Athens and Jerusalem V: The Germanization of Christianity
Some Tedious but Necessary Preliminaries
The title of James C. Russell's The Germanization of Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation does not sound like the opening shot in a war against Christianity. However, ever since Sam Francis' apparently glowing review, conservative neopagans, atheists, and Nordicists have trumpeted the book as proof that whatever virility existed in Medieval Christianity comes from the German element.
I have not read Dr. Francis's review and do not intend to. This is a field in which he had so little knowledge that his opinion—so valuable in American politics and British history—is ideological and irrelevant, rather like my own opinions on Chinese philosophy or the political situation in India. In such cases, we are forced to fall back on preconceptions and paradigms that may be entirely off the point. (I sympathize, for example, with the Hindus because their religion is Indo-European and they have been persecuted by Muslims, but in any historical case I am hopelessly ill-equipped to assess claims of guilt or innocence.)
Before examining Russell's argument, we should try to have an overall understanding of his book. First, anyone looking, however briefly, at Germanization will realize that it is a revised version of a dissertation. This means, basically, that it has been written as a series of footnotes in search of a text. This does not mean that Russell has not made a a valuable contribution to Medieval studies, only that his work is technical, difficult, and a trap for non-scholars.
Second, like too many dissertation writers, he has bitten off more than he can chew. The subject of the German's "reception" of Christianity is too vast for a young scholar to tackle, especially when he has approached it from a broadly theoretical point of view that presumes to find overarching patterns in the development of all religions. At the very least, a writer should be well-grounded not just in the Germanic Middle Ages but also in classical antiquity and in early Christian history and theology before undertaking a study of the changes Christianity underwent in moving from the Mediterranean world to Northern Europe.
Germanization
I had hoped that Russell would nail his argument in the last chapter. Unfortunately, this chapter suffers from the same defects and limitations as its predecessors. In applying a “big theory” to secondary academic monographs and studies, without serious consideration of primary texts and sources, he is free to pick and choose what ideas or even quotations that fit his thesis. He spends a good deal of time on Gregory the Great’s approach to the Anglo-Saxon mission he sent out. Gregory, however, gives conflicting advice. To an AS ruler, he advises toughness in putting down the relics of paganism, while to his missionary he advises a slower and more accommodating approach. Inevitably, Russell relies on Markus’ life of Gregory and sees a significant evolution in Pope Gregory’s thinking, from asperity to accommodation. But Markus does not have to be right about everything, and he certainly is not. We simply have too little evidence on which to judge. Gregory, one needs to remember, had been a major diplomat, and it is quite natural for him to advise discretion to a missionary while instructing a ruler with power to crack down. Thus one cannot go on to construct an account according to which the Church in Germany learned to accept important elements of Germanic paganism.
This is only one instance of many that can be cited. JCR’s more general thesis is not without merit, though it would require a good deal of nuancing and a thorough-going comparative study of the Church in Southern Italy and in the Byzantine East. The general idea is that the world-denying individualistic and otherworldly Christianity ran headlong into a magical, king-revering, collectivist German mentality that it was forced to accept. But, as I have pointed out in this discussion, this world-denying business has been rather overstated. Remember Christ at the wedding and all the homely parables of everyday life, His sense of humor, and His acceptance of publicans and sinners. There has always been an other-wordly mysticism in some important Christians and a tendency to contemn the authorities of this world, but St. Paul tells us that obedience to the powers-that-be is required of Christians; St. Justin writes with great respect to the Antonines; the Apology of Aristides and the Epistle to Diognetus both emphasize how normal Christianity was and is.
The idea that Germans made their rulers semi-divine would not seem terribly strange either to Constantine or to 1000 years of Byzantine Emperors. Surely, these sacred majesties were not influenced by Germans. A similar point would have to be made about Christianity’s hostility toward German paganism’s sacred places. Exactly the same thing happened in the Greek and Slavic world, so whatever took place is not exclusively or even primarily Germanic. In the case of Northern Europe, where some sacred places were identified with human sacrifice, the missionaries were quite naturally suspicious.
What JCR does not seem to understand is Christianity’s complex relationship to this world. The veneration of relics goes to the beginning of our faith, to the woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, to Peter’s wrong-headed desire to build three tabernacles to commemorate the Transfiguration, to the pious Christians of Smyrna who gathered up the relics of their martyr Polycarp. Much like Plotinus, Christians are caught between two poles, between the recognition that God is greater than all his creations and the recognition that what God has created is good.
Stripped of its grand sociological theory and reinforced by a comparative study of Eastern Europe, JCR’s argument might be corrected to the point it could be accepted, but the what would it mean? That some harmless elements were Christened and adopted more or less permanently by Northern European Christians, just as Southern Europeans kept many Greco-Roman customs. That, at the other end of the scale, some bad medicine was also incorporated and this was only diminished after a long time—magical practices, fortune-telling, witch-craft, trial by ordeal. A similar story, again, can be told in the Balkans and in Italy. Finally, some customs and attitudes, neither good nor bad in themselves, perhaps, but risky were accepted into Christian practice and have to be looked at from time to time. At what point does the Germanic sense of courage and honor turn into a justification for murder and mayhem?
The best that I can say of The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity is that it has a pretty good bibliography from which JCR is able to provide a broad overview of what major scholars have said on this subject. In the end, the verdict must be the Scottish verdict of “not proven,” though in this case, I should add, “not even close.” Even the title puts the reader on a false track. It is not Christianity that might have suffered from Germanization but Christendom, the way of life of the Christian West. Even his title, then, illustrates what he himself has called a “subjectivist” and “relativistic” definition of Christianity.
Unfortunately, Russell relies far too much on secondary sources of unequal value, and where they are wrong or misleading, he can only aggravate their mistakes. Even important scholars like Nilsson and Guthrie had their fair share of foibles and made many mistakes that can only be corrected for by someone who knows the primary sources, and, when it comes to anti-Christian ideologues like Elaine Pagels, a scholar who knows the material would simply discard her entirely. To say that his bibliography and notes relating to early Christianity are deficient would be a reckless understatement. The entire chapter on the religion of the Roman Empire would not past muster in a decent seminar. So, starting off with the wrong base-line, it will be very difficult for Russell to understand what sort of religion was carried northward.
Third, one can fault him for a sociological approach that is largely borrowed from Robert Bellah. Now, Bellah did some good work on the rise and fall of Christianity in Japan, but his broad-brushed theories about types of religion and evolutionary patterns one can either accept, reject, or ignore. That is the trouble with all sociological theories: They cannot be proved and therefore cannot be made the basis, as Russell makes the approach of Bellah and other theoreticians, of evaluations of real-world events. Bellah, it should be said, is one of those reds who turned green, that is, he was a communist who turned communitarian. His approach seems to assume that religions are sociological phenomena, and while some of them might be more useful than others, there is no truth, either unique or common. A unique truth would be the Christian teaching of Christ's Incarnation, death, and resurrection, while a more generalized insight would be the belief in a dying god or the notion of an intermediate logos or intermediate divine power between god(s) and man. Naturally, Bellah and Russell would claim to be skeptical scholars, but true religious skepticism or agnosticism would require the thinker to "bracket" all questions of the divine and leave questions of God's existence unsettled. But that is exactly what they do not do, and in deciding in advance that religion is bunk (though they never put it quite that bluntly or that clearly), they take a party line that makes them anything but objective.
