America: The 'Hustler Civilization'

Kirkpatrick Sale wrote a masterful essay on this topic (e.g., 'this country has been about making and taking, a business culture with a commercial orientation, devoted to growth and power, wealth and property, private advancement and profit, militarism and materialism, expansion and empire') and on the 'alternative culture' to it manifested in 'a commitment to craft, community, the public good, the natural environment, spiritual practice, and the "simple life"' in his review of Morris Berman's book Why America Failed.

Regarding the South in particular, Mr Sale said:

And so the alternative culture, though it has always existed on the fringe, and still does even now, has never seriously derailed the steamengine of the hustler civilization nor in fact even slowed it down perceptively. In fact that civilization will always take steps to marginalize it, even destroy it if necessary, a fact that Berman illustrates in a chapter on the antebellum South. He shows how the South was "the one example we have of an opponent of [the dominant] ideology that had real political teeth," and blatantly opted for a life premodern (indeed "neofeudal"), agrarian, slow, conservative, and honoring tradition, honor, chivalry, and hospitality more than making a buck or inventing a gadget. This ultimately the increasingly industrial and expansive North could not stand and so began a war to destroy it. "The treatment of the South by the North," Berman says, "was the template for the way the United States would come to treat any nation it regarded as an enemy: not merely a scorched earth policy, but also a ‘scorched soul’ policy’" that it would use in Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else it could achieve it.

In an age of cheap flattery of America's exceptionalism, it is more important than ever to listen to men like Mr Sale and Mr Berman.

First Principles

By Dr. Robert Peters

C.S. Lewis reminds us in The Abolition of Man that “for the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men…”

In Modernity without Restraint, Eric Voegelin outlines the attempts of modern Gnostics to immanentize the eschaton or “create” utopias without the transcendent through the power of the state.

The Triumph of the Therapeutic is Philip Rieff’s bold assertion about the state of Rousseau’s autonomous individual in late modernity, an individual bereft of story and of relationship; not a Promethean self but rather an estranged and shriveled self.

In the October 1993 issue of First Things, Robert W. Jenson narrates in his article, “How the World Lost Its Story,” the estrangement of Modernity from the Great Story which both frames and quickens creation.  In fact, God has been estranged from His creation and finds no place in it, including no place in the decaying liturgies of the Church.

In his article, “The First Conservative,” published in The American Conservative on 10 August 2011, Dr. Donald Livingston lays out David Hume’s insight that the philosopher must follow the philosophical process inexorably to the point of nihilism and ultimately to humility and just there find that the abstractions of philosophy cannot replace the common sense of the real world and the relationships which it demands.  Hume distinguishes between religion which is based on fear and humility and philosophy which is based on curiosity and pride.   False philosophy is, according to Hume, “the Voice of Pride not Nature.”  False philosophy gives man a false hope in abstract ideas.  True philosophy brings the thinker to the point of nihilism and then beyond to the real world.

These scholars and thinkers give contour to first principles which can be extrapolated from their writings, writing from different eras, on different continents and with different context, yet with a common theme.

At the heart of the common theme is that man is a creature in a created order in which man must learn to live creaturely if he is to be happy.  The other part of that theme is that man is not content to live creaturely in the created order, as C. S. Lewis says, “conforming the soul to reality,” which from the Christian understanding would also mean that we are limited not only by being mere creatures but by being fallen creatures who do not adequately understand our condition or the condition of the creation in which we have our being. As Lewis, however, asserts man prefers to reject creaturehood and to attempt “to subdue reality to the wishes of men.”  If, as Jenson asserts, Modernity has cut itself off from the framing and quickening story of the Gospel, then all stories lose their context and meaning.  Man is cut off from his Creator.  His option then is to embrace the nihilism which Hume says is the end of philosophy or to himself create a fiction of reality which rejects the transcendent but somehow embodies it or, as Voegelin puts it, “to immanentize the eschaton.” Philip Rieff reminds us, going all the way back to Plato, that therapy was once that which we gave the gods and in return received a blessing from them.  Today, we give ourselves or have given to ourselves by psychiatrists and psychologists therapy, suggesting that we believe ourselves to be gods; or that in our dark but self-imposed estrangement from the Creator, the creation and even our own nature as creatures, we in vain attempt the ancient liturgy of therapy but without communion.

