The Secularization of Christianity Part VI - Signs and the Supernatural

As I pick up with the discussion from Mascall's book, the focus of the chapter at hand takes another turn as it begins to discuss the importance of religious symbolism and how it relates to the overall topic.  The classic definition of a symbol is that it is something that points to something else beyond itself, and we see symbolism everyday.  As a part of our faith pilgrimage, symbolism also plays a huge role as well, and often a natural symbol points to a supernatural reality, such as the Eucharist for one example.  Those who attempt to secularize Christianity often also tend to radically reinterpret symbolism to strip it of its supernatural dimension, as for the secularist the supernatural is irrational and therefore irrelevant.  This is what Mascall is addressing in this section of the chapter.

To preface the discussion, Mascall points to a book by Dr. Peter Munz (1921-2006) entitled Problems of Religious Knowledge, a book Munz authored in the year 1959.  To give a little background on who Peter Munz was, he was a historian who was native to Italy but immigrated to New Zealand in 1939, and then earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1948.  He taught history at the Victoria University of Wellington up until the late 1980's, and he is noted for some rather odd views on some things.  He created some controversy in 2004 when he proposed that incestual sex between two consenting adults was perfectly acceptable, and that laws should be changed to reflect that acceptance.  His views on this so shocked the New Zealand lawmakers that they closed discussion on it (Patrick Goodenough, "'Legalize Incest' Suggestion Shocks Lawmakers," published May 21, 2004 at https://web.archive.org/web/20041013155609/http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200405/CUL20040521a.html - Accessed 2/28/2018).  Although Munz's controversial remarks about incest were almost 40 years after Mascall's book was published, it illustrates the type of mindset that secularization represents - in this regard, Munz is no different than controversial moral philosopher Dr. Peter Singer (also Australian) who advocated for infanticide and incest, bestiality, and other taboo practices as well.   It is of interest though that Munz, a historian, is pontificating on religious symbolism - I mean, the man is not a theologian, nor is he even a philosopher, yet he feels the need to "wax theological."  Secularization, however, is like that - it tends to make outrageous statements in areas where it has no jurisdiction, and Munz is definitely faithful to that tendency.  So, what exactly did Munz say to merit a discussion of him in Mascall's text?  Let's get to that next.

In the book Problems of Religious Knowledge, Munz proposes that any "religious picture" is not scientific, and is merely emotional symbolism which has a therapeutic effect on its proponents.  To Munz, the symbol depicts nothing supernatural, but rather simply means a feeling-state.  Therefore, to him, its function is not to give knowledge of supernatural realities (which he, as a good secularist, sees as irrational anyway - yet, oddly, incestuous sex is "rational" to this man - odd!) but is merely a therapeutic device to bring about tranquility to its proponents.  It immediately takes on a humanistic dimension then in that it points to anagogy not being abuot the existence of God, but rather the "blessedness" of man.  Therefore, to put it simply, Munz sees religion (and particularly religious symbolism) as a sort of false hope that brings comfort to those who believe in it - it is both patronizing and condescending at the same time.  Mascall though challenges Munz's position with a question on page 21 - does Dr. Munz give an adequate account of the nature of theological discourse?  Mascall correctly concludes that he doesn't even come close.  Munz, in his account, robs the symbol of epistomological function, and essentially Munz robs the religious symbol of its didactic task by reducing it to a merely therapeutic coping mechanism.  This therefore would diminish theology, as for Munz and others like him it reduces theology to a discussion of symbols rather than about God (whom Munz probably denies anyway, as he is more than likely atheistic).  It is an important reason why a historian needs to stick to history, his own discipline, rather than trying to be an "expert" in theology and other disciplines.  The weakness of academic elites however (also shared by many politicians and celebrities) is that they feel their own position endows some sort of non-existent authority on everything to them, but in reality it does not.  At times, it just makes them look like the fools they are.  And, glaring inconsistencies later reveal themselves too - in Munz's case, the denial of God logically opens up the door to the acceptance of consensual incestuous relationships, because with God out of the way and religion reduced to feel-good symbolism, there is no moral law to take seriously so everything is open-season.  All I can say is that earlier people such as Marsilus of Padua, William of Ockham, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Rene Descartes, in their separation of faith from reason, and their secularization of Scripture and religion (making it subject to arbitrary "experts" for interpretation rather than accepting the authority of the Church, whom Christ endowed with that responsibility) led the way for secularization, and secularization in turn led to a decay of values, norms, and boundaries that radically redefined certain behaviors.  As Mascall notes also with the writers he referenced (Robinson, Bultmann, Tillich, Munz, etc.), they all use different methods to convey the same message - the abolition or diminishing of the supernatural element which has characterized Christianity throughout the ages.  He then notes how this diminishing of the supernatural has led to secularization.

Beginning on page 22, Mascall notes that the elimination of the supernatural from Christianity is reliant upon three main types of argument, either separately or in combination with each other.  These include the following:

1.  The Philosophical Type - is based upon existentialism or linguistic empiricism (goes back to philosophers such as Kant, Heidegger, and Nietzsche).

2.  The argument that the discoveries of science have disproved the existence of any supernatural realities or at any rate the possibility of any intervention by them in the natural world.   This argument has its basis in similar lines of thought advanced by Descartes and Spinoza, among others, and also is a basis for the ideas of rationalism and nominalism, where faith is divorced from reason and the latter takes precedence over the former.

3.  The third is a religious/secular argument which proceeds from New Testament study and alleges that the supernatural element in the Gospels can be proved to have no historical foundation but is due to mythopoetic activity of the primitive Church - this is the position Munz takes.

On page 23, Mascall begins to devote the discussion to the contrast between unchanging revealed truth (datum) of the Christian Gospel versus the essentially relativistic, incomplete, and changing intellectual frameworks, conceptual systems, and verbal formulas in which it finds expression throughout the history of the Church.  He then states two extreme positions that he will soundly reject later on, and those are as follows:

1.  The first sees some particular verbal formula or body of verbal formulas as expressing the Gospel exhaustively, as reflected in Protestant Fundamentalism.

2.  The second, on page 24, is the assumption that divine truth is so completely indifferent to the empirical events of the Church's history that its formulation in one particular context is altogether independent of its formulation in any other, thus making it of interest only to historians.

The problem with the first, as Mascall notes on page 23, is that it is assumed that these formulae are exhaustive and precise statements of dogmatic truth, applicable to all times and places.   It is here that I must differ somewhat with Mascall.  The Catholic Church has always held that the teaching office of the Church, the Magisterium, is indeed unchanging and that certain truths are inalterable and do apply to all ages and generations.  I really don't think Mascall overall would dispute that, but his wording in this paragraph of the text is somewhat incomplete and weak in that it presupposes to the less-informed reader that any formulae is debatable and can be "tweeked" at whim to conform with contemporary culture.  The Church has the Magisterium in place to prevent that from happening.  That being said, on the other hand, there are some less-dogmatic praxis areas that can be altered and made relevent to the contemporary age, but there is a fine line there as well - what is acceptable, in other words, may not always be right, and the assumption that goodness and rightness are the same is the flaw of the proportionalist mindset - it is based on the intent/notion argument, and that in itself is flawed in that it denies universals much in the same way as the nominalism of Marsilus of Padua did. Therefore, Mascall's differing with this position is in need of some clarification.

The second is a bit more in line with my own thought.  What Mascall notes about this on page 24 is that divine direction plays no part in the scheme of those who hold this position, and therefore it was merely random chance that the 1st-century Roman Empire and its intellectual climate fostered the growth and development of the Christian Church.  This means then for those holding this view that the Gospel is to be accomodated to the thought-forms and verbal conventions of the local and contemporary environment, as it was supposedly for the Romans of the first century.  The logic behind this is understandable, but also weak, as Mascall points out.  On some minor issues, the transmission of the faith can be appropriated in a local context, but again care should be exercised in doing so.  For instance, a major Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Dom Bede Griffiths, practically turned himself into a Christian yogi in India and in many aspects became more Hindu than Christian in his theology and practices - that made him suspect in regard to historic Church teaching.  Also, the embrace of many liberal mainline Protestants in the US and Europe of such things as "same-sex marriage" and transgender identity is a mistake in this regard as well, and as these behaviors are contrary to the overall message of the Gospel and the historical position of the Church, they cannot be appropriated.  Therefore, Mascall is correct in refuting such notions, and this leads to the next part of the discussion.

