Theodore P. Fraser writes, in The Modern Catholic Novel In Europe, that:
"The Catholic novel in Europe as we know it today originated in French literature of the nineteenth century. Originally part of the neo-romantic reaction against Enlightenment philosophy and the anti-religious doctrines of the Revolution, the Catholic novel attained fruition and became an accomplished literary form spearheading the renouveau catholique, or Catholic literary revival. This literary movement contained in its ranks a number of brilliant writers (Bloy, Péguy, Huysmans, Bernanos, Mauriac, Claudel, Jacques Maritain, and Jacques Rivière, to name the most important) who reached maturity at the century's end or during the decade of World War I, and it essentially took the form of a strong, even violent, reaction of these French Catholic writers against the doctrine of positivism that had gained preeminence in French political and cultural circles in the last third at least of the nineteenth century."
Marian E. Crowe has written in Aiming At Heaven, Getting The Earth that:
"An impressive number of intellectuals and cultural figures followed the same pattern as Barbey d'Aurevilly. Having abandoned their childhood faith and become atheists in their youth, they reconverted to Catholicism in their adulthood. Among them were Paul Claudel, who wrote poetry and plays stressing sacrifice, chivalry and nobility; Léon Bloy, whose novels expressing the doctrine of the communion of the saints called attention to the poor as an integral part of that communion and depicted poverty as both a social evil and source of santification; and Charles Péguy, an early socialist, who, like Bloy, stressed the importance of the poor and seemed to embody the best ideals of both the republican and religious traditions of France. Bloy's novels made a strong critique of the hypocrisy and materialism of many nominal Catholics, a theme that would be repeated in future Catholic novels. Jacques Maritain, who was raised as a liberal Protestant, converted to Catholicism under the influence of Bloy and interpreted the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas for the modern world. These converts were leading figures in the revitalized Catholicism of the early twentieth century ..."
Jean-Luc Barré writes in Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven of how poets, painters and musicians began gravitating around the Maritains, “most of whom they met in the company of Léon Bloy.” There was firstly their discovery of Georges Rouault, “then of Pierre van der Meer de Valcheren, a Dutch novelist who was presented to them in 1911, two days after his own conversion … Then, during the war, they met the young seventeen-year-old composer, Georges Auric, soon a frequent visitor at Versailles …”
Barré goes on to describe how these friendships led to the formation of Thomistic study circles at the Maritain’s home in Meuden “where close friends of the couple came together – Abbé Lallement, Roland Dalbiez, Doctor Pichet, Noële Denis, the eldest daughter of the painter Maurice Denis, Vitia Rosenblum, the brother-in-law of Stanislas Fumet.” Barré continues, “The year 1921 would see the first circle grow larger: a Romanian prince converted to Catholicism, Vladimir Ghika, a young orientalist eager to bring together the Muslim and Christian worlds, Louis Massignon, the philosopher Henri Gouhier, the writer Henri Ghéon, the future Abbé Altermann, among others, joined the study group.
In The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism Rajesh Heynickx and Jan De Maeyer note that:
“the French poet, writer, and surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau converted under the influence of Maritain. For the painters Gino Severini, a pioneer of Futurism, and Otto Van Rees, one of the first Dadaists-both converts - Maritain played the role of spiritual counselor. And when the promoter of abstract art Michel Seuphor embraced Catholic faith in the 1930s, he, too, had extensive contact with Maritain. For all of them, the dictum of the Irish poet Brian Coffey, once a doctoral student under Maritain, applied: modern art needs a Thomist conceptual framework.”
This journey of significant influence began for the Maritain’s with Léon Bloy. The reading of Bloy’s novel Le Femme pauvre led on to their meeting with the man himself. A period of examination by the Maritains of “the life, the doctrines, and the sources of Catholicism” ensued before, on 5th April 1906, “the couple, at the end of “long conversations” confided to Bloy their desire to become Catholics.” Rouault made a similar journey to that of the Maritains, first reading Le Femme pauvre before meeting Bloy. Barré writes that Rouault “seems to have come to the home of this prophet of malediction seeking for other reasons, and always more painful ones, to question himself and to set out towards the unknown.”
Crowe writes that:
"Mauriac and Bernanos ... clearly demonstrated that the spiritual world could have a dynamic presence even in that most secular of literary forms, the novel, and ... also introduced into it a new kind of interiority that was completely different from the stream of consciousness technique used by James Joyce, Virginia Wolff and others. They ... developed and expanded on several themes already introduced by earlier Catholic novelists - the pursuit of the sinner by God, the criticism of materialism and hypocrisy, the futility of life without God, regenerative suffering, and the motifs of sacrificial substitution and intercessory prayer - to which they added a critique of the Catholic community, especially its superficial pieties, its materialism, its arrogance and its neglect of the poor. Yet even in this critique, they disclosed sources of spiritual vitality within the Church - the sanctity of some of its most humble priests, and of the poor, the unchurched, and even the sinners. For the sinner in their works is not simply someone to be corrected and saved. Rather, Mauriac and Bernanos both show how the sinner is at the very heart of Christianity ... This concept would be dramatized in English Catholic novels, where sinners like Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited or Sarah in The End of the Affair not only are enmeshed in a web of grace that draws them in, but also help the larger community of the "saints." This and many other themes explored by these French novelists would animate the imaginations of some very talented Catholic writers on the other side of the English channel ..."
Fraser wrote in 1994 that:
"Born one generation after Bernanos and Waugh of American parents, Julien Green is today one of France's foremost novelists and the first American ever to be elected to the French Academy. (Jacques Maritain wrote of him several decades ago, "I find it marvelous that an American should be the greatest French writer of our times"[quoted in Dunaway, 15].) A prolific writer (and still writing today at a very advanced age), he had attained a certain recognition as novelist in the United States during the 1950s. Since then, though his works continue to be enthusiastically received by a small but fervent group of Francophile Catholics, earlier translations of his novels into English have long gone out of circulation and are virtually unavailable for the larger reading audience. He has, however, recently become the subject of renewed critical attention ... through the publication of what he calls his "Civil War novels." The first of these, Les Pays lointains (1991; The Distant Lands), has in fact been compared favorably in plot, length, and scope with Gone with the Wind, which is not surprising given Green's roots in the American South ...