To conclude the preliminaries, Germanization is the work of a neophyte scholar, who has accepted, apparently without much reflection, a sociological methodology whose validity cannot be demonstrated and an anti-Christian perspective that makes anything like a comprehensive understanding impossible. At best, such a man would be capable of relaying borrowed truths, much as a celibate marital advisor can tell the couple what his Church teaches about sex without knowing much about the subject personally. But, in the example I have chosen, the priest may have many true and significant things to say about sex and marriage, and in Russell's case, when he gets down to historical business (as opposed to the posturings of sociology) he has a good deal to contribute, though his treatment needs to be stripped of his naive faith in modernism.
The Basic Thesis
In his third chapter, with the ghastly title "Sociohistorical Aspects of Religious Transformation," Russell develop's Bellah's argument with some modifications. Folk religions are either supplanted by universalist religions or transformed by a universalizing prophet (like Zoroaster or the Hebrew prophets). However, the process can be reversed: "It seems that the tendency of folk religions to be supplanted by universal religions occasionally may be reversed by the imposition of a folk-religious world-view which, in turn, reinterprets the universal religion in a folk-religious mode." This happens, he argues, when the religion expands--whether Buddhism into China and Japan or Christianity into Germany--"into areas where folk-religious attitudes are solidly entrenched." This is true, though hardly startling. Historians were well aware of these tendencies long before Bellah drew up his turgid sociological categories.
Russell's problem, just to anticipate a bit, is that he has no way of knowing what, exactly, can have been included in the early Christian approach to society, a subject he has only studied at second hand in the writings of liberals. As if he wished to demonstrate his incompetence, Russell invoke the Dead Sea scrolls (p.77), albeit with an academic caveat, to suggest that the Essenes influenced Christ in world-denying asceticism. But since he is wrong both about Christ and about the connection with the Scrolls, his grasping at straws indicates the weakness of his argument--and his knowledge. Similarly, his second-hand treatment of Gnosticism is both warped and irrelevant to this thesis. What is interesting is the frequency with which he cites Mankind Quarterly, a journal that has some merits but can rarely be trusted because of its tendentious biological reductionism, eugenics, and edgy racialism. I have no quarrel with its editors and their policies: Let them write what they will. But Russell does reveal some of the roots of his own ideology in his citations. That is certainly a plus, however, for his Neopagan fans.
I am going to skip chapter four "Psychosocial Aspects of Religious Transformation," not only because it is more boring even than chapter three, but because he bases his argument on the silly Wayne Meeks, whose attempts to go beyond liberals and conservatives and beyond the Jesus of history have given him a lucrative career at Yale. The same chapter cites Talcott Parsons, Eliade, a book about Moonies, another about Southern blacks--none of which subjects does Russell himself know anything about.
Chapter 4 also begins on a dangerous note. Since we don't have good sources on German "religiosity," we can fall back on Georges Dumézil's comparative studies of Indo-European religion. Hunh??! Dumézil is a brilliant man, but to take his conjectural reconstructions and read them into a real historical people is a little like an article I once read on an ode of Horace by one of my former professors. Reading through the ode, he tried to imagine what had been on Horace's mind, and, armed with that conjectural reconstruction, he proceeded to interpret the ode. I asked him if he did not think his thinking was a bit circular--to say nothing of putting the hermeneutic cart before the textual horse--and he took an instantaneous dislike to the student. This is simply not scholarship, not even bad scholarship.
In reviewing the sources for Germanic religion, he relies on Snorri Sturlson, the great Icelandic writer of sagas. Using a 13th century Icelandic writer as evidence for Germanic religion in the sixth century is a real act of legerdemain. A real Germanicist, armed with every text and comparative tool, might supplement his evidence from Snorri, but Russell is not a real Germanicist and he is out of his depth--as any young non-specialist would be.
Russell follows closely in the footsteps of Georges Dumézil, the trail-blazing Indo-Europeanist who tried to draw up a composite picture of IE society and religion and culture. Dumézil's work emphasizes the hierarchical nature of IE cultures, their structures of authority that are found in an ossified form in the Indian caste system. IE society, according to him, was based on a hierarchy of priests, warriors, and, at the bottom, the farmers and herdsmen who produce food. (I am grotesquely oversimplifying.) Inevitably he was accused of fascist/Nazi tendencies, especially by Arnaldo Momigliano, a Jewish-Italian classicist of considerable reputation, and by Bruce Lincon, a Russian scholar of conservative/moderate liberal tendency, who wrote for Chronicles on one or two occasions. What Lincoln could possibly have to say about a comparative philologist is beyond me. It is true that neopagans like Benoist and wackos like Foucault considered themselves his disciples. Russell's rather blind attachment to Dumezil is one more sign of his orientation. Now, again, I have no objection to his orientation, but it is important to note that he appears to be writing as an anti-Christian racialist, not out of a serenely skeptical indifference to ideology.
JCR quotes (112) Dumézil's summation of Icelandic/Germanic mythology as a starting point for his analysis: "the central motif of I-E ideology , the conception according to which the world and society can live only through the harmonious collaboration of the three stratified functions of sovereignty, force, and fecundity." Maybe so, but then, maybe not, and even if so, maybe irrelevant to the subject at hand, since the Christianity introduced into Northern Europe had been undergoing a transformation at the hands of IE peoples for 5 centuries. The use of a term like 'ideology" is itself deeply disturbing. Yes, I believe only means the collection of basic notions, but it is, nonetheless, a dangerous word that might imply there is some kind of IE world view implanted in our genes. This is not only bad science, but it is evidence of the sort of mysticism that afflicts German literature and all too much writing about IE cultures.
This themes of the alternation of religious sovereignty with martial force certainly occurs in diverse IE cultures, but it is not clear to me that it is absent from non-IE cultures. You see, in an experiment like this, one has to have controls. I certainly see something like this in Sumerian and Egyptian history. It has long been noted that there is an alternation in Livy between warrior kings like Romulus and Tullus Hostilius and peaceful religious kings like Numa. But there might be many explanations. Romulus and Numa might actually have existed and had these qualities. Or it might be a useful literary device, or the Romans might themselves have developed this tendency themselves. It is interesting that we find an alternation or contrast between soldier-emperors (Julius, Tiberius, Vespasian, Trajan) and the men of peace and religion: Augustus, Nerva, Hadrian. Is this a residue of IE mythology.
