   
Alain Besançon's Trois Tentations
...Orest's
other reviews
Alain Besançon has had the kindness to send me not only his L'Image
interdite: une histoire intellectuelle de l'iconoclasme (Paris: Fayard,
1994), but also his Trois Tentations dans l'Église (Paris:
Calmann Lévy, 1996). After reading Anne Ramsey ― whose book is
discussed in my review "On 'Nature'" ― on the profound religious
beliefs of the Leaguers, it occurred to me that the Trois Tentations
might follow interestingly, not because B. is interested in the beliefs of
the Leaguers, but because of the general and perennial relations between
religious beliefs and collective actions, in institutions or out, fixed on
the general idea of temptation.
For B., the first temptation in the R.C.C. is to turn backward and inward
— toward a church in which the primary sense of the human is as a being
— ontological — in need by nature of a redeeming relation with
the divine. This temptation, in the main desirable from B's point of view,
has for him little hope of occurring, largely because the various positivisms
of the 19th century, now fully articulated in the Church, are too strong.
The French church's dérive, for B., is of importance not only
for Christianity and the West in general, but also for the whole intellectual
fabric of the world. Nineteenth-century Romanticism, imbued with some 1789
leftover impulses, gave the Church new force, perhaps, but at a high price.
It shifted from understanding relations as being between the individual and
the Church, to a general social ideal to promote a collective well-being.
Not that B. does not recognize the Church's mission to help the needy, etc.:
that is not the point. Charity and a social mission sustained by a
positivist impulse is quite a different matter. The social idea makes the
Church, in effect, just like any other institution and, in a sense, in
competition with them all. The results were a loss of the older doctrinal
and administrative legal structures grounded solidly on Aristotelian and
Thomistic doctrine.
The shift from the ontological to the social entailed a massive ensemble
of intellectual adjustments, the most important of which was (is) an emphasis
on the New Testament and a distinct de-emphasis of the Old, with all its
historicity and legalism. The Romantic and social impulses were very strong
in Germany, and one of the consequences was the ethical collapse of the Church
before anti-semitism and Nazism. This analysis is supported not only by close
readings of papal encyclicals but of suppressed Psalms — a culture of
"improvement" displaced one that offered grace and redemption as primary
emphases. The Aristotelian foundations of the older Church also enabled it
ot develop compatibilities with Liberalism (not as defined in France today,
but as a political and moral ethic of the 1830s-1860s).
Would the Church have perceived Bolshevism as the emphatic enemy that it
did, without the shift toward the social? Here Besançon's thought
is like a giant geometric figure; one cannot describe one part without doing
injustice to the whole. The 19th century generated a number of competing
utopias — all with positivist engines running — and for B. Christianity
of the 19th-century social type, and Bolshevism were closer than many would
accept — but here a general model of ideological conflict is at work,
that is, it usually is the systems sharing similar presuppositions (in this
case, social utopias) that account for conflict.
The second temptation in the Church is democratization. Exploring this impulse
in the world, and in the Church in particular, is very interesting; but while
analytically sound, when Besançon joins democratization with
egalitarianism, his perspective (Aristotle again) is too colored by the intensity
of the French experience. The old democratic and federal republics —
the Swiss, the Dutch and the USA — are moving ever so slowly toward
egalitarian societies; yet one cannot deny that they have been democracies
for centuries. The United Kingdom, so democratic, is egalitarian in a world
of rights, but not socially egalitarian in the way the 19th-century French
democratic experiences were. Time for Aristotle, changes in the relations
or focus of government, are extremely slow in democratic societies, but perhaps
faster than in monarchies.
In a long chapter entitled Du Sublime Chrétien, an ensemble
of issues is explored. I had expected an analysis of the differences between
ecstacy and the antique but updated notion of the sublime, as secular ecstacy
and resulting enthusiasms; but this is not what B. is after. Within the frames
of hierarchy and egalitarianism, there is the issue of how to institutionalize
individual faiths; the mystic is usually characterized as someone who fulfills
all the "normative" acts of faith within the Church, and thus seeks more
complete union with God beyond these. Today, the croyant who finds
no need for the Church is the issue, and here B's answer is to re-elevate
the emphasis on the being and its need for Redemption.
The third temptation is Islam, and here the focus is very strongly on France,
but with resonances for elsewhere. Astonishing as it may seem, the number
of French Catholic pratiquants and Muslims is about the same! The
ontological grounding in what is, for B, a "natural religion" (he makes a
good case), the Islamic faith, makes it a temptation for those who crave
God. This deciphering of the relations between the major religious communities
is extremely telling and pertinent. For example, the Christian is generally
now only mildly discomfited by the atheist; the Muslim remains fearful and
full of horror, as some ancient Romans were before Christians. The Muslim
only very rarely thinks of converting to Christianity, because historically
it would be a step backward — one that is out-of-date as a result of
the life and writings of Mohammed.
The deeper issue is, of course, whether a partially institutionalized religion
that has a social utopia at its center can survive long-term contact with
a religion whose ontological foundations remain so strong. B's writing
constitutes a warning for the churchmen who wish to create a perfect community
on earth. His understanding of Communism is important here, because it is
grounded on a knowledge of human nature: the social utopia cannot sustain
institutions for very long periods (the very positivism in the program partly
causes their collapse!). An age of sects is upon us in the West. Perhaps
B. depicts the Islamic world in terms that are too monolithic; but his thought
is nonetheless always deeply focused on essential features in religious
communities.
A voice in the wilderness? Besançon's? The humility — religious
humility — which the author of this book communicates, leaves this reader
shaken. There is no claim to have all the answers; there is no chiliastic
tone; there is bearing witness after a quest for understanding.
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