Green has always refused, even bristled, at his possible designation as a Catholic novelist ("The very idea, he says, "appalls me! [Diary, 219]). Yet when he considers Jacques Maritain's judgement "that my books were those of a man living on the mystical plane," he concedes that "there lies in all my books a deep uneasiness that an irreligious man would never have felt." And he admits that all of his fiction, though written not to advance or support religious dogma, is nonetheless "essentially religious." And in the most succinct definition he will give of what he means by this appelation, he writes, "The anguish and loneliness of my characters can almost always be reduced to what I think I called a manifold dread of living in the world" (Diary, 219)."
David O'Connell, in his study on Michel de Saint Pierre, noted that the generation born in the decade before World War I produced a number of important authors forwarding the tradition of the French Catholic Novel. These included Jacques de Bourbon Busser, Gilbert Cesbron, Pierre Emmanuel, Saint Pierre, and Jean Sulivan. Fraser contrasts the careers of Saint Pierre and Sulivan as representatives for this generation of writers:
"Saint Pierre ... began his career as a novelist in 1948, a decade before Sulivan's tardy entry at the age of 45. At Saint Pierre's death in 1987 his literary production was far more extensive than that of Sulivan (who had died seven years earlier), and one of his novels, Les Nouveaux Prêtres (1964) - which deals with the struggle for control of the French Church between the conservative "intégristes" and the liberal "progressistes" just after the Second Vatican Council - had even been a best-seller in France.
Saint Michel's novels have continuously been reprinted and are in great demand. In contrast, though all of Sulivan's novels have been published by prominent French publishing houses ... he has so far not been regarded in his own country as a leading writer of his time, nor, for that matter, have his works been published in translation to any major extent abroad ...
Yet in any study of the Catholic novel Sulivan is an important and representative figure in regard to the change in form, emphasis, and themes the genre has undergone in the contemporary period, arguably as much so as the far better known Michel de Saint Pierre. From the start of his career Sulivan has been recognised as a direct literary descendent of the French giants of the Catholic novel's Golden Age - Bloy and Mauriac, but especially Bernanos, whose influence on Sulivan is both immediately obvious and commanding."
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Scott Walker - My Death.
Showing posts with label peguy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peguy. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Steve Scott dialogues 4: Torrance, Gunton & Bahktin
SS: I just joined the Thomas F. Torrance `fan' page on Facebook (I've been a Torrance fan since the 80s) and I found a bunch of online lectures/papers etc including this one. I noticed Colin Gunton's `The One, the Three and the Many' in one of your book lists (at your `between' blog). Both Gunton and Torrance have (survived in their work) much to tell us ...
`That Thomas F. Torrance is a scientific theologian seems beyond dispute. But that he may also be understood as a theologian of culture is a permission given us through a consideration of his doctrine of God as triune Creator, his doctrine of creation as contingent, and his doctrine of humanity as a mediator of order and priest of creation, whose work results in, and is enabled by, the development of social coefficients of truth. If Torrance provides us with the fundamental assumptions and dynamics necessary for the development of a theology of culture, then we are also given permission to begin to see his work in this light and to develop it toward this end.'
JE: What I'm particularly interested in, I think, is the Trinity as a pattern for aspects of life which is why I enjoyed Gunton's 'The One, the Three and the Many' with its exploration of the implications of God in relation within himself as Trinity through the transcendentals – relationality, substantiality and perichoresis – which Gunton argues underpin all pattern and connection within the created order. This has similarities with Dorothy L. Sayers in 'The Mind of the Maker' and Christian Schumacher in 'God in Work'.
Gunton uses his theology of creation to identify three concepts that he calls (drawing on Coleridge) ‘open transcendentals’. That is, “possibilities for thought which are universal in scope yet open in their application” Gunton’s three open transcendentals are: relationality (“[a]ll things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation”, p. 229); perichoresis (“all things are what they are in relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things”, p. 178); and substantiality (all things are “substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in the face of their relationality to the other”, p. 194). Sociality is a description of the social relation of personal beings, “their free relation-in-otherness” (Gunton, p. 229.). Gunton notes that, outside of God and humanity, “the rest of the creation … does not have the marks of love and freedom which are among the marks of the personal” and so cannot be said to be characterised by sociality.
Within the creation stories, sociality is seen in the joint working in which God and Adam shared to find a helper for Adam (Genesis 2: 15 - 25) and the conversation between God, Adam and Eve in Genesis 3: 8 - 19. Dorothy Sayers remarked on the fact that the one thing we know for sure about God at the point that he makes humanity in his own image is that he is creative [D. L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1941)]. She argues that it is therefore logical to suppose that creativity is a significant aspect of humanity’s being made in the image of God. Within the creation stories human creativity is seen in: God’s blessing of humanity which included the tasks of increasing in number, filling and subduing the earth and, ruling over living creatures (Genesis 1: 28); Adam’s working and taking care of the garden (Genesis 2: 15); and, Adam’s naming of the living creatures (Genesis 2: 20). Albert Wolters brings both sociality and creativity together when he comments that: “Adam and Eve, as the first married couple, represent the beginnings of societal life; their task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life" [A. M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1996), p. 37].
Among those who have developed practical proposals for the implementation of relationality, perichoresis and substantiality through sociality and creativity are:
· Christian Schumacher with his system of work structuring outlined in God in Work: Discovering the divine pattern for work in the new millennium (Oxford, Lion Publishing plc, 1998);
· David Lee and Michael Schluter with the dimensions of relational proximity which they outline in The R Factor (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993).
