Mon 31 Jan 2011
Contra Litterās: Augustine And the English Majors
Posted by Mathew Block under Christianity & Literature Series, Literature, Main
[5] Comments
In his Confessions, one of the first things Augustine gets around to confessing as sinful is his education. That education, with its focus on literature and writing, could well be likened to what we today would call a “liberal arts” or “humanities” degree. Put another way, we might say that one of the first things Augustine gets around to critiquing in his Confessions is the English department.
While accepting the formal aspects of his education (eg, learning to read and write) as in themselves good, Augustine takes great pains to distance himself from the actual texts he studied. Early in Book I, he speaks with disgust of his school-age love of Virgil’s Aeneid. Considering the great pity he felt over the death of Dido in the work, he writes: “For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not himself; weeping the death of Dido for love of Aeneas, but weeping not for his own death for want of love to Thee, O God” (I.21). This topic – feeling pity for the tragedies of fictional characters – is one which Augustine critiques at length in Book II, but the quotation here serves a more general purpose: it demonstrates Augustine’s disgust with those who would take more seriously their literary studies than their relationship with God.
Augustine’s criticism of the humanities finds plenty of resonances among Christians today. With two arts degrees myself, I have spent a fair amount of time studying literature, languages, and philosophy. And I have certainly come up against people who consider those studies not only to be a waste of time, but more seriously a direct affront to Christian faith. They ask, as Augustine would ask, how I, a student of literature, could possibly justify my field of inquiry given the secular nature of the Academy?
Augustine is certainly correct in his criticisms to some extent. We must not, as Christians, love literature (or culture) more than we love God. Thomas Cranmer writes similarly in the Anglican Book of Homilies (1547) when he asks, “What excuse shall we therefore make (at the last day before Christ) that delight to read or hear men’s fantasies and inventions, more than His most holy Gospel?” Augustine, Cranmer and I all agree that our faith must come before all else. But where Cranmer and I differ from Augustine is in this: we do not deny that literature, even literature written by non-Christians on non-Christian subjects, can be both beautiful, true, and edifying.
Cranmer writes well when he says, “Other sciences [ie, fields of study] be good, and to be learned no man can deny; but this [ie, our faith] is the chief and passeth all others incomparably.”We need not reject secular studies so long as we keep those studies secondary to our faith. Indeed, our faith gives us a framework from which to work, from which to evaluate literature, history, and culture. It gives us the ability to distinguish what is good from what is bad.
And there is most certainly good in secular culture – though this good arises primarily from the actions of God rather than the actions of humans themselves. For so it is that God, as Martin Luther reminds us, works through the everyday vocations of everyday people. He works in the vocations of teachers and writers, as much as he works through the vocations of government, family, and the Church. Thus, when an author executes his vocation well, through the creation of some particularly excellent piece of poetry or in some particularly acute observation of human nature, we do not praise her or him alone; we praise also the God at work behind human vocation.
John Calvin articulates this theology of vocation particularly well in relation to the work of non-Christian writers. He says:
When we see in pagan authors the amazing light of truth which appears in their works, it must inform us that human nature, although it is fallen from its integrity and much corrupted, still is adorned with many gifts of God. If we recognize the Spirit of God as the unique fountain of truth, we will not despise the truth wherever it appears unless we want to insult God’s Spirit…. We cannot read the books which have been written about all these matters [ie, pagan books on philosophy, medicine, etc.] without being astonished, because we are obliged to recognize the wisdom which is in them.
Calvin continues, explaining that “anything excellent or praiseworthy… comes from God.” Here he echoes two passages of Scripture which help us understand the importance and goodness of studying human culture. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17); and “If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). When we confess with Calvin, as we must, that God’s goodness has manifested “excellent and praiseworthy things” throughout human literature over the centuries, we further recognize that we ought to “think about such things.”
Not that we do so indiscriminately. We must, as the Scriptures teach, “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In order to know what is good, we must first test everything.
