A fascinating video between Jonathan Pageau and Rachel Fulton Brown on the relationship between the symbolic masculine and the symbolic feminine, or heaven and earth. As Pageau points out, the Enlightenment emphasized the masculine over the feminine, or heaven over earth. This has wide ranging effects:
- Epistemology: rationalism over romanticism. This leads to a reductive scientism and reductive literalism. Science is seen as the only way to truth, the humanities are disregarded. Christians lose the ability to get in touch with the rich symbolism of the bible and only see the shallow surface reading.
- Futurism: Progress is associated with more and more technological advancement, more tech = more advanced. This is pragmatism at its worst, at the expense of goodness and beauty.
- Enviromental: Instead of an ethic of living harmoniously with nature, we see ourselves as extractors. Nature is for us to colonize and exploit.
- Masculinity over Femininity: The traditional masculine roles and traits are seen as normative and desirable. The idea that there is such a thing as gender and gender roles is dismissed as “misogynist.” Under the guise of empowering women, the feminine is undermined and the masculine promoted as the ideal.
- Supernatural/Natural: A dichotomy is created between the natural and the supernatural, church and state. Instead of the idea of a God entering into time, and working within His creation to unite heaven and earth; we have the idea of “souls going to heaven.” Instead of all of life being for the glory of God, we “feed our souls” on Sunday.
The significance of the incarnation is that it represents the union of heaven and earth, God an Man. Jesus is not just God and not just Man, He is fully God and fully man, he is the Logos made flesh. Understanding the significance of this shows the poverty of modernity.
Coffee with Kierkegaard 