Kierkegaard

How to Make Things Harder (And Maybe Better)

There’s an election of some alleged consequence barreling toward us in a couple of days, of course, and though I am trying very hard to keep any mention of external “news” out of this blog, I can’t help but feel like I have to say something, or allude to something, anyway.

My instinct is to find a way to make this whole season easier to get through, but that is probably beyond my capabilities, and besides, it wouldn’t be helpful anyway. The easiest thing to do is, as usual, the worst thing you can do: immerse yourself in “news” coverage, stress about the closeness of the polls, live in perpetual anxiety about what horrible thing might happen should the other side win the election.

That feels hard, but it’s not. It’s so easy, in fact, that it doesn’t require you to do anything: just let the culture do to you what it wants to do, which is to foster stress and outrage and anxiety.

Our culture wants us to believe that “paying attention” to things that we can never control is not only entertaining (yes, if you can’t turn your eyes away, and you can’t stop thinking about it, even if what you’re thinking is how awful it is, that means you’re being entertained), but somehow, in some way, important — like feeling outrage or anxiety is your responsibility as a citizen. Seriously, most consumers watch cable news, or scroll through news feeds, and actually feel like being “informed” means they’re “making a difference.”

Well, they’re not.

Look, cast your vote on Tuesday, certainly — I still cling to the quaint notion that this is a citizen’s responsibility, perhaps the only one — but what in the world is the point of worrying about it beforehand, or after?

I’m not suggesting that the right approach is to go skipping and whistling down the lane, or — more likely — watching reality shows, boxing matches, slasher films, Hallmark holiday movies or anything else the culture offers that feels less anxiety-inducing than the literally-endless, conflict-without-catharsis, movie-without-a-plot we call “news.”

Instead, perhaps the right approach would be for us all to choose, not something easy, but something hard.

Lots of folks now are talking about the need for tolerance toward your political “opponents” (as if ordinary people having particular, differing opinions are somehow your “opponents”), and hand-wringing while pleading for everyone to just be more civil to each other, for God’s sake — but few of them, it seems, are talking about these things in anything more than the most generic of ways.

Tolerance? Civility? I think we ask for these things because they also sound easy, and being human beings, we tend to assume that other human beings are not actually capable of all that much.

What if we asked people to do something difficult, instead? How about, instead of asking them (or ourselves) to be civil to our neighbors, we ask them (or ourselves) to … love our neighbors?

It’s no coincidence that I happen to be reading Kierkegaard’s Works of Love right now, and what makes it feel actually life-changing is exactly how impossible it seems.

Kierkegaard’s approach, even in this work that is designed to be more “direct” than his pseudonymous books, is not to offer summarizable explanations of exactly how he thinks you should live. (“Love your neighbor!”) That’s because he knows that sort of thing doesn’t actually work. (The reason that a self-help book industry exists today is that self-help books are repetitive consumables. You don’t buy just one.)

I think that Kierkegaard’s goal instead is to change the way each individual reader thinks, because the only way to change how someone lives is to first change the way they think. He does this by parsing words and phrases, carefully and expertly, in such a way that they get turned inside out, and the reader starts to think: This sounds impossible, but maybe it isn’t impossible.

After all, what does it mean to love your neighbor? A couple of weeks ago I heard someone say, referring to a well-known person, “I can love him, but I wouldn’t invite him to dinner.” Well then, what does it mean to say that you love him? Is this just another example of the way we reduce everything hard into something easy — in this case, turning love into some sort of vague well-wishing?

Perhaps the only way to change the world is not to watch the “news” or to be “informed”, which obviously doesn’t change anything. And it’s not to tolerate people, or be civil to them, because those are unrealistic and vague things to ask of people — and most people, in everyday situations, already are civil and neighborly toward each other; it only feels like they aren’t when we pretend that online interactions are real.

