The Tender Indifference of the World

L'Etranger, Albert Camus' dark novel of self-discovery and despair, was simply a rather odd novel when I read it for the first time, thirty years ago. Today, re-reading it, I'm more able to discern Camus' underlying message, even if it still annoys me! Modernists often accuse Christians of intellectual arrogance, but they fail to recognize the grandiose certainties of Existentialism. Camus is relentless. He is determined to make his readers understand the fundamental absurdity of life. the vehicle for his anti-gospel is a self-absorbed youth by the name of Meursault.

As the story begins, we learn that Meursault's mother has just died. She had been living in an institution for the elderly. Meursault, her only living relative, had not paid her a great deal of attention. Indeed, her death and subsequent burial fail to move Meursault from his morose naval-gazing. It is as if the novel is taking place in his mind. One is never altogether sure of the existence of the sun-baked Algerian landscape in which Camus' characters live out their miserable lives. Meursault is unmoved by distractions like the death of his mother or a job offer in distant Paris. His refrain is, "Cela m'est egal" - "It's all the same.

Almost by accident, Meursault meets an old work-mate, Maria. His "grief" does not prevent him taking her to the beach, or to see a comic movie, or to bed. He also acquires a disreputable friend, Raymond, who leads Meursault into further adventures. Whilst planning a lazy afternoon at a beach-house, Raymond is confronted by three rather faceless Arabs. Violence lurks, then recedes, until Meursault decides to take matters into his own hands. After everything has calmed down, and the danger seems to have passed, Meursault takes Raymond's revolver and pursues the Arabs. When the sun glints off a knife held by one of the men, Meursault fires, repeatedly, and the man dies. Later, Meursault can only blame the sun for his actions.

Throughout the rest of the story, Camus grapples clumsily with the themes of oppression and state violence. Meursault refuses to accept the existence of a universal moral code. He is accused of being cold and indifferent to other people, but he refuses to conform. Proudly confident of the absurdity of this world, Meursault gives up his life with a shrug.

How sad! Meursault is a man entirely without hope, because his world revolves entirely around himself. There is no consolation to be found in the "tender indifference of the world" beyond a vague appreciation of beauty, and regret at not having longer to enjoy it. Meursault isn't even really narcissistic, he has just convinced himself of he inevitability of the meta-narrative of absurdity. It never seems to occur to him to ask, "If nothing makes sense, should that not also hold for my statement that nothing makes sense?" Like the post-modernity of which twentieth century Existentialism is but one symptom, Meursault's creed is self-contradictory. Camus attempts to use logic to prove the illogicality of the universe. He succeeds only in making his main character appear truly absurd.

L'Etranger has been an immensely influential novel. It is still required reading for many undergraduates. Are those who teach its story still entrenched in the intellectual revolution that was the 1960's? Do pony-tailed professors still dream of Left Bank cafes, and of a time when all of the old certainties were overthrown? If they do, I wonder whether their students can see through the posturing? Will it take a new generation to burst the bubble of Woodstock and the gospel according to Jean Paul? Or, must we look forward to another generation of outsiders, for whom the greatest good appears to be the necessity of revolt?

There is a person missing in Camus' story. Meursault needs a father to hold him accountable and to guide him to maturity. Adolescent angst is no basis for a philosophy for life. And if we are to recover a robust theology that moves beyond both self-adulation and self-loathing, then we must help the Prodigal Meursaults of this world to find a way back to their Father's arms.

Colorful Language

I've just come across a wonderful quotation in Arthur C. Danto's book Nietzsche as Philosopher. I'm only part way through the book, by the way, but I find it very helpful, even though Danto is too enamoured of Logical Positivism for my taste. Unfortunately, this tends to make his insights rather anachronistic, given that Positivism is no longer en vogue. Danto rescues Nietzsce from the accusation that he is merely an intellectual hooligan, endlessly expanding the meaning of words then crashing them back to what they were in order to expose their limitations. Apparently, Nietzsche regarded himself as someone who went about the business of philosophy "with a hammer." There's some truth in this, but Danto succeeds in showing the underlying seriousness of Nietzsche's lifework.

Anyway, here's the quotation. It does not just apply to Nietzsche.

His language would have been less colorful had he known what he was trying to say...

