"You need to understand the historical context"

“You need to understand the historical context.”  I would like to consider and scrutinize this sentiment as it relates to our current conversation on race, especially the debate concerning figures from our past.  Should we hate George Washington because he was a slave-owner who helped construct a document that allowed for the legal sale of human persons?

There are two extreme positions on this statement.  First, there is the outright rejection of this statement in any shape or form.  In short, racism is racism, no matter the time period.  People who adopt this view see the statement in question as an insidious means of justifying terrible people and terrible things, often in service of upholding a tradition that is rooted in oppression.

The other extreme is essentially the position the former is rejecting.  Those who adopt this position might not consider themselves as justifying racism or prejudice, but they are less likely to be “offended” by prejudices from the past because, well, back then everyone was racist, so why would we expect anything else?  A more nuanced iteration of this position would consider our contemporary beliefs on equality as simply beyond the moral horizon of those in the past.

I’d like to respond to both sides with the same argument, or really just a set of observations.  The initial thrust of my demonstration will be against the limitations of the former argument ─ those who outright reject the statement in question ─ although it will eventually respond to what I take to be some of the limitations of the latter.  In short, I find that the common but ahistorical rejection of context undermines the very process that accounts for and makes possible any progress in our perception of equality or civil rights.

To distance oneself completely from all those who said racist things or were deeply prejudiced is to completely overlook the historical distinctions of a time period, distinctions that highlight the actual progress of civil rights.  For example, it is imperative to make a distinction between Mark Twain and defenders of Jim Crow south, even if we decide Twain himself was racist.  Why?  Because Twain was one of the most outspoken critics of Jim Crow south, using his fiction and nonfiction alike to searingly satirize the evils of racism.  Is it possible to consider Twain himself racist, or at least problematically prejudiced?  Yes.  I’ve taught his Huckleberry Finn many times, and I always like us to consider the characterization of the slave Jim, who, while being deeply human and the moral center of the novel, is also stitched from many of the racist stereotypes of the time, some of these stereotypes (like Jim’s stupidity) being quite offensive.  But to ignore the distinction between Twain’s racism and the violent and political racism of the Jim Crow south is dangerous and blinding.  When we refuse to see Twain “in his times,” we miss out on the movement Twain helped instigate, or at least that he was a wonderful representative of: a movement that marked an enormously important step in the civil rights conversation in America.

I’ll take up a topic closer to my own heart: Flannery O’Connor, whose alleged racism has received a lot of attention recently.  I won’t take up the heart of Paul Elie’s article which was very influential in this recent reconsideration of the southern writer ─ but I will simply say that he provides no context for quotations from O’Connor’s letters that he cherrypicks and simply mischaracterizes.  Additionally, Elie makes some uncharacteristically inane literary interpretations that completely misread the basic thrust of some of O’Connor’s stories, e.g. “Revelation.”  But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that O’Connor held racist and prejudiced views. Like with the ahistorical conflating of Twain with supporters of Jim Crow, conflating O’Connor with, say, Senator Bilbo, is willfully ignoring how the civil rights movement developed ─ and this eventually blinds us from seeing how the conversation is presently developing.  

Let me take up her wonderful “All That Rises Must Converge.”  In this story, O’Connor satirizes both Julian’s mother, a prejudiced old lady who, when a black man with a briefcase steps into the bus she and her son are riding, whispers to Julian: “Now you see why I won't ride on these buses by myself.”  But the real bulk of the satire is focused on Julian, a progressive college-educated young man, who sees himself as so enlightened but who ultimately is unable to rise much beyond the deep-seated prejudice of the south: “He began to imagine various unlikely ways by which he could teach her [his mother] a lesson. He might make friends with some distinguished Negro professor or lawyer and bring him home to spend the evening.”  In his imagination, where he lives most of his life, he imagines further ways of “educating” his mother:

“He brought home a beautiful suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare yourself, he said.

There is nothing you can do about it. This is the woman I've chosen. She’s intelligent,

dignified, even good, and she’s suffered and she hasn’t thought it fun. Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us. Drive her out of here, but remember, you’re driving me too. His eyes were narrowed and through the indignation he had generated, he saw his mother.”

O’Connor, while taking humorous and obvious potshots at the overt racism of Julian’s mother, gives more attention to the progressive white liberal, whose beliefs in equality are simply virtue-signalling, self-congratulatory, and/or a justification for condescension ─ especially since these beliefs are unconnected to black people as people, and especially not to helping out the actual plight of the black person in America.  

So while one might validly hold O’Connor as prejudiced or even racist, her perception and representation of the disingenuous liberal call for civil rights amongst white people is a clever and complex addition to the conversation about race in the middle of the twentieth century. (Personally, I see some self-deprecation in O’Connor’s depiction of Julian, and other characters like him throughout her fiction, as if she understood that her rejection of her own mother’s overt racism didn’t free her from the prejudices of the south or align her with those fighting for real racial equality. But that’s beside the point.) My real point here regards the conflation of O’Connor as racist (if we accept the fact) with the racism of Senator Bilbo, who said on the floor of Congress in an argument against an anti-lynching bill in 1938:

“If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the floodgates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousandfold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate.”

To ignore the obvious distinctions between O’Connor and Bilbo is to misunderstand how the conversations of race in the south developed.  O’Connor expresses a nuanced opinion on race that helps us understand the development of white beliefs on race during the first half of the twentieth century.

I’ll quickly address the ahistoricism of the opposing extreme, those who accept wholesale the quotation in question.  The argument that “everyone was racist back then, so why would we expect otherwise?” equally ignores the distinctions (and messiness) of our historical perspectives on race.  For example, this type of defense of George Washington misses out on the fact that other founding fathers viewed slavery not just as a necessary evil, but as an evil to be eradicated.  John Adams famously said that the American Revolution wouldn't be complete until the slaves were free.  Many religious speakers of the times spoke at length and eloquently about the great injustice of slavery ─ and all this during a time that people mischaracterize as a point in history when racial equality wasn’t an idea yet. 