No, all we can do is stop trying to change the world, and instead learn how to love — actually, honest-to-goodness love — our neighbor, which is whoever is there right in front of us, and in their totality,not just whatever seems most lovable about them. We should not do this in order to change the world, and certainly not to change them, and not even to change ourselves — not even to do anything at all, other than to love.

But that sounds a lot harder than the whole well-wishing thing most of us imagine neighborly love to be. It sounds simply impossible to say, “Don’t be civil to your neighbor, don’t respect your neighbor, don’t try and persuade your neighbor — love your neighbor!” I think that we can make it start to seem a little less impossible [sic] by looking inward and asking: Just what the f*** is love, anyway?

Like I said, Kierkegaard defies summarization, so I’m not going to extend this already-too-long-and-rambling blog post by trying to answer that question with some bullet points from Works of Love.

But here is one thing I’m going to try and remember during the craziness of this election — and I would encourage the same for anyone who thinks it is their responsibility to “stay informed”: As stated in 1 Corinthians, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

Kierkegaard wrote:

“Love builds up by presupposing that love is fundamentally present. Therefore love also builds up when, humanly speaking, love seems to be absent and where, humanly understood, the first and foremost need is to tear down … To tear down is the opposite of building up. The contrast never appears more clearly than when the discourse is concerned with love as building up: for in any other discussion about building up there is a similarity to tearing down — it means to do something with another. But when the lover builds up it is the very opposite of tearing down, for the lover does something about himself: he presupposes that love is present in the other person — which is quite the opposite to doing something about the other person.”

So instead of to trying to make the craziness of the next week easier, I will actually make it harder, and challenge myself (and maybe you, the single individual) to think before and during every interaction: Am I tearing down, or building up? Am I trying to do something about this person instead of doing something about myself?

It’s a start, anyway.

(Also, read Works of Love.)

Judge William’s Uncomfortable Truth (or, How to Read Kierkegaard)

It seems to me that the most important factor in reading Kierkegaard is exactly how one does it. You can assume, as he himself demanded, that his pseudonyms are individual personae, writing from each one’s particular perspective and experience. Or, you can approach each book as a puzzle, sifting for meaning inside every perplexing sentence as you fumble your way toward “What Kierkegaard Thought.”

I don’t think I’ve written anything about my current ongoing reading of the SK oeuvre, with good reason: I take the first approach, and the thing about taking the pseudonyms seriously, so to speak, is that the reading starts to feel quite personal, and I would never claim to be particularly expert in, you know, “What Kierkegaard Thought.”

SK’s works, particularly the first authorship, are similar to the Bible, an analogy I choose on purpose. It’s not a single work, but a library of books written by multiple authors, who are sometimes aware of and sometimes in conversation with each other; each individual book, when read individually, must be understood in a certain way, but when read as part of the whole, must be understood quite differently.

But in each case, that understanding occurs inside the reader, as something he or she develops in dialogue with the work, as opposed to something presented as direct guidance from the author. Just as the Bible does not present a system (which is why academic theologians produce “Systematic Theologies”), SK’s works are not offered as bullet points, nor can they be broken down into them.

I mean, you can try; but you will miss the point.

I’ve been reading Either/Or over the course of 2024 with a fellow group of engaged readers, and last week we reached the point in Volume 2 where Judge William has decided to “stop theorizing” (around page 266 of the Hong translation). This is after he has fumbled his way through hundreds of pages of circular arguments, trying (just as “A” did in Volume 1) to find a theory that explains and justifies the life he has chosen. At this point, I think that he has become uncomfortable with where his theorizing has led.

As I read it, Judge William has realized that a life spent in devotion to duty and in concert with civil society, if one is to do so as a whole individual rather than a mindless cog, requires one to internalize that duty. Following the Hegelian universal/particular/individual pathway, as the Judge understands it (and I don’t pretend to), leads him to saying that, simplistically and not in so many words: as long as one believes that what one is doing is good, then it cannot necessarily be said to be wrong.

