“The Western mind has turned away from the contemplation of the absolute and the eternal to the knowledge of the particular and the contingent. It has made man the measure of all things and has sought to emancipate human life from its dependence on the supernatural. Instead of the whole intellectual and social order being subordinated to spiritual principles, every practice has declared its independence, and we see politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power.
And these tendencies were not confined to the secular side of life; they made themselves felt in religion also. Religion came to be regarded as one among a competing number of interests of life, which had no jurisdiction over the rest. And as it lost its universal authority, it lost it’s universal vision; it became sectionalized and rationalized with the rest of European life. The ancient unity of Christendom fell asunder into a mass of warring sects, which were so absorbed in their internecine feuds that they were hardly conscious of their loss of spiritual vision and social authority.”
Christopher Dawson
Christianity & The New Age – p. 59
Published 1931
1.) When Dawson notes that the Western mind is preoccupied with the particular and contingent over and against the universal and eternal he points out a huge problem. The Western mind preferring the particular and contingent over the universal and eternal is like someone stumbling upon a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle scattered all over a house with no box top in order to know what the various pieces are supposed to construct. One cannot know particulars without knowing the universal. Neither can one know the universal without knowing the particulars. Only Christianity can answer this with its teaching of God being both One and Many (Trinitarian) so that the One and the Many condition one another (the doctrine of perichoresis). This idea of the One and Many is both eternal and temporal. Because God is eternally one and many the temporal order is likewise it be understood as one and many. However, if the God of the Bible is not presupposed then modern man has an epistemological problem as the temporal one and many (universals and particulars) have no way of coming into a proper relationship with one another. When the Western mind gave up, as Dawson notes, its dependence on knowing the particular and contingent by knowing the universal and eternal the Western mind gave up knowing. Now, it took time for that agnosticism of knowing to reach full bloom but philosophically the rise of Nihilism, Existentialism, Post-modernism, and post-post Modernism all have been expressions and outcomes of what Dawson was seeing already in 1931. Indeed, Existentialism was in its heyday in the 1930s.
2.) When Dawson notes that “politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power,” we find the foundation of why our University system is no longer worthy of the name “University.” When began, the University (as the word indicates) insisted that there was a unity that could make sense of the diverse disciplines one could find at University. Modern man has abandoned the God of the Bible and His revelation as being that which gives unity to a diversity of knowledge. Because of that abandonment Western man has become schizoid man – he has no unity. Because there is no longer a unifying field of knowledge (i.e.- Theology) If one goes to modern Universities one will find the different departments at each other’s throats. For example the Mathematical department and the Science departments are at war with one another over the issue of whether biological evolution is even possible.
However, even in the Church realm there is strong advocacy that matters like politics, economics, science, and art should organize themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power. Dooyeweerd’s school for example insists that none of the various disciplines are dependent upon the common discipline. Likewise, Radical Two Kingdom theology insists that disciplines like those mentioned (politics, economics, etc.) should not even ever be considered “Christian.” They are their own realities that are absent one organizing unitary principle that gives them a stable transcendent unity. Indeed, R2K goes so far as to say that because there is no unitary principle that brings all disciplines under the God of the Bible’s authority that Christian ministers are wrong (in sin) to speak a “thus saith the Lord” in the realms of politics, economics, science, art, education, etc.
3.) In the mad rush to disenchant the world the results has been there is no longer any sacred authority to speak to all of life and all the parts of life. What the “conservative” “Christian” “faith” of the first part of the 21st century has done is to have emptied the world of God’s authority, and having emptied the world of God’s authority the world has become disenchanted and completely desacralized. By insisting that the Church alone is the realm of the sacred and the enchanted the modern Christian Church has created schizoid man — a man divided against himself. Dualistic man. Instead of speaking of the Church as the “holy of holies,” with everything else outside of the Church finding itself “holy” in light of the Church faithfully holding forth the Word of God over every area of life the Church now insists that it alone is Holy (sacred — realm of grace) while everything else is non-holy (unclean).
Of course, as the saying goes, nature hates a vacuum. Consequently, where the Church has abdicated its role in providing a unitary field of truth, other contestants have sought to provide that role. If the Church will not provide a unitary field of truth based on the theology that overflow from God’s Revelation then sex or science or meaninglessness, or currently, the push towards Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanist constructs, will seek to provide that unitary field of truth. Christians retreating from the idea that Christian theology is the Queen of the Sciences will find that other ugly bitch Queens will arise to steal the sceptre and rule in a vile way.
All of this explains why we are seeing such a departure from the conservative Church. The conservative Church has no answers for modern man. It is completely irrelevant and to be honest I don’t know who I feel more sorry for … for those who don’t attend or for those who do attend.
