Francis Berger's Blog, page 56

Yearning for a Given Christian World Instead of Living in Creation

I get the sense that the romantic aspect of Romantic Christianity causes much confusion and consternation among co-religionists. For most, the adjective cancels out the noun it modifies.

Other modifiers – Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox, Traditional, Liberal – are broadly accepted and comprehended as describing words meant to provide further details about Christianity, but the addition of Romantic before Christianity strikes most Christians as incongruous and inconsistent. 

Mention romanticism and most people envision something fanciful and unreal, an approach and attitude prone to fantasizing or idealizing. This applies to the romantic approach to Christianity, which involves the active choice to develop consciousness, creatively participate in Creation, and fulfill God’s divine plan. It's enough to make most Christians cry heresy or run for the exits.

The reaction is somewhat understandable considering Romanticism's failure to overcome alienation by vivifying Christianity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Romantic impulse attempted but ultimately fell short and succumbed to materialism. Romanticism has never entirely disappeared, but its faint residue has often been misinterpreted or misapplied. 

For conventional Christians, fusing Romanticism with Christianity is the epitome of misinterpretation and misapplication. They insist that the last thing Christianity need is romanticism. After all, it already has its 2000-year tradition, its authority, its scripture, its doctrines, its dogmata, and its churches.

If Christianity needs anything at all, it is faithful and obedient followers of the 2000-year tradition and everything contained within it. 

The 2000-year tradition and all it encompasses is undeniably real and true, but are contemporary Christians true to the 2000-year tradition, or are they estranged and alienated from it?

Does their participation in the 2000-year tradition emanate robustly and meaningfully from the internal, or is it mostly a matter of conforming passively to the external?
 
Put another way, do Christians participate in a Christianity of givenness or a Christianity of creativity?
 
If Christianity is to have any future, it must become creative once again. If it remains in its current state of givenness, the larger given world will eclipse it.

The only way Christianity can become creative again is to romanticize itself and the world. 

Ask Christians what they dream of and most will tell you that they dream of living in a given Christian world. Most are blind to the created world they live in; even blinder to the created world that lives in them.

The first step in this time and place is to look within. The divine calling to overcome the given world and continue God’s Creation is there, waiting to be discovered. 

A Good Connection to My "Don't Fear the Night" Post

The Transparent Unicorn -- a reader of this blog and the only kind of unicorn I have seen in my life -- left a link to a short French choral piece called La Nuict Froide et Sombre by the Flemish, late Rennaissance composer Orlando de Lassus. The short piece connects well to a theme I explored in my recent Don't Fear the Night post from a few days ago.

Though I am familiar with some of his contemporaries like Palestrina, de Lassus was unknown to me until now, so thanks to the Transparent Unicorn for putting this composer on my radar, so to speak. Song and lyrics below:    La nuict froide et sombre
Couvrant d'obscure ombre
La terre et les cieux
Aussi doux que miel,
Fait couler du ciel
Le sommeil aux yeux.

Puis le jour luisant
Au labeur duisant
Sa lueur expose,
Et d'un teint divers
Ce grand univers
Tapisse et compose.


The night cold and dark
Covering with gloomy shade
The earth and the skies,
As sweet as honey
Pours from heaven
Slumber upon the eyes.

Then the shining day
Calling to labour
Shows his gleaming ray,
And with motley colour
Bedecks and shapes
This great universe.

Tradition is Eternal Creativity, Not a Fortress

My triple-pecked priest – who locked up the village church in 2020 and then pulled a seven-month disappearing act that would have made Harry Houdini gape in awe – has recently begun reverting to more traditional rituals and modes of worship on Sundays. 

For example, after he finally declared it safe for the congregation to remove their masks about a year ago, he stated that he would only distribute the Eucharist on the tongue. The announcement caused considerable consternation and confusion among my fellow churchgoers, most of whom had more or less gotten used to the priest treating them like permanent, irredeemable bio-hazards. 

