The Age of Reason

[VIROS 2915]

 

 

THE AGE OF REASON

 

A POLEMIC AGAINST THE GROWING THREAT OF APOSTASY

 

 

PUBLISHED BY

 

JAMES II, HIGH PONTIFF OF THE CHURCH OF THE CANON

 

Our Church is a talented mother. She has been, throughout the ages: our fervent crusader and our mild diplomat; our agent for social change and our bulwark against degeneracy; a rebel who casts down wicked kings and also a servant who lifts up the good ones. She has fought off diseases without and also diseases within: despite all the sin wrought by evil kings and decadent bishops, she has persisted. Yet we must also remember that we still await the last days. In a blink of God’s eye, the World will be so overcome with sin that even our holy mother will not be able to heal it alone.

 

In these past few decades, God has blessed our Church with a relative peace. The temporal world, as always, is embroiled in international disputes, riddled with sin, assaulted on all sides by the forces of Iblees—yet the Church herself (as of yet), is not subjected to the many indignities of previous eras. When I read the writings of the saints and the fathers of the Church, I give thanks. My task has been an easy one compared to those who suffered schism, caesaropapism, persecution, and every other kind of iniquity. Yet there is still greater evil on the horizon. Only when all seems lost, when nearly all the faithful have perished or been subverted, will the prophets return. This is the promise of the Auspice.

 

Thus, despite the peace of this age, I fear for my successors. I fear for the age to come. We are witnessing the infection of our brothers with a disease far more insidious than mere degeneracy. This disease does not, at first, attack the fruits of our virtue. For years, the surface of the tree seems healthy—this is because the disease afflicts the very roots of faith. Season by season, it cuts off the soul from God. The fruit of virtue does not rot, but a dead tree bears no fruit. One day, when the infection’s progress is complete, the faith of the afflicted crumbles and falls. 

This disease is Reason, or more specifically, the worship of Reason. I tell you now that we are threatened by an Age of Reason. I see worshippers of Reason in our streets, and I hear them clamoring to enter our courts and legislatures. I have seen them in Helena, in New Reza, and in Owynsburg. We even suffer them in our own Church. Full of pride, and raising the work of their own mind above God, their criticisms are presented to us, and we receive them with sympathetic patience.

 

I have heard the criticisms of the atheists: “Why should I worship your God above the gods of the elves and the orcs, who prove themselves through mighty magicks?” 

 

I have also heard the criticisms of the pagans: “How can you preach love and tell me my faith is false? If God loves me, I do not need your Church.” 

 

I have even heard the criticisms of the disestablishmentarians: “Our faith is true, but every man has a right to his conscience, and this Empire contains so many.”

 

Each of these is an utterly logical and reasonable criticism, when one accepts the perspective to which these sad men are subjected: the perspective of Reason, whereby the perfect and universal is compared to the flawed and finite. They reach into a realm of ideas and forms, one existing only as a hypothetical—a product of their imagination—and they attempt to fit God and the Church into its operations like gears of a clockwork. When they discover these gears do not fit, they find fault in God, and not in themselves! Suddenly their lack of faith is meritorious; we are supposed to be impressed at the vast, skeptical intellect of these men.

 

Whence comes this sickly idol, Reason? It is not new; we have fought it before. It rears its head again now because we have, once again, become more concerned with appearing virtuous than being virtuous. Sin—when it is driven out at all, for we have become too tolerant—is not driven out because it is something abominable. It is considered a personal failing, a flaw, something not of any particular danger to us, but a danger to the sinner. “Let him believe what he wants.” If we are feeling very charitable, we might even entertain ourselves with a debate. Perhaps we are wrong after all, and he does not actually sin—what is the harm in considering his perspective?

 

The harm is that in permitting his behavior, insisting we can only help him if our explanations are satisfactory, then we have now made ourselves enemies of Truth, just as he has. We have entered into his world of Reason and justification, and now we endanger ourselves as well. In seeking to appear virtuous—patient, temperate, loving—we forget to be virtuous, to hate sin. By putting our faith to his tests, we tear away at it—we do not risk our faith, for it cares not for our explanations. But in seeking to turn his Reason into our Truth, we create an idol. Our objective is no longer reaching the correct end, but in saying the appropriate arguments: we then seek the appearance of righteousness, rather than its actual presence. The outside of our cup is clean and polished for all to see, but it is full of corruption. Let us not imbibe such a vile beverage, no matter how pleasing the vessel.

