From the essays and journalism of George Orwell (1903 - 1950).
In Tribune, March, 1944.
"........I think I can show that the present nebulous state of Christian doctrine has serious implications which neither Christians nor Socialists have faced.
......it also appears from my correspondent's letter that even the most central doctrines of the Christian religion don't have to be accepted in a literal sense......
.....Now, is this orthodox Catholic doctrine ? My impression is that it is not. I can think of passages in the writing of popular Catholic apologists in which it is stated in the clearest terms that Christian doctrine means what it appears to mean, and is not to be accepted in some wishy-washy metaphorical sense........
I do not know whether, officially, there has been any alteration in Christian doctrine. Father Knox etc and my correspondent would seem to be in disagreement about this. But what I do know is that belief in survival after death - the individual survival of John Smith, still conscious of himself as John Smith - is enormously less widespread than it was. Even among professing Christians it is probably decaying : other people, as a rule, don't even entertain the possibility it might be true. But our forefathers, so far as we know, did believe in it. Unless all that they wrote about it was intended to mislead us, they believed it in an exceedingly literal, concrete way. Life on earth, as they saw it, was simply a short period of preparation for an infinitely more important life beyond the grave. But that notion has disappeared, or is disappearing, and the consequences have not really been faced.
Western civilization, unlike some oriental civilizations, was founded partly on the belief in individual immortality........the western conception of good and evil is very difficult to separate from it. There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be right even if you are defeated. Statesman, nations, theories and causes are judged inevitably by the test of material success. Supposing that one can separate the two phenomena, I would say that the decay of the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization. Machine civilization has terrible possibilities........but the other thing has terrible possibilities too, and it cannot be said that the Socialist movement has given much thought to them.
I do not want the belief in life after death to return. And in any case it is not likely to return. What I do want to point out is that its disappearance has left a big hole, and we ought to take notice of that fact. Reared for thousands of years on the notion that the individual survives, man has got to make a considerable psychological effort to get used to the idea that the individual perishes. He is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell..........most Socialists are content to point out that once Socialism has been established we shall be happier in a material sense, and to assume that all problems lapse when one's belly is full. But the truth is the opposite : when one's belly is empty, one's only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we really start wondering about man's destiny and the reason for his existence. One cannot have any worthwhile picture of the future unless one realizes how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity. Few Socialists seem to be aware of this. And those Catholic intellectuals who cling to the letter of the Creeds while reading into them meanings they were never meant to have, and who snigger at anyone simple enough to suppose that the Fathers of the Church meant what they said, are simply raising smoke screens to conceal their own disbelief from themselves......."
"........I think I can show that the present nebulous state of Christian doctrine has serious implications which neither Christians nor Socialists have faced.
......it also appears from my correspondent's letter that even the most central doctrines of the Christian religion don't have to be accepted in a literal sense......
.....Now, is this orthodox Catholic doctrine ? My impression is that it is not. I can think of passages in the writing of popular Catholic apologists in which it is stated in the clearest terms that Christian doctrine means what it appears to mean, and is not to be accepted in some wishy-washy metaphorical sense........
I do not know whether, officially, there has been any alteration in Christian doctrine. Father Knox etc and my correspondent would seem to be in disagreement about this. But what I do know is that belief in survival after death - the individual survival of John Smith, still conscious of himself as John Smith - is enormously less widespread than it was. Even among professing Christians it is probably decaying : other people, as a rule, don't even entertain the possibility it might be true. But our forefathers, so far as we know, did believe in it. Unless all that they wrote about it was intended to mislead us, they believed it in an exceedingly literal, concrete way. Life on earth, as they saw it, was simply a short period of preparation for an infinitely more important life beyond the grave. But that notion has disappeared, or is disappearing, and the consequences have not really been faced.
Western civilization, unlike some oriental civilizations, was founded partly on the belief in individual immortality........the western conception of good and evil is very difficult to separate from it. There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be right even if you are defeated. Statesman, nations, theories and causes are judged inevitably by the test of material success. Supposing that one can separate the two phenomena, I would say that the decay of the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization. Machine civilization has terrible possibilities........but the other thing has terrible possibilities too, and it cannot be said that the Socialist movement has given much thought to them.
I do not want the belief in life after death to return. And in any case it is not likely to return. What I do want to point out is that its disappearance has left a big hole, and we ought to take notice of that fact. Reared for thousands of years on the notion that the individual survives, man has got to make a considerable psychological effort to get used to the idea that the individual perishes. He is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell..........most Socialists are content to point out that once Socialism has been established we shall be happier in a material sense, and to assume that all problems lapse when one's belly is full. But the truth is the opposite : when one's belly is empty, one's only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we really start wondering about man's destiny and the reason for his existence. One cannot have any worthwhile picture of the future unless one realizes how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity. Few Socialists seem to be aware of this. And those Catholic intellectuals who cling to the letter of the Creeds while reading into them meanings they were never meant to have, and who snigger at anyone simple enough to suppose that the Fathers of the Church meant what they said, are simply raising smoke screens to conceal their own disbelief from themselves......."
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