Bruce Charlton's Notions

This is restating the argument of my post of a few days ago - from another angle.

There are many Christians of many types - if we take the definition of those eligible for resurrection to life eternal (1) a follower of Jesus who (2) acknowledges his divinity - which is what Jesus says, repeatedly, throughout the Fourth Gospel.

Among those who style themselves Christian in the modern world, there are many who - By My Judgement - are not Christian. This could be termed the 'Fake Christian Crisis' - it is the infiltration of all Western Christian churches by Leftists and Sexual Revolutionaries - aiming incrementally to subvert, destroy,  take-over, and invert most of real Christianity. Fake Christianity has replaced all, or nearly all, of the leadership in major Western denominations including Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbytarians and most mainstream evangelicals. 

And - also By My Judgement, and according to the Fourth Gospel definition - the real Christians are scattered across many churches denominations and no denomination-at-all.

This is 'easy' for me to assert, since I am in the no-denomination category (although associated with, supportive of, a Church of England Conservative Evangelical church); but, since Christians are in a shrinking and persecuted minority in The West, almost every real Christian wants (as I do) to be able to ally-with/ work-with other real Christians.

But... this become de facto impossible when the real Christians respond to the Fake Christian crisis by doubling-down on the legalism. In a nutshell, the strategy is to define the Leftist Sexual revolutionaries as heretics, and to exclude them on that basis.

But the real problem is not heresy but apostasy - the Fake Christians may be orthodox in narrowly defined legalistic terms, they are usually prepared to stand up and make strict oaths and promises in which they do not believe and have zero intention of living-by; but they are Obviously Not Christian in terms of not being followers of Jesus and/ or not believing in the divinity of Jesus.

This is presumably why the legalistic approach to fighting Fake Christianity has been a near-total failure. 

What can easily be seen by the truth-seeking and discerning eye (or rather heart) is typically invisible to the words of legalism. The answer is simple, but it depends on honest, informed human judgement - for which there is no substitute - nor will there ever be a substitute... so long as Goodness is required: Goodness is a personal, not abstract, attribute.

Once we have cast aside the false idea that Christianity is, or ought to be, protected by legalism - by definitions and procedures (surely an idea that would have been rejected - sharply - by Jesus?) then matters can be much clearer - clearer although not, of course, necessarily easy or simple in practice.

For this to happen each must take personal responsibility for the judgement that he or she must make about others: we must judge others, and we must also be clear that the judgement of others is, can only be, must be for each of us - a personal judgement.

That is to say, we each must discern (with the discernment of the heart - not by checklist and tickbox) who are the real, and who the fake, Christians - and act accordingly, And 'must' means must.

I've said this several times in several places over the past 10-plus years on this blog; but maybe it deserves stating on it own... When I converted to Christianity, when I became a Christian, it was for the wrong reasons... mostly. 

My reasons for believing in first God, and then Jesus Christ, were - mostly, but not entirely- social and civilizational. This was because I had been brought to the point of conversion by the societal decline of England and The West generally. 

I realized that my civilization had become at first weak, then self-loathing; because we had deleted God personally and from public discourse; and in doing so deleted all possibility of purpose and meaning in life. 

Having believed in God (i.e. becoming a theist) I then became a Christian; believing that Christianity was the true-est of all the religions I knew. But I was unsure of the right denomination to join. 

What I was looking for, then, was 'civilizational-level' changes such as purpose, meaning and the basis for social cohesion in support of the transcendental values: truth, beauty and virtue. 

I then embarked on exploring, trying, a variety of denominations; even while I could see them collapsing in real time, almost in front of my eyes... Or more likely I gradually saw that the Western churches shared the weakness and indeed self-hatred of the civilization in general. 

I sought holiness; but found only legalism and a hard kind of strictness. 

From here-and-now, looking back on my recent life; it seems obvious that I was - substantially, albeit not fully - regarding Christianity and its churches as a means to a materialistic end: the awakening and regeneration of The West in general, England in particular. 

I never regarded this as an optimistic desire, indeed it never seemed probable that it would actually happen; but I saw a Christian revival as the only legitimate hope. 

But then I began to realize that my hope for a revival of traditional, old-time religion and strong churches was not just futile (in the sense that the opposite was happening), but that it would not be the answer even if it did happen. 

In other words that my hope - even if fulfilled - was not legitimate. 

I began to realize that Christianity had departed the churches - and they had become mere shells of institutions; in the same way as schools, hospitals, the police, law courts and military were just shells - which is that they retained forms and rules but without the motivating spirit. 

Insofar as there was still a motivating Christian spirit in the churches, it came from low down the hierarchy, it was dwindling; and it was ignored or persecuted (i.e. a situation exactly analogous to what I had observed in science and medicine a decade earlier).  

That is where I currently am. I now believe that I became a Christian for many wrong reasons to do with what I hoped that - in principle - Christianity, or else one or more of the Christian churches, could do for Western Civilization. 

I first realized that this could not happen, because the churches had institutionally lost their core spiritual motivations; and then I realized that even if the churches had remained uncorrupt, none of the earlier institutional forms of Christianity were capable (even theoretically) of addressing the major spiritual necessities of the West here-and-now. 

Liberalism had failed, but traditionalism could not work - even if it appeared to revive (which it didn't).

 

Another way of describing the trajectory, it that it took me quite a while to get clear about what Christianity really is (and always was). After all, across the centuries, Christianity has been and has included many, many things - even if we confine attention to a single denomination. 

At the most basic level, there has been (and is) tremendous ambiguity, unclarity, confusion and contradiction about what Jesus actually did. What, in other words, salvation actually means. 

This, of itself, was something that took a great deal of sorting out; and indeed it could not be sorted-out until I had re-examined several assumptions that I had absorbed without sufficient clarity or evaluation.

I do not think I really understood this - at least not enough to be clear enough to be able to defend it and advocate it as an individual - until my long and focused reading of the Fourth Gospel. 

This eventually (a decade after I became a Christian) made me see that the simple and true essence of Christianity had been obscured by the High Volume of secondary, and erroneous, doctrine and theology that (apparently) began accumulating from very soon after Jesus's resurrection. 

 It now seems to me that the reason why the Christian churches are-not, cannot, and should-not be the basis for a Christian revival; is that none of them have a clear and simple grasp of the core and essence of Christianity. 

This did not much matter in the past, in that the whole package did contain the truth (along with a lot of other stuff) - and because people accepted the whole package, and because society as a whole was not actively evil.  

Now we have a world in which everybody picks and chooses in their religions (even/ especially when they deny this!); when the world as a whole is actively evil; and therefore where Christians absolutely need to be clear about what it is that we believe and why.  

Nobody is going to tell us what we need to know; so we must each work it out for himself, and take responsibility for what he concludes. 

We each need to discover for ourselves what it really is to be a Christian, and to choose that Christianity: choose for the right reason/s. 

Anything else is not going to last, as the world darkens. 

But the right choice will last, and will strengthen - whatever happens to the world. 

Thanks to everybody who commented yesterday - this generous response certainly inclines me to keep going a while longer with this blog: knowing that there are a significant number of people out-there who find the blog worthwhile.

It isn't a matter of stopping writing - since that is how I think; indeed an aspect of how I meditate. But the blog is a medium with a certain style and expectations - actually quite a delicate matter - IMO probably more blogs have been somewhat spoiled by their comments (e.g. Steve Sailer, Unqualified Reservations) than were enhanced by them (e.g. View from the Right). But comments are part of the medium. 

When I began blogging I did so without allowing comments, because I found the whole business distracting - but after experimentation I found value in the interactive aspect; and it was a major factor in developing the ideas of Thought Prison (especially) and Addicted to Distraction. However, the need to 'manage' comments (and commenters!) is difficult for me, since I am not and do not want to be any kind of manager!

However, part of the problem is laziness - I never managed to get myself to learn the skills required to do web pages (probably this aspect has changed); while blogging is as easy as typing, cutting and pasting. I have only managed to tinker with the HTML facility of blogging in the past few months - to fix it when, for mysterious reasons, the blog post comes-out with wrong and ineradicable-by-normal-means formatting) - but I find it extremely soul destroying work!.

The truly wonderful thing about blogging, for someone whose creativity is somewhat pressured and fecund (I could fairly easily - and would want to - post three or even more times a day, on most non-busy days, on a wide range of subjects - but have found it somewhat counter-productive for this type of blog; not least because it seems to feed the media-frenzy way of thinking and behaving - rather than encouraging contemplation)... the wonderful thing about blogging is its immediacy and that fact that it removes The Editor from the equation.

I used to do a fair bit of journalism - in the early 90s I was writing for the New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement and peaked with regular well-paid stuff in The Times (of London) - and that worked for me essentially because the editors printed everything I sent with minimal changes! However, these outlets were cut-off by changes in personnel and policy, and those situations are much rarer nowadays - or else extinct (in my experience) except in very small magazines where a relationship of trust can be established. And anyway, blogging has been much more rewarding and creatively stimulating than any journalism I ever did - money has its price.

