The Devil’s in the Details of Modernity

Following a sermon by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Edward Feser examines the elements which have governed the modern age, and he charts a postliberal path for putting this diabolical modernity behind us.

The nature of the diabolical was of special interest to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, as evidenced by a recently published compilation of his writings on the subject. In a powerful sermon, Sheen analyzed the diabolical from both the psychological and the theological points of view. As he also emphasized, the topic has important implications for politics. What he did not explicitly say, but is clear upon reflection, is that his analysis illuminates nothing less than the entire social and political order characteristic of modernity.

That is not to say that there is nothing good in the modern world. Gravely damaged though human beings are, they do not lose their nature. And the good in that nature will manifest itself in even the most disordered circumstances, like flowers growing through rubble. All the same, when we consider the fundamental assumptions that govern modernity, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are, in Sheen’s sense, diabolical.

Sheen’s analysis

Sheen begins by noting that the concept of the diabolical has remained of interest even to some approaching the matter from a secular rather than religious point of view. He cites, as an example, the work of psychologist Rollo May (who had much to say about the topic in his book Love and Will). Following May, Sheen observes that the Greek root word behind the English “diabolical” can connote “to tear apart” or “rend asunder.” The diabolical, in this sense, is something that works to bring about disunity or discord.

Naturally, discord can exist within a community. But it can also exist within a single individual psyche, when it becomes disordered. Sheen attributes to May the thesis that there are three main manifestations of diabolical discord in the individual. The first, Sheen calls the “love of nudity.” He does not elaborate much in his sermon, but it is not difficult to see what he might have in mind here that would be an instance of internal disunity or discord. One thinks of St. Augustine’s famous account in the Confessions of the way the self is “disintegrated” by sin, and sexual sin in particular. The flesh wars against the spirit, and when it wins, our natural inhibitions can break down and leave us dissolute and shameless.

A second manifestation of the diabolically disordered psyche is aggressiveness, which can give rise to violence. The wrathful man, like the man enslaved to lust, has lost control of his passions and is therefore divided against himself. And this internal discord leads him to act in a way that divides him from others as well. The third manifestation of diabolical internal discord is the lack of inner peace that in extreme cases gives way to full-blown mental illness. Sheen notes that all three of these manifestations – nakedness, violence, and an absence of inner peace to the point of insanity – are present in the famousbiblical story of the Gerasene demon-possessed man (Luke 8: 26-39).

This naturally leads Sheen to consider next the conception of the diabolical that we find in the New Testament. Here, he suggests, there are two key texts. The first is Christ’s famous rebuke to Peter in Matthew 16. When Christ foretold his suffering and death, Peter said “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” – to which Christ replied: “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” (verses 22-23, NKJV). He then went on to teach that whoever would follow Him would need to take up his cross, and that it profits one nothing to gain the whole world but lose one’s soul (verses 24-26).

What Peter expressed here, Sheen says, is resistance to the idea of a suffering Christ. For this, Christ labeled him “Satan,”which in Sheen’s view illustrates how, for the New Testament, at the core of the diabolical is “hatred of the cross of Christ.” This is indicated also in a second passage (Matthew 4), wherein the Devil presents Jesus with three temptations, which Sheen characterizes as “short cuts” around the cross. In the first, Satan suggests to Christ, who had been fasting for forty days, that He ought to turn some nearby stones into bread. What this represents, Sheen says, is the lure of the satisfaction of appetite – for food, sex, or whatever. The promise of such satisfaction would be one way for a Messiah to be more appealing to the world than a suffering Christ is.

Second, Satan tells Christ to throw Himself from a great height and let the angels come to catch Him. This, suggests Sheen, represents the temptation to emphasize marvels or wonders, which would be another way for a Messiah to be more attractive to the world than a suffering Christ. Third and last, the Devil offers Christ all the kingdoms of the world. What this represents, according to Sheen, is the lure of politics, and in particular of emphasis on the social and political order as an alternative to the divine and transcendent order. A Christ whose focus was exclusively political in this way would also be more attractive to the world than a suffering Messiah.

