The Secularization of Christianity Part XI - Decay and Decline as Endemic of Secularization

As we continue this study, I must note from the outset and reiterate what I established at the beginning - Mascall's book is a roadmap for my own perspective in these matters, as he provides a skeleton upon which I can then construct a thesis for this series.  Therefore, the purpose of what I am doing here is not to be a page-by-page review of Mascall's text, but rather to capitalize on key ideas he is expressing and then elaborate on them.  Mascall's work was written over 50 years ago, so a lot has happened.  However, many of the things he discusses are even more relevant now than they were  when the book was published, and that is where my perspective comes in.

I want to begin this part of the study by picking up on page 45 of Mascall's text, where he notes that Paul van Buren (who we examined earlier) finds as his guiding principle for the secularization of Christianity what Mascall notes as a philosophical school called linguistic analysis.  When discussing linguistic analysis, it is important to define what it is first.  Essentially, it is a philosophical position that takes language itself, rather than the subject matter discussed, as a primary focus of study.  Looking at this from the outset, problems immediately surface in regard to this approach that van Buren and others seemed to favor, as it doesn't make logical sense.  First, the focus of study is the subject matter, and the language it is expressed in is merely the vehicle to communicate it.  It is therefore an excuse for an elitist to discredit something they loathe based on language rather than the topic of discussion, and by nitpicking language, the person advancing this pseudo-philosophical position is in essence trying to justify their own biases by redefining the language in order to discredit the subject.  For academia to even consider this approach is somewhat ludicrous, as it detracts from scholarly inquiry by focusing on minutiae.  Unfortunately, however, this has become commonplace in even theological and philosophical circles, and it has in a sense "dumbed-down" the learning process.  There is a discussion of Bultmann's agenda regarding this, and a critique that Mascall references of Bultmann's agenda by A.M. Farrer notes that this agenda of Bultmann's can be broken down into two parts:

1.  For Bultmann, the biblical presentation of the Gospel is given in mythological terms which are unintelligible and unacceptable to modern man, due to the fact that modern man doesn't believe in a three-tiered universe, divine intervention, or a world of spirits.  Therefore, for Bultmann, the Gospel must be "demythologized."  There is a familiar ring to this, as it was advanced by many others prior to Bultmann.   Starting with Descartes, for instance, the methodology of faith is redefined by a new understanding of nature by essentially politicizing Scripture (going back to Marsilus and Machiavelli) initially and then cosmologically applying that same process to cosmology - it mechanizes nature, in other words, and ignores supernatural revelation (Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, pp. 258, 264).  This was later elaborated on some centuries later by D.F. Strauss, who proposed that is historicity is denied, then the account must therefore by mythical (Hahn and Wiker, p. 553).  For Strauss then, what it means is the forging of philosophical truths out of myths (ibid., p. 554).  It therefore reduces Scripture to the this-worldly, and political/social progress rather than the truth of divine Revelation becomes the focus of Scripture. 

2.  In the second part of Bultmann's agenda, once the demythologizing has been accomplished, man's religion is restored to him in the existential act of faith, evoked from the Kerygma, which Bultmann asserts as some quasi-utopian goal of the morality of the Kerygma divorced from its reality - this is taking Spinoza's proposal of confining religion to its "proper place" in society to the max, in that it becomes a lofty moral imperative rather than historical fact as well.  Hilaire Belloc, in his seminal work The Servile State, notes that the problem of this idea is as he states on page 53:  "This moral strain comes from a contradiction between the realities of {the} Capitalist and the moral base of our laws and traditions" (Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State.  London:  T.N. Foulis, 1912 - reprint 2008 by Seven Treasures Publications).  What Belloc means by this is that when religious faith is secularized, for instance, it loses an important dimension that Bultmann and others seem to either ignore or not care about.  It is also the realized vision of Machiavelli's use of religion for political prestige.   What Bultmann and others miss by their "demythologizing" and use of linguistic analysis as a philosophical basis is what Russian thinker Ivan Ilyin notes in his classic text The Singing Heart:  "And when the atheists ask us why we don't see Him with our physical eye, we answer that is precisely because we do not hallucinate.  We perceive Him not with our body, not with our senses, but with our spirit, through our spiritual experience, and with our spiritual vision.  It is pointless, naive, and primitive to imagine that the only realities are those accessible through our five senses" (Ivan Ilyin, The Singing Heart.  Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate, 2005.  English translation published by Orthodox Christian Translation Society, Memphis, TN, in 2006, p. 87).   Ilyin makes an important point that Bultmann and others like him miss - the Christian faith is not subject to "demythologizing," and neither is Scripture, simply because divine Revelation mysteriously encompasses supernatural as well as natural reality.  Just because we don't see or experience it tangibly, in other words, doesn't make it any less real.  What this means then is that Bultmann's "demythologized Christianity or religion" is not true religion at all, but merely a shell of itself.