Mascall notes, continuing on page 24, that although much is diametrically opposed in the two positions, they also have some things in common.  To begin, for the Christian theologian, the relevance of systematic and sympathetic study of Christian thought (conformity and contextualization within a given environment) doesn't exist.  The Gospel and the Christian message is in a lot of ways countercultural - in its liberating message of Christ's redemption, it calls for sacrifice and a giving up of those things which hinder the walk of faith, and the concupiscence of human nature ensures that the cultural context is littered with such distractions.  This makes the Church, as Mascall notes on page 25, necessarily a nuisance and irrelevance to the surrounding culture as a historic entity in time and space.  If I may diverge slightly from Mascall's text, the fact of the matter is that the Gospel transcends time, and it instead speaks to the heart of the human condition, which struggles with the same temptations and concupiscent nature in the 21st century that it did in the 1st - as much as some things change, many stay the same.  Human nature has fundamentally not changed either - although clothed somewhat differently, the same temptations and sins mankind has been plagued with throughout the ages are still evident in society today, and therefore the core of the Kerygma is unchanging as well as it still addresses those fundamental issues.   As Mascall notes at the bottom of page 25, both positions have their positives, and to an extent they are both true, but they don't practically work in their purest forms.  As he then notes on page 26, there are exaggerations of the truth in both extremes, but the problem lies not in the fact that they possess said truth, but rather the fact that both positions tend to over-simplify that truth to such a degree that it ignores the complexities of the truths themselves.   If I were to appropriate the aspects of these positions that are true, then here is what I would propose.

In the first, the fact that certain formulae, doctrines, and other traditions of the Church are immutable is the truth that is to be retained.  Also, the universality of the Gospel itself transcends time, and thus has a relevance for humanity in all historic eras of existence.   At the same time though, praxis to a degree can be contextualized - for instance, adopting technology and even on occasion picking out a valid expression of truth in teaching from something like SpongeBob Squarepants is not really a problem, and also expressing incommunicable truth in communicable contemporary expression (provided said truth is not misrepresented or compromised) is completely acceptable as well.  But, again, discernment must be exercised as well, and that is where the source of much debate on those issues arises.  An example is "worship music" in certain churches.  While a certain amount of contemporary instrumentation and fresh hymnody is to be expected, that implementation must be tempered by a fidelity to continuity of the Tradition of the Church, and that is why for instance an acoustic guitar in a Catholic Mass can work, but not a loud rock band.  The form of expression, as Mascall concludes this section of the chapter, is important, and often even classic translations from centuries previous may be imperfect although the truth they communicate is perfect.  When talking of a transcendant God, as Mascall notes on page 27, it is impossible to fully describe who He truly is in finite human terms, as that always falls short.  The symbolism of language, then, reveals a deeper mystery of faith that maybe uttered words cannot express, and that I can appreciate.  It is one reason why the gift of tongues is also integral to the life of the Church too, within proper context of course.  He uses the example of calling God "Father" - while appropriate in human terms, it also is an inadequate means of expressing the fullness of reality of who and what God is and what He intends for us, but in the context it is appropriate in that it does impart a sense of divine paternity and makes it somewhat relatable in human terms.  And, it also, although falling short of fulness, does express a proper reverence and understanding of God Himself to us.  Again though, a supernatural God can never be fully grasped in natural terms, but it doesn't make Him any less a reality. 

In conclusion, language too becomes a symbol, as it points to a greater mystery and reality beyond itself in such a way that although it doesn't express the full picture, it does have a pedagogical role in leading us to the mystery, which is often understood more in unspoken language than in written or spoken expression.  Symbol thus becomes a powerful and important aspect of the faith, and unlike the secularist who dismisses symbol as merely a coping response for a "deluded" believer in something greater than themselves, the symbol is a powerful expression of faith that serves to remind us of eternal truth.  If we divorce that dimension from faith, then the message faith conveys begins to crumble.  And, at that point we'll pick up the discussion next time.

The Secularization of Christianity Part V - Linguistics or Existential Outlook?

As we continue this discussion, Mascall notes on page 15 that there are two phases which characterize the reinterpretation which has led to a secularized interpretation of both Scripture and doctrine, and these phases are as follows:

1.  A belief that the New Testament presentation of Christianity needs to be radically demythologized in accordance with the program of Bultmann, although this is less evident with Tillich, the latter of whose starting-point is philosophical rather than Biblical, but no less the same objective. 

2.  A belief that the necessary reconstruction must be done on the basis of Heideggerian existentialism, though a major exception to that is in the case of Dr. Paul Van Buren (1924-1998), a major proponent of "secular Christianity" who based his contentions upon linguistic analysis.  

Mascall points out that this Van Buren approach is also shared by others, whom he calls "professional Anglo-Saxon linguistic philosophers," noting among them as significant R. B. Braithwaite (1900-1990), a British philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, religion, and ethics.  To talk a little about Braithwaite, he along with linguist Margaret Masterman (1910-1986) whom later he married, founded the Epiphany Philosophers who consisted of Anglicans and Quakers who wanted to seek a new view of the relationship between science and philosophy ("R.B. Braithwaite," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._B._Braithwaite - Accessed 2/27/2018).  Braithwaite's weakness, though, as noted by Mascall was evident in his 1955 Eddington Memorial Lecture entitled An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief, in which he failed in thematic development of his thesis as well as failing to reply to those who were critical of his position.  The empiricist-linguistic view that Braithwaite espoused asserted that no theological statements can be taken as factual assertions, and this merits some detail at this point.  This separation of theology from philosophy has been an ongoing process that preceded Braithwaite by centuries, as it was evident as far back as William of Ockham, whose denial of the reality of universals facilitated the cracks that led to the rift between philosophy and theology - Ockham advanced the reality of only particulars, and the nominalism he pioneered paved the way for Braithwaite's linguistic empiricism in that it reduced universals as understood to mere names - Ockham's philosophical nominalism was at its heart theological, in that it subjugated God's omnipotence to the order of creation (Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, pp. 49-50).  Going back further to the Averroist philosophy, in particular as embodied in the thinking of Marsilus of Padua (1275-1342), subjected the role of Revelation to be subordinate to natural reason, rather than being complementary to it as St. Thomas Aquinas taught (Hahn and Wiker, p. 23).  Later, Descartes and Spinoza, among others, made this rift even greater, and it led to a break between philosophy and theology that had never existed before - theology for such people codified religious superstition, and was therefore "unreasonable." (Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture, p. 37).  For Spinoza in particular, this meant that Christian faith must be placed under the control of reason, and that control was meant for only an "elite" who rule themselves by rational faculties alone (Harrisville and Sundberg, p. 37).  This approach advanced by Spinoza and others treated Scripture dispassionately, and instead reduced it to merely a historical context that takes from Scripture only what human reason can know.  This would mesh well with Braithwaite's linguistic-empiricist outlook in that no theological statements (which mirrors Spinoza's accusation of theology being a reflection of religious superstition) can be taken as faction assertions because human reason often cannot comprehend them.  It reduces Christianity then, as Mascall quotes from one of his own earlier works on page 16 entitled Words and Images, to a Christianity without God, without grace, and without Christ.  He calls this approach correctly a "reductionist Christianity" which discards what cannot be understood by reason, reducing those aspects to merely "entertaining stories."  As Mascall notes, this is exactly what Braithwaite was doing, and it sort of flips Archer's earlier discussion of central narrative convictions on its head by suggesting that the "Christian stories" are mere expressions of what are essentially for Braitwaite and others "coping mechanisms" which only provide comfort and entertainment for those who embrace them rather than empirical fact - they provide answers to essential questions, in other words, addressed by CNC's, but those actions are platitudes only with no grounding in reason - in that aspect, Braitwaite sounds very much like Spinoza and others who preceded him.  But, is this the case?   Aquinas and other classic Christian thinkers differed with that approach radically, and I want to now take Archer's CNC approach and show how in a more culturally-oriented context.

Appalachian scholar Dr. Loyal Jones, in his excellent text Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands (Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 1999) notes that Appalachian people see themselves here on this earth and in this life through the lens of their religious beliefs, and that places God directly into that picture (Jones, p. 14).  As a sort of variation upon Archer's CNC's, Jones notes that Appalachian people ask some pretty important questions, among them being these:

1. How did we and all around us come to be?

2. Is there a God who created us and everything?

3. If this God is there, what is His nature?

4. Why did He make us as we are, and what is His purpose for our lives?

5. Is there something beyond this life, and if so, what is it like?

6. How is God related to us and all around us in this day and time?

Jones notes that most of the answers to that come from the Bible as well as what we have been taught (CNC's) in other ways, and that meaning starts in Genesis, where God the Creator emerges, as well as establishing the roots of the conflict with Satan's appearance, the Fall, and other factors.  As Jones notes, through traditions that have been established, it also means that there is something universal that is shared by Appalachian people with a much larger portion of the human race (Jones, p 51).  I share this because I was born in this Appalachian context myself, and what I have found out in my own spiritual growth is that what the universals Appalachians share with others is affirmed in the writings of Aquinas and others, and it is also given shape in the "Fourfold Hermeneutic of Scripture" that orthodox Catholic Biblical scholarship understands, which can be expressed as the following:

1. Literal (what the Bible actually says)

2. Allegorical (what we profess to believe based on typologies, etc., from Scripture)

3. Moral (what we are supposed to do and how we are supposed to live)

4. Anagogical (relates to eschatology and our future hope)

Secular and liberal Biblical scholars have in the past (and still are!) attempted to separate each of these senses from the others, but in reality the totality of Scripture is to be read and understood with all four working together - thus, a literal and true event in Scripture can also have a typological dimension that conveys a cardinal truth or a moral norm, and those in turn point us toward anagogical destiny.  Where Braithwaite's linguistic-empiricist approach - as well as Spinoza and others who preceded him - fails is in the denial first off of the literal truth of actual people and events in Scripture, but also in the true application of those allegorical and moral aspects which do cement anagogical hope.  We need to remember as well that philosophy and theology compliment each other, and they are in reality inseparable - each of us has a belief about God (or in the case of non-Christian religions, some deity or deities), and each of us has a way of thinking, and these constitute a worldview that has both theological and philosophical dimensions.  For the Christian, it means though ultimate truth in the true God, and instead of the imagined conflict between faith and reason that many secularists try to instigate, in reality the same God endowed humanity with both, and they are complimentary rather than conflicting.  This is also affirmed in the Thomistic Principle of Non-Contradiction, which states that God authored two "books," Nature and Revelation, and neither can contradict the other although through supernatural grace the truth of Revelation perfects, elevates, and heals Nature.  The natural world for the Christian then has at its origin a supernatural Cause, and we know who that is - God.  