A few months after that, my priest proclaimed that he expected all able-bodied parishioners to kneel before receiving the Eucharist on the tongue. During the mass, he ceremoniously instructed my son and the other altar boys to haul out an old prie-dieu and place it at the foot of the dais before the altar. The parishioners did as they were instructed. 

The reversion to more traditional forms during Mass is my priest’s response to the liberal bishops and cardinals in Germany calling for a change in Catholic teaching on homosexuality and women priests. I know this because he informed us of it himself. As far as he is concerned, the Church is on the cusp of yet another schism, and it was his sworn intention to ensure that my little village congregation remains on the right side of Church history. 

Though I respect my priest for his stance against the QWERTY agenda, I would respect him much more if he had shown a similar level of doggedness during the birdemic. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Litmus Tests, when you fail one, you pretty much fail them all. And my priest failed the birdemic Litmus Test miserably. 

Failed and passed litmus tests aside, my priest’s reaction and subsequent actions against the ominous liberalizing threat seeping in from the West made something eminently clear to me. The more traditional elements within the Church have not sufficiently acknowledged the reality of the evolution of consciousness. Consequently, the only response they can offer against the mature vices, evil, and sins of modern consciousness is to fortress themselves in the past and tradition. 

The impetus to barricade behind tradition arises from the belief that past Church teachings form an eternal criterion of truth from which it is impossible to stray without consigning the world and everyone in it to damnation.

Attached is the conviction that the Church, the world, and men are finished. Spiritual authority is external to the person; authority must be recreated to sustain that eternal criterion of truth ensconced in 2000 years of history.

How far will my village priest go to stem the prevailing evil trends? How far back will he reach into those 2000 years? How many rituals will he reintroduce to ensure we all remain on the right side of Church history? Time will tell; unless, of course, another birdemic hits the world. Then I suspect he might close the church doors again in an effort to keep everyone safe.

The tradition my priest is trying to defend is fixed, static, and external. I wonder how things might be different if he viewed tradition as eternal creativity.

​What if he understood God as continuously creating and expecting eternal newness?

What if he embraced the notion that Christians must play a role in this eternal newness by answering God’s call to conquer the giveness of the world and enrich divine life through co-creation?

​Well, things would probably be quite different indeed. 

Hope To Go on a Walk Like This Soon

The temperatures have dropped dramatically here in the northwestern part of Hungary, and it will remain quite cold for the better part of next week. The forecast calls for some light snow. Who knows? Maybe it will accumulate and remain for short while, but chances are it probably won't.

Snow was a big part of winter when I lived in North America, and I loved going for long walks in snowy forests and fields. Large snowfalls are quite rare where I live now. In all honesty, I don't really miss the inconvenience abundant snowfalls inherently bring with them.

Still, it would be wonderful to go on a snowy walk at least once this winter.  Winter Landscape - László Mednyánszky - Date unknown

Don't Fear the Night

The spiritual foundations of the world have been obscured; its temporal forces exhausted. Modern history is ending. The sun is setting; the twilight is already here.

Night will soon fall. After it does, hearkening back upon sunny days of the past will prove fruitless. Night does not beckon us to look outside but within.

The night is deeper, true, but these depths must not be feared. In the depths there is time and space to connect with life, concentrate on the spirit, and work through the internal challenges and joys of existence.

The night is a time for accumulating the faith, energy, strength, and love needed to create a new day. The new day will not simply arrive; it will not be given. It must be created.

Only after this new creation will the night withdraw. 

Pop a Price Cap In Yo "You Know What"

Here we are near the end of 2022, and around the world, price caps are all the rage. 
​
People may not know this, but here in Hungary, the government has been capping prices on all sorts of things for at least a year or more. Well, it has no choice. I mean, if Hungarians ever found out how little they earn compared to their EU counterparts, well, I imagine they would be quite dissatisfied. Anyway, price caps. The result? Well, nothing much. Moreover, nothing good. 


