I too concur with most of what has been said but also find the need to refine some of the terms proposed in the text, especially in order to keep the question open: How does a 14 year old of today or tomorrow recognise and indeed take interest in a saint?
What constitutes human flourishing? I agree that a saint is the remarkable, rare example of a blossomed human being. But not because he/she is “good”. I find such viewpoint still tied to the moral canons that most churches frame the mystery of becoming.
To say that saints are able to “Place God before humanity” is perhaps not sufficiently inclusive. Yes in the sense of daring to transcend the societal norms of the day; the common sense and above all the fear that has many humans in fetters. But “ God before humanity” might continue to propagate a false disjunction between “human” and “divine” (often reinforced by religious doctrines).
In my understanding humanity is not a static reality nor is is antithetical with the divine. A saint is one who is less in a quest for being good, but in a quest for Being, including overcoming limits, unraveling potentials, cross over chasms and give herself/himself to insane amounts of love. Including one for humanity. That radical.
If I was told, when I was 14, about such people, that they were as good and able as myself and everyone else I knew, only perhaps forerunners exceptionally curious and eager, i would be interested. If, furthermore, I was given the tools to perceive the energetic beauty that certain people exude on account of being who they are (no tricks of rhetoric) then I would have been inwardly moved.
I agree, saints will come, even “in the desert” of the dispossessed.
Thanks. I think you're completely right to be cautious of too hard a divide between the human and divine. At the same time, though, I would not go to far towards dividing sainthood from moral goodness either. The moral canons of any particular church may be right or wrong, and the institutional use of force to enforce those canons has very often been wrong, but that is a separate question to the fundamental one of whether or not good and evil objectively exist. Not to say that a saint must be perfect, but one aspect of sainthood is an increased capacity for goodness. I think of Dorothy Day in this regard.
'Saint' is a Christian term, and Christianity is quite clear about the 'disjunction between “human” and “divine”', which is very far from being false. A saint in the Christian tradition may be in deep communion with God, as a result of his or her personal work of purification and askesis - but the saint has certainly not 'merged' with the 'divine' or anything similar. That notion would be regarded by all saints as a terrfiyting heresy, based on pride. As for 'goodness' - it is also something to be achieved, and worked towards through great self-sacrifice. As our host says - evil is real. So is good.
The philosophical depth of Christianity was, lost on me at 14, and for a couple of decades after. I think, though, that one way of framing the modern predicament is that our have lost the concept of humanity's fallen nature. Other religions have analogous doctrines, but secularity doesn't really.
Within a Catholic context, there is the idea of "union with God" as the final goal of life. This "union" has not been explained completely or properly in mechanicistic terms (scientifically) - at least I don't know of an explanation - but it's clear God's nature won't be changed as a consequence of it. A phrase that is sometimes used to describe this "union" is "Son became Man to bring Man into the inner life of the Trinity". A saint that discussed these things is St. Teresa of Avila, but there are also others. Apparently (I'm researching a bit while writing this) this is also known under the name "theosis". In all likelyhood, the process involves turning "ordinary humans" into "Christ-like humans". Speaking in Chalcedonian terms of Christ's dual nature, Christ-the-human was special in that, while possesing a human nature like us, he's actions were perfectly harmonius with the actions of Christ-the-God. Noone of us is harmonious in such a way. Perhaps this union with God is ordinary humans being changed to be similarly perfectly harmonious with God - to the point it becomes impossible to tell apart what God and human will?
Still, goodness is somewhat secondary as a goal I think. It's a fruit of relationship of man with God, and a perception of the outside observer, as if looking at an image of our Father, because "No one is good - except God alone." To "be good" is actually quite an abstract term, very dependent on the person who assigns the attribute to a thing or another person.
If Christianity doesn`t offer a clear path to radically transformation oneself--even knowing that only a few will ever walk it--then it is already slowly dying. I grew up without a faith or even seeing the need for it. It just wasn't something I considered. The times I did attend, mainly with friends, it always seemed like an odd thing to do.
But a life of exclusive humanism and trying to fake authenticity was largely a disaster. The shiny promises of all the ever proliferating secular therapies and diversions failed.
