Sunic, Devlin & Johnson on Christianity

A couple of recent articles and threads at Counter-Currents about Pierre Krebs’ Fighting for the Essence reminded me what we are now calling “secular Christianity”:

Tom Sunic said…

This book is important because it advises the reader about how to decipher the causes and consequences of our decadent age. Being himself a disciple of European heavyweights such as Homer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger—to name only a few—Krebs correctly traces the root of the problem of White racial decay and cultural decadence not to liberalism and multiculturalism, but to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Above all, Krebs focuses on the destructive forms of the monotheistic Judaeo-Christian mindset which prevails among both the so-called Leftist and Right-wing intellectuals and their respective disciples. In fact, by using quotes from and commentaries concerning many important, albeit deliberately ignored European scholars, Krebs demonstrates that all political concepts that we take for granted today are basically modified ideas, myths, legends and impostures that originated in the Middle East and that are now making headway into our secular, godless society.

Krebs aptly dissects the discourse and the mindset of modern Marxists and liberals who, in spite of the fact that they often profess to be atheists or agnostics, nonetheless adhere to the monotheistic conceptualisation of the world that was handed down by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, through its secular and postmodern offshoots. In the same vein, Krebs adroitly warns against those modern political neuroses which appear quite often among many so-called Right-wingers, which causes them to rely too much on blaming all the problems of Whites on outsiders; or, in a grotesque flip side, to embrace outsiders at the expense of one’s own. Both manifestations are wrapped up in the same Judaeo-Christian package. How can a White nationalist, a racialist, or a traditionalist, or whatever he may call himself, and regardless of whether he lives in Europe or America, successfully combat hostile and alien worldviews and adopt different methods of conceptualisation, while at the same time revering these same alien referents and the same paradigms which are, ironically, part and parcel of the same non-European mindset he wishes to reject?

The matrix of the West, as Krebs argues, is no longer territorial or political. It lies in the White man’s experiment with Christianity, which began as merely an obscure Oriental cult—a cult which has absolutely nothing in common with the spiritual homeland of the White man: ancient Greece.

The answer Krebs offers to intelligent White readers in America and Europe who are seeking an exit from the modern multicultural straitjacket and the conceptual mendacity of liberalism is simple, although it will require a great deal of courage: the return to our lost pre-Christian European roots. Novus rerum nascitur ordo.


Roger Devlin said…

But Krebs names the heresiarch Pelagius as one of his heroes. In his view, the egalitarian lie is to be blamed not on any perversion of Christianity, but on Christianity itself—or, as he invariably writes, “Judeochristianity.” He cites Nietzsche’s observation that

Christianity, which has sprung from Jewish roots and can only be understood as a plant that has come from that soil, represents the counter-movement to every morality of breeding, race or privilege—it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.

From this Krebs infers that

every discourse which calls for a European Renaissance without separating itself from Judeo-Christian civilization, its dogmas and its rituals, is condemned to failure in advance, since it is enclosed within the very matrix of decline.

It is a familiar observation that enlightenment thought amounts to a secularized version of Christian doctrine, a displacement of its eschatology into the realm of politics. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is just one example of a Christian conservative who stressed this connection, citing the Latin proverb corruptio optimi pessima: “the corruption of the best is the worst.”

But Krebs the admirer of Pelagius cannot mean this; his explicit positions would force him to deny that the secularization of Christianity is the essential misstep. Instead he must hold that (1) Christianity itself is responsible for the specific way in which it was negated by the Enlightenment, and that (2) Europe has been in a state of decadence since at least the fourth century AD. This bold interpretation of European history may deserve consideration, but the author has hardly made a case for it in the brief manifesto under review.


Greg Johnson said…

In response to Devlin’s remarks, yes, Krebs is committed to the claims that (1) Christianity is responsible for the trajectory of its secularization, and (2) that Western Civilization has been ruled by decadent values since the fourth century, when the Christianization of the Roman Empire received state power from Constantine. Both of these claims are defensible in Nietzschean terms, and Nietzsche is Krebs’ prime source here.

(1) Christianity is responsible for the trajectory of its secularization, because secular liberalism represents a triumph of Christian values over Christianity itself. Nietzsche argues that the Christian valorization of truth as something worth dying for was turned against the supernatural, faith-based elements of the creed. And once the supernatural, “pie in the sky” elements of Christianity are discarded, then nothing stands in the way of the progressive/utopian realization of Christian values in this world, values like the worth of every human life.

(2) These values were dominant in the West beginning with Constantine, but they were never really taken all that seriously. Spengler is right: the values of the New Testament are the Bolshevism of antiquity, and Christianity was as devastating to ancient pagan civilization as the Bolshevism of the 20th century. But once in power, the church readily compromised with pre-Christian values and social forms because of its essentially otherworldly focus. And they condemned as heretics those who demanded that the Church live by the values of the gospels. When the Reformation triumphed, however, and Christians started actually reading the Bible and thinking of ways to live by it in this world, the corrosive power of Christian values became fully liberated to do their work.


Kim Petrusson said…

Quite evidently it is since Europe was quite fine under traditional Christianity, but have crushed down under the gnostic modernity.


Greg Johnson said…

What you dub “gnostic modernity” is merely Christian axioms being taken to their logical real-world conclusions. And “gnostic modernity” is a rather marginal phenomenon considered alongside the modernizing thrust of the Reformation. What you point to as the heyday of European Christianity was merely, from a Christian point of view, the hypocritical compromise of the church with pre-Christian sensibilities and social forms. When the Reformation actually got Christians reading the Bible and trying to take it seriously, decay really got underway.


Johnnie Appleseeds said…

Greg, I think we need a strong philosophical refutation of Xtianity that is not perceived as vitriolically and mean-spirited as that of Nietzsche. I agree with Nietzsche, but his language turns people off.


Greg Johnson said…

Maybe you are right, but if Nietzsche is right, there is no pretty way to describe the ugly psychological processes that gave birth to and sustain slave morality.