Both extreme positions on the topic miss out on how ideas develop, even moral ideas that seem so clear cut.  Ideas develop through education, family, reading and experience ─ but they develop oddly, often slowly, and circuitously.  To call a developmental position on race prejudiced or racist ─ as in the case of Twain ─ isn’t incorrect, and I might even say it’s important to.  But equally important is understanding its position in the larger development, otherwise we don’t understand how our own time period, like every other time period, is simply one part of the larger development as well.  To ignore history is to ignore how humanity actually moves forward in these areas (the former position’s limitation) ─ and to simplify history is to veer dangerously close to ignoring moral culpability (the latter position’s limitation).  

Holy Week & Tolkien

Last year I shared how Tolkien's motif of the long defeat helped me to see from a new angle the Easter mystery.

This Lent, I was struck by another point as we heard again the three great apocalyptic encounters in John's gospel, which are read for catechumens preparing for baptism on the three Sundays preceding Passion/Palm Sunday and Holy Week. In each of them, the spiritual healing of the woman at the well, the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus, more and more of the answer to the driving question of John's gospel is given, the question addressed to the Lord Jesus: Who are you, where do you come from?

In the recounting of the raising of Lazarus, which has long been one of the singular passages in all the Bible which comes back to me over and over again and never fails to blow me away, and rarely fails to move me to tears--in this recounting, I was struck more by the background narrative of the gospel as a story, and another part of Tolkien's story got me to meditating.

In the gospel, Jesus's friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary live in Bethany, very close to Jerusalem. At this point, Jesus has aroused such hatred in the leaders at Jerusalem that it is dangerous for him even to show his face there. So when he decides to visit his friends in Bethany, his companions realize this may mean death for him. "Let us also go," says Thomas, "that we may die with him." Immediately after the raising, John writes, "Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand." Jesus has come to Jerusalem for the last time, for him to be glorified.

For some reason I recalled the arrival of Aragorn at Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. In that story, Aragorn was king by rights of the kingdom of Gondor and one with the right to sit on the throne at Minas Tirith--the real throne, not the chair that stewards had ruled from for many years as a sign of the absence of the kings. However, Aragorn chooses not to enter openly as ruler until Sauron has been overthrown, if that indeed can possibly happen. (I suppose this serious self-mastery reveals Aragorn's dignity--he does not shrink from the power and authority that comes with kingship, but neither does he seek domination over others as its own end. Rather his kingship will only be in service of a just peace, and only gained by the conquest of the threat of annihilation of that peace).

But as we remember, Aragorn does in fact enter the city after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, before the campaign against the gates of Mordor. He enters at night, unannounced and unrecognized, and goes about tending the wounded and dying, who were struck down in defense of his keep. He brings with him the healing herb of the Numenorean lords, and brings back from death's door many who were near death. All night he labors, and leaves the city at dawn to attend his council of war.

Of course, aside from the overlap of the arrival of the king, the plots of the two stories are different. When Jesus actually enters Jerusalem, he is recognized and hailed as king. And it is not a triumphant arrival that will establish a political regime. Instead of course, before the week's end, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, condemned in two trials--under the religious law and under the imperial law--tortured, and put to death.

Yet is there not a way in which the story Tolkien that tells openly in his romance is a hidden reality in the gospel history? This carpenter's son from Nazareth may have stirred up the people but he was quickly, easily, and utterly crushed by the powers that rule in Jerusalem. Yet John professes over and over again, here it comes, the hour of Jesus, when he will be lifted up, this is it: God is glorifying him. Jesus was, in fact, king. Not only the Son of God, holding authority over all things as their author, but within the history of the Davidic kingdom as well, Jesus was king. "God has raised up for us a mighty savior / born of the house of his servant David" (Lk 1:69). Furthermore, within the broader human story, the procurator who will judge him in the name of the imperium of Rome only holds his power "from above." By his death and resurrection, Jesus will win the scepter of rule over every earthly power, and even over every cosmic power. ("Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the ruler of this world be cast out" - Jn 12:31). He will have authority from the top down and from the bottom up, as it were.

This king arrived in the royal city a week before his Passion (just as the high priest was required to arrive and live in the Temple a week before the Day of Atonement), and a lot of his teachings in the synoptic gospels come from this week: the cleansing of the temple, the parable of the tenants with the highlighting of the prophecy in Ps 118 about the stone rejected by the builders (which we read every week on the Lord's Day in the Liturgy of the Hours), the question about the resurrection, about David's son, and the Greatest Commandment, plus his prophecy of the destruction of the Temple.

He entered his city in a way like Aragorn, unrecognized for his true authority; but he brought his healing herb to save many from dying. And at weeks end, he revealed his power and dignity and authority in casting down the ancient foe:

Death and life have contended

in that combat stupendous;

the prince of life, who died, reigns immortal.

Words

What with the subject of my study, which involves controversy among French Catholics in the late eighteenth century, I've been thinking more than I've ever had to before about basic elements of Christianity.

One approached the subject with a certain vague picture already in one's mind, in which (a) the French Revolution is caused by Modern Ideas (tm) such as the social contract, human rights, the link between liberty and democratic forms of government, a vague link between both of those and social, technical, and moral progress, etc. Thus (b) Rousseau, Locke, Diderot, and Montesquieu are the important thinkers who provided the main motive ideas driving the Revolution. And so (c) it is natural that the Revolution inaugurated the worst persecution of Christians since Diocletian and attacked the Catholic Church.

But while this vague interpretation contains important truths, one found in reading the sources close-up and in context, the interpretation is quite inadequate. It leaves out a very important part of the story, in which believing Catholics who fall across the spectrum in terms of their attitude towards what we would call "The Enlightenment" (and what they referred to as philosophie) embraced the Revolution and helped carry out some of the leading attacks on the Catholic Church as it then existed in France. And all the while, these men (including some clergy and canon lawyers) claimed not to be in schism and only to be making changes to things falling outside of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical power.