The Hungarian government began its price-capping spree with a list of essential grocery items, including chicken breast, sugar, flour, and 2.8% milk. Within a blink of an eye, all of the mentioned items suddenly became scarce.


​If you were lucky enough to find a grocery store that magically still had some beat-up cartons of 2.8% milk crammed behind the other dairy offerings or a few punctured bags of flour tragically spilling their contents onto the shelves like wounded infantrymen in the trenches, you were quickly informed about the number you were restricted to purchasing. 


"Only two kilos of flour per person, I'm afraid."

"Shoppers are restricted to purchasing no more than six liters of milk per day in this store."

And so forth. 


After a while, the stores simply stopped stocking the price-capped goods, but they were sure to have abundant amounts of the items that were not price-capped, to which they added all the "losses" the price caps had inflicted upon them. So instead of purchasing 2.8% milk at 50 cents US a liter, Hungarians were forced to pay one dollar for 1.5% milk.


The price caps were so resoundingly successful that they inspired the government to extend them to gasoline, which it capped at about 1.25 US a liter last November. News traveled quickly. The very next day, hordes of Austrian citizens in fuel-deprived cars invaded the country armed with jerrycans, barrels, plastic bottles, and anything else capable of transporting petrol and lay siege to every Hungarian gas station within a hundred kilometers of the border.


A few weeks later, the government solved the problem it had created by declaring that the price cap on petrol was reserved for Hungarian citizens only. All motorists were legally obligated to show their papers before fueling. Hungarian citizens would get the capped price; everyone else, the market price.


The petrol stations responded by enforcing strict 20-liter limits on price-capped gasoline purchases. Anything over 20 liters would be calculated at the market price. After that, it wasn't always easy to find petrol and empty gas stations became an increasingly common sight around the country.


The recently imposed EU price cap on oil from Vodka-land through a spanner in the Hungarian government's stated objectives of "protecting Hungarian families from inflation", and it quietly and unceremoniously scrapped its price cap on gasoline a few days ago. It now costs the average Hungarian about 30% more to fill up the tank. Of course, the price-capped price was also about 15% above the average pre-war against Vodka-land price, but hey, who remembers that?


And what exactly is the EU's price cap on Vodka-land oil meant to accomplish? Bring the Russkies to their knees economically, in the same manner, the EU's other sanctions have? 


Yeah, good luck with that. 


Price caps are always presented as helpful, alleviating measures, but my experience has taught me that these supposedly benevolent measures bring little to no benefit. On the contrary, they tend to mess things up even more. But that's the whole point, isn't it?


I have come to view price caps and other "benevolent" economic interventions as nothing more than "conditioning" exercises. We simply have to accept that ridiculously high prices, shortages, limits, scarcity and all the rest of it are all par for the course in the West. It's all part of the "can't make omelettes without breaking a few eggs" approach to policy.


If you want to build back better, you have to destroy worse first. And there isn't a price cap in the world that will be able to stop the destruction our "leaders" have unleashed. Moreover, there isn't a price cap in the world that will be able to hide the fact that the destruction has been largely intentional. 

Note added: Apologies for all the clichéd expressions in the post, but the subject matter simply demanded them!    

Short Blogging Break

I'm taking a little break from blogging. I should be back in within a week or so. 

Novalis on Immediate Knowledge

Novalis provides some insights into the kind of thinking Dr. Charlton frequently refers to as primary thinking or direct knowing (bold added):

72. On non-sensory or immediate knowledge.

All meaning is representative, symbolic -- a medium. All sense perception is at secondhand. The more particular, the more abstract, one could say, the idea, the description, or the imitation, the less it resembles the object or the stimulus, the more separate and independent is the meaning.

If the meaning did not need an external cause at all it would cease to be meaning and would be a congruous being. As such its forms can again be more or less similar and corresponding to the forms of other beings.