But the turn-around time to close the loop with readers with small magazines is terribly slow; and of course there is no small magazine which would take the range of things I blog about - or which would indeed be interested in my notions.

Furthermore, the heart of this blog is Christian evangelism - that is why I keep-on writing it. And the fact is that I am such a odd kind of Christian (through nobody's fault but my own!) that there is no audience in small magazines, or small publishers, for what I do. I am grateful to be included (recently) at the Junior Ganymede group blog, which is essentially a conservative Mormon blog - on the basis of having developed a pen-friendship with the blog-Meister; and to participate, albeit from outside the CJCLDS, with the community there. I think they could benefit from a higher rate of commenting; but on the whole there is a 'feel' about that blog (warm hearted and/ but tough minded) which is something positive that blogs can do.

So - the reason for this blog, and what keeps me going, is the attempt to bring people towards or into 'Mere' Christianity - mainly aiming at those whose metaphysical set-up (fundamental assumptions) are preventing this. As with any kind of evangelical work, each individual counts, and one 'success' is sufficient to justify a lifetime of effort - so from that perspective I have apparently been richly rewarded.

Beyond that, the matter of salvation (accepting the gift of eternal Heavenly life which Christ has already gained for us, but which we personally must accept - with its conditions), is theosis - the matter of becoming a better Christian by becoming more God-like during mortal life.

I still have work to do in developing my own understanding about how this might be possible and 'how to do it' in ways that 'work' for introverted, antisocial, wilful, irritable people such as myself - who have compulsively been picking fights with institutions for decades, and who can barely get themselves even to attend church services from time to time.

Nonetheless, I always recommend picking a real Christian denomination, a specific church - in light of oneself and the avaiable possibilities in a particular time and place - joining it, and living in and by it, as the best Christian path for most people. (I haven't given up on this, by the way - but keep trying intermittently.)

On the other hand, not everybody is most people, there are few 'real' churches available to choose from, and even fewer of these (in my case currently zero) which one is eligible to join - and there are also many 'ways' of being a real, self-identified, faith-full but 'Mere' Christian outside the churches; and that is, I think, my core role here.

Certainly not by being an exemplar of the mainstream and most-useful-for-most-people path - but helpful for a minority of Christian oddballs and eccentrics (in that respect similar to myself) on the one hand - and on the other hand indicating some more individual, intuitive and inward,  subjectively-transformative-possibilities for those who are in churches.

Because I think this is the destiny of Western man - the divinely intended direction of Christian life which has so far been rejected or else thwarted. We are not supposed to be contented with a life of obedience and virtue (which is anyway, unattainable); but Christianity ought also to be transformative of the inner Man, of consciousness - albeit partially, intermittently and mainly as an ideal.

Christianity (and salvation) comes first, and acknowledgement of the validity of the rules and practices is essential; the church as an institution (as well as mystically) is essential - and without the institutional church (found in several and various denominations) Christianity will surely die; but Christian thinking ought not to be mundane.  We should strive to be 'not of this world' in terms of our innermost experiences.

In sum, too many Christians are stunted by an exclusive focus on morality - because The Good also includes beauty and truth, and the transformation of being a Christian should have as its ideal not only (nor for everyone primarily) the goal of being ever-more-virtuous. That just isn't enough of an aim - especially in a world permeated with evil thought structures - as ours is.

Aside from a micro-minority, virtue is too small and partial to be the primary goal of life. Attempting primarily to be virtuous leads, too often, to a hard-hearted and shallow morality of legalism. Our minds, our very way of thinking - as deep inside us as we know, need to be different and distinct from the mundane, autonomous of the mundane, and a source of purpose, meaning and real (spiritual) relationships.

Everyone can work on this for himself and in himself - and need not wait for the world to change first. But to recognize that this is a valuable thing to do itself requires a metamorphosis of the normal and enforced assumptions and practices of thinking - normal and enforced just as much within Christian churches as outside them.

We are - almost all of us - self-trapped in a self-imposed prison of the dull, materialistic and ultimately nihilistic; but (properly understood) this is not a matter for despair because the Christian is in an uniquely hopeful and strong position to do something effective about this - starting here and now.

In sum: Modern Man is sleepwalking through life - and Christians are not exempt, indeed they are (on the whole) in this regard, no better than anyone else. We all need to wake-up. To wake-up from our state of ambulent sleep we (probably) first need to understand what we are trying to do, start doing it, then we may experience it - and only then will we know it. 

So, there is work still to be done with this blog - work in-me, and perhaps from-me. 

A problem I have seen among US 'pro-life'/ anti-abortion Christians is a false assumption about the universality, the 'natural law' validity of their intuitive sense of abortion - and indeed infanticide - as evil. 

Christians talk as if it could be assumed - for instance - that non-Christians regard abortion as morally equivalent to murder. 

And when Christians argue that especially late abortion is equivalent to infanticide (i.e. killing of a newborn by his or her mother) - the assumption is that non-Christians regard infanticide as morally equivalent to murder. 

Yet I think it is a simple fact that the equivalence of abortion and infanticide with murder are not spontaneous human intuitions, but are rather specifically Christian convictions. 

It seems that these convictions and intuitions have not been shared by many or most people in history, as they are not shared by many people in the modern world. 

The 'pro-life' intuition and stance is distinctively (if not exclusively) Christian - and this insight ought to be the assumed basis for interactions between Christian and non-Christian regarding these matters. 

In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark describes how the immortality of abortion and infanticide was part of a variety of pro-natalist doctrines that characterized the early Christians, and which operated within the burgeoning society of Christians - but distinctively in that sub-group of society.  

Thus, ancient Christianity grew rapidly by exponential natural increase (as well as by conversions), in a Roman society where women increasingly strove to avoid childbearing and families were kept small or absent. 

It is easy to find many other example of ancient civilizations that were also anti-natalist. But more pertinently, perhaps, records of pre-civilization, simple hunter gatherer societies also frequently practice infanticide - usually by 'exposure' (abandonment of the new born child by his or her mother); and therefore would presumably practice abortion if the technology was available.  

My factual point is that humans are not innately/ spontaneously/ naturally averse to abortion or infanticide - the wrongness of these activities is not a universal moral prohibition as with murder (although that prohibition of murder may not include strangers). Pro-life is not a human universal morality. 

What does seem to be a human universal is that abortion and infanticide are regarded as a 'bad thing' - although not as bad as murder: and therefore something that naturally makes the mother feel bad...

And therefore something to be avoided if possible, and done only when it is the lesser of evils. Abortion/ infanticide are certainly not something to celebrate or to advocate. 

My moral point is that Christians should not assume that non-Christians feel the same abhorrence at abortion or indeed infanticide. 

The strongly-motivated avoidance of such behaviour is part of being a Christian, but not part of being human. And the difference is one reason for the intransigent nature of these policy disputes.  

Another problem is that there is a difference between setting up and justifying laws - which must be clear and categorical, especially in alien, massive and bureaucratic societies such as ours - and the specific, distinctive moral realities of exact situations and circumstances. 

Real morality is about specific issues - each unique; not about absolute and generic prohibitions of broad categories of events. This is why all truly just systems of law have provision for the interpretation of categorical systems by the 'judgment' of a wise and good human judge. The ideal judge bridges between legal categories and the unique circumstance.

Failure to recognize this specificity of morality in religion leads to cold-hearted, anti-Christian 'legalism' or Pharisee-ism in Christianity. And this insight ought to apply to abortion and infanticide, just as it does to arson and murder. 

Our ultimate problem is that we almost-wholly lack wise and good judges, as we ourselves ("the masses") lack wisdom and goodness. 

And bad Men (wrongly-motivated, cowardly Men) cannot be made good by system, by imposing laws or regulations - nor by abolishing them. 

System can make us worse - which is why it is a major tool of Satan; but System cannot (here and now) make us better. 

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In one sense Christian salvation is very straightforward - and was made deliberately so by the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's what it means that Gospel means Good News - it really is good news.

But there is no formula for Christian life - extremes are corrupt, and the middle ground is slippery.

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So-called Liberal Christianity is by now very obviously not Christian, but rather an anti-Christian strategy, a highly successful fifth column within Christianity, eroding from within.

That shouldn't need emphasising, but it does - because nearly everybody (including all mainstream political parties) are now Left/ Liberal - and so is the modern state and its administration, and so are all large and powerful institutions.

So all successful and powerful people are Leftist/ Liberal to the extent that they participate in mainstream modern life - and therefore all powerful and prosperous Christians experience constant pressure on their Christianity to conform to Left/ Liberalism - and since Left/ Liberalism is foundationally secular, to yield to this pressure is to destroy Christianity at its root.

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But ultra-correctness is also a serious problem in Christianity.

The term comes from Fr Seraphim Rose, and he used it to refer to people whose focus on observable externals of Christianity became so total that a superficially detailed and exact observance of rules and rituals masked an anti-Christian, and indeed evil, pride: coldness and hatred in the heart.

