cmccafe's review
5.0
Brague is always such a pleasure to read. This might be the best book of his which I have read so far.
blackoxford's review
1.0
Reversing History
This is a book about Christian faith written by an eminent French intellectual. Its significance lies not in the novelty of its content but in the reputation and position of its author as an endorser of the old time religion of Catholic Christianity. Brague is the new, muscular, provocative voice of the European Religious Right. He is dangerous as an intellectual focal point among religious enthusiasts who have been rocked by scandal in the Church for decades. He is also dangerous politically as a theoretician for the new Christian Europe.
I consider Brague from a definite point of view: The world needs more justice not more faith. Justice is a measurable relation among human beings. Faith is a purported, uncertain relation with God that inhibits justice by distracting from its importance and by actively promoting injustice. Brague’s short book summarises 2000 years of Christian attempts to subjugate justice to faith. Despite its language, the book is a political treatise directed toward the reversal of the gains achieved by liberal democracy over several hundred years.
Faith for Brague, as for all serious believers since St. Paul, is the distinguishing mark of Christianity. Faith, according to Brague, is not to be confused with belief, however. Belief is merely opinion based on imperfect knowledge. Belief can be altered by experience or education. Faith is an act of will which is impermeable to any subsequent events, facts, personal encounters, or emotional states.
The primary object of faith is a God who has our best interests at heart. The interests in question are not our happiness, physical or mental well-being, or stable, fulfilling relationships with other human beings. The real interests of human beings, according to Brague, are those of sanctification, that is, the individual awareness of the reality and nature of the divine as that of love. Not love among human beings but love of and for the divine. The reward of faith is simply more faith, not an improvement in personal or societal life.
This anti-social principle has always been the substance of Christian doctrine. It is not surprising therefore that while Brague has much to say about faith and the distinctive tenets of Christian faith, he has nothing to say about ethics, that is to say, the appropriate behaviour of Christians towards each other and with the rest of the world. This is not incidental. Pauline faith knows nothing of the Sermon on the Mount. Augustine’s famous dictum ‘Love God, then do what you will’ is also infamous for its justification for any number of human horrors from forced conversions to the Holocaust. The battle cry at Beziers of ‘Kill them all, and let God sort it out’ in the 13th century is a representation of this same exaltation of faith.
All Christian churches do a significant amount of earnest hand-waving when it comes to ethics. But almost all of that, like ‘Do unto others...’ (or for that matter the Decalogue), is the residue of Judaic ethics and its commitment to justice. Christianity is about faith and its sanctifying or salvific not its ethical power thanks to St. Paul. Hence Martin Luther’s ‘faith not works’ and the attractiveness of evangelical knowledge to those who don’t want to work for their education. Since the early 13th century, the official policy of the Church, never repudiated, is that this power is denied to those who are not Christians, implying an inherent Christian superiority which is not necessary to demonstrate in action.
So the Church has always temporised about justice. Faith demands that the institution of faith, the Church, be protected at any cost. Justice is preached to others but is entirely absent within the institution. Thus the present continuing scandal of paedophilia and sexual exploitation within the Church. And thus the historical record of the Church in consistently betraying its own members for political advantage - from the Beziers of the Cathars to Hitler’s Munich to the sheltering of the criminal Cardinal Law in the Vatican. Justice in the Church has meant procedural conformity, not human equity. And even this procedural justice is compromised by calls for victims to ‘have faith,’ that is, to patiently endure the lack of justice.
Brague would like to see a world, or at least a European world, of faith. He is not alone. What he and his co-religionists dislike most is what they call ‘relativism’. By this they mean the rejection of faith as an essential element of human flourishing. Like all proponents of faith throughout history, secular as well as religious, they are making a case for totalitarianism. God help us all if he decides to help them.
This is a book about Christian faith written by an eminent French intellectual. Its significance lies not in the novelty of its content but in the reputation and position of its author as an endorser of the old time religion of Catholic Christianity. Brague is the new, muscular, provocative voice of the European Religious Right. He is dangerous as an intellectual focal point among religious enthusiasts who have been rocked by scandal in the Church for decades. He is also dangerous politically as a theoretician for the new Christian Europe.
I consider Brague from a definite point of view: The world needs more justice not more faith. Justice is a measurable relation among human beings. Faith is a purported, uncertain relation with God that inhibits justice by distracting from its importance and by actively promoting injustice. Brague’s short book summarises 2000 years of Christian attempts to subjugate justice to faith. Despite its language, the book is a political treatise directed toward the reversal of the gains achieved by liberal democracy over several hundred years.
Faith for Brague, as for all serious believers since St. Paul, is the distinguishing mark of Christianity. Faith, according to Brague, is not to be confused with belief, however. Belief is merely opinion based on imperfect knowledge. Belief can be altered by experience or education. Faith is an act of will which is impermeable to any subsequent events, facts, personal encounters, or emotional states.
The primary object of faith is a God who has our best interests at heart. The interests in question are not our happiness, physical or mental well-being, or stable, fulfilling relationships with other human beings. The real interests of human beings, according to Brague, are those of sanctification, that is, the individual awareness of the reality and nature of the divine as that of love. Not love among human beings but love of and for the divine. The reward of faith is simply more faith, not an improvement in personal or societal life.
This anti-social principle has always been the substance of Christian doctrine. It is not surprising therefore that while Brague has much to say about faith and the distinctive tenets of Christian faith, he has nothing to say about ethics, that is to say, the appropriate behaviour of Christians towards each other and with the rest of the world. This is not incidental. Pauline faith knows nothing of the Sermon on the Mount. Augustine’s famous dictum ‘Love God, then do what you will’ is also infamous for its justification for any number of human horrors from forced conversions to the Holocaust. The battle cry at Beziers of ‘Kill them all, and let God sort it out’ in the 13th century is a representation of this same exaltation of faith.
All Christian churches do a significant amount of earnest hand-waving when it comes to ethics. But almost all of that, like ‘Do unto others...’ (or for that matter the Decalogue), is the residue of Judaic ethics and its commitment to justice. Christianity is about faith and its sanctifying or salvific not its ethical power thanks to St. Paul. Hence Martin Luther’s ‘faith not works’ and the attractiveness of evangelical knowledge to those who don’t want to work for their education. Since the early 13th century, the official policy of the Church, never repudiated, is that this power is denied to those who are not Christians, implying an inherent Christian superiority which is not necessary to demonstrate in action.
So the Church has always temporised about justice. Faith demands that the institution of faith, the Church, be protected at any cost. Justice is preached to others but is entirely absent within the institution. Thus the present continuing scandal of paedophilia and sexual exploitation within the Church. And thus the historical record of the Church in consistently betraying its own members for political advantage - from the Beziers of the Cathars to Hitler’s Munich to the sheltering of the criminal Cardinal Law in the Vatican. Justice in the Church has meant procedural conformity, not human equity. And even this procedural justice is compromised by calls for victims to ‘have faith,’ that is, to patiently endure the lack of justice.
Brague would like to see a world, or at least a European world, of faith. He is not alone. What he and his co-religionists dislike most is what they call ‘relativism’. By this they mean the rejection of faith as an essential element of human flourishing. Like all proponents of faith throughout history, secular as well as religious, they are making a case for totalitarianism. God help us all if he decides to help them.
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