Amen to that!

Smoke and Mirrors

Where does religion come from? Sigmund Freud thinks he knows. His theory, entitled "the psychogenesis of religion" is to be found in Totem and Taboo (1913). According to Freud, every major religion venerates a father-figure. The reason for this involves "the Oedipal complex." This is what Freud means:

At some prehistoric time human beings lived in a tribe ruled by a chief. This chief was, literally, a father, having exclusive sexual rights over the women of his tribe. However, as the chief aged, and as his sons matured, conflict, fuelled by sexual frustration, grew in intensity. Eventually, the sons rebelled, overthrew their father, and killed him. Almost immediately the sons were overcome by remorse at what they had done. They created rituals in order to assuage their grief and guilt, and so religion was born.

Freud goes on to interpret individual religious experience on the basis of the Oedipal complex. For Freud, veneration of a father-figure is a childish response to a dominant human parent. Fear of punishment forces the child to subject his will to his father's, and then to project the characteristics of the father into an illusory spiritual realm. In effect, therefore, religion is simply the perpetuation of infantile behavior. The frightened child trusts that his father will protect him from the ogres under the bed. The timid adult trusts that his heavenly father will protect him from the very real ogres who inhabit our world. But this is little more than wishful thinking. A confident young adult moves away from his father's control and gains his independence. As he leaves behind the phobias of childhood, so he should also reject the delusion that is religion. He should grow up and deal with the real world, not hide away in a realm created by his own wishes.

For me, the most telling response to Freud's theories of the origin of religion is simply to point out that he is creating an hypothesis, not stating a fact. Freud has absolutely no evidence to support the theory of a prehistoric patricide; the Oedipal complex has no foundation. He has merely invented the event in order to give credibility to his theories, which in turn support his prejudices. This is eisegesis of the worst kind. Freud massages the evidence until it appears to support his conclusions. But it is all a game with smoke and mirrors. Freud is the illusionist, not the Christian.

And yet, how many atheists continue to use this argument? Belief is still condemned as infantile. Obsessional neuroses are blamed for being the hidden persuaders behind religious ritual. Believers are told that they are foolish children, reacting to trauma by repressing their instincts and their emotions. Christians continue to fool themselves by creating castles in the sky.

In truth, though, these criticisms tell us more about the repressed spiritual urges of those who reject Christianity than they do about the origins of religion. Atheists have created their own myth. There is no evidence for its truth, but they continue to advocate for the illusion because they cannot bear to think that they might be wrong. Sound familiar? Freud's psychoanalytical atheism is an hypothesis, nothing more. Christians have no reason to fear an illusion.

Wishing Doesn't Make It True

Is our desire for God anything more than wishing Him into existence? It's an old argument that has been going the rounds since Ludwig Feuerbach. I recently came across the debate still festering on http://www.opposingviews.com/

In a way, I'm surprised that the debate is ongoing. Over a hundred years ago, Eduard von Hartmann pointed out the logical fallacy in Feuerbach's argument, but that doesn't stop the anti-God lobby from using it. Alister McGrath quotes von Hartmann in one of his books, "It is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it." Things do not exist simply because we desire them. But it does not follow that, because we desire something, it does not exist. Feuerbach's argument is a logical fallacy. What's the argument about?

Feuerbach wrote that religion is simply a projection of our wishes. We would like the world to be ordered, for the good to go to heaven and the evil to go to the other place, and so we wish it, and convince ourselves that it is true. In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach argues that the idea of God arises from human experience. Human beings long for something beyond themselves, for immortality, for justice, for love. And so we translate our experience of longing onto an illusory plane and create the idea of God. In a sense, as Sigmund Freud was to argue, religion is a childish response to our dependence upon our parents. When we continue the culture of dependence into our adult lives, we substitute God for our earthly father. If only we would grow up we would realize that our search for spiritual reality is a study of our own experience. There is no external reality to be discovered.

Feuerbach has been very influential, though few remember his name today. Karl Marx adopted his critique of religion. Freud promoted it; in his The Future of Illusion (1927) Freud said that religious ideas are "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind." It's an argument that is still rolled out with great regularity today.