To cut this discussion of the chapter, let me just say that Russell repeats all the cliches about later Roman history--the family declines, patriotism is on the wane, German mercenaries are hired because of lack of solidarity, and while there is truth in the traditional analysis, it is true only insofar as it can be nuanced by reference to specific events and documents. Otherwise, it is pure rubbish. Much of the problems of the later Empire were caused by the increased barbarian threat that becomes apparent in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. To fight off all those bloody Germans and Iranians, the Romans did what they always did--hire foreign auxiliaries. In retrospect we can see they went too far, but a good many well-intentioned and hardworking rulers and commanders did their best down to the mid-fifth century. Majorian made a super attempt, but even in the reign of Theoderic we can witness a Roman elite class that does its duty and tries to salvage Romanitas. This project does not come to an end until after Justinian's reconquest and the subsequent Lombard invasions. For every eminent scholar Russell borrows from, there is an equally eminent scholar who would say either the opposite or offer a useful nuance.
It is not, I repeat NOT Christianity that changed the social life of the Empire's peoples but the facts of living in a vast, bureaucratic, multi-ethnic empire with diminishing financial resources. Pagans and Christians were no different, and if one studies the response made by Christian communities to invasions, we can find many instances of robust resistance. In conclusion to this part of the argument, whatever Russell may prove in his two historical chapters, the foundations he has laid in the theories of Bellah and Dumezil and in broad overviews of late Roman history are far too shaky to make any conclusive case on.
Chapter Six: "Germanization and Christianity: 376-678"
Up to this point I have been a bit hard on Dr. Russell, though if someone like me had been on his dissertation committee, he would have avoided many pitfalls. Someone should have sent it over to my old friend and former fellow-student Harry Evans in the Fordham classics department. But, enough cavils about ancient history and the flawed methodology of sociology! Let us turn to his historical treatment.
His general account of the Germans' reception of Christianity in this period is basically sound. Once he is on firm ground, his writing--and thinking--become clearer and more forceful. He accepts the views (probable but not provable) of Peter Heather and EP Thompson that the Goths were drawn to Arianism precisely because it was not the religion of the Empire. Unfortunately, he goes still further and seems to endorse the argument that Germanic leaders were generally opposed to Roman culture. Even the much-cited case of Theoderic the Ostrogoth, who did not want his people to adopt Roman customs, can have other explanations: He may not have wanted too much fraternization with possible enemies; he may have believed, as he said, that his warriors would grow weak if they turned Roman. Other Germans like Stilicho's father did not have any trouble in marrying a Roman or raising their children, whether in Italy or Constantinople, as good Romans. Besides, a GErman would not need to have a firm anti-Roman conviction to feel some reluctance about an alien people. The Franks, as Russell acknowledges, adopted a rather pro-Roman stance, which probably had something to do with the fact that Clovis adopted the Catholic religion. This in itself did not drive them into the arms of Rome, but Catholic Italians and Catholic Franks shared a similar enemies' list of Arian Germanic peoples.
The Frankish situation is complex, and JCR does his best to do justice to the complexity. Early Franks, though he does not make this clear, had been rather on the fringes of the Roman area of influence, and this may partly explain their sluggish progress in Romanization. The interaction between Franks and the Roman remnant in Gaul was a two-way street, and JCR adopts the view that Clovis, after baptism, began interfering in the hitherto Gallo-Roman Church, which he filled with his less-than-qualified stooges--a problem that plagued the Church in France down to Napoleon's day, at least.
He has a good deal of less than satisfying discussion of the supposed group identity of the Franks from a Weberian point of view, combined with speculation about the attraction of Germanic warriors for heroic Irish monks. This is the context in which he takes up the failure of Merovingian kings to do much in the way of religious education, but the Franks were, after all, a crude lot, a far cry from the Goths who had been civilizing themselves for a fair amount of time. He accepts the argument that the popularity of votive masses, in the Early Middle Ages, implies a radically different understanding of the mass as a good work, but he does not offer much more than the argument from authority, that is, some important scholars have said so. I simply don't know how Augustine or Ambrose or Gregory viewed the mass, and thus it seems difficult to draw such broad conclusions from such a dearth of evidence. That, indeed, is the major problem of even the best parts of his study: the lack of a firm foundation in actual documents. What is seriously lacking, in this chapter, is any treatment of Christian evolution in non-Germanic Christendom, particularly in Rome and Ravenna. Even if the changes he thinks were taking place did in fact take place, Germanization is only one possible explanation.
Nonetheless, this chapter was well worth reading, and JCR picks his way among the conflicting theories with a far surer foot than in earlier parts of his book. Does he nail his case in these early centuries? I don't think so. Everything changes, as Heraclitus observed long ago, but sometimes what we regard as dynamic change or progress is simply decay. We may learn to like the flavor of "aged" game and rotten cheese, but it is still rotten. It naturally took a long time to civilize the Germans. Carolingian and Capetian kings and aristocrats had a terrible problem with Christian monogamy. One interpretation might be that they were Germanizing Christianity, but it seems simpler to suppose that they had not yet got the hang of Christian marriage or even that they were not even trying. Our barbarian ancestors only made a stab at being civilized after the Church had been doing a job on them for five centuries. And, I suppose it is worth noting, that as soon as the Northern West began pulling away both from the Church and from the civilization(s) of the oikoumene, we started acting once again like beasts. I have noted many times before that the post-Christian Germans and Scandinavians are far more repulsive than post-Christian Italians, Greeks, and French.
Conclusion
I had hoped that Russell would cinch l his argument in the last chapter on Germanization post 678. Unfortunately, this chapter suffers from the same defects and limitations as its predecessors. In applying a “big theory” to secondary academic monographs and studies, without serious consideration of primary texts and sources, he is free to pick and choose what ideas or even quotations that fit his thesis but without ever really going deep enough into any event or situation to establish a solid basis for the argument. He spends, for example, a good deal of time on Gregory the Great’s approach to the Anglo-Saxon mission he sent out and its possible indications of a softening of Rome toward Germanic paganism. Gregory, however, gives conflicting advice. To an AS ruler, he advises toughness in putting down the relics of paganism, while to his missionary he advises a slower and more accommodating approach. Inevitably, Russell relies on R.A. Markus' Gregory the Great and His World, from which he derives evidence of a significant evolution in Pope Gregory’s thinking, from asperity to accommodation. But Russell pushes the argument well beyond anything Markus has suggested, and Markus, though a fine scholar, does not have to be right about everything, and he certainly is not. (I find him particularly weak, for example, on Gregory's moral theology.) We simply have too little evidence on which to judge this case. Gregory, one needs to remember, had been a major diplomat, and it is quite natural for him to advise discretion to a missionary while instructing a powerful converted ruler to crack down. To go from Gregory to Boniface is thus not entirely legitimate, especially given the spotty evidence, though Boniface certainly read Gregory's letters. It is simply a conjecture that Boniface, influenced by Gregory, decided to go easy on pagan practices. Thus one cannot go on to construct an account according to which the Church in Germany learned to accept important elements of Germanic paganism. It may well be true, but the historical case is shaky
This is only one instance of many that can be cited. JCR’s more general thesis is not without merit, though it would require a good deal of nuancing and a thorough-going comparative study of the Church in Southern Italy and in the Byzantine East. The general idea is that the world-denying individualistic and otherworldly Christianity ran headlong into a magical, king-revering, collectivist German mentality that it was forced to accept. But, as I have pointed out in this discussion, this world-denying business has been rather overstated. Remember Christ at the wedding and all the homely parables of everyday life, His sense of humor, and His acceptance of publicans and sinners. There has always been an other-wordly mysticism in some important Christians and a tendency to contemn the authorities of this world, but St. Paul tells us that obedience to the powers-that-be is required of Christians; St. Justin writes with great respect to the Antonines; the Apology of Aristides and the Epistle to Diognetus both emphasize how normal Christianity was and is.
