Subversive - A Review

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Faithful Christianity must always wage a war on two fronts. On one front are those who see the trends in culture and wish to conform Christianity to whatever the current fad in ethics or philosophy offers. On the other front are those who remember a particular cultural expression of Christianity and see that as normative, not the central aspects of Christian doctrine. Dorothy L. Sayers is helpful in subverting those who disagree on both fronts.

Crystal Downing’s book, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers, is an engaging book about one of the most interesting Christian humanists of the early twentieth century. In some circles Sayers is remembered for her friendship with C. S. Lewis, which was a wonderful example of two minds meeting and cultivating a meaningful friendship despite—or perhaps because of—their disagreements. Others remember Sayers primarily for her detective fiction, particularly because of her famous sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, but perhaps more significantly for the love story Wimsey had with the semi-autobiographical character, Harriet Vane. These are good reasons to remember Sayers. But a better reason to read Sayers is her engaging thought about Christianity and culture, which is the main focus of Downing’s book.

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The thesis of this book is that Sayers held and put on display a Christianity that undermined the cultural Christianities of her day. Downing is also arguing that Sayers is valuable for our time precisely because of her ability to point beyond enculturated Christianity to a full-throated Christian orthodoxy. This comes through as Downing sees Sayers arguing for a Christianity that would better resist the market-based attitude of church shopping, the inroads of the prosperity gospel in congregations, and the conflation of politics. These are all errors that Downing sees in evangelicalism, which she finds Sayers helpful in eradicating.

When Downing stays on point, focusing on Sayers and her legacy, she is very helpful. The research is well done, touching on a wide range of Sayers’ work. If there is a strong emphasis on interpreting the themes of Sayers’ plays, that is little surprising since Downing’s background is in theatre as well as literature. This is a useful corrective to the theologians and literary critics who invest their research nearly exclusively in Sayers’ non-fiction and prose works.

In Sayers’ day, she was critiqued by those both to her right and left. Progressives critiqued (or dismissed) her for her stolid adherence to traditional Christian orthodoxy. Fundamentalists railed against Sayers for using slang language in her plays and embellishing the details around Christ’s life and death in her passion play, The Man Born to be King. In that sense, Sayers was certainly subversive of the various cultural Christianities of her day, pointing back toward the ancient, orthodox faith.

Inasmuch as Subversive explores how Sayers did her work in her day, it is revealing and explanatory. When Downing tries to bring Sayers forward into our own day to combat the theological and cultural dangers surrounding us, she betrays a good deal more bias that Sayers would have allowed and sometimes does not appropriately differentiate between her own opinions and those of Sayers.

One of Downing’s repeated concerns is that Christians avoid “certitude.”  To Downing, this seems to refer to those with an attitude like Judas who, “like many Christians today [was] certain that his interpretation of the truth was absolute.” (97) It is this sort of self-assurance that Sayers sought to subvert, but Sayers was also quick to subvert the ideas of those who were certain that the interpretations of the community of faith not correct.

According to Downing, the “exact opposite” of “certitude” is faith. (98) It isn’t clear from the text in what sense these two concepts are opposed, but Downing is confident that being confident in one’s reading of Scripture is a great evil. She argues, “Anyone who claims to know the correct interpretation of Scripture––as did Arius––ultimately proclaims to know the mind of God, which is both arrogant and blasphemous.” (37) In truth, Arius’ great error was not that he relied upon the Bible (which association Downing makes frequently) or that he was overconfident, but that the position he (or his followers) held was blasphemously wrong and sought to promote his misconception. Downing’s opposition of faith and “certitude” seems to paint faith as something other than what Scripture supports (e.g., Heb 10:19–39). Rather than a humble but confident faith, Downing seems to point to ambiguity as an essential attribute of the Christian life, though the lack of definitions sometimes make it unclear what Downing is striving for. More significantly for this book, Downing’s opposition of “certitude” and faith does not seem to arise from Sayers.

