Let's Paint Truth
School Truth & Transformation / Book Report: "How Should We Live? Francis A. Schaeffer"
Ancient Rome
Man is what he thinks he is. His inner life in the mind will determine his actions. And the result of his thinking will flow to the external world. To understand the Western culture we must trace 3 the philosophical, scientific and religious paths. The Roman civilization is the direct ancestor of the modern Western world. Rome was great but had no answers to the basic problems that all humanities faces. Much of the Roman thought and culture was shaped by Greek thinking (146 BC). The Greeks tried to build their society upon the city-state that was the polis, but they failed because of the insufficient base upon to build society. Then they try to build a society upon their Gods, but they were finite and limited. Didn’t have divine morals, values, they depended on the society which had made them. Pontifex Maximus (12 B.C.) became the head of the state religion, Romans allowed him to rule in every aspect of their life. He urged everyone to worship the spirit of Rome. The emperors that followed him also ruled as gods. They implemented legal reforms and welfare programs. But as the foundation of the value systems was not divine, but human, with a bit of pressure, this one crashed in her own limitedness and finiteness. (476 A.C.). The Roman Empire was great in size and military strength. It reached out over much of the known world. Its roads led over all Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. Christians were killed because they were rebels. They worshiped an infinite personal God name, Jesus. And because they were enemies of the totalitarian Rome. They rejected all forms of syncretism. In 313 A.C. Constantine ended the persecution of the Christians and Christianity became the 1st legal religion and then the official state religion of the Empire in 381 A.C.
What called my attention is that when the empire fell because of a human and not a divine base, apathy, lack of creativity reigns in the arts and music sphere. No intellectual life. The economy collapsed, oppression, freedoms were lost. Rome was already in ruins when the barbarians invaded…
What called my attention is that when the empire fell because of a human and not a divine base, apathy, lack of creativity reigns in the arts and music sphere. No intellectual life. The economy collapsed, oppression, freedoms were lost. Rome was already in ruins when the barbarians invaded…
The Middle Ages
The artists of the Middle Ages forgot the use of perspective which they used it in their paintings and mosaics. The Roman painting had been full of life, as the early Christian art too. Leaders like Ambrose of Milan (339-397) and Augustine (354-430) was characterized by emphasizing in a true and strong biblical Christianity. Later there was an increasing distortion away of the biblical teaching, and there also came a change in art. It became less real and more symbolic as Christianity moved away from its biblical background.
Since 395 A.C. the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western portions. The Byzantine style developed in the east and gradually spread to the west. This art was beautiful, but only religious topics were given importance and people represented as symbols, not real. The portrayal of nature and humans were removed. Light and color were the emphases in the interior of the new churches. Thanks to the Benedictine monks the Bible was preserved, along with the Greek and Latin sections. The old hymns and the antiphonal psalmody that came from Ambrose too. A humanistic element was added to the teaching of the Bible. There was an emphasis on salvation as a resting on man's meriting the merit of Christ instead of Christ's work alone. Under Charlemagne, the church became a more general cultural force. He gained control over much of the western European territory formerly in the Roman Empire. Church power became coextensive with state power, and culturally they fed one another. With the scholarly revival of Carolingian Age (735), there also came an artistic revival. Pope Gregory I (590 – 604) brought the music of the western church into a systematic whole. The artistic achievements of the Middle Age were characterized by an awakened cultural, and intellectual life and awakened piety. The architecture had an explosion in creativity and in its most inner expression.
What stood out to me is that at the moment that a humanist element enters to the Gospel, everything starts to distortion and its inmediateley reflected in the Arts. Less real, nature, that is Gods expression, removed. It's incredible how evil attacks the core things that God most loves.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance opened the way for people to think of themselves as autonomous and the center of all things. The authority of the Church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible. The fallen man was considered able to return to God by meriting the merit of Christ. There was a change in thinking about man, putting him in the center of all things instead of God. Tomas de Aquino was the outstanding theological of the time that had the most influence in the church. He had an incomplete view of the fall. He thought that this did not affect man as a whole, but only in part. In his opinion, the will was corrupted but the intellect not. He believed that man could rely on his own human wisdom and understanding. And that it was OK to mix the teaching of the Bible with non-Christian philosophers. He managed to reenthroned Aristoteles thinking emphasizing on individual things set the stage for the humanistic worldview. The positive side of Aquino's was that had a day-to-day relationship with the world. People had more prominence than before. This was reflected in the Arts. After 500 years of flat art and without depth, thanks to the Italian painter Giotto, there was a radical change that put nature where God always had the intention. This positive trend towards art was also emphasized in writing, specifically Dante, who wrote the Divine Comedy. One of the fathers of the new humanism was Petrarch. His translation of Homer was one of the foundation's stones of the renaissance, reviving Greek literature after 700 hundreds years of neglect. From him came the line of the humanist that evolved toward the modern humanism, a value system rooted in the belief that man is his own measure, not only autonomous but totally independent. This humanism venerated everything ancient. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) anticipated that humanism would end in pessimism."He understood that man beginning from himself would never be able to come to meaning on the basis of mathematics or painting."