And so we can agree with Augustine that there is some measure of “vanity” in literature. But we need not conclude that all literature is therefore vanity. We need not rail with Augustine, “Woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom!” Instead, we may seek what good God has breathed into these texts, working through the vocation of their human authors, and praise Him as we are wont: as the Author of every good and perfect gift – even those found in the writings of secular humanity.
[This is the first article in a series exploring why and how Christians ought to engage in literary studies. You can see all the current essays in the series here.]
Re-posted, by permission, from email:
I read your post on Augustine, and, yes, I suppose in one sense he is a bit anti cultural. At the same time, much of the culture that had been produced prior was still presumably a living threat to Christianity – if you consider the difference between the classical myths in Augustine’s time and the way they are employed by Shakespeare, you will see the difference. There is no chance that pagan priests and symbols in Shakespeare were suddenly going to produce a roomful of pagans. This might not necessarily have been the case when Augustine wrote. And while this may not seem to connect to your quote about weeping over Dido, I think it does. If paganism had somehow opened a space in which people were in the habit of avoiding their real evils and sins by weeping over fake ones, then it is plausible that such plays and literature would rhetorically play into such a space; hence, it may not be the art itself that Augustine dislikes so much as the rhetorical use. Later in history, as you know, Vergil would be baptized; but one needs to understand the difference between Christ and Vergil before the former can baptize the latter.
I also wonder if one’s theology of art doesn’t have something to do with how Platonic or Aristotelian one’s faith is. Plato of course kicked the artists out of the Republic as liars who distracted from philosophical truth, much as Augustine, a former Manicaean Platonist, also dislikes art as a distraction from spiritual truth. Aristotle, on the other hand, allows for a much more incarnational understanding of the world, as Aquinas realized. If God could make a good world that was not pure spiritual or philosophical truth, then there must be something good about the elliptical and relatively un-straightforward way that humans discover and process truth, a goodnesse exemplified in Christ’s incarnational revelation. If the non-linear creation can speak in meandering ways other than philosophy or pure spirituality, then surely there must be some merit in stories that also speak in this way. Thus, for Aristotle, the goodness of these stories are gauged by mimesis, how much they truly imitate the real tortuous means by which the world speaks (for Aquinas, God’s world), and catharsis, how much this imitation of tortuous communication helps us work things out in the real world. Anyway, I think Aristotle baptized via Aquinas gives us necessary counter to Augustine’s Platonism, although I am fascinated by Augustine’s description of those who weep for Dido rather than real sin – I fear that our own society very often does use art to conjure within ourselves a sense of emotional depth and sensitivity, so that we don’t have to make the real sacrifice of being emotionally deep and sensitive; if we make it look like we care, then maybe we can get away with not really caring. So I think maybe Plato and Aristotle should work in tandem, via Augustine and Aquinas. Speaking of which, you need to read Chesteron’s bio of Aquinas; it has clarified a number of theological points for me, although you will dislike the brief appearance that Luther makes at the end.
Your comments are well noted about the living threat Paganism posed to Christianity in Augustine’s day – though I would also note that the myths as portrayed on the stage would not have been necessarily recognized as “true” accounts any more than they would have in Shakespeare’s day. In any event, you are of course right that most of the audience would have at least believed in the gods themselves if not in the specific events depicted in the play.
I also agree with you that the the invocation of the Greek/Roman gods works well as symbolic devices (if I am not entirely incorrect, that is their principle purpose in all or most English literature before Chaucer and, for that matter, after him up unto the Renaissance).
But while I agree with all that, I do not as a result think Augustine would have stepped down from his anti-culture position if the same in his day (ie, if the gods were mere symbols in his day). His objections to secular culture, at least as expressed in the Confessions, is deliberately anti-cultural – not because the culture was pagan, but instead because the culture was not Christian. When he began to investigate philosophy, he had at least the vague sense, which he later approves of, that he must not give himself to anything wherein Christ was not mentioned. He writes: “This alone checked me, that the name of Christ was not in it,” speaking of the various philosophical schools that tempted him. A little while on, he says that even in those things where certain philosophies we’re correct, he should nevertheless have ignored them. Speaking of the celestial bodies, he writes: “And I indeed ought to have passed by even philosophers who spake truth concerning them, for love of Thee, my Father, supremely good.”