All of which raise numerous questions : what exactly is "the Church"? What is "religion"? What is worship, and what is its connection to the Church? Is the Church a thing that preaches or a thing that worships?

Which preamble leads me to discuss today's important terms. Because I am a reader who thinks in English, studying a culture that thought and wrote in French, I run up against certain issues of translation: the French use the word eglise (from Latin ecclesia, from Greek ἐκκλησία, = assembly) for both the church building and for the universal Church (l'Eglise catholique) and for local churches* ( l'eglise d'Alexandrie ). They also used temple for the buildings, and they use culte where we would use "religion" or "denomination." Temple is funny, because we never use that, so it contains connotations of pre-Christian Jewish sacrificial worship or of pagan religion. One can get over the false cognate of "cult" quickly enough, and remember Latin cultus as worship or a particular form of worship, as for the specific prayers and rites used for a certain god, patron saint, or festival ("the cult of x").
* Another difficult term -- remember that exchange between Kasper and Ratzinger on the relationship between local churches and the universal church?

So what does "church" connect to? Interestingly enough, I learn from the Oxford English Dictionary that church, though it comes to us from Germanic languages, reached them from Greek-speaking Christian groups. The Christians used the term "the house of the Lord," κυριακὸν δῶμα, which got shortened to just κυριακόν. ("We're going to the Lord's [house] this Sunday"). This word kyriakon spread among German-speaking groups and gradually became something like "kirk" (still this way in Scotland). As with lots of Germanic words (cattle, carta, castle, frank) the hard "c" softened into our "ch" sound (chattel, chart/er, chateau, french/franchise), leaving us with "church." As the dictionary stateth:

According to most modern views, the word was probably borrowed early into West Germanic from the ecclesiastical usage of the Christian communities of the colonial cities of the Rhine area. The Greek noun is well attested in eastern sources during the early 4th cent., and was probably current also in the use of the early Christian church in the Rhine area, where Greek models were influential. As a word for a very basic part of the material culture of the Christian faith it was probably well known even to pagan Germanic peoples bordering the imperial frontiers, and to those encountering Christian peoples in both the Roman and post-Roman periods.

...  

In each of the West Germanic languages the word probably originally denoted a church as physical building (as in Greek), but was early extended to denote also the church as an institution and as a body of worshippers, probably after the range of meanings of post-classical Latin ecclesia and its etymon ancient Greek ἐκκλησία (as used in Hellenistic Greek). Application to the holy buildings of other faiths is also found in various other early Germanic languages. 

So church did really derive from the building, although for Christians holding the doctrine of Sts. Peter and Paul, the building is also the body whose head is Christ, while other parts of the (non-Semitic speaking) Christian world spoke of the Assembly or the whole body of those called together.

Doesn't necessarily solve all my issues with l'Eglise constitutionnelle in revolutionary France, but it is fascinating, so I share.

The Function of a Novel

One of my greatest pleasures in life is reading.  Perhaps a close second (although it is ultimately not separate from the first) is discussing books with other people.  As such, when chatting with friends or even acquaintances for long enough, more often than not the topic of books comes up.  What have I read recently? What have you read recently? Although I’m a bibliophile, my most particular and intense love is for fiction, well-crafted narrative.  So I often share about a recent novel I’ve read and enjoyed. As I get into my analysis, I’m often presented the question, “Wait, is this a real story? Oh, it’s not.  Only a novel. OK. Well, I don’t have much time for novels. I can only justify reading useful books.”

The emphasis or word choice might differ from person to person, but the implication is largely the same: reading works of fiction (i.e. fake stories) is at best a neutral filler for a life full of leisure and at worst a distraction from real life.  Novels are purely entertainment, and a serious person, and a serious Christian parent even more so, must limit these frivolities. Unlike a self-help book, there’s no practical purpose of fiction.

A quick word about these friends.  They are well-meaning, hardworking, authentic Christian parents.  Their dedication to their faith and families are primary, and their attitude and actions selfless and often heroic.  Most have lots of children, lots of young children, and they have little time for any leisure.  They are understandably discerning in their use of time.

However, as used as I am to this eventual turn in the conversation, I’m nearly always disheartened.  My frustration is partly with my interlocutor ─ for disregarding the Catholic intellectual tradition on the topic, which runs entirely counter “Puritan” perspectives on art ─ but my frustration is also with my own self, for I have two very different, nearly opposite, avenues for response.  Since they are nearly contradictory arguments, each by itself feels somehow incomplete, false, or misleading ─ but how I can argue both at the same time?

Argument 1:  Yes, literature has no utilitarian purpose, like a self-help book, but that’s what places it in a higher category.  Art, like the human person, is an end in and of itself. It needs no social or cultural justification of its usefulness.  (At this point, I’m assuming some level of distinction between good and bad stories, between art and something that may be just entertainment.  While defining these categories and distinctions is fraught with danger and linguistic subtleties, on a practical level it is easy to observe the difference between pornography as a form of narrative and a Terrence Malik film ─ between Fifty Shades of Gray and a Marilynne Robinson novel.  I have a few things to say on this subject, but later.)

Argument 2:  But reading fiction does have a practical purpose!  Throughout history, art has consistently questioned the status quo, drawing attention to injustices we find difficult to see in our own worlds, but whose reality is more recognizable in and through stories.  Art also opens for us the clearest window in the experiences of another human person, whether that person lived a thousand years ago or is still alive.  While humans are social animals, we are quite literally trapped in our own selves, unable to see the world but through our own eyes and mind. Art, and in particular narrative art, gives a window into another’s lived experience, a snapshot not just of a different opinion on a political or cultural subject, but a window into the very experiences that led to these different opinions.  In short, art provides us with empathy.  Furthermore, art provides solace in our grief, refinement in our joy, peace in our confusion, and wisdom in our ignorance.  Art can change us.