Were its forms and their sequence to perfectly resemble the sequence of forms of another being then there would be the purest harmony between them.

Meaning is a tool -- a means. Absolute meaning would be means and end at the same time. Thus every thing is itself the means whereby we can come to know it -- to experience it or have an effect on it.

Thus in order to feel and come to know a thing completely I would have to make it my meaning and object at once -- I would have to vivify it -- make it into absolute meaning, according to the earlier definition.

If however I were neither able nor willing to do this completely, then I would have to make a part of it -- specifically an individual part quite peculiar to the thing -- an element of the meaning.

What would now ensue? I would acquire mediated and immediate knowledge and experience of the thing at the same time -- it would be representative and not representative, perfect and imperfect -- my own and not my own, in short it would be both antithetical and synthetic knowledge and experience of it.

The element or meaning would be at once an element and a non-element, because through vivifying it I would in a sense have severed it from the whole. If I call the whole thing world, then I would have an integral part of the world in myself, and the rest of it outside myself. I would appear to myself in a theoretical respect, with regard to this meaning, as dependent and under the influence of the world.

I would further, in connection with this meaning, be obliged to cooperate as an element of the world -- for otherwise I would accomplish my intention only incompletely in vivifying it. I would find my meaning, or body, determined partly by itself and partly by the idea of the whole -- by its spirit -- the world soul, and this so that both are inextricably united -- so that properly speaking one could refer neither to the one nor the other exclusively.

My body would seem to me not specifically different from the whole -- but only a variant of it. My knowledge of the whole would thus have the character of analogy -- but this would refer in the closest and most immediate way to the direct and absolute knowledge of the element. Both together would comprise an antithetical synthetic knowledge. It would be immediate, and by means of the immediate it would be mediated, at once real and symbolic.

All analogy is symbolic. I find my body determined and made effective by itself and the world soul at the same time. My body is a small whole, and thus it also has a special soul; for I call soul the individual principle whereby everything becomes one whole.

I know myself to be as I will and will myself to be as I know -- because I will my will --because I will absolutely. Thus within myself knowledge and will are perfectly united.

While I want to understand my will -- and particularly also my deed -- I notice that I also have a will and can do something without knowing about it -- further, that I can and do know something without having willed it. 
                                                                                                                                          - from Logological Fragments I

The Beatles Were Wrong; All Love Needs Is You

The Beatles' "All You Need is Love" would probably make sense to the ancient Greeks, but for Christians the expression must-needs be reversed to "All Love Needs is You." 

I'll try to explain in the following. Bear with me: 

In Ressentiment , Max Scheler juxtaposes ancient and Christian views of love to help clarify and define the unique qualities of Christian love.

According to Scheler, the most important difference between ancient and Christian conceptualizations of love lies in the direction of its movement. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and poets deemed the essence of love to be an upward striving – a movement of aspiration of the lower, weaker, ignorant, and less-formed toward the higher, stronger, wiser, and more-formed.

This upward movement of love is clearly expressed in all life relations in antiquity, including marriage, friendship, and social relations. It made clear distinctions between the “lover” and the “beloved”, with the former being the lower striver and the latter being the higher who is striven after.

It finds its most lucid expression in Greek metaphysics, in which the most perfect form becomes the pinnacle of love that can experience no aspiration, striving, or need. Instead, the most perfect form becomes the prime mover who does not move but attracts, entices, and tempts other beings toward it.

Thus, the essence of the ancient conception of love results in a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities all striving upward but never looking back. The process continues all the way to the deity, which does not love but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all aspirations of love.

Within this framework, love is only a dynamic means through which to achieve an ultimate, static goal. From a different perspective, using the means of love, the ancients strove to attain the end of not having to love at all but instead become the ultimate principle that attracts all other love. Within this perpetual striving upward, the ancient Greeks regarded love to be a limited commodity that needed to be invested wisely and not wasted by condescending to the lower.
 
