Who we are and what we love

Our Mission:  To explore, evaluate, and pass on the Great Conversation of Western Civilization by way of a Christian view of life and the world.

Our faculty, board, students, and supporters are a group of academics, artists, and businessmen (many more than one, and Dan here is all three!) who are concerned that the Christian Faith just doesn’t seem to carry much weight in our culture these days.  Arguments that used to sound reasonable and compelling now seem to fall on deaf ears -- in government, the arts, poplar culture, academia, the business world, even the Church...  How do we regain a hearing for the Faith?  Christians are pretty good at pointing out that everything is falling apart, but what we may need to do is to paint the watching world a picture of the Good again -- to show how beautiful and attractive the Good can be.  Make people want to do it rather than evil because by comparison evil is so clumsy and thread-bare.  For example, it may be that before we can gain a hearing again for the biblical definition of marriage, we first need to find some example of a man leading and a woman following that everyone would agree is beautiful and delightful and worthy of praise.  If it is hard to imagine an example like that, then you see my point.  Have you ever seen two really good waltzers?  They move like one person.  It is far easier to make a biblical case seem plausible when we can show beautiful results of its implementation.

For centuries the Good has been mediated to the next generation through the great literature, art, architecture and music of our ancestors.  So, one of the best ways to keep future generations from taking the Faith seriously is to disconnect young people from their cultural inheritance.  Old Uncle Screwtape would probably advise “just don’t let them see great works -- or if you can’t keep them from seeing, at least keep them from understanding them.”  For a long time now, the universities have been rejecting first, the biblical God, but then 2nd, the Western art, music, and literature that came about partly as a result of faith in that God.  

And it is into this university system that we Christian parents send our young students -- students who have grown up in the Church and been taught in Christian private schools and we are seeing studies now that 50% of these Christian students will lose their faith by the time they finish their undergrad degrees.  

At the Center we draw attention again to our rich and dynamic culture -- in hopes that people will fall in love again with it.  We want students who can stand up against the pressures of this fallen world - not just to say no to partying, but to know how Nietzsche’s take on Dionysus encourages those parties... we want adult students to know not just that Impressionists were painters of pretty pictures, but to know how to read Impressionist paintings, and Greek epics, and Shakespeare’s plays with a Christian mind. These ancestors of ours are, like the descendants of Abraham, a scurvy lot...but they are OUR scurvy lot.  They are OUR parents and grandparents, and we are commanded to honor our parents -- and they have left us an attic and a storage locker FULL of marvelous things they have made and collected - cathedrals, symphonies, novels, paintings, films, statues, poems -- things that Edmund Burke said furnished the wardrobe of our moral imagination.  Those who know these works have larger souls - they have more to enjoy and communicate to their peers and the next generation, and by knowing them, they are more likely to be able to see through the flashy, trashy, superficial, and sentimental that every generation produces, and the present one in spades.  This experience can get us out of ourselves and open our eyes to the full spectrum of the human condition.  CS Lewis said we should read 2 old books for every new one because while every generation makes errors, not every generation makes the SAME errors -- so while we scoff at the blindspots of our ancestors, we no doubt have blindspots of our own that they didn’t have and could teach us about.

At the Center, we don’t see the student as the client who chooses the things he wants to study according to his own interests -- rather we see the wisdom of the ages as the client, and the students as gifted and chosen means by which that client wisdom might be passed down through the ages.  The Center for Western Studies exists to reacquaint this generation and the next with its own culture inheritance.  

I suppose it is possible to argue that Milton's Paradise Lost is the greatest Protestant epic ever written. The reasons for this seem obvious to anyone reading it--the grandest theme possible, the sublime imagery, the baroque syntax (usually compared to Bach's organ music), the classical references, the eloquent speeches, and so on.

However--I would suggest Spenser's Faerie Queene might possibly be even better. Milton seems a bit cold and distant to me, and the sections of the poem dealing with God and Jesus just don't work. I don't buy the problem with Satan (that he is inadvertently the hero of the poem), but neither am I swayed emotionally by a lot of the rest of the poem. About the only part that really works for me is the before and after picture of Adam and Eve (I love the scene where the elephants entertain Adam and Eve).

In contrast, Spenser's poem seems much more alive. It is a wonderful straddling of Medieval allegory and Protestant emblemizing, and the raggedy, unique rhyme scheme is for me actually more engaging than the rather stiff stateliness of Milton's poem.

This certainly does not mean that Paradise Lost is not any good. I mean that, if I had a chance to read one or the other, I think I might grab Spenser. Readers today, especially Protestants who want to be culturally engaged beyond mere political involvement, ought to read in both works, every once in a while, every few years, making both of them part of the equipment of a well-stocked Christian mind.

Although it is easy to get too obsessed with C. S. Lewis (Lewis Study Bible, anyone?), the man was obviously a prodigy in the way he embodied the culture of the Western tradition, and reading him almost always pays dividends.