Schumacher draws on Sayers and Distributionism to create a Trinitarian model while Lee and Schluter draw on the work of Christopher Wright who argues that the Israelite society of the Old Testament provides a paradigm for contemporary Christian lifestyle.
Gunton makes his argument based on Coleridge's work on transcendentals, which I haven't read in any depth, but was interested to have Coleridge's thought commended again in reading Dru's book on Charles Péguy. Not sure that any of this relates to Torrance particularly.
SS: Yes, at first blush I'm going to suggest that Torrance provides a lot of deep background in both patristics and quantum physics (and scientific ideas and history thereof) that hums away in the deep background of Colin Gunton's work. I'm prejudiced because I discovered both Torrance and Gunton `at once' on a sale/clearance table in Logos books in Berkeley in the late 70s or early 80s. There's a good book called `The Knight's Move: relationality in science and theology' (I think) that suggestively links Torrance, Niels Bohr, Kierkegaard and someone else whose name escapes me ... Ah. M. Polanyi. Here are some amazon reviews.
Fascinating second review; suggests that the author as a result of this book is going to read some T F Torrance. Anyway. If the (Trinity in) creative process includes aesthetic judgement (saw that it was good) and there's something optimally human or humanizing about our creative calling ... then this would link what that guy was saying about Torrance (Triune God, contingent creation, priestly Human) and the `open transcendentals' of Gunton's Trinity argument. They become `co inherent' categories that inform not only our `place' in the world, but also the inner dynamic of our art ... everything from the formal arguments about material and design up/out to the social /shalom implications of the work in context ... a la Bourraiud and Loraine Leeson and co. And this would make the Christian contribution to interfaith dialogue via, through or with the arts a distinct one.
JE: I particularly liked this quote from the essay on Torrance that you sent over:
"... human persons are not blank slates to be socially programmed as we wish, nor is the created order passive material that we can arrange as our needs and socioeconomic goals dictate. There is an order already present in reality, created into it by ‘the ultimate controlling ground of order’ prior to our ordering activities. Our task is to create cultural/conceptual tools that enable us to discern that order so that we may cooperate with it, not impose ourselves upon it. This is simply Torrance’s theological science applied to the social and material world."
I've tried to explore what I think this sense of partnership with God might involve in an outline theology of work. Underpinning this is the idea that I first came across through Dorothy L. Sayers in 'Mind of the Maker', but which is unpacked more fully by Paul Ricoeur, that humanity is made in the image of God because we enjoy the power of creativity.
“… according to Ricouer, human being is possibility: “it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3: 2). Human existence is “forward-orientated,” constantly projecting itself in front of itself towards a possible way of being. Possibility is therefore intimately connected to the imagination which projects it, and to time, specifically the future. Human being, then, is not limited to the here and now, that is, to actuality … there is a “surplus of being” to human existence, and this surplus of being is nothing other than possibility. We are not as we shall be. Thanks to this surplus of being – possibility – humanity can hope.”
Kevin Vanhoozer notes that: “In his essay “The Image of God and the Epic of Man,” Ricoeur suggests that humans are in the image of God because they too enjoy the power of creativity. Thus the image of God, creativity, gives rise to the images of man, in the sense of the images that man makes. These images constitute “the sum total of the ways in which man projects his vision on things.”” Ricoeur suggests that through our imagination we can determine (God created) possibilities and define the (God created) essence of all that is around us. Essence, in this sense, is similar to Gerard Manley Hopkins' idea of 'inscape'.
Possibilities are, Ricoeur argues, real, although unactualised and it is through imagination that actualisation occurs and with it self-understanding:“The point of phenomenology is to describe the meaning of “lived experience” rather than its factuality. Husserl calls the meaning of a thing its “essence” (eidos). We come to know the essence of a thing by exploring its various possibilities. These possibilities are explored in the workshop of the imagination. Ricoeur notes of phenomenology that “its favourite technique is the method of imaginative variations. It is in varying the possible realizations of the same essential structure that the fundamental articulation can be made manifest.” Husserl’s example of the meaning or “essence” of a table is helpful. By “free imaginative variation” we can alter its form, its color, its material. By then looking to see what there is in common among the various examples, we can determine its essence. We can also imagine possible uses of a table: we can eat a meal on it; we can write letters or do a jigsaw puzzle on it; we can stand on it to fix the lightbulb etc. These variations are not present, but they are imagined as possible. Phenomenological description is thus closely related to fiction and the realm of as if. As far as phenomenology is concerned, we may define the meaning or “essence” of something as the imagined ensemble of its possibilities”.
We see this happening too in Genesis 2. 18-25, where God brings all the animals in the Garden of Eden to Adam for him to name and, at the end of this naming process, Adam recognises Eve as his soulmate. The key to this story is that names in ancient times described the essence of the thing that was named. So Adam looks and listens in order to understand the essence of each different creature and then creates a name that reflects that essence. By so doing, he also sees what is different between himself and the creatures, so that when he sees Eve he is able to immediately recognise her as his soulmate.
This is also what I understand the Bible as doing for us. The Bible is a diverse book. In fact, it is more of a library than a book; a library of 66 different books containing biography, drama, history, law, letters, prophecy, poetry and proverbs. Mike Riddell calls it "a collection of bits" assembled to form God's home page while Mark Oakley uses a more poetic image in writing of the Bible as "the best example of a collage of God that we have." They use these images because the Bible contains, as Oakley writes, "different views, experiences, beliefs and prayers" drawn "from disparate era, cultures and authors" which are not systematic in their portrayal of God. As Riddell states: "The bits don't fit together very well - sometimes they even seem to be contradictory. Stories, poems, teachings, records, events and miracles rub up against each other. They come from all over the place, and span at least 4,000 years of history."
