On True Civilization
What are the foundational presuppositions of True Civilization?
In answering this question, we must acknowledge that we have begun with assumptions. We have assumed that there is such a thing as civilization. We have assumed that there is a form of civilization that conforms to truth, and possibly several forms that do not. We have also assumed that civilization is both desirable and possible.
Is there such a thing as Civilization? If we admit that it exists, then we must also admit certain other principles as being true, in order that it be so. Civilization is, by its nature, the traditions of a people by which they live, share common life, values, and Telos.
If there is such a thing as Civilization, then the members must share in certain assumptions. These must share an assumed Order, an assumed Authority, and a shared Story. In order for there to be shared Order, rationality and a belief in coherence must prevail.
Darwin can never be more than a heretic against civilization. His theories undermine rationality, order, and all belief in coherence. His espousal of ultimate random-ness is a repudiation of Telos. He is a heretic because he has rationalized irrationality. If his theory were true, then he could not have expressed it, and we could not have understood him, nor anything else.
The fact that we can understand and be understood demonstrates the truth of truth. Language is, in its very nature, a proof of Meaning. In saying this, I am being wholly unoriginal. Others have said these things to me, and I understood them. The fact that I understood is proof of understanding, which thing cannot exist in an irrational universe. That which is really random cannot have meaning in either its whole, or in its many parts.
If language, and its ancestor, Idea, do in fact exist, then we are approaching the mountain of Meaning. For there to be meaning in language, there must be something that is. This thing must be communicable. There must also be those who communicate meaning, from one to an other. Idea must be a thing that exists, if it can be communicated.
If Idea can be communicated, it must belong to the province of Universals. Idea is something other than the speaker. It is outside of the instance of the speech, yet it is also intrinsic to it. A man who talks to another man is communicating ideas that are above himself. These ideas exist, even if he ceases to exist.
Take for instance the fact of chair-ness. I may write thus and so about a chair. I may write about a particular chair. Perhaps it has a rough wooden seat and a high back. The reader knows the particulars of this chair because the reader shares in the knowledge of this instance of chair. It is also possible to speak of chairs in the abstract, as referring to the idea of chair, or to the type of thing known as chair. When we speak of chair-ness, we are generally understood. Either mode of speaking about chair, particular or universal, is equally sensible to the reader. The reader has experience of instantiations of chair, and he also has rational perception of chair as a type.
The fact of chair-ness demonstrates order, rationality, and something universal. The fact of meaning in language demonstrates the same. If Idea can be communicated, it must be something universal, something other than and greater than the particular expression of it.
Order, Authority, Telos and Story are transmitted by word. These things require word in order to be shared. This sharing is natural, it is necessary. If men do not share these things, then they cannot be said to share in the same civilization. Christendom and the Caliphate do not share the same Order. These most certainly do not share the same Authority. If one wishes to say that they share the same Story, then one must also confess that they tell it very differently.
Secular atheism is a heresy against civilization precisely because it denies Order, Authority, and Telos. The story that the atheists tell is entirely too plastic to be said to be one thing. It is a scattering of random. Atheism is abominable and un-civilized because it is false. Atheism is a rebellion against One. It is an embrace of the many. It is the worship of the particular. Everything is reduced down to chance, blind fate, an irreducible meaninglessness. As it is a devotee of the particular, it has lost the coherence of Universals, and has lost all Telos.
Islam has the opposite problem. In its embrace of the One, it has rejected the many. By enslaving Arab souls to One, they have lost Two and Three. The basic muslim confession is that god is One. They have lost number. Sharia is the rejection of the individual, the other.
A God who is only One cannot make anything that is other. He has no prior knowledge of “other” if he is alone. He thus becomes a god in process, if he is anything at all.