One way he can help modern readers is through his writings on fantasy literature and "children's literature." Lewis, in thought and in deed, reflects an approach to literature that connects us with the deepest well-springs of the Western tradtion while also speaking cogently about modern concerns (such as how science fiction can do things that other genres can't). Some short essays of his are worth looking at (though the stories in this selection are not among his best).

Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

Life and Work

Bill is a coal miner.  His father was a coal miner, and his grandfather was too.  Here’s a picture of him coming out of the mine one day, with his fellow workers in their hard hats, grinning, looking forward to lunch.

But last year, Bill turned 22, and began to think that the mines were not as safe as they should be for the men who worked in them.  He thought that if they were designed differently, he might be able to reduce the number of cave ins, so he began to think like an engineer, and learned quickly that he didn’t know what he needed to know about mine design, so he decided to start an engineering degree at the local vo-tech college.  He took out a few student loans, and finished his degree nights while working a few shifts to make ends meet.

Once finished, he worked in the engineering office as an apprentice for a couple of years, and eventually was able to craft some designs of his own that were indeed very helpful for the company, and as a result, he was hired as an engineer (which paid, by the way, a salary higher than the hourly he drew as a miner).  As the company implemented his designs, there were fewer problems, and the company turned a greater profit.  As a result, he was given a bonus from the owners, and even some stock in the company.  

Later, with his own salary, he purchased more stock in the company, as he wanted to invest something back into the business that had given him a livelihood.  (He could have invested in pork bellies, or aerospace, and might have made more money in the long run, but he didn’t know anything about them, and his heart was in mining).  So after awhile, he found that he owned a good portion of the company that he was working for, and as a result, as the company prospered, so did Bill.

Here’s a picture of Bill at age 62, leaving from the board room after discussing with the board the best designs for some new mines.  Mines they were able to purchase partly because Bill had made the company more efficient.  The company’s profits were spent opening these new mines, hiring more miners, and raising the hourly rates of the best miners (they wanted to keep their best producers happy).

Let’s compare the two pictures.  The first is of Bill, dirty but grinning, wearing a blue collar and helmet; a worker.  And the second was of Bill, clean, wearing a white collar, and looking for all the world like “management.” 

But it is the same person.  He was only a member of a “class” of people when you see his life in still photographs.  If you see his life as a movie, day to day, his life is quite different.

Why should we be told in our country that “The rich are getting richer” or that “the corporations are taking the profits” as though these things are bad things?  The only way the rich get richer is if the business is profitable.  The only way the business is profitable is if they have product and buyers.  The only way they have product and buyers is if the company is producing, and the only way the company can produce is if jobs are assigned and each does his job well.  The CEO all the way to the least experienced miner.  And the only way that you can hire CEOs OR miners is if you pay them a salary commensurate with their abilities.  That means that some will be paid more than others.  If some are paid more than others, it means by necessity that there will be the well-paid (rich) and the lesser-paid (poor).  There is nothing insulting, sinful, degrading, or cruel about paying one more than the other.  Bill was paid to dig coal by the hour when he started out, and was paid to design mines for coal workers to work in, and the two amounts were not the same.  The difference in pay was simply a designation of the fact that the design work was considered more valuable by the hour than the digging (rather like a pound of diamonds are worth more than a pound of mulch).  This was the result of the kind of gifts being exercised, and the rarity of those gifts.  It really is the result of supply and demand:  the supply of coal miners is larger than the supply of mine engineers, and the supply of those who have the ability to run the company are rarer still.  The greater the supply, the lower the salary one can require.  Likewise the demand:  there is a demand for coal miners, otherwise none would be hired.  It is not the kindness or cruelty of the owner of the mines that many or few jobs are offered to miners -- the demand for the coal dictates how much coal he needs to produce, and that dictates how many miners he needs to produce that amount.  If the demand for coal suddenly went down, he would make less money with the company, and there would be no need for all the workers.  On the other hand, if the demand goes up, the owner needs to hire more workers, and as the demand for workers goes up, so does the pay for a miner (meaning that the worker benefits when the company does well).  If the owner were to keep all the profits for himself, he would not be putting the money into the pay for the miners, and they would not produce the amount of coal that he needs for the demand.  This (like another still photograph of one moment in time) LOOKS possible, but it is only possible for a few moments before the company falls apart.  The way the owner makes money is not by hoarding profits, it is selling the coal that he pays the miners to collect.  If they don’t produce, he doesn’t have any profits to “keep.”  If the demand for an excellent CEO or a trained mine engineer is high, there will be competition for their services at more than one company.  The market-rate for hiring someone with that rare set of skills will go up, and the miner is a fool if he complains that those with greater or rarer skills are making more money than he is.  It is part and parcel of the same system that pays him for the work he is doing.  Destroy or interrupt the market’s influences on others and you will soon find that your own position is destroyed or interrupted as well.  It is all the same piece of cloth.

In one picture, Bill looks like “the poor” in another he looks like “the rich” -- but he is the same person.  Liberals are accused of attacking “the rich” to protect “the poor” - as though they are protecting Bill the coal miner from Bill the stock-purchasing mine engineer.  But they are the same person.  What conservatives are actually trying to do is to remember that life is not a still photograph but a moving, living, breathing day-to-day life where people are in flux, and because of this, they think that the best way to proceed is to protect freedom for each and every person regardless of position when the picture is taken.  This is the freedom that Bill benefitted from.