The point is that the Bible gives us many different perspectives on God and on human beings. These different perspectives produce new ways of thinking, seeing, imagining and creating in us. As we see God and human beings from different perspectives and through fresh eyes we are opened up to new possibilities. As we see and imagine possibilities we have the same experience as Adam and come to know ourselves better - we see the essence of who we are - and we change to become more like the people that God created us to be.
This is living creatively, living artistically. The art of life is to be open to the diversity of life in order to see life's possibilities from different perspectives and, as we compare and contrast these possibilities, to identify the essence of who we have been created by God to be and to become. By understanding ourselves and by responding to the essence of others, we are able to develop and use our talents for the enrichment of other people's lives. In doing so, we express the fact of being creative creatures made in the image of our Creator God.
I think all this connects well with your description of Torrance's argument; Triune God, contingent creation, priestly Human. Gunton's open transcendentals (and other Trinitarian patterns - Sayers, Schumacher etc.) would then help in exploring the essence of each thing that is around us; including artworks. To critique artworks in terms of relationality, perichoresis and substantiality would indeed be a fascinating and distinctively Christian approach to art criticism and would extend Bourraiud's Relational Aesthetics considerably.
SS: Yes, all true, and some of my thinking on this enhanced by a couple of books by Timothy Gorringe, and the collaborative/partnering with God in Eden was touched on by David Thistlewaite in his `Art of God'.
"As Richard Bauckham has stated, the Christian is thrust into a “painful contradiction between the promise and present reality”:
I think Colin Gunton made some remarks on this in light of Romans 8, and in the framework of his talking about `catharsis' and Trinitarian Aesthetics (a lecture he gave at Kings of which I got a reprint somehow .... and used for `the light by which we see' included in `Crying for a Vision' and is borne out by much of below ...)
“The contradiction arises from a hope for the world, for the whole of this worldly reality, which it exposes in all its god-forsakenness. The Christian’s suffering is thus a loving solidarity with the whole of the suffering creation … and a hopeful solidarity in expectation of the transformation of all creation … Love and hope for the world involve the Christian in a movement towards world-transformation which has two moments: critical opposition and creative expectation …. In the first moment, hope liberates the Christian from all accommodation to the status quo and sets him critically against it … In the second moment, it gives rise to attempts to change the world in the direction of its promised transformation, imaginatively grasping and realising the objective possibilities in the present which conform most closely to the coming Kingdom … .”
Yep, so the `imaginative grasping' probably includes the groaning of Romans 8.
“… according to Ricouer, human being is possibility: “it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3: 2). Human existence is “forward-orientated,” constantly projecting itself in front of itself towards a possible way of being."
I once had a coffee mug that was imprinted with a Ricouer slogan: `If you want to change a people's obedience, you must first change their imagination.' which, I think brings art to the front of the conversation about community and change......
“The point of phenomenology is to describe the meaning of “lived experience” rather than its factuality. Husserl calls the meaning of a thing its “essence” (eidos). We come to know the essence of a thing by exploring its various possibilities. These possibilities are explored in the workshop of the imagination. Ricoeur notes of phenomenology that “its favourite technique is the method of imaginative variations. It is in varying the possible realizations of the same essential structure that the fundamental articulation can be made manifest.” Husserl’s example of the meaning or “essence” of a table is helpful. By “free imaginative variation” we can alter its form, its color, its material. By then looking to see what there is in common among the various examples, we can determine its essence. We can also imagine possible uses of a table: we can eat a meal on it; we can write letters or do a jigsaw puzzle on it; we can stand on it to fix the lightbulb etc. These variations are not present, but they are imagined as possible. Phenomenological description is thus closely related to fiction and the realm of as if. As far as phenomenology is concerned, we may define the meaning or “essence” of something as the imagined ensemble of its possibilities”.
"This is also what I understand the Bible as doing for us. The Bible is a diverse book."
Polyphony. and the ideas of Mikhail Bahktin. Have you read any Bahktin on dialogism and the novel? Also, some people have done work on Bahktin's ideas about culture and implications for the Bible (or our reading of it).
JE: "I think C Gunton made some remarks on this in light of Rom 8, and in the framework of his talking about `catharsis' and Trinitarian Aesthetics (a lecture he gave at Kings I got a reprint of somehow.....and used for `the light by which we see' included in `Crying for a Vision.' and is borne out by much of below...."
Gunton stated in The Actuality of Atonement that “the victory of Jesus stands behind; the final revelation lies ahead [and] it is the gift of the Spirit to enable anticipations of the final victory to take place in our time”. As a result, “the Christian community lives neither in the sphere of the lie nor in the kingdom of heaven where we shall know as we are known, but ‘between the times’”. This ‘in between’ time, David Ford suggests in Self and Salvation, is eucharistic time: “In between the Last Supper and the expected consummation signified by the Kingdom of God there is history punctuated by obedience to the command to ‘Do this’. This is eucharistic time – time understood and shaped through the reality celebrated repeatedly in the eucharist.” All this is where the title of my blog derives from.
"Yep so the `imaginative grasping' probably includes the groaning of Rom 8"
Yes, and the resurrection; as Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.”
"I once had a coffee mug that was imprinted with a Ricouer slogan: `If you want to change a people's obedience, you must first change their imagination.' which, I think brings art to the front of the conversation about community and change..."
Fully agree. Moltmann also says that we have to perceive God’s activity in the gift of the future and in the stream of new possibilities.
"Polyphony. and the ideas of Mikhail Bahktin.Have you read any B on dialogism and the novel.....also, some people have done work on Bahktin's ideas about culture and implications for the Bible (or our reading of it....) ??"
I've read a bit on polyphony in relation to Solzhenitsyn (I think it must have been Krasnov on Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky - very interesting stuff and very relevant to the arguments I've been making about the structure and form of scripture) but I haven't read Bahktin. What would you recommend?
SS: Here are all the pdfs in my Bahktin and bible sub folder. I've got a couple of his titles, and I've read some things on Bahktin and cultural criticism/carnival etc. I'm still coming to understand him.
