The Machiavellian Heresy

Time is time but certain times seem denser than others. 1500 CE was such a time in Europe. 500 years earlier Sylvester II, the Polymath Pope, effected a ‘great convergence’, i.e. the unification of science, mathematics and theology. Christianity became the first TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) since Aristotle.

But by 1500 the world was a very different place. The Renaissance was already in full swing in Italy and the Reformation was just about to break over Northern Europe. Columbus had ‘discovered America’, Savonarola had been executed, DaVinci had returned to his native Florence, and the public career of Niccolo Machiavelli was taking off.

Unsurprisingly, we technophiles have a habit of naming historical periods for their emerging technologies: Stone Age, Iron Age, Industrial Revolution, Cyber Age, etc.

Alternatively, we might label eras by their dominant ethical paradigms. Such a scheme would at a minimum distinguish three ‘period paradigms’: the Heroic ethics of the Classical Period, the Christian ethics of the Middle Ages, and today’s Pragmatic Relativism.

We correctly trace Christianity back to Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus; similarly, we ought to connect Pragmatism with its greatest apostle, Machiavelli. Thanks to him, we take it for granted today that “ends justify means”. So much so that we don’t even notice it. Pragmatism is our oxygen.

But a quick review of the New Testament turns up little evidence of this ethic in the teachings of Jesus:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” Whatever Jesus meant by this, he did not mean that we should artificially impoverish ourselves in hopes of an eschatological reward. Jesus was no ascetic!

And yet, in practice, we modernists often misinterpret the Beatitudes in just such a way. We romanticize poverty and the poor and we routinely practice self-denial as a spiritual exercise. Did it take 20th century Liberation Theology to convince us that poverty is the enemy of spiritual growth, not its topsoil?

Of course, we don’t call ourselves ‘Machiavellians’; in fact, that term has become pejorative. Instead, we dress up Machiavelli as John Stuart Mill and send him out trick or treating on All Hallows Eve…in your neighborhood, not mine.

We call our ‘newly discovered’ ethic ‘Utilitarianism’ - the greatest good for the greatest number. But in an earlier post, we pointed out that there is no such thing as ‘ends’ or ‘means’. In fact, Causality itself is a misnomer

Ok, so I’m not in love with Machiavellianism; so what? Agree to disagree, live and let live, give peace a chance! Why throw a Heresy label on it? Heresy is closely aligned with its cousins, blasphemy and idolatry. Every heresy has two things in common: it misrepresents the nature of God and it delivers a distorted image of the Real World.

Let me set the stage: you are thrown onto a deserted beach by a giant wave we call ‘being born’ (Heidegger). (Storks don’t deliver babies, dolphins do.) What do you most need now? How about a map? How about a friend? How about a friend who will help you interpret that map and navigate its territory? To paraphrase the Christian hymn: “We have such a friend in Jesus!”

Or we did…until a ‘heretic’ handed us an inaccurate and distorted map and planted gossip in our minds so that we would fail to recognize or appreciate any would-be helpers.

In the Wild West, stealing a horse was a hangin’ offense. Made sense too: without a horse a person was defenseless. Without a reliable map and a helpful friend, we are defenseless in our world. Hence a special rung of Dante’s Inferno is reserved for the Heretics.

No less than Arianism, Docetism, and Gnosticism, Machiavellianism is a heresy. But unlike its predecessors, this more modern ‘error’ is alive and kicking in the halls of orthodox Christianity, even today.

Whenever catastrophe strikes, there are always folks only too happy to sublimate the human suffering to some sort of mythical ‘divine plan’. “It’s God’s will,” is the scourge of every mourner.

Has anything more horrendous ever been said about the Judeo-Christian Godhead? No intentional insult from Marx or Stalin could even come close! The idea that a benevolent God would ‘plan’ a world with this level of

immediate suffering, where innocent babies can be burned alive, only provides fuel for antitheists. It lies at the heart of the Problem of Evil which understandably is the #1 reason cited by atheists (e.g. Bertrand Russell) for their disbelief.

Question: Is Fatalism (‘Divine Plan’) really any different from Gnosticism (‘Divine Script’)?

To paraphrase Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-glass, “Bliss yesterday and bliss tomorrow, but never bliss today.” 150 years on, we now accept what Carroll said in jest as a tolerably accurate description of the human

condition.

The idea that time is a vector and that the future is always the preferred frame of reference (relative to the present and the past) is unique to the modern era and, in my view at least, entirely counterintuitive.

The Past is ‘in the can’; it is ‘certain’ and presumably cannot now be altered: “I have suffered.” ☑ The Present is immediate, it’s what’s happening right now. ☑ But the Future is unknown, possibly unknowable, normally unpredictable, certainly uncontrollable, and infinitely contingent.