Rieff calls the circumstance of Modernity the therapeutic culture or the anti-culture.  The term “anti-culture” offers a meaningful juxtaposition to “culture.”

Culture consists of the traditions, customs, habits, institutions and principles which restrain the whims, desires and compulsions of the person so that he is free to execute his responsibilities, duties and obligations to God, to Church, to family and to the local commonwealth.  That freeing from so that one is free to is the process of developing character.  Character is the acquiring, internalizing and living out of the great virtues: the cardinal virtues, the capital virtues and the Christian or theological virtues.  Providence gave to our classical ancestors, the Greeks and the Romans, a keen awareness of the cardinal and the capital virtues, and they developed a means of training young men in the acquisition of the virtues: artes liberals, made up of the Trivium and the Quadrivium.  Dante, in his Divine Comedy, provides the melding of the classical and Christian virtues in “Paradiso” as Saint Beatrice takes over as guide from Virgil, telling Virgil that he carried his light behind him in the classical virtues but that now she completes them with the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. 

At the heart of culture, pagan or Christian, is that which we have come to call “religion.” Religion is man’s realization, always imperfect, that “something” is moving through the created order and man is required to respond to it, to the best of his abilities, and to align himself with the order which he senses to be revealed or apprehended in creation itself.  This is the act of trying to live creaturely: in harmony with the created order and the Creator of that order.  In the Christian understanding, we cannot align ourselves with God and cannot live creaturely until the fall has been undone.  The means to the undoing of the fall is the Gospel.  Grace is extended to man because the Second Person of the Trinity fleshed Himself into history as the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and thereby became our Kinsman Redeemer, the Second Adam, in that He suffered, He died, He arose and He ascended.  Grace, the gift made possible through that Passion, is received by and in Faith, itself a gift of God.  Once Grace is imputed through Faith, we can begin the quest of living creaturely within the divine order.   This is the Gospel of the Church Age, an age of culture, from its pagan antecedents in Greece and Rome to the end of that age, coming perhaps in the late Middle Ages, during the Renaissance or at the Enlightenment.

The hallmark of Modernity is Rieff’s anti-culture.  The anti-culture is the deconstruction of the customs, traditions, habits, institutions and principles which would restrain the whims, lusts and compulsions of the individual so that the individual can pursue those drives unencumbered by convention or taboo.  The person becomes the individual: the Rousseauian individual or autonomous individual – the would-be Promethean self.  This autonomous individual is then outfitted with the abstract Lockean rights of life, liberty and property.  Character is no longer important or even desired because character is an internalized restraining force.  In the place of character rises the cult of personality, malleable and marketable.  Yet, this would-be Promethean self, bereft of relationship which is itself a restraining force, is really an estranged, alienated and shriveled self, seen in millions of faces from the homeless on the streets to the glamorous of Hollywood with their addictions and their loneliness and their suicides and murders.  It is little wonder that the vampire – the ultimate estranged, alienated and shriveled self, a parasite on life itself – has become the cult attraction of the American middle class, particularly females.    Although there has been an attempt to rehabilitate the vampire – to make evil good and good evil – the vampire remains that evil which destroys the created order. By his erotic attraction and his demonic power he draws the girl from the protection of the father, the brother, the fiancé or the husband.   He draws her from God, from home, from Church and from communion with kith and kin and the local commonwealth.

Freedom in a culture is freedom from our whims, desires and compulsions so that we are free to fulfill our duties, responsibilities and obligations in all of the relationships which the created order by its very nature demands.  Freedom in an anti-culture is freedom from the restraining forces of customs, traditions, habits, institutions and principles so that the individual can pursue his whims, compulsions and desires without restraint.

In a culture, character is of the utmost importance, for through it and with it we learn to live and live creaturely.  In the anti-culture, personality, uninhibited, is of the most importance; for by it we can express ourselves from the wildest orgies to the most horrible and destructive wars.

