One of the consolations during darker periods in history is that the goodness of human beings invariably rebounds. The human capacity to grasp the truth and live good lives manifests itself in a more heroic fashion in the “bad times” than in the “good”. In a sense we can thank the darkest of human epochs for producing the great Christian martyrs, the most inspiring political leaders and the most creative writers and thinkers. We can thank Nero and Diocletian for Saints Peter and Paul, Sts Agnes and Marcellinus; we can thank Hitler and Stalin for Churchill, De Gaulle and Adenauer, and we can thank Marx and Lenin for Solzhenitisyn and Vaclav Havel.
In a similar way those very dark and violent times of recent Irish history which we modestly dub “The Troubles” produced some great figures committed to the cause of peace. Two of them, John Hume and Cardinal Cahal Daly, are subjects of books reviewed here this month. The commitment of both men to a peaceful solution to the apparently intractable problem of discrimination and violence in the North contributed in no small way to the achievement of a solution to the crisis, which while by no means perfect was one which would have appeared a complete pipe dream during the darkest days of those three violent decades.
This same phenomenon of the resilience of human goodness and sanity is also apparent in the response of contemporary intellectuals and scientists to the New Atheism which appeared to be so much in the ascendancy only a decade ago. In another book reviewed here this month: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again by Justin Brierley, the author points to the likes of Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, William Lane Craig and Bishop Robert Barron who have clearly eclipsed the champions of New Atheism, most notably Richard Dawkins. Figures from the world of science such as Stephen Meyer (whose 2021 work Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe will be reviewed in an upcoming issue of Position Papers) could also be added to this list of first class minds propelled into the public sphere in response to a crisis, in Meyer’s case a crisis in the world of science.
In Christopher Kaczor’s article below, “Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on the Bible” Kaczor contrasts the simplistic reading of the Bible drawn by one of the leading figures of New Atheism, Sam Harris with the far more intellectually penetrating understanding of the Bible that is Jordan Peterson’s. Kaczor draws an interesting comparison between Peterson’s sophisticated ways of reading the Bible and that of St Augustine. Again in Peterson we see that each age seems to manage to produce individuals who are intellectually and morally up to the challenge of their times.
In Orson Welles’ 1949 classic The Third Man the character Harry Lime famously quips:
You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
There is something to be said for what Lime says. While it might be a bit optimistic to apply the word “Renaissance” to the 2020s, certainly these last few tumultous years of a growing Woke tyrnanny have also produced a great many writers and public intellectuals who are rising most ably to the challenge of the times.
Recently I was having a conversation with an old school friend and he remarked that “in our day” (back in the 1980s), as schoolboys and then as university students we had extremely limited access to material that critiqued the culture. All we had was our national television and radio stations, the books on the curricula of our studies and whatever else was available in the UCD library. The “narrative” (to coin a phrase) of these sources wasn’t just dominant, it was virtually (with the occasional dissenting voice) absolute – or “hegemonic” to coin another phrase! This narrative was left-leaning and, even then, dismissive of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.
He contrasted that with the situation now. For all the insanity of our times, one cannot keep up with the wonderful books, articles and podcasts being churned out by first rate intellectuals, in response to our current cultural malaise.
When we changed the focus of Position Papers to the reviewing of books I was afraid that there would be a dearth of material to choose from, only soon to discover that the opposite is the case. There are simply too many wonderful authors producing too many great books to possibly do anything other than review a mere sampling of their work. However, better something rather than nothing, especially when we’re discovering authors who do us the great favour of restoring our faith in human nature.