I type this in a monastery seeking that more radical path. I think there is a turn happening in our civilization. Small and slow, but a turn. If so, how does Taylor explain that?
His last substantive chapter is about 'Conversions' and is very much focused on conversions to Catholicism. It's well worth a read; but not hugely focussed on explaining conversions: it's clear that he considers exclusive humanism to be fundamentally wrong in a way a substantial people will notice. Instead of explaining, he spends quite a bit of time warning of the dangers for any new movements (and any converts) of replaying the history that got us here. He's sceptical of political partisanship, but even more sceptical of any purifying drive to reform 'ordinary Christians'.
That sounds interesting...and relevant. I agree entirely on guarding against trying to rewind the calender to a previous, and supposedly purer age. Only to replay the same disaster. This is the scenario played out, for example, in A Canticle for Leibowitz. Which as presented offers no way to exit the destructive cycle. It's something I have thought about a lot. Not that I have any solutions.
I will see if I can get my hands on A Secular Age. I do have the audiobook, if I am able to find the section you are referring to. It seems worth pondering.
Thank you for your excellent post. I hope you are well. -Jack
I like this a lot. I find myself more and more thinking along the same lines. The idea that 'the churches have failed to give clear examples of people placing God before humanity' seems obviously true to me, and was a reason also, I think now, that I had the same attitude to Christianity for most of my life. If it is just wordliness, then why bother?
I have also found that the lives of the saints make sense of it all. I am struck by the possibility - the likelihood even - that the catastrophe of the reformation, in ripping away from England the saints, the monastics and the Virgin Mary (the feminine aspect of Christianity, badly absent from the Protestant world), ripped out the heart of the nation too. I'm especially taken by the destruction of the chantries. Each monastery would have monks chanting for the health of the nation, its rulers and its people. Destroy all those and you literally dis-en-chant the country.
Still, the good news is that saints are still being made on Mount Athos and elsewhere. Personally I pray to St Bede and St Edmund daily. I think they're still watching us.
I think there is a definite parallel with the reformation, and perhaps this is partly the story of protestant norms influencing immigrant Catholicism.
I think Taylor is probably right, though, when he looks much further back for causes: to an impulse in elite medieval western Christianity to ensure that everyone in society was being a good Christian. On his account, protestantism was just one turn in that impulse unfurling. I think you're right, though, that for England it was the critical moment. Something was lost that survived the Vikings and Normans.
It really struck me when returning to a Secular Age for this post that his entire thesis is indebted to Illich. He discusses Illich at length towards the end, but because he is such a measured writer and it is such a long book, I think it is easy to miss that he is very nearly as radical, and also seems to have concluded that 'the corruption of the best is the worst'.
I like this piece very much. The area of rural north Portugal where I currently live still maintains, just, a living tradition. This includes reverence to a hierarchy of saints from the local to the universal. For me it is clear that there is an impulse in humanity in all places and throughout all eras that pulls us to transcend our ordinary humanness. So, an exploration of that impulse is the necessary response. I venture that the human being has two roles: the materialisation of spirit, and the spiritualisation of matter. Neither seems easy, but I guess that's by the by. Best wishes
Indeed. Transhumance, for example. But there are fundamental differences between 'saintly' transcendence, and transcendence as a human invention. Two very different cosmologies.
I haven't read A Secular Age in several years so I don't recall if Taylor discusses this there, but in his Sources of the Self, he describes a certain crisis of meaning that afflicts us living within the naturalistic attitude of our culture.
This isn't quite the ethics of authenticity (though they do pair well), nor is it to do quite with exclusive humanism. It is, rather than being any explicit ethical or moral outlook, a crisis brought about by the failure of such things to grab hold of us.
Given Taylor's elaboration of selfhood as a distinctly and irreducibly moral concept, it would make sense here to speak of a certain ennui or malaise (which, unsurprisingly, was part of the original title of his Ethics of Authenticity) in the absence of higher goods, rather than any express outlook that replaces them.