In a culture, we subjugate ourselves in subsidiarity to different levels of hierarchy: God, Church, family, and local commonwealth.  We nurture the sacred places of communion: the marriage bed for husband and wife; the supper table for the family; the communion table for the family of Faith; and the garden – the vegetable garden for nourishment; the flower garden for beauty and the churchyard or cemetery where the Christian will receive his last baptism, buried with Him in the hope of the resurrection, where the curse of that other garden Eden will be undone as we rise in Eternal Day.

In the anti-culture, we deny and decry the sacred places, destroying the marriage bed with adultery and unnatural acts; displacing the gathering place of the supper table with the television and computer; reducing communion among the saints and with the Lord to mere symbol and letting the gardens go fallow or become artificial and distant.

At the core of any culture is religion, pagan or Christian.  At the core of the anti-culture is an abstract individualism, abstract rights and the abstract state in which a notion of the “something” or God in and pushing through the created order is alien.

In the anti-culture the only subjugation is to the Hobbesian state which is an abstract corporation with a monopoly on coercion, with the ability to define the limits of its own power and driven by a powerful will, be that will one of a dictator, an oligarchy or even a democracy in which the masses are manipulated by the elites.  There is no subsidiarity and no communion; merely the collective of millions of autonomous individuals held in check by the coercive will of the state, perhaps - as it devalues currency and thereby dries up wealth, as it subsumes liberty, and as it further estranges with its intrusive policies husband and wife, parents and children, family and community - the ultimate vampire.  Jefferson Davis remarked in his address to the Mississippi Legislature in December of 1862 that “our enemies are a traditionless and homeless race.”

Jefferson Davis also, however, said the following, a message of hope: The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.  Given the classical and Christian education of Jefferson Davis, it would be safe to conclude that his statement was not limited to the Confederacy, for the Confederacy was dead; and not to the South, for the South was prostrate.  Rather as he looked over the lost legacy of the Confederacy and the ruins of the South, it is quite likely that he saw the whole of Western culture as it was being devoured by the emerging Hobbesian state in Germany, in Italy and in America.  When our ancestors came to the New World and initially settled in Jamestown, Virginia; New Bern and Wilmington, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia, they brought with them like a fragile plant the classical and Christian traditions which had been planted, grown and nurtured in Christian Europe, particularly in the British Isles.  They placed that plant in new soil and, therefore, in a new idiom; and then with Bible, with gun, with plow and with ax, they spilled out of those coastal cities and pressed westward to the Mississippi and beyond, into the far West.  It would appear, from the perspective of Modernity in the early 21^st century, that much of that good work has been lost, found like C.S. Lewis’ Old Narnia only in nooks and crannies, in enclaves and waning strongholds.  It has been overcome, or so it would seem, by the anti-culture, by the subsuming and consuming power of the Hobbesian state, and by demographic shifts, a form of war, which threatens to wipe all that has come to be over the last two thousand years away.

A Christian is, however, neither a pessimist nor an optimist; he is hopeful because he knows the Story to be true and the Story Teller to be even truer.  We must be like Leonidas at Thermopylae and see beyond the day and our own death; we must be like Arthur as he defended, seemingly in vain, the last vestiges of Christian Roman Britain; we must be like the Christian Saxon Earl Byrhtnoth who fought a losing battle against the pagan Danes at Maldon and take his words as the unknown poet smiths them to heart: Thought must be the harder, heart must be the keener, mind must be the greater, while our strength lessens.

It is fitting to close with an excerpt from The Free Magnolia, Volume 4, Number 1, a paragraph originally spontaneously produced during a discussion on the website of Chronicles Magazine.  This author penned the lines; but they were nurtured into The Free Magnolia by Dr. Clyde Wilson, the scholarly voice of our Southland:  The South is a garden. It has been worn out by the War, Re­construction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all—Modernity; yet, a worn-out garden, its contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a time which will last longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored, to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the hu­man spirit and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. Divine Comedy. Trans. Gustave Doré and Anna Amari-Parker.  New York: Book Sales, Inc. 2008. Print.

Anonymous. “Battle of Maldon.” Late 11^th Century. Trans. Jonathan A Glenn. University of Central Arkansas: Department of English, 1982. Web.

