And There Was No Remedy

Introduction

We are often reminded, in the words of the preacher, that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). By this observation, he certainly does not mean that there cannot be any new inventions, or any new devices. The prophet Daniel tells us that men will run to and fro, and knowledge will increase (Dan. 12:4). We have figured out lots of new things that have certainly appeared transformative and, on their own level, we need to grant that they have been transformative. I am speaking of the screw pump, or the long bow, or the steam engine, or the microchip. The hot new thing that all the folks are talking about now is AI. But at the end of the day, after all the excitement over “whatever” has died down, the perennial issues still remain. People are still people.

And this is what the preacher was talking about. The human condition is the human condition, and what we are calling our postmodern ennui or angst, or decadence, as though it were some new thing, is not a new thing at all. What we are going through is just what cultures always go through when they get to this stage. Imagine being an eighty-five-year-old man who had come to believe that his situation or condition was absolutely unique in the history of the world. He was the only one. He couldn’t read up on what was going to happen to him next because he thought he was the only person this had ever happened to. Far from being the kind of thing that Cicero mused about, or that meme-makers have fun with, or that Scripture treats as the way of all flesh (Ecc. 12:1-8), his experience was sui generis, absolutely unique. For an old man in that state of delusion, every new ache or pain would cause astonishment and consternation. It would be an occasion of great excitement.

Again and Again

There are many aspects of this, and they are as wide as a culture is. But I am interested here in one particular aspect of it, one perennial recurrence that is as old as dirt.

The history that mankind has with prophets, seers, messengers, and other watchmen on the tower can be summed in one tidy phrase—another barn door, another horse. In short, we do this over and over, again and again. Each generation we forget that generations age. Each society starts out like a twenty-year-old with good digestion, the kind who is ten-feet tall and bullet-proof. And because they are always full of that piss & vinegar, they always find it easy to backhand their seers who see the nature of the trouble ahead. The Jews had their seers who were divinely inspired, and the pagans ignored their wise men, who simply had eyes in their head.

And the situation is routinely made more complicated by would-be-seers who are simply alarmists. They were not filled with insight and wisdom, but rather were brimming with their own crochets, prophesying disasters that never come to pass. “We have thirty-six months to save the planet.” Such were hustlers, not prophets, and one of their roles is make it easier for everybody to ignore the real prophets, and the real dangers. But enough about Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, and Greta Thunberg.

And so the seers are ignored. But lo. Reality starts to seep in.

Tombs of the Prophets

And here is one part of the central pattern, the part that should have our fixed attention today. When things are swell, and our ruling elites are fat and sassy, truth-tellers arise and warn them of the shape of things to come. These truth-tellers are laughed to scorn, patronized, ostracized, persecuted, imprisoned, and sometimes killed. But as the fabric of that society continues to unravel, it starts to become apparent to more and more people that the truth-tellers were, come to think of it, tellers of truth. It all starts to happen. Everything starts crashing in, and in the immediate aftermath, after the rubble has settled, someone suggests that they build a memorial to the prophet who so lately walked among us. The thing is done, and the ribbon-cutting ceremony was solemn.

But over time, things start to revert to normal. And as they head back to normal, we discover that one of the characteristics of “normal” is that the curators of the memorials become quite accustomed to their cushy jobs and princely salaries, and find themselves well-positioned to make life miserable for the next aspiring truth-teller who thinks, in his swollen conceits, that he has anything whatever in common with the previous truth-tellers. “You’re no Luther, pal.”

And what are the differences exactly? Well, Luther is dead now, and he has this memorial here. You new guys are a pain in the neck, and you say ugly and hurtful things.

This is the way it has always been. To take a phrase from this passage, from the foundation of the world, this is the way it goes. And there is an interesting twist here in how Jesus introduces the reference to the Old Testament. He says, “therefore also said the wisdom of God.” When we are talking about this pattern, the wisdom of God contrasts sharply with what we would call the wisdom of man, or, to employ its synonym, the folly of man.

What was the Lord Jesus referring to? Try this from2 Chronicles.

And there you have it. Until there was no remedy. There was no remedy possible, but a little later there would be time for a memorial.