Ultra-correctness would include many examples from all churches - especially the point-by-point 'legalism' which is a temptation to all - as if Christianity was primarily about enforcing obedience to regulations.

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So Liberalism and ultra-correctness are both anti-Christian; and also the reaction against Liberalism and ultra-correctness - strenuous and one-sided efforts to avoid the one or the other - can propel people to the opposite. So a reaction against the Liberalism of modern life may lead to ultra-correctness; and the reaction to ultra-correctness may lead to Liberalism - and both of these may lead (wittingly or unwittingly) out of Christianity...

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Why should these be a particular hazard in modern life - to the extent that it can seem impossible to hold the middle ground?

Part of it is, I think, a decline in intellectual life related to the rise of the Mass Media. People's attention spans are so brief that unreal extremism is almost inevitable - reality is divided into two alternative, neither of which is true or viable - but people are forced to choose between them in a snap decision (and if they do not choose, they will be allocated to one or the other).

So, for example, you are forced either to embrace the lethal lunacies of political correctness or be regarded as a racist and a hater. Or, in an ultra-correct church, to adopt an attitude of slavish and unquestioning mechanical obedience to all rules and doctrines, or be vilified and shunned as heretical, evil, and anti-Christian.

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Partly, this false dichotomy is a consequence of genuine flaws or weaknesses in mainstream classical theology which have been found-out, attacked and exploited by mainstream secular Leftism. For example, there is an apparent paradox or contradiction in the understanding of free will and choice, there is the problem of explaining the existence of evil and extreme suffering when God is supposed to be omnipotent, and there is the problem of supporting marriage and family and opposing the sexual revolution in a religion conceived in terms of individual souls and where marriage, family and sexuality are regarded merely as temporary this-worldly expedients. 

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Also, I think this false dichotomy of ultra-correctness versus Liberalism is a consequence of the significant decline in average intelligence among theologians, philosophers, theoreticians and the like. The problem is that people do not, and perhaps cannot, understand the religion they have inherited from previous generations.

On the one hand, Christianity has been made, and has evolved to be, over-complicated. The faith is supposed to be fully comprehensible to children and the simple minded - but was elaborated to become the province of an elite.

Now the elite don't understand it either!

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Liberalism and ultra-correctness are two responses to this incomprehension.

Liberalism has the attitude that: 'If I don't understand it, then it must be nonsense; so it should be replaced; and replaced with something better in-line-with what everybody knows is ethical and real'.

So, a dumb intellectual, whose attention span is eroded by the Mass Media, and who swims in a world of progressive sexuality - cannot understand why traditional marriage is necessary to Christianity, therefore feels able to redefine it at will - and in line with the notions current in today's media.

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Ultra-correctness also does not understand the real reasons for inherited theology, doctrine, rules and regulations  - but responds by a literal obedience to 'the letter of the law'.

So, a person may not understand the New Testament as a whole, but can understand it one sentence at a time, especially in a modern ('more scholarly') translation.

The ultra-correct may not understand the reason or purpose or motivation behind the list of dos and don'ts - but he can take each do, and each don't - and monitor the situation for compliance. Christianity is reduced to a rulebook on the whatsoever-is-not-forbidden-is-compulsory model - goodness is pride-fully equated to adherence to all of the rules all of the time; while sin = disobedience to the rules (mostly, doing prohibited things, but also to a lesser extent not doing mandatory things).

An ultra-correct Christian education is about ensuring compliance to rules - all or nothing, white or black: and beyond that is the void.

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My point is that Christianity cannot long survive (except as a mere pride-enforced shell of rules and rituals - which may come to mask evil intentions, hate-driven motivations and a rotten heart) if Christianity is not understood.

Or, Christianity - in its essence, its core, that which is necessary - cannot be more complex than the people who practice it.

(Except in the case of young children and the permanently dependent, who are intended to be subsumed under (loving) parental or other familial guidance.)

As the people who practice Christianity become simpler, so must the faith - or rather, Christianity IS simple - or rather: real Christianity is simple and if what we have is not simple then it is (so that extent) not real (or at least not necessary).

If something in Christianity is too complex to understand, or too complex to explain (given a willing learner); then that means that either it is not necessary (not essential), or that we have somehow got it wrong.

But in discarding that which is incomprehensible, we must not dissolve into mainstream secular Leftism; and we must not confuse genuine incomprehension with inattention, laziness, self-justification or any other fake reason for rejecting that about Christianity which is inconvenient.

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There is no formula for this! There is no 'safe' way to be a Christian: no rulebook, nor discarding the rulebook! No assured path to reform, no standard method of ensuring that hazards will be avoided.

There is always need for discernment - the ability to judge according to goodness: the evaluation of the heart.

If there is no discernment, then there will be apostasy - loss of faith, one way or another; but if there is discernment, then all else follows.

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Note added: Since I don't suppose many people reading this blog will be prone to Christian Liberalism, the main purpose of this post is warning against Ultra-correctness; and to emphasize that it is not a 'safe' path - either for an individual person, or for a church. There is no safe path. As soon as Christianity is reduced to any formula or algorithm or decision path; any set of clear, simple rules and regulations which can easily be 'implemented' by anybody - even if they are not themselves Christian - then Christianity evaporates - and is usually replaced with something extremely nasty. For example, when Secular Right Wingers and Reactionaries - who are not themselves Christian (but to all appearances seem to be motivated by pride, hate, resentment, hedonism and the urge to dominate and exploit) - try to influence Christians by approving or recommending policies, they almost-always urge Ultra-correctness (e.g. literal interpretation of specific Biblical verses; or a slavish attitude to Canon Law, or institutional hierarchy, or philosophical statements); partly because Ultra-correctness is all that the secular mind can understand about religion, but also because u-c can easily be incorporated-into their covertly-evil agendas.

So much discussion is rendered futile by the primacy of intent - and that this fact is not recognised, or else rendered an insoluble mystery and ruled-out. This applies also in Christian life.

Discussion nearly always focuses on explicit, observable things like policy statements, laws, and people's actions. Yet these are only understandable in terms of the intentions behind them - the same behaviour can have opposite interpretations depending on the framework of intentions (or motivations) that it is embedded-in.

For example, when I was reading the Letters of Fr Seraphim Rose a few years ago - there were parts when he was at the same time resisting theological 'liberals' and 'ultra-correct' conservatives. The liberals were those who were changing, diluting, and dropping items of faith on the basis that the heart was what mattered. This was what I expected to see. But he was also resisting the 'ultra-correct', who were highly specific and rigid concerning permissible rituals, practises etc - and neglected the intentions and emotions behind them. And indeed I have seen Seraphim Rose criticised both for being a rigid traditionalist and liberalising radical.

At the end of the liberalising path, Christianity dies by being absorbed into mainstream secularism; at the end of the ultra-correct path, Christianity dies by being absorbed by legalistic bureaucracy. Either way, Christianity dies when the intention is other than Christian.

In the end, it was clear that even in Eastern Orthodoxy, which superficially seems a straightforward adherence to 'tradition', there are serious and insoluble difficulties about judging on the basis of actions and ignoring intentions.

In the blog 'reactosphere' - especially among the likes of Roman Catholics and Calvinists - the same debate is repeatedly played-out. And the real debate is - it seems to me - about the underlying intent: this is what needs to be discussed and decided.

For example, if the real, genuine, operative intent of a Christian liberaliser is to change the rules in order to promote his own career, or so as to permit engagement his favourite sexual activity - then whatever policy he promotes will not be what it seems, but merely a stalking-horse for the next stage in his self-gratification.

(This can be seen in the Church of England; where women who personally regard the priesthood as a job which they want to do, and then they want to be promoted to Bishop, will argue - sometimes using 'Christian' reasons - why this is necessary and beneficial; or priests who personally want to have sex outside of the context of a traditional marriage (i.e. between an adult man and women) will make theological arguments about the Christian duty of 'inclusion' to allow or encourage this.)

On the conservative and traditional side, can be seen a rigid legalism of attitude; for example Protestant pastors who reflexively and unrestrainedly (that is, without regard either for the Christian virtue of honesty or the Christian vice of bearing false witness) vilified the Harry Potter series because they contained magic. (This example may seem trivial, but I regard it as perhaps the single most significant lost opposrtunity for Christian evangelism of Western young people over the past couple of decades.) Or the ignorant, aggressive and (I infer) hate-fuelled way that serious, conservative Christians of different denominations talk about each other.

Again it is the intention which is controlling the situation; and conservative Christians are often driven by a desire to gain status by excoriating other people for their failure strictly to follow the rules, practises, and other observable and measurable outcomes. They are like the performance managers of corporations whose entire focus is on errors and complaints, and who use this to gain personal control (and personal gratification) by keeping the spotlight relentlessly on the failures of other people.

My point is that Seraphim Rose was 100 percent correct that neither rule-following nor rule-breaking are of the essence. The essence lies in what is behind this - in intentions, motivations and the like. In the heart.

Now, of course, intentions are not visible - people do not have transparent heads in which we can read their true intentions. And people lie and decieve - including lying to themselves and deceiving themselves - a pre-requisite for effective manipulation of others.

