5 The Unifying Factor In The Steps Of Despair
The line of despair is a unit, and the steps in the line have a distinguishing and unifying mark. With Hegel and Kierkegaard, people gave up the concept of a rational, unified field of knowledge and accepted instead the idea of a leap of faith in those areas which make people distinctive as people—purpose, love, morals and so on. It was this leap of faith that originally produced the line of despair.
The various steps on the line—philosophy, art, music, theater and so on—differ in details, and these details are interesting and important, but in a way they are only incidental. The distinctive mark of the twentieth-century intellectual and cultural climate does not lie in the differences but in the unifying concept. The unifying concept is the concept of a divided field of knowledge.
Whether the symbols to express this are those of painting, poetry or theology is incidental. The vital question is not the symbols used to express these ideas (for example, the words of the existential philosophers or the sounds of musique concrète) but the concept of truth and the method of attaining truth. The watershed is the new way of talking about and arriving at truth, not the terms the individual disciplines use to express these ideas.
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906- ), president of Senegal, is probably the only real intellectual who is head of a government today anywhere in the world. He studied in France. Senghor has written a book which consists of three political speeches given to groups in his own country. The book is called On African Socialism. Some years ago he very kindly sent me an autographed copy of this book. As well as this, he has written some magnificent poetry which has, fortunately, been well translated into English.
As I read his speeches I was very moved. If a man stood up in any of the Western countries and delivered these as political speeches, very few Christians would understand their real significance. The fact that Senghor is an African underlines the need to train our overseas missionaries in a new way, for the problem of communication in our day extends beyond the Sorbonne, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to those places which we have traditionally thought of as “the mission-field.” The problem of communication does not end at our own shores. Among educated men the new way of thinking is everywhere.
Senghor showed in these speeches on African socialism that he understands the modern issues exceedingly well. He points out that the methodology affecting thought today is the same on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In his book he develops in detail the change from the classical concept of logic (A is not non-A) to the general acceptance today of Hegel’s methodology of synthesis.
He points out correctly that originally the Marx and Engels form of communism had an interest in man, which gave it much of its drive. We shall note, of course, that later, as it developed naturally from its presuppositions, man became devalued in the communist state. (The Marx-Engels form of communism should properly be regarded as a Christian heresy. Only Christianity, of all the world’s religions, has produced a real interest in man. Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam could never have produced idealistic communism because they do not have sufficient interest in the individual.) The one thing about communism which really caught the fancy of idealistic communists was this concern for man. But, as I have said, the source of a real care for people as individuals comes from biblical Christianity. Are we losing our impact? It may be due largely to a failure to communicate that we believe that man, in the presence of the God who is there, is truly wonderful. But let us return to Senghor.
He argues that one must not think of Marxism as being primarily an economic theory. Nor must one think that its atheism is central. Atheistic it most certainly is, but that is not the crux of the system. If you want to understand what Marxism really is, says Senghor, you must remember that it rests upon the dialectical methodology.
Senghor goes on to say that he and Senegal cannot accept Marxism’s economic theory completely. Neither will they accept its atheism. But they will hold fast to its method of dialectic. In doing this they will follow Teilhard de Chardin. In other words, Senghor realizes that there is no basic difference between the dialectical approach of Marx and that of Teilhard de Chardin. He appreciates that in methodology they are both on the same side. The fact that the Jesuit priest uses the word god and Marx does not makes no difference, for the word by itself is meaningless until given content. The really important thing is that they both use the dialectical methodology.
If you want to understand the century you live in, you must realize that it is not the outward form which the dialectic takes which is the real enemy. This may be expressed in theistic or atheistic forms. The real enemy is not the form it takes, but the dialectical methodology itself.
ROMANTICISM IS DEAD: CHRISTIANITY’S OPPORTUNITY IF ANTITHESIS IS MAINTAINED
In one way a Christian ought to be glad that so many live under the line of despair and are fully aware of their position. The Christian should be thankful that when he talks to these people, he does not have to remove page after page of optimistic answers which are against all the evidence and without any base. For Christianity is not romantic; it is realistic.
Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished; let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer. For example, in the realm of morals Christianity does not look over this tired and burdened world and say that it is slightly flawed, a little chipped, but easily mended. Christianity is realistic and says the world is marked with evil and man is truly guilty all along the line. Christianity refuses to say that you can be hopeful for the future if you are basing your hope on evidence of change for the better in mankind. The Christian agrees with the people in genuine despair that the world must be looked at realistically, whether in the area of Being or in morals.
Christianity is poles apart from any form of optimistic humanism. But it also differs from nihilism, for nihilism, though it is correctly realistic, nevertheless can give neither a proper diagnosis nor the proper treatment for its own ills. Christianity has a diagnosis and then a solid foundation for an answer. The difference between Christian realism and nihilism is not that the Christian worldview is romantic. We should be pleased that the romanticism of yesterday has been destroyed. In many ways this makes our task of presenting Christianity to modern man easier than it was for our forefathers.
But to rejoice that romantic answers will no longer do, and to be glad in one sense that men like Dylan Thomas have ended by weeping, does not mean that we should not be filled with compassion for our fellowmen. To live below the line of despair is not to live in paradise, whether that of a fool or any other kind. It is in a real sense to have a foretaste of hell now, as well as the reality in the life to come. Many of our most sensitive people have been left absolutely naked by the destruction. Should we not grieve and cry before God for such people?
In this situation which so desperately cries out for the remedy which only biblical Christianity can give, we seem to be failing. This cannot be due to lack of opportunity; already men are partway to the gospel, for they too believe that man is dead, dead in the sense of being meaningless. Christianity alone gives the reason for this meaninglessness, that their revolt has separated them from God who exists, and thus gives them the true explanation of the position to which they have come. But we cannot take advantage of our opportunity, if we let go in either thought or practice the methodology of antithesis (that is, that A is A and A is not non-A). If a thing is true, the opposite is not true; if a thing is right, the opposite is wrong.
If our own young people within the churches and those of the world outside see us playing with the methodology of synthesis, in our teaching and evangelism, in our policies and institutions, we can never expect to take advantage of this unique moment of opportunity presented by the death of romanticism. If we let go of our sense of antithesis, we will have nothing left to say.
Moreover, not only will we have nothing to say, we become nothing. Christianity ceases to exist, though it may still keep its outward institutional form. Christianity demands antithesis, not as some abstract concept of truth but in the fact that God exists, and in personal justification. The biblical concept of justification is a total, personal antithesis. Before justification, we were dead in the kingdom of darkness. The Bible says that in the moment that we accept Christ we pass from death to life. This is total antithesis at the level of the individual man. Once we begin to slip over into the other methodology—a failure to hold on to an absolute which can be known by the whole man, including what is logical and rational in him—historic Christianity is destroyed, even if it seems to keep going for a time. We may not know it, but when this occurs the marks of death are upon it, and it will soon be one more museum piece.
To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantage of the death of romanticism, we must consciously build back the mentality and practice of antithesis among Christians in doctrine and life. We must do it by our teaching and by example in our attitude toward compromise, both ecclesiastically and in evangelism. To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at those points where there is a cost in our doing so is to push the next generation into the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.
Finally, and with due reverence, may I emphasize that not only should we have genuine compassion for the lost among whom we live, but also concern for our God. We are his people, and if we get caught up in the other methodology, we have really blasphemed, discredited and dishonored him—for the greatest antithesis of all is that God exists as opposed to his not existing; he is the God who is there.