Returning to Mascall's text, he notes the writing of another one of these individuals who embraces a linguistic-empiricist view similar to Braithwaite's, and this is T.R. Miles (1923-2008).  Miles was an Emeritus professor of psychology at Bangor University who wrote extensively on linguistic philosophy, religion, and science, and in doing so he authored a text entitled Religion and the Scientific Outlook that Mascall examines specifically ("Thomas Richard Miles," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Richard_Miles - Accessed 2/27/2018).  Mascall notes that Miles differed with Braithwaite regarding the latter's discussion of "stories," considering this inadequate and deficient in evidence, but does express full agreement regarding references to God as lacking in straightforward literal truth.  Miles qualifies his views with a phrase "silence qualified by parables," meaning that the moral behind the parable is valid but the parable itself is not.  This warrants some further discussion, and in wrapping up this part of the study we'll address that now.

The traditional and orthodox Catholic "Fourfold Hermeneutic of Scripture" exists for a reason - to put it very basic, it is the way God enabled the Church to communicate the truths of an inerrant Scripture to an audience that spans generations - some truths are allegorical for a reason, in that the audience at the time of the transmission of said truth may not have had the full understanding of that truth that maybe a future generation may see clearly.  Does this make the parable in the Gospels, or its originator (Jesus) any less real?  Of course not!  And, Jesus Himself did use parable to communicate immutable truths that apply not just to one generation, but to all, and therefore to reject God's reality is to reject the truth itself.  One of the transcendental properties of being that applies to God, as we have seen, is Truth (along with Beauty and Goodness).  God embodies truth, beauty, and goodness, but is also Himself true, good, and beautiful.  So, the arrogance of someone like either Miles or Braithwaite to attempt to separate the reality of the author of truth from His truth is absurd at best, and blasphemous at worst.  Mascall notes this as well on page 18, when in reference to Miles's ramblings he notes that any unbiased reader will (certainly) feel that there is something very arbitrary about reinterpreting the phrase (a good example he uses) "Thy will be done" (which Guardini, you will remember, identified as the "gateway petition" of the entire Our Father prayer) in a way that "Thy" is not a possessive pronoun is inconsistent with the original context of the phrase itself.  Looking at Guardini's text on this, we see the problem with Miles's thesis - Guardini notes in his classic book The Lord's Prayer (Manchester, NH:  The Sophia Institute Press, 1986) that God does not wish that his will is to be actualized with the compelling force of nature, but rather it should arise from man's inner being - from his heart, his intellect, his love, and his free will.  Therefore, no compelling necessity can force what happens (Guardini, p. 6).   He further notes in the same paragraph that certain things - courage, purity, generosity, loyalty to those who trust in us (nobility of character - or, dare I say, noblesse oblige) - are not things that arise automatically or by physical laws; they issue from the freedom of the heart and the will, which transcends those laws and is of supernatural origin - they have their source in a God, in other words, who is very real, and they stand as evidence that someone beyond ourselves has a hand in our own creation and destiny.  Therefore, the assertions of Miles are unfounded based even on natural law, which again reflects a supernatural source.  Mascall, quoting the Collect for Purity that opens the Anglican Mass in the Book of Common Prayer, affirms this when he notes on page 18 that the wording of this prayer itself - "Almighty God, to Whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from Whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts...."  - is in itself a presupposition that we behave as if someone can see our innermost thoughts.  In this case it is a correct presupposition, in that unlike Miles's arbitrary dismissal of a literal "Thy" in reference to God, there is an inexplanable desire within us to seek out one who does know these things, and although in many cases natural reason cannot tangibly point out this Being, the reality of our own nature is evidence enough that He is there.  By the reductionism which Miles and those like him employ to diminish God or reduce Him to an abstract "comfort mechanism," it lays the foundation to reject other truths of the Christian faith which rest upon the reality of God's existence.  As Josef Jungmann pointed out in his seminal 1936 catechetical text, The Good News and the Proclamation of our Faith, it is absolutely essential that the Trinity (in particular the person of God the Son in Jesus Christ) be at the central "hub" of all we profess to believe, and every doctrine radiates from that central "hub."  Therefore, to diminish or deny it is to in essence deny the whole faith, as Jesus is both the source and the end of our faith.  As Cardinal Danielou points out in his seminal text Prayer as a Political Problem (New York:  Sheed and Ward, 1965), it is important to understand that religion, far from being arbitrary "superstition" as Spinoza and others tried to diminish it, is not just concerned with just the anagogical dimension of our faith - it is a constituent element of this life as well, and more importantly it forms part of the temporal common good (Danielou, p. 18).  As Danielou also affirms, the Bible is not a mere book of "superstition" and hearsay, as the liberal secularists such as Braithwaite seem to say, but rather it is a very real history which states the evidence for the actions of God and where the Word appears in time (Danielou, p. 88).  Again, Mascall's argument that truth cannot be separated from its Source affirms that God is a God of history, and that prayer, far from being a futile effort, is indeed the means by which God has enabled man to seek Him and also to petition His continued intervention in the course of history and indeed of man's individual destiny as well.  

By critiquing where certain people have failed in their denial of the realities of God, Mascall is addressing the heart of the problem - a secularized society which excludes belief in God will in time decline, and the decline, I will add, is not necessarily God meting punishment but rather is the natural consequence of our own divorce from Him.  It has been correctly said that it is not God who sends people to hell - people do that themselves.  God is a God who honors the free will He created us with, and as such it means that if we willfully reject Him, we then willfully choose hell whether we realize it or not.  So, whether it be Bultmann, Spinoza, Descartes, Braithwaite, or any of the other secularizing philosophers and theologians discussed, all of them share one thing in common - they willfully rejected God, and by those who willfully follow similar convictions as theirs, it causes society then to make the arbitrary choice to reject God, and that is where secularization comes in.  Much of it, unfortunately, is secularism under the guise of Christianity, but the question is whether that variety of Christianity is really Christian at all?   Or, is it a sort of dressed-up atheism masquerading as "Christian" in order to deceive others?  Mascall's text is addressing that very thing, and as we read more through it, the deception he is confronting presents an even more dire threat today than it did in 1965, when Mascall authored the text we are following.  Keep that in mind as we continue the study.  

The Secularization of Christianity Part IV - Tillich, Modernism, and Other Influences

Continuing my reflections on Mascall's seminal text, I want to go where he is going in the first chapter by looking at his evaluation of theologian Paul Tillich.   There are a few names that Mascall references that will be somewhat unfamiliar to most, so we'll try to delve into that more as we go along.

Despite a fairly orthodox Anglo-Catholic viewpoint, Mascall unexpectedly almost endorses Tillich and his views beginning on page 12, and it is here that I want to comment first.  Early in my graduate studies, I took a course called Theology of Ethics at my alma mater, Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL, and one of the texts we had in that class was Tillich's Systematic Theology.  Tillich didn't impress me much - unlike Barth, for instance, who at least tried to maintain some level of orthodoxy, and Bonhoeffer, who I believe to be a martyr for the faith despite some of his questionable theological tendencies, Tillich was a bit out there for me.  That is why I have to reflect on this separately, as exposure to Tillich has piqued my interest in what an Anglo-Catholic traditionalist theologian would have to say about him. 

Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

Paul Tillich, a German-born philosopher/theologian who later, due to his correct opposition to Nazi terror in his home country, fled to the US and eventually taught at both Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1933-1955, as well as being a guest lecturer at Columbia University from 1933-1934.  He was a Lutheran by confession, and also would fall squarely into the liberal Protestant camp as far as his own convictions were concerned, but to his credit he was also an early supporter of the "Confessing Church" in Germany that opposed the Nazis too.  Tillich's theology was essentially one that although at first appearing as traditional monotheism, his own wording more closely resembles pantheism when he describes God - a nod to Nazi-leaning philosopher Martin Heidegger here - as the foundation upon which all being exists.  To an extent, on the surface this seems correct, until it is placed in the context of the rest of Tillich's view.  While God is indeed the source of all being - that is not in dispute - Tillich's wording almost sacrifices the transcendant aspects of God in favor of confusing the "foundation of all being" with "being in all being."  God then becomes, for Tillich, an "it" that encompasses a force behind all being, and thus personhood is merely an anthropomorphic symbol for Tillich, clothed in orthodox language, rather than a transcendent Person in His own right.  And, that is where problems with Tillich's theology start (Information taken from "Paul Tillich," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich - Accessed 2/26/2018).  

