Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
A Fruitless Search

A Fruitless Search

Last updated on: June 14, 2019 at 8:00 am by Coyle Neal

A Fruitless Search 2019-06-13T13:03:37-06:00 Coyle Neal

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Brad Birzer’s recent monograph Seeking Christendom: An Augustinian Defense of Western Civilization was, by the author’s own admission, birthed only half-formed. For all that, it is an ambitious project:

This book, Seeking Christendom, offers an Augustinian critique of the twentieth-century and all of its ideological horrors… [with] special attention to [Russell] Kirk, [Christopher] Dawson, [T.S.] Eliot, [J.R.R.] Tolkien, [C.S.] Lewis, and [Eric] Voegelin.

As I said, this is ambitious for so short a work. For what it’s worth, I think he’s done a decent job of covering a lot of territory in a few pages.

Three things about this book.

1. I agree with some of Birzer’s criticisms, and I’m sympathetic to much of his project. Traditional conservatism is a much-needed corrective to the insanity of the modern world. And yet, I think there are still some problems here. For example, he begins with a list intended to be added to Kirk’s “Canons of Conservatism“:

“First, that the preservation of the virtues of the West, best understood through the stories of the exemplars of these virtues, is a sacred duty.”
-I’m fine with the goal of “the preservation of the virtues of the West,” and I’m fine with understanding these virtues through “stories of… exemplars” (more on this below). What I’m not fine with is the “sacred” bit.

“Second, that one must understand history in metahistorical, theological, and poetic terms as did Virgil and St. Augustine.”
-This is a very important point, because at the end of the day we understand ourselves and the world through these kinds of filters. The less reflective we are about them, the more likely we are to be swept up in false and destructive ideologies. Of course merely being “reflective” is no curative, but reflection is a necessary precondition for a cure.

“Third, one must embrace a proper anthropology, defining man by both his inherited sin and his received grace. The person, at root, is a being endowed with rationality, reason, and passion. He is higher than the animals, but lower than the angels. He must, to be fully human, balance each of these tensions.”
-No disagreement here.

“Fourth, Christians (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant)–in alliance with Jews and even virtuous pagans…”
-I’m breaking this one into two points, because this first point I generally agree with. When it comes to politics, I’m certainly willing to work with my Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish friends to achieve common goals (ending abortion, for example). So, as far as it goes, sure. But, Birzer goes on to say that these groups
“must sanctify the world through the Grace of God. For men of good will to fight amongst themselves squanders precious time and resources, and it leaves the field to the Enemy.”
-Here, Birzer has done the thing traditional conservatives always want to avoid–he has immanentized the eschaton. “The world” is not something that will ever be “sanctified” in this life. We are pilgrims passing through a world bound for destruction. And to be sure we have responsibilities that involve warning the world of the coming judgment, and living well as believers in our churches, but those responsibilities do not involve the sanctification of the unregenerate cosmos. If the world is elevated by our example, so much the better for the world. If not, well, that’s the concern of Providence.

“Fifth, the real struggle in the world is not between left and right, but between Christ and anti-Christ, between that which is humane and that which is anti-humane.”
-No disagreement here.

“Finally, true remembrance, preservation, and advocacy of all that is Good, True, and Beautiful, comes from a recognition that our highest form of understanding is derived from the reflection of the light of the Logos in our souls through the faculty of imagination.”
-I think this is probably true as well. The focus on a properly formed imagination is an important one, and something that is worth more reflection on. (Irving Babbitt is a good place to start.)

So overall, something of a mixed bag in terms of the book’s goals, though a bag with plenty of good stuff in it.

2. I disagree with his Roman Catholic prescriptions, mostly because they are heretical.
As with so many faithful Roman Catholics, he looks to the Middle Ages as his guide and ideal for what a properly balanced society should be. And hey, I get it: this is the point in history when the most powerful head of state in the Western World, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, knelt down in the snow and begged forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII for exercising political authority within the borders of his own realm. Meanwhile, my guys were having their bodies exhumed, burned, and their ashes thrown in the river.
(We got the last laugh though, because besides eternity in heaven, the river into which Wycliffe’s ashes were thrown

“conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over”)

But I certainly don’t begrudge a Catholic being a consistent Catholic. I hope to evangelize and witness to them, but not to begrudge them consistency in their beliefs.

3. Probably most importantly, I disagree with his positive prescriptions, both in their accuracy and in their being tied to Augustine.

“More than any other figure in the Western tradition, St. Augustine spoke to the twentieth-century defenders of the West for three important reasons. First, Augustine took his role as preserver of the West as a sacred duty. Second, one can readily regard him as the ‘founder of the philosophy of history.’ Third, St Augustine offered a proper anthropology, defining man by both his inherited sin and his received grace.”

The second and third points are undoubtedly true. Augustine was certainly the father of the philosophy of history. And he did offer up a “proper anthropology,” in that he was functionally expositing the view of man found in Scripture. But the first point is wrong. In fact, to say that “Augustine took his role as preserver of the West as a sacred duty” is so wrong that if this statement were handed to me out of context I’d suspect that its author simply had never read any Augustine in the first place. This is, after all, the theologian who asks in City of God whether it even matters what government we live under, so long as we’re not being forced to sin? Which isn’t to say there aren’t better and worse forms of government–Augustine happily admits that there are. But at no point does he confuse the City of God with the city of man. He in fact dedicates multiple books in City of God to existentially and ultimately separating these two from each other. The fact that they get jumbled again in the Middle Ages, often times in the name of Augustine, is just a sign of the growth of one kind of heresy in the institutional church during that time period.

None of this is to say that Seeking Christendom is without value. I do recommending reading it as a reflection on the 20th century. It just misfires right where it could have been most useful. Fortunately, there are many, many other excellent works by Birzer that I’m even happier to recommend (you should especially watch his occasional writings over at The Imaginative Conservative).

Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO

Previous Post

June 7, 2019

The Past is Helpful

Next Post

June 21, 2019 The Past can be a Pain

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Action AFI Top 100 Animation Best Picture Winner BFI Top 250 Biography Biopic Books Childrens Christian Classics Classics Comedy Crime Documentary Drama Editor's Choice Family Fantasy Fantasy Films Foreign Historical Historical Fiction History Horror Horror IMDB Top 250 Indie Memoir Modern Novel Musical Mystery Non-Fiction Oscars Philosophy Poetry Popular Literature Reading and Writing Reality Romance Science Fiction Science Fiction Silent Sports Thriller TV Show Uncategorized Western Westerns Young Adult

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 June 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

And if a kingdom be divided against itself, ____________.

Select your answer to see how you score.

that kingdom cannot stand it is doomed it will fall it has no hope