Barfield Keeps Evolutionary Spirituality On Track

I just finished a better than expected book, Romantic Religion by R.J. Reilly, which explores the way imagination was evoked in works of the four major Inklings: Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Surprisingly, the book gives more emphasis to Barfield, primarily because of the four Inklings he was the one that constructed a newer theory of knowledge that, similar to his counterparts, was still grounded in Christian worldview.  

Barfield took up a topic that was not necessarily undiscovered, but coherent and consistent enough with tradition that it did not require man to create another religion. His main thesis is that the evolution of nature is inseparable from the evolution of consciousness. And that Christianity could be seen in a fresh light from this current milieu as God reveals “His word to man in the way that man at that particular stage of civilization is best fitted to receive it.”

But how is this different from other espousers of evolutionary spirituality (or process theology)? First, Barfield did not see God as evolving; it is only our relationship to Him that evolves. Barfield disagreed with Teilhard de Chardin's mystical evolution to the Omega Point, because “it begins with the old Darwinian assumption that matter preceded mind, that, over aeons, matter evolved into ever more complex organisms, and that eventually the increasing complexity of structure in matter produced consciousness.” Barfield did not stray from God as Creator, and with his study of language he found that the ancients participated with phenomena less distinctly and more intuitively. The “Fall” has been a process of making finer distinctions of phenomena, thereby granting objective existence to our collective representations. If we were to evolve from here, it would require us regain our conscious participation and continue upward toward Eternal Spirit. Reilly notes, “From the purely temporal point of view, then, we may say that God is manifesting Himself in man; but He is not thereby diminishing Himself, nor is He evolving.”

Also, Barfield differed from other theories of evolutionary spirituality in his importance of maintaining the distinction between God and person. His view was “that evolution is a descent from unindividualized spirit into individualized spirit and matter—man and phenomena—and then a continuing upward movement back toward spirit—a return to the One, but not a submerging of the individual spirits in the One, rather a convergence of the fully individuated and fully conscious Many in the One” (emphasis mine). God remains a mystery above and beyond man, but coinheres in the individuated personhood of man. C.S. Lewis appreciated this perspective, and sided with his colleague and friend Barfield that “among Pantheists we must emphasize our independence of God, while among Deists we must stress his Divine presence.”

Lastly, Barfield saw that true evolution was not necessarily always moving in the way man may see it; and that history was a “series of conflicts between the impulse toward true evolution and the impulse toward substitution.” Since man is condemned to religion, he will find false substitutes if the demands of tradition do not suit the times nor his temperament. Such as we can see through history with the trends of marxism, socialism, materialism, scientism, environmentalism, and new ageism. Reilly adds, “We may choose a further evolution toward an even greater idolatry, choosing to cut ourselves off even more from the world outside us.” Barfield's fear is that this would eliminate all meaning and coherence from the cosmos, because our participation would not be primarily with God.

On a final matter, Barfield did not dismiss the Incarnation as symbolic gesture, but a true myth that aligned with his temporal theory: “At a certain point in time—the time of the historical Incarnation of Christ and His subsequent death—the process became one of ascent, or re-ascent. Diagrammatically, Barfield says, the process of evolution appears not as a straight line sloping always upward but more as a capital U.” The flight from God requires us, as Barfield said, to “find our way back to her again.”

*

I particularly recommend this short film on Barfield. I find this gives one a good sensibility of the man, and his transmission of ideas. I've also noticed a recent uptick of people recognizing his work again.

Our Violent Nature Is a Feature — Not a Bug!

I was watching a recent interview with Peter Thiel, and then decided to read his white paper called The Straussian Moment. For high tech mogul, Thiel is certainly unique from the Silicon Valley mindset. He understands there is an indoctrinated mentality of his peers who believe in the power of the will over reasoned inquiry of metaphysics, morality, human meaning, and the order of being or its transcendent ground. As such, Thiel is concerned that the technologists of today have abandoned the question of human nature and teleology over a materialistic mono-culture of entertainment, naval-gazing, and cultural Marxism.

With no real vision for humanity tomorrow, we begin to lose sight of the things that matter today.  

Thiel, as a René Girard'ian at heart, also sees we are sweeping an elephant under the rug: humans are and will always be violent as part of our nature, and violence can be a great unifier if we don't have something to counter this. The Enlightenment values may have attempted to counter this with the idea that we will use reason to form social contracts, but in truth, such reason needs a virtuous and principled underpinning. Without it, we can easily become swept up by the will for power — even if it's only accumulating more followers of our tweets.  

Our ancestors found a way to keep our violent nature at bay; however, with a price to be paid: the scapegoat. Thiel says, 

“That murder is the secret origin of all religions and political institutions, and is remember and transfigured in the form of myth. The scapegoat, perceive as the primal source of conflict and disorder, had to die for there to be peace. By violence, violence was brought to an end and society was born. But because society rests on the belied in its own order and justice, the founding act of violence must be concealed - by the myth that the slain victim was really guilty. Thus violence is lodged at the heart of society; myth is merely discourse ephemeral to violence.”

But this is how things use to work. It doesn't mean our violent natures went away, its just the Enlightenment took over with the belief there is a natural goodness to humanity and we can all come together and form our social contracts. But violence can be activated in every direction; from the common man to the intelligentsia (as we've seen with the 20th century atrocities). With myth abandoned, we are living on borrowed time before the malice of humanity is unleashed.

To think we have matured beyond our violent past, Kevin Williamson notes: “About 13 percent of Republicans and 18 percent of Democrats believe political violence would be justified in 2020 if their party lost the presidential election.” If 10 percent is a tipping point, we are getting closer to trouble. As mob rule becomes more dominant, then Thiel is correct that the will to power will superimpose itself over any real discourse. As Williamson adds, “Groups do not think in any meaningful sense. People think — one at a time.”

In his excellent book, Violence Unveiled, which honors René Girard's work, the author Gil Bailie notes:

“When cultures lose their ability to generate lasting forms of camaraderie at the expense of their victims and enemies, they are soon overtaken by the social tensions and fractional rivalries their sacrificial mechanisms can no longer reconcile. Unless one of these factions can convincingly declare its violence to be metaphysically distinct from the violence that is physically indistinguishable from it, no resolution is possible, and the society teeters on the brink of “apocolyptic” violence.”

Girard's brilliance was to see the only way out of mimetic violence was not to return to the sacrificial and scapegoating myths of the past, or even a purely intellectual process of the Enlightenment philosophers, but to find real religious transcendence. Since we are condemned to religion through our passional instincts, we require the transcendent mystery of God to do a Will that transcends our will to power.

We begin to realize the beauty of the Gospels where the Christ figure overturns the victim by converging it with the prophet. Christ dies to undermine the structures of our sacred violence, and is resurrected to show us how to live sacredly without such structures. His sacrifice points us to an end of all external sacrifice as a means to a transcendent order — which can only happen through our own internal sacrifice! Mimetic violence is turned on its head as the one true myth deconstructs it and, in turn, offers a God-centered way of being that holds all factions together.

The stark contrast of this choice from where we are today only supports Thiel's concerns going forward. The real issue at hand for the modern world is its belief that it can “fulfill the requirements of the second commandment without having to bother with the first” (Bailie). 

We probably can not.