JE: Thanks for this. Have just skim read the Bahktin and the Bible pdf which is one of those 'ohmigod, someone is articulating what I have been thinking' moments. Much of what I was writing in my posts on 'The Bible: Open or Closed?' (click here, here, here, here, here) seems to be expressed more clearly in this article which I'll clearly need to read more closely together with the other Bahktin files. Having read the Krasnov book, I've clearly come across Bahktin's ideas but without having incorporated them directly into my own thinking and writing on these issues. So, am very grateful to have these essays to fill in this gap.
SS: Excellent. I've long been a fan of the polyphonic/mosaic approach to `the Bible' as a whole ... as was the author of Hebrews ...
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Noah and the Whale - 2 Bodies 1 Heart.
`That Thomas F. Torrance is a scientific theologian seems beyond dispute. But that he may also be understood as a theologian of culture is a permission given us through a consideration of his doctrine of God as triune Creator, his doctrine of creation as contingent, and his doctrine of humanity as a mediator of order and priest of creation, whose work results in, and is enabled by, the development of social coefficients of truth. If Torrance provides us with the fundamental assumptions and dynamics necessary for the development of a theology of culture, then we are also given permission to begin to see his work in this light and to develop it toward this end.'
JE: What I'm particularly interested in, I think, is the Trinity as a pattern for aspects of life which is why I enjoyed Gunton's 'The One, the Three and the Many' with its exploration of the implications of God in relation within himself as Trinity through the transcendentals – relationality, substantiality and perichoresis – which Gunton argues underpin all pattern and connection within the created order. This has similarities with Dorothy L. Sayers in 'The Mind of the Maker' and Christian Schumacher in 'God in Work'.
Gunton uses his theology of creation to identify three concepts that he calls (drawing on Coleridge) ‘open transcendentals’. That is, “possibilities for thought which are universal in scope yet open in their application” Gunton’s three open transcendentals are: relationality (“[a]ll things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation”, p. 229); perichoresis (“all things are what they are in relations of mutual constitutiveness with all other things”, p. 178); and substantiality (all things are “substantial beings, having their own distinct and particular existence, by virtue of and not in the face of their relationality to the other”, p. 194). Sociality is a description of the social relation of personal beings, “their free relation-in-otherness” (Gunton, p. 229.). Gunton notes that, outside of God and humanity, “the rest of the creation … does not have the marks of love and freedom which are among the marks of the personal” and so cannot be said to be characterised by sociality.
Within the creation stories, sociality is seen in the joint working in which God and Adam shared to find a helper for Adam (Genesis 2: 15 - 25) and the conversation between God, Adam and Eve in Genesis 3: 8 - 19. Dorothy Sayers remarked on the fact that the one thing we know for sure about God at the point that he makes humanity in his own image is that he is creative [D. L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1941)]. She argues that it is therefore logical to suppose that creativity is a significant aspect of humanity’s being made in the image of God. Within the creation stories human creativity is seen in: God’s blessing of humanity which included the tasks of increasing in number, filling and subduing the earth and, ruling over living creatures (Genesis 1: 28); Adam’s working and taking care of the garden (Genesis 2: 15); and, Adam’s naming of the living creatures (Genesis 2: 20). Albert Wolters brings both sociality and creativity together when he comments that: “Adam and Eve, as the first married couple, represent the beginnings of societal life; their task of tending the garden, the primary task of agriculture, represents the beginnings of cultural life" [A. M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1996), p. 37].
Among those who have developed practical proposals for the implementation of relationality, perichoresis and substantiality through sociality and creativity are:
· Christian Schumacher with his system of work structuring outlined in God in Work: Discovering the divine pattern for work in the new millennium (Oxford, Lion Publishing plc, 1998);
· David Lee and Michael Schluter with the dimensions of relational proximity which they outline in The R Factor (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993).
Schumacher draws on Sayers and Distributionism to create a Trinitarian model while Lee and Schluter draw on the work of Christopher Wright who argues that the Israelite society of the Old Testament provides a paradigm for contemporary Christian lifestyle.
Gunton makes his argument based on Coleridge's work on transcendentals, which I haven't read in any depth, but was interested to have Coleridge's thought commended again in reading Dru's book on Charles Péguy. Not sure that any of this relates to Torrance particularly.
SS: Yes, at first blush I'm going to suggest that Torrance provides a lot of deep background in both patristics and quantum physics (and scientific ideas and history thereof) that hums away in the deep background of Colin Gunton's work. I'm prejudiced because I discovered both Torrance and Gunton `at once' on a sale/clearance table in Logos books in Berkeley in the late 70s or early 80s. There's a good book called `The Knight's Move: relationality in science and theology' (I think) that suggestively links Torrance, Niels Bohr, Kierkegaard and someone else whose name escapes me ... Ah. M. Polanyi. Here are some amazon reviews.
Fascinating second review; suggests that the author as a result of this book is going to read some T F Torrance. Anyway. If the (Trinity in) creative process includes aesthetic judgement (saw that it was good) and there's something optimally human or humanizing about our creative calling ... then this would link what that guy was saying about Torrance (Triune God, contingent creation, priestly Human) and the `open transcendentals' of Gunton's Trinity argument. They become `co inherent' categories that inform not only our `place' in the world, but also the inner dynamic of our art ... everything from the formal arguments about material and design up/out to the social /shalom implications of the work in context ... a la Bourraiud and Loraine Leeson and co. And this would make the Christian contribution to interfaith dialogue via, through or with the arts a distinct one.
JE: I particularly liked this quote from the essay on Torrance that you sent over:
"... human persons are not blank slates to be socially programmed as we wish, nor is the created order passive material that we can arrange as our needs and socioeconomic goals dictate. There is an order already present in reality, created into it by ‘the ultimate controlling ground of order’ prior to our ordering activities. Our task is to create cultural/conceptual tools that enable us to discern that order so that we may cooperate with it, not impose ourselves upon it. This is simply Torrance’s theological science applied to the social and material world."