And to make matters worse there are radicals and reactionaries and misguided Christians who are always harping-on about not judging other people - by which they mean that because we cannot be sure of what is going on in the intentions of another, we are forbidden to make an inference on the topic - and must therefore either always assume the best intentions, or the worst.

This is dangerous, deadly nonsense! - even if it is sincerely and compassionately motivated - for the simple reason that intentions are the most important factor - and so they cannot be ignored.

So we should be upfront in talking about and thinking about the intentions of others. For example, in public life, in leadership, in politics and the like... we should be talking less about what people say and their policies, and more about what kind of a person they are. Furthermore, we cannot read-off what kind of person they are from what they have done - because until we know their intentions we cannot interpret what they have done.

So we must be wary about asking for 'evidence' of the intentions of others, and we must be wary of having an assumption of either good or bad intentions - because in practice such assumptions cannot often be overturned by 'evidence'. We need to aim at intuiting intentions - which is how the most socially-adept people behave in real life.

But how do we know the intentions of others? The answer is by paying careful attention to them, over period of time - in personal contact, in a number of situations, and with time to think about it and take notice of our hearts - the discernment of the heart as a Seraphim Rose called it - more than listening exclusively to our heads/ intellect or to our gut feelings/ immediate urges (both of which are easily fooled).

With public figures this process is more difficult and may be impossible. So be it - it is one reason why our mass society functions so badly. Nonetheless we must make such decisions and be open about the fact. (And, of course, our decisions must be open to revision - when our genuine intuitions change.) 

The single most important thing we can know about someone is his intentions (or, as GK Chesterton put it - his 'philosophy'; by which I would understand his metaphysical assumptions and his motivations in life).

This knowledge cannot be had for the asking, nor given by the telling -  the knowledge is not explicit nor quantifiable; in the end it comes from no specific technique or technology but from loving attention to communications (including those that are too subtle to recognise and beyond the sense to detect) and to our own most profound responses.

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Edited from Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield (1965) - the chapter "Religion":

The needful virtue is that which combats the besetting sin. And the besetting sin today is the sin of literalness...

The relation between the mind and the heart of Man is a delicate mystery, and hardness is catching. 

There is a connection, at some level - however deep, between literalness and hardness of heart.

*

The above quotes hit me with the power of insight - 'literalism' is indeed our besetting sin; and this comes out most starkly in disputes; and Christians are just as prone to it as are the majority secular culture. And literalism does often lead to hard hearts - indeed that is how it can usually be noticed - by the hard, brittle, cold tone which enters discourse.

In mainstream secular culture, literalism is seen in the legalism, the microscopic analysis of sentences and individual words, which prevails in modern bureaucracies (which means in most of modern life - since the interlinked bureaucracies - the system - is almost everywhere).

And in Christianity literalism is also a besetting sin - which can be observed in all denominations - although some are worse, in this respect, than others. It is my impression that literalism is what attracts some people to Christianity, and retains them in it.

*

The problem is that literalism justifies itself, by dichotomizing Christian discourse as all or nothing, and dividing the faithful from the heretics on clear technical grounds: either either people fully implement every line of scripture (when quoted line-by-line) or people have rejected the Bible; either people fully live by the rule-book or people are making it up as they go along; either everyone fully submits to church authority; either people adhere to traditional practices and ritual in every respect or else they have rejected it; either people are theologically orthodox or they are heretics or apostates.

In practice, individuals have their own favourite tests - the response to a particular passage of scripture, attitude to contraception or doctrine. In modern culture-wars (Christians versus secular mainstream) litmus test issues include abortion, and the ordination (or pastorate, or full membership) of women and sexual-revolutionaries. Within Christianity the tests are much more numerous- and generally reduce to the authority of authorities - the primacy of church leadership, scripture, traditions etc.

*

My point is that these disputes have a horrible way of playing into the enemy's hands; and the way this often works is by literalism - both sides end-up using literalist arguments, and both sides have their hearts hardened and chilled by the process. Those with the hardest hearts come to the fore, take charge and and take-over the disputes, and ensure that - from a Christian perspective - there are no winners but only losers. 

What I mean is that the right side - the side which holds the correct views - ends-up as being corrupted - so they come to hold the right opinions for the wrong reasons - and thereby the right opinions become invalidated and irrelevant.

Because in Christianity, having the right beliefs for the wrong reasons means having the wrong beliefs: the reasons are a non-optional part of the right beliefs.

*

It should be obvious, and it certainly is true, that a persona can sincerely hold all the correct beliefs, and do all the prescribed actions - every single one of them, and obey all the legitimate church authorities to the letter - and not be a Christian because they have hard hearts.

In other words because they lack love - also termed 'charity' and agape.

*

This hard-hearted lovelessness seems to be terribly common among strident self-identified Christians on the Christian blogosphere and even more so on the secular Right Wing/ Reactosphere. 

Among Christians, the inference is that these are people who have become Christian to provide a transcendental excuse to indulge in hatred.

In other words, a literalistic definition and interpretation of Christianity is being used to justify an attitude which is consistently and hypocritically directed at teh expression of hatred.

This is sometimes called Phariseeism - after the revealed attitude of Jesus's enemies among the Jewish priesthood - but it remains extremely common (albeit less rigorous, and not always focused on 'the law).

*

This kind of thing is very obvious to non-Christians, and 'hypocrisy' by this definition is one of the legitimate criticisms of the Christian churches throughout history.
Because, hypocrisy is properly a matter of motivation - the prime hypocrisy is to be motivated by hatred and pride in the name of a religion that regards love as the primary and always necessary virtue. 

We are almost all of us prone to this kind of hypocrisy, and it is understandable how debates and arguments easily degenerate in this way.  But while it can be explained, there is no sufficient excuse for it - and it is very, very dangerous (I mean morally hazardous) to seek to excuse hate-motivated discourse on the grounds of necessity, on the grounds of the greater good.

When we detect it in ourselves, we must repent and cease; when we detect hate-motivation in others we must be careful not to treat them as mentors, teachers, authorities, or good interpreters - no matter how learned or rhetorically skilful they may be, no matter how correct in their expressed beliefs practices and obedience.

Such hypocrites (by the above definition) are extremely dangerous if given power as Christian leaders - dangerous to those under their authority, and damaging to the faith itself; and very difficult to get rid of once in place because it is their motivation which is at fault, rather than their actions - which are always correct and orthodox.

*

So Christians must guard against hate-driven-pseudo-Christians - who are often the most orthodox and obedient in their behaviour; and must recall that love comes above all: Love of God and Neighbour covers, compensates-for, is far more important than total literalistic correctness.

In other people, but also more importantly in ourselves. We must guard against hardening of our hearts.

And if our hearts are hardening and we become aware of this, then there can be no excuse or compensation - the immediate priority must be to restore warmth to the heart (or to allow warmth to re-emerge, to become warmed); and the antidote for hardness is love.

*

*

I think Christianity is supposed to display both sweetness and strength, which combination is the consequence of love; as shown in human affairs by a good mother or father with respect to their children - but this is a difficult combination for an institution to sustain.

Few churches have succeeded steadily in achieving this combination; but temptation lies in both directions, and even the best churches oscillate around the optimum.

*

Liberal Christians (as individuals, not the leadership) often display sweetness, warmth of heart, kindness and breadth of welcome - but they are weak, and easily and rapidly conform to secular world, cease being Christian, then switch to being anti-Christians, who feel good about themselves while serving the enemy.

*

But hazards lie in the other directions too - in pursuit of strength Christians may become ultra-correct, hard-line; they fall into extreme narrowness, harshness, legalism, pedantry; they cease to be loving and starting enjoying hatred and punishment. Thereby they cease to be Christian but begin to work against it: they, too, have switched sides.

*

There are those who are repelled by the unloving harshness of the hardliners who soften their Christianity down to nothing or its near-opposite; and there are those who are repelled by the sentimentality of Liberals who harden their Christian practice into something which will reject and/or persecute any real (that is, loving) Christian.

*

In sum, there is no institutional formula for avoiding both weakness and harshness - and any formula designed to avoid the one will tend to encourage the other, and also provoke a backlash; and this is a fact of life because there is no formula for love.

But love is real - or at least potentially so.

*

I don't think this is theoretical - I think it is a real problem.

In the modern West the churches, and the variation within churches, do generally seem to be too-far in one or the other direction: mostly sweet, broad and submissive; but with other parts of Christianity tending too much toward the harsh, narrow and bossy.

We need the discernment of the heart to find churches that are truly both sweet and strong: a combination only possible when motivated by love. 

*

*

This assertion is based on my experience, as well as my understanding of history.

In my brief time as a Christian I have tried - at times - to give my allegiance to a bottom line - whether scripture, reason, tradition etc  - and found it almost immediately impossible.

It seems that a living religion cannot exist on such an abstract basis but must be 'believed' in the sense of lived; which means that there must be communication with God and revelation at a personal level - simply in order to sustain scripture, reason, tradition.