Davis, Jefferson. “Jefferson Davis’ Speech at Jackson, Miss.” The Papers of Jefferson Davis. Rice University (MS-43):  Houston: Rice University Press. 2011. Web.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature.  Norton, David Fate and Mary J. Norton, eds. Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.

Jenson, Robert W. “How the World Lost Its Story.” First Things.

                October 1993. Web.

Lewis, C.S.  The Abolition of Man. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. Print.

Livingston, Donald. “The First Conservative.” The American Conservative. 

                10 August 2011. Web.

Peters, Robert. “The South is a Garden.” The Free Magnolia 4:1 (2011): Killen, Alabama: The League of the South. Web.

Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. New York: Harper and Row,

                1965. Print.

Voegelin, Eric. Modernity without Restraint. Vol. 5. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2000. Print.

Dr. Robert Peters is a writer and teacher living in Fairview, Louisiana.  He received his B.A. in German from Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana; his M.A. in German from Southern Methodist University; and his Ph.D. in German from the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Peters has served as a civilian linguistic specialist for the United States Army, Europe, and for the 417^th Military Intelligence Battalion of the Louisiana National Guard.  He has also served in state-funded, public residential schools in Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas.  He is currently the headmaster of Central School in Grand Cane, Louisiana.

He and his wife, Alice, own and live on a small thirty-acre farm.  The Peters have two children and three grandchildren.  The Peters are members of the Fairview Baptist Church.  Dr. Peters is the current commander of the Colonel Samuel D. Russell Camp #1617 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and is an associate of the Abbeville Institute.

Dr. Peters enjoys reading, writing short stories and sketches, and hiking.

A Real Polis?

Dr Thaddeus Kozinski offers a good essay to contemplate regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement at The Distributist Review, 'Victims of Mammon'.  He quotes Aristotle,

For if men met and associated out of regard to wealth only, their share in the state would be proportioned to their property, and the oligarchical doctrine would then seem to carry the day. It would not be just that he who paid one mina should have the same share of a hundred minae, whether of the principal or of the profits, as he who paid the remaining ninety-nine. But a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only: …Nor does a state exist for the sake of alliance and security from injustice, nor yet for the sake of exchange and mutual intercourse… Whence it may be further inferred that virtue must be the care of a state which is truly so called, and not merely enjoys the name: for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and law is only a convention, ‘a surety to one another of justice,’ as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens good and just.

Dr Kozinski then follows this by saying,

An alliance alone cannot make citizens good and just, and liberalism is an alliance pretending to be a polis, which is the worst of all options, worse than even a tyranny, for at least a tyranny is a genuine polis, albeit a defective one. As Alasdair MacIntyre has stated, when the state requires you to sacrifice your life in war, “It’s like dying for the telephone company.”

It may be inferred from the above (and from the rest of the essay) that until organic communities are again the norm, rather than agglomerations of isolated individuals, any efforts at reform - be they political, economic, or moral - are likely doomed to failure.  For the lone individual is powerless to effect change, and individuals with divergent religious, political, etc. views forced together into an artificial union (which is our current situation in the United States) will devour one another until that union either is dissolved or collapses.  From that point on, however, there is hope - hope that small, humanely-sized villages and towns rising from shared beliefs and grounded in the Church, extended family, small farms, and guilds of artisans and professionals will be the rule rather than the exception.


We in the United States are far from this ideal, living instead in the fake polis constructed and controlled by our corporate masters and their government servants (known at times as 'our' elected officials - representatives, presidents, governors, and so forth.), wherein most live a life without ever knowing the blessings of having roots in any one particular place, ready to move at a moment's notice to some new job in the vain hope of finding happiness in the salary offered to him by one faceless company or another. 

Whatever one may wish to say about the OWS crowds, good or bad, at some level they realise this to be true.  The sooner the rest of us awaken to it, the better off everyone will be.

A Call to Action

To a generation cowed into obedience to a corrupt, oppressive elite of academics, corporate executives, bankers, politicians, etc., Henry Timrod's 'Carolina' is a welcome antidote.  There is no need for armed battle, but we could gain much by taking to heart its underlying message:  the duty to put forward manly resistance to an enemy intent on doing us harm.

