The Secularization of Christianity Part VII - Cultural Influence or Contamination?

While there is no doubt that some cultural influence will impact the Church through the ages - which isn't a bad thing, and may even be necessary in some areas - at the same time we need to be able to differentiate between influence and contamination.  The Christian tradition has always sought to appropriate those things which are not in conflict with Scripture or doctrine, and in doing so it can be perfectly acceptable to incorporate certain cultural aspects without compromise of faith.  Over the centuries for instance, the adaptation of such things as pipe organs, Sunday Schools, and other innovations have actually served to benefit the mission of the Church.  However, even here discernment must be advised, because some things which may not conflict with faith convictions in principle may actually conflict in practice, and this is where we have issues a lot of times (the "grey areas," if you will).  Beginning on page 27 of Mascall's text, he sort of addresses this very issue in regards to such things as philosophical inquiry, and it warrants a bit of discussion in regard to that.

If one accepts the Thomistic position that nature and Revelation work together (as I certainly do), it presupposes that God orders things in the universe in concert with human free will.   Everything, therefore, has its time and place for occurring in history.  In the case of the first coming of our Lord for instance, a number of factors facilitated the perfect time for that event occurring, as well as for the subsequent spread of the Gospel and the growth of the Church.  The Greco-Roman world, for instance, had many centuries of both technological and philosophical preparation for this - when Plato talked in his writings about the "Good," for instance, it piqued a curiosity in his readers for what that ultimate "Good" really was, and made them receptive to the Gospel some centuries later.  We see that reflected in Scripture with St. Paul in Acts 17:16-34, when Paul visited Athens and noted there was a statue to an "unknown god" there among the pantheon of pagan deities.  Many who study this passage have unanimously concluded that the philosophical tradition that existed many centuries prior facilitated the construction of such a monument, and St. Paul in his wisdom capitalized on that by making the "unknown god" known by introducing them to the Savior of mankind.  Also, the Roman infrastructure aided in a more efficient evangelistic effort, and in time the desperation of an empire in decay led to Rome itself becoming Christian too.  This is but one example among many, and shows how God can utilize human technological and philosophical conventions to reach lost humanity.  Of course, the down side to this was that it also created syncretism and heresy, which is evident from the beginning with Gnostic sects and other such groups.  We see this later on as well in the influence of the Averroist mindset among some, and a brief discussion of this is warranted now.

Averroes is a Latinized name of an Arab Islamic Aristotelian philosopher named Ibn Rushd (1126-1198).  The major focus of Averroes's work was to demonstrate that reason took precedence over faith, in direct contrast to Aquinas, who taught that nature was perfected by Revelation.  A Christianized version of this was later advanced by Marsilus of Padua (1275-1342), whose anti-papal work Defensor Pacis (1324) blazed a trail for the secularization of the West we see today.  Marsilus advocated for subjecting the Church to the state, and in doing so civil peace then becomes the ultimate aim.  While he rightly perceived monarchy as a "good regime," it was in purely temporal terms - like Averroes before him, revelation is subordinate to nature, and faith is subordinate to reason - this meant then that for Marsilus heavenly economy was only relevant as far as it served earthly goals, and thus the spirit serves the body (Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, p. 29).  This meant then that religion had to be redefined in order to support these goals - religion for him was a product of philosophers to secure civil order, and divine revelation and the supernatural was downplayed.  This led to the phenomenon of what would be known later as "civil religion," where the Church becomes subordinate to the state to be used by the state for imposing civil order.  Religion then would become secularized to serve this world, and anagogical hope was seen as impractical at best (Hahn and Wiker, p. 31).  More could be said about Marsilus, but the "rub" here is that his subordination of religion to civil order and his stripping of the supernatural in favor of the temporal aided in a growing secularization of Christianity and may have contributed to many problems we see today.  At this point, we now turn back to Mascall's text. 