When faced with the statement that a serious Christian doesn’t have time for a novel, I’ve flip-flopped over the years, early in my adult life focusing on the usefulness of art, then the uselessness ─ then back again to art’s engagement in the real work. In real conversations, though, I usually didn’t pursue either argument.  Instead, I fumed on the inside, wishing we were all better read in the Catholic intellectual tradition.  But if I’m being perfectly honest, I usually didn’t respond in any extended fashion simply because I couldn’t balance the two opposing tensions in the two separate argument.  

It was through my reading of Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basic of Culture that I found a working model through which to synthesize my two opposing responses.  For Pieper, our contemporary focus on social and cultural productivity and utility is, interestingly, a win for Marxism, or a Marxist view of the world.  In the Marxist perspective, the value of a thing is based on its utility.  Time is well spent when there is a practical, even measurable output.  How do we use our free time? Let us make sure it passes the utilitarian test: Is the output worth the time put in?  Even if we consider things with no practical output, like a “useless” vacation, we’re usually justifying it by its long-term use: Spending seven days not thinking about work at all will make us better workers when we return from vacation.

But Pieper shows us how this is very different from the ancient wisdom of the Greek and Medieval thinkers.  They saw leisure as the heart and mark of a civilization.  Use of time for reflection (not mindless reflection, but true philosophical pursuits) were the highest goods of a culture.  Now, Pieper recognizes that these pursuits do have some practical results but that they shouldn't be justified by these ends.  Leisure is an end in itself and should not be justified by some utilitarian model, which ultimately makes it a means to an end.

Let’s look at prayer in more detail.  Does prayer have practical results? Yes.  Often prayer makes us more at peace; it often makes us better persons.  But do we prayer because of these results?  Pieper says, emphatically, no.  We pray because we should pray. We pray because it is our duty to pray.  We pray because we become more of who we are through our prayer. Does life because “easier” through our prayer?  Maybe sometimes, in the sense that we might find it easier after prayer to accept God’s will in our lives instead of constantly complaining about and fighting the whirlwind of our circumstances.  But should we pray because it might make life easier?  No. In fact, prayer has good effects because it is a good in and of itself ─ not the other way around (as in “it is good because it has good effects”).  

In short, prayer is an end in and of itself, and it shouldn’t be judged according to a utilitarian model.  This doesn’t relegate prayer to a frivolous activity, and it doesn’t even mean that prayer doesn’t have practical outcomes; it simply means that the outcomes are an effect of the goodness of prayer, not the goodness of prayer an effect of its good outcomes.  

Art, in its creation and consumption, is an end in and of itself.  Art is one of the central ways man participates in the ever-present and continuous creative act of God.  Art intigates and develops the communion between individuals that is our truest reality but is often overshadowed by our egoism and fallen nature.  Art is our most sublime expression of what man is, who God is, what human relationships means ─ what beauty is. Art does not need to have a practical outcome to give us a reason for partaking in it, for art is an end in and of itself.

But this doesn’t mean that art doesn’t have good practical results.  I like to say that every good book offers us the possibility of making us better people.  Many a time have I been struck by the beauty of a book ─ beauty sometimes in what the book depicts, and sometimes beauty simply in a book’s language or structure ─ and my mind has been raised to contemplate the beauty of the world, and God.  Many times I have honed the tools of ethical analysis through an evaluation of a novel’s moral dilemma ─ tools ultimately used to better reflect upon and judge myself, as I, like most of us, don’t see my own faults too well directly.  Other times, I have found myself better understanding a person or group of people better because of my encounter with a person in a book.  Too often I have been cut to the core by seeing my own weaknesses so thoroughly portrayed in other characters, mentally cringing as I force myself to read on.  Often I have been emotionally and psychologically awed by the heroism of a character, or a single heroic act of an unheroic character; and this has given me models against which to define and seek to change myself.  

But I need not prove these results in order to justify my reading of novels.  These things are true ─ or can be true ─ only because art is a good in and of itself already.  To return to the original response by my friend, I might venture to say that the highest human activities are those which make us more ourselves ─ those that help us discover a little bit more who we are, how we are loved by God, and how to better love others with whom with have an indissoluble bond.  By no means an exhaustive list, I might begin a sketch of these inherently good and human activities with prayer, friendship, marriage, art, and philosophical pursuit.  Asking the question, “What utility does the reading of this novel provide me today?” is like asking, “So what utility does such-and-such friendship provide me? I’d like to spend time with this person tonight, but can I justify this time spent by a measurable outcome?”

What I am not saying is that we should spend all our free time reading novels.  But we also shouldn’t spend all our free time praying either.  We have practical duties, obligations given to us by God and our vocations; and these must be attended to with our full selves.  But just as we must “carve out time” in our busy lives to spend enough moments on our knees in prayer, so much we find time to partake in other of the most human activities, like spending time with friends, reading a good book, and training our mind to understand theological truths.  

At this point, someone may pose the question, But are all novels art?  One way of approaching this topic is to pose a related question, Are all novels artful?  This seems an easier question: no, not all novels are artful. But I’d like to say a little more on the topic.  I think we intuitively understand the difference between Dante, Agatha Christie, and a poorly crafted romance novel.  I don’t intend to spell out this difference. We don’t need to have an unassailable definition of each category in order to see the differences and act accordingly.  Instead, I’ll point quickly to two texts that speak to or assume important ideas on the topic. I’ll begin first, again, with Pieper’s Leisure.  

Pieper claims that philosophical pursuit is an attempt to see reality as it is; it isn’t an active task, but one of reception.  Analogously, good art, good narrative, is that which allows us to see the reality of the world around us better. Art often works this way by making readers more attune to a sacramental vision of reality, which stands in direct opposition to the materialistic, militant scientism that accompanies most other “descriptions” of reality.  Narratives often let us see the connections between actions, between characters, between ideas, connections that are often difficult to see in real life. Second, Pieper links leisure with festival and joy. Analogously, good art, good narrative, expands our capacity for joy. This doesn’t denigrate sad stories, but rather judges them against the ultimate criterion of joy.  Reading Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night poignantly and painfully makes me more aware of the joy of my own life as well as the dangers of ignoring this facet of human dignity.  