You can't really argue with Feuerbach, or his disciples. He simply states his hypothesis as gospel, and that's the end of the argument. Religion is wish-fulfillment. Nothing more. With a condescending smile the popular psychologist encourages us to grow up and grow out of the delusion. Only then will we be free.

Feuerbach's arguments are predicated upon the assumption that all religious experience is actually human experience. Specifically, as Schliermacher wrote, religion is based upon the human experience of being dependent. This was a popular idea at the time but, as many have pointed out, Feuerbach ignores the doctrine of revelation. As Christians we don't have to rely upon our subjective interpretations; God confronts us through His Word. He is prior to and independent of our experience. We aren't just listening to ourselves. God speaks. More to the point He often says things that we probably we would not wish to hear, especially when He calls us to repentance, to turn from sin and to turn to Christ. How can it be wish-fulfillment when it would be easier all around if God did not exist, if there was no judgment to fear?

Most of the time, though, Feuerbach doesn't depend upon arguments. He just insists that he is right. Curiously, it's like arguing with a charismatic who claims a direct line to God. There can be no argument when all opposing viewpoints have been eliminated, a priori, as nonsense. Even the glib, self-satisfied smile is the same, "Of course you wouldn't understand."

What we understand is that just because an argument keeps being repeated, that doesn't make it right. When I was at Birmingham University a young girl, who used to attend the meetings of the Christian Union, suddenly stopped coming. Eventually we found out why. She was dating an undergraduate from the Department of Psychology. This genius had read a little Freud and decided that he had no further need of "the god hypothesis." And, because he wanted her to do away with her "bourgeois, oppressive, Victorian morality," he persuaded her that her religion had been a projection of her insecurity. She responded, not by slugging him, but by agreeing. Rejecting the moral code of her childhood she was free to debate philosophy between the sheets. I don't know what became of her. I pray that she woke up.

Of course, the irony is that she created a new reality on the basis of her wishes. She wanted to be found attractive to this young Lothario, (and for her brain not just for her looks), so she wished for a world in which her constraints evaporated. And they did. She mistook anthropology for theology. She thought that she had argued herself out of a need for God. But God is not dependent upon her needs, neither is He perturbed by her denials of His existence. She may wish for a world without God, but wishing does not make it true!

Why should we be expected to abandon the Christian faith just because Ludwig Feuerbach tells us that we are projecting our wishes instead of experiencing God? It's still a very unconvincing argument, no matter who tells you otherwise.

Dead Men Rise Up Never

Proserpine - by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Jack London has a tale, from his youth, of going to sea on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner, seal hunting off the coast of Japan. London tells of a fellow-sailor, an unpleasant man known only as "The Bricklayer" who died and was buried at sea, with "a gunnysack, half full of galley coal... fastened to his feet." Against naval tradition, the seventeen year-old Jack London took over his recently-departed colleague's bunk. His other shipmates warned him that the Bricklayer would not be pleased. He would come back to haunt the lad.

Then, on an ugly night, Jack was startled to see an ominous shape on deck, near the spot where the Bricklayer had been tipped over the side. Intellectually, he could not fathom what he was seeing. Was it a spectre, risen from the deep? Surely, "dead men rise up never." Finally, after an agony of self-doubt, Jack plucked up the courage to confront the ghoul, only to find himself face to face with an equally terrified Newfoundland dog.

The title of Jack London's short story (later purloined by others) comes from Swinburne:

From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no man lives forever

That dead men rise up never

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

The Garden of Proserpine: A.G.Swinburne 1866

Is it true, though, that "dead men rise up never'? Ernst Troelsch, the German sociologist, had an unsophisticated answer to this question. His response is typical of many today. Troelsch argued that, since dead men do not rise, Jesus Christ could not have risen from the dead. And that's the end of that. The central pillar of Christianity is swept away, by fiat. Troelsch simply declares, like David Hume before him, that resurrection just does not happen. Since there is no evidence of dead men rising in our experience, it follows that no dead men have ever risen, or ever shall.

What are we to make of this argument, given that, as Paul says, "if Christ is not risen we are, of all men, most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:19)? Wolfhart Pannenberg points out that Troelsch takes a very dogmatic approach to the question of resurrection. Based upon his presuppositions, Troelsch dictates what can and cannot happen. According to Troelsch, and a horde of modern disciples, the question of resurrection is non-sensical. It does not happen today and it did not happen 2,000 years ago.