Mascall, on page 12 of his text, refers to Tillich as an "outstanding figure" who possesses "mature thought" in regard to his views in his seminal defining work Systematic Theology.  He does note something from Tillich's text though that does make some sense in lieu of the discussion - Tillich noted in Systematic Theology that the fundamental principle of Protestantism is not its unquestioning acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God, but rather its determination to protest against every human activity, idea, formula, and judgment as a challenge to and an infringement upon the transcendence of God.   To a degree this is true, but there is a problem that Mascall doesn't address in his text but that I will here.  Protestantism, by its nature, is reactionary - beginning with Luther and then more so embodied in Zwingli and the Radical Reformers, there has been this general attitude among Protestants to eschew Tradition - using of course alleged and real Catholic abuses of the past - in favor of a more individualistic approach, and in doing so I would argue that it is not so much an "unquestioning acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God" that is emphasized, but rather the individual interpretation of the reader.  As the Archbishop-Primate of the Anglican Catholic Church, Mark Haverland, points out, it is symptomatic of a greater problem that is at the roots of Protestantism itself:

"However, the seeds of failure are present even in those forms of Protestantism that are doing well in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  For instance, the Southern Baptist (Convention - my add), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States in this period, is theologically committed to the individualistic ideas of personal inspiration in the reading of Scripture and the autonomy of the local congregation.  Over time, in the context of a secular culture that is hostile to religious truth and traditional theological perspectives, such an individual and local focus will produce the same secularization found in other Protestant bodies.  Likewise, the emphasis on the authority of personal religious experience found among the 'charismatics' lends a subjective and individualist cast to their movement that will, in the long run, lead down the familiar Protestant path."  (Mark Haverland, Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice.  Athens, GA:  Anglican Parishes Association, 2011.  pp. 62-63).  

Archbishop Haverland's observations are quite astute, as he realizes that the primrose path of modernism is what will in time secularize even supposedly "conservative" denominations within Protestantism, and this can also be seen at the roots of the Protestant Reformation itself.   Wiker and Hahn note that Luther himself set this in motion from the beginning when he began to radicalize that distinction between secular and sacred, and in doing so he carried on a tradition started by Marsilus of Padua in that the secular only was presupposed for the body, and that the soul was entirely separate.  Neutralizing the secular from any notion of supernatural grace that could transform, perfect, heal, and elevate it made for a dangerous situation in which secularizing tendencies were then made a power unto themselves, and thus they could be at odds with the sacred.  In time, if secular culture prevailed, it would secularize the sacred as well, and thus the problem (Wiker and Hahn, Politicizing the Bible.  New York:  Herder and Herder, 2013. pp. 216-219).  The further desacramentalization of Christianity by subsequent Reformers such as Zwingli made further inroads into the realm of the Church, in that the absence of the sacred made the secular more logical and palatable.  Thus, you have Protestantism's legacy of secularization, also intensified by Luther taking the hermeneutical responsibility of the Church away and placing it in the hands of either "experts" who served the secular state or the merely "baptized," who could supposedly read Scripture for themselves and become the concluding authority on its meaning.  Luther paved the way, in essence, for those like Schleiermacher and others who came later.  And, in time, it would even begin to infect Catholic theology, via people such as Tielhard de Chardin as well as Fr. George Tavard, whom Mascall discusses more at length.

Fr. George Tavard (1922-2007)

Fr. George Tavard was an French Augustinian priest and theologian who focused much of his work on the disciplines of ecumenism, spirituality, and historical theology.  Fr. Tavard taught for many years at Princeton Theological Seminary, and later participated in joint Catholic dialogue with Anglicans, Methodists, and Lutherans, serving as well as an official Catholic observer at the WCC Faith and Order Conference in Montreal in 1963.  While the positive fruit of his efforts meant a greater openness on the part of Roman Catholics to Protestants as fellow Christians, he also was very liberal on theological and dogmatic issues, even advocating (as did Richard McBrien, another prominent liberal Roman Catholic theologian) for women to be ordained to Holy Orders as well as expressing some sympathy for Communism during the Vietnam conflict.  Based on his views, Tavard would not be recommended as a sound doctrinal source for studying Catholic dogma, and his efforts unfortunately also led to some of the faulty implementations of Vatican II that came later (From "George Tavard," at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tavard - Accessed 2/26/2018).  He is referenced by Mascall in relation to his book Paul Tillich and the Christian Message, in that Tavard offers a fairly even-handed critique of Tillich's theology, in particular the confusion Tillich displays regarding man's created being and fallen nature.  Tavard notes, as Mascall documents, that Tillich rejected Chalcedonian (and thus creedal) Christology based on misunderstandings of language, thus introducing the "Godmanhood" notion in his Systematic Theology.   While Tavard notes the weakness in Tillich's attempt to express traditional faith with contemporary terminology in other words, Tavard likewise fails in trying to unintentionally redefine the Creed to reflect such terminology.  In regard to that passage, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is actually quite clear in that it affirms that the Church confesses (in its historic Creeds) that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man, and that there is no confusion due to the result of a random mixture of divine and human, and it also doesn't mean that part of Jesus is God and part of Him is man; he is fully both (CCC 464, 469).  Tavard seems to avoid this, at least by what Mascall quotes of him, and Tillich misinterpreted it totally and because he couldn't understand it, it had to be radically redefined.  That is where some closing remarks on this subject now come into bearing.

True Catholicism accepts that the Bible is the Word of God, inerrant in its truth and unique in its revelation.  However, the Bible is a book of supernatural origin, and there are some things in it that may be ambiguous to prior generations but that we may understand completely.  The Church, in her wisdom, has kept that in mind through the centuries, and therefore any confusion about what the Biblical text says can be easily clarified by the consensual view of the Church throughout the ages - if the Church doesn't address a certain thing, then a consensus can be drawn based on peripheral issues that relate to that thing.  Mascall actually is faithful to this as an orthodox Anglo-Catholic, and in doing so he is also faithful to Anglican patrimony which is accepted by the Church.   However - and this is the clencher! - it is ironic that Fr. George Tavard, a French Augustinian and Catholic priest, is less Catholic than Mascall in this regard, and it proves something very pivotal - there are those who don't profess to be Roman Catholic who are often more faithful to the Magisterium than self-professed Roman Catholics, including priests and bishops.  This also means that although the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ, she is not a perfect Bride - there are those in our parishes, religious orders, seminaries, and other places who are only "Catholic" in name but not in conviction, and they are what my late mentor Fr. Eusebius Stephanou calls "baptized pagans."  The roots of this secularization even within the Church were seen by Pope St. Leo XIII, who even addressed it in official encyclicals.  Leo predicted that in the 20th century, the Church would undergo a great shaking and to a degree an apostasy as more self-professed "Catholics" would become ensnared to the idols of secularism - they would sit in Church, some even receiving the Sacraments, yet they also were for all intents and purposes atheists;  their mindsets are secular, and they tend to flippantly dismiss very vital Catholic teaching on important matters.  This is why even today in our US Congress, we have secularists (and rabid leftists) such as Nancy Pelosi, the late Ted Kennedy, and others calling themselves "Catholics" yet not listening to the Church on pivotal issues (abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia are three big ones).  Mascall, like the late Pope St. Leo XIII, prophetically saw this happening even in his own time, which is why he wrote the book addressing it specifically.  When we return in the next segment, there will be more detail on these and other issues.  

The Secularization of Christianity, Part III - Challenges of Bultmann and Others Against Traditional Faith

We pick up now in Chapter 1 of Mascall's The Secularization of Christianity, and beginning on page 6, Mascall gives an overview of the major forces of liberalism which have sought to secularize Christianity, and he narrows it down to some very pivotal figures.   The idea behind many of the viewpoints of these theologians that Mascall dissects and soundly refutes is this notion that the traditional faith of Christendom is to be reinterpreted and understood in the light of the outlook of contemporary secularized man.  In doing so, Mascall makes two very important points.  First, he notes that there is a perplexing tendency among such writers to retain the word "Christianity" for something they embrace which is not identifiable as "Christian" at all - Mascall notes that this tactic is utilized by such writers to appeal to a "continuity" with historic Christianity, but in reality it is more confusion in that much of what such people espouse is anything but historical Christianity.   Second, Mascall notes that this secularization of Christianity reduces it to a one-sided conversation in which truth is often conceded for error, to more or less translate Mascall's thoughts on page 7.  Due to the irreligious nature of much of contemporary Western society, proponents of this approach seek to de-supernaturalize Christianity in order to make it more "relevant" to modern man.  This desupernaturalization process in essence turns the religious person atheistic, and it also cuts at the heart of many dogmas of the Christian faith, such as life after death, the importance of prayer, and temporal utopianism (al a Spinoza, Descartes, and Machiavelli).  The main figure he notes in this type of liberal secularization is the theologian John A.T. Robinson, and he is who we will discuss now.