The Judge writes:

“But however much the external is changed, the moral value of the action remains the same. Thus there has never been a nation that believed that children should hate their parents. In order to add fuel to doubt, however, it has been pointed out whereas all civilized [sic] nations made it the children’s duty to care for their parents, savages [sic] practiced the custom of putting their aged parents to death. This may very well be so, but still no headway is made thereby, because the question remains whether the savages intend to do something evil by this. The ethical always resides in this consciousness, whereas it is another question whether or not insufficient comprehension is responsible.”

The Judge then turns away from his theorizing, because — as I read it so far — he is uncomfortable with this sort of moral relativism, and his attempts to wriggle out from under it have failed. There is really little difference between his ethical life and A’s aesthetic life, in terms of practical outcome. One wants to do whatever he desires; one wants to fulfill his duty as a member of society, but that duty will ultimately conform to his desires. (Isn’t it funny how so many self-professed Christians in the United States wind up discovering that Christianity just happens to support their own personal inclinations toward ethics and politics?)

Even in our little Either/Or reading group, nobody seemed eager to accuse the “savages” in the Judge’s example of being objectively wrong based on their actions (never mind their motivations). After all, perhaps the aged parents being put out to ice were suffering from terminal diseases; perhaps they were inflicted with ceaseless physical pain and the “savages” believed they were sending them to a better, eternal life. How could that be wrong?

These are the ways we try to justify such a thing as, in this particular case, placing a calculable value on a human life. Of course, rarely does anyone go “whole hog” on that sort of thing — governments and the WHO may be able to place a dollar value on a human life, but actual human beings don’t usually go through life evaluating individual family members based on their country’s gross domestic product, and would look askance at anyone who asked them to do so.

But I wonder, without any sense of the eternal, a reality beyond the material world, how can one say it’s wrong to do so, or where to draw any sort of line? If I believe that aged parents are actually more valuable to society than, say, a devotee of Nietzsche of any age (and I think I could make a good argument), then who is to say that my valuation is incorrect?

I think that Judge William is like us. He has put forth his theory, such as it is, and followed to where it inevitably leads. Faced with its actual implications, he changes the subject, just like we all do.

So my point in all of this is to ask, can one get the “gist” of Kierkegaard by dissolving it into bullet points, or into a blog post like this one? Perhaps. But whether I am “right” or “wrong” in my interpretation, will you lie awake at night thinking about it, wondering what it means for the way you lead your life, the way I did last night about Judge William and his theorizing?

I’m guessing, definitely not. And that’s, in my considerably uninformed opinion, how (and why) to read Kierkegaard (and not my blog posts). Not so that one can somehow figure out “What Kierkegaard Thought” but so that one can somehow figure out what he or she thinks, and what it actually means.

Enchantment As a Framework for Culture War

Recently there was an interesting exchange between Alan Jacobs and Brad East on “enchantment,” or more accurately, “disenchantment,” and its current vogue among, primarily, conservative Christians. (EDIT: I should note that Jacobs’ original post was instigated by David Bentley Hart’s newest book, and DBH is not in any way a conservative Christian.) This post from Jacobs links to each post in order, all well worth reading, but basically, the not-quite-argument seems to come down to this:

  • Alan believes that the current discussions about enchantment, at least for him, are “just another way to avoid thinking about Jesus.” Enchantment can and does mean a million different things, all of which but one have nothing to do with Christianity.
  • Brad agrees that the enchantment he finds sympathetic is specifically a Christian enchantment, and those Christian writers discussing it are doing so, he says, as part of their struggle against a “secularized Western culture” that imposes “unimpeachable public social norms” which make it apparently uncomfortable to live in a universe where God is real and active.

I’ve been rather sympathetic to the enchantment conversation in the past, and I enjoyed Richard Beck’s book on the topic, Hunting Magic Eels, which had, as I recall offhand, little or nothing to say about politics and “public social norms,” and rather much to say about the church and liturgy. (I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the same will not be true of Rod Dreher’s forthcoming book, given his particular, uh, history.)