Most obviously, because disagreements on interpretation always come to the fore, and cannot be resolved on the basis of anything other than interpretation - yet interpretation is shaped (almost wholly) by motivation such that it turns out there is ambiguity everywhere (in scripture, reason and tradition); such that when any church is cut-off from continuous revelation, the corruptions of the world will supervene.

*

And I was taught by reading Fr Seraphim Rose, as well as seeing for myself, that 'super-correctness' is no answer at all, but makes matters worse.

Super-correctness effects scripturalism (leading to line by line Biblical literalism and legalism), reason (leading to scholasticism) and tradition (leading to micro-level arbitrary ritualism and lifestyle rules).

Super-correctness leads to a particularly dangerous form of fake Christianity - prideful, zealous, punitive, negative, life-destroying, tyrannical and evil. It has everything that is Christian except the one thing needful: love.

Super-correctness is easy to perceive in other people, but very difficult to combat without advocating dilution, weakness, and 'liberalism'.

*

What passes for modern Christian 'devoutness' (and is advocated by reactionaries) is, unfortunately, very seldom otherwise than mere super-correctness.   

*

I think there is only one robust defence against on the one hand apostasy and backsliding into secularism; and on the other hand superficial and prideful super-correctness - and that defence is a living faith, a faith of frequent contact with the divine and in receipt of continual revelations.

The major mainstream branches of Christianity are mostly divided between a majority of apostates and a minority of super-correct - and the real Christians are trying to live off their glorious histories (I have tried this myself - tried to be a Prayer Book Anglican, in effect, to live from written history); but this won't work - or at least it won't work for very long, or in the face of difficulties.

*

I think that effective Christianity from now will absolutely require to aim for, and organize around, a direct personal contact with a personified God.

That requirement to subjective-ize the objective is (I think) the characteristic which is shared by all significantly large and thriving types of Christianity.

(It follows that what cannot be so appropriated by an individual must not be put at the centre of their faith - only that which they feel can be and ought to be a rock.)

Of course this is not enough - and by itself or when too dominant this is excessively individualistic, creates schisms, weakens and destroys churches - but I think Christians must be open to, indeed insist upon, a personal appropriation and experience of the Gospel, of the main tenets of their faith.

*

And it is clear that cool, detached, playful intellectualism can be a very significant barrier to this; which is why - in the modern world - intellectuals and intellectual activities are almost always anti-Christian in their effect (whatever their intention).

*

The mainstream orthodox Christian stance of extreme suspicion against anything "spiritual" (what I recently dubbed spiritual scaremongering) is a deadly error - that leads indirectly but almost-inevitably into embracing the "Ahrimanic", bureaucratic totalitarianism of "this world" - but especially The West. 

This is because spiritual scaremongering is a species of materialism/ positivism/ scientism/ reductionism - and that is what has delivered the whole world of global and (almost entirely) national social institutions and public discourse into the rulership of demonic evil. 

As modern Men have become individual consciousnesses (alienated, cut-off - but also more free, potentially spiritual agents), so that we are no longer unconsciously and spontaneously immersed-in the consciousness of each other; so has dwindled to insignificance the ancient and medieval way that an exemplary Christian monarch - and Christian priests, monks and nuns of valid churches - could act for the community in spiritual matters. 

When in the past (and the further past, the more this is so) we all shared in each others consciousness, one (or a small group) could indeed act for all a spiritual community.

So that there was no necessity for all Men to have spiritual contact with the divine or with spiritual Beings; since the spiritual work of a small proportion of selected, trained, supervised persons could do this on behalf of the community - as with the Medieval monastic ideal of intercession. 

No longer. 

We do not feel spontaneously and powerfully participators in, parts of, a spiritual community. 

All such immersive group phenomena have declined, catastrophically - and those who insist upon them, who insist upon obedience to an institution (including a church - those who will not deploy their own spiritual potential... Such persons are either left bereft (by their own choices - not by God); or else have de facto substituted the material for the spiritual. 

...They have, in effect, delivered themselves up to "society" in a world where "society" is net-evil and ruled by evil imperatives.  

Here and now; we cannot rely on other people (past or present) for the benefits of spiritual and divine contact - and if we try to do this, we will merely be "secondhand Christians" - which means (because of the corruption of social discourse and institutions) we will Not Be Christians.  

Spirit is primary - and contains all: The physical realm is indeed always and necessarily spiritual, but the physical is a subset of the spiritual realm. 

And the divine is a subset of the spiritual. 

We ought therefore, I believe, to consider spiritual contact - i.e. contact with the spiritual aspects of this world - as a necessary participation in the whole world. 

Lacking which we have self-excluded from participation in the whole world; and cut-off the possibility of our own escape from the totalitarian evils of The System.

Therefore, spiritual scaremongering is a covert form of materialism; a species of metaphysical self-blinding against the spiritual; hence the divine. 

As I said a few days ago: Demons want all religion to be mediated by human institutions, because demons can (and currently do) control institutions.

In sum: we must take the risks of seeking spiritual contact - we have no alternative if we wish to become and remain Christian in a world where the demons have taken over net-control of social institutions - including the churches (and where this evil corruption is worsening). 

Because we now need to become Christians our-selves, first-hand; therefore rooted in spiritual contacts generally - and divine contacts in particular. 

Note added: The reason for the "hard-line" urgency of this blog post, is that I seem to see far too many serious orthodox and traditionalist Christians who are following their churches away from the warm-hearted, loving, personal nature - of the truth of following Jesus Christ. And instead descending-into the hard-hearted, this-worldly literalism/ legalism/ Pharisee-ism that modern church-based Christianity becomes when its adherents eschews personal responsibility for faith and metaphysical choices. The trajectory leads away from the spirit and into a material world dominated, as never before, by the spirit of Satan. This trajectory is, I think, consequent upon the necessary goal of seeking courage to hold-the-line; but doing so by accusation and doubling-down on obedience to a church as their primary (non-negotiable) virtue. 

Edited and adapted from several pages of the chapter "Religion" in Saving the Appearances - a study in idolatry by Owen Barfield, published 1957.


It is in the nature of the case that if, at any point in time, a new moral demand is made upon humanity, then moral judgements will grow for a time double and confused.
     I spoke earlier of symptoms of 'iconoclasm', meaning a new willingness to apprehend life symbolically instead of literally; and I now maintain that these have a moral significance, and indeed a paramount moral significance for the present times.
     Yet this does not correspond with the generally accepted scale of Christian moral values, but appears to cut right across it.
     There are plenty of people with a natural taste for dream psychology, symbolical art and literature, sacramentalism in religion and other things whose meaning cannot be grasped without a movement of the imagination. And many of these people are arrogant, self-centred and in other way immoral.
     Conversely, there are practical, humdrum, literal souls before whose courage and goodness we are abashed.
     It is not a happy task to maintain that, from one point of view, and that an all-important one, the former must be accounted morally superior - because they posses the one thing needful which the other lack.
   Because the 'needful' virtue is the one that combats the besetting sin. And the besetting sin today is the sin of literalness or idolatry - of experiencing the phenomena of the world as objects in their own right - independently of human consciousness.
     The relationship between the mind and heart of man is a delicate mystery, and hardness is catching. I believe it will be found that there is a valid connection between literalness and a certain hardness of heart. This is rooted in avoidance of self-knowledge and a determination to adhere to existent idolatry.
     On the positive side a certain humble, tender receptiveness of heart is nourished by a deep and deepening imagination and by the self knowledge which that inevitably involves.

In the sixty years since this passage was written I think its deep truth has become apparent. Literalism in Christianity has persisted and has been largely defeated by the literalism of secular mainstream culture.

Attempts to evolve a more 'symbolic' Christianity have been mostly insincere - typically a stalking horse behind-which liberalism was advanced, with a covert agenda of allowing conformity with secular morality (especially in relation to the sexual revolution).

In essence, we have had sixty years of Secular literalism slugging it out with Christian literalism. An ever more atheistic, and anti-Christian, public sphere has demanded a literalist response to its criticisms - then reacted with horror and disdain to the literalistic perspective that it elicited. Secularism sees Christianity as nothing more than a list of detached knowledge claims, rules, prohibitions and demands on human behaviour - and finds this version of Christianity to be absurd, dull, arbitrary and indeed appalling in its harshness.

And on the other side, those Christians who have resisted the mass trend into apostasy by a strict and stubborn adherence to legalistic definitions (e.g. Biblical inerrancy, an emphasis on obedience to priestly authority, rigid adherence to forms and rituals) have too often fallen victim to that hardness of heart that Barfield sees as a consequence of literalism.

There is indeed a beady-eyed and punitive fanaticism evident in the discourse of too many traditionalist and conservative Christians.

I think Barfield is correct in his overall diagnosis that literalism is a dead-end - and man must move forward to a new and more engaged relationship with the world: neither the immersive acceptance of the past, nor the manipulative nihilism of the present - but a view that feels each of us to be a participant in a web of family-like relationships that embrace not only God, and other people, but all things.