Question: Why would I give more weight, much more weight, to a contingent Future at the expense of the immediate Present or the experienced Past? Answer: Machiavelli.

It is an unidentified core assumption of Machiavellian ideology that all future frames of reference trump any present or past frame. How else could any end justify any means?

Marcel Proust wrote the 20th century’s most important novel (lie quiet, Mr. Joyce) as a multi-volume assault on Machiavellian cosmology. Specifically, Proust showed that past events are just as real as present ones, maybe even more so. The future does not trump the past after all.

The intensity of our experiences is unrelated to their sequence. While not explicitly formulated until the 16th century, the spirit of Machiavellianism has been with us since the beginning of recorded history. (Abraham and David were able to face their own personal deaths, fortified by God’s assurance that the Messiah would come from their descendants.) And it was alive and well at the time of Jesus, even among his closest disciples.

At a feast in Bethany, a woman (sometimes identified with Mary Magdalen) broke a bottle of perfume over Jesus and anointed him with the oil. Some at the table murmured. According to Mark they were infuriated. The bottle of perfume was worth a year’s wages. Why not sell it and give the proceeds to the poor instead? (Mark 14: 3 - 8)

These dissidents were using ‘future ends’ (the eradication of poverty) to evaluate ‘present means’ (the anointing of Christ); Jesus demurred: “The poor you will have always with you and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you will not always have me.”

Reversing the paradigm, Jesus was giving priority to the present over the future. More importantly, he was attacking the premise that current acts (sale of perfume) can intentionally and reliably cause future events (eradication of poverty).

Jesus was also giving precedence to the symbolic and communicative power of an act of worship over the economic power of a commercial transaction. Selling perfume to fund charitable acts might (or might not) immediately benefit a selected few. Beyond that, consequences can neither be predicted, measured nor controlled.

On the other hand, “Amen I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14: 9)

In his handling of this ‘test’, Jesus combined the cynicism of a 1950’s Parisian existentialist with the optimism of a 21st century Seattle technophile. There are no causes or effects, no means or end, on the material level, but on the cyber level, information is indestructible.

Note that Jesus does not say, “Ignore the poor.” He understands the material and spiritual benefits of charity, but he also understood that it was beyond the capability of his contemporaries to eradicate poverty.

Worship, however, is an activity always available to anyone. It validates itself; its success is that it happened. Its Dasein is its Wassein. (Heidegger) And it happens entirely in the Present; it is its own means to its own end. It does not depend on anything outside itself, not even history, for its value.

Eradicating poverty is a laudable, if perhaps immediately unachievable, objective but worshipping the Son of God is something anyone can do right here right now. And so he articulated the heart of Christian ethics:

“Let her be. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me…She has done what she could.” (Mark 14: 6 – 8)

Now be honest. The first time you heard this reading, did your sympathies go straight to Mary…or did you feel some affinity for the dissident disciples? Of course you did! (If you didn’t there’d be something wrong with you.)

We are children of the so-called Enlightenment. We have learned to put the future ahead of the present, the practical ahead of the symbolic. We have learned to ‘defer gratification’; we even consider it a sign of adulthood. But we are wrong!

We are Machiavellians, everyone…except maybe Tiny Tim. We learned ‘waste not, want not’ in the nursery; but for the most part, no one taught us to celebrate life. If we learned to do so later, it was often with a twinge of guilt.

“How did it all turnout?” Did they live happily ever after? Our curiosity is insatiable. Good thing too or we’d have nothing to watch on PBS or BBC. How many books would Agatha Christie have sold if the answer to “Who done it?” was always the same: “Who knows, who cares?”

A century ago, some folks dreamed of building a culture around the ideas of Karl Marx; but they were a bit late to table. The West had already built its culture - 400 years earlier - around the ideas of Niccolo Machiavelli.

So again, why heresy? Because Machiavellianism distorts God’s values (future, present, charity, worship) and obscures the Real World behind a false veil of Causality. So, welcome to the 6th rung, Niccolo. But cheer up, thanks to the industrial culture you helped foster, we have invented something called ‘air conditioning’; I’ll make sure a unit gets installed right away inside your burning sarcophagus. I hope it provides cold comfort! (Get it, cold comfort?)

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"The Burning of a Heretic" by Sassetta is a panel from the San Francesco Altarpiece (c. 1430s) that depicts the dramatic execution of a heretic by fire, illustrating the triumph of the Franciscan faith over heresy. The scene reflects the religious and social tensions of the time, combining Gothic elegance with intense emotional expression to promote orthodox Catholic doctrine.