Troelsch's argument is based upon inductive reasoning, moving from a particular example to a general rule. The particular example he chooses is his own experience. He then proceeds to draw his conclusion based upon his chosen premise. This is obviously unsatisfactory. Observation cannot eliminate the possibility of resurrection, it can only establish probability.

If "dead men rise up never," how do we account for the witness of the New Testament? It cannot be wish-fulfillment, given that the devastated disciples were in no fit state to create the fiction. Neither would they have been prepared to suffer so cruelly for an obvious untruth. Could it not be that the bodily resurrection of Jesus provides the best explanation of the events? Often, it seems, our response to the empty tomb tells us more about ourselves than we imagine. Secular people give a secular response. But Christians tend not to be so concerned. We judge matters of life and death on the basis of what we know about Jesus, not the other way round, and certainly not on the basis of Troelsch's dogmatic metaphysical presuppositions.

We don't need to apologize for our faith. When our opponents dismiss the resurrection of Christ out of hand, they merely display secular fundamentalism. Swinburne's vision of the underworld was of a grey place without fear but also without hope. Is it wrong to hope for something better?

Tea and the Slippery Slope

I happen to like tea. I prefer black tea - a blend of orange pekoe and broken orange pekoe that most Americans would call "English Breakfast Tea." I like it piping hot. In fact, the hotter the better otherwise the tea will not infuse properly and the leaves will rise in the cup. Yes, I brew it in the cup, mainly because that's how I like it. I just have to remember not to drain the cup! In my humble opinion tea should have milk in it, and it should not be flavored. Blackcurrant, mango, and mint may be wonderful flavors for soft drinks, but they should not be allowed to contaminate tea. It goes without saying that the words "iced" and "tea" should not be used in the same sentence, sweetened or unsweetened.

Does that make me a tea-snob, or (as someone once called me) a tea-afficianado? No, it just means that I prefer my tea the way I have been drinking it since I was a small boy. I'm not going to judge your preferences, but neither am I going to apologize for mine. I just happen to like my tea good and strong and very hot!

Other people take their tea differently. In China, Gaiwan Tea has full green leaves floating in the cup. In Japan, Sencha is green tea that remains unfermented. Other traditions predominate in other areas. Millions of people enjoy their favorite drink in many different ways. And that's fine. To accept this, we have to have a basic understanding of cultural relativism. Different cultures have different ways of doing things. It's good to know that we are not all the same. Who knows, I might try iced pomegranate tea one day and like it. It's not very probable, but it might happen.

The problem comes when cultural relativism becomes ethical relativism. Let's imagine that, in order to produce their favorite type of tea, the citizens of Pomerania require that all of their left-handed children be taken from their parents, trained to climb to the tops of the trees to gather the youngest, most succulent leaves. Ethical relativism says that, since different cultures have different moral beliefs, we should not judge the Pomeranians. They have their method of producing tea and we have ours. That's just the way it is.

Ethical relativism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical scepticism, which proposes that there are no absolute moral rules. If the citizens of Pomerania decide to kidnap children from our country and to force them into slavery, we still can't judge them, because absolute moral rules are impossible to prove. All that we can do it to prevent their capture, or rescue them. We will do this, not because we judge the Pomeranian tea-manufacturing process to be immoral, but because we value our children. With regard to ethical norms, we remain sceptical.

Ethical scepticism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical nihilism, in which there are thought to be no moral rules at all. The Pomeranians may not only steal our children, they may also sacrifice them to the tea-gods after the harvest, adding their blood to the brew! As nihilists we will be unable to do anything, other than exert a superior military force. Morally, we could not challenge the Pomeranians. We could not describe them as "evil," since evil does not exist. We could not judge them, since there would be no standard we could bring to bear. No universal principle would guide us. No holy book would determine right from wrong.

* * * * * * * *

Of course this is all a bad dream. Cultural relativism does not need to become ethical relativism, which does not need to become ethical scepticism, which does not need to become ethical nihilism. And this conversation is not about tea.

