Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1909

Penciling in the page margins of Arnold J. Toynbee, “Christianity and Civilization” (Surge Memorial Lecture delivered at Oxford May 23,1940, published by Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 1947).

May 28, 1951

 

Original is in item 1907.

 

 

 

/Toynbee: “We seem to see a series of different kinds of society succeeding one another in This World. As the primitive species of societies has given place to a second species, known as the civilisations, within the brief period of the last six thousand years, so this second species of local and ephemeral societies may perhaps give place in its turn to a third species embodied in a single world-wide and enduring representative in the shape of the Christian Church.” /Emphasis by Heath)/

 

 

Civilization — society — is one kind of organization. It cannot differ from itself. It is a Golden-Rule relationship — contractual, not coercive. Of many degrees, but only one kind.

 

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Civilization is not empire, not slavery, but society, not statism but freedom.

 

 

The spirit of God created order out of chaos — and still does. Spirit is that which creates.

 

 

“If God’s love has gone into action in This World in the Redemption of mankind by Christ, then man’s efforts to make himself liker to God must include efforts to follow Christ’s example in sacrificing himself for the redemption of his fellow men.”

 

 

This the diabolism of T.S. Elliot’s “Cocktail Party.” Suffer and sacrifice. The devil’s own!

 

 

To be like God is to act like God — to create, not to suffer and snooze.

 

 

Pie high in the sky via death!!

 

 

How uninspiring! Pessimism, the slave’s despair.

 

 

God as spirit created and gave men the orderly world out of which He made them. Just so is He giving them society and civilization in which to re-make them. Can better living fail to make better men?

 

 

By acting more like Him. As a creator, i.e. spiritually.

 

 

“It is for the salvation that is open to all men of good will — pagan as well as Christian, primitive as well as civilized …” /Heath’s emphasis/

 

Bah!