Essex vicar Paul Trathen offers an interesting image, apparently his own photograph:
“a Lapith pinned by an aggressive Centaur”, as portrayed in a marble from the Parthenon in Athens, currently in the British Museum. This could have made a good caption competition, but Paul has already offered his interpretation of it as relating to Archbishop Rowan Williams:
I photographed the metope sculpture from the Parthenon depicting a Centaur taking apart a Lapith, thinking once again of poor ++Rowan being savaged by the half-human, half-animal that is current media-discourse and, more broadly, our increasingly barbaric culture… … This battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs was important symbolically to the 5th century BC Greeks. The Lapiths represented civilization, and the Centaurs represented barbarism. The Lapiths were victorious over the Centaurs – and the Greeks believed that in their defeat of Persia, they too, had defeated the barbaric forces.
Thanks for the explanation, Paul, but in it I see the xenophobia and intellectual arrogance not only of the ancient Greeks but also of modern British academia. I am sure you picked up some of this studying A-level classics, even if you didn’t learn so well how to identify vases.
So, a victory of Greeks over horse-riding non-Greeks, perhaps Scythians (the probable origin of the centaur myth), has been understood as a victory of civilisation over barbarism. Of course that is what happens in history written by the victors. But were the Greeks really more “civilised” than the barbarians they fought? When the Persians are included as barbarians, the point is highly debatable. It was by force, rather than advanced civilisation, that Alexander and his successors imposed Greek culture on so much of the world and largely destroyed the far more ancient cultures of the lands they conquered. And it is only because of this disastrous cultural genocide that we in modern Europe have come to believe the Greeks’ ancient propaganda about how civilised they were and how all others were barbarians.
Paul goes on to ask:
What, I wonder might be the shape of the struggle to come, for us, between civility and barbarism …? … According to Alasdair MacIntyre … the barbarians are already among us …
But who is he now calling barbarians? Presumably he is thinking of “the half-human, half-animal that is current media-discourse and, more broadly, our increasingly barbaric culture”, those by whom Rowan Williams is “being savaged”. In this way Paul creates an image of a western intellectual elite, of which Rowan is the champion, upholding civilisation against hordes of barbarians and savages, which seems to mean anyone outside this small circle. With words like this, probably quite unintentionally but nevertheless offensively, Paul links Rowan’s opponents in the British press with his opponents in Africa and Asia who have long been portrayed in the West as barbarians and savages. This kind of portrayal is offensive not only to those of other races but also to the ordinary white, mostly nominally Christian people of Britain, those who are incensed that Rowan can even consider making concessions to Sharia law, who are being written off as “barbaric” in contrast with the “civility” of the intellectual elite. Paul is also perpetuating a type of ad hominem argument, that because some of Rowan’s opponents in the more popular newspapers have acted as if they were savages, that somehow implies that what Rowan is fighting for is right.
Well, I can’t help thinking that in the picture it is the Centaur rather than the Lapith who looks like Rowan Williams, and that the Archbishop’s title “Cantuar” is rather similar to “Centaur”. The Centaur has the advantage of the strong horse body, reminding me of the church establishment which has closed ranks behind Rowan. But the common people represented by the Lapiths have the advantage of numbers and so are sure to win the battle in the end.
Paul Trathen wants to perpetuate the battle between Greek-based civilisation and what he calls barbarism. But another Paul, centuries ago, taught that there was no room for this kind of battle in the Christian church:
Here there is no Gentile [literally, “Greek”] or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
Colossians 3:11 (TNIV)
Hi Peter
Thanks for posting this, and for commenting so usefully on my earlier post.
I am aware – from some of your earlier posts – that I am unlikely to be absolutely of a mind with you about this, but I want to substantially agree with many of your contentions (and premises) and clarify some of my own in this regard…
The ‘civility’ of which I want to speak – and about which Newbiggin and MacIntyre, cited, were speaking, as I understand it – is the sensibility that actually RECOGNISES CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE AND HONOURS IT BY INCLUSION. Barbarism is defined by not being able to see, or live with, difference or conviction, and seeks to rubbish it, or bully it into silence.
In raising Sharia as an example – since he is, effectively, hampered by that strange phenomenon, the Established Church of England, from talking so directly about Christian moral law or dispute-resolution – the Archbishop, it seems to me, is pointing to the strongest current example in the UK of a secularising public consensus wanting to NOT RECOGNISE DIFFERENCE.