The Right Attitude to Rain

I'm plodding my way through The Right Attitude to Rain, the third in the Sunday Philosophy Club series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith. 'Plodding' is the right word. Some of the prose makes Jane Austen look like a speed-writer. Actually, there are some parallels between the two authors, in that both deal extensively with social convention. Austen always has her tongue in her cheek, but she is still fundamentally positive. Although her characters can be painfully bound (for example, many of her young females seem to spend their lives playing the piano-forte, doing needlework, and waiting for Mr. Right), there's usually some point at which convention works in their favor. Austen challenges prejudice, but she does so with a positive attitude towards convention. It's not convention itself which she finds fault with, just the misappropriation of convention as a means of oppression (okay - usually by men). Austen wants the system to work. Fundamentally, she is a very moral writer; there is nothing of the anarchist in her.


McCall Smith, on the other hand, seems to have a destructive view of convention. His main character, Isabel Dalhousie, claims to be an empiricist, but she is nothing of the sort. She is supposed to be the editor of something called The Review of Applied Ethics. The book contains a number of discussions of ethical problems, usually when Isabel seems to be daydreaming. But the content of these discussions is generally superficial. It feels like she is playing at popular philosophy, as a rank amateur, instead of studying it as a professional.
What is particularly grating is Smith's habit of giving Isabel a hectoring high moral tone in all manner of situations, except when it comes to sexual ethics. It's like reading about a Calvinist Sunday School teacher from the Highlands, who is mortified by an accidental untruth, but who has no qualms about jumping into bed with her niece's ex-boyfriend. The almost total absence of Christian reference is startling, given the context. Isabel lives a very pleasant life in a beautiful, Georgian city (Edinburgh), but she never notices the churches. They have no effect upon her life. Her worldview is drawn from an environment which is not just alien to the Gospel, it is antithetical. The streets she walks along are named after the saints, but all other traces of a common faith are gone.


I don't find Isabel particularly believable. Her grasp of philosophy is too shallow to enable her to be the editor of a prestigious journal. But I do wonder whether she is not more representative of modern Scotland than many of us would care to admit. Just over a hundred years ago, a visiting American evangelist was asked to address an assembly of public school children. During his message he asked, rhetorically, "What is prayer?" and was amazed when the entire school stood and recited the answer to that question as it is formed in the Shorter Catechism. His astonished response was to sugest that they should all thank God for the privilege of having been born in Scotland. Today, the Calvinism that seemed so engrained in the Scottish character is ebbing like Arnold's tide of faith. It leaves a generation of Isabels without the moral compass that could guide them around the rocks of life and the shoals of mortality.
At one point, Isabel meets a lady from whom she wishes to purchase a flat (an apartment). The woman, Florence, is an ex-school teacher. She tells a story (which doesn't really fit into the plot) of a young boy with terminal cancer whom she had taught, and to whom she could offer no hope. Only the school chaplain had been able to reach the boy, because his creed had compelled him to love. Florence tells Isabel that she has tried, but that she cannot believe in God; and yet she longs for a faith that would enable her to share hope. The best that Isabel can do is to point out that she has known athiests who have been capable of expressing love. It's a poor substitute. Either Isabel does not understand the spiritual impulse, or she does not want to understand. So she goes back to her daydreaming and her poetry. Her life is rich, but she is unutterably impoverished. Which just goes to show that the mission field is not restricted to unpronouncable corners of the world; it is also next door; it drinks chardonnay and reads W.H. Auden, but without Christ it is equally lost.

Plato and Moral Philosophy

There's an interesting sentence in Robinson and Groves' book on Plato, which I've been reading. Commenting on Euthypro's confidence that he has behaved morally because he has obeyed religious edicts, Plato asserts that true moral knowledge can only be achieved through philosophical thinking and debate. He has a point, in that people sometimes commit immoral acts in the name of religion (blowing up innocent people comes to mind). By the same token, moral acts can be religiously unorthodox. For example, the actions of the Good Samaritan in Jesus' parable (Luke 10) were obviously moral in that he showed compassion to a man who had been "set upon by thieves" and left for dead. Jesus' point was that ritual cleanliness, which made the priest walk by on the other side of the road, is no substitute for compassion. The moral deed was impious.

Back to Plato: the authors conclusion is "Only when people turn away from the dogmatism and irrationality of religion can true moral philosophy begin."

