This week, I return to one of my earlier books for this blog every so often. Almost everything I have written was published initially as part of this blog, but the precise chapter I will be visiting was written before I had a blog. The reason it’s on my mind is because twice in the last week, people have mentioned Alastair McIntyre’s After Virtue to me, which has been a very important book in my intellectual growth. [1]In one case, a professor was talking to me about his students. He began to speak about most of his students’ characterological and emotional issues. His statement to me was something like, “Every new class seems to be more dysfunctional and to have more difficulty conceiving of any kind of a disciplined moral life. I think it has to do with our educational system and how it has abandoned the teaching virtues over the last century. This is not just true in the United States, but worldwide where Western civilization has been important.” The second person with whom I spoke was interested in a comment by Leslie Nubin that Saint Benedict reacted to the decline of the Roman Empire and the institutional corruption of the church to create a new way of life that could penetrate the largely rural Europe of his day. I was thinking about the rule of Saint Benedict and its meaning for us today.

A New St. Benedict?

Near the end of After Virtue, MacIntyre cryptically speaks of the end of Western Civilization as we know it and of a “new dark age” in which we now live. This New Dark Age is characterized by a loss of faith in truth and the reality of spiritual and moral values. Its results are seen in our societies’ pervasive spiritual and moral decay and the loss of confidence in our institutions. MacIntyre ends his book with no answer, only a general direction in which Western culture might go:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of virtues was able to survive the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for some time. And, it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict. [2]

In this short conclusion, McIntyre gives just a clue as to our predicament and the probable way Western society might escape the New Dark Age.

Benedict of Nursia (493-547) lived at the end of the Roman era when the world was moving from one cultural milieu to another. The classical world was over. The culture created by Greece and Rome had burned itself out. What we call the Fall of Rome ended a long period of decay as the classical world came to its political, intellectual, moral, and religious end. During Benedict’s lifetime, Western had already entered a dark time of cultural dissolution and decay.

There are many parallels between Europe at the time of Benedict and our culture. We also live at a juncture in history. The modern world is over. Something different is emerging, a culture we call post-modern, but it is too early to tell precisely what this new culture will be like.

Amid this turbulent period—St. Benedict created a rule and a form of life that gave order to Catholic monasticism. [3]The achievements of St. Benedict and the other Roman Catholic reformers who created the culture of the Middle Ages were not revolutionary. Benedict believed in the truth of orthodox Christian faith and the adequacy of the morality of the Bible and the Christian tradition. His task, unlike that of the new barbarians among us, was not to create a “new religion,” “new morality,” or “new society,” but to establish the religion, morality, and society of the pre-modern world upon more secure intellectual and practical foundations. Benedict was the inheritor and protector of a tradition.

Fundamental to St. Benedict’s program was that the church and society of his day could not be renewed without a visible picture of what a renewed society might look like. The medieval orders were a kind of embodied picture of what could be—of what the Roman Catholic Church could look like and what a wise society built on the foundations of Christian faith and practice might look like. The monks lived out their notion of what a renewed Christendom might look like.

The Medieval orders were primarily a way of life structured through an institution (the order and monastery) where individuals found meaning and a place in a society where spiritual values lay at the center of human life. Their days were punctuated by work, worship, and rest. One can critique the success of the orders in achieving their program, but at least they attempted it. For countless people within and without the orders, they were the source of a life with meaning and purpose devoted to God, truth, beauty, and virtue.

A Life Structured Around Scripture

Benedict, like the Protestant Reformers after him, shaped a way of life structured around the Bible and the story of the Bible. Protestants often critique the Catholic orders as “unbiblical.” This prejudice cannot survive a day of living in a community structured by reading Scripture and worshiping God. A renewed Western Civilization that does not spring from a renewed commitment to a life structured around the Biblical story and Christian faith is unlikely to impact our culture in a powerful and lasting way. At the center of any life lived by indwelling the Christian story is the figure of Christ, the Word and Wisdom of God revealed in human flesh for all to see.

Much post-modern criticism has been levied on the foundational texts of Western civilization. In its most infantile form, it critiques a society created by “Dead White Men.” This, of course, ignores the facts. The “Children of Abraham and Sarah” and the writers of the Old Testament were Semites. The “Eastern Fathers” were not European and included women and men. Augustine was North African. The body of literature they created is a culturally diverse text.

To reconstruct a stable and wise Western world in Europe and America, it will be necessary to recover the foundational texts of Western culture and add new texts of wisdom as time goes by. In the face of multiculturalism, it will even be necessary to reach deep into the wisdom literature of other cultures and incorporate their wisdom into our thinking. Most importantly, any new Benedict must recover the Bible and its language in such a way that it becomes written on the hearts of contemporary men and women.