Now, I cannot act as an apologist for Islamic theologians or lawyers – as I am patently neither – but I can, as a passionate Christian, advocate the kind of cultural acceptance that St Paul advocates, not just to the Christians in Colossae, but also in the other, plural city-states of his day, not least the Galatians. St Paul works this in an interesting way: at one turn, he can state his ‘lineage’ clearly, in terms of identifying well his own cultural formation and his legal entitlements, either as an observant Pharisaical Jew (eg. Rom 9:3)or as a Roman citizen; yet, he only ever uses these identities as tools to open up the possibility of talking about the gospel hope and vision of true freedom in Christ, which transcends these limited versions of grace. (cf 1 Cor 9:20-21 or Phil 3:8))
Now, you may be right that ++Rowan represents a narrow, intellectual Oxford elite – arguably, many in leadership of the C of E, historically, have been and remain so. I cannot comment about that too far, though it seems to me that his theology (and other writings) are, rather, refreshingly polymathic and broad, rather than narrow. I can say – with greater force – that I have no interest in advocating or propping-up any such cultural superiority that belongs to a particular educational background or social milieu. For myself, I have always rather resisted this world – as only the second person in my Cornish working-class family to stop on at school beyond age 15, I later found myself at some odds with my family when I worked in academia and, still, now I work within the clergy-structure of the C of E. When teaching, I deliberately sought out a non-trad discipline and taught folk from less-than-conventional backgrounds to those often found in HE. Today, my work is in community development work and social action, advocating for the poor and disadvantaged.
The ‘civility’ I see advocated as part of gospel living has little or nothing to do with ‘the conventions of the liberal elite’. It is, after all, the conventions of the liberal elite which are the barbaric dimension, as these conventions (and assumptions) are now so thoroughly secularised and, indeed, hostile to Christians and others who do ‘God-talk’.
I would agree with you that certain parts of my analogy with Periclean Athens were weak – I should perhaps rethink these. (Certainly, the 5th century BC Athenian ‘project’ had plenty of flaws, and the Persian cultures and systems had a great deal to commend them (although not, I would suggest, much under Xerxes)).
(BTW, I think the ‘++Rowan looks like a Centaur’-stuff, is a bit of a cheap shot – it doesn’t really get us anywhere.)
Finally (for now! but I will enjoy the conversation!), I should say that you are right to focus on OFFENCE as a crucial dimension. I find myself increasingly-persuaded that Soren Kierkegaard was correct in identifying the notion of OFFENCE AS THE DIRECT OPPOSITE OF FATIH. Not doubt, not certainty, rather OFFENCE. In a post-Christendom culture in which – as you note – many of our fellow-Britons are ‘nominally Christian’ – offence will be felt by both ardent secularist and the ‘I-ticked-the-box-on-the-census’-guy, who only wished really to register that he/she was ‘not one of those ‘others”.
Kierkegaard suggests that the possibility of offence at the idea of the incarnate Christ and at the life of his followers is that which must be kept alive at all times if authentic faith is to happen. Why else would Jesus day ‘blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me’ (Matt 11:6) unless being offended was a live possibility? Facing this possibility of offence at Jesus is the first step towards faith in Christ. Yet who can be offended at the benign, wise or obviously divine figure presented to us by our Christianised culture? Christendom has forgotten how incredible, how improbable, and how challenging the incarnation is – that this MAN is GOD, or indeed that GOD IS THIS MAN, are notions that should offend the most cultured sensibilities.
Thanks, Paul, for your thoughtful response.
It helps that you have clarified Newbiggin’s and MacIntyre’s definitions of civility and barbarism. But they don’t seem to have much to do with the clash between Greek civilisation and those they called barbarians. Like you, I also see a lot of this kind of barbarism rather than civility in the liberal elite, who are not prepared to honour by inclusion the culture of sometimes illiberal ordinary people. That is the real point behind my joking about Rowan’s resemblance to the Centaur: barbarism is found even among his in group.
Thanks for sharing something of your own background. I don’t want to accuse you of being in an intellectual elite. It is just that parts of this tend to rub off on all of us in unexpected places.
Your description of what Kierkegaard said about faith and offence is interesting. I need to think about it more. But I don’t think this can be used as an excuse for giving offence to others. We might be theologically justified in telling Africans that they should not be offended when we implicitly call them savages but should gladly bear the shame as Christ did on the cross, but I don’t think we have the right to preach that to them while we continue using the word.