The idea that Germans made their rulers semi-divine would not seem terribly strange either to Constantine or to 1000 years of Byzantine Emperors. The Hellenistic kings had been divine or semi-divine, and in the East Augustus was worshipped even in his lifetime. Later emperors were less modest than Augustus. Even Constantine, after accepting Christianity, actually enhanced and magnified the religious reverence due to the emperor. The word sacred, for example, was more or less used in bureaucratic circles as term to denote what belonged to the emperor. Surely, these sacred majesties were not influenced by Germans. A similar point would have to be made about Christianity’s hostility toward German paganism’s sacred places. Exactly the same thing happened in the Greek and Slavic world, so whatever took place is not exclusively or even primarily Germanic. In the case of Northern Europe, where some sacred places were identified with human sacrifice, the missionaries were quite naturally suspicious.
What JCR does not seem to understand is Christianity’s complex relationship to this world. It is both word-denyint and world-accepting from the beginning. In the ancient Church, a distinction gradually developed between the strict expectations of the clergy, especially monastic clergy, and the requirements for ordinary men and women. Celibacy and communism turned out to be impractical, and, indeed, neither is actually taught by Christ Himself. On the magical elements in Christianity, we should remember that Christ worked miracles and passed on this power to his apostles. The veneration of relics goes to the beginning of our faith, to the woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, to Peter’s wrong-headed desire to build three tabernacles to commemorate the Transfiguration, to the pious Christians of Smyrna who gathered up the relics of their martyr Polycarp. Much like Plotinus, Christians are caught between two poles, between the recognition that God is greater than all his creations and the recognition that what God has created is good.
Stripped of its grand sociological theory and reinforced by a comparative study of Eastern Europe, JCR’s argument might be corrected to the point it could be accepted, but the what would it mean? That some harmless elements in paganism were Christened and adopted more or less permanently by Northern European Christians, just as Southern Europeans kept many Greco-Roman customs. That, at the other end of the scale, some bad medicine was also incorporated and this was only diminished after a long time—magical practices, fortune-telling, witch-craft, trial by ordeal, polygamy. A similar story, again, can be told in the Balkans and in Italy. Finally, some customs and attitudes, neither good nor bad in themselves, perhaps, but risky were accepted into Christian practice and have to be looked at from time to time. At what point does the Germanic sense of courage and honor turn into a justification for murder and mayhem?
The best that I can say of The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity is that it has a pretty good bibliography from which JCR is able to provide a broad overview of what major (and not so major) scholars have said on this subject. In the end, the verdict must be the Scottish verdict of “not proven,” though in this case, I should add, “not even close.” Even the title puts the reader on a false track. It is not Christianity that might have suffered from Germanization but Christendom, the way of life of the Christian West. Even his title, then, illustrates what he himself has called a “subjectivist” and “relativistic” definition of Christianity.
In conclusion, Neopagans who trot out The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity as proof that whatever manly elements there are in Medieval Christianity derive from Germanization are, first, misapplying Russell's book, because that is not his argument, and two, even if they were correctly interpreting the book, Germanization is not one of those magisterial books that closes and argument.
Entries(RSS)
Another measure: contrast the regimes of Salazar, Franco, Petain, and Mussolini with the Third Reich. I am not saying that the Latin dictators were nice men--though a case could be made for several of them--but the hysteria of the Germans should make even an avowed anti-Semite a little nervous. Please do not mistake me. I like most of the Germans I know and I admire German music and much German literature. I once was visited, though, by a youngish PhD, a leader in the REP (Republikaner). He was highly intelligent and well-educated but a bigger boor I have never met. Germany had never made a single mistake. Even shooting Ukrainian peasants was a good idea. He insulted the pretty Italian waitress about her ethnicity then tried to pick her up by saying he knew she was oversexed like all her race. What a smooth-tongued devil he was. I do not say that he is typical of the German Right, because I know he is not. Still, I have never met anyone remotely like this in any rightist group in Europe.
Do you think that it's inherent in the northern races or are you saying that they've never been civilized AND at the same time anything but Christian and Latin? If the latter, then it almost sounds like you're saying they have nothing to fall back on.
The trouble with broad-brushed generalizations, including my own, is that they not only admit of exceptions but are also too sweeping. But, with that caveat in advance, I do think that Mediterranean civilization was the creation of certain peoples. To the extent we barbarians have buckled down and learned the ancient languages, studied the literature, and imbibed the wisdom of the Delphic Oracle, Aristotle, Cicero, and the two Catos, we become Greeks and Romans in spirit, but when we stray from the disciplines of antiquity we seem to begin reverting to our original type. Europe was a hybrid culture, much like the English language, but it was and still sort of is magnificent. It is neither Germano-Celtic nor Greco-Roman, but a vigorous fusion of the two stocks. Italy benefited in the long run from the German warriors who came in with Theoderic, theLombards, Charlemagne, Otto the Great and Barbarossa, just as the Germans gained so much from contact with the South. As it turns out, the southern Europeans can sort of scrape by without us, whereas we cannot do without them or at least the traditions of their ancestors.
The good thing about generalizations, is that they are true and the exceptions prove them. In certain fields of study we should not ask for more certainty than the subject allows. As Aristotle observed the truth is not only of what always is, but also of what generally is. The notion of symbolic logic might be helpful in building rockets that normally fly on target but not at all helpful in formal fields of understanding such as biology,genetics, history, poetry and ethics.
The personification of meanigless abstractions such as progress, human perfectibility, evolution, Nordic Man, and other such notions is to speak without regard for causes. God may use us, we may use ourselves,we may allow notions of "Nordic Man" to use us and even blind us with powers of delusion and grandeur, but the causes of what remain of our civilization "generally speaking is Greece, Rome and the Incarnation. The exceptions such as Theodoric are important only indirectly such as Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy written after he was imprisoned by the "great one." The burden of proof is on those who want such exceptions to become the rule, not on those of us who understand our traditions as they have been handed down. Hegel and Marx are a far cry from Aristotle and Plato and Nietzche is not even a footnote to Boethius. God help us all when these common facts of our history become confused with the uncommon scholarship that surrounds us.
