design submitted by a reader of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Abbey of Misrule
My belief in the profanity of technology is not widely shared, and…even people who I imagined would have a serious critique of technology often simply don’t. You might expect religious leaders to be clued up about the dark spiritual aspects of the technium, but while there have been astute religious critics of the Machine - Wendell Berry, Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, Philip Sherrard and Marshall McLuhan… - most religious leaders and thinkers seem as swept up in the Machine’s propaganda system as anyone else. They have bought into what we might call the Myth of Neutral Technology, a subset of the Myth of Progress. In my view, true religion should challenge both. But I think, as ever, that I am in the minority here.
Finished reading: What Is Christianity? by Herman Bavinck 📚
What is contained in that Bible is so rich and so broad in scope that it cannot be taken in and reproduced by one person, not by a single generation of people. That requires centuries. The knowledge of the length and breadth and depth and height of Christ’s love can only be attained in fellowship with all the saints. First, therefore, the confession is small. Nothing else is needed except: I believe in Jesus, the Christ. Later on, it will be explained more broadly in the words: I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is the root, which later on grows into the trunk of the twelve articles of faith. And each time the church is introduced more deeply into God’s revelation in subsequent times, this root grows up and various branches grow on it, some of which bend sideways and grow in the wrong direction. But thus, in the course of the centuries, the love of Christ is interpreted more and more broadly, and that glorious image which the church conceives from the Holy Scriptures and causes to radiate outwardly is further and further completed.
The unity of the church and Christianity is irrevocably behind us; differentiation is increasing in all areas, including religion. Just as Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed have had to get used to existing side by side. God seems to want to teach us even more in this direction; his teaching in previous centuries of the lack of charity of our hearts has not yet been received seriously enough.
Currently reading: The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis 📚
treasures old and new
Finished reading: The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat 📚
Douthat’s commentary is unfailingly wise and incisive. He’s one of a vanishingly small number of writers who can make a case in such a reasonable way that those with different priors can still acknowledge the seriousness of his position. It’s hard to imagine a person of any political persuasion contesting the main contours of his description of our decadent age. Even his predictions and possible paths forward, which are by nature more speculative, seem sensible enough.
RIP mummy