John A.T. Robinson (1919-1983)

Robinson is a fairly contemporary and recent theologian of the 20th century whose claim to fame was his attempted synthesis of Tillich and Bonhoeffer in his 1963 book Honest to God.   Although nominally Anglican, and indeed a bishop in the Church of England, he also espoused the heresy of universalism based on his secularization of the Christian faith that took away the supernatural - if Jesus doesn't really save and God doesn't exist, in other words, then man cannot be all bad and all men are to be "saved."  He is also a mentor of the now notorious American Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, whose liberalism has scandalized the American Anglican tradition for decades.  To read Robinson's work alongside a more conservative Anglo-Catholic traditionalist such as Mascall, one could almost conclude they belong to two different religions!  (Information on Robinson obtained from "John Robinson {Bishop of Woolwich}" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robinson_{bishop_of_Woolwich} - accessed 2/22/2018). As Mascall notes on page 8, the major weakness of the type of radical secularization proposed by Robinson and those like him is that it entirely undermines the whole notion of Christian social theology, in that it completely capitulates to the outlook of the contemporary world and thus has no criterion for passing judgment on it.  This is the reason as well why "political correctness," as well as "liberation theologies," radical feminism, the "gay agenda," and other such things have made inroads into churches which espouse such views.  

Although Mascall notes that Robinson, along with Paul van Buren (1924-1998) and I would add as well people such as Stanley Hauerwas and Jurgen Moltmann, are typical examples of a contemporary deliberate secularization of Christianity (in that league as well I would place Catholic theologians such as Tielhard de Chardin and Richard McBrien), he also notes on page 8 that this didn't appear out of a vacuum, but instead rests in the efforts of "demythologizing" associated with Rudolf Bultmann, who we will now discuss in detail as well.

Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976)

Bultmann (whose likeness reminds me personally of the actor Christopher Walken for some reason!) was one of the most influential liberal theologians of his time.  Unlike Robinson, Bultmann was a German Lutheran, and he was noted for being a leading proponent of "form criticism," which essentially is a method of reading Scripture which attempts to look at the original form of a certain pericope (passage) of Scripture and then try to determine what its writer intended.  In this context, as Mascall notes, Bultmann then reduces the Gospels to mythological notions unacceptable to 20th-century man, and which the main purpose was for transmitting the Kerygma to the culture of its time.  Therefore, the task of the form critic, in Bultmann's rationale, was to discard the myth and retain the Kerygma at the heart of what the myth was trying to communicate. This result is achieved by a method that Bultmann lifted from philosopher Martin Heidegger's playbook in that it makes the Gospel strictly existentialist - this therefore means that Christian belief is dependent upon one's present existence rather than the actual message of Christ in the Gospels.   To summarize Bultmann's system in this regard, here is a synopsis.

For Bultmann, the "thought-forms" of the New Testament are "mythical," depicting the universe as being divided into three parts - center being earth, sandwiched between heaven and hell.  He ascribes this mythical view to the Biblical description of the events of salvation, and to this worldview then the "aggravatedly modern man" is irreconcilably opposed.  The reason for this, Bultmann proposes, is that man has a self-conception as a self-contained being who is not open to the seizure of supernatural powers.  Retention of the "myth," Bultmann argues, is tantamount to returning to a primitive era and sacrificing faith to intellect.  Bultman therefore advocates not only for just "demythologizing" but also "reinterpreting" the Gospel in terms of a self-understanding which mythology furnishes the vehicle, and that Paul and John furnish the pathway to this "reinterpretation." (Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. pp. 228-229).   Basically, to put what Bultmann proposes into lay terms, the way the Gospel was written is not infallible (that is in opposition to Church teaching, which does affirm the infallibility of Scripture), and therefore must be "tweeked" to get rid of those inconvenient, outdated concepts which Bultmann generally designates as "myth" in order to make the Kerygma palatable to modern man.  The problem with this approach is that it also deconstructs orthodox teaching on many levels.  This also concurs with Mascall's critique of Bultmann's position on page 9, in which he notes a couple of important things:

1.  Bultmann lumps together a variety of quite diverse items under the all-inclusive term "myth."

2.  While Bultmann is quite tender to the modern man's intellectual prejudices regarding the supernatural and the miraculous (he mirrors Bauer and Strauss in that regard), he is at the same time unsparing in his demands (which Mascall notes are based in Heideggerian existentialism) on dogma and even the Scriptures themselves to conform to his sensitivities of modern man's objections.

3.  Bultmann's insistence that the Kerygma is limited only to audible proclamation from a pulpit is a false premise, as in particular for the Catholic Christian it is also lived out in the sacramental life of the Church as well. 

In response to Bultmann's ideas, and also in true Thomistic fashion, Mascall contends on page 11 that if only "authentic existence" which Bultmann espouses were true, then a sincere Muslim or Buddhist would be just as valid as the Christian.  It is at this point I will leave off on Mascall's thought until the next part of the series and conclude with a few observations of my own.

Bultmann's idea of "authentic existence" is an old one, and also a very incorrect one, when one understands what he really is saying.  In essence, it is a sort of "salvation by works" in which the Kerygma is reduced to a mere moral code and thus its only relevance is in what conforms with the hearer.  Authentic Christianity, as Mascall will later argue and with which I concur, is very different - we are to conform to the Gospel rather than make it conform to us, and proclamation is only part of the equation - proclamation serves as a means for living out the commandments God gave us, even when they go against the whims and fancies of contemporary society.  Therefore, the problem with Bultmann's premise is the same old rehash of his predecessors - Schleiermacher, Rauschenbusch, Baure, Strauss, and Heidegger, among others.  What they say, in essence, is that the Gospel is reflected in merely being a "good person," and that is what comprises "authentic existence."  As Mascall correctly pointed out on page 11, this reduces Christianity to just another belief system among many, and thus its outcome is to lead the person to question very important dogmas of the faith such as Christ's divinity, as well as His death, Resurrection, Ascension, and His coming again. It also serves to desacramentalize the faith as well, in that if the supernatural is ruled out, then sacrament is not possible because supernatural grace is imparted to us via the Sacraments.  Being a "good person" (authetic existence) may temporarily benefit a society, but once those virtues are divorced from their Christian and Biblical moorings, they are also subject to reinterpretation and that is where secularization becomes the fertile field of heresy.  In the next segment, we will continue on Chapter One as Mascall deals as well with the views of Paul Tillich.  

The Secularization of Christianity Part II - Changing vs. Changeless

In exploring Mascall's writings, we will begin here with Chapter One of The Secularization of Christianity, which I will also address in lieu of other material.  That being said, this series on Mascall's work doesn't constitute a book review, but rather Mascall's work serves as a guide for further reflection on an addressed issue.

The opening paragraph of the chapter entitled "The Changeless and the Changing" Mascall states the core issue by saying this:

"One of the most imperative duties with which the Christian theologian is confronted is that of relating the revealed datum of Christian truth, final, absolute, and fundamentally permanent as he must by his Christian commitment believe it to be, to the essentially incomplete, relative, and constantly changing intellectual framework of the world in which he lives." (E.L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965. p. 1)

What Mascall is saying here, to simplify, is that the important task a Christian theologian has is to relate immutable revealed truth in a world in which changing intellectual trends are evident.  This is where many are faced with some serious problems, as in many cases theologians are often prone to redefining "orthodoxy" within the context of contemporary culture, and thus that is where problems are created.  Cultural relativism has no real place in theology or philosophy, except in one area - as new issues arise, they have to be evaluated as to how they conform to or contradict the historical Magisterium of the Church.  When one allows the whims and fancies of the popular culture to color theology, one is at risk of compromising Christian conviction for cultural conformity rather than taking the effort to truly understand and evaluate current trends in light of established doctrine and faith.  What happens then is a trend that goes back to pre-Enlightenment philosophical positions, notably some such as William of Ockham and Marsilus of Padua, who laid a foundation in both theology and Biblical studies which steered the West toward secularism by instead implementing a this-worldly focus that fosters a hermeneutic of suspicion.  It also reduces God to the Averroist view that He is limited to being bound to the order of creation and thus it rules out the supernatural (Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, Politicizing the Bible. New York: Herder and Herder, 2013. pp 50, 57).   The importance of the task of relating immutable revealed truth in a changing world, for Mascall, has three reasons:

1.  Christians, however well-instructed or thoughtful, share inevitably in the intellectual climate and perspective of their time, despite inconsistencies between that culture and their Christian beliefs. (catechetical)

2.  It is also concerned with the apologetic and evangelistic work of the Church - we speak words to those outside the Church in language they comprehend. (apologetic)

3.  It is important for Christians to have the ability to see the relevance of their faith in relation to the issues and problems of contemporary culture, bringing to bear their influence upon the solution to those problems in accordance with orthodox Christian beliefs about human nature, anagogical situation, and his predicament and resources. (social)