Don't mean to beat this to death, but are you saying it's in our blood or is it some sort of deep-rooted folk memory that's surfacing?
I wonder if there isn't something unique going on with modern man and if it really is valid to trace our dysfunction back to illiterate, superstitious barbarians. Please note I've no delusions about northern noble savages.
Also, you mentioned the Germanics but the British, I'm sad to say, are quite swinish too.
In reading Mr. Russell's comment above I found the following statement rather shocking, especially after he has just stated for us that he attends mass and his book is not anti-Christian:
"If our civilization is to survive, we need a religiosity that reinforces, rather than undermines it. We cannot allow our religion to be turned into a weapon against us."
What more idolatrous statement could there be than this? It essentially states that he thinks the purpose of Christianity is to uphold "our civilization" and in the next sentence says we have to permit it from being turned against us as if our religion is some instrument of warfare.
The purpose of "our" religion is not to uphold our civilization. The purpose of our civilization should be to magnify God, and if we were busy doing that (or at least playing our local, humble role in it) I don't think we would have too much to fear from any enemies.
He wrote "religiosity" as in "practice." He didn't say we needed a "religion" that reinforces it. I don't see what's so objectionable.
The (liberal) practice of our religion HAS been turned into an instrument of warfare against us.
I don't know what Russell meant by his remark, but it is a curious way of speaking about a faith that claims to be true. Indeed, my basic objection to his book is that it treats Christianity as something that can be, has been, and probably ought to be reinvented to suit different social needs. Even Voltaire thought religion served a valuable social purpose, but this sort of instrumentalization of Christ, although it is done in virtually every generation, beginning with Simon Magus, is what the Church he says he believes in is supposed to combat. The basic thesis of his book is incompatible with authentic Christianity. That does not mean that he is not Christian, but if he is he is a very confused one, and it does not mean that his book, stripped of its sociological palaver, is not a valuable overview of the subject, because it is. The trouble with such works, generally, is that what is valuable and true has been done before, while the original parts--the sociohistorical framework--is not only not conclusive: It positively distorts Christianity.
Bruce has asked me this question repeatedly, namely, about what went wrong with German peoples, including the English. If I thought I had a good answer, I would write a book. I don't. Yesterday afternoon, though, I had a call from a friend who lives in Eastern France and, to improve his German, he sometimes watches German television. The problem is that after a certain point in the evening, the advertising is so sexually explicit, he feels uncomfortable and cannot watch it with the ladies of his family. I don't think one has to posit genetic differences--though they may play a part--but there are cultural genes that are almost as hard to eliminate as biological ones, especially if there is a gene-culture feedback loop, as EO Wilson has described. This loop naturally worked in human evolution, but there is no reason to suppose it does not work in ethnic traditions. Societies that prize self-discipline and moderation will reward people who possess this trait. They in turn will be more successful which, in most pre-modern societies, means they have more children. Warrior societies will reward warriors, etc etc. Even though one may impose an overlay of the warrior ethos on a Stoic society or vice versa, it would take an awful long time to reverse the basic character. This is pure speculation.
I must say; this has been an interesting discussion, definitely more interesting than arguing over the quotidian political news.
I, however, not having read Russell, am still confused by what "Germanization of Christianity" means, and how one would be in error to say that the Germans did influence European Christianity. As a Christian, I've always been fond of the various European influences upon Christianity.
One, I I think, can hold three positions (possibly more):
(1) There is a pure form of Christianity (set in the early communities of the Middle East) and we should strive to purge from Christianity any foreign elements. (We see this among Pentecostals, etc.).
(2) Christianity is influenced by and absorbs the ancestral elements of the people where it thrives. (For example, Europeans imposed upon Christianity various Greek, Roman and Germanic traditions. Today, people in Mexico impose Amerindian traditions and people in Brazil impose both Amerindian and African traditions upon Christianity.)
(3) Christianity has been so overtaken by local elements that it arguably ceases to be Christian (e.g. "Voodoo Catholicism" of Haiti?).
To say that the Germanic tribes had some influence in shaping Christianity (.e.g Easter and Christmas as they are celebrated by Europeans) - alongside the Greeks and Romans - would belong in camp two above? Was the Germanization so little that Russell is mistaken? Or was the Germanization so great that at times (e.g. Arian influences) European Christianity ceased to be Christian? Was there some Germanization but it was minor compared to the Greco-Roman influences?
This morning I was rereading Bede looking for Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) influences upon Christianity. I find it interesting that Bede still traces the pagan genealogies of early Anglo-Saxons. For instance of Hengist and Horsa (I.15), he writes, "They were the sons of Wictigils, whose father was Witta, whose father was Wecta, son of Woden, from whose stock sprang the royal house of many provinces." As many scholars have pointed out, what's essential to understanding paganism is that it not only is the worshiping of local gods, but of ancestral gods. I find interesting that Bede, living from 672 - 735, still recounts these (divine) genealogies to add luster to kingly lines. Clearly, though, unlike the Pentecostals, I don't think this detracts from Bede's analysis or his belief in Christianity, and would only fall in camp two above (since he doesn't believe these genealogies to be true but nonetheless thinks they are an important part of their ancestral mythology).
Mr. Roberts,
This is an excellent post. In many instances, most instances, the message of Christ fulfills and perfects, rather than destroys. Our puritan roots with its emphasis on what not to do and its discipline of the hapless human will, blinds us to the understanding of the Gospel as the divine answer to long held questions that men have had from the beginning. Why should it be a surprise that the emphasis on the family, the community, and tribe or prayers for the dead, or intercession of the immortal ones, should be perfected in Christ rather than foreign to it. Again, I appreciate your post and think you have our story correct in reading it organically from the inside out instead of idealogically as something drasticaly imposed from Heaven above with a loud voice like Charlton Heston's, when in fact the tradition tells us it is much more like a gentle breeze.
I prefer to speak of the reception of Christianity, a somewhat technical term that sets aside value judgments or attribution of causation. That Christianity escaped the Mediterranean oikoumene in going to Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, the Americas, and India is true, naturally. That local cultures inevitably had an effect on modes of worship and thought is inevitable. The term Germanization, quite apart from JCR's own views, suggests some more basic modification that makes the Christianity we have inherited different in some essential ways. I think a more Christian way of looking at this--and perhaps a more practical way--is suggested by Mr. Roberts' analysis. Christianity, as it is received by various foreign cultures, is affected by those cultures but no more (in the long run less) than those cultures are affected by Christianity. It is not only foolish but a waste of time to attempt to restore a primitive Christianity about which we know far too little. Christianity developed higher structures of authority, more complex modes of worship, and more subtle theologies. A pious believer in the time of the Apostles might have held a creed closer to Arianism or Nestorianism than to what became the Orthodox/Catholic position, but so long as he did not start a sect, his misunderstanding was not harmful, because these distinctions had not been made. Once they were made, one cannot presume to go back in time to the point before, say, the Nicene Creed was ironed out. I think most of us taking part in this discussion would agree that Roman marriage customs and Germanic Christmas customs are simply an enrichment of Christian culture.
