C.S. Lewis wrote prophetically about the Abolition of Man. We are witnessing its literal fulfillment. If history unfolds in 500-year epochs, then we are on the cusp of a new epoch. What does it hold for humanity?
I have not been the only one to recognize that the last five hundred years have been an Age of Revolution. Jacques Barzun’s monumental From Dawn to Decadence follows the same theme, albeit without the rhetoric in which I have indulged in my video series, The Church in an Age of Revolution.
The revolutions of this five-century epoch have, step by step, led to a revolution in the very concept of humanity. Each revolution has eroded a little further the historical conception of humanity, leading to the racial suicide we are now facing. In these five hundred years there have been multiple revolutions in a multitude of places and cultures, but it is worth considering the five most important—one per century—thath define that century and reveal how each revolution proceeded from the previous ones, leading us to our present crisis.
I do not presume to be a historian or a philosopher. I am merely an observer offering a few thoughts for what they are worth.
The first of the five revolutions (and the one that established a foundation for those that followed) is the Protestant Revolution of the sixteenth century. Beneath all the political and ecclesial turmoil was a philosophical and theological revolution that was seismic. It was the destruction of the sacramental vision.
Simply put, the “sacramental vision” is the worldview that takes as a given that first, there is a transcendent reality—an unseen realm—and that this transcendent reality is infused in, and operative through, the physical reality. Not only is this understanding of the world evident in Greek philosophy, but it was the essential understanding of reality amongst all human beings everywhere until the sixteenth century in Europe.
No matter what their religion, philosophy or culture, human beings believed in a transcendent world populated by transcendent beings who interacted with the realm they could perceive through their physical senses. The Catholic understanding of the sacraments specified this interaction and made it accessible.
The roots of the revolt against the sacramental vision lie in the philosophical movements of the late Middle Ages, but it flowers in the Protestant Revolution. The “Reformers” rejected the sacramental vision that had been maintained and promoted by every aspect of the Catholic religion, and in rejecting Catholicism, the Protestant revolutionaries rejected the sacramental vision that Catholicism had in common with all of humanity up to that point.
I realize, of course, that this is a simplification and that Protestant Christians would reject the charge that they have repudiated the transcendental reality. Lutherans would maintain that consubstantiation retains the sacramental vision. However, no matter what the theological quibbles, it is certainly true that the essence of Protestantism is the reduction of the sacraments to symbols of faith.
If the Protestant Revolution is emblematic of the sixteenth century, the Enlightenment Revolution marks the seventeenth. With the publication of Descartes’ thought, the human imagination becomes egocentric. The Enlightenment is fueled by the Scientific Revolution, which, in its essence, is atheistic. Not having the courage to fully embrace atheism, Enlightenment thinkers opted for that form of “atheism lite” called Deism—a bland belief that does not deny the transcendent per se, but simply relegates the divine to an irrelevant impotence.
Again, this is a simplification—boiling down a complex era of some genuinely positive advances into an essential underlying thought. However, the simplification is useful in recognizing the link among Protestantism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment thinkers of the seventeenth century. The destruction of the sacramental vision laid the foundation for the rise of science without an assumption of divine interaction with the physical world. The destruction of the sacramental vision also laid the foundation for enlightenment philosophy. If the God of the deists was dozing on the other side of the cosmos, then man is the measure of man. Indeed, man is the measure of all things.
Alexis De Tocqueville observed that the aspirations of the French Enlightenment were incarnated most perfectly in the American Revolution, and this crucial revolution of the eighteenth century consists of much more than merely the American War of Independence. The American experiment is a cultural revolution that blossoms out of the Protestant Revolution and the Enlightenment Revolutions of the previous two centuries, and in a new and boundless continent has boundless opportunities to flourish. Someone has commented, “America is a Protestant country. Even the Catholics are Protestant.”
Everything distinctively American is rooted in the destruction of the sacramental vision and in the beliefs of the Scientific and Enlightenment Revolutions. The separation of church and state, rugged and radical individualism, the distrust of tradition and historic authority systems, the consumerism and plundering of the world’s resources—all of these assume a physical world cut off from the creator and constitute a kind of de facto atheism, in which man is alone in the world and must make the most of it.
The full global reach of the American experiment has yet to be realized, but it is a potent and seductive dream and one which the rest of humanity will find difficult to resist.