Now, that may very well be true when the religion you are talking about is that of the ancient Greeks. At the time of Plato, the pantheon was made up of a bunch of immoral, capricious louts who did, basically, whatever they wanted without much regard for moral law. The gods were to be appeased (and avoided), not emulated. It's probably true to say that more sophisticated Greeks took this religion with a very large dose of salt, even if they didn't say so publically. (After all, Socrates was tried and put to death for blasphemy). However, the context of ancient Greek mythology and folk religion is scarcely the same as that of Christianity. There is a consistency to biblical morality that is not found among the broody mob on Mount Olympus. And if there is a development of interpretation in some areas, even this can be put down to the dawning of the light upon the faithful, rather than change in what God calls "good." You simply cannot label all religious moral teaching as equal. You cannot tar all faiths with the same brush. It's irresponsible to do so, it's deliberately misleading, and it's very poor scholarship.

What's the alternative - secular ethics? Morality that is not informed by religious tenets, such as the Ten Commandments, doesn't have a good track record, either. Some of Plato's own ideas about good government, for example, would be considered immoral today, especially his theories about different classes of people being entitled to different degrees of liberty. Some of his ideas sound like Stalinism, and Stalin certainly was not motivated by religion! It's also worth remembering that Plato had time to think philosophically because the society in which he lived required slavery. Plato seemed to think that there was an objective moral good that could only be discovered by philosophy. That idea would be ridiculed by secularists today. Nowadays, ethics are almost always regarded as situational, except by those who have a reference point beyond specific circumstances.

Christians have such a reference point. It's called the Bible. I don't think we need to apologize for believing in moral absolutes. Christianity may, during its history, have been responsible for some shameful acts (though not as many as some would have you believe). Those acts have, however, been committed in violation of revealed moral law, not as a result of the perversion of morality by religious dogmatism.

What if the conclusion was: Only when people turn away from the dogmatism and irrationality of secular humanism can true moral philosophy begin. Wouldn't that, too, be unnecessarily offensive, given that there are many forms of secularism? So why is it acceptable to make sweeping generalisations about religion? Possibly because when you convince yourself that biblical morality is outmoded and untenable, you are left with no morality really worthy of the name, and that is what you wanted all along?

One Story Only

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling...

There were thousands of books at the Brazoria County Library book sale, last Saturday. To my credit, and my wife's visible relief, I came home with only four - a thin, popular theology book about comparative religion, by Timothy George, which I will probably give away; a history of Britain at the time of Shakespeare; a novel by Faulkner; and... a first edition of Robert Graves Poems 1938-1945. All for $3.75.



It took me a while to come across Graves the poet. I'd read several of his novels - I, Claudius, Claudius the God and Count Bellisarius. I'd also read his youthful autobiography Goodbye to All That, which I enjoyed. Then I encountered the schizophrenic poet. To be perfectly honest I'd never related well to Graves' poems. Some of them (his "left-handed" poems, he called them) are satirical. Satire doesn't age well, and I found them very dated. I also found them mean-spirited, but that didn't make them poor poems, just uninteresting.
Of more interest were his "right-handed" curative poems, which still seemed dense and arcane. The Greek mythological references were usually too obscure for me (that's what an English Comprehensive school education will do for you). More often than not, I'd no clue what they were supposed to be about. Then I read, somewhere, about Graves' fascination with pre-historical myth. Specifically, I learned that Graves' imagination was captured by the Goddess myth, which he attributed to the Pelasgians who apparently inhabited Greece about 3500 B.C.
According to this myth, it was a goddess who was the creator of all things. She arose out of the primordial chaos and danced wildly until her movements created a great wind. The wind somehow became a serpent, with which she danced, and by which she bore the Universal Egg, out of which all things came. Thereafter, the serpent tried to claim power for himself, but was banished to the caves beneath the earth.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean...
All very interesting, I'm sure; yet out of this myth, Graves constructed his rationale. For him, the goddess became the muse that moved him. Her usurpation by the later Greeks explained the violence of a male-dominated world. Just as Zeus begat Alexander the Great, Jehovah begat Napoleon. Instead of being warm, affirming and peace-loving, as the goddess intended, the world descended into war-mongering, bellicose, male-dominated monotheism. The solution, for Graves, is for the world to return woman to her rightful place as the dominant sex!
The most famous poem in the slim volume I picked up is called To Juan at the Winter Solstice, from which I have already quoted. Without the context of Graves' goddess infatuation it remains obscure; but with it, things begin to fall into place. The one story that explains everything to Graves is the grand theme of man's birth from woman, and his love and death in her arms.
Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly.
In a way, I can understand. Graves endured the war to end all wars. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in World War I, and was so badly wounded that, at one time, he was presumed killed in action. He had seen the worst that men could throw at each other. He had witnessed a generation being sacrificed on the bloody altar of nationalism. No wonder he preferred the embrace of a woman.