Second, I suggest CS Lewis’s Experiment in Criticism, an extended essay in which he proposes that we judge a book not by the book itself (its content or its style) but rather by the type of reading it allows for or promotes.  So if a novel affords us the possibility to see the world anew or increases our capacity for joy, then it is a good book.  In this way, we need not turn our noses down on literature we might consider second-rate but which others gain much from.

I’ll end by considering a central “function” of art, particularly narrative art, that is close to my own heart.  A novel, through the evolution of its narrative voice and perspective, opens up the possibility of revealing to its readers the emotional and spiritual ─ I may go as far as saying transcendent ─ connections between people.  Just as God does not exist in isolation, through the eternal love between the Persons of the Trinity, so do we exist, always, in relationship with others.  Whether through sin or our contemporary culture’s focus on hyper-individualism, this relational aspect of the human person is often muddied. A novel can be an antidote to this crushing sense of alienation in two ways.

First, as we read, we gain access to another human’s consciousness: to their fears, motivations, psychology, conscience, and memories.  Novels can make us understand other human persons in ways that hardly anything else in this world can ─ and this can happen, ironically, in complete isolation!  We can be curled up, alone, in our favorite corner of our favorite couch, the rest of the house asleep, and we can begin to see, through the perspective of the narrative voice and empathy, the sacramental ties that connect all of us.

Second, when we read good books, we want to talk with other people about these books!  I’ve suggested books to people I wasn't entirely sure they would like, simply so I had someone to talk to about them.  In fact, I think I can safely say that the two most common thoughts I have after finishing a particularly powerful book is, first, when will I read this again, and second, with whom can I talk about this book?  There is something inherent about the nature of stories that, even in the case of the most private of storytelling, the novel, we feel compelled to reach out to other people.  Perhaps it is part of the wonder of the story that, in highlighting the connections between people with its sacramental narrative, we are drawn out of ourselves and into the relationships that remind us that we exist not in isolation but in continual relationship to the other.

Epic Easter

The reading from today's Office is from St. Ephrem the Deacon, and it is awesome:

"Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain."

And in a passage similar to the great ancient homily for Holy Saturday, St. Ephrem meditates on Christ's descent into hell and his encounter with Eve:

"Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swalllow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death's fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure."

This calls to mind nothing so much as the assaults upon the fearful fortresses of Morgoth, Angband and Thangorodruin, in Tolkien's Silmarillion. These are utterly impenetrable even to the High Elves; at times they succeed in smashing themselves valiantly against its walls, as when Fingolfin challenges Morgoth to single combat and even wounds his foot before being killed, or when Beren and Luthien succeed in breaking in and stealing one of the silmarils from Morgoth's iron crown by means of Luthien's enchantments. My last re-reading of the book made me realize how much of the story is a long and almost despairing defeat for the good guys, and a gradual complete victory for the ancient Dark Lord, Morgoth. Basically the Noldor arrive in Middle Earth at the height of their power and splendor, bound by oath to relentlessly oppose Morgoth. But one by one their fortresses are taken, their lords slain, and their people scattered. The awakening of human beings coincides with the arrival of the Noldor, but you realize that the vast majority are either allied with, or living in abject terror of the Dark Lord. The few tribes or ally themselves with the Noldor share their fate: strongholds, heroes fallen or enslaved. Finally, even the great enchanted kingdom of the Grey Elves, protected by their Queen, Melian (one of the maia, akin to Sauron), is defeated by the powers of darkness, leaving the whole northern world bereft of any protection against Morgoth.

A very similar realization came over me upon reading, in succession, the introductory notes to all the history books in my New American edition of the Old Testament: the history of the Jewish people in the land of promise is, for the vast majority of the time, a long tragedy. There are very few just Judges, and even your good ones, just in the sight of the Lord and anointed by God, often succumb to temptation of one sort or another (like Sampson), wasting all the good they'd achieved. And when God consents to giving the people kings, it is the same story again. Saul turns away, David and Solomon sin, and for much of the reigns of the heirs of David, the rulers of the chosen people do not direct the nation under God's rule. It's a sign of my unfamiliarity with the bible that I was surprised to see that the good rulers and good times for Israel were the exception, while wickedness and punishment for wickedness were not anomalies but the normal course of things.

Here is another similarity: the authors of the history books (Judges, Chronicles, Samuel, Kings, etc), as the introductory notes make clear, were not just recording facts: they were crafting literary artifacts, and the moral of the story often enough is that while the Lord is present in human history and particularly in the history of the children of Abraham, the Jewish people often represented in the person of the king refused for the most part to worship the one true God--refused, that is, not only to follow the right form of liturgy, but also what that liturgy signified for their personal lives and for the whole life of the people, they refused to order their lives according to the Commandments and the wisdom and the Law of God. In the Silmarillion, too, the author makes clear over the course of the book that the long despairing defeat is not only due to the evil and the power of the Dark Lord, but to the ways in which elves and men allowed that evil to enter their own hearts and gave it secret anchorage. Several of the main defeats in battle, including the last serious assault on Thangorodruin and the fall of Gondolin, were the result of jealousies and treachery among the Allies. The same goes for the deaths of several heroes, including the children of Hurin, the elf princess Finduilas, and Beleg Strongbow.

Thus in both stories, the fictional and the historical, all is lost and darkness covers the lands: in other words, things are ripe for eucatastrophe (Tolkien's wonderful coin).

