A Deeply Moral Concern and a Common-sense Matter
We do not doubt the dynamism inherent in the quality of totality. But sometimes we feel the need of a word more expressly suggestive of dramatic action, perhaps a noun implying a verb in it. The idea of repairing something that may now be sadly broken is foremost in our mind. We cannot help thinking of the prevailing need in this culture, an urgent necessity for every member of it. Is not this thing we all need so desperately connectedness?
The illness from which we suffer is dis-connectedness. Someone--in some way--has to re-connect what has been dis-connected. Man must re-enter that state of an intimate connection which God has prepared for all things.
With what, in particular, has he lost his original connection? First and foremost precisely with God. But consequently also his connection with the whole tangible, visible world which he finds surrounding him. He has lost his connection with his fellows, and so, perhaps worst of all, his connection with himself.
We have tried to show this, particularly by focusing our attention on a certain doubleness of vision we call dualism.
Some will perhaps object that men today, in the West above all, are too firmly anchored in their own "sturdy realism" to be seriously troubled by any such "doubleness of vision" whatsoever.
Let us have a brief glance at that "anchor" and that "sturdiness". We have been astonished to discover how often some sort of dualistic illusion may turn out to be at the base of most varying forms of onesidedness in our culture. Does even radical materialism form any real exception here?
As a dogmatic standpoint, that peculiar "Lebensanschauung" may of course present itself as a certain "monism". It may have succeeded in establishing itself as a view of remarkable "wholeness" and "harmony". But is this by virtue of a fundamental oneness? Or is it just the spurious effect of an audacious trick? There is an age-old maneuver practised sometimes in order to pose as a formidable monist: one simply excludes all unwanted aspects of human reality. In the case of materialism this may be done with the solemn proclamation: "Matter is one. Matter is the great, all-encompassing fact of this universe!"
By way of a conclusive test, we have contented ourselves with a simple glance at human individuals, seen under the vertically piercing light of the Christian Gospel. I only need to visualize myself as a being like so many others, steeped in materialistic unconcern. What, then, is the real nature of my ailment? What has made that materialism of mine a potent danger to my basic equilibrium, both as a logically reasoning and as a morally acting person? I have simply caught the "bacillus": a common, but fatal idea has, somehow, managed to enter my head and my heart. Whether that idea has come to me from Plato, or from Marx, or from any other source down the sinuous trail of the human pilgrimage across the centuries, that is a question of minor importance in this context. And the idea is approximately the following.
I constantly imagine--or there is something in the sombre depths of my being which constantly imagines-that everything will be all right with my life as long as I can provide satisfactorily for my "physical" needs. If things are going well with my body, with my house--my standard of living, and so on, and so forth--then the peculiar needs of something called my soul, my spirit, etc. will be a comparatively negligible concern. In other words, I tacitly detach that "soul", that "spirit"--or whatever one may call it--from my total destiny as a human being.
But what is this, if not a false abstraction of the most deleterious kind? And what is the subtle trick that fools me into assuming that such a detachment can properly be performed at all, without falling headlong into the trap of some kind of dualistic deception? Perhaps just materialism may turn out to be the most common manifestation of false dualism ever occurring to man. Certainly, materialism and atheism--seen from the higher viewpoint of Christian totality--are very far from abolishing dualism. For in accordance with that Christian viewpoint, a genuine religious outlook on life, and on the world, is the only escape open to man--away from the lethal clutch of dualistic illusion.
The term "flesh", as used in the Bible, is very different from the term "matter", as used in our world. In our Christian anthropology we shall endeavour to show how the former consistently stands for a whole man, body and soul--a man as we commonly know men in this world of ours, a man "under the sign of sin". Now Paul has a particularly interesting expression here: he speaks about "sowing in the flesh" (I Cor. xv:44). That is, indeed, an illustrative example of just this disruptive and alluringly one-sided materialism, towards which we are all so frantically inclined in our self-delusion.
Let us make our point still more plain and understandable through a practical example: On a tree in front of me there hangs a nice-looking apple belonging to another person. I happen to know that stealing this apple from him will cause the owner a most serious loss. For some reason he needs that apple himself quite desperately. And it is his. Nevertheless the temptation becomes too strong for me. One day I take the apple and eat it.
Now, what do physiology and my biology--as detached natural sciences--teach me concerning the things happening when I resolutely take that apple and introduce it into my hungry stomach?
They say, "This is absolutely perfect. Such and such a physiological process has started in the most beautiful order. The end of it all will be increased strength and well-being." The case is one of perfect satisfaction in all essential respects--physically and chemically speaking, or let us say biologically speaking, in order to be sure to include the nice physiological process taking place in a sound, living human being.
But stop now for a moment: Is not this "biology" here, after all, a monstrously crippled one? Is it not a biology brutally segregated from its spiritual aspect? For, in accordance with the full facts of the laws of "unmolested biology" (as Christianity is bound to look upon bios!), that apple--just like Eve's in the garden of Eden--soon brings misery, and eventually even death.
Was there anything wrong with the apply "in itself", considered as "pure matter"? Was there anything wrong with the science I consulted, considered as "pure science"?
Of course, the real wrong was already in believing that things pertaining to life can be divided into sections in that habitual way at all, without turning immediately into monsters instead of things.
Sometimes, it is true, the absurdity of the dualistic view may invite us to an almost comic consideration. We have, in the case of faith versus works, suggested the image of a windowpane. Remaining in that same field of illustration, let us try and tell a slightly different story. Imagine a customer who has purchased a set of windows. He writes the following letter to his provider:
"Dear glazier, I have just received the windows you sent me. On close inspection I notice that there are two sides to each windowpane, an outside and an inside. Now, in my case, that is a bit of a luxury. I very seldom leave my room, you see. So, generally, I can only enjoy the inside of the windows. In the future, therefore, I would suggest that you always send me windowpanes having only one side. I hope that you can then grant me a considerable discount; perhaps I should not be charged more than half the ordinary price. That would not seem unreasonable, I think, in view of the fact that my windows will then have the total of exactly half as many sides as ordinary windows. I know, of course, that most people treat themselves to windows of the double-sided type, but to me that is an extravagance I can hardly afford, and, moreover, a superfluity which is against my principles."
However, dualism, as we have here endeavoured to study it from a Christian viewpoint, regarding the most serious realities of human lives, contains so many painful and even tragic aspects that perhaps the following parable would afford a more adequate illustration.
We imagine a fine city fearfully menaced by external enemies on all sides, but wonderfully protected against them all by means of a high wall surrounding it. There is peace and prosperity among the happy inhabitants of that city for a long time. But then one day a terrible internal strife begins to divide up the population into parties fighting each other with increasing passion and bitterness. The "reason" for the conflict, however, is this "problematic" question which has suddenly arisen in their midst: "Which side of the great wall is the essential and really important one for our efficient protection, the inside or the outside?"
One group cries, "It is the outside, for that is the side stopping every attack from our dangerous enemies."
"Oh no, it is the inside," insists the other group, "for that is truly our side of the wall. We have nothing whatsoever to do with the outside. That is the side of our enemies. So it is an entirely despicable and disgusting side. In fact, we simply ought to steal out one night and tear that side down."
Presumably, no reasoning man would think a strife of that kind very intelligent or very happy. But in what does it differ so notoriously from the whole tragic-comedy we have tried to describe in our culture; we mean viewed with the eyes of an anthropology which has managed to catch sight of one curious fact--man, the indivisible!