Sheen himself does not explicitly say so, but it seems that the way in which what he calls the “psychological” and the “biblical” conceptions of the diabolical are related is that the first concerns the natural order and the second the supernatural order. When the diabolical leads us to absorption in sensual pleasure, wrath, and mental disorder, it thereby corrupts the everyday natural order of things. When the diabolical tempts us to prefer appetite-satisfaction, marvels or wonders, and political action to the call to take up the cross, it attempts to interfere with the supernatural order – that is to say, with the means by which God has, by His grace, willed to heal the natural order and redirect it to a higher end (viz. the beatific vision).

Liberal modernity

But what does all this have to do with the character of the modern world? Let’s turn to that.

Consider a couple of recent accounts of modernity, one from a defender and one from a critic. In his book Natural Law Liberalism and the Malaise of Modernity, philosopher Stephen Boulter suggests that there are three defining features of the modern world. The first is a conception of modern science as the supreme authority in matters of knowledge. The second is a commitment to liberal democracy and associated ideas such as the thesis that political legitimacy derives from consent. The third is an emphasis on free markets as the best means of providing for economic needs, with government providing for those that the market cannot meet. Boulter notes that this trio of science, liberal democracy, and market economics has yielded the highest standard of material well-being in human history.

Boulter also notes (with regret) that modernity’s material achievements have been accompanied by what Max Weber called a “disenchantment” of the world – that is to say, the marginalization, and among many the complete disappearance, of belief in any ends higher than those attainable via science, politics, and the market. Naturally, this includes belief in the ends characteristic of religion.

Raymond Geuss, in his book Outside Ethics, proposes that modern Western society has come to regard three things alone as of fundamental importance. First, the satisfaction of subjective individual preferences. Second, knowledge that is useful insofar as it allows us to predict and deal with what happens in the world around us. Third, arriving at universal rules or principles, governing our actions and our interactions with each other, thateveryone can agree on. Whatever does not fall into one of these categories, or is not at least somehow related to them, is considered of marginal importance at best and altogether delusional at worst. For the modern world, says Geuss, only “darkness” lay beyond these three realms. And religion in particular has come to be relegated to this outer darkness of the marginal or delusional.

Boulter and Geuss write from very different perspectives on liberal modernity – Boulter defending (a reformed version of) it from an Aristotelian point of view, Geuss criticizing it from the left. But it is clear that their characterizations of liberal modernity are closely parallel. The three things that Geuss says modernity values are precisely the three things secured by the institutions identified by Boulter as defining modernity. In particular, the satisfaction of subjective individual preferences is secured by the free market (or government, where the market cannot do the job). Knowledge useful for predicting and controlling the world around us is provided by modern science. And a social order defined by universal rules that all can consent to is the central ideal of liberal democracy. Moreover, Boulter and Geuss alike characterize these elements of modernity as having pushed religion to the margins (even if they would differ over the significance of this fact).

Not that Boulter’s or Geuss’s characterizations of modernity are terribly novel or idiosyncratic. The features they identify are widely acknowledged, even if not always described in exactly the way these two writers do. But it is striking that the three features they take to be definitive of the modern world correlate exactly with the three temptations by which, on Sheen’s analysis, the Devil attempted to draw Christ away from the cross, away from redeeming us by way of suffering. In the light of Sheen’s analysis, modernity can be seen as appealing to us in precisely the diabolical way Satan urged Christ to appeal to us.

Again, the Devil’s first temptation was to urge Christ to be a Messiah of the kind who promises us satisfaction of our appetites. But the question of what will satisfy our appetites is, on Geuss’s analysis, the first of the three issues that modernity takes to be of fundamental importance. And the market economy is, on Boulter’s analysis, precisely the element of modernity that has satisfied our material desires in a manner unrivaled in human history. In effect, in its economic aspect, the modern world has offered to us the first of Satan’s three alternatives to the cross.