The faithful remnant of Israel still prayed, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." It is interesting to read in Luke how the kin of Mary understood the Covenant given by God long ago to Abraham: "to set us free from the hands of our enemies, / free to worship him without fear, / holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life." This is not exactly what we find in the book of Genesis, where God tells Abram "you are to become the father of a multitude of nations" and promises him "descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore" and that all nations will be blessed through the nation God is to make out of him. Yet Zechariah and Mary profess in their canticles a belief in God's fidelity, that one way or another he will rescue his people, and that the new kingdom to be established will be one in which the people is free to worship God aright. But at present the prayer is one of hoping against hope, for the kingdom and people have been brought low, and they are utterly incapable of saving themselves; . In the same way, every effort, however valiant, of the elves and men to defeat Morgoth ended in disaster, and by the end of the story the faithful remnant is hiding on the edge of Middle-earth, waiting for the end to come. In the Silmarillion, while they are waiting here, Manwë at last receives the command to act and the armies of the Valar come thundering out of the West to fall upon the fortress of Morgoth. In this epic telling, "that combat stupendous" is enacted physically; the whole earth shakes and is changed when the Valar turn Thangorodruin inside out, driving away all the dragons, balrogs, and orcs and finally binding Morgoth himself, to cast him beyond the circles of the world.

In the real story, the battle was not so visibly worked out in physical creation, but St. Ephrem helps us see it as no less epic and dramatic. On the surface indeed it was not noticeable: in a world filled with injustice, who notices one more helpless man unjustly killed? But "concealed within the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat."

When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her [the New Eve's] mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men. 

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. YOU ARE INCONTESTABLY ALIVE....

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer the Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all."

Amen!

Skrignovian Skepticism

A friend of mine, who just passed his comps in Philosophy, is going to be thinking about Free Will for his dissertation. He sent me an interesting essay that explains the issues he'll be writing on. Here's the opening:

Are our choices unavoidable, given our reasons for making them? If our choices follow our reasons strictly, one might worry about whether our reasons proceed from sources that do not depend on us, such as our innate dispositions, our upbringing, and particular events that happened to us shortly or long before we made a choice, determining the choice unavoidably. In contrast, if our choices do not follow our reasons strictly, then they are irrational. In either case, free will is threatened, and apparently moral responsibility with it. These concerns are one way of approaching the traditional problem of free will and determinism, which we call the problem of intellectual determinism.

I have to admit I never considered having reasons for choosing as grounds for doubting my free will in choosing. But how exciting, once the idea is raised! Whereas the ordinary objections to free will seem obviously self-defeating -- that from brain science or physics we must deduce that events including all our actions are determined by material forces and arrangements of matter, asking one, on the basis of observation of natural phenomena, to reject an even more basic natural phenomenon on which the latter observations rest -- this one works from the other direction...

Scene: A corner of a country bar or inn, two chairs drawn up to a fire in the hearth.

Skrignov (tapping his pipe on the arm of his chair): ...I will concede, if only for the moment, that fMRIs do not show that the clusters of molecules arranged in the forms of "me" and "Old Harry" delivered the pint of bitter into my glass rather than the stout, without any power of will on his or my parts. (As a philosopher myself I am not, after all, a registered congregant at the First Church of Science!).

Simplicius (warming his hands around his mug of vin chaud over the fire); I am very glad to hear it, dear boy. I don't see how you do that consistently of course, given your long and frankly embarrassing flirtations with David Hume.

Skrignov (ignoring this unfair and snide remark): But I put before you the following problem in which, unlike in the case of the materialist determinists, it is up to you and not me to defend your position. (Takes a long, deep draw from his pipe). You claim to choose freely, that you are the one making decisions as to your actions, deserving praise or blame in proportion to their being attributed to you and your will. For example, you wish to attend the Erasmus Lecture in Manhattan: you deliberate whether to drive or take the train, considering the monetary costs, the difficulty of finding parking, walking distances, amount you would be permitted to safely drink, and so on, at the end of which you "choose" to take the train. (The footman will await your return to the Peapack-Gladstone Station).

Simplicius (raises eyebrows): My good man, I'm not quite sure you've not forgotten which side you're arguing for here.

Skrignov (smiles beneath his bushy mustache): Indeed. But--

Simplicius: Ah...

Skrignov: But! the very story you have accepted does not seem to me to narrate a choice that was all that very free.

Simplicius: The elasticity with which you tie your own reason into knots never ceases to amaze me. How do you arrive at this, er, flexible conclusion?

Skrignov: Be honest, sir, if not civil. Who has a higher regard for Reason than I? I even capitalize it, and not just at the beginnings of sentences. But consider: have you chosen well, chosen rationally, I mean?

Simplicius: I suppose so...

Skrignov: Then the resulting decision followed inexorably from your reasons. Your will played no part in the matter that I can see. (A satisfied draw-and-puff follows from this).

Simplicius: Oh that's very neat, sir, very neat indeed. Now let me think. (Rolls some wine about in his mouth).

Skrignov: An excellent change of plan, if you will permit me to commend your new resolution.

Simplicius: Now who is being uncivil? But hang on a minute. You're making it out that my own reason constrains my choices, and so I don't have free will?

Skrignov: You, my good man, are the one claiming to have this power. I merely and politely ask you to articulate just how it works. You will note that this time, I have made no recourse to materialism of any kind, nor even asked you to doubt the existence of your self or other persons? (Puff).

Simplicius: (A longish pause). Not bad, old thing. But I believe you've missed something, or craftily left it out apurpose. My choice of the train over the car was not an automatic calculation.

Skrignov: Oh no?

Simplicius: No indeed. How would a calculator weigh the value of money against the value of time saved, or convenience, or the feeling of being able to leave at one's leisure? The scale wouldn't work because it is being asked to weigh different kinds of value. 'Tis a qualia thing, not a quantity thing.

Skrignov (his mustache accentuates his frown): Pray, explain.

Simplicius: My reasons didn't lead inexorably to my decision. Or at least that is an insufficient narrative. In fact--that is, in this fiction--I chose particular aspects to consider based upon their value to me. I may not have considered all possibilities, or even all values. In fact, with my limited mental capacity (Skrignov sniggers). Oh you know what I mean.

Skrignov: Believe me, I do!