In sum - the way I interpret this passage is in terms of my musings on the deep metaphysical problem of modernity.

So long as we adhere to our nihilistic metaphysical assumptions - even Christianity will usually be neutralized; because Christianity will be distorted, drained, and sucked into an irresistible whirlpool of legalism, hard-heartedness and de facto hatred by the cold, dead-ly, meaning-and-purpose-destroying nature of its literalistic, idolatrous metaphysical underpinnings.

Because if our metaphysics presupposes that we are merely an isolated consciousness inhabiting a dead and indifferent universe the reality of any of which we cannot be sure-of - then doubt will feed on doubt until faith becomes merely a proud, indifferent and arbitrary zeal.


(At least, this is what I fear - that secularism will triumph because it has infected Christian thought so deeply that its presuppositions are undetected, or falsely taken to be logically necessary.)

*

That there is a place or state of Hell seems clear enough to most real Christians - but what Hell means, who it is for - what kind of people, what kind of proportion of people - and the matter of whether Hell is a default state or if not whether it is an imposed punishment of a self-chosen destination... these are matters of great disagreement among Christians.

My purpose here is simply to point out that how Christians discuss Hell is specific evidence of how they understand and evaluate Christianity in general - and indeed each Christian can reflect on their own way of discussing the subject of Hell as a way of diagnosing their own evaluation scheme.

*

At one level it is trivially obvious that primary understanding of Hell comes from the authority structure of whatever Christian denomination to which you are affiliated - what I am interested by is what comes next. If further evidence is asked for, or evidence for the view of authority, then differences emerge.

For many people the proper way to understand Hell is to examine the Bible verses which reference Hell - or precursor or related concepts of Hell such as Sheol. These verses are then compared and synthesized to generate a picture of Hell.

I would call this a bottom-up or legalistic approach.

This view seems to suggest that Jesus Christ introduced Hell, and depicted it as a worse place than Sheol: a tormenting place rather than a place of ghostly dementia and witlessness; and that people were to be judged and sent to Hell.

It seems hard to avoid that Hell is a punishment - and Original Sin makes Hell seem like a default for humans primarily because of the transgression of Adam and Eve.

*

At the opposite extreme is the way I personally tend to approach understanding Hell, which is very 'broad brush' - and that is by (for example) looking at the overall implication of Jesus's ministry in the Gospels.

What I see there is that Jesus was clearly preaching Good News. For me this sets the boundaries for whatever concept of Hell is settled upon - that it had to be something which was Good News in the context of the New Testament, against the backdrop of Jewish and Pagan ideas about the afterlife.

Whatever Hell is, therefore, as a package the destiny of the soul after life as described and promised by Christianity must be much better than anything on offer from paganism and Judaism.

*

As further evidence, I take very seriously the broad brush context of the first and second commandments (to Love first God, then secondly they 'neighbour' as thyself) plus the repeated concept of God as Love; and the further consideration that all Men we are (in a profound sense) God's children (Sons of God).

So whatever Hell is, and whoever it is for, must be seen in a context of familial love, a Fathers love of children.

*

A third factor is that in my broad brush way of considering the Bible - the Old Testament is all about the free will, choice and agency of the 'characters' - Adam and his family, Noah, the Kings and Prophets, smaller characters like Ruth, and even baddies like the Pharaoh in Genesis... they are all seen choosing and taking the consequences of their choices - and everything hinges on these being real choices.

So, the fact that Jesus was preaching Good News, that God is love, we are his children, and we have real free choice including the freedom to reject the Good News... all these broad brush considerations set fairly sharp bounds for how a Christian should conceptualize Hell.

So I see what Christ did as wholly Good News, a gift of salvation-by-default; and Hell as an anomalous and self-chosen state (not a punishment, not a place someone is sent against their wishes) - a destination chosen by free will, and against the deepest wishes of God.

*

(This is not universalism nor Namby Pamby, Pollyanna-ish wishful-thinking - because I believe that many people have chosen, more are choosing and probably many more will in future choose, Hell - and that Hell really is Hellish. And also that Satan and his demons are at work increasing the numbers of people who make such choices. But although this situation surely angers God, as it would any loving parent if their children chose to reject family, goodness and love; this situation is primarily a source of deep, eternal sorrow to God - as it would be for any loving parent.)

*

And in all this, there has not been not much place for the close analysis of chapter and verse and unravelling hard or ambiguous passages; there is no role for legalism - leave aside the microscopic examination of individual words and issues of the translation of Hebrew or Greek concepts.

Now, ideally I would want to be able to synthesize the broad brush with the chapter and verse sources of evidence - because ultimately they are not in conflict, and all contradictions must be superficial and not deep, apparent and not real.

But what matters is which level is primary: what needs to be reconciled to what.

Many or most modern Christians are bottom up - and reconcile the broad brush with the chapter and verse - I am pointing-out that the top down and broad brush view is of at least equal validity to legalism (and has the great advantage of being much less dependent on the minutiae of translation and historical context).

*

*
When Liberal 'Christians' interpret the Bible for guidance concerning modern sexual doctrine, and this criticism includes some of the most learned and eminent among modern scholars, they approach it looking for 'legal loopholes' which could be argued to allow what secular Left want to do anyway.

This applies to the two major recent issues that have riven the major denominations of ordination of women as priestesses within Christian Churches, and the extension of the post-sixties sexual revolution within Christianity.

*

The basic method is to  assume that behaviour which is not explicitly and comprehensively forbidden - by multiple and wholly- reliable sources - is permitted, perhaps acceptable, potentially admirable. The 'null hypothesis' is that if there is  uncertainty about what is forbidden, then it should be permitted.

Such a method is adept at exploiting inevitable imprecision, magnifying disagreements over translation judgements, encouraging disputes historical over historical practices - and so on.

In the end an atmosphere of the desired uncertainty is manufactured, and used to justify new practices.

*

But if we really want to know how the Bible wants people to behave, then the method is entirely different, much simpler, much surer. We would not ask what is forbidden by Scripture; but instead ask how the God wants us to behave as revealed in Scripture.

In relation to sexuality, what is encouraged? The answer is very obvious: celibacy, or  sex between man and woman within marriage. That is what God wants us to do. Obviously! If we start asking whether other types of sexual arrangements are absolutely forbidden under all circumstances, then we have already left the path of wisdom.

And with the priesthood - there is nothing whatsoever in the Bible that could be regarded as a positive encouragement to establish priestesses in the Christian church. If we ask whether priestesses are therefore absolutely forbidden under all circumstances and for all time, then we have already left the path of wisdom.

*

When a question is framed wrongly, and when the wrong framing is prescribed and enforced by those in power; then there can never be a true answer. Additionally, Christian theologians and theorists are often addicted to legalism, and modern legalism is negatively framed - this approach cannot yield truth and virtue.

So long as the question is right, Christianity really is very simple; simple enough for a child to understand - but simplicity may not be welcome when it contradicts our desires and practices.

*

In this world of materialism, opposed to all matter of the spirit and religion; it is significant that so many Christians define their faith materialistically, legalistically, bureaucratically - in terms of checklists, bullet points, terms of service, standard procedures...

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the imagination and individuality gets squeezed-out of Christianity, and some of the most important Christian thinkers are rejected as Christians - both by the anti-Christians (who want to deny Christianity the lustre of their membership) and by Christians themselves (captive to materialism).

Many denominations and churches self-define in legalistic terms; and find themselves permanently at odds withe even very similar denominations and churches - and the whole of Christendom disunited, enfeebled, and pervaded by spite and fear.

Yet these self-styled 'orthodox' Christians, the ones who subscribe to (what they regard as) the objectivity of materialism, those who publicly subscribe to multiple, interlocking and sharply defined creedal statements and elaborate oaths... these have (mostly) become corrupted by leftist politics, and nowadays are By Far the worst of fake Christians - worse than the most notorious unorthodox and heretics of the past.

Why should this be? I think it is a consequence of the corruption of materialism. Materialism was present from the early days after the life of Jesus, as Christianity grew in the context of Judaism and the Roman Empire: both legalistically rooted and permeated. At any rate supposedly-strict legalism and objectivity have failed spectacularly to prevent mass apostasy. 

Yet the Fourth Gospel (our most authoritative source) presents the teachings of Jesus in a personal (and very simple) way, as a matter of Jesus's identity and our proper attitude to his person and promise. From this perspective, the public religion of Christianity was misconceived from a very early stage.

If not, then what?

Christianity is, obviously, an internal matter, self-defined. Yet this leaves open the matter of judgement - we must judge others, including whether they are Christian - or in contrast opposed-to and working-against God and creation.

How may this be done without legalism and explicit definition? Well, in exactly the same way that we infer the dispositions, motivations and intentions of other-people about any other important subject. We do it all day and every day. This is the bread and butter of social life, an absolute necessity of social competence.

Of course we do not have any mechanism for imposing our own inferences upon other people. When we judge a person (or institution) to be nasty; this usually cannot be proven to someone who interprets their disposition, motivations and intentions to be nice. Despite this, life goes on.

