Liberalism as corrupted form of Christianity
Ivan Illich sets it out forthrightly in the first sentence of his book: “I believe that the Incarnation makes possible a surprising and entirely new flowering of love and knowledge.” This says, first, that God has become fully incarnate, embodied, in a human person; second that this is surprising – it’s a gift; third that it’s new – it hasn’t happened before and couldn’t have happened before because it’s a revealed possibility; and finally it says that this revelation expresses itself as both love and knowledge. He goes on to say that this freedom to love that the Incarnation makes possible is immediately shadowed by two dangers: the first is that it threatens the integrity of families, communities and cultures by undermining their right to entrain and direct love within proper boundaries; the second is the danger of institutionalization- “a temptation,” as Illich says, “to try to manage and, eventually, to legislate this new love, to create an institution that will guarantee it, insure it, and protect it by criminalizing its opposite.”
Illich takes the parable of the Samaritan as the paradigm of this revelation. I’ll quote his telling of the famous story from the Gospel of Luke:
Jesus tells the story in response to the question of “a certain lawyer,” that is, a man versed in the law of Moses, who asks, “Who is my neighbor?” A man, Jesus says, was going from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was set upon by robbers, stripped, beaten and left half-dead in a ditch by the road. A priest happens by and then a Levite, men associated with the Temple and the community’s approved sacrificial rites, and both pass him by “on the other side.” Then comes a Samaritan, a person whom Jesus’ listeners would have identified as an enemy, as a despised outsider from the northern kingdom of Israel who did not worship at the temple. And this Samaritan turns to the wounded one, picks him up, takes him in his arms, dresses his wounds and brings him to an inn where he pays for his convalescence.
This story, Illich says, has been so thoroughly assimilated into Christian religion that its meaning seems obvious and unproblematic: it illustrates a universal ethical duty to those in need. But Illich reads it differently. He draws attention to the ethnic difference between the two men. The Samaritan, as an outsider, has no duty whatsoever to the wounded man – his duty is only to his own kind – and therefore his action, in historical context, is a violation of ethical decency, not an instance of it. He does what he does because he is moved by what most English translations call compassion, but what the original Greek text describes more literally as a stirring in his guts. And this is crucial for Illich. For him, the answer to the question – who is my neighbor? – is: it could be anybody, so long as it is a fully embodied relationship and one that is actually felt as a personal call. Remove this embodied quality, turn a personal experience into an ethical norm, and you have Illich says, “a liberal fantasy.”
http://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2015/10/22/christ-and-anti-christ-in-the-thought-of-ivan-illich