A Lesson From Church History (from the Second Age's End)
Storm Clouds over Roman Fort at Housestead, circa 400AD Source
A recent podcast speaker pointed out (sadly I cannot remember who this was), that when Church History is told 8 million years from now, those listening will see us as functionally contemporaries of Christ Jesus, members of the Early Church, and standing at the dawn of Redemption Time. If scientists are right, our sun will last another 4-5 billion years, in a stable phase. So, a thousand million years from now, the Earth should still be just fine, with a stable Sun, and Christ's ongoing story will unfold, and be told and retold, in myriads of ways. We will be drops in the bucket, but also seen as primitive worshippers, those lucky enough to live through miracles.
What, precisely, are we looking at?
If you ask someone where they live, they tell you their address. Then again, they can name the town, then the country. Next comes the continent. Soon, the planet is invoked. After that, the solar system, the Orion arm of the Milky Way, and so forth. Keep this up long enough, and they can no longer give coherent answers. You zoom out into infinity, the Ring-Pass-Not, or the ignoramibus. The definition becomes the original context, which you can no longer assume is the real context. Background and foreground merge into a blob.
At that macro level (and remember, Science defines all that "is" in terms of micro building blocks and macro physical reference points), but...just exactly Where is Where? Because without the total context, you could not really be sure. Humans, by definition, almost (since our brain is six inches or so across, per John Michael Greer), can't grok or even observe the total context.
Worse, when Time is invoked, things become truly snarled. Because Time itself, has no actual objective definition. Things change, and our sense of them changes, along with our sense of our sense. We age along with Things. As a result, we register something called Time.
In reality, Things are just out there, Happening. Do we know what? How do we know? And who is the "we" that is knowing?
Neither Mother Nature, nor Father Time, are "on our side", so to say. This equation defines our legitimate mortality interest.
Neither Mother Nature nor Father Time really march to our own drum beat
In terms of Meaning, Nuance, Interpretation, and Significance, the average person defines all of "Out There" as Dead Matter in Empty Space. But they can neither account for their sense of Time (which reduces to the coordination and comparison of Change), nor can they tell us where Space is. Saint Augustine famously said, when I think of Time, I understand it, but when you ask me to explain, I cannot.
I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all. - Lord Bertrand Russell
The micro building blocks (constituents) of this equation can be invoked, as if that "explained" it, rather than explaining it away, and the macro vanishing foreground can be evoked, as if we all just "knew" what and where we were looking. As if our naive experience of the world was self-evidently perspicacious. Luther famously thought Scripture was perspicacious, as well, which is evidence of the "rationalizing" element already making itself felt in the 1500s. Our modern world went him one better (Luther also retained a belief that "God was the innermost reality of all things"), and declared that all Philosophy amounted to an Als Ob position, which is that Things Mean What You Want Them to Mean.
This, however, is the true starting point, not the ending point. What is a Thing? What is a "You"? Why is there something, rather than nothing (Leibniz)? And why do secular philosophers always exempt themselves from their own legitimate insights? (See Greg Bahnsen on this one.)
The question remains as most compelling - does anyone truly understand, or know, what the ultimate meaning of Reality is?
At least one center of consciousness must, since we do feel and sense and even think, that there is an ultimate meaning "out there", or interior to the physical crust of all things. Something is happening, both inside of us, and outside of us. Schopenhauer exploited this insight, quite famously. This center of consciousness, presumably, upholds, in some way, the very fabric of Space and Time, since otherwise, lacking accurate perception in a center of consciousness, there could not be an exterior at all, or manifestation. In short, if "Dead Matter and Empty Space" exists, it is necessary that they also not exist, in that they could not be Ultimate. If they don't exist, the Ultimate itself accounts for this dreamy or nightmarish sense, the once-upon-a-time illusion, when we feel a lack of meaning and a deadness to reality, or a question as to what meaning itself means. The supreme Mind is either the pinnacle of Creation and its origin, or else it is behind everything, even its seeming absence. Perhaps both, at once. What would the difference, really, be?
Under this account, we call the Knower of the Universe, God.
Religion bypasses all of this philosophy, and cuts to the chase of practice.
Unbelievers don't like Religion, but have even worse intellectual problems. On absolutely any account, a potential knower has to account for the inner world, the outer world, and whatever unifies or harmonizes them. Purely conceptual apparatus may not be adequate to deep knowledge, since conceptual apparatus is only capable of bifurcation (On/Off Binaries, and the "Null Set" of Doesn't Matter).
