A useful maxim for me over the years has been to find out who my favorite writers are reading, and start reading those authors. As I wrote previously, I’ve benefitted quite a lot recently from Chris E. W. Green’s podcast. One of the thinkers Green has been referencing frequently is Ivan Illich, an Austrian Catholic priest and thinker from the first part of the 20th century. So, off I went to learn about Ilich.

It appears that a digestible canonical form of Illich’s thought is in a wonderful CBC radio series titled ‘The Corruption of Christianity’ as presented by journalist David Cayley. I’m only through 3 of the 5 hour-long episodes so far, but it’s fascinating stuff. Illich contends that the movement to formally establish programs to do good, even (especially?) church-run programs, is a horrible corruption of the original Christian call, because the benevolence then ceases to be a voluntary act of love on the part of the individual believer.

Frequently through the first few episodes of the program, Illich argues that the early Christian view of certain acts was different than we understand today because those Christians had a different scientific view of the world. For example, he says the ancients thought of “the gaze” as an act where the human eye actually casts a ray out to the perceived object, by which the viewer and the viewed interact. With the advent of modern science, he says, we now think of the eye as a lens through which an image is received, and now we have a more passive interaction with the representation of the object rather than an active interaction with the object itself. And this represents a “corruption” of the ancient understanding.

This is really interesting for me to set in conversation with Ilia Delio’s writing. Delio approaches the question the other way around. Given what we now know, she says, about science and cosmology, how should we update our understanding of God and Christianity based on that modern science? Illich seemed to assume that the early church understanding was the perfect, uncorrupted one, and that we should work to get back to it. Delio takes a more progressive revelation view that encourages us to look forward rather than back. I have been helped a lot by Delio’s work over the past few years, so it’s interesting to run up against Illich and interrogate some of her premises. I haven’t reached conclusions yet but it’s some fascinating stuff to think on.