UltraRealist review of "Logos Rising"

"Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality" by E. Michael Jones

Having just been published, I quickly got myself a copy of "Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality," by Catholic scholar Dr. E. Michael Jones.  I then let myself digest the contents of its 700+ pages for about a year ( and Dr. Jones has other books much larger!)  This one deals with science, philosophy, religion, history's meaning, revolution...

Dr. Jones is also the author of the admittedly controversial "The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit And Its Impact On World History," thus demonstrating his willingness to communicate truth as he understands it.  We can ask ourselves which we prefer in these times, genuine insight or comfortable "political correctness"?  

The book is divided in two parts, "The History of Logos," and "The Logos of History."

What is ultimate reality?  This was the great question of the first true philosophers, among the ancient Greeks.  Dr. Jones deals with how the question has been answered...and how it can affect our lives.  He deals with how the elite have answered that question for us and how that fits their agenda of control...  The book struck me as a timely read because of the COVID pandemic, which ended up highlighting our society's prevalent Scientism.

St. John's Gospel begins:  "In the beginning was [Logos], and [Logos] was with God, and [Logos] was God." ---(John 1:1).  "Logos" is a Greek word, and has the sense of "word," "reason," "order"...

The logos in nature and the logos of the human soul come from the divine Logos.

Dr. Jones traces Logos all the way from the beginning of the universe through the emergence of civilization and through the beginning of philosophy among the ancient Greeks, and all the way to AD 2020.  It is an epic saga, in which Dr. Jones himself features as one of the characters.

Jones shows us philosophically that atheism fundamentally denies logos, and therefore cannot account for reality in a rational way.

St. John, originally a fisherman by trade from a backwater of the Roman Empire, solved the great problems of the philosophers and elevated philosophy to a higher level by sharing what he learned from God---that "Logos is God" and that "God is love"...Needless to say, the world would never be the same...

Dr. Jones goes on about how philosophy/theology of God, creation, and time developed differently in various cultures, and how the Christian West was the one culture that did not fall short of the proper understanding of Logos (this is because of the doctrines of creation out of nothing and of the Trinity).  Also covered is the conflicting understandings of those who saw reason/order as primary in God and of those who saw will or power as primary in God. 

The understanding of Logos enabled St. Augustine to "discover time" and for true science to appear...

The key to the meaning of history was already provided, in essence, in ancient times with St. Augustine's work "City of God."  The logos in humanity (unintentionally) works with the divine Logos, which is Divine Providence and is unstoppable---despite what might appear.  History is the ongoing battle of Logos and Anti-Logos. In every age comes a turning point...Jones treats as an example the events of the year 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution, Reagan's presidential campaign leading to Carter's defeat, and Pope St. John Paul II's rallying of Polish workers against their Communist rulers.

St. Thomas's philosophy is dealt with as a force for logos in western civilization, but the proper harmonization of faith and reason represented by Thomas was short-lived.  Although he treats the downfall of Thomism within the Catholic Church as due to multiple forces, he treats its lack of concern with the historical as the prime historical defect which lead to its defeat.  

There is much about how the understanding of the Trinity relates to the understanding of the creation, so that a misunderstanding of the Trinity can lead to or contribute to leading to a misunderstanding of reality.  He takes what at first might seem like a fairly lengthy detour exploring the thought of the German Idealists of the 19th century, with whom I wasn't familiar (but I'm made to feel that I should have been).  These in Dr. Jones' telling started out as a Lutheran theological movement as much as of modern philiosophy, but ended up contributing to the growth of philosophical materialism.  Their greatest philosopher was Hegel.  Marx developed Hegel's thought, especially the Dialectic, in an atheist-materialist way to come up with his understanding of history as class conflict.  Nietzsche is also discussed (he is characterized as anti-Logos).  We can see how the perceived conflict of faith and reason and technological development have shaped the contemporary world philosophically. 

With Chapter 12, "Heisenburg and the Collapse of Atomism," we recapitulate the story of the ancient Ionian philosophers.  Entire materialist systems had been composed on the basis that the ultimate reality was indivisible atoms and the void, but with the atomic bomb's splitting of the atom and with quantum mechanics this apparently turned out not to be true!  Our contemporary understanding of reality, including of ourselves, has yet to catch up... Even capitalism as we know it has developed under the influence of mechanistic materialism.

In the later part of the book the subject of social engineering is taken up, with an emphasis on those who work for revolution out of hatred for order (logos).  In this connection, the function of sexual liberation as providing means of political control is broached, but is dealt with more fully elsewhere in the author's older book "Libido Dominandi." 

This is definitely a book for anybody who's asked the "big questions," such as: what is a human being?  Is the world a product of chance?  Is there a plan? What of free will?  Herein there is much food for thought.