In fact, this is just how Unbelievers and Modern people "solve" the epistemic knowledge problem - they invoke the "Null Set" of "It's All Dead Matter and Empty Space" (so none of this matters). The binary is resolved by saying "No" to God (and the interior), "Yes" to sensations and passions, and their Knowledge Computer spits out the Null Set of "And None of this matters anyway...".
In other words, nothing gets done, and no answers are reached. Secular philosophy by itself, is incomplete and a dead end. The lowest religious believer is superior to the pure secular philosopher (see Kukai).
Kukai and Iamblichus, both not Christians, would take an average pew worshipper over an atheist
Knowing all of this, we have the strength to actually go back to Church History, but with some backbone, and courage to draw conclusions.
What can we expect in the dark Times ahead?
Humans have gone through time periods like this before, where Anything Goes & Nothing Matters (James Howard Kunstler).
One such period, was Roman Britain, as it entered the Dark Ages. You can read St. Gildas' De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae for a taste of what that time period must have felt like. Britain was one of the first countries to receive the Gospel, if the legends are true, and the Celts generally took to the new religion with no bloodshed.
Britain prior to the Roman Conquest, was incredibly wealthy. By 400AD, it had recovered its opulent wealth, and become a target for would-be raiders.
Roman generals had stripped Britain of its protective legions, taking them back to Rome to fight for the imperial crown. Vortigern had stopped the Irish and Pict raids, by hiring Saxon mercenaries. These men became troublesome, and at a meeting, massacred the 300 nobles of Britain. Vortigern went into exile in Wales, and the rest of the Roman aristocracy fled the country. Britain burned. St. Gildas claims that the miserable British were terrible human beings, even worse Christians, and received the fate they deserved. All of this set the stage for King Arthur and his knights.
There was no other way to get rid of the Roman system, and the aristocracy (who did not want to pay taxes for self-defense), without a Collapse. The problem with ailing, failing "Systems" is that they die hard, because you have to pry the cold, dead hands of the aristocracy off of the steering wheel.
Had the Roman Church and the Roman aristocracy let go of Rome, and concentrated on Britain, there would have been no Dark Age. As it was, it was much worse in Britain, than anywhere else, except perhaps Italy and Gaul. How bad did it get? Read St. Gildas. Pottery ceased to be made, or even circulated, in the British Isles.
Like a Forest Fire, it was necessary to clear off the Roman cobwebs of a corrupt, effete, idiotic aristocracy (too cheap to even pay taxes to hire loyal native soldiers), in order to make room for the rise of medieval Britian in the chivalry of King Arthur, Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Quest for Holy Grail.
Hitler had big plans for big Systems. They all came to nothing. The Church is still here.
In 500AD, Britain and the Church there looked lost, and underwent God's judgement. A thousand years later, the Reformation was beginning, and England began her rise to Empire.
In exactly the same way, a person can be struggling with doubt and unbelief, but if he clears away the problems, and attains knowledge of the real Self, there is not just hope, but triumph. God's judgement on Evil is the brush fire that clears away the dead wood, to allow the Green Life of Spring to return. And God is always judging, or "destroying", Evil, both in us, and in the "outer world". These laws are as real in History, as they are in Psychology.
Humans celebrate, not the Love of Wisdom, but the maintaining of their lies. This happens all the time, everywhere. Lying is Big Business, and helps the world go around. See here, and here. Lying, or "buffers", developed as an evolutionary strategy to maintain group coherence (inner and outer) in a dangerous world. It works, for a while. When it falls apart, humans really go to pieces, because they have no other coping strategy. This makes the world worse, and people go back to their lies, to cope. When they say they don't lie, it's just another lie. You can see the problem.
Religion is the only thing that can compete with the State and with Sin, against the overwhelming compulsion of Fear, Sex, and Hunger. Philosophy may help later, but Religion also has even deeper survival value than Lies. This was true in all traditional societies, even Pagan ones.
The collapse and Resurrection of Christian Britain (in the years 400-600AD) is simply one case of the Logos, seeking everywhere, at all times, and in all things, to bring about its manifestation. We do not have to fear "the Dark Ages". This is the "wrath of God" which "destroys" Evil, in order to bring about the wisdom of His love, and His will to redeem all of Creation.
Tolkien's doctrine of the Catastrophe that leads to Eucatastrophe, is one of the most powerful and artistic intuitions of this Truth, that anyone has ever given the world. And, of course, Tolkien's roots were precisely in the Dark, Heroic Age of Britain, when the "true Self" of Briton stood up, amid the ruin and chaos, in the person of King Arthur and his dauntless Knights.
The Gospel is the best Fairy Tale, and the Truest Truth. And it always Was, always Is, and always Is to Come. We are not at the Beginning of any End, but just the End of the very Beginning. The best, as always with God, is yet to come.