Choose boldly between Christianity & Vitalism

Equivocation will weaken conviction when it is needed most

Do not try to be a Christian and a Vitalist.

You can be a Christian that draws inspiration and energy from Vitalist authors in the pursuit of your own faith. You can be a Vitalist that respects the devotion and rigor of the Christian men who built the West.

But to equivocate, to pursue a contrived attempt at intellectual synthesis between two competing models of reality, will destroy your absolute belief - your true, transcendent faith - in both.

The two positions are fundamentally irreconcilable.

Contemporary Vitalism is infused with Nietzsche’s Positive Nihilism: the notion that in the absence of absolute Truth, we can generate our own metaphysics derived from Nature, our “proud animality”. His project starts with our worldly existence, and attempts to “justify life, eternalize it, divinize it” (from Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’). Christianity, conversely, asserts an absolute Truth, a transcendent Divine to Whom incarnated beings must submit.

To attempt to fuse the two position is just ‘soft’ Vitalism (attempting to alter metaphysical truth based on natural desires). This is cowardice and obscurantism, and an insult to the theologians and philosophers on whose paths we tread.

A contrived religion is an act of imagination, of fantasy, and you will not be able to trick yourself into believing in it. Nor will you be able to trick yourself into fanaticism for a faith that has been selected because it seems to present easy solutions to your personal issues or the political problems of the day. Facile solutions will fail, and if a faith is inauthentic, the consequences - which echo in eternity - are greater than contemporary politics. Choose wisely.

How, then, should we make that choice?

We must make an absolute commitment to the truth - wherever that takes us. This will involve deep meditation, study, an openness to challenging revelations, and a rejection of caricatures and cheap idols. We must be willing to cast aside social expectations and our own worst impulses, like an attraction to whatever provides easy comfort or childish excitement. We must be willing to question whether the apparent failings of our faiths force us to conclude that at some deeper level they are fundamentally false.

Pasquale Rizzoli, Cella Magnani (1906)

Raw Egg Nationalist

makes an important point in his essay ‘A Vitalist Christianity? Don't Bet On It’. He notes: “Instead of treating Christianity with the sophisticated analysis it deserves, considering not only the complex problems raised by Christian theology but also the history of the Church as it has actually existed, we get cheap caricatures.”

Here it is worth including an example of what it would mean to move beyond this; to illustrate just how complex, subtle, and multi-dimensional the interplay of philosophy and history can be, and therefore how nuanced we must be in the pursuit of truth.

I am a Christian, and I will use a Christian example; but there is also fantastic work being done by the best of the Vitalists, who are unafraid to contend with just how alien many aspects of the philosophies of antiquity were, and therefore how complex their revivification will be.

We must pierce through ideological caricatures, and dive deep into the rich thought of our forefathers to understand the fullness of their belief. With Christianity, reductive modern portrayals abound, including the notion that the sin of pride precludes Christians from pursuing excellence and magnificence, and that Christians are never permitted to hate.

Since REN mentions the philosophy of the Church Fathers as being at odds with the martial virtues of Vitalism - virtues that may become necessary again should war return to the West - this seems like a worthy subject of inquiry. Does authentic Christianity demand that we become weak and pacifistic?