He does refer to the buffered self in a Secular Age, but its fairly far from centre stage. For my personal experience, the more philosophical concept of exclusive humanism was a far more appropriate frame because I wasn't suffering any concious ennui or dissatisfaction; and, for me, loss of faith was not traumatic. My puzzlement was intellectual.
Fair enough. I don't think that intellectual confusion has to segregated off from other types of emotional or spiritual dissatisfactions (especially not given Taylor's unorthodox takes on human agency & selfhood, which don't neatly separate things like intellectual and moral or spiritual categories) but you are making an interesting point regardless.
It's also interesting to compare Catholics, who have the mythology of saints (let's call it mythology because it seems to occupy the same space old mythologies occupied) and Protestants who - AFAIK - don't have saints. But your analysis is very interesting indeed.
I've just realised I can't comment on your blog without a google account, so I'll leave another note hear instead.
- I don't think anyone could have explained 'encountering' a saint to me either, even from within a religious context. maybe my grandmother when she was still alive.
- I only came across Caedmon within the last few years, depite being from Yorkshire. Hild, Cuthbert, all the Anglo-Saxon saints seem neglected in the broader culture. They no longer contribute to the sense of Englishness.
There is little, almost nothing, of the Anglo-Saxon monastery left; but its still a great place to visit. The abbey's museum is very good too. Walk along the coast or in the moors and you will find something that speaks to you, if not in the town itself.
I would integrate it with a visit to Lindesfarne. It is still haunting, and the Farne Isles (where Cuthbert was hermit for a time) are still almost unbelievably exposed and desolate. I'm sure you would find something that spoke to you
It is of interest, thank you, especially as it is about two Yorkshire saints (if from before the time Yorkshire existed a a political entity), Caedmon and Hild!
Thanks for this. I wonder how common this feeling that you have to make your 'interest' respectable is. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there are often seminar rooms with several people all talking in 'respectable' language about something they relate too in a far more complex way.
Have you read Orsi's 'History and Presence'? Your story makes me think of it a lot.
I too concur with most of what has been said but also find the need to refine some of the terms proposed in the text, especially in order to keep the question open: How does a 14 year old of today or tomorrow recognise and indeed take interest in a saint?
What constitutes human flourishing? I agree that a saint is the remarkable, rare example of a blossomed human being. But not because he/she is “good”. I find such viewpoint still tied to the moral canons that most churches frame the mystery of becoming.
To say that saints are able to “Place God before humanity” is perhaps not sufficiently inclusive. Yes in the sense of daring to transcend the societal norms of the day; the common sense and above all the fear that has many humans in fetters. But “ God before humanity” might continue to propagate a false disjunction between “human” and “divine” (often reinforced by religious doctrines).
In my understanding humanity is not a static reality nor is is antithetical with the divine. A saint is one who is less in a quest for being good, but in a quest for Being, including overcoming limits, unraveling potentials, cross over chasms and give herself/himself to insane amounts of love. Including one for humanity. That radical.
If I was told, when I was 14, about such people, that they were as good and able as myself and everyone else I knew, only perhaps forerunners exceptionally curious and eager, i would be interested. If, furthermore, I was given the tools to perceive the energetic beauty that certain people exude on account of being who they are (no tricks of rhetoric) then I would have been inwardly moved.
I agree, saints will come, even “in the desert” of the dispossessed.
Thanks. I think you're completely right to be cautious of too hard a divide between the human and divine. At the same time, though, I would not go to far towards dividing sainthood from moral goodness either. The moral canons of any particular church may be right or wrong, and the institutional use of force to enforce those canons has very often been wrong, but that is a separate question to the fundamental one of whether or not good and evil objectively exist. Not to say that a saint must be perfect, but one aspect of sainthood is an increased capacity for goodness. I think of Dorothy Day in this regard.
'Saint' is a Christian term, and Christianity is quite clear about the 'disjunction between “human” and “divine”', which is very far from being false. A saint in the Christian tradition may be in deep communion with God, as a result of his or her personal work of purification and askesis - but the saint has certainly not 'merged' with the 'divine' or anything similar. That notion would be regarded by all saints as a terrfiyting heresy, based on pride. As for 'goodness' - it is also something to be achieved, and worked towards through great self-sacrifice. As our host says - evil is real. So is good.
