Nothing Like a Good Book, Part 1 - The Idol of Our Age

Dear Parish Faithful,

I would like to share with everyone some brief reviews of the last three books that I have recently read. These books are:

• The Idol of Our Age - How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity  by Daniel J. Mahoney; 
• Political Orthodoxies - The Unorthodoxies  of the Church Coerced by Fr. Cyril Hovorun; 
• and, Fossils and Faith - The Bible, Creation & Evolution by Lester L. Grabbe. 

All three are quite different, yet each in its own way deals with very contemporary issues that are the source of some fierce debates, to understate the issue. The first book is concerned generally with political philosophy; the second with contemporary challenges that our own Orthodox Church is facing; and the third with the relationship between religion and science. Inevitably, all three address the issue of how theology can either impact or interact with contemporary issues, with the implied claim that without a theological perspective, the subjects raised in these books are missing the "big picture."

From within the Church we realize that a theological perspective on any issue - including social, political and cultural issues - provides depth and a wider scope. We are thus able to grasp these themes sub specie aeternitatis  (under the aspect of eternity).

I am not really providing a detailed critical book review, but more of a summary/synopsis that hopefully encapsulates the primary intention and content of the book under consideration. All books have flaws, but my intention is to simply share some of those themes that provided me with new and insightful perspectives, or which made we think in new ways about the given subject, thus making the effort of reading these books more than a little worthwhile.

The first book I would like to cover is The Idol of Our Age - How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity by Daniel J. Mahoney. According to the book jacket blurb, the author "holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College. He is a specialist in French political philosophy, anti-totalitarian thought, and the intersection of religion and politics."

The author offers a trenchant critique of what he calls "the religion of humanity," a term he claims was initially coined by the 19th century positivist philosopher Auguste Comte. This humanitarian can mimic genuine Christianity and even seem to improve upon it, but Mahoney is determined to prove that to be misleading and misguided. The author's approach is quite interesting, because he engages with, and summarizes the thought of other Christian thinkers and how they almost prophetically addressed the issue of the perils of a humanism devoid of God, and thus of a transcendent basis.

The first thinker is someone I have never heard of, and he is Orestes Browning (1803-1876), a 19th century American who converted to Catholicism and who then tried to provide a meaningful political philosophy for America that was deeply informed by his newly-found faith. Mahoney then surveys the deep insights into these issues offered by two Orthodox thinkers: the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) and the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008). Here I am on more familiar ground, and these two respective chapters did justice to the thought of these seminal Russian thinkers.

The chapter on Vladimir Solovyov really caught my attention, for Mahoney summarized and analyzed Solovyov's fascinating work A Short Story of the Antichrist, a work both prophetic and even phantasmagoric and one that I would highly recommend. A further chapter offers a respectful, but critical reading of some of Pope Francis' recent political statements. And there is also an appended chapter that reprints a very prescient essay written in 1944 by another thinker that I never heard of before, a Hungarian political philosopher by the name of Aurel Kolnai. 

Each thinker in his own way discerned that humanism without God is susceptible to degenerating into an inhuman form of totalitarianism, both from the "left" and from the "right." The twentieth century proved them all correct in their prognoses. Communism and Nazism are the two dreadful devolutions of "the religion of humanity" into a barbaric caricature of a political philosophy theoretically claiming to elevate and liberate humanity. (Although I do not recall any high-minded claims being made by the Nazis, whose thirst for naked power, based on blood and soil, was there from its inception). Such is totalitarianism. As Solzhenitsyn reminded us: Humanity has forgotten God - and the consequences can be horrific. Basically, then, though a secular humanism may appear benign on the surface - just one more choice other than a theistic humanism - the problem proves to be within humanity itself when unleashed from a divine source. As Mahoney writes:

"'Humanity', understood as the very best in human beings, becomes the Grand-Etre to be worshipped by limited and fallible men. Comte has forgotten that what is highest in man finds its ultimate source in what is higher than man. Without deference to the Beings, Forms, and Limits that inform and elevate the human will, man risks becoming a monster to himself, enslaved by his own self-deification." (p. 9)

In his concluding chapter, Mahoney writes the following:

"The totalitarian lie radicalized the subjectivism and relativism at the heart of liberal modernity. It did not so much re-enchant the world as empty it of all the resources of faith and reason. Comprehensive relativism, the denial of God and a natural order of things, and not some alleged moral absolutism is at the source of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century." (p. 124)

So, just to offer the slightest "taste" about - or by - some of the insights from these thinkers, I will include a typical passage from some of them or from the author himself.