It's amazing how our minds can think so wrong if we don't have a proper grid to guide our thoughts. How could somebody think that when we are get corrupted our minds don't necessarily do?
The Reformation
While men of the Renaissance wrestled with the problem of what could give unity to life specifically what universal could give meaning to life and to morals, another great movement, the Reformation, was emerging side by side in the north of Europe. John Wycliffe (1320 - 1384) emphasized the Bible as the supreme authority. He and his followers produced an English translation which had wide importance throughout Europe. John Huss (1369-1415) returned the teachings of the Bible to the early church and stressed that the Bible is the only source of final authority and that the salvation comes only through Christ and his work. Further, he developed Wycliffe's views on the priesthood of the believer. Huss was promised safe conduct to speak at the Council of Constance but was betrayed and burned at the stake on July 6, 1415.
Wycliffe'sand Huss's views were the foundations of the Reformation which came later while la Renaissance was giving its humanistic answers in the south.
Martin Luther King (1483 - 1546) translated the Bible into German and the translations were available for the people in the languages they could understand. The reformation in contrast to Aquinas had more a Biblical concept of the fall. People could not begin only from themselves, and on the basis of human reason alone think out the answers to the great questions which confront mankind. Gradually they came to see that the church founded by Christ had since been marred by distortions. In contrast to the Renaissance humanist, they refused to accept the autonomy of human reason. Rather they took seriously the Bible own claim for itself, that is the final authority. They took seriously that man needs the answers given by God in the Bible to have adequate answers in distinguishing between right and wrong.
I love that the thinkers of the Reformation did not divide authority between the Bible and the church. The church was under the teaching of the Bible, not above it, and not equal to it. It was Sola Scriptura, the Scriptures only.
The Reformation Continued
The Reformation did not bring social or political perfection, but it brought a positive influence in society that went beyond the church to the culture, including the arts and politics thanks to the Biblical teaching that brought a tremendous freedom without chaos. In the Anglo-Saxon world, England showed clearly the results of the Reformation, as did Holland and in varying degrees the other Reformation countries. The constitutionalist ideas of Martin Bucer (1491-1551) who was a leader of the Reformation in Strasbourg and important throughout all the Reformation countries or a John Calvin produced results because they did not lose contact with daily life. The Book Lex Rex: Law is King by Scot, by Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) expressed a concept of freedom without chaos because the Bible as the final authority was there as a base. He made a proposal of a government of law rather than of an arbitrary decision of men. Rutherford's work had a great influence on the United States Constitution. His influence was mediated through two sources: John Witherspoon (1723-1794) and John Locke (1632-1704)
There were many areas where the Bible was not followed as it should be. First, a twisted view of race, and second, a noncompassionate use of accumulated wealth. In the area of race, there were two types of abuse. The first was slavery based on race, the second, racial prejudice as such. Both practices were wrong, and often both present when Christians had a stronger influence on the consensus that they now have. The church did not speak out sufficiently against them. William Wilberforce - 1759-1833 fought against slavery in England and didn't see the fruit of his labor until he was on his deathbed in 1833 when a bill was passed in England abolishing slavery.
What I like about a supernatural God is that the lovers of his book, the Bible, are not romantic about the man, as the Reformers of the time. I believe because of the humanistic stream, there had to be a strong emphasis on the Fall. And an external mark of the children of God is that we want accountability. For us and for others.
The Enlightenment
The utopian dream of the Enlightenment can be summed up by five words: reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty. It was thoroughly secular in its thinking. The humanistic elements which had risen during the Rennaissance came to flood tide in the Enlightenment. The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) often called the father of enlightenment was greatly influenced by the results of the revolution in England. When the French revolution tried to reproduce the English conditions without the Reformation base, but rather on Voltaire's humanist Enlightenment base the result was a bloodbath that ended with the rule of Napoleon. If these men had a religion, it was deism. The deists believed in a God who had created the world but who had no contact with it now, and who had not revealed truth to men. Like the humanist of the Renaissance, the men of the Enlightenment pushed aside the Christian base and heritage and looked back to the old pre-Christian times. The American Revolution parallels that of the bloodless English, while the French Revolution parallels that of the later Russian Revolution (with Napoleon and Lenin parallel to one another). For communists, socialism is a step toward the ideal of utopian communism. However, this utopian ideal always leads to repression.