The nineteenth century sees the Industrial Revolution rise like an antiChrist from the foundations of the previous revolutions. With a focus only on money, the plundering of the world’s resources—both human and organic—continues apace. Without the sacramental vision—without a God who is involved in His creation—the natural world is simply there go be exploited by clever, entrepreneurial men. The irresponsibility of man for the rest of creation is exacerbated by the ideology of evolutionism, which further divorces God from creation. If evolution is true, then all of creation is subject to the predator: the “fittest” who may use the natural world as he sees fit. If this is the case for the natural order, it is also the case for his fellow man; thus the Industrial Revolution leads to a global “military industrial complex” in which the strong dominate the weak for further exploitation.
The Industrial Revolution provides the weaponry for the devastating wars of the first half of the twentieth century, and the radical individualism and sentimental romanticism spawned by the enlightenment flowers into the eroticism that prompts the Sexual Revolution of the second half of the twentieth century. Now all the philosophies and technologies that have been percolating for four hundred years culminate in the invention of artificial contraception and safe, hygienic abortion.
The Sexual Revolution introduces the final break in the sacramental vision—the destruction of the divine link with humanity itself. Man cannot be created in God’s image because God (if there is such a being) didn’t create man anyway. If nature and our fellow human beings are simply there for us to use as we see fit, then our own bodies are also no more than physical machines for us to do with as we like.
The end result of all these complex and compounded revolutions is the abolition of man we are now experiencing. The prophets of the demographic winter foretell a human birth rate that will continue to plummet so that by the end of the century, the human population may be in a permanent, irreversible decline.
Furthermore, medical, chemical ,and scientific technology is bringing about the literal abolition of man and woman. Allowing individuals to modify their bodies according to their own whims. Does a man believe himself to be in the wrong body? Let him receive female hormones to grow breasts. Let him be mutilated—in a horrendous procedure, let his penis be turned inside out and inverted into his body cavity to create an artificial vagina.
Does a female believe she is really a male? Give her hormones so she grows a beard and deepens her voice. Remove her breasts. Cut a portion of flesh from her thigh and fashion an artificial penis. Create a scrotum. Implant artificial testicles.
C.S. Lewis wrote prophetically about the Abolition of Man. We are witnessing its literal fulfillment. If history unfolds in 500-year epochs, then we are on the cusp of a new epoch. What does it hold for humanity?
Most revolutions eventually run out of steam. Let us hope that the horrors brought about by the Age of Revolution will die as did Frankenstein’s monster—drifting away on a raft of ice into the darkening world. Then as this culture of death dies, let us work and pray that a new Christendom may arise Phoenix-like from the ashes.
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One can but choose to wonder what in 500 years down the pike, our descendants will think of these current times?
Excellent analysis of where we are and how we arrived here. Pray that a sacramental vision will be revived in the hearts of individuals and grow into a strong and true body of Christ.
I agree, and your work is important, refreshing and needed. I think the Renaissance, Columbus, Copernicus, that period from the late 1400s to around 1540 truly began that major shift, and I do not see many positives. I do however think we are at the threshold of a major restoration of true values, turning the revolutions on their head – unfortunately, we (as a whole) are having to stare into the precipice to understand just where we are.
Brilliant. thank you Imaginative Conservative for this.
There are many important observations in this essay with many agreeable observations. However, the theme implies that the world prior to the sixteenth century was a much better world, more in alignment with a universal view of Christendom. Are we really certain that the world prior to the 1500s was more true and beautiful with a more pure worship of Christ? Horrible things have occurred in the last 500 years, as they did in the 500 plus years prior to that. Despite our human failings, I am glad to have been born near the end of this 500 year epoch as I believe the time prior was brutish and short in horrible ways we can only imagine. Not to distract from Fr. Longenecker’s important points but I believe it likely I would have starved to death prior to age 40 years or died of measles or smallpox as a child in the world prior to the 1500s.
Wow! For the longest time I’ve been trying to patch together this very thought put forth in this brilliant piece but not able to fully do so. My stumbling block it seems is the American Revolution, which I can’t help feel is a good and not a negative. But it does fit this over all pattern as laid out by Fr. Longenecker. I still don’t know what better alternative there is to a Democratic Republic. Nonetheless I thank Fr. Longenecker for putting it fully into a comprehensive whole. This essay is one I will be returning to many times over.
For an in-depth exploration of Fr. Longenecker’s theory, read “The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society,” by Brad Gregory. It’s a long read but well worth it.
Good recommendation, long yes but fascinating with an interesting undercurrent that the Catholic Church failed to respond adequately to the emerging & challenging ideologies made more difficult with the speculative theology introduced by Duns Scotus.
