Postscript

 

"A specter is haunting Europe - a specter of communism" wrote Marx in the Manifesto. A century later this specter became a mere phantom. However, the triumphant Judeo-Christianism did not cease to use communism as a scarecrow to legitimize itself.

Anti-Americanism has always been in France a value shared for different reasons by most of the political forces viewing America as not being a true historical nation, without understanding the ideas of the Lumieres (philosophers before the French 1789 revolution, such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau), universal values of the French Revolution, and wanting to dominate the whole of the planet. The Gulf Wars have revived these feelings.

 

Since the Greeks, ethics was expressed in the ancient tripartite model, where wisdom prevailed over force, and force over wealth. Modernity has supplanted traditional ethics with the deontological (δέον obligation, duty) morality of Kant, based on a unitary conception of the just, toward which all individuals must strive in accord with a universal moral law. This ethics supports the ideology of minimal moral code and is used as the main strategic weapon of the Western ethnocentrism.

One can avoid the relativism and nihilism of today by restoring some meaning, i.e., by retrieving some shared values, and by assuming some concrete certainties that have been tried and defended. It was Nietzsche who well understood the meaning of "Athens against Jerusalem." Referring to ancient times, he wrote in The Joyful Wisdom:

"It was there that the right of individuals was first respected. The inventions of Gods, heroes, supermen of all kinds, as well as these of fairies, centaurs, satyrs —were the inestimable preliminary to the justification of the sovereignty of the individual. Monotheism, on the contrary, the belief in a God beside whom there are only false spurious Gods—has been and continues to be among the greatest dangers to humankind."

Alain de Benoist

What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?

This question, which Tertulian (160-230) asked centuries ago, is one that is still very pertinent to Christians, for much of the modern church displays the epistemological ignorance characteristic to our age. The etymological root of the word philosophy is from the Greek word meaning "love of wisdom." In our modern culture, however, the idea of wisdom and truth is no longer seen as essential. The philosophy of this world is hopeless and deceptive. The Bible refers the worldly wisdom as knowledge "falsely so called"(1 Tim 6:20). Eph 4:18 is very clear when it states that unbelievers have "had their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts." The unbeliever's intellectual enmity against God is simultaneously his epistemological undoing. The carnage and hopelessness of the present age are the outworking of this vain and darkened understanding. Men have turned to themselves to find knowledge and meaning and the results have been truly abominable: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Jeffrey Dalhmer, Abortion, Euthanasia, pedophilia, etc. In our attempts as a culture to "become as gods," we have truly reaped the fruit of our philosophical folly.

There are distinct differences between a Christian philosophy and the philosophy of the unbeliever, namely, the foundation for epistemology. In order to have a true philosophy we need to recognize that Christ is the only source of truth and knowledge. For it is Christ "in which are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). Christ is "the way the truth and the light" (John 14:6). Christ is thus the inescapable starting point for knowledge of the world and all things in it. Thus the true basis for philosophy is the standard of Christ. Christ is the ultimate authority for the Christian. Christ must be Lord over our thinking; every thought must be made captive to Him.

The Christian witness cannot simply be a naive criticism of the unbeliever, but must be a critique based on a clear and comprehensive understanding of their worldview. In critiquing the thought of unbelievers, we cannot be ignorant. We must be schooled in a wide variety of systems of thought and understand these systems and how they interact with one another. In order to have a truly effective witness, it is essential for us to have knowledge of different philosophies, understand their importance, and be able to refute them, and give an answer for our faith. We study philosophy in order to see what kind of thinking we should reject in this, our pluralistic, syncretic culture. In short, we study philosophy to discern and comprehend misguided thinking and to commit ourselves to true thinking about man and the world. We are encouraged to appreciate worldly knowledge, but always understand that any truth is founded on Christ. Thus we are called to maintain the epistemological antithesis between the darkened mind of the unbeliever and the mind of the Christian renewed by the Lord. It is only by maintaining this antithesis that we can have an effective witness. When we reason with the unbeliever from the foundation of Christian knowledge, we are working from the solid rock of God rather than the vain meanderings of worldly philosophy; we are called to a firm standard of epistemology that gives us courage and stability in a constantly changing world of relativistic philosophy and depravity, for it is only the Christian basis of knowledge that can provide truth.

We thus see that Jerusalem, the Christian foundation of knowledge, is the only way we can make sense of Athens, the pursuit of philosophy. The thinking of the unbeliever is futile and his mind is darkened because he does not recognize Christ as the source of wisdom and truth. As Christians, we are called to posses a uniquely Christian theory of knowledge holding that Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Thus the Christian philosophy cannot be synthesized with unbelieving philosophies; it is unique in its claim to the truth. It is only the Christian that can present a consistent and optimistic philosophy, since Christ is the foundation for all knowledge.

