Modern man is thoroughly marooned, and Christ is the only lifeline that can help him find a way back on to the ship.
Because man needs roots, many revolutionaries [Voltaire, Hitler, to name two] have attempted to make a short-circuit back to a forgotten pagan age, despising the Christian legacy of which they themselves were a product, like children turning against their mother. It is also the commonplace of much new age thinking.
But C.S. Lewis has a neat answer for those who think that Europe can come out of Christianity ‘by the same door as in she went’ and find herself back where she was. “It is not what happens,” says Lewis “A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the Pagan past.” – in De Descriptione Temporum, a lecture delivered on 29th November 1954. CUP, 1955.
But that also means that Christians need tradition: cultural, theological and otherwise. If we make the mistake of some Protestants and ignore any thought earlier than the Bible, and treat with suspicion everything that came after it (hey, what could be better than the Bible, after all …?) then we risk deracinating Christianity itself. Christianity is not there just to redeem individual souls, but also to redeem the whole story of mankind. And so, well-rooted and thoughtful Christians profit from a knowledge of the great traditions in which Christianity first flourished, and of the the new roots that Faith has been putting down ever since. Hence, the need for the study of what the Americans have christened “the Great Books”.
From 26th July to 4th August 2009, together with Professor Anthony O’Hear of Buckingham University (author of The Great Books, just published by ISI), Robert Asch (co-editor of StAR) and writer Denis Boyles, we’ll be immersing ourselves in this wonderful literary tradition in a kind of literary house party, in the Vendee region of France (the one that withstood the Revolution!). You’d be welcome to join us: www.thegreatbooks.chavagnes.info/
‘A bientôt’,
Ferdi McDermott
(Founder of StAR and Principal of Chavagnes International College, France).
I’m always of two minds when this subject of hard times, repression, or persecution (the distinction is a matter of degree) comes up. The de-Christianization of Europe (and possibly the U.S. as well) is a serious concern when we think about what it means for culture, religious freedom–serious matters indeed. Yet, I also remember back in the 50’s when I was a child, a playmate had an African-American nanny who commented one day, “We were better off when we were slaves.” We were children and didn’t understand, so we asked her, “You don’t want to be free?” She replied, “Well, we weren’t better off, but our souls were.”
Life experience teaches each of us personally that we’re closer to Christ when times are bad, and that’s true historically of whole societies as well. We’re better Christians in the catacombs than we are in boardrooms, universities, and the like. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
Of course, I love Christian culture. It civilized Europe. And if the darkness descends, we certainly will not be “better off.” But our souls might be.