Have to seriously disagree with Father’s counting of the American Revolution in his essay. What he describes and condemns as “distinctly American” only came about in the post-WWII era. It wasn’t until the 50s that the Supreme Court made Jefferson’s wall between church and state (a concept which, itself, isn’t unique to the United States) into a “high and impenetrable” one; before then, Sunday blue laws, blasphemy laws and other laws defending basic morality were all on the books and enforced. Radical individualism wasn’t normalized until about the same period (as Barry Shain writes in his book, THE MYTH OF AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM, colonial, revolutionary and early republic Americans all believed and accepted corporate liberty over individual liberty [in fact, British writers like David Hume faulted republicanism because it, unlike monarchy, restricted freedom too much]). Americans have also been very traditional, not only holding onto the Constitution and the Revolution (if we were opposed to all traditions of authority, those would have been thrown out much sooner than they were) but to the British common law and the legacy of the Roman Republic. In fact, the Revolution could very well be described as a Roman undertaking instead of an Enlightenment one, as Eran Shalev argues in his book, ROME REBORN ON WESTERN SHORES. Only a handful of Enlightenment figures were even read during the Revolutionary period; Locke and Hume to an extent (though Locke’s presence, as Russell Kirk argued, has been inflated and Hume was used primarily as a historian instead of a philosopher) and even fewer Americans read the French philosophes. The most often cited work in revolutionary pamphlets, as noted by Donald Lutz, was Deuteronomy. Is the America we knew and loved dead? Yes, but not because revolutionary Americans lacked a sacramental vision.
Fortunately, pope Paul VI who promulgated the Second Vatican Council was an Augustinian. Many other important events in the earthly city took their time and place during the 1960’s: The cold war, the sexual revolution, the lunar walk, and the perfection of sciences and medicine with math-phys-chem-biol, and the digital internet. Of course, the USA was and is leading. But while the Second Vatican Council drank deeply from the plentiful wells and sources of divine revelation, and so still has religion to offer, in the City of God, the earthly city cannot move beyond those questionable 1960’s landmarks. Hence, more than half a century later, natural scientific progress is done, the cold war is over, and the sexual revolution eats its own children. The earthly city, not the City of God, is in crisis. Give another half century with the same Second Vatican Council, and the City of God will prevail. Yes, there are some details with the Latin mass, with male and female vocations to monasticism, and the sacramental orders of male priestly ordination, and marriage between man and woman, and especially with religious liberty to the outside, and ecumenical unity to the inside. Nevertheless, the earthly city is already doomed, and the City of God enters the third millenium. Pope Paul VI also gave us the Jesus of Nazareth motion picture, through Franco Zeffirelli, and it is a beautiful testament to the third millenium. We are at a crisis, since the earthly city crashes, and many theologians in the Church go along. Reality is that the City of God is well prepared. Indeed, even the Latin mass is becoming more popular than ever, among young Christians. While the world and Church leaders are still of the generation who was young in those 1960’s, and who do not grasp that they are obsolete, it is important that we respect our parents’ ages. Give another half century, and the City of God can still cherish liturgy in Latin, Greek, or the vernaculars, with English only for the earthly city that once was, only in the twentifirst century. Nobody can build the third millenium on neither the gone British empire nor on the American victory in the cold war, and the NATO will also become obsolete and disbanded, and the sexual revolution must die out together with the social democratic well fare state experiment. The best for the Roman-catholic Church is to contend herself with some popular decline, while the earthly city crashes, and the futureless abolition of man hence soon abolishes itself. Whence, do not panic, let the third millenium live and drink from eternal and divine revelation.
This essay disturbed me. Of all these revolutions, only the last one is truly of loss, chaos, and evil. The first four can all be interpreted positively as well as negatively.
Most painful to my heart as a painter and Tolkien lover is the first one. As a Protestant Pentecostal I have been trained to read and treasure the Bible every day, and can worship in the Spirit – my most inestimable treasures. Yet perceiving the Lord’s revelation of Himself through the parables and metaphors of nature is not appreciated.
For the second,, read Eric Metaxes’ book Is Atheism Dead? for a marvelous look at how science reveals God. Third, the American Revolution is “seductive”, compared to what? What better place or system? Until the Millennial reign of Christ . . .
And even as a Luddite I have to appreciate the benefits that came from the Industrial revolution.
Isn’t the better point to not so much rue all these revolutions, but to grieve that in this fallen world we still have to be so fractured. Our hope is for when the Lord comes, restores, heals, puts us all back together again.
As an Anglican, Reformed in theology, I have to dispute that the Reformation necessarily ended the sacramental vision of creation. It certainly did for the extremes, but not for Presbyterians or Anglicans, and not even for all Baptists. Otherwise, this essay is a brief synopsis of a descent into degradation and a great example of what happens when humanity turns its back on God, convinced that they need him not. The world of “That Hideous Strength” is not that far away, I suspect.