The Evolution of My Theology
July 2021
I remember being very young and hearing a conversation between my older brother and my parents. My parents were aghast that my brother would call himself an “atheist”. For a family that never attended church and never said grace before or after meals, this really should have been no surprise for them. They then turned to me in curiosity and I mostly dodged the question saying “I don’t know.” In reality, I did know my answer and that was that I, too, was an atheist at a very, very young age. I recall being in preschool, for which I was sent to a Baptist church, and being taught the literal Creationist view of the creation of humans. Even at only being a few years old, I do remember thinking it was ridiculous. I also remember being in elementary school, roughly 4th and 5th grades, and being adamant I thought God did not exist with my Christian friend.
Several years later, in high school, I found myself invested in the New Atheist movement. New Atheism, in addition to the position God does not exist, holds that the idea of God – and religion generally – is a net negative, or outright harmful, for humanity. I watched the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens almost daily. I was amused by videos picking apart Christianity and making Christians look foolish. For me, Christianity was stupid and morally backward.
In 2017, I got into radical politics, from which I have since calmed, which led me down a rabbit hole of Neo-Paganism. I came to see religion as an essential and inseparable component to civilization. One that was necessary to keep intact for society to keep afloat. However, I still saw Christianity as an evil. Paganism forced me to reconceptualize what God, or a god, could even be. Coming to understand that even the Pagans did not see their gods as men frolicking in the clouds, I understood the hypocrisy in seeing the Christian god as a morally backward man in the clouds. I had dipped my toes into metaphysics, not knowing the enormous iceberg that laid underneath. I realized the large breadth of knowledge that is required to come to such moral conclusions. Slowly, I assumed all of the morals of Christianity that I had formerly thought were blatantly backward and laughable, even from a more-or-less secular perspective. It became obvious that my time spent musing at people picking apart Christian stupidity was really people performing a “strawman” takedown of Christianity. They only ever bothered with the lowest hanging fruit.
It was amazing to learn that the Catholic understanding of the world, speaking more to metaphysics, is a continuation of a much longer tradition of Aristoteleanism. Seeing the Church carry the torch of the Classical period, rather than a hard break at Rome’s fall, helped to change my perspective. Reading a slight bit of Aristotle was a good primer, but I cannot say it didn’t put me to sleep at times. I relied much more on online metaphysics dictionaries, the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia [1], and reading about topics such as Divine Simplicity.
It is also unfair to discount any role politics played in my conversion, much like the conversion of other former atheists I’ve talked to. As I’ve said, politics at least gave the initial push into religion, though not Christianity. Since I was young, I have always been repulsed by the debauchery of the times. Coming into adulthood, Julius Evola’s ideas of essentially becoming an island of tradition yourself really spoke to the virile spirit that lies dormant in all modern men. Catholicism, bearing that torch of classical knowledge, and even transcendent knowledge, I suppose I see as an island in itself waiting out the debauched storm that is the Modern period.
Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were becoming more palatable. Protestantism remains only slightly less ridiculous than it was when I was an atheist. Between the irreverent rock concerts and how divided the Protestant faiths are, both externally among each other and internally among a single faith, I cannot hold them in a high regard. I flirted with Eastern Orthodoxy for having held, at least superficially, to tradition better than Catholicism. However, between the Photian Schism, the Formula of Hormisdas, and other things, I arrived at Catholicism as Truth. From there, I dove into Thomas Aquinas and the fundamentals of metaphysics. As a person who typically needs mountains of information to come to a conclusion, this pieced the puzzle of Christianity in my mind. I have heard similar from others I have talked to online. Metaphysics and Scholasticism were the key components to leave their atheism. Both of these are entirely lacking in the Protestant faiths, which rely more on a lackluster exegesis than a deep theology, because of their voluntary separation from the Early Church [2].
I know that people will look at me and attribute my positions on any individual topic to my Catholicism. On the contrary, the reverse happened. Slowly, as I had come closer and closer to Truth, I realized that Catholicism was the culmination of Truth. I realized that my perceptions of morality and history under my atheism were more due to the Zeitgeist than my own thinking. Undoing, one by one, my views on various topics, they pointed in a single direction: apostolic Christianity, and more narrowly over time, Catholicism.
To boil it down: I have realized that religion is not for children, but for adults. While it is necessarily for all people, religion is not exclusively for the simple minded.
I have largely always been antimodernist, at least in some aspects, only more and more over time. Now, I would call myself antimodernist in all aspects. This carried over in an inhibiting way into my Catholicism, then bordering Sedevacantism. I attended a Latin Mass but was only confused from never having attended a mass in general. Finding a parish I find acceptable was difficult and seemingly only more difficult with the release of Traditionis Custodes [3]. I attended a different parish which was worse in opposite ways with their guitars and lax mass. I have since, though, found a local parish which celebrates the Mass in a reverent fashion in the ordinary form. As of June 4th, 2023, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, I have begun attending RCIA there.
Currently, I have no problems with intellectual assent to Christ and His Church. I know that I am sorely lacking in my internal spiritual life, however. This will be the next step in the evolution of my theology.
Links given in this piece:
– [1] New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
– [2] The Metaphysical Foundations of Christianity
– [3] Traditionis Custodes