Jeremy Rein (in What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?, February 3, 2003)

 

 

The Hating God

Jehovah is not only a jealous god, but also the hating god: "Surely you will slay the wicked, O God" (Psalms.) The book of Jeremiah is a long series of maledictions and curses hurled against peoples and nations. Jeremiah cries out:

"Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord." His contemplation of future punishments fills him with gloomy delight. "Bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction. Deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword. Let their wives to bereave their children, let their men be put to death" (Lamentations 3:17-66).

Further, Jehovah promises the Hebrews that he will support them in their war efforts:

"The Lord your God will cut off the nations from before you when you advance to possess them, to overpower them, and dwell in their land. In the cities of these people, which the Lord your God did give to you, you shall save alive nothing that breath." ((Deuteronomy 12: 29).

While he resided with the Philistine King Achish, David also practiced genocide (1 Samuel 27:9). Moses organized the extermination of the Midian people (Numbers 31:7). Joshua massacred the inhabitants of Hazor and Anakim. "And they killed all the souls that were there with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was none left to breath: and he burnt Hazor with fire" (Joshua 11:10-11, 20-21).

Emile Gillabert in Moise et le phénomène judéo-chrétien (1976) says

"No ancient religion, except that of the Hebrew people has known such a degree of intolerance."

Renan had written in similar terms:

"The intolerance of the Semitic peoples is the inevitable consequence of their monotheism. The Indo-European peoples, before they converted to Semitic ideas, had never considered their religion an absolute truth. Rather, they conceived of it as a heritage of the family, or the caste, and in this way they remained foreign to intolerance and proselytism. This is why we find among these peoples the liberty of thought, the spirit of inquiry and individual research." Of course, there have always been massacres and exterminations, but it would be difficult to find in the pagan texts, be they of sacred or profane nature, the equivalent of what one so frequently encounters in the Bible: the idea that these massacres could be morally justified, that they could be deliberately authorized and ordained by one god."

Christian intolerance began to manifest itself very early. In the course of history this intolerance was directed against "infidels" as well as against pagans, Jews, and heretics. It accompanied the extermination of all aspects of ancient culture—the murder of Julius of Hypati, the interdiction of pagan cults, the destruction of temples and statues, the arson, at the instigation of the Bishop Theophilus of Sarapeum, of Alexandria in A.D. 389, whose library of 700,000 volumes had been collected by the Ptolemys. Then came the forced conversions, the extinction of positive science, persecution, and pyres.

The Jewish people were among the first to suffer from Christian monotheism. Among causes of Christian anti-Semitism is the proximity of the Jewish and Christian faiths. As Jacques Solé notes: "One persecutes only his neighbors." Only a "small gap" separates Jews from Christians, but as Nietzsche says, "the smallest gap is also the least bridgeable."

Alain de Benoist

 

Our pre-Christian heritage

Can we still conceive of the revival of pagan sensibility in an age so profoundly saturated by Judeo-Christian monotheism? In popular parlance the very word "paganism" may incite some to derision and laughter. Who, after all, wants to be associated with witches and witchcraft, with sorcery and black magic? Worshiping animals or plants, or chanting hymns to Wotan or Zeus, in an epoch of cable television and "smart weapons," does not augur well for serious intellectual and academic inquiry. Yet, before we begin to heap scorn on paganism, we should pause for a moment. Paganism is not just witches and witches' brew; paganism also means a mix of highly speculative theories and philosophies. Paganism is Seneca and Tacitus; it is an artistic and cultural movement that swept over Italy under the banner of the Renaissance. Paganism also means Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Charles Darwin, and a host of other thinkers associated with the Western cultural heritage.

We should not forget that the Western world did not begin with the birth of Christ. Neither did the religions of ancient Europeans see the first light of the day with Moses. Nor did democracy begin with the with the proclamation of American independence. Democracy and independence—all of this existed in ancient Greece. Our Greco-Roman ancestors believed in honor, justice, and virtue; attempting to judge them through the lens of the contemporary ideology could mean losing sight of how much we have departed from our ancient heritage, as well as forgetting that modern intellectual epistemology and methodology have been greatly influenced by the Biblical notions. Maybe the time has come to search for other paradigms? Perhaps the moment is ripe, as Alain de Benoist would argue, to envision another cultural and spiritual revolution—a revolution that might well embody our pre-Christian heritage?

Tomislav Sunic