Parts One and Two laid out the usefulness of a metaphor for civilizations in history, the metric Scripture gives for understanding civilizations (I), and why several of the common genres of such metaphors are less than suited for purpose (II). Today, as promised, I will lay out the metaphor I find best for the purpose of describing, analyzing, and understanding civilizations.

Civilizations Are People

The metaphor I prefer is of the civilization as an individual. I do not mean ‘civilization as an organism.’ An organism is a natural body, albeit one which is alive and integrated with a spirit of varying soulishness (Gen. 1-2). The organism itself, however, has no moral weight; a human body’s tendency to stop working when compressed under fifteen tons of lead is not a moral choice. When I say that a civilization is an individual, I mean that a civilization is best conceptualized as a human person, a moral agent composed of body and soul.

This metaphor (unlike the rest) gives due pride of place to the Biblical metric for a civilization’s state. Scripture (as per Part One) considers civilizations in moral terms, as subject to blessing or judgement. This metaphor awards that fact pride of place, for it calls upon Scripture’s identical standard for individual men: we are considered as righteous (Gen. 6:9) or wicked (6:5), long before bodily health becomes relevant (Matt. 16:26; 1 Cor. 15:45-48). Both society and person are considered in an eternal, God-centered perspective.

Those who like to rush ahead will have realized exactly why the correspondence exists: civilizations are made out of people. I’m essentially arguing that civilizations are to some extent symmetric with the people that compose them. A society bears the image of the people in that society; society in general bears much of the nature of the humanity who make up particular societies.

The body-and-soul nature of mankind also plays well with analysis of civilizations. A civilization too has its body: the biology of mankind and of particular ethnicities (sickle cell anemia, lactose intolerance, pale skin, etc.), geography, disease, natural disasters, etc. On the other hand, it has its soul element: its moral responsibility (corporate and somewhat different from the individual’s (in a way too complex for now, as I’ve yet to fully study it)). The agency, the intellect, the ideas, the worldviews, the religions, the traditions, the art of a people, these also are component to its metaphorical soul.

Before closing out, I must acknowledge some ways in which this similarity is imperfect (as it must be, to be symbolism). This duty is incumbent upon me in order to avoid that trap of metaphor: hiding the truth, distorting it, or adding lies to it.

First, while two people cannot be blurred into being indistinguishable (marriage notwithstanding, for the beauty of marriage is the close union without indistinguishability), civilizations are not so neat in their identities. Civilizations overlap and intermix, sharing people and ideas and geography and time. One civilization becomes another without ever announcing as much; one civilization incorporates another, changing itself in the process into something recognizable but undeniably different.

Second, persons can’t be nested. I am me; my faculties are not persons in themselves, however I speak of them in hyperbole or metaphor. Because of their composite nature and the blurriness of the terminology, though, we can credibly identify societies nested inside of other societies. Both rural farmers and noble dilletantes had individual culture in England, alongside hundreds of other sub-cultures, but they were all part of the English culture as well. Perhaps ‘civilization’ is a less nestable idea in this sense, but we can credibly distinguish ‘English civilization’ from ‘French civilization’ while considering both part of a larger encompassing ‘Western civilization.’

In both these cases, the way in which identity attaches to entity is the differentiating point. Persons are unitary; civilizations are composite.

Third, civilizations can be sanctified- made holy- but they cannot be justified. Christ did not die for societies; He died for actual, real people. The sanctification of a civilization is properly the manifestation or composite of the whole-life sanctification of persons composing it. Consequent to this difference, too, civilizations cannot be brought to total perfection, not on this earth where men still sin (1 John 1:10). Moreover, because they cannot be fully sanctified, civilizations are ever vulnerable to backsliding. God preserves His people in salvation (Rom. 8:31-39), but a society can find the righteous men in it being replaced by the wicked, can find that the righteous slack in their sanctifying work. The result, unless the society (the society’s members) repent, is the damnation of that civilization which once was so righteous.

An Important Similarity

The only salvation for a person is through repentance.

All men are born with Adam’s sin, with the nature he scarred himself with in rebelling. All men are damned, therefore, by their own natures. The only salvation from this damning is repentance.

The only sanctification for a civilization is through repentance.

A civilization cannot repent in the same way a person can, as a unitary entity. Civilizations, societies, cultures are gestalts, tens or hundreds or thousands or millions of individuals spread across the face of the earth (well, a part of its face). A civilization is not a person in itself. However, if the persons which compose the civilization repent as a  pattern, if they recognize the sin which they have engaged in and turn from its wholeheartedly, if they turn to God in faith (which is the fruit and foundation of repentance- true faith and true repentance as two parts of a whole (Mark 1:15)), then the civilization can be said to have repented corporately. We see as much in Nehemiah 9, where the people of Israel come together formally to declare their sin and declare their enmity towards it. They make no empty proclamation, either, for they act on that enmity forthwith (Neh 13).

Our civilization, in all its subdivisions (the West, America, the American ‘church’, etc.), is in great need of this spirit of repentance. Oh, we have a thousand and a million problems, but our rebellion and refusal to repent lies at the root. If America could be given one boon, if the West were to receive on gift, by the grace of God it would be an apprehension of the terrible judgment due for our sin, an apprehension leading to repentance.

Repentance does not lead a civilization to perfection. However, repentance is the only path to make a society healthy and good in God’s sense of the words. We could eat the best food in the world, but sinful hearts would turn that only into greater evil. In actual fact, we will eat our present diet of slow-and-fast poisons until we die, unless we repent and turn to the God who gives life. After all, “All who hate Me love death” (Prov. 8:36). Even if we fixed that problem, we’d merely be expelling the one demon so that it could return with a company of seven evils greater than itself (Matt. 12:43-45).

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is at hand when a man dies, as he may in an instant. It is at hand in this world, for Christ rules (Ps. 2). It is at hand, for when He comes His winnowing fork will not spare any who have not His blood upon their doorposts (Matt. 3:12; Ex. 12:7,22).

Conclusion

Understanding history and the present day is too large a process for any one man at any one time. The mere facts are overwhelming; synthesizing the facts into meaning, relating them to man and to self and (most importantly) to God, that’s an exponentially larger pursuit. A clear understanding of how we think and communicate about civilizations, however, can help us in achieving some small but worthwhile part of that pursuit, preparing ourselves for fruitfulness in the here-and-now, looking forward to eternity.

God bless.