‘Carolina’

By Henry Timrod

                                I

The despot treads thy sacred sands,

Thy pines give shelter to his bands,

Thy sons stand by with idle hands,

                                 Carolina!

He breathes at ease thy airs of balm,

He scorns the lances of thy palm;

Oh! who shall break thy craven calm,

                                 Carolina!

Thy ancient fame is growing dim,

A spot is on thy garment's rim;

Give to the winds thy battle hymn,

                                 Carolina!

                                II

Call on thy children of the hill,

Wake swamp and river, coast and rill,

Rouse all thy strength and all thy skill,

                                 Carolina!

Cite wealth and science, trade and art,

Touch with thy fire the cautious mart,

And pour thee through the people's heart,

                                 Carolina!

Till even the coward spurns his fears,

And all thy fields and fens and meres

Shall bristle like thy palm with spears,

                                 Carolina!

                               III

Hold up the glories of thy dead;

Say how thy elder children bled,

And point to Eutaw’s battle-bed,

                                 Carolina!

Tell how the patriot's soul was tried,

And what his dauntless breast defied;

How Rutledge ruled and Laurens died,

                                 Carolina!

Cry! till thy summons heard at last,

Shall fall like Marion's bugle-blast

Re-echoed from the haunted Past,

                                 Carolina!

                                IV

I hear a murmur as of waves

That grope their way through sunless caves,

Like bodies struggling in their graves,

                                 Carolina!

And now it deepens; slow and grand

It swells, as, rolling to the land,

An ocean broke upon thy strand,

                                 Carolina!

Shout! let it reach the startled Huns!

And roar with all thy festal guns!

It is the answer of thy sons,

                                 Carolina!

                                V

They will not wait to hear thee call;

From Sachem's Head to Sumter's wall

Resounds the voice of hut and hall,

                                 Carolina!

No! thou hast not a stain, they say,

Or none save what the battle-day

Shall wash in seas of blood away,

                                 Carolina!

Thy skirts indeed the foe may part,

Thy robe be pierced with sword and dart,

They shall not touch thy noble heart,

                                 Carolina!

                                VI

Ere thou shalt own the tyrant's thrall

Ten times ten thousand men must fall;

Thy corpse may hearken to his call,

                                 Carolina!

When, by thy bier, in mournful throngs

The women chant thy mortal wrongs,

'T will be their own funereal songs,

                                 Carolina!

From thy dead breast by ruffians trod

No helpless child shall look to God;

All shall be safe beneath thy sod,

                                 Carolina!

                                VII

Girt with such wills to do and bear,

Assured in right, and mailed in prayer,

Thou wilt not bow thee to despair,

                                 Carolina!

Throw thy bold banner to the breeze!

Front with thy ranks the threatening seas

Like thine own proud armorial trees,

                                 Carolina!

Fling down thy gauntlet to the Huns,

And roar the challenge from thy guns;

Then leave the future to thy sons,

                                 Carolina!

(Note:  Henry Timrod's poems are now part of the public domain.  This poem is from the Nabu Press reprint of Poems of Henry Timrod, with Memoir and Portrait, memorial ed. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), pp. 141-4.  My thanks to the folks at the web site Poetry and Music of the War Between the States for providing a fairly good transcription of the poem online:  http://www.civilwarpoetry.org/confederate/thebreak/carolina.html)

Dialectic As Seen in a Medieval Narrative

By Jacob Aitken


“The critique of religion is the premise of all critique,” or so said Karl Marx.[i]  One understands the irony and difficulty of beginning a traditionalist essay with a positive reference to Karl Marx.  Despite where Marx went wrong, however, there is an important truth in the above statement:  Behind political and social structures lie deep theological issues.  This essay argues that behind much of the Western philosophical and religious tradition is a dialectical understanding of God and the world.  The author will draw heavily from the earlier work of Joseph P. Farrell[ii] and from the great medieval historian Ernst Kantorowicz.[iii]  Specifically, the author will rely on Prof. Farrell's reading of the neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus as the latter develops “the dialectic,” the dialectic's role in early and medieval Christian thought, and specifically how this dialectical reading of God and society embodies itself, per Kantorowicz's gloss, in a case study dealing with medieval iconography.[iv]

