Not Western, But So What?

The roll call of Christian poets is mighty impressive. Most of us are familiar with some of the Big Names of the English language tradition, such as John Milton, George Herbert, John Donne, T. S. Eliot, and so forth, but the tradition is much wider than this, with lesser known writers who deserve reading. This list would include the likes of Thomas Traherne, Christopher Smart, Elizabeth Jennings, and Jack Clemo.

Blind Cornish and Christian poet Jack Clemo

Beyond the English language, you can find Christian poets who have been influential in their own national and theological spheres, such as the Dutchman Jacobus Revius, the French Huguenot Salluste du Bartas, the Danish Lutheran N. F. S. Grundtvig, or the Polish Czeslaw Milosz.

One of the first biggies of Christian poetry was the early church poet Ephrem of Syria. Ephrem lived in the 4th century and was highly prolific (as so many church authors were back then), churning out hundreds of texts of poems, hymns, sermons, and biblical commentary. His writing was popular and translated into surrounding languages, such as Coptic (Egyptian), Armenian, and Georgian (as in near Russia, not near Alabama).  One of the themes of the early church was Christ as victor, as warrior, and Ephrem exemplifies this in some of his work. Notice in this  prose translation of some opening lines how Christ fights Death like a mighty hero:

"Death trampled our Lord underfoot but he in his turn treated death as highroad for his own feet.  He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself.  Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.

“Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed; but the same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death.  Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain.  It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.

“Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld.  This chariot was the body which he received from the virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong room and scattered all its treasure.”

The emphasis here is on hardcore doctrine (the incarnation, the atonement, our salvation) in highly charged, exciting poetic imagery. When we think of the tradition of Christian poetry, it is good to have some knowledge of the English tradition, as referenced above, but it’s also good to expand beyond that, forming an historical awareness of Christian poetry. This is good for us for several reasons. One, it helps smash the chronological snobbery that we are more and more enveloped by; two, it expands our access to profound spiritual resources that can enhance our own devotional lives.

Christ the Conqueror

I’ve been trying to track down a quotation given on numerous web pages regarding Ephrem, including Wikipedia, but haven’t found it. The quotation is this: Ephrem is, according to one writer, “The greatest poet of the patristic age and, perhaps, the only theologian-poet to rank beside Dante.” — Robert Murray. I have no way of judging the truth of this, but I’m sure one could mount such a defense of Ephrem’s importance.

Wait. There was a huge Christian church in Syria as big as anything in the West?

Well, there was. Syria was once a hotbed of vital Christian culture, with poets and theologians of great learning influencing the early church all over Europe and the Mediterranean. For instance, the now relatively famous Irish monastics were in direct contact with this Syrian Christianity, and a lot of the Celtic interlace on texts like the famous Book of Kells derived some of their inspiration from Syriac (and Egyptian Christian) versions and were not totally indigenous to the Irish.

So what happened to Ephrem and his ilk? What happened to this thriving, influential branch of Christianity, and why didn’t it hang around like the church in the West?

Well, there was this thing in the seventh century called Islam . . . .

To find out what happened to the ancient Syrian church, read this.

Just Listen to Your Heart

It is a temptation to take an important work by C. S. Lewis and call it a tour de force because you will end up calling nearly everything he wrote a tour de force. But in all honesty not everything C. S. Lewis wrote works equally well. And sometimes even Jack nodded. For instance, no one would argue that Lewis was a great poet, even though that’s what he wanted to be when first starting out. And it would be pretty hard to argue that The Pilgrim’s Regress is one of the best things Lewis wrote. Though The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has some fun stuff in it, it can never rank at the top of the Narnia books. And some of the occasional essays are too tied up with contemporary issues and arguments to speak with the same irenic urgency that Lewis’ most important works do (like The Abolition of Man--if anything, this work is even more desperately true regarding 21st century American education than mid- 20th century British education).

But The Screwtape Letters? Well, that is a TOUR DE FORCE. There are many good things one can say about this book, with its incisive examination of the way we poor mortals constantly fool ourselves into thinking we are pretty decent people. One particular aspect of this great bit of epistolary genius is the way Lewis examines the rightful place of clear thinking in the cosmic scheme of redemption. I mean, we are talking about demons, and salvation, and eternal souls, and God’s love, and sex. And right in the middle of these really really big issues, Lewis keeps returning to the importance of clear thinking--or rather the absence of it in the modern age when it comes to “spirituality.”

Uncle Screwtape tells Wormwood in the very first letter to keep the patient away from argumentation because logic, definition, well stated propositions and so forth no will not in fact clinch a solid atheism:

“But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you supposed argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as a result of a chain of reasoning.”

