Pointing Past Polarization: Matthew Becklo’s The Way of Heaven and Earth

While division has always marked the human experience, “the speed, frequency and intensity with which we can now share ideas has brought us to a crisis of polarization – one that more and more threatens the future of civilization.”

Matthew Becklo had me from the opening of his new book, The Way of Heaven and Earth.

“Do we believe in the conservative or the liberal cause? Tradition or progress? High culture or pop culture? Religion or science? Is man a soul or a body? Is the good life in discipline or passion? Should we be religious or spiritual? Is reality spiritual or material? Are we saved by faith or works?” You know the drill, and so does Becklo. The question is whether he would have anything new to offer readers who feel the pain of the polarization he so aptly describes.

The answer? Yes and no.

Yes, because Becklo has organized his alternative to the various ideologies on offer (whether religious or secular) into a readable introduction to the history of philosophy.

A cogent guide through luminaries from Plato, Aristotle, Pascal, Luther, Kant, Marx and more, Becklo examines the answers they offer according to the emphasis of their proposals: the way of heaven (contemplative, spiritual and ascetic) or the way of earth (active, embodied and sensual).

No, because after examining the way of heaven vs. the way of earth on a particular question, Becklo concludes each chapter by revisiting the old, “forgotten Way” of Christianity, the way of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, faith and works, contemplation and action, Scripture and Tradition, faith and reason: the Catholic Both/And. He does so by pointing us to Sacred Scripture and its interpreters within the tradition including Irenaeus of Lyons, Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Benedict XVI and many more.

And all along the way, we’re treated to the sparkling clarity of writers from Dante, Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Dorothy Day to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Becklo organizes the great questions themselves into three sections: The Dilemmas of Life, the Dilemmas of Philosophy and The Dilemmas of Christianity.

Together, they provide a secure scaffolding for a historical tour of ideas.

One of the most provocative and timely chapters opens the third section. “Mission: Contemplation or Action,” which compares the passivity of Quietist spirituality with Karl Marx’s “cry against the world above and summons to reclaim the world below by violent revolution.”

The Way, by contrast, is both contemplation and action. Here Becklo first looks at the Gospel story of Mary and Martha, often hastily read to hold up Mary’s contemplation over Martha’s action without recognizing that the “one thing necessary” is Christ himself, regardless of what we do or don’t do in a particular situation. He moves on to an enlightening look at the history of liberation theology, the extreme tangents of which were condemned as a “purely earthly gospel” that would make the Church no different from “another political regime or nonprofit organization.”

“From the patristic era to the present, the Church has a deep tradition of both personal charity and social justice–a term first coined by a Jesuit priest,” writes Becklo:

We see a modern exemplar of action in the Servant of God Dorothy Day, a former communist who converted to Catholicism and co-founded the Catholic Worker movement. But Day didn’t live by bread alone; like all great saints of social justice, she was animated by prayer, liturgy and contemplation–especially the gaze of Eucharistic Adoration.

Day, like all the great saints before her, found her peace in contemplation of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh.

And that’s why The Way of Heaven and Earth is well illustrated by Piero di Cosimo’s painting, Incarnation of Jesus on the book’s cover. The center of the painting is the pregnant Virgin Mary, through whom God entered the world, “pitching his tent” or “tabernacling” with us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the inexhaustible mystery that, despite its very imperfect servants, remains visible through the centuries in the unbroken Church.

It is a mystery that leads us beyond reactionary tangents in the history of faith and philosophy and to the wholeness of the Christian Way. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, quoted in the appendix (Illustrations of the Way), “Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other.”

Weary of left/right, science/religion, ascetic/epicurean, faith/reason, either/or binaries?

The Way of Heaven and Earth reveals the road to recovery.

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You might also enjoy Whoever You Are and However You Voted, You Are (Still) My Neighbor and Loving Your Neighbor while Reading the Times: A Theological Contemplation on the News.

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