How do you conceive of a civilization or a society? When you discuss history, does a society rise and fall? Is it young or old, solar or lunar, a part of a season-cycle? How do you picture a society’s lifespan? Spengler had one answer, his spring-summer-autumn-winter cycle, and some truth is found in the idea. The problems of these images, however, become clear upon closer inspection, ways in which they distort our views of civilizations and history. We’re going to look at why such a metaphor is useful, the basic metric all civilizations must be measured by, and the comparison I find the most accurate.

Why Use One?

Chesterton’s critique of Nietzsche seems almost to deny the worth of the whole enterprise. He says in Orthodoxy, ch.7:

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, ‘beyond good and evil,’ because he had not the courage to say, ‘more good than good and evil,’ or, ‘more evil than good and evil.’

The problem of a metaphor is that it is not the thing itself. When I speak by metaphor (by symbolism), a part of what I describe is applicable to what I describe, and a part is not. The accuracy of the metaphor lies in two qualities: the extent of its likeness to the thing symbolized; and the clarity of which parts do not have that likeness. The first bears the truth, and the second preserves from lies.

The reason for a metaphor explains why this is desirable. A metaphor is intended to use something with which we are familiar to help us understand that with which we are unfamiliar. So when I speak of a civilization as ‘young’, I seek to draw up the common understanding of an organism’s youth: in working order, agile, vigorous, decisive. This ‘youth’ is ideal (and the terms I use to describe it themselves metaphorical- ‘vigor’ in inanimate things is not literal). The analogical application to a civilization is easily enough made, though whether it is accurate I leave for another point.

Chesterton’s objection to such metaphors, understood clearly, is their use to conceal. Did the authors he named refrain from metaphor? Of course not. However, they used metaphor, Chesterton implies, not as an obscuring factor, not to keep hidden the idea intended, but as a means of revealing what they thought. Metaphor (and symbolism) properly used is a means of communicating truth, not hiding it.

The criteria of a metaphor, then, are that it 1) has such resemblance to the symbolized as to communicate clearly and accurately and 2) is, whether by use or by nature, clear on where the differences lie. In this way it fulfils the purpose of a metaphor- communication of novel understanding- without falling into the trap of metaphor- hiding or twisting or embellishing the truth.

The Basic Metric

Scripture gives us the basic way to measure how well a civilization is doing, to assess whether we should expect it to continue, expand, diminish, detonate. The metric? Obedience to God’s law. The civilization which heeds His law as a rule, which fosters repentance for sin, which seeks His glory both explicitly and implicitly, such a civilization must be applauded. We may expect it, so long as it holds to those fundamentals, to thrive. It will raise men and women of character and excellence, champions of virtue with less than the standard amount of dysfunction and sin in their lives.

The opposite happens when a society succumbs to idolatry, to the allure of the fool’s proclamation that “There is no God” (Ps. 53:1). As Herbert Schlossberg puts it in his excellent Idols for Destruction,^[1] “[M]an can place anyone or anything at the top of his pyramid of values, and that it is ultimately what he serves. The ultimacy of that service profoundly affects the way he lives. When the society around him also turns away from God to idols, it is… heading for destruction” (6).

Man is made in God’s image, and so he starts breaking down when he abandons God. The result of this breakdown on a broad scale is the disintegration of civilization, where even unity becomes a destructive mirage, a temporary façade which breaks all the worse in the end (Matt. 12:45). The result is destruction of society at all levels- individual, personal (me-and-one-other), familial, economic, religious, governmental, artistic. Each of these breaks in its own way, both as a direct result of sin and as a result of the breaking of other parts, a self-reinforcing cascade.

By God is the house built (Luk.6:46-49). Without God, the house (society in this case) falls. This dichotomy is founded on twin realities. First, because He made the world and all mankind, any work of man which prospers does so only by some coherence to the Divine design of the world. Diligence is effective because diligence is Godly, even though sin turns diligence to wrongdoing and eventually to vanity (Ecc. 1:1-2). Second, God, both in how He designed the world and in direct action, blesses the righteous and curses the wicked (Deut. 11:26). O, this fact is often obscured in the short term- but eventually the truth will out (Ps. 73).

The basic metric of a civilization’s wellness, its ‘health’, is its submission to God. A civilization will naturally break down, at varying speeds, under the influence of sin. The society’s response to this sin can be to embrace it, rebelling against God. This response is man’s natural and preferred choice, the easy way out and the road to destruction (Matt. 7:13). Such a society will find itself rotting from within, engaging in foolish relations with the rest of the world, choosing bad leaders. Families will destabilize; institutions will stop doing what they ought to while growing more and more corrupt; public trust and coherence will disappear. The process may be relatively slow. Often many members of the society will see this destruction, will even identify the second-order issues. They may bring reform that restrains parts of the destruction for a time, but in the end the stopgaps will break (as will be the fate of England and America if we rely on ‘right wing’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘anti-establishment’ and continue to ignore God). Then the sin which has been made foundational sweeps all away.

Alternately, a society can turn to God. A society can repent. Now, strictly speaking, a society can’t repent; it’s not a person. A spirit and passion for repentance, however, can possess a civilization; it is this to which I refer. Repentance can make a terminally ill society once more alive. The sin which was integral to the former life of the civilization will have to be stripped, and in a sense this removal is a death of that old civilization. However, by repentance a people can maintain their identity (insofar as it was real, not a phantom of sin) despite sin’s destructive effects.

Even a partial repentance has magnificent power; Byzantium carried forward Rome at least a thousand years despite the shallowness of obedience that afflicted that civilization (and most civilizations, because men aren’t good at repentance). A repentance such as bloomed in the heart of England (the Puritans) and Scotland (the Covenanters and their predecessors) bore fruit for centuries, so that even now America is the freest nation on earth, despite all the damage done by sin un-repented. Civilizations can near-die, but repentance is life, repentance joined to the faith which is its foundation and fruit.

Next week and the week after, we’ll finish out this discussion with an analysis of several metaphors devised to understand societies. We will do so in light of the essential metric Scripture has given us to understand a society’s estate. Righteousness saves a society; wickedness destroys it; repentance is to turn back from wickedness, confessing and repudiating it, and to embark upon righteousness. With this in mind, we will see the problems of several prominent metaphors and assess the metaphor I present as the best yet, along with its shortfalls.

Until then, God bless.

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[1] A book every Christian in the modern West should read.