When JCR appears to overvalue the Germanically influenced forms of Christianity, he runs into a grave danger. Suppose a tribe of cannibals, for example, became Christian but tried to introduce the eating of real flesh and the drinking of real blood into the liturgy? Or suppose the Germans had succeeded in glorifying bloodlust and making it part of the Christian life? Obviously, all Christians are one in Christ. Nobody is saved either by Aristotle's philosophy or by Christmas trees and Yule logs or even reverence for ancestors (as common among Greeks and Romans in a parallel state of development as among the Germans, and more persistent.) When I meet Christians from Japan, Africa, and India, though I may be surprised by some peculiarities introduced by their cultures, I know we are brothers who speak a common language of faith in worshipping the same God the father and his Son. I do not say JCR intends this error, only that it is one that seems to grow very quickly out of the approach he has taken.
Dr. Fleming, you write "A pious believer in the time of the Apostles might have held a creed closer to Arianism or Nestorianism than to what became the Orthodox/Catholic position, but so long as he did not start a sect, his misunderstanding was not harmful, because these distinctions had not been made". Do you believe that this believer would have been a heretic? If a modern, contemporary Christian were to hold similar religious beliefs would *that* be heresy?
There is more to heresy than making a mistake or failure to understand. Most Catholics, probably, hold curious views that are at odds with the Church, but they are unaware of the conflict. I meet many people who tell me that the Church has always condemned and now more strongly condemns capital punishment. A heresy is a willful persistence in error, once the error has been condemned. I think people make too much of intellectual prowess. Most of us are too stupid and ill-informed to be able to explain, much less justify our beliefs. That is one of many reasons we have to subject ourselves to authority. Heretics refuse but prefer to follow the lead of some guru, their heresiarch. You cannot blame stupid people for being stupid, but one can blame them for willful perversity, especially the perversity of saying, "My will be done."
Thank you.
A not uncommon assertion among the secular hard right is that Christianity was Romanized and then additionally Germanized and that the Reformation started the process of reversion back to the original, weak type. They also say that the protestantizing Vatican 2 put the Catholic Church on this trajectory. They also say that some Christians such as the Reformed dealt with this reversion to weakness by Judaizing. This is not my position, but what should we say to them?
Dr. Fleming,
A minor digression: You might find some support for your critique of political science and the social sciences in Michael Oakeshott. Terry Nardin's "The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott" is excellent in this regard. On Nardin's account, Oakeshott is not the mere political philosopher that everyone thinks he is; he has an elaborate historical metaphysics that offers a compelling critique of "scientific" attempts to wring "ought" out of "is."
It is not entirely untrue but not even half-true either. You have to be pretty ignorant even to make such an argument, ignorant of history, theology of course but ignorant of human nature. The Church was very quickly Hellenized and de-Judaized, beginning with Paul, and there soon came a time when it was not viewed as kosher to keep kosher, that is, clinging to Jewish dietary rules was an insult to the dignity of the Creator. (Peter was given something like this in his famous dream.) The Hellenized church then spread throughout the Roman world, though Greeks maintained a strong, often dominant position, even in Rome, for many centuries. I wouldn't worry about what ignoramuses think. More important is to arm ourselves with historical truth. One can show that even in the Gospels Jesus does not call for a non-judgmental weak and self-sacrificing life. He tells his followers that once He has gone, they should arm themselves, and one of the more interesting passages is: Matthew 23:23: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith." For justice, a better translation is judgment or even condemnation.
What I am trying to point out in these discussions is that while Christianity is a religion of peace, mercy, and charity, it is also a religion of intelligence, judgment, and courage. The pacifists who leave out these latter qualities have lead many believers into a blind alley, but the neo-pagan lies only compound the error. I have tried reasoning with some of these people, but they are as dogged in their errors as a Jehovah's Witness. Christianity, for them, is the dog that any stick can be used to whip.
At Mel Bradford's recommendation I tried reading Oakeshott several times but I never got much out of him I had not received in a clearer form from one of his predecessors. There is too much jargon for my taste, and phrases like teleocratic etc. leave me entirely cold. I am sure he is worth reading, but not perhaps by me. I would never, repeat, never read a second-hand book about a a contemporary writer whose books are easy to get and, unless the author is crazy or incompetent, should be easy to interpret.
It's better to go to the source than to get it second-hand. But in my case, I just assumed until recently (when I read the book I mentioned) that Oakeshott can be summed up on the basis of "Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays"--which is not the case, according to Professor Nardin. Our assumptions can lead us to think we understand an author, and because assumptions are hard and in some cases impossible to get away from, we can benefit from someone who has peeled more layers of skin from the onion than we have.
I would add that Nardin emphasizes Oakeshott's near-obsession with presuppositions and how to examine them. That is very uncommon in scholarship, whether the classics or any other field. Mel Bradford was on to something.
Dr. Russell has put the cart before the horse: the Germans were Romanized and Christianized, not the reverse. By the way, genetic studies by Dr. Bryan Sykes of Oxford University suggest that the people of the British Isles have retained about 80% of their genetic inheritance from Neolithic times (with the matrilineal mostly dating to Mesolithic and the patrilineal skewed toward Neolithic settlers originating in the Eastern Mediterranean). He estimates the Anglo-Saxon component to be no more than 20% even in Southern England and a Norse component in the far north and east of Britain as high as 40% in some areas. In this view the British people are chiefly Celtic/Pictish in ancestry which comports well with their general physical appearance in comparison with North Germans and Scandinavians. The English language became the language of the areas dominated by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, much as Arabic became the language of the areas conquered by the Arabs. The Romanized British were Germanized and then Christianized, reversing the usual German to Roman order.
"Christianity is ... also a religion of intelligence, judgment, and courage," which are cardinal virtues, inherited by the Church from Greek and Roman philosophers, if I'm not mistaken.
#62 "This is not my position, but what should we say to them?"
I say to them,
"Have you then found reality? Are you content in these truths or in this blissful ignorance? Have you found in these assertions the peace which the world does not offer?"
I once knew a frenchmen who was quite intelligent and sympathetic to the Church but was without faith. He told me that he would trade the one for the other. Another man, much more content than the first, told me after living in France for thrity years as a monk that there were alot of excellent French Catholic scholars who lived without the sacraments for years, only to discover later in their life, as death approached, that this was not at all necessary. There is an experential aspect of the life of grace, that must be practiced,attempted, lived and endured in order to understand. It cannot be approached soley through the mind or solely through the will, but must be united to both through the heart, as in : " A broken and contrite heart is a sacrifice to God."
#62 “This is not my position, but what should we say to them?”
Eventually one gets to the point where one does not even want to talk to such people.