What calls my attention is that in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), marriage was considered a part of capitalism, expressed like “private prostitution” and family was minimized. They use “arbitrary absolute” laws without any base of right or wrong, but that will change through history depending situations.
The Rise of Modern Science
There was a third phenomenon simultaneously to the High Renaissance and the Reformation, that was the Scientific Revolution. The foundation for modern science can be said to have been laid at Oxford when Scholars attacked Thomas Aquinas teaching by proving that his chief authority, made certain mistakes about natural phenomena. Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) laid the philosophical foundations for a departure from Aristotelian science. Later the Roman Church attacked Copernicus and Galileo (1564-1642) because the Aristotelian elements had become part of church orthodoxy and Galileos notions clearly conflicted with them. Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was one of the factors which brought about his trial. The rise of modern science rested upon the Bible teaches. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) stressed that modern science was born out of Christian worldview. Francis Bacon, did not see science as autonomous. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) like other early scientist had no problem with the "why" of all things because he began with the existence of a personal God who created the universe. That's how he came to the conclusion that there is a universal force of attraction between everybody in the universe and that it must be calculable. That's what he called the "Force of Gravity". The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) assumes that everywhere in the universe light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum. He would say, there is nothing less relative philosophically than the theory of relativity for those that are trying to make of "relativity" a worldview.
What stood me out and I love is that the early scientist believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason. And because they had this foundation, they could move with confidence, expecting to be able to find out about the world by observation and experimentation. This was their epistemological base, the philosophical foundation which they were sure they could know. They new there was a correlation between themselves as observers and the thing observed, between subject and object.
The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science
Even though modern science rested in a Christian base because the early modern scientist believed in the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in an open system. God and man were outside the cause and effect machine of the cosmos, and therefore they both could influence the machine. To them, all that exists is not one big cosmic machine which includes everything. The shift from modern science to the actual modern science is that the concept of uniformity of natural causes in an open system to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes to a closed system. In the latter view, nothing is outside a total cosmic machine: everything which exists is part of it. In the 17th and 18th Century scientist pushed more and more the word God to the edges of their systems and moved to the idea of a completely closed system, finally not leaving space for God. In the humanism of the High Renaissance, flowing to the maturity through the Enlightenment, not only man was determined autonomous but devoured. Man as a man is dead, life is pointless, devoid of meaning. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) set forth the concept that all biological life came from a simpler form by a process called "the survival of the fittest". Even though Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, and reductionism still have problems explaining how the process they postulate actually work, the concepts still rule most of the scientific realms. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) known as the father of the modern philosophy thought that by human thought alone one could doubt all notions based on authority and could begin from himself with total sufficiency: "I think, therefore I am". Second, he believed mathematical analysis with careful deductions would provide a factor which would give a unity to all knowledge. The shift of optimism to pessimism came later with Jean Jacques Rousseaux, Immanuel Kant, George Wilhelm Hegel, and Soren Kierkegaard.
It’s so good the definition of the modern man, that is a man of dichotomy. There is a total separation between the area of meaning and values, and the area of reason. I see this everywhere. This thinking has deep roots and is not conscious, adding values to unmeaning things, and resting value to core issues, its non-reasonable.
Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology
Sartre held that in the areas of the reason everything is absurd, but nonetheless, a person can authenticate himself by an act of the will. It can act in any direction for good o for bad because reason was not involved. Camus (1913-1960) wasn't consistent as Sartre and was more human in his thinking, more liked by the young French that liked existentialism. Heidegger (1889-1976) was of the idea that answers were separated from reason. Jaspers (1883-1969) believed that even though life is absurd, we can have a final experience (without reasoning) that would give us meaning. Huxley (1894-1963) proposed that drugs were the solution to find the truth inside their own heads. He was of the idea to provoke that final experience that Jaspers mentioned.
