Brief Note on the Internal Incoherence of Traditionalist Critiques of Modernity
One of the self-evident, internal issues with the hyper-polemical critiques of modernity given by religious traditionalists across a variety of religious affiliations is the clear lack of creative imagination and faith on display in thinking that a God who is supposedly all-Powerful and all-Good would somehow allow for a period of human culture, consciousness, and philosophy to develop which has nothing of substance to contribute — nothing positive or novel… Nothing which is ultimately intended by the Divine to give added wisdom or richness or beauty to the cosmos and the particular human story occurring therein.
Does one really have such little faith in God’s wisdom and planning that one thinks humanity somehow outdid the Divine in ushering in a total Dark Age with no silver lining or greater purpose available? Is it not more faithful and pious to think there may in fact be some wise intent behind the development of these contemporary modes of thought, these modern socio-cultural values? Obviously, it is a sort of religious naturalistic fallacy to assume merely because something exists, it is Divine intent that this thing be accepted wholesale and that it be seen as Good — were this the case, there would be no basic sense to human action and moral responsibility. But it is equally a mistake to disengage from the important but difficult task of working to ascertain Divine intent and wisdom behind the manifestations in this world, even if this is always a provisional project where achieving some kind of finality or comprehensiveness is not feasible. To brush aside this work by buying into broad, polemical narratives that provide pre-packaged, easy answers to the difficult questions of our era is to shirk one’s religious duties — it is both sloth and arrogance.
Of course, there are myriad aspects and consequences of modernity (and postmodernity, etc) which we rightly want to condemn, reject, transform, and contextualize. Some of these things very likely do not exemplify some sort of higher Divine intent (except in the negative — i.e. “here’s a very clear example of how NOT to act in this Creation”) and instead just represent the reach of human folly. But this is exactly the point: we have a duty to carefully sort the wheat from the chaff. I would venture that few would wish to wholesale reject the affordances offered by the modern medical paradigm, even as there’s much therein deserving of critique and requiring greater balance. But unless we do the difficult work of fine-grained analysis, how can we come up with a coherent vision for, say, rejecting the crude and imposing mechanistic worldview underlying much of contemporary science without making the positive, tangible results of the practices and methods that spring from this paradigm basically incomprehensible? If modernity is so fundamentally bad and entirely the result of human folly, is it then the case that God does not intend that human beings venture forth in search of knowledge and techniques to cure disease and treat ailments? The kind of care and concern for creation involved in such a project, and the virtuousness with which it is often undertaken, seems like paradigmatic example of rising to the Divine call in this world. Yet how can we see this as such if we are viewing the world through such black and white glasses? How can we come into contact with a genuine teleology behind aspects of the modern, and bring this into coherence with our basic intuitions about the Divine and the God-World relationship (i.e. that God is at work in this cosmos, endeavoring to bring about the best outcomes)?
Not only do I think certain heavy-handed critiques of modernity are incapable of sufficiently answering these questions, but that they become active obstacles to careful, pious work in this domain. There is a certain gnostic dualism to this perspective — that the dark forces of modernity are somehow so powerful that God’s beneficent intent for humanity could very well be thwarted. Of course, this part is never said aloud, as it cuts so strongly against the grain of traditional theologies. But that itself should be a clue that such perspectives are incoherent and off-point.
May we all be empowered beyond the trappings of simplistic and incoherent answers to greater contact and clarity with the mystifying arc of history in the midst of which we find ourselves.