Simplicius : Aaannyway,...The fact that I use my ratio on a limited number of considerations, in part because I am unaware of the possibly unlimited number of factors and in part because I attend to the ones I think most valuable (and the ones that I am able to remember during the process of consideration) -- as I say, this fact of limited considerations does not occlude the operation of a free will. Rather, I deliberated, I assembled the relevant reasons, and chose that which seemed to me best. Therefore the calculation presupposed the willing. I used my will, because in deliberating I actually calculated not only means but also ends: I considered the means to the end of listening to the Erasmus Lecture (itself perhaps toward further ends of truth and joy), but also other ends of stewarding my property in order to care for my family, of the uses to which I could put the time driving vs. riding the train, and even of using my time for an entirely different profit that night -- as in doing a bit of gardening back home instead of going into the City at all.

Skrignov: I'm not sure you've quite wriggled free, dear boy. Quite apart from your ridiculous proclivity for wallowing in filth out in your garden, there are two places, I think, where you invite us to skip a step on the staircase. First, the various qualia you weigh in your deliberation -- the value of money, of time, of liberty to indulge in the libations -- are not after all arbitrarily chosen. Even you would concede as much being a hylomorphic realist. Granting for the present that there's a "you" there and that the mind-independent world exists and is intelligible, your reason allows you to grasp the most relevant qualia. This is, again, not an arbitrary choice. The mind-independent relation of these quantities and qualities to your end of reaching the Union Club in time for the lecture leads you of necessity to your "choice." The fact that your powers of reason is a complex scale capable of weighing irreducibly distinct qualia needn't worry us here.

Simplicius (eyes his now-empty mug with mild disappointment): A fair rejoinder, even if I think we could return to it and investigate whether or not you use terminology too freely and loosely. But you said I skipped a step in two places. What was the second?

Skrignov (smiling not unwickedly): The second, my bibulous convinion, is that in asking us to grant that for any given end, there may be multiple reasons assembled and even perhaps to speak of these as different ends, you simply push the problem back a step. These other ends -- are they too not provided to you by nature--that is, by the sum total of your nature and history as well as of all other people and things involved in your trip to Manhattan? It is, I believe, an analogy in time of how you cannot help but grasp mathematical and geometric truths. You don't choose to see that, given two angles of a triangle add up to 120 degrees, the third measures 60; in an analogous way, you didn't choose to attend the Erasmus Lecture.

Bartender: Gentleman, I'm afraid you'll have to finish your percolations another time. The bar's closing.

⚜

Followup on Lewis

In Nancy

November 12, 2017

After so recently reading the post-conversion Evelyn Waugh, and only some months after Fr. Ronald Knox’s works, it can be tempting to absorb their brilliant (and often casual) dispensations with Protestantism (in A Spiritual Aeneid, Knox notes how he came to regard the Protestant Reformation as “a great disaster” long before he thought of leaving the Church of England). With Lewis’s authoritative critique of modern thought and of the great, insouciant arrogance that in his telling has marked the outlook of the forward-thinking intelligentsia of Western Civilization ever since the Renaissance, I find it easy to take in stride, almost without realizing, a view that places Protestantism easily within the fold of modernism. Like the moderns today, like the self-named “enlightened” philosophes in the eighteenth century, like the (again, self-named) men of the “rebirth” (renaissance) in the sixteenth, Protestants mis-read their forebears and misguidedly attacked what came before while in the same manner failing to realize how much of what they valued was handed on to them.

Since it was helpful for me, I share here more of Lewis’s illuminating historical commentary, this time on what made the New Religion so attractive in the sixteenth century.

“Even more important, if we are to understand why the Reformers, whether rightly or wrongly, felt that they were escaping from a prison, is Fisher’s conception of purgatory. A modern tends to see purgatory through the eyes of Dante: so seen, the doctrine is profoundly religious. That purification must, in its own nature, be painful, we hardly dare to dispute. But in Fisher the pain seems to have no intrinsic connexion with the purification at all: it is a pain which, while it lasts, separates us from God. Since even in this life pain ‘will not suffer the soul to remember itselfe, moche lesse therefore it shall haue ony remembraunce abydynge in tourmentes, for cause also the paynes of purgatory be moche more than the paynes of this worlde, who may remember God as he ought to, beynge in that paynfull place?....’ Thus the pains which in Dante were genuinely purgative have become, it would seem, merely retributive. Tyndale’s reaction to such a doctrine can be gathered from a sentence in his answer to More, ‘To punish a man that has forsaken sin of his own accord is not to purge him but to satisfy the lust of a tyrant’. Perhaps Fisher might not mean exactly what he said: or, meaning it, might not do justice to the doctrine of his own church. That is not here our concern. We want to know how people in England felt; we shall not succeed if Dante’s picture dominates our minds” (163-164).

 And

“The second book [of St. Thomas More’s Supplication of Souls (1529)] … illustrates a further degradation of the idea of purgatory. In Fisher the pain had been separated from any spiritual purification, but the torments had at least been inflicted by angels. In More this last link with heaven is severed. The attendants…are now devils. ‘Our keepers’, say the imprisoned souls, ‘are such as God kepe you from, cruell damned spirites, odious enemies and despitefull tormentours, and theyre companye more horrible and grieuous to vs than is the payn itself and the intollerable tourmente that they doo vs, wherewith from top to toe they cease not to teare vs’. The length of the sentence has thus become the sole difference between purgatory and hell…. I make the point not to disgrace a man before whom the best of us cannot stand uncovered, but because the age we are studying cannot be understood without it. This sort of thing, among others, was what the old religion had come to mean in the popular imagination during the reign of Henry VIII: this was one of the things a man left behind in becoming Protestant” (172-3).