As established earlier, and as Mascall affirms on page 27, Christian truth and Greco-Roman/Hellenistic thought cross-fertilized each other, and as part of God's kerygmatic plan, He utilizes aspects of Greco-Roman thought to convey the Gospel to culture.  As Mascall also mentions in the same paragraph, the Church was able to salvage and incorporate the best aspects of Greco-Roman culture and mold them to her purposes.  While Fundamentalist Protestants, with their often misguided mantra of Sola Scriptura, often in varying degrees decry this, it is actually necessary and also affirms the Thomistic principle that God created nature as well, saw it as good, and then used supernatural grace to elevate and perfect it for His good.  And, despite some Fundamentalist objections, they themselves have done the same thing without realizing it.  What is interesting though, as Mascall really elaborates on page 28, is that while the Church transformed certain aspects of culture by supernatural grace, God utilized those same perfected aspects to give the Church a clearer understanding of her own mission too.  As we established at the beginning of this installment, and as Mascall actually affirms on page 28, this was taking place centuries before the Incarnation happened, as there was a sort of cross-fertilization of Semitic (Hebraic) and Hellenistic cultures happening thanks in part to the efforts of Alexander the Great, who Hellenized much of the civilized world - God entered that environment, and began an inner transformation of it that worked itself out over time. Of course, this had its pros and cons too, as Mascall continues on page 29, and this is seen in the earliest decades of the Church with Christological heresies and the difficulties of non-Jewish cultures to embrace the idea that the "flesh" (Greek sarx) was in reference to not only the material part of human nature, but also to it as a whole.  As Mascall notes on Page 30, God works in collaboration with human freedom rather than against it, and therefore it was the vocation so to speak of the Greco-Roman world to give intellectual formation to the Christian faith, and the aspects of other cultures add other attributes to it as they encounter it as well.  The challenge is, as the Vatican II pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes addresses, how to do this in such a way that it respects the freedom of the individual without compromising the core message?  This has led to the source of many endless debates among Christians of all traditions, as well as some rather bizarre contextualization in certain cases which unfortunately falls short of maintaining the integrity of revealed Truth - examples of this are especially evident in areas of sexual ethics, in that on one hand homosexuality is affirmed as a "gift from God" by groups such as the Metropolitan Community Churches, or the homosexual as a person is rejected and condemned unilaterally by other sects such as the late Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church (the whole "God Hates Fags" issue).   Both of these approaches are very wrong, and both must be rejected by orthodox Christian teaching.  The balanced approach in this issue is to see homosexuality as a blemish against nature, and a concupiscent fruit, but at the same time the redemption Christ offers as affirmed by the Kerygma is available for any person who is bound by homosexuality as Christ loves the person but not necessarily the action or the proclivity - the role of supernatural grace, therefore, is to help a person in that situation to discover what God intends for them to be, and to provide the means of being healed, perfected, and elevated.  Another area as well is the issue of polygamy - some sects (Fundamentalist Mormons) in the western United States see polygamy as acceptable because the Old Testament is either silent on it or seemingly accommodating to it.  Unfortunately, some "Christian polygamists" have also taken this approach as an evangelistic tool to supposedly "reach" Mormons engaged in that lifestyle.  This too is wrong, in that nothing in Scripture actually promotes polygamy, and God's silence or apparent toleration of it doesn't imply His blessing either.  This is why both Scripture and Tradition are important, in that together they clean up ambiguities and provide a balanced answer to the problem based on the general consensus of Church teaching over the centuries.  This then means, as Mascall points out on page 31, that other cultural contexts in addition to providing their own contributions to the Holy Tradition of the Church, will also due to concupiscent human nature produce heresies of their own endemic to their culture.  Where I would possibly differ with Mascall though is that no heresy is inherently new - heresies can be repackaged, "tweeked," and contextualized, but at its core it is still the same old heresy in that it is a fruit of fallen human nature.  For instance, take a sect like the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Charles Taze Russell, who founded that sect in the 19th century, claimed "special revelation" but in reality he embraced a heresy that characterized Arius in the 3rd century - it was in reality the same old thing but in different packaging.  Those annoying Jehovah's Witnesses that like to rap on our door at inconvenient times are doing the same thing the Arian missionary Ulfilas did centuries before among pagan Teutonic people.  It proves simply that Satan is not original in his tactics, but is clever enough to prey on gullible human nature to present the same old lie in a nice new wrapping.

Mascall gives, beginning on page 32, an excellent missionary strategy to engage "unreached" cultures that he sums up in three principles, and they are as follows:

1.  Clarity is essential, in particular concerning the distinction between the substance of the ancient doctrine and its formulation.  There is to be no compromise in substance, in other words.

2.  While we should not strive to make "cookie-cutter" clones of ourselves among others by imposing our own cultural setting upon those people (a weakness of American Evangelical Protestantism, I regret to say), at the same time we must be ready and enthusiastic about sharing with them the blessings which we have received in the course of our own Christian history (or, the power of the testimony, in other words, which inspires the hearer). 