This is the wisdom of God. For those who hate such wisdom, the only alternative for them is the pursuit of death. To hate wisdom is to have a love affair with death. And that is why all the isms that afflict us, taken together, are just one long suicide note.

Now granted, that suicide note can be pretty garbled and convoluted, like some shooter’s manifesto, but it always boils down to death. All the ugly isms think that French kissing with zombies sounds sexy.

Case In Point

One of our seers, one of the great ones, was C.S. Lewis. He had the unique honor of having had work on his memorial start early, almost immediately after his death. It has been a sight to behold. Folks started becoming C.S. Lewis scholars almost right away, and some of them, say, like Michael Ward, really have been invaluable. But others have been pretty tedious, and certified well beyond their intelligence. They know his work, in a pedantic sort of way, but they do not understand the central genius of his insight at all.

Let me give you an sample. Recently, Josh Daws (@JoshDaws) started up a kerfluffle online by quoting C.S. Lewis, and then applying the quote to our culture wars. Here is the quote:

“The idea of the knight—the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause—is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage—a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Commenters came out, indeed in an explosive swarm, and some of them were velvet rope curator types.

One of them introduced herself on this wise: “C.S. Lewis scholar here. Let’s dive into this.” This was followed by a long thread, topped off with a Taylor Swift gif. The thread pointed out that original quote in CONTEXT was all about forgiveness, which was true enough and. utterly beside the point. But common sense was restored with a thud when Meg Basham reminded everyone of That Hideous Strength. The Academy may have more than a little bit of the witch’s green powder, but we have THS, which smells like burnt marshwiggle. And who exactly introduces themselves with “C.S. Lewis scholar here”? Step aside, folks. Expertise incoming!

And a number of the commenters tried to shame Daws by saying that Lewis was “talking about a real war, you bozo.” Not a culture war. Again, That Hideous Strength helps us. Apart from the dénouement in which Merlin wrecks havoc at Belbury, and then wipes Edgestow off the map, that whole thing was “not a real war.” And those fireworks at the end, although clearly destruction in real time, was not a real war either. That was more like a supernatural intervention. The company at St Anne’s did not fire a shot.

The whole conflict revolved around dirty academic politics, manipulation of the masses through the media, scientists messing around with things they didn’t respect or understand, and powerful bureaucratic forces driving toward a global and demonic tyranny. And all without any kind of “real” war. What shall we call this kind of thing? What possible relevance could it have for us today?

To which the Director replies that what was required was obedience. And this, be it noted, is an alien concept for these curator types.

And everybody needs to remember that if the forces of Belbury had not been undone through the grace of Maledil, the bad guys by this point in our history would be in full control of the C.S. Lewis estate. And you can be assured that they would have AI engines working hard to produce “lost” Lewis manuscripts that revealed that Lewis, quite ahead of his time really, had unambiguous sympathies with what we now recognize as the trans-revolution. And that Alcasan really did have some good points. He was a brilliant scientist, after all.

Maybe a Positive, Maybe a Negative

I have mentioned from time to time that we here in Moscow have been warning about the inevitability of our current cultural free fall that we are now experiencing, and we have been warning about this for decades. We do not claim to have had any special insight or revelation ourselves, but in this regard have simply been faithful readers and disciples of men like Kuyper, Van Prinsterer, Hodge, Dabney, Machen, Lewis, Schaeffer, Rushdoony, and some other eclectic seers we had in our library. But as a consequence, the old guard of the evangelical establishment wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole. We have either been shut out and ignored, on the one hand, or slandered on the other.

But I have also previously mentioned that this embargo is now effectively broken, which is of course gratifying. We have been most thankful for that fact, and have put a positive construction on it. But there are two possible interpretations that can be put on this development, and we would much rather it be one and not the other. Here is the positive construction. The fact that large numbers of Christians are now willing to hear no-nonsense applications of biblical truth to the current hysterics could mean that we are on the verge of a great reformation, which is the only thing that could possibly save our bacon.

But the other thing it could mean is that we are now at the point where it doesn’t much matter what anybody thinks, seeing that there is no remedy. If you look again at the picture of the fall of Rome that I have posted here, it would be a small consolation if, on that crowded bridge in the middle of the picture there, someone remarked, “You know, this is what the Sybil said would happen.”

So pray that it not be the “no remedy” scenario.