So let us consider where we might have a home
and reflect upon how we might get there…
The Seafarer, Old English poem from the Exeter Book
This road has no end
Ben Okri, The Famished Road
Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Isaiah 55:1
Contents:
Introduction
1. What do we mean by true?
2. Being, Consciousness, Desire
3. Metaphor, Language, Revelation
4. Love
5. What think ye of Christ?
Introduction
This is a piece I have been thinking about since I started writing articles and essays online. It brings together ideas in other pieces; it is long, and I hope you will give it a fair go. Naturally I have skirted the subject in other writings, and perhaps also naturally for the time in which we live, the reaction is usually somewhat brittle to say the least whenever the words ‘Christianity’ or ‘religion’ are invoked. Its an easy and somewhat tiring response to have to point out that most of the categories by which we make many of the criticisms we make are themselves largely Christian, and rejecting the root of our values while imagining they will be self sustaining is a troubling position, one to which we need to take more attention to considering, but this is an argument that has been made extensively elsewhere, not the least in Tom Holland’s significant book ‘Dominion’, or Nick Spencer’s ‘The Evolution of the West’. The point is that the truth of Christianity matters to all of us in the West because whether we like it or not it is the seedbed of much of our moral and philosophical worldview, and our current condition of fragmentation, polarisation and general aimless drifting leaves us as far from answers to the most significant of human questions as we have ever been, so much so that many simply abandon asking them. Alongside this the debate about the ‘truth’ of Christianity in many of its manifestations even within contemporary church seems to have become bogged in stifling literalism and a failing to grasp the substance of what belief in God has meant philosophically for much of Christian history. This situation means we are in need of taking Christianity seriously, not for the sake of winning an argument or putting down a group of people but because we should want to know what is true, or not, and how we might sustain our core values through the storms of history, collectively and individually. Individually is perhaps the most important. I do not think from my judgement the West will return to Christianity in a broad sense, and perhaps this is not such a bad thing. Nominalism can be as listless as apathy. Faith must be found not just named, and if you are seeking with an open mind, this essay is written for you.
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