Andrew Klavan is a novelist and filmwriter, who has also become a conservative commentator. Klavan converted to Christianity at the age of 49. At his New Jerusalem substack, he has posted an essay entitled We’ve Won. Now What? Notes from a Foot Soldier in the Culture War.
Though he has sometimes criticized Donald Trump, Klavan exults in his victory. He looks back over his life, saying that he became a conservative–despite the harm that did to his career in Hollywood and publishing– not so much because of politics but because of the cultural radicalism that had taken over academia, journalism, and the entertainment industry. “To me, Trump’s victory meant simply this: we beat them. Skirmish by skirmish, we exposed their oppressive philosophies, their abuses of power, and their ceaselessly dishonest mangling of history, news and national mythology.”
So what now? Having successfully accomplished the negative work of debunking and defeating the radicals, Klavan says that conservatives must now do the positive work of truth-telling in journalism, art, and culture. For himself, though, Klavan says that now he wants to concentrate on knowing God.
Even here, though, he sees the beginning of a recovery, citing some of the signs we have blogged about. Klavan sees, though, a few things that need to happen. “As in the political sphere, our job is no longer to debunk the non-believers, it is to rediscover what it means to believe. The ancient and medieval wisdoms and orthodoxies are important, but there are more basic questions that have to be answered before thinking non-believers can even put their toe in those deep waters.”
He lists four issues. I’ll list them, quoting and paraphrasing Klavan, then adding my thoughts in italics:
1. Heart Vs. Mind. “Science, technology and capitalism are so responsive to the work of intellection that they have lifted reason above its station. . . .We must renew the rituals and practices that can re-open our eyes to a love beyond reason.”
True, as far as it goes, including the part about “rituals.” But I want to return to this.
2. Inside Vs Out. “For centuries, materialist thinkers have sought to find the source of spiritual reality within the mind of man. . . .The basic idea was that spiritual truth is a psychic creation rather than an outward reality.”
“Not so,” Klavan says. “We see God through a glass darkly, but his incarnation in Christ is proof that what we see is really there.” But what do we do with angels, demons, answered prayers, and other things difficult for people today to get their minds around. How can we believe in the objectivity of spiritual reality without descending into superstition or rejecting them and descending back into rationalism?
Here Klavan makes his best point. We have to stop thinking of religion in terms of subjective experiences or values that are just inside our heads. Rather, we must realize that religion has to do with objective reality. Nancy Pearcey has chronicled how ever since the Enlightenment, religion has been consigned to the interior life of the mind, leaving the outside realm of nature, physical life, and the world to reason and science, thereby stripping it of meaning and significance.
But how does Klavan’s first point, that we must bring back the heart over against a spiritually-dead reason, fit with his second point, that we must recover the sense that spirituality is not just inside us, but outside of us?
I think we need to bring these realms together, to regain the sense that the inner and the outer, the heart and the mind, are not polar opposites, but rather two complementary facets of reality. Today’s science, particularly quantum physics, reveals nature to be far more complex and one might say miraculous than can be comprehended by a reductive reason alone.
In an age of reason, we must indeed re-emphasize the heart, but today the heart is surely ruling, as the postmodernists Klavan complains about are insisting that truth itself is a mental construction. Even today’s religions tend to fixate on inner experiences and psychological benefits. When it comes to religion, recovering the “outer” requires the return of doctrine, which includes a role for reason. But it also requires revelation, which helps us avoid the reductive, demystifying effect of reason. This, in turn, means learning to accept the “outer” reality that revelation discloses, including angels, demons, and the efficacy of prayer.
3. Symbol vs Reality. Here I am not quite sure what Klavan is saying, so I’ll quote most of what he says and let you help me to understand it:
The thesis of all religion is that there is an invisible reality that our world reveals and symbolizes. Transcendental values like love, justice and mercy must be made manifest in human word and deed. But what are the limits? It’s lovely to say a husband and wife represent Christ and the church, but is that what he’s thinking when he’s chasing her around the bedroom? (I hope not!)
While living into transcendentals can elevate our behavior, inhuman restrictions based on metaphor can be immiserating, inflame doctrinal hatred and give fuel to the arguments of unbelievers. Can we discuss ecumenicism, interfaith cooperation, and various other species of tolerance and deviance without either moral surrender or bullying self-certainty?
Is he saying that we need to figure out what is symbolic and what is real in religion? In my experience, when people say, “that’s just symbolic,” they imply that we don’t need to worry about it. They stop short of thinking through “what truth is the symbol expressing?”
Klavan thinks it’s “lovely” to say that marriage represents Christ and the church, but not when it comes to actual sex. But sex is exactly what the Bible is talking about in bringing up the connection between marriage and Christ and the church. See Ephesians 5:31-32, which speaks of the “one flesh” union that sex creates in marriage and that points to the union of Christ and the church, which is described as His body. Marriage is not just a symbol or a metaphor of Christ and the church. Rather, both are objective realities, with the spiritual being foundational for the earthly.
I think Klavan is also hung up on a problem for many Protestants, their confusion about the sacraments. At Marburg, Luther said, quoting Jesus and Scripture, that the bread in Holy Communion is the body of Christ. Zwingli said that the bread symbolizes the body of Christ, a view that has come to dominate Protestantism. Even Klavan’s Anglicanism, generally thought of as being quite sacramental, teaches that a sacrament is “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” There is that “outward” and “inward” distinction again. Lutherans, though, teach that the sacraments are not only signs but “efficacious signs” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, article 13) that actually convey grace and create that inward faith.
This view brings together symbol and reality, inside and out, heart and mind, which I think is what Klavan is intending, though he seems to be speaking of resolving one end of the polarity in favor of the other.
4. Orthodoxy vs Individuality. Klavan recognizes the importance of orthodoxy, but is concerned that since each individual’s spiritual journey is unique, that will sometimes conflict with church orthodoxy. He asks, “Can we allow the beauty of the single soul to thrive in a church of true faith?”
Well, again, the goal should be to bring these polarities together. There is nothing contradictory about an orthodox church and a personal faith. “True faith” is what the individual receives by means of the Word and Sacraments in an orthodox church. The “beautiful soul” may have gone through a long and varied “journey,” but the whole point of a journey is to arrive somewhere definite.
Photo: Andrew Klavan by Embutler – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66884337