Rieff on grace and holy terror

Got in yesterday's mail an advance copy of Philip Rieff's "Charisma: The Gift of Grace and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us," which will be released in February by Pantheon. Rieff wrote much of the book in the 1970s, but never published it. He completed, or allowed to be completed by assistants, the final draft weeks before he died last summer. Here, from the publisher's website, is a synopsis of the book:

Charisma has come to be understood today as a special gift or talent that celebrities–artistic performers, athletes, movie stars, or political leaders–possess, a quality that makes their lives exemplary and transforms them into objects of universal appeal or attraction.

In Charisma, Philip Rieff explores the emergence and evolution of this mysterious and compelling concept within Judeo-Christian culture. Its first expression was in the idea of the covenant between God and the Israelites: Charisma–religious grace and authority–was transferred through divine inspiration to the Old Testament prophets; it was embodied by Jesus of Nazareth, the first true charismatic hero. Rieff shows how St. Paul transformed charisma into a form of social organization, how it was reworked by Martin Luther and by nineteenth-century Protestant theologians, and, finally, how Max Weber redefined charisma as a secular political concept. By emptying charisma of its religious meaning, Weber opened the door to the modern perception of it as little more than a form of celebrity, stripped of moral considerations.

Rieff rejects Weber’s definition, insisting that Weber misunderstood the relation between charisma and faith. He argues that without morality, the gift of grace becomes indistinguishable from the gift of evil, and it devolves into a license to destroy and kill in the name of faith or ideology. Offering brilliant interpretations of Kierkegaard, Weber, Kafka, Nietzsche, and Freud, Rieff shows how certain thinkers attacked the very possibility of faith and genuine charisma and helped prepare the way for the emergence of a therapeutic culture in which it is impossible to recognize that which is sacred. Rieff’s analysis of charisma is an analysis of the deepest level of crisis in our culture.

I'm the sort of wildly disorganized reader who keeps several books going at once (percolating now: Rieff's "Triumph of the Therapeutic," D'Souza's "The Enemy at Home," P.D. James's "The Children of Men," and Tracy Wilkinson's forthcoming "The Vatican's Exorcists," which I'm reviewing for another publication). Nevertheless, I couldn't keep from reading the first chapter of "Charisma" last night. There I found a striking paragraph. Before you read it, understand that Rieff was not a religious man, though as a sociologist he was preoccupied with profound questions of the role faith plays in sustaining cuulture and civilization. In this new book, he sets out his belief that there are two types of "charismatics," by which he means people who have the natural authority, by force of personality, to lead. The first (and older) type is the authentic charismatic, who led people to adhere to a creed, to turn inward and overcome their own propensity for disorder and evil. The newer type is the fake charismatic, who leads people outward and away from the internal struggle to overcome, and rather to embrace instinct and indulgence and the casting off of all creeds. The older charismatic possesses grace in the service of holiness; the new charismatic uses fake grace to serve evil. Here's Rieff:

In this period of transition, our would-be charismatics are best understood as terrorists. The relation between the transitional, modern notion of charisma canned in the sense [Max] Weber, as I shall show, canned it, and terror needs some preliminary explanation. Perhaps the best place to begin is with the suggestion that holiness is entirely interdictory. A m oral absolute thus becomes the object of all. Holy terror is charismatic; our terror is unholy. For our charismatics are engaged in no wrestlings of angels, but, rather, with the obeying of demons. Jacob was a charismatic when Laban and Jacob took mutual pledges before the God of their fathers; Jacob swears by the fear of his father, Isaac (Genesis 31:53). What is this charismatic fear? What is holy terror? Is it a fear of a mere father; in a phantasmagoric enlargement, Frued's idea is silly. Holy terror is rather fear of oneself, fear of the evil in oneself and in the world. It is also fear of punishment. Without this necessary fear, charisma is not possible. To live without this high fear is to be a terror oneself, a monster. And yet to be monstrous has become our ambition, for it is our amibtion to live without fear. All holy terror is gone. The interdicts have no power. This is the real death of God and of our own humanity. It is out of sheer terror that charisma develops. We live in terror, but never in holy terror. Those are the only alternatives, as I shall try to show in the course of this book.

A great charismatic doees not save us from holy terror, but rather conveys it. One of my intentions is to make us again more responsive to the possibility of holy terror.

In other words, you can have what the prophets and the preachers call the fear of the Lord, which entails understanding your own capacity for cruelty, anarchy and barbarian behavior absent a binding recognition of a greater authority that transcends you and requires your obedience. Or you can become a monster. Your choice. The prophet has the charisma -- the grace -- to call people to repentance and subjection to the moral code; the terrorist uses his charisma to call people to rebellion, disorder and cultural suicide.