There is not, and cannot be, a better or more valid definition of Christianity that the serious inference of one individual about another: that is the bottom line. If I am a Christian, then I can and must make a heartfelt judgement about others - insofar as this fact affects me personally.

And I would be a fool to allow this 'intuitive' inference to be overridden by checklists and bureaucratic validations.

Because (following the Fourth Gospel teaching) I believe that Christianity is - at core - extremely simple: a matter of commitment to loving and following Jesus Christ (with 'following' understood as essentially being led by Him through mortal-death to eternal resurrected life) -- this belief leads to the question of how such a next-world-aiming faith can guide our behaviour in this life?

The question is answered because Christianity builds-upon personal theism; and a conviction that God is the creator and we his beloved children. 

And that God wishes to raise each of his children to the highest divinity that each wishes to attain; with divinity being understood as loving creation - creation in the context of that love which harmonizes each individual's effort with that of God's primary creation - and of other Men's creation. 

Traditional Christians are - no doubt - concerned that this conception of Romantic Christianity - based on individual discernment, motivation and responsibility; and with its core aims "not of this world" - has no place for the morality that has so dominated conceptualization and practice of Christian churches for most of two millennia.  

Romantic Christianity perhaps needs to make more explicit how such an individual spiritual process - aiming beyond death, and moving away from the top-down legalism of traditional church-based, top-down Christianity - could, even in principle, lead to 'good conduct' in mortal life. 

Such is the aim of this post. 

In other words: I am to explain how we get from a primary commitment to Follow Jesus Christ to Salvation - all the way down to the here-and-now level of moral behaviour in the multitude of testing and tempting ethical dilemmas of modern life in 2022.

For instance; how do we get from the Heavenly perspective that is 'not of this world'; to the mundane details of what we think, say, do and believe in context of living in an exceptionally corrupt and evil world?  

Then, how do we know what we should and should not do; and then how may we prevent the here-and-now, immediate pressures of expediency - of short-term and selfish benefit - from routinely overwhelming the eternal goals of properly Christian behaviour - as they so obviously have done in all the major Christian churches?

The basic insight is that morality derives from a personal knowledge of how individual behaviour harmonizes with God's existing creation and God's creative motivation. 

Goodness is that which - by love - is in-harmony-with divine creative intent; and evil is that which opposes God's creation. 

We may discover and know such harmony by that individualized guidance which is accessible to us from consulting our own inner divinity ('conscience') - which every Man has from being a child of God. And also by external guidance from personal interaction with the Holy Ghost - who is potentially accessible to all Christians: all those who have committed to follow Jesus - to accept his gift of resurrection into life everlasting. 

The 'accuracy' by which we might know what to do depends on the genuineness of our own motivation; on the sincerity of our following of Christ.

But - assuming he knows what he ought to do; what then motivates an individual person to resist, to go against, the dictates of short-termist, selfish expediency - in a context when that pressure of expediency is immediate and present, while the rewards of true morality are delayed until after death? 

What determines the choice to affiliate to God's purpose - rather than, expediently, to go-against it?

This is, of course, the test of Faith; because the powers of evil will probe and apply pressure to exactly this point - will contrast the sureness and certainty of current expediency with (what is described as) the vagueness, speculative nature, distant and merely-probabilistic hopes deriving from what 'might' happen after death...

Will assert the triviality and futility of a single and solitary person doing-the-right-thing - only for it to be unnoticed, ignored, punished, or forgotten; when the whole vast System will do otherwise, and regardless. 

(Why - the powers of evil ask - waste effort making such a pointless, dumb, insane gesture?)

In the first place; I think we will only be able to resist these pressures and pass such tests on the basis of a faith rooted in conviction of our own salvation. 

Whereas, for most of its history, Church Christianity has instead emphasized the uncertainty of salvation, and counseled strongly against presumption...  

But I think we instead need to regard salvation with utter confidence; confidence that - so long as we really want salvation, we can have it.  

Rooted in such confidence, we can then recognize this mortal life as a time of learning - the eternal benefits of which will come to all those who desire salvation.  

In summary: The powers of evil will assert expediency on the basis that salvation may not actually be true, that it may not happen to us personally - and, anyway, if salvation is really-real and we attain it; the microscopic incidents of this mortal life can (surely?) have no bearing on our condition after death. 

To resist such blandishments requires, therefore, an understanding that nothing Good is ever wasted. 

That every Good act (thought, word, deed), that is done from Good motivations and in harmony with divine creation; and no matter how apparently small and insignificant and ineffectual it seems from this-worldly perspectives -- 

Every Good act will be permanent - will be woven-into the texture of creation. And this will happen immediately - and forever. 

Every Good act will be permanent exactly because we can be confident of our own salvation; and we can be confident that our loving God has care for each of His children; and will arrange each life such that Good acts are made part of eternal reality. 

This is exactly the nature of that learning for which mortal life is sustained.  

We need, therefore; not just confidence in salvation; but confidence that all the tests and trials of this mortal life - all occasions when immediate expediency opposes our alignment with God's creative motivations - are exactly those occasions when we can personally make an eternal difference for the better. 

In other words, properly understood, the here-and-now benefits of expediency can be opposed by the here-and-now benefits of doing Good. 

And we may be confident (as confident as our faith) that eternal Good, no matter how small that Good, is infinitely more significant than whatever temporary and contingent, selfish benefits may accrue from rejecting God and opposing divine creation. 

The keys seem to be Faith-in and Love-of God, active in this earthly mortal world as well as beyond; and that Hope which derives from confidence in Christ's gift of salvation.

And also our knowledge that nothing Good in mortal life is ever lost - but is instead taken-up into eternal divine creation; which we shall personally enjoy and contribute-towards in the Heavenly life everlasting. 

The authors GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are usually bracketed together - indeed, their friend and sparring partner George Bernard Shaw called them 'the Chesterbelloc' and described an imaginary beast of that name.

(There was, for several years, a kind of road-show travelling around England in which Belloc would Chair no-holds-barred but always good-natured (no-offence-taken) debates between GBS and GKC.)

But while GKC and HB were great friends and allies, and their Roman Catholicism and political views were almost identical, each man has a very different flavour: indeed each could be used to characterize a typical type of modern intellectual Roman Catholic.

To me Chesterton comes across as warm-hearted, sunny, positive - he seems like one of the most likeable men in the history of English literature, and the spirit of his writings breathes generosity. His writing pours-out like a volcano - unpremeditated, unrevised, of amazing evenness and high quality; tackling every subject, yet always the same in essence.

Belloc, on the other hand, has a hardness and a darkness about him. His writing (although also extremely abundant) often gives the impression of being worked-over and contrived. His best work is probably the light verse, especially the Cautionary Tales for Children, which are unsurpassed in their surreal fluidity, the brilliant humour and perfect technique... simply brilliant - but which are deliberately 'nasty'. Belloc's essays and best books like The Path to Rome and The Four Men are very fine - but strike me as unspontaneous, and hard edged - like a wood-cut, or perhaps a steel engraving.

Put simply, Chesterton represents a Merry England style of Roman Catholicism which brings to mind an idealized version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - or William Morris's News from Nowhere plus vulgarity and religion. For Chesterton, God is primarily about Love and Beauty.

That is, Chesterton dreamt of a colourful, semi-chaotic, lusty and noisy life of vivid and flawed characters engaged in all manner of activities - a society of people who often get carried away into extremes by their love of each other, and of beauty, science, medicine, learning and other positive things. But also a society in which there will be phases of reflection, repentance and renewal and unification of the apparent-chaos. However, Chesterton loves 'life' so much that he would not want unity at the cost of vigour, or love.

This Chestertonian vision is, indeed - for me, by far the most appealing vision of what Roman Catholicism could perhaps be.

And it is the basic vision to which adhere all whom I judge the best Roman Catholics that I 'know' (mostly as penfriends, authors, bloggers).

But the Bellocian type of Roman Catholic is also common among intellectuals, maybe commoner. It is a Roman Catholicism which is strong, hard, strict - and not so much warm as either hot or cold: it is the Roman Catholicism of Southern Europe of the past few centuries - harsh sun and black shadows; periods of routine and inertia interrupted by extreme violence.

Bellocism is, for me, that Catholicism of a man who is not naturally 'a good man', and who was not really motivated by love. Belloc held-onto to Roman Catholicism with a grip of iron and was valiant in the defence of Christendom; but I don't think he was motivated by love - rather (usually) by anger, irritability, and a strong streak of harsh authoritarianism enjoyed for its own sake.

The Belloc type of Roman Catholic is also common online - they get the greatest satisfaction, seem to take, indeed, a bitter delight, in excoriating other ('heretical') Christian denominations. These Bellocians seem attracted to Roman Catholicism primarily by its clarity: the authority structure, the uniquely comprehensive and logical theology, the apparent ability to provide a clear answer to any question.