In regard to the last, I return to Pentecostal scholar Kenneth Archer's discussion of what are called central narrative convictions, in that these do address those issues with questions, and here they are also in light of the traditional four-fold hermeneutic of Scripture as proposed by the Church.  Archer notes that there are some important questions that central narrative convictions address, and these include the following:

1. Where are we?
2. Who are we?
3. What's wrong?
4. What's the remedy?

As Archer defines central narrative convictions (hereafter called CNC's) they are essentially those things that essentially comprise the primary story used to explain why a particular community exists (in Archer's context, he is referring to his own Pentecostal tradition, but it applies to Catholics as well).  Although Archer says they cannot be reduced to presuppositions or preunderstandings, I would disagree in saying that as Catholics our faith has already been presupposed and established, and it is therefore the Deposit of Faith that shapes our understanding of such (Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture, and Community.  Cleveland, TN:  CPT Press, 2009. pp. 156-158).  What does this mean then?  Philosophically, it means that there are some norms which have what is called incommunicability - they are unchanging, presupposed by both faith and reason, and is irreplaceable.  Although often associated with personalist philosophy, nonetheless the concept of incommunicability applies theologically as well, given the fact that God's truths are eternal.  Although we live in a communicable culture that often seeks to coerce individuals to conform to what society sees as "good" or "bad" (which, as an school of thought called proportionalism asserts, doesn't mean such things are "right" or "wrong," and these definitions are fluid for someone holding those views) it must be understood that we have as Christians an incommunicable faith which is not subject to the times and changes of the world around us.  However, that doesn't mean our response isn't.   Let me explain that using some issues in today's society.

The issue of "same-sex marriage" has gained momentum in recent years as a newly-defined "norm" in secular society.  As a Christian addresses this "norm," one thing that must be taken into account is how the Church views similar issues.  Since God established natural law at creation, there is a natural order which presupposes that certain types of behavior deemed unnatural are not to be practiced or sanctioned by one who follows God precisely because it goes against the natural order of things.  In the case of "same-sex marriage," therefore, a communicable issue can be responded to with incommunicable faith and truth.  Going back to Mascall's premise, the challenge for Christians is the fact that such "norms" exist, that they must necessarily be addressed in contemporary context, and they must be evaluated in the light of unchanging faith and beliefs regarding human nature, etc.  This in itself can be challenging, as often such "norms" are so radical and unnatural that many Christians don't want to face them, but as Mascall notes, the daunting task of the Christian theologian in particular is to relate an unchanging Gospel to a changing society, and in doing so he makes a very profound statement on page 4 of his text - "But I would draw attention to the fact that I have said 'the Church....in the twentieth century,' not 'the twentieth century Church.' There are twentieth century Christians, but there is not, in the strict sense, a twentieth-century Church, any more than there is a twentieth-century Gospel.  The Church, like the Gospel, is one throughout the ages, however much its forms of speech, worship, and life may vary from time to time."  To simplify, the Church doesn't change although the world does, but in basic relationship things can be adopted that aid in evangelization and discipleship of the 20th-century person.  This therefore both affirms and disagrees with Archer's idea on CNC's that they are not presupposed or preunderstood - the Church, and the Gospel, were presupposed from the foundation of the world, and the Church itself transcends temporal bounds as it comprises all who were, are, and will be in Christ.  That transcendant, supernatural perspective of the Church also explains her sacramental life as well - the sacraments are supernatural in that they transcend time and space, and they are a "mystery of faith" precisely because of that - when we Catholics partake of the Eucharist, we don't "recrucify Christ," but rather we are transported to Him.  The incommunicability of moral law in particular can also be seen in the Ten Commandments - despite changing times and places, it is still wrong and socially stigmatic to steal, murder, lie, cheat, and do other things which either violate the dignity of personhood of others or diminish God.  Although there are some who seek to even redefine those things - those who advocate abortion, for instance - at the end of the day those same people who want to murder the innocent child in the womb will in turn do what they can to preserve their own lives, and thus it creates for them a very serious problem.  And, abortion is one of those things which apologetically is addressed by the Church in the modern age, not so much because it suddenly is popular (abortion and infanticide were practiced throughout history to some degree) but because it is the same sin in a new context - whereas in the past the infant was murdered on the altar of a pagan god with a dagger and a fire pit, nowadays it is a scalpel and saline solution in the sterile confines of the operating room, but it is still murder regardless.  And, that is the point I believe that Mascall is making in the opening pages of the chapter.

The next part of this chapter, beginning on page 5, is the separation of philosophy and natural science from theology, and while Mascall focuses on Barth's role in this as well as that of his disciples (notably in the text Karl Heim and W.A. Whitehouse), it goes back much further than that.  We see it early on in the writings of Ockham and Marsilus of Padua, but it is more pronounced as time progresses by Niccolo Machiavelli, who in his work The Prince establishes this rationalistic thinking by asserting that what is should define what "ought" (Hahn and Wiker, p. 130).  In other words, conformity to culture, when applied to Biblical and theological realms, defines interpretation.  This is further developed in later centuries by Rene Descartes, who advanced that only what is rational is what is real, and thus the supernatural, by virtue of its intangibility, cannot be understood as rational. For Descartes, this means a mechanized universe where supernatural creation was not possible - developed later by Spinoza and D.F. Strauss, this essentially means that the miraculous is not real, but merely a misunderstanding of natural events.  The supernatural and the miraculous deny rationalization, so they cannot be real, in the minds of such people.  It entered theology and Biblical scholarship via the Reformation, which in rejection of the Scholastic approach of St. Thomas Aquinas, which affirmed that natural law and a supernatural God were complimentary rather than contradictory, eventually led to the Protestantization of all theology, leading instead to it being confined to an ambiguous group of "experts" rather than the Church, and those "experts" could range from merit of baptism alone (as Luther proposed) or in true Machiavellian tradition they were appointed to advance an agenda.  We still see it that way today.  Protestants continued this negative separation of philosophy from theology, for instance, as Mascall notes on page 9, by essentially rejecting the former as merely a seductive artifact of fallen man.  This led to a very dangerous disconnect between philosophy and faith, as embodied in later secular philosophers such as Heidegger and Nietzsche.  Likewise, theology was also divorced from faith by secular-minded theologians such as Schleiermacher and later those like Tillich and Moltmann who asserted that the life and teachings of Christ were to be radically reinterpreted and "demythologized" to make them more palatable to contemporary man.  Mascall also critiques Bultmann as well, whose ideas were so radical that they will be discussed in the next part of this series.

Mascall's bottom line in this whole discourse is really quite simple - the Church, her message, and the Gospel are all unchanging in that the proclaimed truth of all is timeless and transcends all time.  However, that being said, time does change, and the Church must be able to draw upon her eternal deposit of faith to address any and all new questions that arise in a way that communicates to the society she finds herself in.   This can be tricky, and one has to really be cognizant of the fact that a fine line exists between relevant language and cultural conformity, a fine line we as Christians must take care not to cross.  Too many have already crossed that line, and it has led to either a denial of faith and rejection of truth or to a conforming of the Gospel and Church Tradition to the passing whims and fancies of the times.  That is also why a study such as this one is vital, in that it addresses a vital issue in a day and age when so much chaos in society dictates so many things that contradict universals.  We must transcend the norms of the times, in other words, while at the same time appropriating the language of the times to communicate timeless truth.  We'll pick up on this in the next segment.

The Secularization of Christianity Part I - Some Preliminary Discussion

Now that I have my graduate studies completed, I want to take the next few months to catch up on some reading and do some observations.  Two of the books I am going to initiate some reflection on are by the Anglo-Catholic Thomist theologian E.L. Mascall (more about him momentarily) entitled The Secularization of Christianity and The Christian Universe.  Having become a very staunch Thomist myself in the course of my graduate studies, I have taken an interest in Mascall's work in particular for two reasons - first, it is insightful (albeit somewhat verbose to wade through!) and secondly, I am a former Anglo-Catholic myself who has in the past year "reverted" back to the Roman Catholic Church after a lot of soul-searching and also thanks in part to capable instructors at Franciscan University of Steubenville who helped me sort many things out and come to the conclusion that full communion with the Church is the best option for my own vocation as a catechist and educator myself.  I want to spend today talking about some preliminary thoughts behind my undertaking of reading Mascall's work, and I also want to sort of introduce Mascall to readers who may not be familiar with him.