The philosophical depth of Christianity was, lost on me at 14, and for a couple of decades after. I think, though, that one way of framing the modern predicament is that our have lost the concept of humanity's fallen nature. Other religions have analogous doctrines, but secularity doesn't really.
Within a Catholic context, there is the idea of "union with God" as the final goal of life. This "union" has not been explained completely or properly in mechanicistic terms (scientifically) - at least I don't know of an explanation - but it's clear God's nature won't be changed as a consequence of it. A phrase that is sometimes used to describe this "union" is "Son became Man to bring Man into the inner life of the Trinity". A saint that discussed these things is St. Teresa of Avila, but there are also others. Apparently (I'm researching a bit while writing this) this is also known under the name "theosis". In all likelyhood, the process involves turning "ordinary humans" into "Christ-like humans". Speaking in Chalcedonian terms of Christ's dual nature, Christ-the-human was special in that, while possesing a human nature like us, he's actions were perfectly harmonius with the actions of Christ-the-God. Noone of us is harmonious in such a way. Perhaps this union with God is ordinary humans being changed to be similarly perfectly harmonious with God - to the point it becomes impossible to tell apart what God and human will?
Still, goodness is somewhat secondary as a goal I think. It's a fruit of relationship of man with God, and a perception of the outside observer, as if looking at an image of our Father, because "No one is good - except God alone." To "be good" is actually quite an abstract term, very dependent on the person who assigns the attribute to a thing or another person.
Beautifully said. Thank you.
If Christianity doesn`t offer a clear path to radically transformation oneself--even knowing that only a few will ever walk it--then it is already slowly dying. I grew up without a faith or even seeing the need for it. It just wasn't something I considered. The times I did attend, mainly with friends, it always seemed like an odd thing to do.
But a life of exclusive humanism and trying to fake authenticity was largely a disaster. The shiny promises of all the ever proliferating secular therapies and diversions failed.
I type this in a monastery seeking that more radical path. I think there is a turn happening in our civilization. Small and slow, but a turn. If so, how does Taylor explain that?
His last substantive chapter is about 'Conversions' and is very much focused on conversions to Catholicism. It's well worth a read; but not hugely focussed on explaining conversions: it's clear that he considers exclusive humanism to be fundamentally wrong in a way a substantial people will notice. Instead of explaining, he spends quite a bit of time warning of the dangers for any new movements (and any converts) of replaying the history that got us here. He's sceptical of political partisanship, but even more sceptical of any purifying drive to reform 'ordinary Christians'.
That sounds interesting...and relevant. I agree entirely on guarding against trying to rewind the calender to a previous, and supposedly purer age. Only to replay the same disaster. This is the scenario played out, for example, in A Canticle for Leibowitz. Which as presented offers no way to exit the destructive cycle. It's something I have thought about a lot. Not that I have any solutions.
I will see if I can get my hands on A Secular Age. I do have the audiobook, if I am able to find the section you are referring to. It seems worth pondering.
Thank you for your excellent post. I hope you are well. -Jack
I like this a lot. I find myself more and more thinking along the same lines. The idea that 'the churches have failed to give clear examples of people placing God before humanity' seems obviously true to me, and was a reason also, I think now, that I had the same attitude to Christianity for most of my life. If it is just wordliness, then why bother?
I have also found that the lives of the saints make sense of it all. I am struck by the possibility - the likelihood even - that the catastrophe of the reformation, in ripping away from England the saints, the monastics and the Virgin Mary (the feminine aspect of Christianity, badly absent from the Protestant world), ripped out the heart of the nation too. I'm especially taken by the destruction of the chantries. Each monastery would have monks chanting for the health of the nation, its rulers and its people. Destroy all those and you literally dis-en-chant the country.
Still, the good news is that saints are still being made on Mount Athos and elsewhere. Personally I pray to St Bede and St Edmund daily. I think they're still watching us.
I think there is a definite parallel with the reformation, and perhaps this is partly the story of protestant norms influencing immigrant Catholicism.