Yet the mythology around which Graves based his creative or curative poetry, and which became the defining meta-narrative of his life, was really nothing more than a romantic notion. His goddess may not have started any wars, but neither had she built any hospitals. The longing for a "female sense of order", as opposed to a "restless and arbitrary male will" may be laudable, but can you really base your life upon a tale of an empty egg?
Critics will say that that is exactly what Christians do, but I'm not falling for it. Christians have a grand narrative, by which we understand ourselves and our place within the world. But ours is based on the reality of a man who actually lived. And the empty tomb is not just a metaphor for a broken egg. For Christians it means something to say "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again."
I don't want to imply that this is an either/or situation, that we must choose the hard masculinity of Christ over the soft femininity of Graves' goddess. You don't need to be a sabre-rattler to be a follower of Christ; after all, don't we call Him the Prince of Peace? But I do think it matters what story you take as the meta-narrative of your life, the lens through which you understand the world and your place within it. It can't just be a story that resonates with you; you can't pick a world-view on the basis of what you happen to prefer. Truth has to be external. It has to grab you. You understand your life through the story not because it gives you the results you want, but because the story is true. As I look at it, Graves accepts the myth because it fits his experience. Isn't it better to understand your experience on the basis of the story? And what is that story? For me, it's the glorious narrative of salvation history, the love story of a Creator from whom we had been alienated by our own foolishness and pride, who sent His Son to redeem us and to bring us home.
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling...
And that is the story of Christ.

Cultural Amnesia

A few evenings ago, I watched Bill Moyers interviewing Clive James, the Australian journalist, on PBS. James has written a book entitled 'Cultural Amnesia,' which they were discussing, (or marketing, depending on your point of view). Apparently, the main thesis of the book is that something of great value will be lost if the West forgets its cultural heritage. I agree. Like a fish that fails to appreciate the water in which it swims, Western Civilisation depends, to a large extent, upon the intellectual inheritance birthed, first by the Renaissance, then by the Enlightenment. Unless an appreciation for the liberal arts is taught to a new generation, their benefits may be lost. Unless the rights afforded by democracy are championed, they are likely to be taken for granted, before being sold for a mess of potage or a bag of magic beans. I didn't hear the entire interview, but I did wonder whether James would be as vocal in his defense of the benefits won by the Reformation.
I have always enjoyed Clive James' writing. He has a penchant for le bon mot, and seems able to express complicated subjects in terms which make them accessible to ordinary people. He's an old-fashioned Socialist at heart, with Old Labour's disdain for anything approaching elitism. His writing is clear, insightful, and thought-provoking. He also has a great sense of humor. If writers are to be judged on the basis of whether one would wish to spend time in their company, then Clive James is near the top of my list.
Towards the end of the interview, Bill Moyers asked James how he would have ordered the world differently, if he were God. It was a good question to ask a person thoroughly immersed in the secularism of modern Europe. James' reply was revealing. On the one hand, he had no idea how he would order the world differently. On the other hand, he was quite sure that he would make a better job of it than God. When asked why, James laughed and replied that, if there is some kind of divine force, it is "obvious" that this god does not interfere in the affairs of men.
The horrors of the Holocaust made a lasting impression upon Clive James as a young man. To this day, he cannot understand how such evil could have been perpetrated without divine intervention. Neither can he understand how his father could have survived internment in Japan, during the Second World War, only to be killed in a tragic accident while being repatriated to Australia by the Americans at war's end. He would not accept that a loving God could allow such seemingly senseless human suffering.
As an expression of the argument from evil, James' words are nothing new. I remember a debate I had with Alan Dutton, one of my old philosophy professors in Birmingham, which followed the same course almost exactly. Alan wanted to believe. He found Christ tremendously attractive. But he could not or would not believe. "Evil trumps love," he used to say. Nevertheless, he was open to being proved wrong. We talked about not blaming God for human evil, and the context of human freedom which stays God's hand. The arguments on both sides are well-known. For myself, I remain convinced that suffering has to be understood in light of the Cross - God's self-identification with the pain of a fallen world through the person of His Son. I also remain sure that God, in His mercy, only allows evil because He does not want to compel us to do good. Unless we are to be no more than mindless automata, obeying without the action of our wills, then we must be free to choose evil. Finally, I believe that human suffering must be understood within a teleological framework that acknowledges history's goal. If human history is purposive; if God has a desired end in sight, then we cannot judge the play until the curtain falls.
What surprised me about Clive James was the arrogance of his laughter. To be fair, Bill Moyer did not invite him to debate. James was never challenged. It was not put to him that his position is as much an act of faith as is that of the theist. The difference is, of course, that James has faith in his own mental faculties, not in God. He does not see that "the fallenness of humanity," one of the key ingredients of Christian anthropology, has warped him, just as it made a demon out of Adolf Hitler. James fails to grasp that Western Civilisation requires Augustine, not just Aristotle.
Culture, we are told, depends upon a humanist intellectual inheritance, derived from Enlightenment thinkers from Rousseau to Voltaire. In one sense, this is true. The seeds of optimistic modernism have blossomed, but they have become the poisoned plant of postmodernity. Instead of Diderot we are left with Derrida. Yet the culture that gave birth to Erasmus also produced Martin Luther. We cannot lament the loss of cultural icons without recognising the part played by the Christian faith. That's why James' laughter is dangerous. He, and many like him, already have selective cultural amnesia.