A Life Structured Around Worship

The monastic life was and is structured around worship. The monastic day is structured around the “hours” and the regular worship, not just weekly but throughout the day. For Western civilization to recover a sense of the Holy and of human relationship with the Holy, it will have to recover a desire for worship and for a life that finds its structure and meaning in regular cycles of worship involving families, local religious bodies, and even larger communities of faith.

Secular culture has resulted in a society in which the Sabbath, a day set aside for worship and rest, is a thing of the past, practiced by a few dedicated souls. What used to be “Holy Days,” in which families gathered to worship and celebrate the foundations of their faith, have become, even for many Christians, days to eat and drink to excess and watch sports. Such a culture soon forgets the sanctity and the holiness of family life.

A Way Recognizing the Moral Nature of Life

Modern culture is rapidly proving the intuition of the ancients that a society without a moral and ethical center must inevitably disintegrate into political, economic, and cultural chaos. Much of our culture is built upon a false exaltation of “individual choice” and a failure to see the reality of personal wisdom and virtue. To say that wisdom, faithfulness, justice, equity, sobriety, and other values are fundamental values is to say they have existence and potency whether or not any particular individual accepts or recognizes them. It is to say that there is something like a natural law operative in the world—a reality we cannot ignore without consequences.

C. S. Lewis speaks helpfully of this law in his book Mere Christianity:

The Moral Law, or the Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behavior in the same way the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behavior we call bad and unfair is not exactly the same as behavior we find inconvenient, and in fact may even be the opposite. Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you want to call it, must somehow or another be a real thing—a thing that is really there and not made up by ourselves. [4]

Lewis goes on to point out that there is more than one kind of reality. The reality of truth, beauty, and goodness press in on us whether we recognize it or not. [5] The moral universe presses upon us whether we recognize it or not. We cannot safely ignore it without pain to ourselves and the dissolution of our society.

To say that anything is real is to say that it exists independently of our subjective perception and impacts the quality of life of those who come into contact with it. It is in this exact way that wisdom and foolishness operate. Those who cease to see the difference between wisdom and foolishness, righteousness and wickedness, or virtuous and lewd behavior cannot make the decisions necessary to achieve a happy and whole life. Those who cease to feel that the wisest course of action will be revealed to them by the practice of the virtues are left without the ability to react to the moral nature of the universe, which, in fact, presses upon us all.

A Way of Life Involving Order

The Benedictine renewal involved orders that followed rules that resulted in a particular way of life. The way of life the members of the Benedictine order thought they were recovering was the Way of Jesus as they understood it. Any recovery of ordered life in the postmodern world will likely be accompanied by people banding together to embody a different way of life than common in our society.

Modern readers of the Rule can be put off by its detail concerning the structure of daily life and the relationships among monks. It is helpful to recognize that Benedict was reacting against the disorder not just of his society but of the monastic orders themselves as he created the Rule. The Rule’s success is proof of its power and importance as a kind of pattern with the power to order human life wisely.

The historic Way of Wisdom provides one avenue for ordinary people to explore in their daily lives to discipline themselves to find a better and more satisfying way of life than that urged upon us by the media and by the cultural arbiters of post-modern society. A rediscovery of the value of faith, tradition, and traditional ways of ordering life would result in persons from many parts of the Christian tradition re-thinking and re-ordering their lives in many ways. A Christian re-discovery of the wisdom tradition would almost certainly cause other traditions to rediscover their own wisdom resources. There may, therefore, be not so much a need for one new St. Benedict as for many. What is certain is that the excessively individualistic and excessively disordered structure of contemporary society does not provide a viable path forward.

A Way of Life Founded in Family

Recovery of a wise and healthy culture in the West cannot be accomplished without a renewal of the basic unit of society. It has been pointed out that families in the West, especially families in America, are notoriously weak. Without strengthening family life, it is difficult to imagine that community life can be strengthened in the West, especially in America.

Our capacity to live in community is formed in the first community we are a part of. If wisdom literature is correct concerning the crucial role of the family, then the most basic renewal that is needed is in the family’s life. The new St. Benedicts among us will have to find ways to express a wiser and more orderly way of life in the context of concrete human families.