3. We need to encourage new formulations and expressions which we could never have produced for ourselves, but from which we may profit as others produce them.

Mascall beautifully states the whole reality in one statement following this on page 32 - there is not a separate European Christianity, or an Asian Christianity, or an African Christianity, etc.  There is one Christianity, and as Ephesians 4:5 reminds us, there is but one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.  This is also affirmed by Romans 12:4-5, which says the Body of Christ has many members, and although all members have their own unique functions, they work together for each other.  Likewise, Mascall correctly states that the Church transcends time - there is no first-century Christianity, nor is there a twenty-first century Christianity - there is one Christianity, and its embodiment in the Church transcends time and generations.  Ultimately, the Church is to be looked at as more of a stew than as a boiled potato, to use culinary terminology - many ingredients have enriched the recipe, although in some cases some of those ingredients by themselves may be unsavory; however, in combination with other ingredients, their full flavor is brought out and contributes to the overall richness of the dish.  In this age when racial divide (thanks to Obama and some like him!) has ripped our culture to shreds, this message of universality in the Church is needed, and the Church can transform the divisiveness of culture if it is allowed to do so.  Unfortunately, secularism has tainted that too - racist "liberation theologies," whether espoused by neo-Nazis like the late "Christian Identity" demagogue Richard Butler, or the "Black Liberation Theology" of the equally racist Black theologian James Cone, are the ultimate evil and distortion of the Kerygma, and authentic Christianity needs to reject those unilaterally as contrary to traditional Church teaching and Scriptural proclamation.  To put it in a secular context, it is important to understand that not only do "Black Lives Matter," but all lives matter to Christ, as He died for all and is, to quote Scripture from Acts 10, no respecter of persons based on externals.  Jesus is about the soul and heart, not the color of one's skin, or what is concealed under one's underwear, or what accent one speaks in.  Differences exist for a reason, and they are not to be used to divide or dominate others - rather, through supernatural grace, we learn to see our own unique composition as good, but also appreciate and respect the uniqueness of others as well.  We are, remember, created in the visible image of an invisible God who Himself was made visible to reconcile us to our Creator (Himself) through His Incarnation, death, and Resurrection.  That being said, it is therefore the Church that is the conduit of supernatural grace that transforms the cultures it permeates without demeaning what makes those same cultures unique.

The final two observations in this section Mascall makes on pages 34 and 35 have to do directly with secularism itself.  The two observations are as follows:

1. Asia presents a unique set of circumstances of its own in that it is home to deep-rooted philosophical and religious systems (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, etc.) which are as old as (if not older than) those of Europe and Africa.  Although these systems have elaborate social and religious patterns, in many cases the indigenous thought of a philosophical type is absent at best and confusing at worst.

2. As far as Europe's influence upon Africa and Asia as far as outlook on life goes, unfortunately Christianity is not the only option that Europe has introduced. Secularism, which in many cases has usurped Christianity's impact, is a product of both Europe and America that has made a disastrous but huge impact upon traditional values and thought in other areas of the world, as well as decimating Christianization of its home realms.  Its bi-products are Marxism and corporatism in many cases, which diminish the dignity of personhood and are often antagonistic toward Judeo-Christian morality.

As far as the last is understood, we see that more in our time even than we did during the time Mascall authored his text, and this presents a growing problem in areas of faith and morals - with the adaptation of "political correctness," as well as the aggressive pushing of the LGBT agenda and the "convenience" of abortion which permeates entertainment, news, and athletics, the Church is now for the first time ever faced with a crisis for its own existence.  Christians are often seen as "inconvenient barriers of change" in regard to progressive agendas, and a concerted effort is underway to undermine, marginalize, and discredit Christianity in modern society.  Unfortunately, there are liberal and progressive voices within Christendom who want to embrace this agenda, and they are what Mascall is referring to by the title of his work, "The Secularization of Christianity," and as can be seen this is not something that has happened overnight - it has deep roots, and when one realizes the original temptation and lies of the Fall in Genesis 3 - the selfish and self-centered delusion of one's own deity (which is false) and thus the genesis of what we know now as "humanism" - it brings into perspective that Christianity vs. secularism is a war which will not cease until Jesus Himself returns and supernatural grace finishes its task of restoring the world to what God intended.  More of this will be brought out as we continue Mascall's study in subsequent chapters.