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The recovery of a lost classic

Those familiar with the French counter-revolution will recognize the Angelico Press republication of The Genius of Christianity: The Spirit and Beauty of the Christian Religion for precisely what it is: The recovery of a lost classic. Along with Joseph de Maistre’s Considerations on France and Louis de Bonald’s On Divorce, Rene de Chateaubriand’s Genius stands as one of the cornerstones of the under-appreciated conservative Gallic tradition. Where de Maistre sought to expose the flaws in the political theories of Voltaire and Rousseau and Bonald brought to light the harm wrought by a revolutionary redefinition of marriage and the family, the Viscount de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) devoted himself to an even more important project: The defense of the Faith.

For just as in 21st-century America, in 18th and early 19th-century France it was fashionable to condemn religion as a force for ignorance and superstition, and to identify progress with secular humanism. As if he were Cato calling for the destruction of Carthage, the Deist Voltaire would repeatedly cry Ecrasez l’infame! to his fellow Frenchmen—that is, he exhorted them to wipe out what he deemed to be the infamous superstition of Catholicism. For his part Rousseau denied the doctrine of Original Sin, and insisted that Christianity was an unsuitable religion for a republic. At its most extreme, Enlightenment rhetoric took the form of this claim paraphrased from a poem by the atheistic and progressive Denis Diderot, inventor of the Encyclopedia: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

As a retort to critics of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, Chateaubriand composed a 700-page document which catalogues the myriad Christian contributions to law, government, medicine, morals, art, literature, philosophy, and science. Even in obvious, worldly terms the Gospel has been a blessing to man, argued Chateaubriand—to say nothing of the immortal soul. As Chateaubriand’s argument unfolds, he offers his own account of the rise of infidelity:

At the very time when so many new proofs of the greatness and wisdom of Providence were discovered, there were men who shut their eyes more closely than ever against the light. Not that those immortal geniuses, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Leibniz, and Newton, were atheists; but their successors, by an unaccountable fatality, imagined that they held the Deity within their crucibles and telescopes, because they perceived in them some of the elements with which the universal mind had founded the system of worlds.

Of the luminaries he mentions, only one—Copernicus—was Catholic, yet Chateaubriand is on to something when he emphasizes that none were religious skeptics. Kepler was inspired by faith, and quite explicit about his belief that the Heavens testify to the glory of God; Leibniz devoted much energy to formulating a theological bridge between Protestantism and the Catholic Church; Newton’s obsession with Scripture and prophecy was such that he bore more resemblance to a cult leader than a 21st-century militant atheist.

Read more at Catholic World Report 

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