The next accepted version in the West of life in the area of non-reason was the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both are non-rational trying to find meaning in life apart from rationality. Modern man lives in a dichotomy, where reason leads to despair. Downstairs in the area of humanistic reason, mans is a machine, man is meaningless. There are no values. And upstairs optimism about meaning and values is totally separated from reason. Reason has no place here at all. This division into these two areas is the existential methodology. This is the hallmark of the modern stream of humanistic thinking. Once people adopt this dichotomy, they must face the fact that many types of things can be put in the area of non-reason. And it's not relevant what we choose or not to put there, because reason doesn't give us a basis for choosing between one and another.
Kierkegaardianism brought forth another form of existentialism: the theological existentialism which began with Karl Barth (1886-1968) with his 1st commentary on the New Testament book entitled The Epistle to the Romans. With him, the existential methodology and the dichotomy were accepted in theology. Theology had not been added to all the other things which had been put into the area of non-reason. The neo-orthodox arose which says that the Bible in the area of reason has mistakes but nonetheless can provide a religious experience in the area of non-reason. They do not see the Bible giving truth, but contentful propositions that are open to verifications. Bible doesn't give absolute moral values and instead of having faith in something, they have faith in faith. This finally brings them to a place where the word God merely becomes God, and no certain content can be put into it, but one can use the word for countless religious experiences within which reason has no place. Friederich Nietzsche is the first philosopher that declares that God is dead.
It makes me mad that these philosophers influenced the mindset of the church of today. And this explains the relativity and nonreasoning of the new theologians can't explain where evil comes from. They don't accept that God has given truth to the man.
Modern Art, Music, Literature and Films
Modern pessimism and modern fragmentation, have spread in three different ways to people across the world. Geographically, from the European mainland to England, and then from the Atlantic to the United States.
Culturally, it spread in the various disciplines from philosophy to art, to music, to general culture(novel, poetry, drama, films), and to theology.
Socially, it spread from the intellectual to educated and then through the mass media to everyone.
In the cultural sphere, this pessimism made art sterile in its meaning. The impressionist painted what they saw, but tended to think that the reality was a dream. The post-impressionist tried to find the way back home to reality to the absolute behind the individual things, but Art became the vehicle for the modern man's view of the fragmentation of truth and life. The fragmentation was parallel to the loss of hope for a unity of knowledge in philosophy. Art is a window to human society. Is the most spiritual action with our souls. Is a reflection of our deepest ideas that take shape to express themselves. All creation in arts is a thermometer of the meaning of life itself.
Our Society
Modern Governments have forms of manipulation at their disposal which the world has never known before:
Determinists, who say that man has no freedom in his choices: For example, we can think of Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939) psychological determinism, focused on a child's relationship with its mother during early development taught that this sets patterns of the child's phycological makeup; B.F.Skinner's (1904-1990) sociological determinism through behaviorism, people are can be explained by the way their environment has conditioned them, society should use positive stimuli to bring about the society it wants; and Francis Crick's (1916-2004) chemical, that is, genetic determinism, received the 1962 Nobel Prize for breaking the DNA code, he is reductionist, one who reduce man to an electrochemical machine. He also believed that our future is in our hands, that we can do whatever we want. Modern people want to be free to shape their own destiny. They don't want real boundary condition for what they do. Moral "oughts' are only what is sociologically accepted at the moment. Man no longer see himself as qualitatively different from non-man. The Christian consensus gave the basis for people being unique, as made in the image of God.
Manipulation of the media: through television and media.
All that is needed is that the worldview of the elite and the worldview of the central media coincide. One can argue that sometimes there is a planned colusion, but only looking for the possibility of a clandestine plot opens the way to not see a much greater danger: that many of those in the most prominent places of influence and many of those who decide. Just as we now have sociological science, and law, we also now have sociological news. News can be colored by what is said, or not said, or how something is said (emphasized) or not.
What is important to have in mind is that today the ability to generate news rests upon a kind of syndrome or psychology or mindset, not only in the journalistic fraternity but also in influential circles compromised of congressmen, other governments officials, and professors. The influence is not necessarily based on circulation, but rather on its reputation with the right people. Before hitting the world with a big story, there is a communicational strategy to prepare the audiences.
The Alternatives
The pressures of not having absolutes in a person whose values are personal peace and prosperity are several: Economic breakdown, Modern inability to find a solution to the problem of inflation without causing economic recession opens the door wide for the economic breakdown. War or serious threat of war: between the expansionist, imperialistic, communistic countries and the West. The chaos of violence: random or political violence and indiscriminate terrorism, in an individual nation or in the world.The radical redistribution of the wealth of the world. A growing shortage of food another natural resources in the world.
