Christian Red Pill bloggers like Aaron Renn insist (against the claims of Evangelical preachers) that godliness does not attract women. Women, instead, are attracted to power, what we call "alpha" attributes, i.e. size, strength, status, confidence, money. In fact, godliness is unattractive. Godliness is "beta". Women will settle for "betas" because they are good providers, but will secretly despise them. Women pick alphas for sex and then settle for betas to take care of the alpha's bastard kids. Therefore men have to be taught not only how to be godly but also how to be alphas.

I understand what they are getting at - we do observe these kinds of behavior and the examples he gives of what passes for Evangelical marriage advise are ridiculous - but I think the model for understanding the behavior is flawed. From a theological perspective it can't be the way God intended human nature to work; since status is purely relative, by definition not all men can be high-status. There will always be inequality of alpha traits. But since God wills that the great majority of men marry, it cannot be the case that God makes a condition for being married the display of these traits.

The alpha / beta dichotomy is basically a Nietzschean one in which the ubermench takes what he wants while the ordinary people huddle in fear of social scorn. It is not a vision of an orderly society but of a fundamentally disordered one. It is also based on evolutionary psychology which tends towards just-so stories: an evolutionary explanation of how the alpha got his game is analogous to a wives' tale of how the cat got his tale, tending towards tautology and generally free of evidence.

Most Christian Red Pill types are Protestants which means they labor under a distorted view of human nature: in classical Protestant doctrine human nature is totally corrupted by original sin, so a Protestant can imagine a world in which the natural order is a Nietzschean one while the divine law is something completely different.

Catholics don't always have a consistent view of nature and grace, but in general they do not see human nature as totally corrupted by sin, but as weakened while retaining its inherent goodness. Catholics don't typically speak of godliness but of virtue, which is the development of the good capacities inherent in human nature. There is no set of good Christian "beta" virtues on one side, and human "alpha" virtues on the other. Rather both are sets of human virtues which work together, and which are perfected and elevated by the infusion of the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

God does not expect all men to be powerful in the hierarchies of the world, but he does expect all men to be virtuous. He also expects men to exercise authority according to their state in life. For most men, that means exercising authority over their families and property. So the virtues of manhood should be those virtues ordered to the exercise of authority: prudence, courage and creativity in the face of opposition, obedience to higher authorities, integrity, accountability, and the ability to take counsel. (I am sure there are others, these are the ones that occur to me).

Virtue understood as the perfection of a good potential is attractive because there is nothing else a person can possibly be attracted to except for virtue. Problems arise when a person is attracted to lesser virtues instead of higher, or is so enamored of one virtue that they ignore vices in other areas, something that happens all the time. This is probably not a simple matter of nature but also of social conditions: our society encourages young people to start fornicating in the second half of their teens and marry ten to fifteen years later, which means we are habituating them to judge members of the opposite sex and themselves in terms of what makes for a good fornicator and not a good spouse, hurting their marriage prospects later in life.

I suppose someone like Renn would accuse me of imposing a theological framework on reality, when reality is completely different. Just like the Evangelical pastors I want virtue to be attractive because of my theoretical commitments. Fair enough.

 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​