A Few Terms Clarified

This paper will use a number of philosophical and theological terms which do not always have the same meaning when used by different people at different times.   To avoid unnecessary confusion, the author will define how he will use the terms throughout this essay.[v] Unless otherwise indicated, the term “dialectic” will be used in a specifically Plotinian sense.   There is a connection to the later usage by G. W. F. Hegel, and further essays will explore that connection, but that is not the sense in which it is used in this paper. By dialectic one means a “dialectic of opposition.”   Plotinus defines it as clarifying terms by setting them against their opposites.[vi]

One must also say a few words about the discussion of God and the Trinity in this essay.

When the word “simplicity” is used, it primarily denotes the meaning given by St. Augustine:  “to be is the same as to be strong, or to be just, or to be wise.[vii]” In other words, Augustine is identifying God's attributes (wisdom, justice, etc.) with God's essence.  This is elsewhere known as absolute divine simplicity.  It is not the same as divine simplicity when used by men like St. Basil the Great.  As the reader will see below, the dialectic is directly related to absolute divine simplicity. 

Plotinus:   The Dialectic Becomes Visible

Like many other narratives in Western history, this one also begins in ancient Greece.  The ancient philosopher Plotinus represents the high-point of the school known as neo-Platonism.  As Joseph P. Farrell notes, “In Plotinus' system it is precisely the Idea of Good, the simplicity itself, which forms the ontological starting point for the system.  For Plotinus had as his goal not only to demonstrate the Good, but to demonstrate that the demonstrations of the Good are the means of attaining it.[viii]”  The last clause in the above sentence is commonly what is known as “the dialectic.”

For Plotinus, perhaps in contrast to later philosophers, the dialectic was not so much a means of “doing philosophy,” but a way to purify the soul and lead the soul into truth.  While that is a commendable goal and should certainly be kept in mind when studying Plotinus, the interest of this essay is in his method. 

At the risk of oversimplification (no pun intended), Plotinus' system faced the temptation to reduce all reality to “the One.”   Plotinus goes on to say, “The One is not something else or in the divisible, nor is it without parts in the sense of the smallest possible.[ix]”  This raises a question, though.   It does appear to us that there are distinctions.  Given that the One encompasses all of reality, yet there appear distinctions in our day-to-day experience, how can one account for distinctions?   Let us return to Plotinus' definition of the dialectic:  It is the science of saying what something is and how it differs from its negation.  Therefore, the dialectic is knowing (or reconciling) something by means of opposites. 

This brings us to a tension:  If Plotinus' system tends to reduce all reality to the One, yet there remains the fact that we can speak of distinctions (given that we can even philosophize about the One), we come to the conclusion that in positing the One we also posit the oppositions to the One (keep in mind the nature of the dialectic itself: We know something by its oppositions).  Therefore, if the One, then the Many.  Farrell concludes, “The One needs the Many because it is dialectically dependent on the Many, the Finite, and the Relative, otherwise it will not be the One at all.[x]”  Before continuing, one  will advance another conclusion:  Although the One dialectically demands the Many (distinctions), it also tends to minimize or negate these distinctions.  If that sounds contradictory, that is no accident.  The dialectic is the attempt to reconcile opposites; it remains to be seen whether these attempts are successful.  We will return to this point later. 

Blessed Augustine:   The Dialectic Christianized

It is tempting to dismiss large parts of St. Augustine's theology as simply “Christianity in a neo-Platonist form.”  Several scholars today have challenged the contrast popularly drawn that Augustine began his theology with abstract reasoning concerning the Divine Essence, whereas the Greek Fathers began with the Three Persons.[xi] Certainly, there are facile stereotypes of both Augustine and the Cappadocian Fathers concerning the Trinity, but one must still argue that there is a grain of truth in these stereotypes.  Augustine's triadology seems to lean heavily towards the priority of the Divine Essence over the Three Persons:  Given the fact that Augustine phrases his understanding of the Divine Essence as “absolutely simple essence,[xii]” and notwithstanding the fact his system resembles the neo-Platonist system on many fronts, one must argue at least on some level that Augustine shared key assumptions with Plotinus.  