Scheler observes that the Christian view of love turns the ancient Greek axiom on its head. Instead of the lower aspiring toward the higher, the Christian criterion of love has the higher stooping toward the lower, the wise to the ignorant, the rich to the poor, and so forth.

Scheler notes that the Christian, unlike the ancient Greek, suffers no anxiety that he loses something in the process of looking back or looking below. On the contrary, the Christian harbors the pious conviction that his act of descending toward the lower not only ennobles him but that it earns him the highest good because it makes him equal to God – at least in action.

For the Christian, God ceases to be the eternal unmoving star beckoning all life toward it like a beloved beckoning the lover and becomes instead a “creator” who creates “out of love”. The essence of the Christian God is to love and to serve through acting, thinking, and creating. The highest good for a Christian does not involve aspiring toward the prime mover who does not love but to align with the act and movement of Divine Love itself. Love itself and actively participating in the continuing expansion of love becomes a Christian’s highest good. Scheler writes:

The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. Indeed, the achievements of love are only symbols and proofs of its presence in the person. And thus God himself becomes a “person” who has no “idea of the good,” no “form and order,” no logos above him, but only below him—through his deed of love.

He becomes a God who loves—for the man of antiquity something like a square circle, an “imperfect perfection.” How strongly did Neo-Platonic criticism stress that love is a form of “need” and “aspiration” which indicates “imperfection,” and that it is false, presumptuous, and sinful to attribute it to the deity!   

But there is another great innovation: in the Christian view, love is a non-sensuous act of the spirit (not a mere state of feeling, as for the moderns), but it is nevertheless not a striving and desiring, and even less a need. These acts consume themselves in the realization of the desired goal. Love, however, grows in its action. And there are no longer any rational principles, any rules or justice, higher than love, independent of it and preceding it, which should guide its action and its distribution among men according to their value. All are worthy of love—friends and enemies, the good and the evil, the noble and the common.

Scheler defines the above as authentic Christian love. As such, he declares it to be free of ressentiment (resentment). Nevertheless, he is quick to admit that ressentiment can taint Christian love and subtly hijack it for its own purposes, most notably in pursuits like altruism.

Scheler chalked up the difference between ancient and Christian views of love to the direction of its movement. Another possible way to conceptualize this is to consider the direction of movement as participation – the way in which men choose to take part, cooperate, and play a part in Creation. For the ancients, participation was largely a matter of using love to strive upward toward the goal of the unmoved mover who attracts all love but is attracted to nothing and loves nothing.

For Christians, participation seems to be more a matter of loving and cooperating with a personal Creator who also loves. The only “end” so to speak is the expansion of love, through which Creation itself expands.

Unlike the ancient deity, the Christian God actively desires that the lower become higher. Creation itself becomes a place in which to “raise up” gods. However, this raising up does not involve God attracting. On the contrary, in Creation, God enables this “raising up” by “condescending” to the lower, the weaker, and the unformed through love. Also unlike the ancient deity, the Christian God invites His believers to do the same because, contrary to what the ancients believed, such actions expand love and Creation rather than diminish it.

To sum up, becoming like God meant something very different to the ancients than it does for Christians. For the ancients, becoming god-like entailed a perpetual striving upward in which love must always be aimed at something higher and never at anything lower.

The case is the opposite with Christian love where Divine Love freely and willingly condescends to work creatively with the lower to expand love within Creation.

​Becoming god-like in Christianity involves participating in that Divine Love by treating love as a never-ending dynamic end rather than as a dynamic means through which to attain a static end. The god of the ancients was an unmoving idol; the Christian God is a loving parent. 

Note added: Scheler wrote Ressentiment from a primarily Roman Catholic perspective, yet he was able to detect and pierce the strains of classical philosophy that had flowed into Christian thinking over the centuries. 

Music for the First Sunday of Advent