Lessons from Revolutionary France

I've been reading Rodney Allen's fascinating book "Threshold of Terror." It's about the last hours of the Monarchy at the time of the French Revolution, specifically, the attack on the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.
To be perfectly honest, the search for the truth, behind the "he said...he said" supposedly eye witness accounts is not always rivetting, except in as much as it demonstrates a continuing belief in absolute reality which is unusual nowadays. (I grow tired of being told that history is always written from someone's perspective, and that truth is, therefore, always relative to one's point of view). One of the enduring questions about the fight that began on the grand staircase of the palace, for example, has always been "Who fired first?" Was it the insurgents, under the sans-coulotte General Santerre, or was it the Swiss Guards, sworn to protect the King? It's refreshing to hear Allen say that, although differing reports were given from all sides, SOMEONE must have fired first! Hallelujah! Absolute history exists.
This means, of course, that we are not necessarily dinosaurs when we say, "Christ has died. Christ is risen." We are also claiming that truth exists. It is not mere wishful thinking to proclaim the bodily resurrection of Christ, as if it was just "truefor us." Something happened in the Garden Tomb on the third day. It is not just a matter of perspective; that's why we are bold to proclaim - as history - an empty cross, an empty tomb, and a risen Savior.
One other point from this book bears mentioning. There is a lengthy discusssion of the overthrow of the legally elected Municipal General Council of Paris by the radicals under Huguenin, claiming to represent the People. It's clear that the slowness of the Council and its ponderous attention to procedure, allowed it to be outmanouevered and manipulated by the Jacobins. In the end, the moderate middle was far too timid to uphold the Constitution. They became mere marionettes, dancing to the beat of the revolutionary drum, until they became expendable. The radicals used legal language to dress up their illegal acts, and they did not stop until they got their way. They had another agenda, and they were singleminded in pursuing it, then in enforcing it with threats. Eventually, even the National Assembly was bullied into inactivity; those who opposed signed their own death warrants.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Madame Guillotine is lurking for those who oppose the radicalism so beloved of the extreme left in the PC(USA), but I believe the example does demonstrate that, unless the Constitution is defended vigorously, it will end up being abused by those with their own agenda. The radicals of revolutionary France had no intention of obeying the Constitution, they merely wanted to use it for their own ends. I fear that the extreme left of the Presbyterian Church has as little regard for our Constitution, and that they will not rest until they have bent it to their will.
Presbuteros