Attacking the rich to serve the poor only makes sense if you see the world in categories suggested in still photographs.  The attack takes all those in one category and forces them to help those in the other.  If you see life more as a movie, the result of this attack is only to discourage Bill from studying, improving his gifts and offerings, and contributing more to the need of the company and the community.  The result is that Bill remains a miner all his life (which is not bad in and of itself) but because of that, he doesn’t improve the mines, which in turn leads to more injuries and deaths.  It also leads to lower profits for the company in the long run which means that they are not able to buy more mines and employ more workers, and the miners that ARE working are paid less than they would have been.  How is this better in any meaningful way?

This is the reason we have a stagnant economy right now.  

ps - some would say that I am not an economist.  They would be right.  But what about my parable here is wrong?  It may be an oversimplification of more complex issues, but I would rather have you think of it as principled.  Where are the principles wrong?  I will consider any argument on that level.  Arguments that suggest simply that I have neglected the complications of economics because I am not an economist must first address how those added complications oppose or change the principles I am offering before they will carry any weight with an honest man.  

A Quote from Paul Shorey

"...the good teacher will almost in the same breath translate a great poetic sentence, bring out its relations to the whole of which it is a part, make its musical rhythm felt by appropriate declamation, explain a historical or an antiquarian allusion, call attention to a dialectic form, put a question about a peculiar use of the optative, compare the imagery with similar figures of speech in ancient and modern poetry, and use the whole as a text for a little discourse on the difference between the classical and the modern or romantic spirit; so that you shall not know whether he is teaching science or art, language or literature, grammar, rhetoric, psychology, or sociology, because he is really teaching the elements and indispensable prerequisites of all."

~Paul Shorey, "The Case for Classics," in Frank Kelsey's Latin and Greek in American Education, 1927.

On Love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

What genius to create a love triangle that serves as a love circle! Three people each loves the next: A loves B, B loves C, and C loves A! Impossible you say? Not if A is a girl posing as a boy. Viola can love the Duke, who loves Olivia, but Olivia can close the circle and love Viola because Viola appears in the guise of the man, Cessario. This makes for some wonderful comedy both onstage and off, that is, among the critics.

Recently it has become fashionable to think in ideological terms about Shakespeare’s plays, often reinterpreting characters and situations with a homosexual or feminist slant (among others). Twelfth Night, with its “gender-bending,” is ripe fruit for such interpretations.

The feminist complaint, that women have no significant power unless it is through a man, finds traction in Twelfth Night in two ways. First, the fact that Viola is powerless and insignificant until she takes up the livery of a man, and second that Olivia, empowered now as head of her household, scorns the Duke’s proposals and resists the attempts by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Malvolio to tame her to their wishes. She then pursues her own love interest, and her heart leads her toward Cessario.

The homosexual perspective, that men and women have latent tendencies toward loving their own genders, finds support in Olivia’s open love for Cessario (not knowing she is a girl), and simultaneously the sparks of attraction the Duke seems to feel toward Cessario (again not knowing she is a girl). Then there is also the open love of Antonio for Sebastian without any mistaken identity, that becomes all the more poignant when Viola/Cessario (Sebastian’s twin) denies that love when Antonio mistakes her for Sebastian.

The feminist argument loses traction, when we dig into the play a little farther. Viola may gain power and position when she is taken for a man, but her decision to dress and act like a man was not to gain power as such, but to gain security. She thought it was dangerous for a woman to go around in an unknown territory alone, a problem that is timeless. While she IS a man, pining for the Duke and avoiding Olivia’s advances, she wishes she were NOT a man, and we know that she won’t be satisfied until she can again safely appear in public as a woman. Sad is an empowerment that grants security but makes love impossible. How many women have listened to that siren call, pursuing security over love by competing with men in the marketplace, only to find that married love and family is what they wanted? They may realize too late the real power that women have: the power to bear and shape the next generation.

The homosexual argument falls apart by simply recalling the biblical distinctions between erotic love and brotherly love. In fact, the comedy in Twelfth Night is possible only for those who take such categories seriously. Olivia’s attraction to Viola is humorous only when it is taken as misguided eros, and the Duke’s attraction to Cessario is likewise funny when it is seen as misguided philia. If either had known what both Viola and the audience know, it would no longer be funny. Additionally, the love of Antonio for Sebastian is proper philia (as is that of Jonathan and David in the bible) and, if mistaken for eros, spoils the happy ending we want for Olivia, namely a happy marriage to Sebastian, Viola’s twin.

So, feminist and homosexual interpretations, when taken to their logical ends, fail to account for the play as a play, or for its humor, and would have confused and irritated both the playwright and his audience. The biblical categories of love and gender again give clarity, delight, and meaning.

John Hodges

Director

Defending Dante's Hell...

(click the link) Defending Dante's hell . . .