Reason is the harmonization of all ideas so that they are compatible with each other, and so it is the opposite of Truth. God is faith; He is certainty; He is Truth.

 

Reason, however, by its own definition sets itself apart from Truth—for it purports to be the method by which Truth is decided. Reason calls itself the means and Truth the ends. It introduces this division, asserting that looking for Truth in the proper way is just as important as simply knowing Truth. At its most extreme, Reason divides up the Truth into little pieces: God, the Holy Scrolls, the Church, all of these are pulled apart and dissected, examined according to foreign standards. By this method, worship of Reason rips our faith apart. It leads to schism, which if left to fester, leads to atheism. Anyone who would split up Canonism does not care for God; he cares for the worldly abundance and power that religion can give him. If our Church will not give it to him, he will happily make up a simulacrum of it, as Harren did of the holiest city. The schismatic is the apostate is the atheist.

 

One may hold a well-reasoned view of the world which, in a sudden cascade, is shattered by the “learning” of any one thing, so long as that thing is believed without doubt (read: faith). When a man holds something to be true despite having no Reason, his entire person becomes, to these worshippers of Reason, mere stubborn superstition. Through slavish obedience to Reason, such idolaters enter into a competition whereby they prefer to prove they know the Truth, rather than to either know the Truth, to seek it, or to teach it. This knowledge through Reason is often called “understanding”, as if to know God one must somehow understand Him. 

 

If you believe that Reason can lead you to God, however, you have already set down the wrong path. Reason establishes parameters to prove or disprove; it measures the purely hypothetical and counterfactual as equal to the real. Do not enter into arguments about how God’s existence is logically necessary; do not entertain notions about how the Holy Scrolls can be proven to be accurate. If God can be proven, He can be disproven. But if you believe God’s existence rests on any fact but Himself, you have not found Him. God is revealed only to fervent, penitent seekers of Him; no one knows Him by mere reading, and no one knows Him by mere mechanical operation of logic. He offers the gift of faith and we either take it or refuse it, according to our disposition. If we accept it, we see Truth: that He is real, that He gave us the scriptures, that He gave us the Church. If we refuse it, we are blind. There is no other means to believe in God except by faith in His Truth.

Thus truthful men are despised by reasonable men. Who is the truthful man, to assert he has discovered something that the reasonable man has not—who is the truthful man to refuse to put his ideas up for debate, when the reasonable man is so confident as to risk his own?

 

And yet the truthful man does not need to be confident; he does not need to prove his faith is immune to evidence, because he already knows evidence does not come into the matter. He refuses to offer up truth for mere spirited debate because nothing the reasonable man has is of any value to him.

 

What the truthful man does not know, he seeks to learn from others. The reasonable man only seeks to learn what others do not know.

 

And do not be deceived, a man of Reason might also profess faith. If you wish to uncover such a man, merely ask him “Hypothetically, what would it take for you to lose your faith?” A man of faith speaking truthfully will tell you there is nothing, no ‘knowledge’ or change in circumstances could lead to this. If he says otherwise, he lacks faith entirely; he might be a closeted atheist, or he might be a reasonable man who has deluded even himself into believing he has faith. However, faith which is merely the latest winner in a competition of ideas, awaiting the next round of challengers, is not faith; faith exists only when it is given unconditionally, when its existence is accepted prima facie, and all other things exist to serve and empower it. Faith is Truth is God.

 

If anyone says to you he will not consider adopting your faith unless you consider adopting his, ask him what a meager prize he offers you, that he believes by risking it, he might win something greater. Tell him you will not even hypothetically consider tossing away your faith in God for anyone’s mere intellectual satisfaction. Tell him that his judgement of whether you can adequately explain the inexplicable is altogether worthless to you; you have already received that very first gift God offers, and you know there is no greater prize to be won. He will probably call you stubborn; he will probably call you arrogant. But let us pray that you will plant a seed in his heart, and one day he will wonder at how one attains the mighty certainty God had given you: faith. Your certainty will be infinitely more helpful than him to a hundred “reasoned debates”. Your righteousness will be a far better medicine than whimpering, mild courtesy.