The authority of Scripture is another a particular sticking point for Downing. At one point she argues that the authority of the four ecumenical creeds exceeds that of the canon of Scripture because these “’footings’ of the foundation [of the church] as they are known, were poured by earnest followers of Christ in the early centuries of the faith before the biblical canon was even finalized.” (35) This is basically a paraphrase of a letter Sayers wrote to a critic. However, Downing introduces some terminological confusion. In some places Downing sets reliance on the prime authority of the creeds against “bibliolatry,” which in context sounds like the classical Protestant understanding of the supremacy of Scripture. In other places, Downing uses “bibliolatry” to refer to an unhealthy reverence for the King James Version (a problem Sayers faced), which is another problem altogether. There is imprecision here that Sayers would not have tolerated.

Downing’s actual beef appears to be with modernist hermeneutics, which often result in excessive confidence in readings of Scripture due to their presumed objectivity. One need not hold to supremacy of the creeds to argue against such hubris; orthodox Christians are justified in believing the creeds are authoritative inasmuch as they are faithful distillations of Scripture. Here Downing seems to have a related, but substantially different opinion than Sayers, who uses the ecumenical creeds as the starting line for “official” Christianity. But, as Sayers affirmatively declares, the men arguing at Nicaea “were fifty time greater sticklers for Biblical authority than any one living today.” (Letters, III:367) For Sayers, the issue is not the source of authority, but the way the argument is put together and the manner in which the conclusion is held. It is not that Sayers holds my position on the authority of Scripture (I am quite certain she did not), but rather than she does not hold Downing’s either, and that is difficult to tell from the text of Subversive.

At times, Downing does not differentiate her own opinions (which may be true of false on their own merits) from those of the subject of the book. Readers may well find themselves disagreeing with Downing and believe they are disagreeing with Sayers. This will not always be correct, based on my reading of Sayers. This ambiguity may push away some of the very readers who most need Sayers’ corrective to have a properly confident faith, that is held with humility.

Sayers’ work is incredibly valuable for our day largely because she built a positive case for a robust Christianity in her public work. She spent more time making much of Christ than subverting incorrect views. Sayers’ subversion was of cultural Christianity by presenting a true Christianity faithfully. Rather than to seek to undermine the legitimate faith of others, by way of critique she presented a more compelling vision that she hoped would outshine the lesser gods of the day. Her harshest published criticisms were delivered with a such a wit that it would draw a chuckle rather than a groan. Her subversively constructive approach is what makes Sayers such a valuable conversation partner in our age. In the end, there is enough of Sayers and enough good research in this volume to make it a worthwhile volume, especially for those engaged in the study of the life and work of Dorothy L. Sayers.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Splendour in the Dark - A Review

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There are those of us who would be delighted to read a shopping list that C. S. Lewis wrote. In the world of scholarship, there would be a rush to dissect it, look for literary imagery, and find out where the reference to plums coincides with one of the many feasts in the Chronicles of Narnia, demonstrating how personal the feast really was for Lewis.

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As a result, the recent publication of the Wade annotated edition of Lewis’s Dymer along with analysis by Lewis expert, Jerry Root, will find a healthy reception in the world of Lewis studies. This book, Splendour in the Dark, is a good piece of scholarship that will help fill a gap in Lewis studies.

Prior to his conversion, Lewis published two books. Both were volumes of poetry. The first was a cycle of poems that were, largely, completed in the trenches of World War I. Spirits in Bondage is an early work, which shows both flashes of potential and points of weakness. Similarly, Dymer tells an interesting story, but has points of strength and elements of weakness. Were Lewis a lesser writer, these volumes would no longer be in print and rarely, if ever, discussed.

However, because of who Lewis is and has become among contemporary Christians, early works like Dymer will get discussed and related to his later works and evidence in the trajectory of his thought examined. Dymer provides rich soil for research.

