Liberation from Modern Captivity

Liberation from modern captivity. This is the message of my esteemed author to Christian intellectuals in the position paper he wrote in 1994. Due to the "notoriety" of his writing style and tone and due to the "success" of smear reviews of his books, I decided to make his name anonymous(But of course, it's easy to find out who he is by simply cutting a portion of the excerpt and pasting it on your search browser). I think that by doing this somehow our attention will be on the importance of what he has to say.

This writer wrote "The Crisis of the Old Order," which is about the ideas of five men that shaped the modern world. He argued that the ideas of these men except one are now in decline, and as a result, the humanistic foundation of our civilization is also collapsing. He is calling for Christian intellectuals to provide an alternative worldview. However, to do this, liberation from the captivity of the ideas of these men is necessary. For many, perhaps, the message of this writer is old. But to me, it's new, and I am still not familiar with the writings of these men. 

Here is the excerpt: 

"We are in the midst of a WORLDWIDE REVOLUTION. It is peaceful, so we tend not to notice its revolutionary character. It is revolutionary in the sense of the public’s shift in commitment: from the OLD ORDER TO SOMETHING NEW. . . . Three things about this revolution are obvious. FIRST, there is not ONE POLITICAL LEADER of any real substance or following who is articulating it. . . . SECOND, there is no visible SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP. . . . THIRD, the key Western institutions that the humanists have captured, most notably EDUCATION, are under constant fire from the public. There is a widespread loss of faith. . . . Only Nelson Mandella has anything like a leadership role (but he is now dead). . . . What has gone wrong? . . . . We are living in what appears to be the late stages of sensate culture, the civilization inaugurated by the Renaissance. . . . It is time for Christians to begin to think about their responsibility to offer an ALTERNATIVE WORLDVIEW, as well as working models of alternative institutions. But Christian intellectuals, to an extent that they refuse to admit, are the CAPTIVES OF FIVE MEN who gave us modern culture. . . . "

"We live in a world dominated by the theories of FIVE DEAD white European males: a physicist, Isaac Newton; a novelist, political theorist, and lying autobiographer, Jean Jacques Rousseau; an unemployed naturalist, Charles Darwin; an unemployed philologist, Friedrich Nietzsche; and a conservative politician, Otto von Bismarck. These five men created the modem world. Only Nietzsche’s legacy still seems to be in the ascent phase, and only in one area: culture. . . . "

"On the surface, NEWTON seems to be the untouchable master. His physics is still the physics of introductory textbooks. But thediscovery of quantum physics in the 1920’s ended his reign . . . . ROUSSEAU'S romanticism began the erosion of Newtonian classicism in the late 18th century. His theory of the General Will did not sweep Western political theory until the 19th century. . . . his theory of education -- not tested on his five illegitimate children, whom he turned over to public orphanages as infants, where most children died -- laid the foundations of modem education’s theory of the innocent child in need of State education. . . . DARWIN'S theory of evolution through impersonal, unplanned natural selection transformed Western religion and philosophy, as well as Western social theory. By 1880, Darwinism reigned almost supreme in every academic discipline . . . . But since the late 1950’s, Darwin’s specific explanations have been undermined again and again by those inside the camp. . . . This brings us to NIETZSCHE. His influence is still profound. Marx is now passe; Freud is suspect; and Carl Jung turns out to have been the founder of his own messianic secret society, with himself as god incarnate -- all very embarrassing for his humanist disciples. But Nietzsche, the great modem exponent of the death of God philosophy, still exercises influence through his existentialism and his control over the arts, especially rock music. E. Michael Jones has traced this cultural influence in his important book, Dionysus Rising (Ignatius Press, 1994). It began with Richard Wagner, a participant in the German Revolution of 1848-49, who subsequently used music to undemine the political and moral order. His disciple Nietzsche took this strategy one step farther: using philosophy in a cultural war against Christendom. . . . Finally, there is OTTO VON BISMARCK. It was he who, as Prussia’s political leader, put together the modern German state, from 1866 to 1871. . . . he successfully undermined the political platform of the liberals in the German parliament by proposing State-funded insurance: the first State-guaranteed pension system for all workers. This idea was adopted by the English, along with the income tax, in 1911. It was adopted in the United States in the late 1930’s: the Social Security system. . . . We do not normally think of the welfare State as the invention of a conservative, but its initial implementation surely was. For over a century, the promise of guaranteed retirement has been the most politically powerful lure of all government intervention, the basis of the most powerful organized constituency. To challenge Social Security is to touch 'the third rail of American politics' . . . . This is the most sacred of all sacred cows in Western politics. It apparently cannot be stopped through political action. There is only one way to reverse it: the BANKRUPTCY OF THE STATE. . . . "

"The modern world has placed its faith in the ideas of FIVE MEN. All of them constructed worldviews that, to one degree or other, deny the existence of the providential God of the Bible. Nietzsche was most vocal in his rejection of all gods, but intellectually and socially, all of them denied providence. . . . Our problem as Christians is that our spokesmen are, to one degree or other, dependent on one or more of these FIVE MEN. "

Source: Institute of Christian Economics