I've tried to explore what I think this sense of partnership with God might involve in an outline theology of work. Underpinning this is the idea that I first came across through Dorothy L. Sayers in 'Mind of the Maker', but which is unpacked more fully by Paul Ricoeur, that humanity is made in the image of God because we enjoy the power of creativity.
“… according to Ricouer, human being is possibility: “it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3: 2). Human existence is “forward-orientated,” constantly projecting itself in front of itself towards a possible way of being. Possibility is therefore intimately connected to the imagination which projects it, and to time, specifically the future. Human being, then, is not limited to the here and now, that is, to actuality … there is a “surplus of being” to human existence, and this surplus of being is nothing other than possibility. We are not as we shall be. Thanks to this surplus of being – possibility – humanity can hope.”
Kevin Vanhoozer notes that: “In his essay “The Image of God and the Epic of Man,” Ricoeur suggests that humans are in the image of God because they too enjoy the power of creativity. Thus the image of God, creativity, gives rise to the images of man, in the sense of the images that man makes. These images constitute “the sum total of the ways in which man projects his vision on things.”” Ricoeur suggests that through our imagination we can determine (God created) possibilities and define the (God created) essence of all that is around us. Essence, in this sense, is similar to Gerard Manley Hopkins' idea of 'inscape'.
Possibilities are, Ricoeur argues, real, although unactualised and it is through imagination that actualisation occurs and with it self-understanding:“The point of phenomenology is to describe the meaning of “lived experience” rather than its factuality. Husserl calls the meaning of a thing its “essence” (eidos). We come to know the essence of a thing by exploring its various possibilities. These possibilities are explored in the workshop of the imagination. Ricoeur notes of phenomenology that “its favourite technique is the method of imaginative variations. It is in varying the possible realizations of the same essential structure that the fundamental articulation can be made manifest.” Husserl’s example of the meaning or “essence” of a table is helpful. By “free imaginative variation” we can alter its form, its color, its material. By then looking to see what there is in common among the various examples, we can determine its essence. We can also imagine possible uses of a table: we can eat a meal on it; we can write letters or do a jigsaw puzzle on it; we can stand on it to fix the lightbulb etc. These variations are not present, but they are imagined as possible. Phenomenological description is thus closely related to fiction and the realm of as if. As far as phenomenology is concerned, we may define the meaning or “essence” of something as the imagined ensemble of its possibilities”.
We see this happening too in Genesis 2. 18-25, where God brings all the animals in the Garden of Eden to Adam for him to name and, at the end of this naming process, Adam recognises Eve as his soulmate. The key to this story is that names in ancient times described the essence of the thing that was named. So Adam looks and listens in order to understand the essence of each different creature and then creates a name that reflects that essence. By so doing, he also sees what is different between himself and the creatures, so that when he sees Eve he is able to immediately recognise her as his soulmate.
This is also what I understand the Bible as doing for us. The Bible is a diverse book. In fact, it is more of a library than a book; a library of 66 different books containing biography, drama, history, law, letters, prophecy, poetry and proverbs. Mike Riddell calls it "a collection of bits" assembled to form God's home page while Mark Oakley uses a more poetic image in writing of the Bible as "the best example of a collage of God that we have." They use these images because the Bible contains, as Oakley writes, "different views, experiences, beliefs and prayers" drawn "from disparate era, cultures and authors" which are not systematic in their portrayal of God. As Riddell states: "The bits don't fit together very well - sometimes they even seem to be contradictory. Stories, poems, teachings, records, events and miracles rub up against each other. They come from all over the place, and span at least 4,000 years of history."
The point is that the Bible gives us many different perspectives on God and on human beings. These different perspectives produce new ways of thinking, seeing, imagining and creating in us. As we see God and human beings from different perspectives and through fresh eyes we are opened up to new possibilities. As we see and imagine possibilities we have the same experience as Adam and come to know ourselves better - we see the essence of who we are - and we change to become more like the people that God created us to be.
This is living creatively, living artistically. The art of life is to be open to the diversity of life in order to see life's possibilities from different perspectives and, as we compare and contrast these possibilities, to identify the essence of who we have been created by God to be and to become. By understanding ourselves and by responding to the essence of others, we are able to develop and use our talents for the enrichment of other people's lives. In doing so, we express the fact of being creative creatures made in the image of our Creator God.
I think all this connects well with your description of Torrance's argument; Triune God, contingent creation, priestly Human. Gunton's open transcendentals (and other Trinitarian patterns - Sayers, Schumacher etc.) would then help in exploring the essence of each thing that is around us; including artworks. To critique artworks in terms of relationality, perichoresis and substantiality would indeed be a fascinating and distinctively Christian approach to art criticism and would extend Bourraiud's Relational Aesthetics considerably.
SS: Yes, all true, and some of my thinking on this enhanced by a couple of books by Timothy Gorringe, and the collaborative/partnering with God in Eden was touched on by David Thistlewaite in his `Art of God'.
"As Richard Bauckham has stated, the Christian is thrust into a “painful contradiction between the promise and present reality”:
I think Colin Gunton made some remarks on this in light of Romans 8, and in the framework of his talking about `catharsis' and Trinitarian Aesthetics (a lecture he gave at Kings of which I got a reprint somehow .... and used for `the light by which we see' included in `Crying for a Vision' and is borne out by much of below ...)
“The contradiction arises from a hope for the world, for the whole of this worldly reality, which it exposes in all its god-forsakenness. The Christian’s suffering is thus a loving solidarity with the whole of the suffering creation … and a hopeful solidarity in expectation of the transformation of all creation … Love and hope for the world involve the Christian in a movement towards world-transformation which has two moments: critical opposition and creative expectation …. In the first moment, hope liberates the Christian from all accommodation to the status quo and sets him critically against it … In the second moment, it gives rise to attempts to change the world in the direction of its promised transformation, imaginatively grasping and realising the objective possibilities in the present which conform most closely to the coming Kingdom … .”