The poem is something of a fantasy. It begins with a young man in a totalitarian society who breaks free having struck his teacher so hard that the teacher dies. Dymer, the title character, then goes on a journey, finds a palace, has a tryst with a goddess, meets a magician who shoots him, and eventually comes to grips with his own fantasies. The story is, in fact, quite engaging, though there are points where the narrative poem is heavy sledding. This is a poem for those seeking to study Lewis rather than for those seeking to study excellent poetry.

David Downing, the codirector of the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton, added notations to the 114-page poem, which clarify at a few points terms or allusions that are likely to get past a reader a century removed from its publication. Then the work itself is followed by several essays by Root analyzing it, with responses from some of his Wheaton colleagues.

Taken together, this reprint with annotations plus scholarly analysis by a leading expert in the field is well worth a place in the library of someone interested in Lewis studies and the college library. Root’s essays help tie Dymer to Lewis’s broader thought life. He helpfully shows where some of the pre-conversion ideas Lewis shows forth in Dymer are cultivated and bloom more vigorously in later Lewisian works. Root’s analysis is excellent, bringing to bear his decades of study in Lewis. The responses by various other Wheaton professors are at some points interesting and at some points a bit frustrating. None of the three respondents are C. S. Lewis experts, but two English professors and a theatre professor who are well-credited in other areas. Their lectures begin with too many apologies for their own lack of expertise, which is likely a testament to Root’s status in the field of Lewis studies and the obscurity of this poem—it is quite easy to find people who have strong opinions and understanding of, say, The Chronicles of Narnia, but this project likely was well outside their comfort zone. In any case, there are some helpful tidbits in the essays, but their contribution was likely strongest in their delivery as a response to a friendly audience in the moments after Root delivered his three lectures. What does come from each of the respondents is the sense that Dymer is, in fact, a second-rate poem. It is significant, but not excellent. Good, but not great. So, this book is valuable for Lewis-lovers primarily. 

Read for what it is—a reprint edition with helpful annotations and commentary on a neglected work by a famous author with a brilliant mind—this is a solid book. The purpose is accomplished with skill and quality. Splendour in the Dark is exciting for those of us who love talking about Chronicles, Surprised by Joy, and the ‘A’ Side works, but really want to go beyond. It is a good entry in that conversation, which will prompt further study, deepen the understanding of Lewis’s pre-conversion work, and generally enrich an ever-growing body of literature.

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

The History of the Ancient World - A Review

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George Santayana is most famous for quipping, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This has become a cliché, often misquoted, but there is certainly some truth to it.

Since we can’t remember the past being our own limited experience, we resort to studying history. The problem with studying history is that it is hard to know where to begin. Returning to the textbookish surveys I was exposed to as a child doesn’t seem helpful. My college history books have long been disposed of and I don’t remember them being all that interesting, now that I think of it.

Since we homeschool, I decided to give Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World a try for putting the pieces of this world together. The bet was a good one.

Given the range of material Bauer covers in this tome, it is amazing how well she weaves the timelines and stories together. The first section of the book begins with the civilizations with only fragmentary records. None of her work is original, but she assembles stories of Sumer, what would become Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China into a coherent narrative.

She then moves through the various twists and turns of various civilizations as the records improve, new technological and civic inventions grow, and cities become more prominent. What emerges is something that is more complex than the pictures of clay tables with cuneiform writing and fragments of pottery that I remember from my studies of history. Thankfully, she also expands the scope of her interest beyond a flyby of Mesopotamia leading to the Greeks and Romans and landing in a Euro-centric focus. What we get is a fairly balanced record of known civilizations, including those in the East, the Mid-East, and toward the West.

Bauer is surveying four or five thousand years of history of multiple, integrated civilizations. It is amazing that she was able to sort through so much material. This, of course, means that there is a great deal detail left out and many places where Bauer was forced to pick a reading of history and run with it. It is clear from some of her footnotes that she is aware of alternate interpretations, but it’s a survey, not a monograph on a particular subject.