Being I am also politically a Monarchist, I take a great interest in catching Charles Coulombe's broadcast of "Off the Menu" every Monday, and this week what Charles was talking about sort of lines up with where I am going here.  The question came up in the program as to what exactly an Anglo-Catholic is, and if they can be truly called "Catholic," and what Charles did in answering the question was a brief but brilliant historical background of how the Oxford Movement and other developments evolved into what is commonly known as Anglo-Catholicism.  However, he did leave out a few details, such as the St. Louis meetings in 1977 that led to the establishment of the "Continuing Anglican" movement, which I was formerly identified with and many of which are uncompromisingly Anglo-Catholic.  But, that is neither here nor there in the greater point of the discussion.  Simply put, I was confirmed as a Roman Catholic myself in 2000, but for about 10 years I was part of a "Continuing Anglican" parish, although in that time I have always retained my Catholic convictions and never thought I was anything other than Catholic myself.  You see, my initial reception into the Roman Catholic Church was, well, somewhat spotty.  I went through the RCIA process beginning in 1999, and I did receive Confirmation and First Communion on Easter Vigil of the year 2000.  But, much of what I remember from my RCIA classes was a bit fuzzy, and also the Roman Catholic parishes we were part of had clergy and others who at times acted like we basically didn't exist, so I was beginning to feel it was Rome who had left me rather than me leaving Rome.  When Barb and I initially started attending a "Continuing Anglican" parish in 2007, it was at that time I really began to learn what the Sacraments were, and also more about what being Catholic really entailed.  Then, in January 2014, I started my graduate work at Franciscan University, and it was as if a whole other world opened up to me - I learned more in the past 4 years about the Catholic Church than I did through my entire RCIA program years ago, and after our move back home in 2017, our initial continuation of attending a "Continuing Anglican" parish was proving to not fit, nor was it really all that feasible for us to do so - it was too far away, for one thing, and also I didn't feel as if the parish shared in a lot of the vision that I felt God was giving to me in regard to how I would serve the Church.  So, we began attending a Roman Catholic parish down the road from our house, and last summer I found myself coming to an important decision - it was time to "come back home," and so I did.  It is a decision I feel was necessary, and I am very grateful circumstances opened up that door for us.  I say all of that concerning my own story to focus on something Charles talked about in regard to Anglo-Catholics in his program, and that is this whole idea of patrimony.  It is time to just sort of give an idea of how I understand its meaning, and then relate it to the rest of the discussion.

For Catholics, the teaching office of the Church is called the Magisterium, and it has as its core a conviction that Holy Tradition, as well as orthodox doctrine, must be passed down as is without alteration - in that context, it comprises what we catechists call the Deposit of Faith.  Although the dogma of "no salvation outside the Church" is pretty well set, and even bad implementations of some Vatican II ideas don't change that, there is also what is known as a "hierarchy of truths" which allow for a certain amount of inclusion of other Christians in the life of the Church as a whole - much of this is spelled out in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, and more detail can be gleaned from reading that very important document of the Church. In the "hierarchy of truths," some Christian groups have more, some have less, but they are deemed "Christian" by their subscription to what they hold that qualifies for the "hierarchy of truths."  For instance, all Christians would affirm that faith in Christ is necessary, as well as the dogmas surrounding the person of Christ (His death, Resurrection, and Ascension, the Virgin Birth, the hypostatic union of Jesus as fully God and fully man, and His incorporation as a Person of the Triune Godhood) - this makes them participants in salvation due to their embrace of this aspect of the "hierarchy of truths."  For some - Baptists and Pentecostals - that is really about as far as it goes, but others such as Anglicans embrace more and are closer to full Catholic doctrine and practice.  Anglo-Catholics are even more so.  This is why in regard to patrimony, the idea of the Anglo-Catholic tradition's existence is important.  In Lumen Gentium 8, the following affirmation is made in regard to what patrimony is without expressing it specifically:

"{the single Church of Christ} subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by bishops in communion with him.  Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines.  Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling toward Catholic unity." 

According as well to the 2009 encyclical Anglicanorum Coetibus, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI sort of defines Anglican patrimony in particular by noting that Anglicans who are received into a personal Ordinariate are given the faculty to celebrate the Eucharist and other sacraments of the Church according to liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, although requiring approval from the Holy See, and this is done to ensure that liturgical, spiritual, and pastoral traditions of the Anglican tradition are retained and maintained as a "precious gift nourishing the faith of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared." (Pope Benedict XVI, Anglicanorum Coetibus: Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into full communion with the Catholic Church (2009) at http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_ben-xvi_apc_20091104_anglicanorum-coetibus.html#_ftn11 - Accessed 2/19/2018).  This is also similar in many aspects to what the late Russian Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon established in the 19th century when he blessed the use of the Western Rite in the Orthodox Church, in particular both the Roman and Anglican traditions (Benjamin Joseph Anderson, "A Short History of the Western Rite Vicariate" {2015} at http://antiochian.org/sites/default/files/wrv_history.pdf - Accessed 2/19/2018).  So, essentially this patrimony is recognized - at least in regard to Anglican converts to both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches - universally.  That being established, here is how it relates to Mascall's work.

Writers like Mascall, who affirm a great deal of orthodox Catholic doctrine, possess this Anglican patrimony in their writings despite the fact they never formally became part of the Roman Catholic Church in many cases.  Also, given the Thomistic emphasis of Mascall's writing in particular, it can also prove valuable to study it, keeping in mind the patrimonial aspects of the writing and how they relate to Catholic teaching as a whole.  This is why, as I delve into Mascall's work and share insight here, I will also be making a lot of references in Catholic literature to aspects of his text that relate.  That being said, let us now talk some about who Mascall is before wrapping up this introduction.

Eric Lionel (E.L.) Mascall (1905-1993)

E.L. Mascall was an Anglo-Catholic clergyman who served as the professor of Historical Theology at the University of London, specifically at The King's College, beginning in 1962.  He began his theological studies in 1931 and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1933.  He was a very noted Thomist, and also utilized his mathematical training.  Additionally, he was a great proponent of ecumenical dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.  He was also part of a rich tradition of 20th-century Anglo-Catholic theologians that also included Dom Gregory Dix.  His 1965 text, The Secularization of Christianity, will be the primary reference point of many of my observations as I go through this study with you, although I will also be referencing his other seminal work, The Christian Universe, which was published a year later.  Mascall's observations on Christianity's secularization are practically prophetic as well, and in examining the influences behind how all that happened, I will also be cross-referencing similar trends that happened in the field of Biblical Studies as well, being that theology and Biblical studies are interrelated and were subject to much of the same secularization, as we'll see.  If a contemporary theologian in the Anglican tradition could be compared to Mascall, the closest would be N.T. Wright, although despite Wright's orthodox conservatism on some theological and moral issues, Wright is more in line with Evangelicalism than with the Anglo-Catholic tradition, but the careers of both Wright and Mascall are of interest to note in regard to comparison.  

In the future, I will be taking Mascall's The Secularization of Christianity and discussing it by chapter portions.  Although not a huge book, Mascall's chapters are very lengthy, and it is best to digest them in small bites - the first chapter of the book alone is 39 pages!  At 280 pages of text, it will also take a while to get through, so we are in for a lengthy discussion of Mascall for a while!  Any rate, in the next installment of this series, we'll start on the first chapter of Mascall's seminal book.  

Political Blunders of Internationalists and Big Government

As I write this, I am sitting here watching a documentary on A&E Network about the Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh (1959-1993).  The incident in Waco, TX, where a number of Branch Davidians (including Koresh) were slaughtered by the Federal ATF forces under Bill Clinton's watch, was another in a series of such events enacted by the Clintons in the 1990's, beginning with the Ruby Ridge incident and ending with a wrongly-executed invasion of Kosovo in 1999.  There are a few observations I wanted to make in regard to this whole thing, and let's start. 
This is more of a political post than it is a religious one, but it has some theological implications.

Author Christophe Buffin de Chosal, in his seminal work The End of Democracy (Arcadia, CA: Tumblar House, 2017) notes on page 70 of his book the following: "The state which arrogates to itself this right to discrimination has in fact a weapon capable of annihilating every individual freedom. This state will no longer be under the rule of law."  He notes further on page 137 the following as well: "Furthermore, the democratic state bears within itself an appetite for unlimited power, induced by electioneering and justified by the principle of popular rule."  It also seems that Enlightenment-influenced postmodernism contributes to this rise of the "democratic tyranny," in that as John Horvat II notes in his book Return to Order (York, PA: The American Society for the Preservation of Tradition, Family, and Property, 2013) it has lead to legislative group-think in the name of "diversity" which in reality is not true diversity at all - he states the following on page 40 in regard to this: "In these times with all talk of diversity, never has there been less diversity and more conformity....While all believe themselves to be free and autonomous, never have so many been compelled to think and act in the same politically correct way."  What Horvat is talking about is what is today called "political correctness," which in the name of "diversity" and "individual self-expression" has become instead a totalitarian mindset of which the real message is "if you don't think like us or agree with us, then you have no place."  It is a great violation against the dignity of personhood, and it is the root problem of why incidents such as the Waco Branch Davidian massacre, the Ruby Ridge incident, and the Kosovo invasion happened in the 1990's, and under the Obama administration it is the reason why businesses - the sole proprietary realm of their owners - are punished for refusing to go against the convictions of their owners.  It is also why many of our politicians have no problem criticizing Israel over the Palestinian issue, but those same politicians are only too complicit to accept kickbacks from the Turkish government to suppress recognition of the massacre of millions of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians (and others) in 1915.  They are also all about "Native American rights," but are not too virtuous to continue to occupy homes on land belonging to those same Indians they claim to be fighting for.  Our government's inconsistency also extends internationally, in that while we were fighting to "liberate" Albanian Muslim terrorists in Kosovo, at the same time our government ignored the massacres of South Sudanese Christians by the radical Islamic government (with ties to Al-Qaeda) by saying it was "not our fight."  That statement led a South Sudanese activist, Dr. Dominic Mohammed, to remark rightly, "Are White Muslims of more value (to NATO and the US - my add) than Black Christians?"  Dr. Mohammed is correct of course - with all the fake cries of "racism" that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others have squawked against policemen and others in this nation, they have been stone-silent when it comes to issues in South Sudan; curious, isn't it?  This also has some very strong religious ramifications as well when it comes to the US, and let's discuss that now.

