Throughout Trojan Horse in the City of God, Hildebrand will oppose the enemy forces of the Horse against the features of the City of God. Mythologically, the Trojan Horse was pulled into the city by the Trojans themselves and the enemy soldiers hidden inside rushed out at night and overwhelmed the city. The City of God was described by St Augustine in reference to another sacking, that of Rome by the Visigoths. Augustine contrasted it to the City of Man, the city of temporal concerns and comforts.
So the title carries its share of the weight in evoking Hildebrand's concerns as a philosopher and Catholic commentator. Remember, he had seen and personally resisted the rise and subsequent fall of Nazism and the Third Reich. He saw the rise of Communism. Yet he still considered, as early as 1967, that the "present crisis (is) the most serious one in the history of the Church." Instead of opposing dark forces, the Church was struggling with dark forces inside her walls.
Again and again throughout the book there will be a sketch of a false alternative against the backdrop of a perduring verity of the Church. The polarities are briefly drawn; books could be written about each of them. He seems to want not so much to elaborate on them as to point them out so that readers can become aware of pitfalls that otherwise might trap, confuse and dishearten them. Hildebrand was a prolific writer and many of the things he mentions here in brief are probably discussed in more depth in his other books; or they are ideas that might be expected to be familiar to well-educated Catholics, like Hegelianism or Platonism.
Think of a term that has become common usage in our day: gaslighting. Dietrich von Hildebrand obviously does not use the word but he is hoping that by pointing out the discrepancy between the real nature of Christianity, and some of the corruptions of it that were common in the 60's when he was writing, that bewildered Catholics might take heart in the knowledge that the weirdness isn't just in their imaginations.
His book was reprinted again 25 years later in 1993 and many of the currents he points to are still very much with us another 3 decades after that.
The book is divided into four parts:
- True and False Renewal
- The Dangers of our Time
- The Secularization of Christianity
- Sacred and Secular
As you can see, the structure of the book plays on the dichotomies he is pointing out, between true and false, sacred and secular, time and timelessness. One of the general points he emphasizes over and over again is that the truth is the truth -- it's not the medium between two errors, it's not the opposite of an incomplete truth. It can often be found *beyond* various false dichotomies. As we get into the book we will see more examples and refinements of this basic idea.
Another basic theme, related to this, is the basic Christian trust and hope that truth will prevail. In every description of false ideas and reasonings, he brings out the essential "realness" of the true alternative. It is eucatastrophe in theological/philosophical terms. Consequently, I am going to try to end my posts on the same note, because after all, it is probably a nutshell formulation of the evangelium itself.
So to quote from the Introduction --
"May God grant us grace so that our minds may again be enlightened by Christ, the divine truth, and our hearts inebriated by the ineffable holiness of the God-Man. May God grant Catholics the grace to experience again what is written in the Preface of Christmas: By the mystery of the Word made flesh, from thy brightness a new light has risen to shine on the eyes of our soul in order that God becoming visible to us, we may be borne upward to the love of things invisible."
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