The book is written in a manner that will displease some Christians and also anger vocal secularists. Bauer assumes an ancient earth and treats the Hebrew Bible in the same manner she treats other historical sources. This, of course, means that she is much less derogatory toward the value of those ancient documents than many secular scholars would be, which leads to accusations of religious bias. At the same time, she also does not hold to a young earth and sometimes floats assertions that the biblical record was sanitized to make certain kings look good. This perspective will tend to annoy some Christians, particularly homeschoolers seeking to rigorously shield their children from opposing views. (A quick scan of the Amazon reviews shows that both of these positions exist in decent numbers.)

Frankly, as a conservative Christian, I think this book is an excellent way to introduce a child later in her schooling to critical sources. There will be a point at which our kids are going to have to engage with other voices to grow and learn, Bauer’s approach is good historically and at least fair toward the Judeo-Christian tradition. I can’t give advice to secularist parents, other than to note that her assumptions are pretty mild and certainly not satisfying in any religious way. This isn’t a book seeking to promote the Judeo-Christian tradition as the one, true religion. It also doesn’t go out of the way to bash Judaism and Christianity, either. As a religious text, it fails; as a history book, it’s pretty good.

Aside from debates about Bauer’s biases, this is, above all, an extremely readable book. It certainly isn’t a novel, graphic or otherwise, but it was a pleasure to pick this book up and read a couple of chapters every day. I wouldn’t recommend the volume for elementary readers, but for a thoughtful high schooler this would make an excellent text for homeschool or as summer reading. I picked up an electronic copy of the study guide that goes with the book and it is well structured with enough questions and answers to help this integrate easily into the homeschooling parent’s life, without having to become an expert.

This is the sort of book that I wish I had had access to when I was younger. I would have read the volume just for edification, beyond my regular school work. I am looking forward to the next two volumes in the series and very hopeful that Bauer writes the fourth and final volume in the very near future.

Vaclav Havel and the Power of the Powerless

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There are at least two types of tyrannical political order. The first is one that is implemented by brute force with soldiers or police patrolling everywhere looking to enforce the ruler’s will on a frightened population. The second type of tyranny is one enforces by the people on the people. There is always a coercive force, but it does not require constant patrols by soldiers, because people (whether they believe in the tyrannical policies or not) enforce them or call in the authorities to do so.

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Of the two types of tyranny, the second is the more awful. There will always be some toadies in an oppressed culture that will jump over to the other side and work with the oppressors in the first type of tyranny, but the vast majority of people will outwardly comply, but inwardly hope for and be prepared to assist a rebellion. Resistance is cheered, even in small things. This is a totalitarian system of government.

In the second form of tyranny, internal cultural forces demand absolute compliance and offer little hope of freedom. It requires the deletion of civil society—those groups that exist for non-political purposes and which hold societies together—and their replacement with government authorized programs. The second form of tyranny induces citizens, even those who do not explicitly favor the government’s policies, to enforce them through social pressure and, sometimes, by calling in the government’s enforcers. There is little room for people to live in dissent. Vaclav Havel calls this second form a post-totalitarian system.

In Vaclav Havel’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless” he describes what it means to live in a society in which dissent is impossible. He is speaking of his experience in Czechoslovakia, where he was a significant member of the resistance that eventually contributed to that nation being freed from communism.

Havel describes a simple act by a greengrocer, who one day refuses to put the approved Party sign in his windows. He does not believe that “Workers Unite” has any particular significance in a political system designed to entrap everyone in a miasma of misery. He may have already declared his allegiance in various public and semi-public ways through participation in Party activities, without ever believing the concepts. But one must go along to get along.

And yet, though many of the customers will not particularly care about the sentiment “Workers Unite,” because it has no real meaning, the minor resistance of the greengrocer in no affirming the approved common sentiment will be deemed a rebellion. In a post-totalitarian society, social auto-totality will lead to conformity, as word will spread and reach the authorities who will by force ensure compliance, often by removing the right to work. It may not be physical force that is brought to bear, but commercial and social pressure.