It is true that recent historical research has shown that the emancipatory quality of Protestant Reform is largely a perception handed down in Protestant countries from polemical sources – the historian Andrew Gow has shown that vernacular Bibles were already quite widespread by the time of Luther’s translation, so the notion that Luther delivered the people access to scriptures that had ‘til then been walled away was a later invention of the polemicists. All the same it is important to be aware that there were genuine Christians for whom accepting the reforms in doctrine or practice was experienced as a liberation. You have Thomas Cranmer, whose political career and worldly success was based upon his support for the king’s divorce; but you also have William Tyndale, whose early acceptance of Protestantism opened no appointments but forced him into a life of exile as a hunted man, who opposed the king’s divorce, and who was finally caught and executed (the fate of a disconcertingly large number of controversialists at this period!).

It is striking at today’s vantage to see this point about genuine experience of emancipation. As regards actual right doctrine, it is likely the case that, as Lewis notes, “In all this we may be sure that what Tyndale is attacking is a mere travesty of what his best opponents held; as what they attack is also a travesty of his own view. In these controversies each party writes best when he is defending what (well considered and in a cool hour) the other did not really deny” (190); but if it was so easy to draw the wrong conclusion about what right doctrine was (even as defended by More or Fisher, the doctrine of Purgatory would not be thus presented today), then that also says something about the Church’s teaching at the time. It seems a tragedy more than anything else. Lewis again: “one sees how tragically narrow is the boundary between Tyndale and his opponents, how nearly he means by faith what they mean by charity” (189).

As I stated at the outset, I share this mainly as a “here’s-something-that-struck-me”; if there is any point to be made, it is the very old one, the caution (to myself) to humility. When one sees clearly where a certain error or logical inconsistency lies, one can wish to always draw the conversation back to that point: “What the 2016 election was really about was [insert your analysis of the bottom-level causes, forces, etc.].” Today’s controversies within Christianity do indeed turn upon non-negotiable fundamental dogmas and doctrines, but it is also necessary to listen to how ordinary people describe their own perceptions. I don’t know that this is advice per se – I’ve hardly even had a conversation with someone with a terrible misperception of Church teaching who was also willing to a nuanced response. Just a more accurate interpretation of the Reformation.

------

A last quote to be shared is rather delightful piece of crabbiness coming from Dean Colet, a learned schoolmaster, a Catholic humanist who thought both that the Latin of the “classical” period was the only style and vocabulary one could use and also that the paganism of the classical literature was deplorable. In one of the statutes of a school he started, he barred all those texts which “more rayther may be called blotterature thenne litterature” (160).

Thoughts prompted from reading CS Lewis

By happy constellation I discovered an American Library in France, supplying (free) books I couldn’t pack because of the austere weight requirements of Norwegian Air. This library was formed by books left behind by American GIs stationed in postwar France, so it’s heavy on authors popular at mid-century: Graham Greene, Thomas Merton, Norman Vincent Peale, and—land, ho!—C.S. Lewis, whose English Literature in the 16^th Century I had never read before. As usual, the lucidity of his thought and the clarity of his communication are astonishing. His introduction, a historical essay setting the scene, should probably be published as a standalone short book. It shares a lot of the themes in The Discarded Image, Studies in Words, and several essays in the Selected Literary Essays edited by Walter Hooper.

Needless to say, it’s an awesome essay, spurring lots of thoughts and actually prompting me to write. I urge you all to find a copy.

At the moment I mainly want to share a musing from a section of the introduction where he describes the early English Puritans (not gloomy ascetics but avant-garde intellectuals; he compares them to Marxists in his day). He begins by sketching the “experience” of the Reformation shared by the Puritans and the broader Anglican group, and his description of the way in which purely theological issues got entangled in quite different matters suggested a connection to certain controversies in the Catholic literary circles today. Here’s a short excerpt; you’re coming in just as Lewis has led us from Luther’s early cloudless dismissal of works to the totems of the faith/works controversy ending up in popular comedies:

   “The real reason why any reference to faith and works (or merit) is sure of a response in the theatre is that this topic touches men’s pockets: one of the seats of laughter[:]…he who cries up merit…is probably going to ask for money…. And he who cries up faith…is probably going to refuse money…. Shakespeare uses either jibe impartially.”
   “The process whereby ‘faith and works’ become a stock gag in the commercial theatre is characteristic of that whole tragic farce which we call the history of the Reformation. The theological questions really at issue have no significance except on a certain level, a high level, of the spiritual life; they could have been fruitfully debated only between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure…. In fact, however, these questions were raised at a moment when they immediately became embittered and entangled with a whole complex of matters theologically irrelevant, and therefore attracted the fatal attention both of government and the mob. When once this had happened, Europe’s chance to come through unscathed was lost. It was as if men were set to conduct a metaphysical argument at a fair, in competition or (worse still) forced collaboration with the cheapjacks and the round-abouts, under the eyes of an armed and vigilant police force who frequently changed sides.” (37)

(Side comment: have you ever met an author so artful in inventing the perfect analogies?). Any-hoo, this description of a “tragic farce” put me in mind of a lot of headlines I’ve seen, sighed, and ignored recently that have sprouted up around Amoris Laetitia and Fr. Martin’s new book. (Not to mention the identical process which I’m reading in the archives of the religious schism that occurred during—and helped shape—the French Revolution). A tricky properly theological question arises (even if not from properly theological seeds) which could “be fruitfully debated between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure.” Instead because the questions are tied to principles of authority and jurisdiction, generations of articles proliferate from Catholic journalists who share with their secular fellows the chief skills and values of their craft—namely, irony, cleverness, the smugness of having secured one’s position above the fray and so preserved oneself from being taken in. (I grow sick of irony—in our newspapers, our supposedly “fresh” Netflix shows and podcasts and NPR programs). And “below” this level of the venues reserved for commentators who’ve mastered the ironic art, the myriad militant blogs and internet newspapers of the various camps put up their standards and banners and raise the call to arms.

Is genuine conversation, genuine disputatio, possible? Of course. Perhaps the more pertinent question is, Is there a way to prevent the various habits of our literary cultures, which seem perversely co-ordinated toward Babel, from causing grave harm to the Bride of Christ?