The Riddle of The Sphinx

"It chanced that the face was toward me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile  on its lips. It was greatly weather worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease." The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 

 I once watched a lecture by historian Tom Holland where he expressed his view that Western culture is saturated in Christian values, even when it is at its most secular. He contrasted these values with those of the classical world of pre-New Testament civilizations such as Greece and Rome. Western secularism thinks of itself as having outgrown the "superstitious" beliefs of core Christianity, beliefs which affirm Jesus as a co-equal member of the Trinity & the Resurrected Savior of a humankind mired in Sin. But according to Holland even in the absence of this supernatural kernel, faith in Christ's teaching about humanity's moral duties still informs Western thinking. 

In a similar vein I was intrigued to see an article in the June 2022 edition of Premier Christianity magazine by a Glen Scrivener. In this article Scrivener picks up on a theme similar to Holland's and runs with it; in fact he has written a book on the subject called "The Air We Breathe", the same title of his Christianity article. The book got a good review in the same copy of Christianity. 

In his article Scrivener lists the values of equality, compassion, consent, science, freedom and progress as ostensibly an axiomatic part of Western moral mores. These mores all have their roots in what he calls "The Jesus Revolution". Above all, concern for the poor, the weak and the victimized, a stance which at least gets lip-service in Western humanist thought, was very much part of Christ's teachings.   

However, we should bear in mind that there was a long gestation-period before these Christian values  surfaced substantially into social discourse and subverted the status quo.  It was only during the slow demise of the aristocracy and serfdom that we start hearing that familiar "freedom and human rights" language (e.g. The 1381 peasants revolt) and see a drive to advance science (e.g. Francis Bacon). But having said that we nevertheless find Christian values embedded in Western history going a long way back before the peasants revolt and Bacon: That very peculiar tendency of Christianity to glorify courage and service in the face of vulnerability was there all along: e.g. Many of the churches of Norwich celebrate martyrs who like Jesus himself submitted themselves to those who would kill them for their faith. Examples  are  St, Edmund, St. Peter, St. Clement, St. Laurence, St Stephen and St John all of whom have at least one ancient church in Norwich memorializing their life and heroic deaths. A sacrificial life is the epitome of heroism in the Christian play book and these churches glorifying sacrifice come right out of the depths of the aristocratic middle ages. Christ's teaching had so sunk into the consciousness of the war-like Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans et. al. that they started to perceive a romantic heroism in a life of serene vulnerability.***

Humanly speaking it's a strange paradox that Christianity celebrated submission unto death  This was surely a revolution and an inversion of the old might is right ethos that dominated civilizations such as Egypt, Assyria and Rome; these civilizations glorified, above all, victory in war and in the building of empires, their despotic rulers claiming a large slice of the glory. Set that against Philippians 2:1-11

But when contemplating Holland's and Scrivener's theses we should also bear in mind that many latter day interpretations of Christianity are regressive and repressive and have become the receptacles of ugly attitudes and false beliefs such as European empire building, fundamentalism, brutal certitudes, anti-science thinking, young earthism, flat earthism, fideism, gnosticism, heavy shepherding, spiritual intimidation & abuse, demagogic leaders, conspiracy theorism, Christian dominionism and the like. Our understanding of the effects of "The Jesus Revolution" must have built-in qualifiers: Typically of the human predicament, progress is a backwards and forwards motion, a zigzagging to and fro somewhere between the good, the bad and the ugly.

But then Christianity itself has an explanation for this very mixed picture: Human beings, Christian and otherwise are moral shades of grey and always face the challenges and uncertainties of an imperfect epistemology: But that's why Christ came; He came to not only reveal Himself but to also save us from the ultimate consequences of human sin. But without that supernatural centre around which those important values of humility, serenity, meekness and service orbit, the way to hell is paved with good intentions: The French revolution and Marxism all made claim to laudable Christian humanist values about liberty, fraternity and equality but human beings are apt to corrupt those values beyond recognition. As Sir Kenneth Clark said in an episode of his epic "Civilization"* series, the leaders of the French revolution....

              ....suffered from the most terrible of all delusions: They believed themselves to be virtuous. 

...and may I add believed themselves to be the sole supplier of veracity, the only truth tellers. Such attitudes, it seems, can be found among those with triumphalist visions of utter certitude: From Marxists, through Christian sects, to Islamic fundamentalists** they see themselves as the last word for mankind,  But Scrivener, as a good Christian should be, is well aware of the failings that also plague churches: "I could go on. Criticisms of the church abound and many of them are entirely valid", he says. But he then says that such criticisms are actually using Christ's moral compass as the standard against which a flawed church is measured.  I feel that Scrivener and Holland are very much on the right track.....Christianity has had a very humanizing effect on us very flawed humans. Christ's teachings not only act like salt & light halting the rot somewhat but also, in places, reverses that rot. 

Finally, I would like to draw attention to one very profound observation that Scrivener makes. Viz:

The deepest clash between "belief" and a purely secular worldview does not occur between Christians and non-Christians. It occurs within the Western secularist, because the secularist is a believer too. They navigate their life by roughly the same stars we do - equality, compassion, consent and so on. On a daily basis, they walk according to these convictions, and yet as they look up to such supernatural values they insist that they are standing on purely natural ground. They claim to have a (practically) atheist account of the world, even as they live by (basically) Christian assumptions. 

Scrivener then goes on to make further observations that I would identify as the secular paradox: Viz: Christ's teachings so obviously give meaning and purpose to life and yet when they are seen through the lens of a purely secular interpretation of the cosmic perspective there seems to be an overwhelming disconnect: Where do those Western moral values we aspire to come from given the wider context of what to the secularist looks to be at first sight a huge impersonal universe apparently guided only by a ruthless survival ethic and which will eventually end in oblivion? There is an apparent mismatch of incommensurables here more stultify than the mismatch between gravitational theory and quantum mechanics.  Atheism teeters on the brink of the nihilist abyss..... This is the Riddle of the Sphinx for today's secular milieu.

Footnotes

* See the episode "The Fallacies of Hope"

** Critical Theory, which tries to trace (all?) human problems back to the observable conditions of the cultural, economic and political milieu, is likely to fall short of the mark if it fails to acknowledge that individuals, which are the seat of the first person conscious perspective, will naturally enough be tempted to look after self first under any circumstances.

*** It is possible that other religious leaders at one time or another preached similar values, but it seems that it is Jesus who is the almost exclusive source of these values in the modern world.