The crime of the greengrocer was simply to stop living the lie. He had never truly believed the slogans, like most of the population, but had simply done what was needed to get by. In that moment when he chose to stop putting up slogans, stop voting in farcical elections, and, perhaps, even positively voice an opinion at a political meeting, the greengrocer will have begun to live in the truth, but society will not allow it.

Havel writes as one who has experienced a post-totalitarian system under Communist rule. He worked against the system, though the system did not acknowledge him, and eventually became the prime minister of Czechoslovakia after the end of the Communist oppression ended.

We, however, are seeing the beginning of a very different regime of oppression that is being brought to bear on society more gradually and yet no less insidiously. At present, there is still room to live in the truth, but there are an increasing number of voices looking to make the lie the only possible way of life.

Consider, for example, the rush to ignore differences in sexual expression and the demand to support various forms of LGBTQ lifestyles. One may think those good or not, but participation in much of society is now becoming dependent on active, public affirmation of those lifestyles. There is no room for neutrality or even quietly thinking, along with many of the voices in human history, that this is an unhealthy lifestyle. Instead, employers require affirmation of “diversity” along arbitrarily invented lines, which necessarily exclude diversity of thought, or, really, any thought at all. To refuse to wear a rainbow ribbon on the culturally approved day or affirm the latest evolution in sexual ethics is a form of open rebellion, much as the green grocer’s refusal to post the sign, “Workers Unite.”

At times there is force of law behind these edicts, as with the states that are attacking bakers and florists that decline to participate in same-sex wedding celebrations, but much of the punishment for violating societal norms is meted out by regular people. This is an auto-totality. In Western culture, it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Havel’s concerns are certainly different than those we face in the auto-totality, but the methods used by the contemporary culture to gain and maintain control are similar to those used by the Soviets in oppressing the people of Eastern Europe. Havel’s essay, “Power to the Powerless,” is informative because it provides a roadmap for those who disagree with the consensus that is being hammered over society to maintain their integrity and not live the lie.

The hope of the resistance should be to create an existential revolution, so that people see and pursue a radically different way of thinking and knowing. That is, the resistance needs to demonstrate that an alternate, moral reality exists and live in a way that points people toward it.

As Havel writes,

“Above all, any existential revolution should provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the ‘human order’, which no political order can replace. A new experience of being, a renewed rootedness in the universe, a newly grasped sense of ‘higher responsibility’, a new-found inner relationship to other people and to the human community – these factor clearly indicate the direction in which we go.”

Havel wrote his ideas on living in truth to fuel an existential revolution leading to moral reconstitution when the fall of communism still seemed unlikely. As the storm clouds of our present auto-totality continue to deepen, we may find it necessary to tighten the boundaries of our contrast communities, rebuild the moral structures within them, and live with greater integrity to demonstrate the plausibility of our moral vision for the world.

The Humane Economy of Wilhelm Ropke

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To some people, free market economics is the worst social evil of our age that is responsible for every other social evil. What causes Racism? Capitalism. Child abuse? Free market. Objectification of women? The market economy. War? Economic liberty. Poverty? The same. Bad hair days? Definitely capitalism, too. You get the idea.

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On the other hand, there are others for whom free market economics are akin to the good news of Jesus Christ. Andrew Carnegie did, after all, write a book called, The Gospel of Wealth, which largely extols the market economy. There are others to this day who see capitalism as not merely permissible by God, but actually required by a correct reading of Scripture.

In reality, liberty, including economic freedom, is a necessary condition for human flourishing, but it isn’t a sufficient condition. The free market economy the cleanest dirty shirt we’ve got. Like any human system, it has sinful people involved, so it is subject to abuse and distortion. Unlike other human economies that have been envisioned, it has the best means to keep people’s natural tendencies toward evil and oppression in check.