The weird thing about Bultmann in regard to this, as Mascall points out on page 46, is that while he practically jettisons almost all the historicity of the Gospels, in particular its miraculous and supernatural elements, he oddly accepts the fact of the Crucifixion and the historicity of Jesus as a real person.   The paradox though of this is that Jesus is reduced to merely a revolutionary then who was martyred for his radical proposals to reform society (later expounded in other directions by racist "liberation theologians" such as James Cone).  However, Bultmann's positions are somewhat mild as compared with his proteges, as is usually the case - it is not unusual for a radically liberal theologian from a generation later to go further than those who mentored them.  The one that Mascall notes in particular is Fritz Buri (1907-1995) who went further than Bultmann in denying not only the "mythological" aspects of the Gospel, but the very Kerygma itself.  Buri was a Swiss Reformed clergyman and professor of theology who also studied under Martin Werner (1887-1964), a Swiss Reformed theologian who was influenced by Albert Schweitzer and thus reduced Jesus to a mythical social reformer rather than God the Son who was incarnated to bring salvation to the world.  Whereas Bultmann at least attempted to hold onto some semblance of Christian belief, Buri didn't even have the pretense of doing so - he was a thoroughly secularized theologian divorced from Christian faith.  This even led to his receiving a rebuke in 1962 from Karl Barth of all people, who saw Buri's position as simply "unbelievable," describing it essentially as a prettily-packaged Christology that was in reality reduced to mere anthropology ("Fritz Buri" at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Buri - Accessed 3/20/2018).  Buri has much in common with van Buren then, as like van Buren he is concerned only with secularizing the faith of Christians and thus has no pretensions about his objective.  Mascall notes that van Buren's assertion of "a conversation from 'faith to faith'" is in reality the conversion by the secularist from the Christian faith as traditionally understood to a more "secularized" faith that is essentially "Christian" in name only. 

What we see here is a slippery slope of secularism that began with the Enlightenment and found its fullest manifestation in what is essentially a "secularized Christianity," gutted of its supernatural dimension and "demythologized" in order to make it more palatable to secular outlooks.  But, the writer G.K. Chesterton offers some hope, in that the Church is Christ's, and despite the onslaught of secularization, there is a quality of the Christian Church that she shares with her Bridegroom, and Chesterton expresses that sentiment in his seminal The  Everlasting Man when he writes the following:  "Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave" (G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.  Rough Draft Publishing, 2013 {Reprinted from original}, p. 160).  And, if one does believe Scripture is truthful (as a devout Christian should) then we have hope in that in the end, God wins.  And, that leads me into a few closing thoughts as we end this part of the study.

The secularist is a fruit of the Fall as recorded in Genesis 3 - although the secularist may deny the reality of the supernatural and even the existence of a transcendant God, in reality the secularist has bought into the old lie of the serpent - "you shall become gods."  There is really no such thing as a true atheist, and human nature really doesn't allow for the existence of a true atheism - man has a sense that something must drive his destiny, even if it's his own reasoning, and therefore everyone ends up worshipping something whether they admit it or not.  However, there is only one true God, and denying His existence or re-writing it in secular terms doesn't diminish that fact.  When the secularist though tries to take on the facade of "Christian" as a theologian, it presents a problem for that person in that they cannot worship two masters unless conflict happens within their own being.  So, in order to make things more "comfortable" the "secular Christian" diminishes God by redefinition of traditionally understood norms, and "demythologizing" those things which conflict with one's agenda.   This is the ultimate attribute evident in the theologies of Bultmann, Buri, van Buren, and a host of others like them.  Bottom line, the Kerygma is complete, and is to be accepted as a whole - the supernatural as well as the moral.  If one is ditched at the expense of the other, it produces a false Gospel, and in time it unravels because it is missing what keeps it together.  This will be discussed more in the series as we continue the study, and hopefully it may even have evangelistic fruit by exposing the folly and futility of divorcing Christian morality from supernatural reality simply because it doesn't compute with one's natural reasoning.  Maybe it is time such people realize that not everything is going to be tangibly understood, as some things transcend nature without either contradicting or denying it.