<\/p>
Christopher Dawson, who died in 1970, was one of the leading historians of the twentieth century. A devout Roman Catholic, hededicated his career, and some 25 books, to understanding andexplaining history, particularly Western history, from aChristian perspective. One little book, Christianity and the New Age, provides a glimpse of thewisdom of this remarkable writer. <\/p>\n
Originally published in 1931, \u201cChristianity and the New Age\u201d does not deal directly with the popular neo-paganism that has recently been going under the label of \u201cNew Age.\u201d Rather, Dawson focuses on the decades around the beginning of this century, which he sees as amajor turning point in Western history. It was a time, he says, when liberalism and nationalism, which had dominated the 19th century, \u201chad won their long fight with the old [Christian]order, but they had lost their own ideals.\u201d <\/p>\n
These decades saw the collapse of the humanism that hadarisen with the Renaissance, a collapse that, Dawson argues, was inevitable because of the inherently self-destructive nature of humanism. Medieval men rooted their lives in the \u201csupernatural.\u201d Renaissance men, by contrast, \u201crejected their dependence on the supernatural,\u201d but this \u201cself-affirmation of man gradually led to the denial of the spiritual foundations of his freedom andknowledge.\u201d Humanism is a parasite, stealing what life it hasfrom its Christian host. The end result of humanism divorced from Christianity is man \u201cstripped of his glory and freedom and left as a naked human animal shivering in an inhuman universe.\u201d (I suspect the Renaissance, at least in some sectors, was more friendly to Christianity than Dawson suggests.) <\/p>\n
Once Western man had uprooted his social and cultural lifefrom its Christian moorings, the way was opened for various forms of materialism. Hence, Marxism became the \u201cquasi-religious\u201d driving force of much of the world. More immediately dangerousto the West, however, is its passive acceptance of \u201cthe practicalmaterialization of culture.\u201d <\/p>\n
In this context, Dawson has some harsh words for the \u201cmechanization\u201d of life in this century, but he is not an opponent of technological progress; rather, \u201cthe disease of modern civilization lies neither in science nor in machinery, but in the false philosophy with which it has been associated.\u201d Indeed, in one of his most dramatic insights, Dawson says that the machine is \u201ca vindication of spiritual order,\u201d both because it is an artefact of Christian culture and \u201csince it frees man from his age-long \u2018animal\u2019 condition of dependence on nature andmaterial circumstance.\u201d Thus, \u201cthe restoration of man to his true position as the master of nature and the organizer of the material world, which is the function of science, corresponds in the natural order to the spiritual restoration of human nature initself, which is the work of Christianity in the supernatural order.\u201d <\/p>\n
Prophetically, Dawson recognized that Western man could not construct the totally materialistic culture that humanism desired. He argues that \u201chowever far back we go in history, and however primitive is the type of culture, we do find evidence for the existence of specifically religious needs and ideas of thesupernatural.\u201d Because \u201cman cannot live by reason alone,\u201d Dawson predicted that Western man would be \u201cdriven to take refuge in the non-rational.\u201d <\/p>\n
The great strength of Dawson\u2019s work is that he not only diagnoses the West\u2019s illnesses but he also prescribes a cure. The problem facing the West, he says, is how \u201cspiritual experience is to be brought into living relation with human life and with the social order.\u201d Simply put, the cure, the solution, is Christianity, because Christianity alone among the world\u2019s religions \u201cbrings the spiritual world into vital and fruitful communion with the life of man.\u201d <\/p>\n
If Christianity is to be brought into relation to society, however, several false conceptions of Christianity must be rejected. Dawson castigates Christians who regard their faith as \u201ca limited department of life, which ha[s] no jurisdiction overthe rest,\u201d and warns that pietism, which divorces religious experience from doctrine, weakens and discredits the ethical side of Christianity, and leaves Christianity vulnerable to attack. <\/p>\n
Instead, Christianity must be proclaimed in its totality. It \u201calone among the great faiths of the world was essentially based on the belief in a Holy Society.\u201d Even in the Old Testament, Israel was intended to be \u201cthe source of a universal Kingdom of God, which should embrace all nations, and in whichthe creative purpose of God should find its ultimatefulfillment.\u201d Jesus did not come proclaiming a retreat from human life and society, but the coming of a \u201cnew order inaugurated by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus,\u201d in short, \u201cthe mystical and spiritual reign of God in humanity . . . .already immanent in the present order, which it is destined totransform and supersede-it is a leaven and a seed and a hidden treasure.\u201d This new order is already \u201cincorporated in a spiritual society,\u201d so that \u201cthe Church was itself the future kingdom in embryo.\u201d <\/p>\n
The goal of this new order, Dawson argues, is \u201cnothing less than the re-creation of humanity.\u201d Dawson argues that, since the Christian is a citizen of two realms, \u201cevery Christian mind is a seed of change so long as it is a living mind,\u201d and \u201ca Christian has only to \u201cbe in order to change the world.\u201d Thus, \u201cit is the function of theChurch to sow this divine seed, to produce not merely good men, but spiritual men-that is to say, supermen.\u201d Thus the Church \u201cis the organ through which the Spirit enters the social process and builds up a new humanity. The spirit breathes and they are created and the face of the earth is renewed.\u201d <\/p>\n
I cannot agree with everything in this book. Dawson is very uncharitable and inaccurate in his treatment of Protestantism,and there is some typically Roman Catholic mysticism. But overall, there is more wisdom in this little book than in many fat volumes of secularist history or philosophy. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christopher Dawson, who died in 1970, was one of the leading historians of the twentieth century. A devout Roman Catholic, hededicated his career, and some 25 books, to understanding andexplaining history, particularly Western history, from aChristian perspective. One little book, Christianity and the New Age, provides a glimpse of thewisdom of this remarkable writer. Originally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n