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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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You're saying christianity forces us to believe dogmatic, but positivistically void claims like "the bread becomes flesh in an abstract manner". Progressivism, meanwhile, forces us to believe Jamaicans and Jews are equally fast at sprinting.

I guess that's true if you compare catholicism to wokeism, which is a fundamentalist branch of progressivism. But, as always, I'm not sure I agree with NRx that extreme blank slatism and communism were inevitable extrapolations of liberalism; that as soon Jefferson penned "all men are created equal", CRT and HAES were a matter of time. I think, if backed into a corner, progressives can reduce their claims to abstract, unfalsifiable ones, just as christians did.

Catholics believe man was created in God's image — this idea is safe, because scientists will never capture God in a dragnet for analysis. In the same way, early, non-fundamentalist liberals believed all men housed an ineffable equal dignity — this idea is also safe, because the human-rights-granting organ apparently can't be found via autopsy.

Evolution and HBD imply that catholics and liberals are wrong. But it's merely in the way that seeing a man living in a slum implies that he's poor; without seeing his bank account, one can come up with any number of excuses why he's actually a billionaire who chooses to live in a shack.

I'm not sure I agree with NRx that extreme blank slatism and communism were inevitable extrapolations of liberalism; that as soon Jefferson penned "all men are created equal", CRT and HAES were a matter of time.

To clarify the timeline, the Identicals have been preaching and attempting to enforce blank slatism, and the erasure of all distinctions whatever, for thousands of years before Jefferson was even born.

The identicals force us to believe that being is identical to nothing. That p = !p in the literal and metaphysical sense. Kabbalah did it, the gnostics and hermetics did it, Hegel ("Nothing is, therefore...altogether the same as, pure being.") said so, and so on. Blank slatism and HAES are just modern Identicals finding new domains in which they can enforce the belief that everything is really just the same as everything else. Fat is healthy. All people are equally capable of all things. p = !p.

Catholics believe man was created in God's image — this idea is safe, because scientists will never capture God in a dragnet for analysis.

Let's look at what it means that man is created in the image of God. At a tangent, John Wyndham has a good YA SF book, The Chrysalids where science and religion are mingled and the insistence is on an eugenic image of Man so 'mutants' (and this means even things like polydactyly) are exterminated whenever found. I've always thought this more a poke at the Science! crowd than the Fundie Christian crowd, and indeed after reading the quote from Pal Jim there, I'd extend it to the likes of that thinking: Man has five toes and five toes only! Six toes are blasphemy! Dark Enlightenment, save our souls! But then, I am only a weak and feeble woman, nothing at all on the same level as a Man.

The inhabitants of post-apocalypse Labrador have vague knowledge of the "Old People", a technologically advanced civilization they believe was destroyed when God sent "Tribulation" to the world to punish their forebears' sins. The inhabitants practise a form of fundamentalist Christianity; they believe that to follow God's word and prevent another Tribulation, they must preserve absolute normality among the surviving humans, plants and animals, and therefore practice eugenics. Humans with even minor mutations are considered blasphemies and either killed or sterilized and banished to the Fringes, a lawless and untamed area rife with animal and plant mutations, and suggested to be contaminated with radiation.

So, in what does man's likeness to God consist? Bolding mine:

Since, as Damascene states (De Fide Orthod. ii. 12), man is said to be made to God's image, in so far as the image implies an intelligent being endowed with free-will and self-movement: now that we have treated of the exemplar, i.e., God, and of those things which came forth from the power of God in accordance with His will; it remains for us to treat of His image, i.e., man, inasmuch as he too is the principle of his actions, as having free-will and control of his actions.

More detailed parsing of the question here:

Article 1. Whether the image of God is in man? Objection 1. It would seem that the image of God is not in man. For it is written (Isaiah 40:18): "To whom have you likened God? or what image will you make for Him?"

Objection 2. Further, to be the image of God is the property of the First-Begotten, of Whom the Apostle says (Colossians 1:15): "Who is the image of the invisible God, the First-Born of every creature." Therefore the image of God is not to be found in man.

Objection 3. Further, Hilary says (De Synod., Super i can. Synod. Ancyr.) that "an image is of the same species as that which it represents"; and he also says that "an image is the undivided and united likeness of one thing adequately representing another." But there is no species common to both God and man; nor can there be a comparison of equality between God and man. Therefore there can be no image of God in man.

On the contrary, It is written (Genesis 1:26): "Let Us make man to Our own image and likeness."

I answer that, As Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 74): "Where an image exists, there forthwith is likeness; but where there is likeness, there is not necessarily an image." Hence it is clear that likeness is essential to an image; and that an image adds something to likeness—namely, that it is copied from something else. For an "image" is so called because it is produced as an imitation of something else; wherefore, for instance, an egg, however much like and equal to another egg, is not called an image of the other egg, because it is not copied from it.

But equality does not belong to the essence of an image; for as Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 74): "Where there is an image there is not necessarily equality," as we see in a person's image reflected in a glass. Yet this is of the essence of a perfect image; for in a perfect image nothing is wanting that is to be found in that of which it is a copy. Now it is manifest that in man there is some likeness to God, copied from God as from an exemplar; yet this likeness is not one of equality, for such an exemplar infinitely excels its copy. Therefore there is in man a likeness to God; not, indeed, a perfect likeness, but imperfect. And Scripture implies the same when it says that man was made "to" God's likeness; for the preposition "to" signifies a certain approach, as of something at a distance.

Reply to Objection 1. The Prophet speaks of bodily images made by man. Therefore he says pointedly: "What image will you make for Him?" But God made a spiritual image to Himself in man.

Reply to Objection 2. The First-Born of creatures is the perfect Image of God, reflecting perfectly that of which He is the Image, and so He is said to be the "Image," and never "to the image." But man is said to be both "image" by reason of the likeness; and "to the image" by reason of the imperfect likeness. And since the perfect likeness to God cannot be except in an identical nature, the Image of God exists in His first-born Son; as the image of the king is in his son, who is of the same nature as himself: whereas it exists in man as in an alien nature, as the image of the king is in a silver coin, as Augustine says explains in De decem Chordis (Serm. ix, al, xcvi, De Tempore).

Reply to Objection 3. As unity means absence of division, a species is said to be the same as far as it is one. Now a thing is said to be one not only numerically, specifically, or generically, but also according to a certain analogy or proportion. In this sense a creature is one with God, or like to Him; but when Hilary says "of a thing which adequately represents another," this is to be understood of a perfect image.

C. S. Lewis wrote about the relation of Christianity to the liberal idea of political equality in a few places. This passage is from his essay "Membership":

I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.

That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of Father and Husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin) but because Fathers and Husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.

...

By treating human persons (in judicious defiance of the observed facts) as if they were all the same kind of thing, we avoid innumerable evils. But it is not on this that we were made to live. It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense ― if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining ― then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It may be that He loves all equally ― He certainly loved all to the death ― and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality it is in His love, not in us.

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