The problem is when these very online cultural conservative types (such as Dreher, for example) begin using the idea of “enchantment” as a new framework for their chosen war. 1950s America having lost its appeal for a wide variety of gender- and race-related reasons, these commentators have decided instead to go medieval on our collective ass.

If one has particular political and social beliefs that are currently out of vogue, and one also happens to be a Christian in a certain sense, then there is an obvious appeal to blaming the disenchantment of a “secularized Western culture” for making one feel defensive and uncomfortable about those beliefs.

Of these sorts of Christians, Brad East wrote in his first reply to Jacobs, “They feel condescended to, coerced into pretending that life is nothing but atoms and energy, when they know in their bones the open secret that this world is charged with the grandeur of God. They don’t want to invite evil spirits into their homes. They just don’t want to be made to feel crazy for believing in what cannot be seen.” (emphasis added)

However, if one believes that Jesus was the God-Man, incarnate God literally entered into human history as one of his own creations, lived in lowly humiliation, was literally murdered and then just as literally risen back to life, and now invites and draws all to salvation in him … then this belief will have, to put it mildly, an impact on your life. One will attempt to live out that truth, however imperfectly, no matter what “unimpeachable social norms” might exist.

As Kierkegaard wrote, “The decisive mark of Christian suffering is that it is voluntary.” If you really believe these crazy things are true, and you are living your life as if these crazy things are true, then people are going to think you’re crazy, and they are going to treat you accordingly. That was the case when Jesus was alive, and it was the case immediately after his death and resurrection (when there were eyewitnesses!), and it was the case during all the years of Christendom (including the now-rose-colored era of medieval enchantment), and it is, obviously, the case today.

Clearly, the church has allowed itself to become secularized (disenchanted) in an unacceptable way, but that is because the Western church has, for nearly all of its existence, allowed itself to be aligned with civil society. As Jacques Ellul noted in Prayer and Modern Man (and elsewhere), “the desacralization, the secularization” are actually “profoundly in conformity with the spirit of Christianity.” The world is the world, it is always careening toward death; our role as Christians is not to rule it.

The answer to the church’s descent into a sort of atheistic therapy for embarrassed pseudo-believers is not to start chanting the liturgy while demanding a re-entry into the halls of the elite. It is to recognize that, in terms of worldly power, true Christianity is, always has been, and must always be, shut out in the cold.

That Which We Measure May Be Forgotten

It’s the end of a year and a new one beckons, another way in which we humans try to control things by measuring them. I am as guilty of this sort of thing as any, and probably more than most — how much time have I wasted over the last few years meticulously noting down everything I eat into a food journal, for literally no actual purpose?

I also track the books I read, movies and TV I watch, and my opinions about them, etc., for only slightly greater purpose — unlike the food journal, the book lists might be revisited once or twice in the future. These lists also let me do things like this, an end of year summary that will certainly be of interest to no one but me. (Of course, the same can be said of all the other articles on this little WordPress outpost.)

For many unmeasurable reasons, this has been a very good year. Below are some of the things that can be weighed, tracked and listed.

Books

I finished 64 books this year, down a bit from prior years, but then this is also the year I dove eagerly down the Kierkegaard rabbit hole. It started with a Catherine Project reading group of Fear & Trembling, continued with another CP group tackling Sickness Unto Death, and then a courageous few of us decided to stick together for The Concept of Anxiety. We’ve also read a few of Kierky’s discourses, including the three contained in The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air.

All of these books rank naturally as my best reads of the year, probably the best reads of my life; in January, our group begins Part 1 of Either/Or, and I begin thinking about how to actually turn Kierkegaard’s insights into personal action (or to use more precise words, inwardness and reflection).

I am still, of course, unfinished with Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World, which I am reading at perhaps the slowest pace of any book in my life. I’m glad to be doing so. God willing, I will continue notating my way through it here at the blog through 2024.

