Veritas et Sapientia – The Inevitable End of The Christ Rejecting, Dishonest Modern Man

Mandeville, LA – “In truth, all human values find their root in Revelation; everything immediately human is related uniquely to Revelation. Man is related to God through Faith, but Faith is the effect of divine grace freely given and it draws the substance of all things human into itself. As a result, a Christian Order of life could come into existence in which ―natural‖ human powers would be freed for full development, a development impossible outside a Christian Order. Man might then become conscious of values which, although evident in themselves, only take on visible manifestation under the aegis of Revelation. Those who maintain that these values and cultural attitudes are simply one with the autonomous development of human nature misunderstand the essential role of a Christian economy of Revelation, Faith and Grace. In fact the misunderstanding leads—permit me to speak plainly—to a kind of dishonesty which, as anyone who takes a clear-eyed view can see, is integral to the contemporary world itself.

Personality is essential to man. This truth becomes clear, however, and can be affirmed only under the guidance of Revelation, which related man to a living, personal God, which makes him a son of God, which teaches the ordering of His Providence. When man fails to ground his personal perfection in Divine Revelation, he still retains an awareness of the individual as a rounded, dignified and creative human being. He can have no consciousness, however, of the real person who is the absolute ground of each man, an absolute ground superior to every psychological or cultural advantage or achievement. The knowledge of what it means to be a person is inextricably bound up with the Faith of Christianity. An affirmation and a cultivation of the personal can endure for a time perhaps after Faith has been extinguished, but gradually they too will be lost.

A similar loss reveals itself in contemporary man’s feeling that personal values inhere in special talents or social position. Gone is that reverence toward the person qua person, toward his qualitative uniqueness which cannot be conceptualized or repressed for any man even if he has been typed and measured in every other respect. A kindred loss is found in the exercise of human freedom. Instead of allowing for the full development of the existent self, freedom has been restricted to the psychological advantage or social privilege; it has ignored man’s right to choose, to possess his won act while possessing himself in that act. As well, human love has been stifled, resting content with sympathy, a willingness to serve or with social duties, but seldom affirming the ―though‖ of the other even as it must accept the obligations of an “I.” Not one of these attitudes can be viable, unless the Christian concept of the person is vigorously maintained. As soon as the true value of the person is lost, as soon as the Christian faith in the God-man relationship pales, all related attitudes and values begin to disappear.

Modern man’s dishonesty was rooted in his refusal to recognize Christianity’s affirmation of the God-man relationship. Even as the modern world acclaimed the worth of personality and of an order of personal values, it did away with their guarantor, Christian Revelation. This parallel affirmation and negation can be illustrated in modern history in the case of German classicism. Carried forward by truncated attitudes and values, German classicism was noble, humane and beautiful, but it lacked the final depth of truth. It had denied Revelation although it drew everywhere upon its effects. By the next generation the classical attitude toward man had also begun to fade, not because that generation did not occupy an equally high plane, but because an uprooted personal culture is powerless against the breakthrough of positivism. ” – The Christian Foundation of Modern Values, Romano Guardini

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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