Countries that have never had a Christian Reformation base will be the first to bow to authoritarianism. Already a growing number in Asia and Africa have taken this path. Western government men failed to understand that freedom without chaos is not a magic formula that can be implemented anywhere.
The artists of the Middle Ages forgot the use of perspective which they used it in their paintings and mosaics. The Roman painting had been full of life, as the early Christian art too. Leaders like Ambrose of Milan (339-397) and Augustine (354-430) was characterized by emphasizing in a true and strong biblical Christianity. Later there was an increasing distortion away of the biblical teaching, and there also came a change in art. It became less real and more symbolic as Christianity moved away from its biblical background.
Since 395 A.C. the Roman Empire had been divided into eastern and western portions. The Byzantine style developed in the east and gradually spread to the west. This art was beautiful, but only religious topics were given importance and people represented as symbols, not real. The portrayal of nature and humans were removed. Light and color were the emphases in the interior of the new churches. Thanks to the Benedictine monks the Bible was preserved, along with the Greek and Latin sections. The old hymns and the antiphonal psalmody that came from Ambrose too. A humanistic element was added to the teaching of the Bible. There was an emphasis on salvation as a resting on man's meriting the merit of Christ instead of Christ's work alone. Under Charlemagne, the church became a more general cultural force. He gained control over much of the western European territory formerly in the Roman Empire. Church power became coextensive with state power, and culturally they fed one another. With the scholarly revival of Carolingian Age (735), there also came an artistic revival. Pope Gregory I (590 – 604) brought the music of the western church into a systematic whole. The artistic achievements of the Middle Age were characterized by an awakened cultural, and intellectual life and awakened piety. The architecture had an explosion in creativity and in its most inner expression.
What stood out to me is that at the moment that a humanist element enters to the Gospel, everything starts to distortion and its inmediateley reflected in the Arts. Less real, nature, that is Gods expression, removed. It's incredible how evil attacks the core things that God most loves.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance opened the way for people to think of themselves as autonomous and the center of all things. The authority of the Church took precedence over the teaching of the Bible. The fallen man was considered able to return to God by meriting the merit of Christ. There was a change in thinking about man, putting him in the center of all things instead of God. Tomas de Aquino was the outstanding theological of the time that had the most influence in the church. He had an incomplete view of the fall. He thought that this did not affect man as a whole, but only in part. In his opinion, the will was corrupted but the intellect not. He believed that man could rely on his own human wisdom and understanding. And that it was OK to mix the teaching of the Bible with non-Christian philosophers. He managed to reenthroned Aristoteles thinking emphasizing on individual things set the stage for the humanistic worldview. The positive side of Aquino's was that had a day-to-day relationship with the world. People had more prominence than before. This was reflected in the Arts. After 500 years of flat art and without depth, thanks to the Italian painter Giotto, there was a radical change that put nature where God always had the intention. This positive trend towards art was also emphasized in writing, specifically Dante, who wrote the Divine Comedy. One of the fathers of the new humanism was Petrarch. His translation of Homer was one of the foundation's stones of the renaissance, reviving Greek literature after 700 hundreds years of neglect. From him came the line of the humanist that evolved toward the modern humanism, a value system rooted in the belief that man is his own measure, not only autonomous but totally independent. This humanism venerated everything ancient. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) anticipated that humanism would end in pessimism."He understood that man beginning from himself would never be able to come to meaning on the basis of mathematics or painting."
It's amazing how our minds can think so wrong if we don't have a proper grid to guide our thoughts. How could somebody think that when we are get corrupted our minds don't necessarily do?
The Reformation
Wycliffe'sand Huss's views were the foundations of the Reformation which came later while la Renaissance was giving its humanistic answers in the south.
Martin Luther King (1483 - 1546) translated the Bible into German and the translations were available for the people in the languages they could understand. The reformation in contrast to Aquinas had more a Biblical concept of the fall. People could not begin only from themselves, and on the basis of human reason alone think out the answers to the great questions which confront mankind. Gradually they came to see that the church founded by Christ had since been marred by distortions. In contrast to the Renaissance humanist, they refused to accept the autonomy of human reason. Rather they took seriously the Bible own claim for itself, that is the final authority. They took seriously that man needs the answers given by God in the Bible to have adequate answers in distinguishing between right and wrong.
I love that the thinkers of the Reformation did not divide authority between the Bible and the church. The church was under the teaching of the Bible, not above it, and not equal to it. It was Sola Scriptura, the Scriptures only.