But how is this “the dialectic?”  Space prevents a larger examination, and if an Augustinian scholar responds that I have ignored key passages in St. Augustine, he would be correct.   However, most summaries of Western Trinitarianism would concur with the above passage, even if they would disagree with the conclusions elsewhere.   One example will suffice.  Remember what was said about the dialectic earlier:  given both the absolute unity of the One, and also the fact that we can speak of the one (which seems to posit a “many”), we explain this unity by a dialectic of oppositions.  Western theology will pick up on this Plotinian move and add a different one:  relation of oppositions.  Augustine writes, speaking of the Father's relation to the Son, “Therefore, He subsists relatively, as he begets relatively.[xiii]”

Nameless Detour: The Filioque and Theological Precision

As above, it is also debatable to what degree St. Augustine actually taught the Filioque as would be understood by later theologians.  Certainly, there is a strong movement in On the Trinity which points to the “double-procession.”  I will assume, along with what appears to be the standard position in Trinitarian scholarship, that Augustine did teach the Filioque.   Whether he did teach the Filioque is beside the point.  What remains is that the Filioque is seen as an implication of Augustine's (neo-Platonic) view of absolute divine simplicity.  Given the unity of the One, and that we can only know the One via oppositions, we must ask the question how can there be personal distinctions in the Godhead if the essence is “absolutely One?”  Augustine answers:  by relations of opposition.   This is where the Filioque comes in:  the Father begets a Son (relatively) and the Father and Son beget a third term, the Holy Spirit.[xiv]

Unfortunately, there arises an immediate problem for the Christian tradition.  Ancient triadology had always distinguished the persons of the Godhead by their operations: we know the persons by what they do.  For example, the Father is Father because he begets, and so on.  Ancient triadology had a specific term for the Father's action:  causation.   The Filioque, however, places causation in the field of two persons.   Therefore, the hypostatic distinctions between Father and Son are blurred.   It is more difficult to identify them.[xv]

Case Study:  The Aachen Gospels

The above argumentation is no doubt abstract, and some will wonder if it is merely speculation and inference.  Perhaps it is, but the great medieavalist Ernst Kantorowicz came to a similar conclusion even if he did not always identify the theological issues involved.  Kantorowicz resumes his discussion of medieval political theology by noting the artwork surrounding the copy of the Gospel of John located in Aachen, Germany, circa A. D. 973. Kantorowicz will contrast this with the “Reichenau painter.”  The Aachen front-piece has a picture of Emperor Otto III whose throne is placed in mid-air.  The political connotations, while interesting, are beside the point.  What concerns the reader here is the Christological appearance of the Emperor, and whether the Emperor is representing God the Father or God the Son, or neither. 

Before proceeding, one must clarify a few presuppositions regarding both iconography and theology:  In iconography the Son is identified by having a halo superimposed by a cross, along with the words (in Greek) “ho own,” he who is.  Commenting on the art of the Aachen Gospels, Kantorowicz notes, “All this results from a philosophy of state which is very different...[while] there is a relationship between the ruler on his throne and the remote Father in heaven; Christ is absent from that scene...Nothing could have been more contrary to the Reichenau painter.  His emperor is in the place of Christ, and the hand stretching down from above is surrounded by a cross-halo,” connoting the hand of the Son.[xvi]

Understandably, the above paragraph is confusing, and without access to the artwork it will likely remain so.  In explaining the above paragraph and how it relates to the essay, one will also begin to introduce some conclusions.   In the Reichenau painting one could identify God the Son quite clearly: given the constant reference to the Old Testament narratives to justify monarchy, and given that the Emperor was seen to be an imitator of Christ, these Old Testament narratives, indeed the Old Testament itself, was a revelation of God the Son.    God the Son is clearly identifiable in history.  He is identifiable by his actions in history.  Following Kantorowicz one must infer that the art of the Aachen gospels did not have these identifying characteristics.   It is harder to distinguish God the Father from God the Son.  Kantorowicz concludes:  “The 'Lord' who dwells in the king and decrees justice through the king, is God the Father rather than God the Son, although admittedly in the later Middle Ages it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish clearly between the first and second persons of the Trinity.[xvii]”