Yep, so the `imaginative grasping' probably includes the groaning of Romans 8.
“… according to Ricouer, human being is possibility: “it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3: 2). Human existence is “forward-orientated,” constantly projecting itself in front of itself towards a possible way of being."
I once had a coffee mug that was imprinted with a Ricouer slogan: `If you want to change a people's obedience, you must first change their imagination.' which, I think brings art to the front of the conversation about community and change......
“The point of phenomenology is to describe the meaning of “lived experience” rather than its factuality. Husserl calls the meaning of a thing its “essence” (eidos). We come to know the essence of a thing by exploring its various possibilities. These possibilities are explored in the workshop of the imagination. Ricoeur notes of phenomenology that “its favourite technique is the method of imaginative variations. It is in varying the possible realizations of the same essential structure that the fundamental articulation can be made manifest.” Husserl’s example of the meaning or “essence” of a table is helpful. By “free imaginative variation” we can alter its form, its color, its material. By then looking to see what there is in common among the various examples, we can determine its essence. We can also imagine possible uses of a table: we can eat a meal on it; we can write letters or do a jigsaw puzzle on it; we can stand on it to fix the lightbulb etc. These variations are not present, but they are imagined as possible. Phenomenological description is thus closely related to fiction and the realm of as if. As far as phenomenology is concerned, we may define the meaning or “essence” of something as the imagined ensemble of its possibilities”.
"This is also what I understand the Bible as doing for us. The Bible is a diverse book."
Polyphony. and the ideas of Mikhail Bahktin. Have you read any Bahktin on dialogism and the novel? Also, some people have done work on Bahktin's ideas about culture and implications for the Bible (or our reading of it).
JE: "I think C Gunton made some remarks on this in light of Rom 8, and in the framework of his talking about `catharsis' and Trinitarian Aesthetics (a lecture he gave at Kings I got a reprint of somehow.....and used for `the light by which we see' included in `Crying for a Vision.' and is borne out by much of below...."
Gunton stated in The Actuality of Atonement that “the victory of Jesus stands behind; the final revelation lies ahead [and] it is the gift of the Spirit to enable anticipations of the final victory to take place in our time”. As a result, “the Christian community lives neither in the sphere of the lie nor in the kingdom of heaven where we shall know as we are known, but ‘between the times’”. This ‘in between’ time, David Ford suggests in Self and Salvation, is eucharistic time: “In between the Last Supper and the expected consummation signified by the Kingdom of God there is history punctuated by obedience to the command to ‘Do this’. This is eucharistic time – time understood and shaped through the reality celebrated repeatedly in the eucharist.” All this is where the title of my blog derives from.
"Yep so the `imaginative grasping' probably includes the groaning of Rom 8"
Yes, and the resurrection; as Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.”
"I once had a coffee mug that was imprinted with a Ricouer slogan: `If you want to change a people's obedience, you must first change their imagination.' which, I think brings art to the front of the conversation about community and change..."
Fully agree. Moltmann also says that we have to perceive God’s activity in the gift of the future and in the stream of new possibilities.
"Polyphony. and the ideas of Mikhail Bahktin.Have you read any B on dialogism and the novel.....also, some people have done work on Bahktin's ideas about culture and implications for the Bible (or our reading of it....) ??"
I've read a bit on polyphony in relation to Solzhenitsyn (I think it must have been Krasnov on Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky - very interesting stuff and very relevant to the arguments I've been making about the structure and form of scripture) but I haven't read Bahktin. What would you recommend?
SS: Here are all the pdfs in my Bahktin and bible sub folder. I've got a couple of his titles, and I've read some things on Bahktin and cultural criticism/carnival etc. I'm still coming to understand him.
JE: Thanks for this. Have just skim read the Bahktin and the Bible pdf which is one of those 'ohmigod, someone is articulating what I have been thinking' moments. Much of what I was writing in my posts on 'The Bible: Open or Closed?' (click here, here, here, here, here) seems to be expressed more clearly in this article which I'll clearly need to read more closely together with the other Bahktin files. Having read the Krasnov book, I've clearly come across Bahktin's ideas but without having incorporated them directly into my own thinking and writing on these issues. So, am very grateful to have these essays to fill in this gap.
SS: Excellent. I've long been a fan of the polyphonic/mosaic approach to `the Bible' as a whole ... as was the author of Hebrews ...
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Noah and the Whale - 2 Bodies 1 Heart.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Hope
The faith that I love best, says God, is hope.
Faith doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising
I am so resplendent in my creation. . . .
That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.
Charity says God, that doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising.
These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another.
How could they not love their brothers.
How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by.
And my son had such love for them. . . .
But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.
Even me.
That is surprising.
That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.
That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning. That is surprising and it’s by far the greatest marvel of our grace.
And I’m surprised by it myself.
And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.
Charles Péguy
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Bruce Cockburn & Toumani Diabate - World Of Wonders.
Faith doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising
I am so resplendent in my creation. . . .
That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.
Charity says God, that doesn’t surprise me.
It’s not surprising.
These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another.
How could they not love their brothers.
How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by.
And my son had such love for them. . . .
But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.
Even me.
That is surprising.
That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.
That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning. That is surprising and it’s by far the greatest marvel of our grace.
And I’m surprised by it myself.
And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.
Charles Péguy
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Bruce Cockburn & Toumani Diabate - World Of Wonders.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Modern Catholic novels
I'm currently reading Marian Crowe's Aiming at Heaven, Getting the Earth which is an excellent analysis of four contemporary Catholic novelists - Alice Thomas Ellis, David Lodge, Sara Maitland and Piers Paul Read - demonstrating that the demise of the Catholic novel has not yet occurred in the UK, at least.