The Reformation Continued
The Reformation did not bring social or political perfection, but it brought a positive influence in society that went beyond the church to the culture, including the arts and politics thanks to the Biblical teaching that brought a tremendous freedom without chaos. In the Anglo-Saxon world, England showed clearly the results of the Reformation, as did Holland and in varying degrees the other Reformation countries. The constitutionalist ideas of Martin Bucer (1491-1551) who was a leader of the Reformation in Strasbourg and important throughout all the Reformation countries or a John Calvin produced results because they did not lose contact with daily life. The Book Lex Rex: Law is King by Scot, by Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) expressed a concept of freedom without chaos because the Bible as the final authority was there as a base. He made a proposal of a government of law rather than of an arbitrary decision of men. Rutherford's work had a great influence on the United States Constitution. His influence was mediated through two sources: John Witherspoon (1723-1794) and John Locke (1632-1704)
There were many areas where the Bible was not followed as it should be. First, a twisted view of race, and second, a noncompassionate use of accumulated wealth. In the area of race, there were two types of abuse. The first was slavery based on race, the second, racial prejudice as such. Both practices were wrong, and often both present when Christians had a stronger influence on the consensus that they now have. The church did not speak out sufficiently against them. William Wilberforce - 1759-1833 fought against slavery in England and didn't see the fruit of his labor until he was on his deathbed in 1833 when a bill was passed in England abolishing slavery.
What I like about a supernatural God is that the lovers of his book, the Bible, are not romantic about the man, as the Reformers of the time. I believe because of the humanistic stream, there had to be a strong emphasis on the Fall. And an external mark of the children of God is that we want accountability. For us and for others.
The Enlightenment
The utopian dream of the Enlightenment can be summed up by five words: reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty. It was thoroughly secular in its thinking. The humanistic elements which had risen during the Rennaissance came to flood tide in the Enlightenment. The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) often called the father of enlightenment was greatly influenced by the results of the revolution in England. When the French revolution tried to reproduce the English conditions without the Reformation base, but rather on Voltaire's humanist Enlightenment base the result was a bloodbath that ended with the rule of Napoleon. If these men had a religion, it was deism. The deists believed in a God who had created the world but who had no contact with it now, and who had not revealed truth to men. Like the humanist of the Renaissance, the men of the Enlightenment pushed aside the Christian base and heritage and looked back to the old pre-Christian times. The American Revolution parallels that of the bloodless English, while the French Revolution parallels that of the later Russian Revolution (with Napoleon and Lenin parallel to one another). For communists, socialism is a step toward the ideal of utopian communism. However, this utopian ideal always leads to repression.
What calls my attention is that in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), marriage was considered a part of capitalism, expressed like “private prostitution” and family was minimized. They use “arbitrary absolute” laws without any base of right or wrong, but that will change through history depending situations.
The Rise of Modern Science
There was a third phenomenon simultaneously to the High Renaissance and the Reformation, that was the Scientific Revolution. The foundation for modern science can be said to have been laid at Oxford when Scholars attacked Thomas Aquinas teaching by proving that his chief authority, made certain mistakes about natural phenomena. Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) laid the philosophical foundations for a departure from Aristotelian science. Later the Roman Church attacked Copernicus and Galileo (1564-1642) because the Aristotelian elements had become part of church orthodoxy and Galileos notions clearly conflicted with them. Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was one of the factors which brought about his trial. The rise of modern science rested upon the Bible teaches. Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) stressed that modern science was born out of Christian worldview. Francis Bacon, did not see science as autonomous. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) like other early scientist had no problem with the "why" of all things because he began with the existence of a personal God who created the universe. That's how he came to the conclusion that there is a universal force of attraction between everybody in the universe and that it must be calculable. That's what he called the "Force of Gravity". The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) assumes that everywhere in the universe light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum. He would say, there is nothing less relative philosophically than the theory of relativity for those that are trying to make of "relativity" a worldview.
What stood me out and I love is that the early scientist believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason. And because they had this foundation, they could move with confidence, expecting to be able to find out about the world by observation and experimentation. This was their epistemological base, the philosophical foundation which they were sure they could know. They new there was a correlation between themselves as observers and the thing observed, between subject and object.