Satan’s second temptation was to suggest to Christ that he appeal to us by wonders or marvels rather than through the cross. Now, this is precisely how science, another of the three elements of modernity identified by Boulter, has come to appeal to us. It has yielded technological wonders unparalleled in previous human history – air travel, space flight, telephones, television, computers, home appliances, vaccines and life-saving medical procedures, and on and on. And these are analogous to miracles in that they have given the scientists who produce them a “prophet”-like authority possessed by no one else in the modern world. Modern people look to scientists alone for the sort of predictive and practical knowledge that Geuss says is the second thing modernity takes to be of fundamental importance. In effect, in its scientific aspect, the modern world has offered us the second of the Devil’s alternatives to the cross.

Satan’s third temptation was to propose that Christ present himself as a political Messiah, to appeal to our desire for worldly power and social reform rather than a heavenly reward transcending that. This is precisely what is promised by the remaining element of modernity, liberal democracy. As both Boulter and Geuss emphasize, modernity insists on consent as the touchstone of political legitimacy. It takes public authorities and social institutions to have no authority over us unless we in some way agree to them. It thereby promises to treat every man as a sovereign individual – as his own king – and endlessly seeks to ferret out as yet undetected forms of oppression from which it can liberate us. In effect, in its liberal democratic aspect, the modern world has offered us the third of Satan’s alternatives to the cross.

The point is not that free markets, science, or democracy are in themselves evil, nor is it to deny that they have indeed afforded modern people great benefits. The point is that they have become idols and false messiahs. This is obvious from the fact that, as Boulter, Geuss, and many other analysts of modernity emphasize, the prosperity, technological prowess, and freedom that modernity has yielded have pushed religion into the margins of modern life. Modern people treat the prospects of Final Judgment, Heaven, and Hell as afterthoughts at best, when not dismissing them altogether as superstitions from which we have been liberated. It is the goods of this world on which they have set their hearts.

Moreover, while modern people may occasionally speak sentimentally of the cross, its substance is anathema to them. As Sheen emphasizes, even in the Church today, mortification, asceticism, self-denial, and the “spirit of discipline” in general have been set aside. The remaining imperfections and disappointments of modern life are not endured patiently or acknowledged as inevitable in a fallen world, nor are they accepted as a penance, but instead are endlessly complained about and attributed to persisting injustice.

The modern world does not want a suffering Christ who commands us to take up our own crosses. It wants the satisfaction of every desire. It wants bold and wondrous actions. It wants political power to secure these other wants, and to dominate and neutralize any who would deny them to us. It wants what Sheen characterizes as diabolical “short cuts” around the cross.

After modernity

There is one further parallel we must note, and it indicates what to put in place of the spirit that animates the modern world. The three diabolical temptations identified by Sheen, and the elements of modernity to which they correspond, each happen to be directly contrary to one of the three Theological Virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

Modernity tells us to put our trust in science and the marvels it has given us. Faith tells us to put our trust in “every word which proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4), which in the course of ordinary life speaks to us with a “still, small voice” (I Kings 19:12) rather than dramatic miracles.

Modernity tells us to seek fulfilment here and now, in social reform and political action. Hope tells us to look beyond this world to the Kingdom of God, admonishing us that “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (I Corinthians 15:19).

Modernity tells us to gratify whatever desires we happen to have, and reduces other human beings to fellow economic actors who might be enlisted to facilitate such gratification. Charity tells us to will what is actually good for us and our fellow human beings, and instead of gratifying itself it “suffers long… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (I Corinthians 13:4,7).

A postliberal order will resist the lures of modernity in favor of the theological virtues. To be sure, it should embrace science. But it must repudiate the scientism that blinds us to other and higher sources of knowledge. It can incorporate the market economy, but it must repudiate the economism that blinds us to ends higher than worldly goods. It can acknowledge a legitimate sphere of individual freedom, but it must repudiate the exaggerated individualism that recognizes no authority to which individuals do not consent and claims to liberate us from traditional moral restraints. To these temptations, it must say, with Christ, “get behind me Satan, you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”