In this way, Augustine rejects all knowledge gained from non-Christian sources – not because it is necessarily wrong, but because (to him) it would be wrong to learn it in such a way that Christ is not mentioned. And so, even though Cicero pointed him to God, he cannot therefore commend Cicero. Such is his view, as I read it at least. Obviously, however, I do not hold it myself… though his criticisms of tragedy, I confess, still hold some sway over me. (Beyond the bit about Dido that I quote in the article above, he writes at length in Book III on other criticisms of tragedy. A brief sample includes the following: “Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, and this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness?… When he suffers in his own person, it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds the actors of these fictions the more, the more he grieves…” He goes on like this for a fair bit, and I have to say it is really quite thought provoking.)
As for your comments regarding Plato and Aristotle, I think I agree with you completely – though personally, I would say that I believe in “anti-catharsis” as opposed to Aristotle’s definition of catharsis. Instead of engaging art to purge emotion, I rather believe we engage art to imbibe emotion, thought and life experiences we would otherwise not have access to, in order to live a more wise life in the real world. But more of that appears in my post on Bunyan: What Good is Literature? Losing ourselves to find ourselves.
I think you exaggerate a little bit, but mostly because you are only basing your interpretation on the Confessions. Although I haven’t ever sat down and read it through, I do get the sense that he is talking more personally than in terms of what every Christian ought to do. For example, philosophy may be perfectly fine – but as you and I both know, there are certain personality types that may be inclined to turn philosophy into an idol, and for these, fasting may be necessary. I guess what I am saying is in the same way that Paul does not condemn marriage, but personally prefers not to be married without making this a fixed rule, so perhaps Augustine is writing personally – I am wondering if he might be more circumspect were he writing an ecclesial document. For example, consider this quote of Augustine, at the following link; it would seem to counter your assertion that “Augustine rejects all knowledge gained from non-Christian sources”:
http://www.pibburns.com/augustin.htm
Here, we have Augustine saying that Christians should not talk nonsense about the world, because if they can’t get basic public facts (known by non-Christians) right, who will trust them about God? I guess what I am saying is that in matters like this you really need to consider genre – there are five or eight different Augustines – he is actually something of a moderate compared to someone like Jerome, at least on some matters – and given that much medieval theology is based on him until Aquinas, and given that we actually have literature that shows Augustinian influence, he can’t be quite as bad as you make him sound. Granted, the medieval Augustinian justification of culture could depend on a selective reading of Augustine, but I’m not sure that your reading, or mine for that matter, is any less selective.
I think I very much disagree with your belief that the purpose of literature is to allow us to imbibe emotion, thought, life experience etc. that we might otherwise have not had. I suppose firstly I protest because it seems to be a theory of literature as exploration – and history shows that unless we are very careful, exploration often leads to imperialism and colonialism. Literature must be more than something we stick as feathers in our experiental caps, so to speak. Actually, the way you put it sounds rather like something that Wilde’s Dorian Grey might say. There is something proud and wearisome about trying to live the lives of as many different authors as one can – it smacks of Babel and the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. Of the making of many books there is no end.
With catharsis, one becomes entangled in literature rather than acts as the explorer selecting specimens to bring back to “civilization”; and I think with a bit of play we can interpret catharsis as the process of working through earthly situations – for what is the purgation of pity and fear except a response and treatment of pity and fear that is already in people?