A Way of Life Founded in Community

During one of America’s recent political conventions, one person was reported to have said, “Our national government is all we have in common.” With due respect for our national government and its leaders, this statement expresses a deep problem with our society. Nation-states are essential, but they are no substitute for families, local communities, and what sociologists call “mediating institutions,” such as churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, private associations, and other local institutions. National governments are no substitute for neighborhood associations, townships, cities, and other local community forms. It is essential that people feel connected to their local community. While no one belongs to all of the possible institutions of local community life, everyone can be happy for their participation and that of others in all of them. A renewed Christian way of life will be founded on the deliberate nurture of communities at all levels of society.

A Life Formed in a Rhythm of Labor and Rest

In much of contemporary society, work has supplanted God, family, and community as the center of life. Especially among the successful, work and its accompanying status and benefits have become idols. In America, success has become the ultimate goal of too many in business, government, the media, academia, and almost all institutions of life.

St. Benedict and his followers created a way of life in which worship, work, community, and rest all find a place. Work is important. In working, human beings fulfill the command to act as stewards of creation and perfect the world entrusted to their special care and nurture (Genesis 1:28). Work is a natural outgrowth of worship. Still, in overworking, we demonstrate a lack of balance that increasingly warps our full humanity.

What is needed is a recovery of the notion of a rhythm of labor and rest. Sabbath-keeping can be essential to this recovery, but it is not enough. A rest day is no substitute for a rhythm of worship, family life, community involvement, work, and relaxation. A renewal of Western culture cannot be accomplished without a renewal of a proper relationship between work and the rest of life.

A Way of Life Founded on Truth

Lesslie Newbigin’s book Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth contains a powerful critique of contemporary society and an analysis of its roots similar to the one presented in this chapter. [6] Newbigin speaks about how modern society distinguishes between the public world of scientific facts and the private world of religious and moral truths. Newbigin encourages Christians to have the confidence to proclaim the gospel not just as a truth among many truths but as The Truth—a truth embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He writes this:

But when the Church affirms the gospel as public truth it is challenging the whole of society to wake out of the nightmare of subjectivism and relativism, to escape from the captivity of the self turned in upon itself, and to accept the calling which is addressed to every human being to seek, acknowledge, and proclaim the truth. For we are that part of God’s creation which he has equipped with the power to know the truth and to speak to praise of the whole creation in response to the truthfulness of the Creator.” [7]

In the end, any notion of wisdom requires an idea of truth. To embody the spiritual and moral order of the universe in times of trouble, we must believe in the reality of such an order and, in humility, seek to understand it and adjust our lives to its demands. We will not take any path with confidence and personal commitment, even the Path of Life, unless we believe it will take us to the place we desire to go—to the wise, happy, and fulfilled life.

The post-modern critique of Enlightenment thinking often reduces all claims to truth as bids for power. This critique is sometimes levied against the church and Christian faith. The critique may be valid as to some past actions of the church and Christians, but it cannot be levied against the Christian faith in its essence. The Way and Truth Christians proclaim is the way of the One who came to serve and not be served and rejected worldly power as a temptation (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45).

For Christians, a renewal of our culture requires a willingness to serve a culture that is often dismissive of our values and hostile to the lifestyles we practice. The days are long gone when we might achieve cultural change by some act of a non-existent “moral majority.” What is now needed is the hard work and diligent ministry of a wise minority. A renewal of wisdom cannot be legislated; it can only be encouraged. [8]

In the end, the notion of truth that we are called to embody, transmit, and defend is a truth that our society will find almost impossible to understand—it is a truth that can only be known in a community of self-giving love formed in the image of the One who was Truth lifted on a Roman Cross for all the world to see—in the form of a first century Rabbi. It is a truth found in a single person and an indissoluble unity with self-giving love. This personal truth desires to be in relation to every human being that we proclaim.

Copyright 2024, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Alistair McIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

[2]  Id, 263. This portion of the blog comes from the final chapter of my previous work, Path of Life (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014).

[3] See, Benedict of Nursia, Rule of St. Benedict in English, Timothy Fry, ed. Collierville, MN, 1982). There are many translations, interpretations and commentaries on the Rule for those who are interested.

[4] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London, England: Collins Fontana Books, 1952), 28-29.

[5] Id.

[6] Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI & Geneva: William B. Eerdmans and WCC Publications, 1991).

[7] Id, at 13.

[8] Perhaps the fundamental mistake of the movements of the 1960’s, left and right, was the notion that true cultural transformation for the better can be accomplished through legislation and the power of the nation state. This was an especially mistaken approach for Christians. The One who resisted the temptation to rule the kingdoms of this world and who chose instead to die on a cross works primarily not in overt power but in self-giving service to the world.