In the very Introduction to the book, Mahoney addresses one of the central tenets of the religious of humanity's "creed" - free choice - and finds it wanting in moral and ethical seriousness. He writes: 

"The taking of an unborn life is merely a "choice," which is, one assumes, completely beyond good and evil. ... Free choice, autonomous choice, trumps any respect for the directness of human freedom toward natural ends and purposes. A kind of juvenile existentialism, marked more by farce than angst, has become the default position of our age."  (p. 2)

Orestes Browning, in claiming that the Church can only offer "moral authority" to an existing government - for he resisted any form of "clerocracy" or clerical government - stated a very positive form of that idea in the following manner:

"The only influence on the political or governmental actions of the people which we seek from Catholicity, is that which it exerts on the minds, hearts, and the conscience - an influence it exerts by enlightening the mind to see the true end of man, the relative value of all worldly pursuits, by moderating passions, by weaning the affections from the world, inflaming the heart with true charity, and by making each act in all things seriously, honestly, conscientiously." (p. 30)

Summarizing the thought of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, Mahoney writes:

"True Christianity affirms the truth of pagan nature, the Jewish Covenant, and political reason and political civilization. All are allies in the common struggle against ideology or the demonic falsification of the good." (p. 64)

"Humanitarianism subverts human dignity when it identifies our highest aspirations with a peace and prosperity, a godless philanthropy, shorn of any concern for that which transcends humanity and which ultimately grounds our dignity as spiritual beings." (p. 65)

An underlying thesis in Mahoney's critique of the "religion of humanity" is its blindness toward the power of evil. He explores this theme throughout the book, and very much so in his chapter on Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He informs us that Solzhenitsyn, in resisting what he regarded as Tolstoy's naïve pacifism, argued that evil may at times have to be resisted by war. Thus, one of the characters in his sprawling novel, August 1914, the priest Fr. Severyan, argued that there are five evils even worst than war:

"An unjust trial, for instance, that scalds the outraged heart, is viler. Or murder for gain, when the solitary murderer fully understands the implications of what he means to do and all that the victim will suffer at the moment of the crime. Or the ordeal at the hands of a torturer. When you can neither cry out nor fight back nor attempt to defend yourself. Or treachery on the part of someone you trusted. Or mistreatment of widows or orphans. All these things are spiritually dirtier and more terrible than war."

Whatever one's attitude to war - sometimes or never justified - this is a moving passage indeed on the power of evil and the horrible consequences that occur when unleashed and perhaps, we can add, when not resisted.

This is a very rich book, but perhaps that might be sufficient to at least outline some of the main directions of The Idol of Our Age. Daniel Mahoney has thought this through with a refreshing thoroughness in an age in which we encounter "ideas" in various social media forums or on internet sites in such truncated forms as to render them meaningless; or with a desire no greater than to echo the surrounding popular culture which seems impatient with careful and responsible thinking.

As I said above, all books have their flaws, as this book surely has, and one can find areas of disagreement, with some lingering questions or concerns unanswered, but I found this to be an impressive approach to a very timely and essential issue: Will theism in its Christian expression retain its capacity to shape our moral, ethical and spiritual landscape; or will it be subverted by a "religion of humanity" and the moral, ethical and spiritual uncertainties of where that would lead us?

Daniel Mahoney is an unapologetic Christian thinker and he presents a cogent case - supported by other deep Christian thinkers and writers - for our need to remain vigilant about maintaining a Christian identity and corresponding worldview that places us firmly and humbly under the sovereignty and providence of God.

Next Review: Political Orthodoxies by Fr. Cyril Hovorun