Crowe also provides a useful summary of the beginnings of the Modern Catholic Novel in the French Catholic Renaissance. She writes:
"An impressive number of intellectuals and cultural figures followed the same pattern as Barbey d'Aurevilly. Having abandoned their childhood faith and become atheists in their youth, they reconverted to Catholicism in their adulthood. Among them were Paul Claudel, who wrote poetry and plays stressing sacrifice, chivalry and nobility; Léon Bloy, whose novels expressing the doctrine of the communion of the saints called attention to the poor as an integral part of that communion and depicted poverty as both a social evil and source of santification; and Charles Péguy, an early socialist, who, like Bloy, stressed the importance of the poor and seemed to embody the best ideals of both the republican and religious traditions of France. Bloy's novels made a strong critique of the hypocrisy and materialism of many nominal Catholics, a theme that would be repeated in future Catholic novels. Jacques Maritain, who was raised as a liberal Protestant, converted to Catholicism under the influence of Bloy and interpreted the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas for the modern world. These converts were leading figures in the revitalized Catholicism of the early twentieth century ..."
Crowe then describes the work of François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, the greatest novelists of the French Catholic Renaissance, before surveying the work of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Muriel Spark to give the background in the UK for the contemporary Catholic novels of the four novelists analysed in this book.
All of which is useful preparation for the Big Picture 2, a Diocese of Chelmsford Eastertide course which starts this Tuesday evening in Waltham Forest and in which I share the leadership with Philip Ritchie and Paul Trathen. How can Christians respond to controversial art: protest or engagement? How have Christian artists expressed their faith through popular culture? How has Christianity influenced popular culture? How does popular culture portray or critique Christianity? These are some of the questions the course will explore using multi media resources with plenty of opportunity for discussion and practical response.
In one of my sessions I use the thoughts of US Catholic novelists, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, to introduce ideas on how to communicate Christianity in popular culture. O’Connor wrote that:
“When you can assume your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of taking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
The problem as O’Connor sees it is that non-Christians do not recognise as sin those things that Christians view as sin. The whole concept of sin itself may be anathema to those who are not Christians and they may accept as completely normal things that Christians view as sinful. So she wrote that “the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.” In order to make things which seem normal to many appear as sinful to your audience you need to use the shock tactics of distortion and exaggeration, crisis and catastrophe.
Percy writes about there being two stages in non-Christian audiences becoming aware of grace. First, there is an experience of awakening in which a character in a novel (and through that character, the audience) sees the inadequacy of the life that he or she has been leading. This is a moment of epiphany or revelation about themselves; a moment in which they either realise their depravity or their potential for grace. This is what O’Connor was talking about when she said that the job of the Christian novelist is to help the audience see activity that they regard as normal as a distortion. Such an experience may then lead on to the second stage of hearing and responding to the grace of God in Christ.
What O’Connor and Percy both seem to suggest is that their characters and their audience cannot see the grace of God without the first stage of becoming aware of the inadequacy of the current lives.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woven Hand - Tin Finger.
Crowe also provides a useful summary of the beginnings of the Modern Catholic Novel in the French Catholic Renaissance. She writes:
"An impressive number of intellectuals and cultural figures followed the same pattern as Barbey d'Aurevilly. Having abandoned their childhood faith and become atheists in their youth, they reconverted to Catholicism in their adulthood. Among them were Paul Claudel, who wrote poetry and plays stressing sacrifice, chivalry and nobility; Léon Bloy, whose novels expressing the doctrine of the communion of the saints called attention to the poor as an integral part of that communion and depicted poverty as both a social evil and source of santification; and Charles Péguy, an early socialist, who, like Bloy, stressed the importance of the poor and seemed to embody the best ideals of both the republican and religious traditions of France. Bloy's novels made a strong critique of the hypocrisy and materialism of many nominal Catholics, a theme that would be repeated in future Catholic novels. Jacques Maritain, who was raised as a liberal Protestant, converted to Catholicism under the influence of Bloy and interpreted the philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas for the modern world. These converts were leading figures in the revitalized Catholicism of the early twentieth century ..."
Crowe then describes the work of François Mauriac and Georges Bernanos, the greatest novelists of the French Catholic Renaissance, before surveying the work of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Muriel Spark to give the background in the UK for the contemporary Catholic novels of the four novelists analysed in this book.
All of which is useful preparation for the Big Picture 2, a Diocese of Chelmsford Eastertide course which starts this Tuesday evening in Waltham Forest and in which I share the leadership with Philip Ritchie and Paul Trathen. How can Christians respond to controversial art: protest or engagement? How have Christian artists expressed their faith through popular culture? How has Christianity influenced popular culture? How does popular culture portray or critique Christianity? These are some of the questions the course will explore using multi media resources with plenty of opportunity for discussion and practical response.
In one of my sessions I use the thoughts of US Catholic novelists, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, to introduce ideas on how to communicate Christianity in popular culture. O’Connor wrote that:
“When you can assume your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of taking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
The problem as O’Connor sees it is that non-Christians do not recognise as sin those things that Christians view as sin. The whole concept of sin itself may be anathema to those who are not Christians and they may accept as completely normal things that Christians view as sinful. So she wrote that “the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural.” In order to make things which seem normal to many appear as sinful to your audience you need to use the shock tactics of distortion and exaggeration, crisis and catastrophe.
Percy writes about there being two stages in non-Christian audiences becoming aware of grace. First, there is an experience of awakening in which a character in a novel (and through that character, the audience) sees the inadequacy of the life that he or she has been leading. This is a moment of epiphany or revelation about themselves; a moment in which they either realise their depravity or their potential for grace. This is what O’Connor was talking about when she said that the job of the Christian novelist is to help the audience see activity that they regard as normal as a distortion. Such an experience may then lead on to the second stage of hearing and responding to the grace of God in Christ.
What O’Connor and Percy both seem to suggest is that their characters and their audience cannot see the grace of God without the first stage of becoming aware of the inadequacy of the current lives.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woven Hand - Tin Finger.
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