The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science
Even though modern science rested in a Christian base because the early modern scientist believed in the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in an open system. God and man were outside the cause and effect machine of the cosmos, and therefore they both could influence the machine. To them, all that exists is not one big cosmic machine which includes everything. The shift from modern science to the actual modern science is that the concept of uniformity of natural causes in an open system to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes to a closed system. In the latter view, nothing is outside a total cosmic machine: everything which exists is part of it. In the 17th and 18th Century scientist pushed more and more the word God to the edges of their systems and moved to the idea of a completely closed system, finally not leaving space for God. In the humanism of the High Renaissance, flowing to the maturity through the Enlightenment, not only man was determined autonomous but devoured. Man as a man is dead, life is pointless, devoid of meaning. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) set forth the concept that all biological life came from a simpler form by a process called "the survival of the fittest". Even though Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, and reductionism still have problems explaining how the process they postulate actually work, the concepts still rule most of the scientific realms. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) known as the father of the modern philosophy thought that by human thought alone one could doubt all notions based on authority and could begin from himself with total sufficiency: "I think, therefore I am". Second, he believed mathematical analysis with careful deductions would provide a factor which would give a unity to all knowledge. The shift of optimism to pessimism came later with Jean Jacques Rousseaux, Immanuel Kant, George Wilhelm Hegel, and Soren Kierkegaard.
It’s so good the definition of the modern man, that is a man of dichotomy. There is a total separation between the area of meaning and values, and the area of reason. I see this everywhere. This thinking has deep roots and is not conscious, adding values to unmeaning things, and resting value to core issues, its non-reasonable.
Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology
Sartre held that in the areas of the reason everything is absurd, but nonetheless, a person can authenticate himself by an act of the will. It can act in any direction for good o for bad because reason was not involved. Camus (1913-1960) wasn't consistent as Sartre and was more human in his thinking, more liked by the young French that liked existentialism. Heidegger (1889-1976) was of the idea that answers were separated from reason. Jaspers (1883-1969) believed that even though life is absurd, we can have a final experience (without reasoning) that would give us meaning. Huxley (1894-1963) proposed that drugs were the solution to find the truth inside their own heads. He was of the idea to provoke that final experience that Jaspers mentioned.
The next accepted version in the West of life in the area of non-reason was the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both are non-rational trying to find meaning in life apart from rationality. Modern man lives in a dichotomy, where reason leads to despair. Downstairs in the area of humanistic reason, mans is a machine, man is meaningless. There are no values. And upstairs optimism about meaning and values is totally separated from reason. Reason has no place here at all. This division into these two areas is the existential methodology. This is the hallmark of the modern stream of humanistic thinking. Once people adopt this dichotomy, they must face the fact that many types of things can be put in the area of non-reason. And it's not relevant what we choose or not to put there, because reason doesn't give us a basis for choosing between one and another.
Kierkegaardianism brought forth another form of existentialism: the theological existentialism which began with Karl Barth (1886-1968) with his 1st commentary on the New Testament book entitled The Epistle to the Romans. With him, the existential methodology and the dichotomy were accepted in theology. Theology had not been added to all the other things which had been put into the area of non-reason. The neo-orthodox arose which says that the Bible in the area of reason has mistakes but nonetheless can provide a religious experience in the area of non-reason. They do not see the Bible giving truth, but contentful propositions that are open to verifications. Bible doesn't give absolute moral values and instead of having faith in something, they have faith in faith. This finally brings them to a place where the word God merely becomes God, and no certain content can be put into it, but one can use the word for countless religious experiences within which reason has no place. Friederich Nietzsche is the first philosopher that declares that God is dead.
It makes me mad that these philosophers influenced the mindset of the church of today. And this explains the relativity and nonreasoning of the new theologians can't explain where evil comes from. They don't accept that God has given truth to the man.
Modern Art, Music, Literature and Films
Modern pessimism and modern fragmentation, have spread in three different ways to people across the world. Geographically, from the European mainland to England, and then from the Atlantic to the United States.
Culturally, it spread in the various disciplines from philosophy to art, to music, to general culture(novel, poetry, drama, films), and to theology.
Socially, it spread from the intellectual to educated and then through the mass media to everyone.
In the cultural sphere, this pessimism made art sterile in its meaning. The impressionist painted what they saw, but tended to think that the reality was a dream. The post-impressionist tried to find the way back home to reality to the absolute behind the individual things, but Art became the vehicle for the modern man's view of the fragmentation of truth and life. The fragmentation was parallel to the loss of hope for a unity of knowledge in philosophy. Art is a window to human society. Is the most spiritual action with our souls. Is a reflection of our deepest ideas that take shape to express themselves. All creation in arts is a thermometer of the meaning of life itself.
