The unexpected return of Christian ethics
by Gavin Ashenden, Catholic Herald:
The Church has been fighting a losing battle in the West over culture, belief and ethics. But rather surprisingly, there are reasons for thinking this may be the moment for a fight-back; a re-energising of the Church’s conviction that Truth matters and the cost of rejecting the Christian vision of truth and ethics has been fatal to alternative narratives.
Much of the recent damage to the Faith came at the hands of “the Four atheist Horsemen of the apocalypse” who waged a rhetorical campaign of scorn with great effect at the turn of the millennium.
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett were skillful, clever and angry at God. They did a great deal of damage to the whole concept of religious belief and chipped away with forensic destructive skills at the foundation of Christian culture on which the West was built. They believed they were the future.
And yet, a few years later, and much to everyone’s surprise, things have begun to look rather different.
They had no common solution to offer once they had, as Nietzsche foresaw, “killed God”.
A few powerful Christian voices were raised in reply. William Lane Craig was very effective as has been Bishop Barron. To everyone’s surprise, including his own, Jordan Peterson has taken much of the world by storm. It’s hard to resist such a gifted and intellectually competent agnostic psychologist telling you that Christianity and the values it espouses all work. And not only do they work, they work much better than the competing alternatives.
But there is a new development, and although a few wise and perceptive people may have foreseen it, it comes as some surprise.
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