Comments on: Bertrand Russell gets something right

By: Nathan Smith

Nathan Smith — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:30:00 +0000

Tobias Petrus’s comment is an exaggeration but nonetheless insightful. It’s true that the Orthodox have had a long habit of attributing holiness to secular rulers, often spectacular undeserving of the honor, particularly in Russia. Probably the mental habits did explain the ability of the Russians to accept rule by the Soviets and even to see them as the good guys in a global struggle, somehow, even though they were vaguely aware of the horrible evils that had been perpetrated by them. I’ve had it explained to me that the Soviets in some ways produced a secularized version of the civic life of the old “Holy Russia,” complete with a universalistic official faith.

But there was always another side of Orthodoxy: a side that saw holiness in the meek and the downtrodden, in redemptive suffering. I believe that people always felt that this was the truer part of their faith, but the awe of power corrupted them generation after generation. Perhaps God allowed the Bolshevik Revolution to happen in order to cure the Orthodox, through terrible tragedy, of the Caesaro-papism that had for centuries marred their civilization.

By: Clara

Clara — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:44:00 +0000

Actually, Russell talks about the Bolsheviks in the essay. He classes Orthodox thinkers together with Catholics since they both look to a single Church as the foundation of their faith. He claims that Catholic freethinkers, once they revolt, can go one of two ways. Either they have a sense of fun, take a “moral holiday”, and become Montaigne-type figures, or else they’re unfun people and seek to recreate the central authority in some other way. And his main example of that is Lenin.

By: Tobias Petrus

Tobias Petrus — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:23:00 +0000

Perhaps the “orthodox” situation can be understood in terms of the caesaro-papism of schismatic lands. These people already expect a virtually all-powerful secular ruler to control and manipulate a national sect. Communism substitutes the Communist dictator for the Czar, the Party for the Church.

By: Tobias Petrus

Tobias Petrus — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:20:00 +0000

“They revolt, in order to be bad, by living their faith…”

Well, if you read what Russell wrote (and he should know), protestant freethinkers actually are living their “faith” — private interpretation and the total depravity of man — as much as Islamists are living their “faith.” Protestant freethinkers are just living out the logical consequences of the theological, and hence moral and intellectual, chaos wrought by Calvin et al. Many of the leading German philosophes were the children of Lutheran pastors, for instance. One of my mentors, Vin Lewis, likes to say that Catholics go to hell for rejecting their religion, protestants and all other non-Catholics go to hell for following theirs.

So I agree with Ambrosius: the best protestants turn Catholic, the worst Catholics turn protestant. I would add that many of the leading protestants are ex-Catholics precisely because they bring more residual fragments of truth with them, plus a guilty conscience that forces them to rationalize their apostasy via greater commitment to heresy than those raised in these sects would ever care to muster. To account for this (why ex-Catholics are the most zealous protestants) the following saying of a high school teacher of mine comes to mind: “In the land of the blind, the cyclops is king.”

Plus, we should remember that many (not all, but many) of the more influential founding Bolsheviks were Jewish, not eastern “orthodox” (sic). So they were enacting the false messianism of rabbinic judaism, but in a secular, international-utopian (as opposed to national-Zionist) manner.

By: Nathan Smith

Nathan Smith — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:50:00 +0000

Hmm. If Protestant freethinkers revolt to be good, Catholic freethinkers to be bad, then what about Orthodox freethinkers? They revolt to become communists. Which is that? It has something of the effort to be good about it, but actually leads to becoming worse than any Catholic apostate that I’m aware of. (Even the French revolutionaries never held a candle to the crimes of the Bolsheviks.)

Then there are contemporary Islamists who probably have the sense of revolt characteristic of an apostate even as they blow themselves up in the name of their faith. They revolt, in order to be bad, by living their faith…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:15:00 +0000

I believe the novel you are referring to is The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I read the book in my senior year of high school. Overall, I didn’t find it very interesting, but the Catholic sermons in the third chapter were impressive.

By: Tobias Petrus

Tobias Petrus — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:36:00 +0000

Joyce was an ex-Catholic freethinker. I’ve been told that one of the freethinking characters in a novel of his is asked, “So have you become a Protestant?” He responds, “I’ve lost my faith, not my mind.”

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:58:00 +0000

Interesting remarks!