Conclusion

Conservatives and traditionalists rightly want to combat the forces of Marxism, secularism, and other villains of Western culture.   One must wonder, however, if they proceed from a faulty understanding of the doctrine of God—indeed, an understanding which posits a dialectic within the heart of the Godhead—how successful can their defense of “Christian culture” be.  St. Gregory of Nazianzus makes a pointed observation regarding this:  “The three most ancient opinions concerning God are Anarchia, Polyarchia, and Monarchia.  The first two are the sport of the children of Hellas and may they continue to be so.  For Anarchy is a thing without order and the rule of many is factious, and thus anarchical, and thus disorderly. For both these tend to the same thing, namely disorder; and this to dissolution.[xviii]”  Gregory's point is this:  Political positions flow from theological presuppositions (note Gregory's use of the word arche in Greek, which has political connotations).   Per our discussion, if there is a dialectical point within one's religious views, one can ultimately expect this dialectic to manifest itself in one's political views.[xix]  In this context Socrates' maxim to “know thyself” takes on new meaning:  Examine thy presuppositions.

Works Cited

Augustine, On the Trinity, Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 3 (First Series), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Aquinas, Thomas.  Summa Theologica.  Great Books of the Western World vol. 19 Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

Ayres, Lewis.   Augustine and the Trinity, Cambridge, MA:  Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Farrell, Joseph P.  God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes.  Seven Councils Press, 1997.

Gregory of Nazianzus, The Third Theological Oration, Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 7 (Second Series), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieaval Political Theology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [reprint 1997].

Marx, Karl.  Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, ed. Joseph O'Malley. New York: Cambridge University Press, [reprint 1982].

Saint Photios, The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, trans. Joseph P. Farrell,  Brookline, MA:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987.

[i]  Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, ed. Joseph O'Malley. New York: Cambridge University Press, [reprint 1982], 131.

[ii]  Joseph P. Farrell, God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes.  Seven Councils Press, 1997.

[iii]  Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieaval Political Theology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [reprint 1997]. 

[iv]  The author should immediately confess the coming inadequacies of this paper.  Numerous scholars have studied this issue (and similar others) for their entire lives; this paper is simply summarizing the key points and crystallizing the debate, pointing out key arguments, and hopefully facilitating future discussions.  

[v]  One hopes the definitions are not merely arbitrary.   To ensure that, the author will quote from standard, scholarly sources when possible.  

[vi]  Plotinus, The Enneads, I.III.6, in Great Books of the Western World vol. 17, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952.

[vii]  Augustine, On the Trinity, Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 3 (First Series), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 100.

[viii]  Farrell, God, History, and Dialectic, p. 92.

[ix]  Plotinus, The Enneads, VI.IX.6.

[x]  Farrell, God, History, and Dialectic, 94.  I have simply summarized a few of Farrell's conclusions.  The reader is strongly urged to consult this section of God, History, and Dialectic for Farrell's larger argument. 

[xi]  Cf.  Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, Cambridge, MA:  Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[xii]  Augustine, On the Trinity, 100ff.

[xiii]  Ibid., 111.  This form of argumentation hardens radically when one approaches Thomas Aquinas, cf. Summa Theologica, I. qu. 28. a. 3. 

[xiv]  While Augustine would reject Plotinus's “Chain of Being,” the structure of his thought is quite similar, at least on the surface level.

[xv]  Saint Photios, The Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, trans. Joseph P. Farrell,  Brookline, MA:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1987, 66.

[xvi]  Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, 77.  Kantorowicz is not arguing that the Emperor takes the place of Christ, like in some secular papal theory, but that the Emperor is imitating Christ and that Christ is clearly identifiable.

[xvii]  Ibid., 159.

[xviii]  Gregory of Nazianzus, The Third Theological Oration, Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 7 (Second Series), Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 301.

[xix]  This assumes, of course, that people always act logically, which they do not.

Jacob Aitken is an educator in Monroe, Louisiana.

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