By the way, I once said that you can generally discern a people's level of refinement and civilisation by its national beverage of choice. I am not saying there is no such thing as "refined whiskey" or "quality beer," but it is generally true that the appreciation generally works from highest down, not lowest up (c.f. a wine lover can appreciate beer, but a pure beer lover cannot enjoy good wine) :
- TEETOTALING: caveman
- SPIRITS: barbarian
- BEER: in the dark
- WINE (Controlled Appelations): Romanized
- WINE (Guaranteed Controlled Denominations): Roman
DISCLAIMER: I am in no way endorsing the label "Appelation d'Origine Contrôlée" as a reliable test for the quality of French wine. I like one particular three-euro label-less country wine from Languedoc that works much better as table wine than a lot of the cheap Bordeaux that seems to be such popular party fare.
Make that "Appellation," pardons.
Thanks, Nicholas. I am sure Hilaire Belloc is smiling down at you. I like the occasional beer and the more than occasional whiskey, but try as I might I cannot seem to do without wine. Thanks, too, to Mr. Van Osbree, for his excellent point both about the cart and the horse and the care we need to use in assessing Germanization. In northern Italy, the assumption has been that they were massively Germanized. If Cavilli-Sforza is to be trusted, however, the dominant stock is still Celtic. Umberto Bossi, whom I used to know, picked up this theme and declared to the press, after seeing Gibson's movie, "Io sono Braveheart." Not long after I found myself giving a lecture to a group of Italian youth in Merate, I Giovani Celti Meratesi. The very name Merate, by the way--like so many Lombard names of towns (Galbiate, Olgiate, Olbinate, Galarate) is apparently Celtic.
I'm sorry to jump off topic, but I wanted to wish the writers at Chronicles, the participants and all of your families a joyful Thanksgiving.
I confess. I'm a beer and cider fan. Vino's an ok substitute.
I'm not a geneticist but Sykes book on patrilinal/matrilineal markers seemed to make an awful lot of inferences.
Conclusion
I had hoped that Russell would cinch l his argument in the last chapter on Germanization post 678. Unfortunately, this chapter suffers from the same defects and limitations as its predecessors. In applying a “big theory” to secondary academic monographs and studies, without serious consideration of primary texts and sources, he is free to pick and choose what ideas or even quotations that fit his thesis but without ever really going deep enough into any event or situation to establish a solid basis for the argument. He spends, for example, a good deal of time on Gregory the Great’s approach to the Anglo-Saxon mission he sent out and its possible indications of a softening of Rome toward Germanic paganism. Gregory, however, gives conflicting advice. To an AS ruler, he advises toughness in putting down the relics of paganism, while to his missionary he advises a slower and more accommodating approach. Inevitably, Russell relies on R.A. Markus' Gregory the Great and His World, from which he derives evidence of a significant evolution in Pope Gregory’s thinking, from asperity to accommodation. But Russell pushes the argument well beyond anything Markus has suggested, and Markus, though a fine scholar, does not have to be right about everything, and he certainly is not. (I find him particularly weak, for example, on Gregory's moral theology.) We simply have too little evidence on which to judge this case. Gregory, one needs to remember, had been a major diplomat, and it is quite natural for him to advise discretion to a missionary while instructing a powerful converted ruler to crack down. To go from Gregory to Boniface is thus not entirely legitimate, especially given the spotty evidence, though Boniface certainly read Gregory's letters. It is simply a conjecture that Boniface, influenced by Gregory, decided to go easy on pagan practices. Thus one cannot go on to construct an account according to which the Church in Germany learned to accept important elements of Germanic paganism. It may well be true, but the historical case is shaky
This is only one instance of many that can be cited. JCR’s more general thesis is not without merit, though it would require a good deal of nuancing and a thorough-going comparative study of the Church in Southern Italy and in the Byzantine East. The general idea is that the world-denying individualistic and otherworldly Christianity ran headlong into a magical, king-revering, collectivist German mentality that it was forced to accept. But, as I have pointed out in this discussion, this world-denying business has been rather overstated. Remember Christ at the wedding and all the homely parables of everyday life, His sense of humor, and His acceptance of publicans and sinners. There has always been an other-wordly mysticism in some important Christians and a tendency to contemn the authorities of this world, but St. Paul tells us that obedience to the powers-that-be is required of Christians; St. Justin writes with great respect to the Antonines; the Apology of Aristides and the Epistle to Diognetus both emphasize how normal Christianity was and is.
The idea that Germans made their rulers semi-divine would not seem terribly strange either to Constantine or to 1000 years of Byzantine Emperors. The Hellenistic kings had been divine or semi-divine, and in the East Augustus was worshipped even in his lifetime. Later emperors were less modest than Augustus. Even Constantine, after accepting Christianity, actually enhanced and magnified the religious reverence due to the emperor. The word sacred, for example, was more or less used in bureaucratic circles as term to denote what belonged to the emperor. Surely, these sacred majesties were not influenced by Germans. A similar point would have to be made about Christianity’s hostility toward German paganism’s sacred places. Exactly the same thing happened in the Greek and Slavic world, so whatever took place is not exclusively or even primarily Germanic. In the case of Northern Europe, where some sacred places were identified with human sacrifice, the missionaries were quite naturally suspicious.
What JCR does not seem to understand is Christianity’s complex relationship to this world. It is both word-denyint and world-accepting from the beginning. In the ancient Church, a distinction gradually developed between the strict expectations of the clergy, especially monastic clergy, and the requirements for ordinary men and women. Celibacy and communism turned out to be impractical, and, indeed, neither is actually taught by Christ Himself. On the magical elements in Christianity, we should remember that Christ worked miracles and passed on this power to his apostles. The veneration of relics goes to the beginning of our faith, to the woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, to Peter’s wrong-headed desire to build three tabernacles to commemorate the Transfiguration, to the pious Christians of Smyrna who gathered up the relics of their martyr Polycarp. Much like Plotinus, Christians are caught between two poles, between the recognition that God is greater than all his creations and the recognition that what God has created is good.
Stripped of its grand sociological theory and reinforced by a comparative study of Eastern Europe, JCR’s argument might be corrected to the point it could be accepted, but the what would it mean? That some harmless elements in paganism were Christened and adopted more or less permanently by Northern European Christians, just as Southern Europeans kept many Greco-Roman customs. That, at the other end of the scale, some bad medicine was also incorporated and this was only diminished after a long time—magical practices, fortune-telling, witch-craft, trial by ordeal, polygamy. A similar story, again, can be told in the Balkans and in Italy. Finally, some customs and attitudes, neither good nor bad in themselves, perhaps, but risky were accepted into Christian practice and have to be looked at from time to time. At what point does the Germanic sense of courage and honor turn into a justification for murder and mayhem?
