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Mr. Eliot's Idea of a Christian Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2024

Gerald Vann O.P.
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It can hardly be necessary at this date to summarize the contents of a book which, one notes with thankfulness, has been so widely described and discussed. It will be recalled that Mr. Eliot’s purpose in writing it was to offer a ‘contribution to a discussion which must occupy many minds for a long time to come’; and the most fitting way in which to salute his work would therefore seem to be to confine oneself to suggesting the main points at which further elucidation appears desirable. The urgency of such continued discussion should also need no stressing; the background against which these lectures are to be read is the realization, in September 1938, of a ‘general plight,’ the conscious ‘doubt of the validity of a civilization and that doubt is not assuaged but intensified, the urgent need of following as best we may the lead here given us is not diminished but increased, by the constant iteration, from press and platform, that the conflict in which we are now engaged is quite simply one between the powers of darkness and the powers of light, between Satan and Christianity.’ The last thing we should like to do would be to examine that “Christianity” which, in such contexts as this, we say we keep.’ We can make much emotional capital out of the use of labels that have lost all definite meaning; but the facts are quite plain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 21 , Issue 239 , February 1940 , pp. 119 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © 1940 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The Idea. of (2 Christia,i Society. By T. S. Eliot. Pp. 99. Faber; 5 / - ).

2 Since this review was written, Mr. Eliot has replied to Mr. Reckitt's criticism (New English. Weekly, December 14th, 1939,explaining that his definition was meant to allow for the presence, within the Christian Society, of a non-Christian minority. I must confess that his reply does not wholly set my doubts at rest, principally because the ambiguity in the use of the term ‘virtue’ seems to remain. Granted that the Christian Society cannot ask of its minority an acceptance of Christian revelati, on, yet it must surely ask acceptance of the Christian principles of behaviour ; or, in other words, though the minority may be interested in a ‘natural end only, it must be prepared to conform with principles established by reference to a supernatural end-its life, though natural in se, must be supernatural derivatively and externally, i. e., by reference to its extrinsic exemplary cause.

3 It should be explained that Mr . Eliot distinguishes, as elements in the Christian Society, the Christian State, the Christian Community, and the Community of Christians. The Community of Christians would comprise those of ‘superior intellectual and/ or spiritual gifts, whose function it would be to leaven the mass, the Christian Community ; for the mass of the faithful! ‘religious life would be ‘largely a matter of behaviour and conformity’; and the Community of Christians, therefore, would ‘form the conscious mind and the conscience of the nation.’