Our Society
As a consequence of this liberal theology influencing all the spheres of society, people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence. Personal Peace, that meant to be left alone, not to be troubled by other people. To live one's life with the minimal possibility of being disturbed. And affluence meant an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity, a life made up of material possessions and convenience. In the early sixties, life was meaningless. The concept of knowledge was fragmented. There wasn't a reason that gave purpose to existence. The mass media popularized the reason leads to pessimism. Aldous Huxley's ideas of drugs were introduced to give meaning to people. Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg were making drugs an ideology. Leary called drugs the sacraments of a new religion. The ideology of Marxism & Leninism took over in Europe, South America and in some other places. Not so much in the USA. In spite of the clear evidence of oppression, the young followed Marxism. This ideology is another leap into the area of non-reasoning; idealistic as a drug. Materialism, the philosophic base for Marxism-Leninism, gives no basis for dignity or rights of man. But it attracts by its constant talk of idealism, but as we know, with a materialistic base this ideology is far from giving dignity to man. Not having a Christian base, until it comes to power it uses the words for which Christianity does give base. There are two streams of Marxism-Leninism, 1. Idealistic form: These hold to their philosophy against all reason and close their eyes to the oppression of the system. 2. Old-line form
These hold to old-time communist orthodoxy such as that which was held in the old Soviet Union.
What called my attention is when Andre Malraux said in 1975 that there can't be communism with a human face because of no base for the dignity of the individual. Only "arbitrary expediency" gives whatever dignity is given, and can twist and turn at will. Countries which have a different base, for example, a Christian one (or a least with a Christian Foundation) may indeed act most inconsistently and horribly. But when a state with a materialistic base acts arbitrarily and gives no dignity to man, internally or externally, it is being consistent with its basic presuppositions and principles. So well said!
Manipulation and the New EliteThese hold to old-time communist orthodoxy such as that which was held in the old Soviet Union.
What called my attention is when Andre Malraux said in 1975 that there can't be communism with a human face because of no base for the dignity of the individual. Only "arbitrary expediency" gives whatever dignity is given, and can twist and turn at will. Countries which have a different base, for example, a Christian one (or a least with a Christian Foundation) may indeed act most inconsistently and horribly. But when a state with a materialistic base acts arbitrarily and gives no dignity to man, internally or externally, it is being consistent with its basic presuppositions and principles. So well said!
Modern Governments have forms of manipulation at their disposal which the world has never known before:
Determinists, who say that man has no freedom in his choices: For example, we can think of Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939) psychological determinism, focused on a child's relationship with its mother during early development taught that this sets patterns of the child's phycological makeup; B.F.Skinner's (1904-1990) sociological determinism through behaviorism, people are can be explained by the way their environment has conditioned them, society should use positive stimuli to bring about the society it wants; and Francis Crick's (1916-2004) chemical, that is, genetic determinism, received the 1962 Nobel Prize for breaking the DNA code, he is reductionist, one who reduce man to an electrochemical machine. He also believed that our future is in our hands, that we can do whatever we want. Modern people want to be free to shape their own destiny. They don't want real boundary condition for what they do. Moral "oughts' are only what is sociologically accepted at the moment. Man no longer see himself as qualitatively different from non-man. The Christian consensus gave the basis for people being unique, as made in the image of God.
Manipulation of the media: through television and media.
All that is needed is that the worldview of the elite and the worldview of the central media coincide. One can argue that sometimes there is a planned colusion, but only looking for the possibility of a clandestine plot opens the way to not see a much greater danger: that many of those in the most prominent places of influence and many of those who decide. Just as we now have sociological science, and law, we also now have sociological news. News can be colored by what is said, or not said, or how something is said (emphasized) or not.
What is important to have in mind is that today the ability to generate news rests upon a kind of syndrome or psychology or mindset, not only in the journalistic fraternity but also in influential circles compromised of congressmen, other governments officials, and professors. The influence is not necessarily based on circulation, but rather on its reputation with the right people. Before hitting the world with a big story, there is a communicational strategy to prepare the audiences.
The Alternatives
The pressures of not having absolutes in a person whose values are personal peace and prosperity are several: Economic breakdown, Modern inability to find a solution to the problem of inflation without causing economic recession opens the door wide for the economic breakdown. War or serious threat of war: between the expansionist, imperialistic, communistic countries and the West. The chaos of violence: random or political violence and indiscriminate terrorism, in an individual nation or in the world.The radical redistribution of the wealth of the world. A growing shortage of food another natural resources in the world.
Countries that have never had a Christian Reformation base will be the first to bow to authoritarianism. Already a growing number in Asia and Africa have taken this path. Western government men failed to understand that freedom without chaos is not a magic formula that can be implemented anywhere.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario