The War and the World Today

World War II was probably one of the most terrifying, mysterious, and dreadful disasters to ever befall the human race. How could a civilization, presumably one of the most advanced, enlightened, and humane the world had ever known, descend with such precipitous speed to such terrifying barbarism? Clearly, those who analyzed the roots of this conflagration merit our special attention since their extraordinary subject matter could not but yield the most penetrating results. I will mention four outstanding scholars.

In theology, there is Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics begun in Germany as Hitler came to power. In economics, there is Karl Polayni's The Great Transformation completed in 1945; in literature, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis written between May 1942 and April 1945; and for culture, Charles Cochrane's Christianity and Classical Culture published in 1944. All approached their subject from different perspectives, but the concept of nature, whether the nature of the ecosystem, a given race, or an exceptional individual, played a critical role in their thought.

Nazism was a pagan religion of "blood and soil." Barth opposed this nature religion with a Christo-centric faith, basing divine revelation not in nature but in Jesus Christ. He was the chief theologian of the Confessing Church, that minority of Christians who resisted Hitler.

In economics, Polayni showed how the operations of a free market led to the insane inflation of the 1920's, followed by world-wide depression, imperialist competition, and finally, the collapse of the international market system and global war. This free market madness was justified by an appeal to nature in which the market was seen as a self-regulating mechanism where individuals competed for survival like animals in a self- regulating ecosystem.

Through an analysis of classical culture, Cochrane showed how a world-view based on nature leads at once to the recognition that certain individuals exemplify the ideal type, a fortuitous combination of virtue, fortune, and prowess that crowns them with divinity and the adulation of the multitudes. The concept of the fuhrer is a logical corollary.

And finally, Auerbach examined how classical Greek and Roman literature treated those of the lower classes, the weak, impoverished, the enslaved, as unworthy of serious literary attention. A common redeemed sinner could never be a hero. It was only "the story of Christ, with its ruthless mixture of everyday reality and the highest and most sublime tragedy, which had conquered the classical rule of styles." (p. 555)

The War has taught us nothing. A return to nature is the theological rage. Free market liberalism is the dominant economic theory today. Culturally, the exceptional individual, the great athlete, the gorgeous starlet, the canny tough politician, the ruthless brilliant entrepreneur, are our heroes. And finally, in literature, I have scarcely found any who present the face and voice of God as a palpable reality before whom the human condition can be depicted in all its grandeur and grief.

We need a profound conversion, of ourselves and our culture. (Plenteous Harvest, February, 1997)