Their general stance of Bellocians is what I term 'legalistic': their ideal is that God is primarily about power and truth in unity. The church understand this, and tells us exactly what it is essential to do (and not to do) in any circumstance, and therefore obedience is by far the most important Christian virtue. Their primary role in the Christian life is allying themselves with legitimate authority and against disobedience.

Now, of course, this characterization of legalism as 'Bellocian' is an unfair exaggeration; and Belloc the man in his later life practised a simple, humble faith which struck all who saw it as sincere. He also joined in with the Chestertonian hurly-burly lifestyle with vigour - albeit, there always sounds like an element of aggression in Belloc's 'noisyiness' - an element of attention-seeking and self-assertion which was absent from Chesterton (who, by contrast, seems innocent, schoolboyish, even when describing drunken revellings and hi-jinks).

But in his prime as a public figure, Belloc did indeed create the general impression I describe - and the, harsh, hard-eyed, cold-hearted legalistic style and emphasis is one which is all too common among those who describe themselves as traditionalist Roman Catholics.

*

In 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' (which has an atheist and materialist perspective) William James makes a distinction between Once-born individuals who are naturally well-adjusted souls who do not feel the need to be 'saved' (like Ralph Waldo Emerson, of Walt Whitman), while the Twice-born are those who feel radically miserable, incomplete and who perceive a need to be saved.

I was of the Once-born type for most of my life, and could not understand all the fuss about 'salvation'.

Indeed, I regarded salvation-talk as evidence of an unfortunate illness, or sometimes a thing deliberately induced by manipulation from Churches (who made naturally contented people feel guilty and incomplete in order to get and retain converts).

*

To the Once-born, sin is perceived as (merely) breaking as a set of (intrinsically imprecise and changeable) social rules; and not a matter of a person's basic perspective on the human condition.

As a Once-born atheist I had been aware of modern man's alienating perspective for some years (for example in this essay: http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.html ) which I interpreted as a consequence of the move away from a hunter-gatherer life that was natural to the evolved human.

But I did not interpret alienation as sin; merely as a source of misery; the response to which was to adjust human emotions by management of lifestyle, use of modern pharmacology, and ultimately genetic engineering: in other words I took a 'transhumanist' perspective.

This survived into my early days as a nominal Christian.

*

When I became nominally Christian I remained of the Once-born type for many months, until I began to understand the nature of Sin.

So, after a while (after practicing Christianity, as best I understood it, for some months) I began to realize that one cannot really be a Once-born Christian: there is no such thing.

One must be 'born-again'.

(I was, in fact - despite my protestations, until that point actually a monotheist, but not a trinitarian; indeed I could not understand the point of the trinitarian doctrine.)

*

I now recognize that Christ cannot 'save' a person who fundamentally feels no need to be saved.

There is an absolute necessity for Christians to have a 'born-again' perspective by which a person recognizes their need for salvation; therefore their state of this-worldly incompleteness.

However, and this is vital, this recognition is inevitably partial and temporary.

(Or rather, the recognition is inevitably partial and temporary except among the Saints; but even Saints do not achieve this perspective instantly and completely, but after many years of prayer and ascetic discipline.)

*

This is a 'mystical' perspective of sin - different from the common 'legalistic' perception of sin in terms of breaking God's Laws.

*

A basic problem for Christianity today is that we live in a Once-born culture.

Modern secular culture perceives the matter of Christianity's trying to bring people to a recognition of their intrinsic state of sin, as if it were a matter of trying to make happy and well-adjusted people into miserable and needy people.

The common legalistic definition of sin and salvation does not work for Once-born modern mainstream secular culture. It is not really a matter of incorrect, but the legalistic definition does not work.

*

Legalism does not work in modernity because it does not bring the majority of Once-born people to a recognition of their need for salvation.

Modern secular culture 'understands' - from experience - that 'law' is something labile and - apparently - almost unlimited in its change, evolution, flexibility. Indeed law has been perhaps the primary means of secularization in late modern societies.

Therefore, to moderns, the problem of sin is one which is cured by changing the laws - by re-defining sin - and not by divine intervention.

*

And this is why I believe that we moderns need a mystical understanding of sin as a false perspective: sin as a false understanding of the human condition.

*

To judge by his behaviour (if not by his explicit statements) there seems little doubt that JRR Tolkien regarded the consequences of the Second Vatican Council with a combination of deep dismay and horror; indeed, I once wrote that Vatican II may have been the most deeply dismaying event of Tolkien's whole life. 

His friend (and fellow Catholic) George Sayer; believed that Tolkien saw little or nothing wrong with the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church. 

This is worth contemplating because it shows that a Catholic as devout as Tolkien could be in deep opposition to Vatican II; but without making reference to "legalistic" aspects of the validity of Papal elections. I imagine Tolkien would have found that whole "sedevacantist" line of argument on both sides to be extremely distressing and fraught with dangers - especially when engaged-in by lay people. 

This may have some implications for traditionalist Catholics who all agree that the RCC took a severe wrong turn, a down-turn and movement towards apostasy, with the Second Vatican Council. 

My point is that the disastrous nature of Vatican II may be regarded as common ground among serious Roman Catholics. And indeed all serious Christians of any- or no-denomination, who wish for the recovery and renewal of spiritual health in the largest and most influential Christian church - this may be common ground quite apart from the legal arguments. 

In other words; sedevacantism can reasonably be regarded as one of several (or many) possible hypotheses for explaining the disastrous effect of Vatican II; and, most importantly, how to set it right. 

It is indeed possible that the sedevacantist legal arguments for why the papal seat is empty might be true; but the legalistic solutions may nonetheless be ineffective or counter-productive in solving the Roman Catholic Church's many and deep problems. 

That is, indeed, my opinion - I mean that the sedevacantist solutions (i.e. their advocated approach to dealing with the RC problems) are ineffective, and would be counter-productive: they are wrong in their spirit. 

Because I think it can be known in advance - from multiple experiences in multiple churches - that legal solutions will not have a good effect; that a re-set is impossible (and the attempt undesirable) because it will empower the wrong people and set faithful Catholics at each others throats... 

That this negative potential can be known in advance from experience, and legalism eschewed, even despite that (probably) nobody has yet proposed any other clearly promising and practical way of genuinely revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church in the West. 

For what little it is worth; I suspect that an answer might be found in the actual practice of Roman Catholicism at its Christian best; rather than in abstract theories about the matter. 

Something to do with the lives of ordinary Catholics (including 'ordinary' Saints); rather than the models and hypotheses of canon lawyers, theologians, philosophers, church bureaucrats or the like.  

Maybe the most luminous, rich, and inspiring aspects of the pre-Reformation Catholic 'world' - something rather like GK Chesterton's imaginative pictures of "Merrie England" - could be found to contain clues toward the changes that are needed and would work and could grow; and also (and vital) what aspects ought to be de-emphasized... 

Selected cuttings from that ancient tree of faithful living might be planted to yield new and different fruits, but recognizably derived from the same root stock. 

The topic is raised at William Wildblood's blog - in relation to his own, early adult, experiences with channelled communications from higher spiritual beings (not angels, or not necessarily angels).

This provoked me to think, and elicited the following comment - here expanded:

The demand to know how we may distinguish for sure between good and evil spirits, or between angels and demons, or white and black magic is one of those situations in which people seem to be asking for something which cannot be had in mortal life - absolute-infallible-objective-eternal certainty of knowledge.

Such is not available to us. We cannot - in that hard sense - 100% determine the difference between (say) angels and demons. After all, we might currently (at this moment) be insane, delirious or demented - or asleep and not knowing it.

But there is nothing specific to that class of discernment. It is qualitatively the same discernment we need to make between someone who loves us and someone who loathes us and is manipulatively pretending to love us - yet we must make such a discernment to marry. Or between a saint and an Antichrist - yet we must make such discernments to live consciously.

In this mortal life, we are not made (nor is the world made) to be omniscient; but instead called upon to make a truthful and honest evaluation, and to learn from the consequences. That is, Mortal life is for experiencing and learning - in ways that benefit us in the coming (if chosen) eternal, postmortal, resurrected, Heavenly life - we are not supposed to 'be perfect'.

(If that was the intention, we would have to conclude that God-the-creator has badly-designed our-selves and this world.)

I think what covertly (or explicitly) lies behind the kind of question 'Are 'The Masters' demons?' is the assumption that there is a 'safe' way of being a Christian, where we do not need to make such discernments.

The idea that (for instance) by reading and obeying scripture 'literally' we will all be saved; without having to hazard the 'risks' of dealing with spiritual, supernatural, 'esoteric' phenomena...

By contrast, I see no safe way to be a Christian, there are hazards in every direction. For instance, materialistic legalism is a major hazard of supernatural-avoiding, anti-spiritual Bible-based Christianity.

There is no safe path, there is not meant to be a safe path; and there is no path which fits the needs of everybody (we each have different weaknesses, and strengths). Your actual life and my actual life just-are-unique, and deliberately so; because our spiritual needs are unique.

We are meant to live without certainty in order that we may learn through living.

Thus, life is irreplaceable.