The disease is still in its early stages; it has presented itself before, and like in the past, it can still be cured. Reason was once subservient to Truth. It was a tool of discernment, as was tradition, as was prayer, as was reading scripture. Yet any ideology followed too closely will become idolatry. In this age, Reason seeks to surpass and supplant Truth; like Iblees, it has become an idol, and its worshippers are not happy until even God meets their standards.

 

I do not ask of anyone that he abandons reason entirely. He who applies good sense to scripture does not apostatize himself, and he who changes his mind when he has strayed into error is not cursed. And God is the Most Merciful: if we seek to please Him with all the tools He has given us, we are not reproached. But I will tell you now there is no path to God that will make sin acceptable to Him; there is no path to God in two or three or eight churches; and there is no path to God in the legalization of certain sins or the tolerant acceptance that your brother will enter the Void. The sick man does not spit out good medicine, whether it tastes sweet or bitter to him. If, giving your faith like medicine, you do find it is bitter to those who taste of it, first see that the error is not with you: find your recourse in the Church and the saints. But if you still find no error, then it is your brother who sins. Persisting, he risks the oblivion of the Void. It is neither patience nor temperance to allow this terrible fate to befall him

 

We are charged then, as we always are, to reinvigorate our faith: to look inwards at ourselves, then outwards at others. We must reject any attempt to tear God out of hearts. We must hate any attempt to cleave Him apart from His Church or His Word. Such evils cannot be permitted by any authority nor justified by any argument. Do not engage with these Deniers of God on their terms. When you seek to recover them into God, recover them with the method He commands, which is virtuous instruction, not meticulously curated debate.

 

As he did with Saul, Iblees will cloak the atheist, the apostate, the schismatic, and the disestablishmentarian in a more pleasing guise. He may call him a fellow citizen or a free man. He may call him a skeptic, an academic, a philosopher, a defender of liberty. All of these are fine things to be if they are matched with faith—but nevertheless the faithless Saul remains an atheist, apostate, schismatic, etc. It will begin sweetly, and he will offer us some remuneration for our apostasy, a worldly pleasure or some petty temporal power. Yet all he seeks is the division of men and their condemnation to the Void. If we do not drive Saul away, we will suffer as surely as Horen and his brothers did in the first days. Thus our mission is the same as St. Julia’s and Ex. Horen’s, the same as all believers in God and the Canon: cast the Denier out of our camp.

 

[A response in tract form by Fr. Pius of Sutica is cross-referenced with this essay in the Pontifical Library, along with James II’s acknowledgement of the response.]

 

[Borin 7646]

Viktor Lorenz Barclay reads the missive from his good friend the High Pontiff, shedding a few tears “He’s right, the amount of heretical speech I hear from the unfaithful and uneducated  Elves, Wonks, other races, men and women in the Empire is enough to make a grown man cry... But we can’t do anything about it or we’ll get arrested!” he wipes his cheek “Atleast House Barclay shall forever remain faithful servants of GOD!”

[rep2k 3192]

Reading this, Alfred Barclay, a young chaplain of the Haense Royal Army feels something eat him from within. It is not the bad thing that eats him away, such as jealousy or revenge, but on the contrary, he is eaten up by the fact that there are people like those mentioned in the text. His devotion to God, though only chaplain, is great and loving, which he himself may have noticed as he read this text. “ God, enlighten these people and tell them that what they are doing, is not good. Reason them to return to the true faith, the true belief that you, only you, God, can unite and heal this afflicted people. Heretics come and go, just like their delusional ideas, but we, true believers, will always stay, with God's help. The age of Reason will pass, because a true believer, a man sent by God, will never and cannot be greater than you, God, Father of us. “ Alfred says reading the final part of the text, praying for the salvation of these people who think they can be greater than God, even though they cannot.

[Burnsider 4566]

Young Nicolas looked over the table at his father after trying to read the treatise, but it was a little difficult for him. "Vater, when ich was in Helena the other day, ich saw priests being arrested while people yelled at them that 'people can believe what they want. We have freedom of religion here.' It was scary, watching the priest on the donkey have to run like some kind of criminal. Is that what this is about?"

[BenevolentManacles 2232]

Philip drapes a red banner with a white star over the chapel in the Palace Novellen. He rests his hands at his sides, his wife seated on the nearby pew with their newborn Princess in her arms. He turns to his quiet wife, turning his head only, so as not to turn his back to the altar.