Lewis indicates that most people in 1942 had already become trained by mass media and modern education to think in terms of impressions and passing subjective states of moods as the defining condition of real life. Don’t believe your lying brain; believe in yourself, your heart, your Oprah-shaped hopes and dreams. Clear thinking (not the “critical thinking” pabulum currently so au courant in academia) helps kill this kind of ego centered stance.

Screwtape also offers this bit of advice: “Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.”

Don’t define things. Don’t categorize. Don’t seek out cause and effect. Don’t box me in with your reductive petty ideas and logic chopping. Systematic theology is for losers. Didn’t you read the latest book on church growth? That book you have in your hands--yeah, The Imitation of Christ--man, that’s OLD. It can’t have anything to say to me. Here, read this book on prayers from twitter. And stop using those old fashioned theological words. They are such a turnoff.

This continues throughout the letters. The advice tends to center around a few key strategies: keep the patient in the stream of things (especially through mass media), keep him constantly monitoring his state of mind, keep him focused on the momentary as The Real. Above all, avoid things that might lead him to think about ultimate ends, final purposes. At one point about halfway through the letters, Screwtape’s facade of care for his nephew slips when he learns that Wormwood inadvertently let the patient have two real pleasures--a good book and a nice country walk. This practically led the patient to a second, deeper conversion because the patient was taken outside of himself to think about the ultimate end of things--which is the love of God.

The depth Lewis takes us to in this book comes, partly, from showing the linkage of logic and love. Clear thinking-- clarifying  definitions, accurate comparisons, historically shaped perspectives, and so forth--do not sever us from God, from beauty, from deepest, richest emotions. Clear thinking moves out of the way the tiresome ego and its enervating fears about life so that we can finally see Reality in all of its sublime, heartbreaking beauty.

Logic does not cancel out love for the Christian. It brings us to an attentiveness that silences the constant but ephemeral propaganda that each one of us is the center of the cosmos. For me, this is one of the things that makes The Screwtape Letters such a powerful and convicting piece of writing.

Reaching for the Stars

Take a look at the YouTube clip regarding the new movie by Christopher Nolen. Forget about the movie itself for a minute. Pay attention instead to the exalted rhetoric of sublime human exploration and achievement as the ultimate identity marker of what it means to be a fully realized human being.

“We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments, these moments when we dared to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known, to count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we’ve lost all that, and perhaps  we’ve just forgotten that we’re still pioneers, that we’ve barely begun, and that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, that our destiny lies above us.”

This is nonsense, but it is surprising nonsense.

It is nonsense because the “we have defined ourselves” sounds like human beings have defined themselves as technological overachievers from the beginning. But overcoming the impossible in the sense given in this clip is an ideology born in the Enlightenment, or thereabouts. People like Francis Bacon* and his heirs thought that with the right materialist manipulation of nature (and of human beings, eventually), we overcomers would overcome nature and rule like gods. (The answer to this blasphemic hubris is Gulliver’s Travels and Frankenstein.)

Swiftian scientist extracting sunlight from cucumbers

It is surprising nonsense, because we are well into the second decade of the 21st century, and we are nowhere near the Gernsbackian utopia envisaged by atheists who idolize scientism and its promise of endless progress. The world might have some pretty sophisticated technology, but human beings are as a whole still in pretty bad shape. Our greatest accomplishments don’t seem to fix the problems with crime, with civil wars, with collapsing infrastructures, with poor education, with shattered families and the attendant pathologies of crime and drug addiction. It is surprising that anyone could still say with a straight face that our destiny, our ultimate satisfying identity, is in space exploration.

When it comes to technology, we are in a sense superior to previous generations, and our best inventions (maybe) are still ahead of us, though superior ways of delivering pornography doesn’t seem like much of an improvement. Breaking barriers in terms of curing cancer is impressive and humane. Breaking barriers in terms of bigger and bigger houses (on the moon, maybe) with bigger and bigger closets is less so.

"I say, old chum! Does this thingy show the topless girls from Mardi Gras?"

Here is an odd fact--odd from the perspective of a secularist ideologue who believes in inevitable progress: human nature doesn’t change. What Plato, what Shakespeare, what Edwin Arlington Robinson has to say about being human is still as relevant as it has ever been.

According to the New Testament, the proudest human achievement is to repent. In an unintended way, the Interstellar voice-over gets it right--our destiny lies above us, just as Aeschylus, Milton, Faulkner, and , oh, I don’t know--Isaiah?--have been telling us.

Maybe this movie will be good. Nolen has made some entertaining movies. But it will only be a pleasantly diverting fiction, if the movie is nothing other than a celebration of Promethean Man, who is in fact the little child who says, “I can do it by myself!”

* I am probably being a bit unfair to Francis Bacon, but history is uncanny in its twists and reversals. Bacon wanted empiricism to serve humans, helping them to become noble and religious. Instead, it brought about the horror of things like hyper-efficient Nazi death camps and transhumanism