I think Taylor is probably right, though, when he looks much further back for causes: to an impulse in elite medieval western Christianity to ensure that everyone in society was being a good Christian. On his account, protestantism was just one turn in that impulse unfurling. I think you're right, though, that for England it was the critical moment. Something was lost that survived the Vikings and Normans.
It really struck me when returning to a Secular Age for this post that his entire thesis is indebted to Illich. He discusses Illich at length towards the end, but because he is such a measured writer and it is such a long book, I think it is easy to miss that he is very nearly as radical, and also seems to have concluded that 'the corruption of the best is the worst'.
I like this piece very much. The area of rural north Portugal where I currently live still maintains, just, a living tradition. This includes reverence to a hierarchy of saints from the local to the universal. For me it is clear that there is an impulse in humanity in all places and throughout all eras that pulls us to transcend our ordinary humanness. So, an exploration of that impulse is the necessary response. I venture that the human being has two roles: the materialisation of spirit, and the spiritualisation of matter. Neither seems easy, but I guess that's by the by. Best wishes
I would agree. I think in even expressly and aggressively materialist movements, the urge to transcendence is fairly clear.
Indeed. Transhumance, for example. But there are fundamental differences between 'saintly' transcendence, and transcendence as a human invention. Two very different cosmologies.
I haven't read A Secular Age in several years so I don't recall if Taylor discusses this there, but in his Sources of the Self, he describes a certain crisis of meaning that afflicts us living within the naturalistic attitude of our culture.
This isn't quite the ethics of authenticity (though they do pair well), nor is it to do quite with exclusive humanism. It is, rather than being any explicit ethical or moral outlook, a crisis brought about by the failure of such things to grab hold of us.
Given Taylor's elaboration of selfhood as a distinctly and irreducibly moral concept, it would make sense here to speak of a certain ennui or malaise (which, unsurprisingly, was part of the original title of his Ethics of Authenticity) in the absence of higher goods, rather than any express outlook that replaces them.
He does refer to the buffered self in a Secular Age, but its fairly far from centre stage. For my personal experience, the more philosophical concept of exclusive humanism was a far more appropriate frame because I wasn't suffering any concious ennui or dissatisfaction; and, for me, loss of faith was not traumatic. My puzzlement was intellectual.
Fair enough. I don't think that intellectual confusion has to segregated off from other types of emotional or spiritual dissatisfactions (especially not given Taylor's unorthodox takes on human agency & selfhood, which don't neatly separate things like intellectual and moral or spiritual categories) but you are making an interesting point regardless.
Interesting... =_=
It's also interesting to compare Catholics, who have the mythology of saints (let's call it mythology because it seems to occupy the same space old mythologies occupied) and Protestants who - AFAIK - don't have saints. But your analysis is very interesting indeed.
With Saints:
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-59969926?r=1nm0v2
I've just realised I can't comment on your blog without a google account, so I'll leave another note hear instead.
- I don't think anyone could have explained 'encountering' a saint to me either, even from within a religious context. maybe my grandmother when she was still alive.
- I only came across Caedmon within the last few years, depite being from Yorkshire. Hild, Cuthbert, all the Anglo-Saxon saints seem neglected in the broader culture. They no longer contribute to the sense of Englishness.
Thanks again :)
There is little, almost nothing, of the Anglo-Saxon monastery left; but its still a great place to visit. The abbey's museum is very good too. Walk along the coast or in the moors and you will find something that speaks to you, if not in the town itself.
I would integrate it with a visit to Lindesfarne. It is still haunting, and the Farne Isles (where Cuthbert was hermit for a time) are still almost unbelievably exposed and desolate. I'm sure you would find something that spoke to you
It is of interest, thank you, especially as it is about two Yorkshire saints (if from before the time Yorkshire existed a a political entity), Caedmon and Hild!
Thanks for this. I wonder how common this feeling that you have to make your 'interest' respectable is. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there are often seminar rooms with several people all talking in 'respectable' language about something they relate too in a far more complex way.
Have you read Orsi's 'History and Presence'? Your story makes me think of it a lot.