There is no doubt that the Branch Davidians - a radical sect that was a schism from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the year 1935 in part due to the efforts of excommunicated SDA Victor Houteff, a Bulgarian emigree - are a heretical sect.  The fact that Koresh thought himself as "God incarnate" is immediately suspect as cultic, not unlike Jim Jones and others in previous generations. But, the issue is that when the Federal government plays "Inquisitor," it oversteps its bounds.  Koresh was crazy, no doubt a criminal, and the Branch Davidians did have some issues, but the way Janet Reno, the late lesbian attorney general under the Clinton Administration, handled the whole thing was reprehensible at best and downright eerie at worst - if the government has that kind of tendency against the Branch Davidians, who else could it target?  The same is true for the late Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church - that group was anything but Christian, and its "gospel" of hate doesn't in any way represent the Christian position toward certain things.  True Christianity doesn't hate anyone, and although we can actively oppose certain agendas that threaten traditional values, it should never entail hate, death, or injury against our opponents.  We need to understand that the people who are espousing such immorality and odd worldviews are in need of conversion, not elimination, and as human beings - and like all human beings a visible image of an invisible God - they are entitled to the same opportunity and love that the Gospel offers them for salvation.  This is why, based on what I understand from Waco and other things, we need to make some things clear.

Homosexuality is a disordered condition, and the actions associated with it are sinful.  As Christians, we espouse a different worldview that sees the destructive results of these behaviors (including "gay marriage") and in good conscience we cannot affirm those behaviors in any way, shape, or form.  That is why certain businesses which are owned and operated by devout Christians - particularly bakeries - cannot extend certain services to such people.  I don't think that any Christian baker would deny a homosexual patron the right to purchase goods - there is no moral conflict in selling a dozen chocolate chip cookies, a pizza, or a birthday cake to a gay person, and no Christian would see a problem with any of those types of transactions.  Therefore, a Christian businessman would not be opposed to doing business with gays for those types of normal transactions.  But, there are limits to what a Christian can do, and for instance a Christian bookstore would not sell pornography (or at least shouldn't), and a Christian motel owner would probably have a serious issue with a married man fooling around on his wife with his attractive young secretary - such things violate moral conscience, and a professed Christian should have no part in those things.  And, baking a cake for a "gay marriage," or catering banquet services or renting a motel room to a "gay" couple likewise has moral problems for the Christian.  Baking a "gay wedding" cake, in essence, is rightly viewed by the Christian in the same way as a Christian bookstore selling Playboy - it makes no logical sense, and is complete violation of a Christian business owner's core convictions.  As Catholics, this is even more pivotal, in that we believe that marriage is a sacramental union that is the distinct domain of the Church and the state therefore has no right to define or enforce definitions of "marriage" based on the whims and fancies of radicals.  God established at Creation what a marriage is - one man, married to one woman, in a sacramental union that is covenantal and eternal.  Natural law - and Aquinas would affirm this as well - substantiates this fact.  What I find interesting though is how many Darwinian evolutionists support this whole "same-sex marriage" nonsense, but if they were to be completely compatible with their own worldview, it's not even possible there either - despite the efforts of early homosexual activists such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and others to use eugenics and evolution to justify homosexuality as an "evolving third sex," fact is this is illogical.  If you are a true social Darwinist, then you would understand that the idea of "Natural Selection" (survival of the fittest) is in direct opposition to the homosexual agenda - a big part of natural selection, in the Darwinist mindset, is procreation; you need capable partners to produce capable offspring for the propagation of the species, correct?  Well, homosexuals cannot procreate, so that is a problem.  So, without even realizing it, the Darwinist has just affirmed a strong Creationist conviction and Christian belief by standing by the idea that procreation is an integral factor in the "survival of the fittest" and the continuation of the species.   If more homosexuals would look into that realistically, they would see then that it is not only the Christian worldview that sees their lifestyle and behavior as unnatural, but the strictest evolutionist would also come to that same conclusion.  The reason for that is simple - natural law!  Where the Darwinist/evolutionist misses the mark though is the fact that a supernatural God established natural law.  For the Christian this poses no problem, and it also gives a natural underpinning for moral law as well, which has its fullness realized in the person of Christ.  Any rate, I digress.   The point is, getting back to Waco, Westboro, and other weird sects (even Scientology at this point), when the government cracks down and uses unjustified excessive force against the Branch Davidians, and a precedent is set, then what does that mean for the Christian baker who simply refuses to make a "gay wedding" cake?   It goes back to the de Chosal quote, in that a state which arrogates to itself this arbitrary right of discrimination has then at its disposal a destructive weapon that it can employ arbitrarily against anyone it deems "politically incorrect" or "intolerant," and that whole emphasis is being pushed by radicals such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and their ludicrous "Hate Map," and it encourages a nasty "mob rule" that we see with terrorist groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, as well as those acting as "vigilante warriors" such as gay activist Floyd Corkins who in 2013 used the SPLC "Hate Map" to shoot up the Family Research Council's offices.  It then leads to travesties such as Ferguson and Charlottesville, and thus as Horvat noted in the earlier reference it forces more conformity to the worldview of "political correctness" rather than to true diversity, which would allow those who disagree with something to have their position without intimidation and persecution.  What our government did at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990's should serve as a precedent of what could happen, as well as looking at what repressive regimes such as Stalin's, Hitler's, and Mao's did to millions who disagreed with them.  As the late Pontiff, Pope St. John Paul II, notes in his seminal document Veritatis Splendor, "at the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person, who, as the visible image of an invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights which no one may violate - no individual, group, class, nation, or State."  He later affirms that truth and freedom are intrinsically connected, and that this creates an inseparable bond between divine reason and will.  What that means is that just as the homosexual has a right to choose wrongly and is given the dignity of personhood to make that choice (no matter how wrong it is), then that same right is to be extended to the devout Christian who chooses otherwise.  That being said, with the rise of "political correctness" and the entitlement mentality of many, now being legislated by unelected activist judges, there is ample evidence to believe that the United States is no longer a free society - freedom has become for many redefined as the affirmation and open flaunting of personal vice, and is in reality not true freedom at all.  This also presupposes for us that perhaps the current United States system, as it now operates, is becoming more inefficient and in decline by the day.  In time, I think this will become more pronounced as well, and as a whole separate discussion, it is however not a time to fear or despair, as anagogically it heralds a good thing to come.  Ultimately, it puts us closer to the "Blessed Hope" of Christ's return, but in reading the writings of many Church visionaries and saints, both East and West, there may be a season of renewal, a spiritual renaissance, which may reform and clean up the current mess our society is in.  But, that hope, as mentioned, is for a later discussion, as it requires a lot of detail to discuss itself.

Much more can be said, but let's try to summarize.  First, while it is not disputed that David Koresh, Jim Jones, and even David Miscavige of the Scientology cult are evil, deranged men who head (or did head) destructive religious cults, and the Church would rightly condemn their heresies as such, at the same time in reference to Koresh in particular and the whole Branch Davidian/Waco mess, we need to think about government overreach - has our own nation become so rigidly Machiavellian that it would even destroy the most peaceful of dissenters against its agenda?  If so, it means that democracy is not the system of government God intended for us to have, and we need to re-think that radically and maybe consider the possibility of a restoration of traditional values and order as being a vital personal mandate.  We can be eschatologically utopian, staring at the sky for Jesus to return, but what if that doesn't happen for another century or millenium?   It means then that we have a responsibility, and maybe that responsibility should set us upon a path to rediscover what it was that made us as a Christian civilization at one time great, and how to restore those attributes which will re-establish that greatness.  My answer naturally is that a sound and solid monarchy is our best hope, and as a patriotic American, perhaps the most un-American of systems (a king) may be where we preserve the best of what it is to be American.  On that, I would agree with my good friend Charles A. Coulombe and his semi-fictional book Star-Spangled Crown, which I would recommend.  This is the ideal, but there is also a more ominous outcome that could happen too - the scenario in Robert Ferrigno's Prayers for the Assassin, in which America fragments, and large portions of it become an Islamic Caliphate.  If you can do so, please read both books and then decide which you would rather live under - for me, Coulombe's scenario is my choice hands-down, and it is my conviction to aid in seeing that happen for real if at all possible.  Thanks for allowing me to share with you again, and have a blessed Lenten season.