The best that I can say of The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity is that it has a pretty good bibliography from which JCR is able to provide a broad overview of what major (and not so major) scholars have said on this subject. In the end, the verdict must be the Scottish verdict of “not proven,” though in this case, I should add, “not even close.” Even the title puts the reader on a false track. It is not Christianity that might have suffered from Germanization but Christendom, the way of life of the Christian West. Even his title, then, illustrates what he himself has called a “subjectivist” and “relativistic” definition of Christianity.
In conclusion, Neopagans who trot out The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity as proof that whatever manly elements there are in Medieval Christianity derive from Germanization are, first, misapplying Russell's book, because that is not his argument, and two, even if they were correctly interpreting the book, Germanization is not one of those magisterial books that closes and argument.
Dr. Fleming I thought this a very delicious crumb from your full course table this morning :The general idea is that the world-denying individualistic and otherworldly Christianity ran headlong into a magical, king-revering, collectivist German mentality that it was forced to accept. But, as I have pointed out in this discussion, this world-denying business has been rather overstated."
Yesterday evening I was reading Peter Brown's description of the historical country surrounding St. Augustine and he said the very same thing. I think it might be helpful to some of the younger lurkers of the blog, so I will quote a little of what he said.
"Moderns tend to be distressed about personal isues, such as sexual attraction, competitivness, popularity, and envy, so such people must make a strong effort to understand the impersonal passion for truth that runs through this Christian book."
Augustine remained to the end of his life an unreconstructed ancient philosopher. He believed that human beings should take their lives in hand, and that no trining of the self could hope to succeed if it were not grounded in reality --- that is, in as true a view as was possible for humans to attain of God, the universe, and of the human person. He put his life in order in the light of a higher reality,which the conventional wisdom of contemporaries had evaded or blurred."
In fact he goes on to suggest, it was the secret doctrines preached by Mani that were the other worldy fantasies so often attributed to"other worldly Christians". It is much like the secret doctines and interpretations of Vatican II offered today by such luminaries as George Wiegel, Father Neuhouse (rest in peace) and his friend Mr. Bottom who supposedly knows what Father or John Paul II and others would have said, if they were still here to say it.Yet, according Augustine and one of his better biographers, Peter Brown, the Christians or (catholics) interest should be in knowing God in spirit and in truth which alone can provide the eternal rest and peace we all so much desire. Such knowledge is, according to the Christian Tradition,is to be learned here, or nowhere at all.
Pax
FYI - Dr. Gottfried has responded to some of Dr. Fleming's points at Takimag:
http://www.takimag.com/article/christian_heresies/
Thank you, Toddard. I do not know Paul Gottfried as well as I would like, but he along with, Ilana Mercer, are two of my favorite Jewish journalists writing today. They do not expect(or respect) everyone to agree with them, and they can throw a punch as well as anyone in the current pundacracy but what I most admire about them is that they are serious students and teachers. Tom is a hard hitter too, however, and when one challenges his intellectual understanding of a common historical fact, they best be ready to answer. Where else in "Amerika" do folks really engage the subjects under discussion with the passion, understanding and respect that these fellows do. Normally we are reduced to watching Alan Dershowitz scream "hater" at Pat Buchanan, or Alan Keyes scream "liberty" at Professor Dershowitz, and other such stimulating assertions. Here the debaters use their own reflections and fight from the well worn trenches of a histoical tradition, instead of the dishonest disguises of the trench coat!!
Dr. Gottfried, at the end, makes note of Dr. Fleming's beard. I think once this debate has gone as far as it can go, it will have to be resolved in the way all Great Debates are eventually resolved: with a Beard-Off.
May the best beard win!
Toddard,
This reminds me of when National Review was a real magazine and had real articles and debates. Heck, when Bill Buckley and his brother-in-law acted like real,relatives and argued!!! Or when Freshman college students could expect at least one real professor (like Clyde Wilson or Peter Brown, who wanted to teach freshman and loved their subject) out of five for the enormous sacrifice and money their folks spent on such endeavors. Or when the libertarians and Trad Catholics fought like savages during the day only to live together on wine at night until the sun and the arguments returned. What a contrast to little David Frum and Jonah Goldberg telling all the boys and girls who didn't agree with them about the great advebtures in Iraq and Afghanistan that they were Un-American --- have they no shame? Have they no decency? etc. etc..
I never saw him write anything stupid and offensive, but I saw his disciples write things that were stupid and offensive. The head disciple, for example, wrote a piece with a simple, one-sided argument about the particular-to-universal trajectory of Judaism that clearly was intended to discredit Christianity. He made an amatueuishly simple argument that we were supposed to accept from his authority. From a reader's perspective, his disciple hasn't written anything that suggests a depth of knowledge in the relevant subjects that's comparable to that of Rockford.
Bruce writes:"From a reader’s perspective, his disciple hasn’t written anything that suggests a depth of knowledge in the relevant subjects that’s comparable to that of Rockford."
And don't plan on it anytime soon. Taki.Mag has a totally different mission than Chronicles or so it would appear. I always assumed that Taki simply wanted to lay down some suppressive fire and provide a training ground for younger writers under the direction of older warriors who had already bled, while his friends over at Chronicles engaged in the the more disciplined and prolonged effort of re-establishing the foundations by offering schools, providing travel opportunities along what remains of the "old roman road" and an education that every college student had hoped for when he first headed off and away from his dear home --- But Never Received or Encountered!!
I am going to close this discussion and begin preparation for a fresh installment. I should like to make one or two concluding observations. First, this is not about personalities. I have always like Paul Gottfried personally, though his eccentric and willful conduct makes it difficult to remain on friendly terms. He has a way of making ill-considered and fallacious statements which he then converts into incontrovertible truths. When this is applied to long dead people, it is simply poor scholarship, when it is applied to the living it can be libelous and when it is applied to living or recently deceased friends it is a form of betrayal. It was because of false and malicious things he wished to publish about Sam Francis that I dismissed him from our editorial board--that on top of a long history of intrigue I find distasteful. His current attempt to get out in front of an anti-Christian movement is simply his latest folly. If he thinks, really, that any amount of rhetorical obfuscation can obscure his anti-Christianity or that his Christian friends are going to pretend he has not said what he has said, he is very much mistaken.
Takimag is a work in progress. Its namesake and funder has no agenda. He never goes online and, as he would be the first to say, cannot even handle the email program on his computer. He makes me and Chilton Williamson seem like technical whiz kids, and that is saying a great deal. Under its new editor, Takimag can be expected to take a new direction and give up this rather foolish Tendenz. I wish the project well, as I have always wished it well, if only for the name it bears.
In response to the gentle chiding of some readers that these sad young men--living in their mothers' basement, as one of you said--are not worth attention, I have replied more than once that they are merely the superficial emanations of a deeper phenomenon that includes the circle of the Medici, philosophers like Bacon and Descartes, occult movements like the Rosicrucians who did not exist and the freemasons who do, and much else that has polluted our spiritual and intellectual universe. Some attention, in an editorial fashion, might be paid to the several branches of this "movement," and I hope to take this on. I am also going to return to Herodotus.