I guess my point is that literature is more powerful, both for good and evil, than you seem to give it credit for. We cannot approach it in a disinterested manner, and so we have to decide what interest we should – and should not – have in it. Aristotle’s idea (if I understand it correctly) offers us a rubric for deciding what we should and shouldn’t read, whereas you will even get an alternate “experience” in something as mean as the Twilight series. Put another way, I would suggest that Aristotle allows us to ask of literary exploration how we ought to do it and for what purpose; the answer is that it must be read for the sake of becoming holistic humans, and ideally literature will teach our hearts in some way to follow truth, for surely the idea of catharsis has behind it the idea of some proper attitude toward the truth of the world? Vicarious literary experience for its own sake seems to me rather dangerous; even experience is accountable to the lordship of Christ and the church, which is his body.
I say this, having not read very much Aristotle at all, and knowing full well that I am probably disagreeing with Lewis on points. I guess I just feel the need to say all this because I personally do not have the luxury of approaching literature from an objective, God-like stance; I read literature because I need it in the thick of things, just as I need other humans, and I will hopefully treat it no better or worse than I would treat others (for it is the voice of others) – with the knowledge that it contains the potential to reveal the image of God, but also the knowledge that sin has corrupted it and that it is not above deserving blunt words of reproach at times.
In retrospect, I imagine I have caricatured your position; nonetheless, I will leave this response to an exaggeration of your position for the purpose of further dialogue. I do think a too strong emphasis on literature as experience might lead to the position to which I have responded; however, I think your specification that we ought to seek experience with wisdom might answer some of the problems I have raised.
I’d point out that in the selection you link, Augustine is concerned with having Christians not assert falsehood about the Scriptures so that Pagans would not condemn the Scriptures as similarly being false. There’s a difference between saying Christians shouldn’t write falsehood and saying Christians should seek truth in Pagan literature. It’s worth noting that Augustine’s own interpretation of Genesis deliberately rejects much of the secular philosophical account of the universe. In fact, Alister McGrath writes that part of Augustine’s purpose in writing this particular book is actually out of the concern “that biblical interpreters might get locked into reading the Bible according to the scientific assumptions of the age.” Augustine rejects, for example, a long history to the universe (as contemporary philosophers would have asserted). In the selection you refer to, it’s fair to say that Augustine believed reason could help Christians to interpret Scripture, but based on the rest of the book, I don’t think he intended Christians to get that reasoning from non-Christians. He is, after all, referring to things “even a non-Christian knows” – operative word being “even”. Whether he elsewhere becomes more open to reading pagan literature and its positive influences for the Christian, I must confess I have not read enough of his work to be certain.
You probably do caricature me a bit Karl, but not entirely unfairly. Reading your comments and then going back to the article on experience demonstrates reveals to me just how much I left unsaid. My newest article on the blog is meant as a partial response to your concerns. Let me just say here that I agree with you that “vicarious literary experience for its own sake” is, indeed, dangerous. But that is not what I intended to suggest (again, see my new article “Judging the Literary Experience” for details).
I’m afraid I have to disagree with your assessment that Aristotle “offers us a rubric for deciding what we should and shouldn’t read.” In fact, Aristotle approach literature in the same way he approaches any subject: from a scientific perspective. In the Poetics, he’s in effect dissecting tragedy into its constituent parts of plot, unity, reversal, etc, etc – much as one might break down a flower into petals, stamen, stem, and so forth. However, it is certainly true that in the Renaissance, writers began to take Aristotle prescriptively as opposed to descriptively.
That all said, while I do not think Aristotle provides us the (sole) methods by which we ought to judge literature, I’m not against using some of it as aids by which we judge literature. (Some of his observations – on unity, for example – seem to me generally important, if not always so, to a good story.) But I would argue that his ideas regarding catharsis (purging emotions in the “safe” method of literature, as opposed to dealing with them in real life) comes closer to “vicarious literary experience for its own sake” than my own thoughts on the matter do. He was, in some sense, responding to Plato’s concern that art made people hysterical, ie, worked up their emotions, thus making them a threat to peace; Aristotle countered by saying that theatre allowed people to purge themselves of such dangerous emotions.