In order to be consistent with their confession of god as One, muslims ought to either confess that there is something higher than their god who can account for number and other, or they must confess that nothing has been created by their god. If the first proposition is true, then we have nothing more than the duodecads of Valentinius. If the second, then all being is already in god. We are in god already, and nothing in Islamic theology makes any sense. Islamic theology dissolves down into Gnosticism on the one hand, or into pantheism on the other. That no muslim agrees with these inescapable conclusions is merely a demonstration of institutionalized hypocrisy. If the Islamic god is true, then we are left with an arbitrary choice between two absurdities.
Individuation is obvious. There are numbers beyond One. Math proves Islam false. If there is being other than god, then the Islamic god is false. Being falsifies their idea of god.
Language proves atheism false. There is meaning beyond the individual. The fact that any two men can speak coherently to each other proves that there is indeed universal meaning. Coherence falsifies Darwin. When atheists appeal to any concept at all, they are acting as if the universe is something other than a sheer blind evolutionary deterministic thing. These too, are guilty of hypocrisy.
If Number and Being falsify Islam, and Coherence and Universals falsify Darwin and his atheist apparatchiks, then where are we? One cannot account for the many. Many cannot account for the One. On what good ground may we have a civilization?
We must embrace both the individual and the universal. Our system must account for the Facts and for Idea. We must account for Universals and for Particulars. It appears that we must have both the One and the Many, and have them without losing either. I speak not of a purely rational attempt at arbitrary balance between two wildly divergent things. I speak of the Trinity.
True Civilization is only possible in a world created and governed by the Triune God, the One True God revealed to us in the scriptures.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God spoke everything into being. This speech was the person of the Eternal Son, Jesus Christ, who like a master workman was at His Fathers’ right hand from the beginning. The person of the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters, making order rise in place of chaos.
The Eternal Father is the Creator. The Eternal Son is the Word, the effectual might of His Father. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings unity to the disparate elements, the one who is the Breath of Life. The Son maintains all things by His word of power. All things have their maintenance and coherence in His wisdom. All authority resides in the Father, and is given to the Son.
These three persons are One. They are one in divinity, three in person. They have the same essence. Each does not have a similar essence, but the very same. This is not an essence that they share, as if it were a pie, each getting one third. Each of them is absolutely Divine, and all of them together are God. The persons are not different modes of the One. The Son is eternally the Son, the Father is eternally the Father, the Spirit is eternally the Spirit. They are Three and One. This is a pure and perfect unity that does not obscure or diminish any of the Persons. The Divine mystery of the Trinity is a perfect and eternal union of the One and the Many. All of the simplicity of the One is present, as is the individuation of the Three.
The Triune God of the scriptures is the explanation for the world as it is. A God who is both One and Three is sufficient ground as an explanation of the One-ness and the Many-ness of creation. When God created the universe, he was not doing something that was outside his own experience. In eternity there was always an eternal Other within the Godhead. For God to make anything other, was for Him to do something that came from within His own being. Other is intrinsic within the Trinity.
Creation is also coherent. Laws, Rules, Order and Telos exist as things outside of the particulars. The Particulars adhere to these laws. Gravity has a way of dropping apples on Englishmen. These laws of physics do not erase distinctions between things on which they act. Particular being is not annihilated by Universal law. Both exist, and exist at the same time, in the same place. The laws of math do not erase numbers. Both the law and the individual number exist. You can annihilate a particular man, but you have not eliminated mankind thereby. The destruction of a blade of grass does no harm to Grass-ness. One might attempt the suppression of an idea, but no tyrant can suppress Idea.
True Civilization must be grounded in the Triune God of the Bible. Trinity is the only coherent explanation for everything. All universals and all particulars can be accounted for in this world, as made by this God.
Individuals can only have a just civilization into which they belong, in so far as it is ordered according to the Word of the One True God. A just civilization must be one ordered according to the True Story. Genuine, grateful homage must be rendered to God. True civilization can only begin when it begins at the starting point, which is Christ Jesus himself. To speak of civilization is to speak of Christendom. Christendom is a Good Thing.
Under the holy banners of Christendom, the many and the one may cohere. Here is no fragmentation of the One, nor an annihilation of the particular. In Christ, and in His Holy Kingdom, nations and people have their right place.