One of the most careful proponents of a free market that I’ve read in Wilhelm Röpke. He was a German who emigrated to Turkey in 1933 because of his resistance to the National Socialist regime. Early in his life he was inspired by socialism, later by the Austrian school of economics, and finally landed on a position that encourages a free market with targeted and limited government interventions. Röpke argued for what might be described as a humane capitalism. Röpke was one of the main thinkers that inspired the creation of the West German economic system after World War II, which helped to shape its balance between social welfare and free market, a system that resulted in West Germany rapidly recovering and developing into an economic power, with East Germany lagging behind, mired in socialism.

Röpke’s classic book, A Humane Economy, is an important book for socialists and libertarians to read so they understand both the needs for and perils of a free market.

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One of Röpke’s concerns is over “mass society.” It was the enmassment of human activity that Röpke had witnessed in the rise of fascism in Europe before the war. Like other forms of socialism, the National Socialists ceased to recognize people as individuals or small units, and pursued global solutions with a faceless homo economicus as the actor. This faceless stand in for humans sometimes makes a good generalization, but it fails to take into account the goodness of owning a business, of small firms being able to compete in a grand economy, and of individual craftsmanship. At the extremes, unfettered capitalism and socialism lend themselves to aggregating humans into the faceless mass. Röpke was just as opposed to corporate monopolies as he was to state monopolies. Unlike some contemporary neoliberals, Röpke recognized that the power of the state was essential in preventing any sort of monopoly from forming.

What makes Röpke particularly significant is that he honestly represents the damage that redistributive programs like welfare can have as they encourage inflationary economics and can reduce the incentives to engage in meaningful economic activity. At the same time, he demonstrates that well-designed welfare systems can be essential to provide a safety net and can actually prevent the worst cases of abuse by the state and by corporate entities. Röpke is exactly the sort of thinker that will make people on both poles of contemporary social and economic debate uncomfortable, which is one of the best reasons to listen to him.

Another important aspect of Röpke’s perspective is that he emphasizes the necessary balance between collectivism and individualism. Both ideas in the extreme are debilitating to society. Röpke writes, “Man can fulfill his nature only by freely becoming part of a community and having a sense of solidarity with it. Otherwise he leads a miserable existence and he knows it.” A more apt criticism of most forms of socialism and the contemporary economy in the United States could not be written. In socialism, one is forced to assimilate with the mass, to contribute as the authorities deem necessary and to receive in exchange only that which the collective deems warranted. In late post-industrial capitalism, one tends to be isolated from the collective, set to gain what one can earn on her own, and catechized to believe that individual freedom is something of a summum bonum. To some degree, at least, Röpke seems to offer a golden mean.

In A Humane Economy there is resistance both to state totalitarianism and the totalitarian utilitarianism of some economics. But he is unquestionably opposed to the ravages of Communism. Röpke argues:

“Totalitarianism gains ground exactly to the extent that the human victims of this process of [social] disintegration suffer from frustration and non-fulfillment of their life as a whole because they have lost the true, pre-eminently non-material conditions of human happiness.”

He continues,

“What the free world has to set against Communism is not the cult of the standard of living and productivity or some contrary hysteria, ideology, or myth. This would merely be borrowing Communism’s own weapons. What we need is to bethink ourselves quietly and soberly of truth, freedom, justice, human dignity, and respect of human life and the ultimate values. For these we must set our course unerringly; we must cherish and strengthen the spiritual and moral foundations of these values and vital goods and try to create and preserve for mankind such forms of life as are appropriate to human nature and support and protect its conditions.”

This sort of attitude is what makes Röpke so helpful. He recognizes the horrors of socialistic economics, but also sees the abyss that is a purely materialistic utilitarian capitalism. Röpke reminds us that at the heart of the economy is the human. We are not graphs and statistics alone. Those things can be helpful, but they are not enough. We need to be more humane by treating people around us like humans. Economics can only function when it is constrained by virtue.