 

“His Holiness has put to paper the corruption of the realm, one which none before him could do. As our love of the republic grows, our respect for the Lord diminishes, and folk claim their inventions and advances in their own name in place of the Lord’s. It cannot go on, and it can be reconciled.”

[thesmellypocket 1859]

Pius of Sutica is shocked by the letter. "The trouble is that the so-called rationalists have no reason at all. Reason and faith are like two wings on which we soar forth to the contemplation of truth. The problem isn't reason, the problem is bad reason, fed by pride, which causes them to build an idol out of their personal judgement. I am afeared you go too far in your condemnation of reason. You ought to focus your attention on condemning BAD reason; to fall into a kind of fide-ism that despises reason itself, is a grave mistake, and you will never win these people over. I myself am a convert; I had to reason myself before I could assent with my intellect to the Revelation. Reason is incomplete without Faith because some truths which we ought to know really are beyond human grasp; but we could not know Faith without reason, and this is easily demonstrated." Pius advises in a letter to the Pontiff.

 

 

[Hephaestus 1326]

But the kindling of a flame came upon reading the scroll, far beyond where men walked their steps with dignity, and elves with an overzealous therein, but instead below the canopies of trees high and mighty within the heart of a bayou, past where children ran in devilgrass in wake of spring. Sleeping Hawk tied at nooses and pelts, and pelts and nooses, forming himself, from the scale and hardy skin of the marsh’s reptiles a waistcoat for the winters he’d been destined to walk, soon.

The winding of strings upon planks of wood, torn from the base of his own home, in the form of a sitar-like instrument sounded through the desolate waters, the crickets coming to a wake, and returning to their own habit of singing lullabies to children, bringing them to sleep. Sleep. A near fear that’d come to the Hawk in recent times, whence birds pecked at his liver in his dreams, taking the form of hawks themselves, in a mockery of himself. It’d seemed Lyes took to a blissful torturing of Sleeping Hawk’s naïveté, in teaching him of what more mistakes he struck himself with. Nie was high time for reflection.

 

”Perhaps a god may exist, amongst the Aenguldemonica.” He but mused, stringing together unintelligible phrases below the hymns of crows. ”Only Lyes may live to tell me, in my own dreams and reveries.”

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Jentos 9425]

A foreigner named Jean kissed his balled fist, and offered the missive to an aged mentor before him. 

”Olt Wylldr. Ikr’ak ei saul-Ishter. Fireah kar gae.” he spoke in his foreign tongue. He then raised his palm towards his head, a single middle finger was raised while all the others were nestled; kneeling before the central protrusion of his hand, and he kissed it. 

@Callistus

[Callistus 988]

2 hours ago, Jentos said:

A foreigner named Jean kissed his balled fist, and offered the missive to an aged mentor before him. 

 

An elder of the transient vicarage that had long since branched from the canon – but which remains at its root derivative of the faith – warily read from the missive, and in turn could not help but assent with its belief. Viedrick and the brethren with whom he had migrated in solemn duty found their presence necessary only at the face of growing apostasy and man-borne devilry, which infectuously spread alike rot to eat at the mind of Man in the name of preposterous reason. He thereby writes in response, and brands the missive not in his name, but in that of his people.

 

”In our books, we the Aemesh acknowledge the advent of reason and mortal rationale as the poisonous scourge that it is, and are thoroughly aware of its Godless consequence. The pillars of faith that we now witness corrode in our very land, and amongst our very own, ought to frighten any sane or holy man. It is in precis the sin of vanity that brings rise to arrogant reason, and incites the foolish man to believe himself greater; to laud himself upon a pretentious pedestal, to contend against God, or attempt to wrest the concept of Godhood from its historic cradle. It is this pattern of degeneracy that first exhorted us to wander from the warmth and sanctum of our homeland to yours, for our noble seeking to uproot degeneracy and quench the flame of heathenry does not in any measure differ from yours. I duly acclaim this stance from my position as God’s Vicar to the Aemeshite flock, and will say, as I did once before, that a meeting of our peoples must be had in good faith; idolatry amongst our kith has now truly seen its culmination.”

 

”Ae indel, Kastafir.” This he spoke in conclusion to the foreign disciple of the School, ensuring thereafter that the missive is rightly consigned for delivery. Prostate before the exalted altar in Johnstown chapel, the priest made obeisance and called upon divine guidance.