A few other books I read and loved this year:

Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell (2020) — Beautiful writing about a messy life (and is there any other kind?).

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin (2009) — Quiet and wonderful. How did it ever become a movie?

Secret City, by James Kirchick (2022) — Long but fascinating.

Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates (1992) — Should have read this a long time ago, but I am a latecomer to JCO’s work.

Jessica Fayer, by John L’Heureux (1976) — I read two L’Heureux novels in 2023 as part of my ongoing meander through his work; this one shows its age, but is a provocative examination of how death creates meaning for even the most desultory life. (The other one, The Handmaid of Desire, a weak attempt at academic satire, was mediocre.)

Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons, by Rowan Williams (2018) — Small but dense, worth rereading again. Also convinced me that I really need to read Iain McGilchrist, if only his books weren’t so damn massive.

Works of Mercy, by Sally Thomas (2022) — A first novel from a Catholic poet; funny and heartbreaking.

Howards End, by E. M. Forster (1910) — A good friend convinced me to read this as part of a group, and I didn’t regret it.

Philosopher of the Heart, by Clare Carlisle (2019) — A very good biography of Kierkegaard, though there are others I plan to read as well.

How to Inhabit Time, by James K. A. Smith (2022), and For the Time Being, by W. H. Auden (1944) — I didn’t plan on ending the year reading these particular two books, or imagine that they would wind up being such a one-two punch.

Movies

Not a lot of movies this year, though we wound up actually going to the movies more than I would have expected, and mostly just for fun: Barbie (which was more serious than most people seem to think), the new Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible films (which were both more fun than most people seem to think), Theater Camp (which was hilarious). Also saw both Vertigo and Shadow of a Doubt on the big screen, which were terrific experiences.

Passages, which I wrote about here, was the best new film I saw all year; I still enjoy thinking about it.

Finally, we stumbled across Brian de Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise on the Criterion Channel, and what the actual fuck? Amazing weirdness; I can’t believe I’d never heard of it, let alone never seen it before.

Television

Not a lot of TV this year, and hopefully even less next year. But we finally got around to watching the third season of Atlanta, and it was such pure genius that we are putting off watching the fourth and final season until we feel a craving for something perfectly sublime.

Also, Somebody Somewhere on HBO (or whatever they call it now) is heart-wrenching and hilarious and beautifully acted; and the first season of Poker Face was just sheer fun; and All Creatures Great and Small starts every year on the perfect note. (New season next week!)

This Blog

This will be the 44th post since June 27. It feels weird to launch a blog in 2023, knowing that, unlike the glory days of 2005, it will be pretty much impossible for anyone to find it. But I’ve never really felt at home anywhere else, and whether anyone else ever reads any of these posts or not, I still feel a particular moment of apprehensive excitement when I press the “publish” button. Here’s hoping I am able to do so even more frequently in 2024.

Books In and Out of Season

I admire people like Joel Miller who are able to plan out their reading, which seems infinitely preferable to my habit of perusing my to-be-read shelves (now numerous, spanning multiple rooms) waiting for a certain inspired curiosity to fall on my head like, well, a book from a high shelf.

But I doubt I will ever be able to join the ranks of the planners. Instead, every time I must choose my next book, I’m seized with a bit of paralysis. What’s the book for me right now? is one of the questions with which I struggle. And, is it a book I want to have read, or one I want to read? — which are sometimes the same, sometimes not.

This is why my husband rolls his eyes at how many books I bring whenever we go anywhere, weighing down the luggage. Well, I don’t know what I will feel like reading when I finish the one I’m reading right now! I must have choices.

Unfortunately, once I defeat the paralysis and answer the questions, sometimes those answers are wrong.

I have a habit of accumulating books that make sense for a certain time and place in my life, but then never getting around to reading them — until, possibly, they are well past their season.

For example, John Fowles’ The Magus has existed in a corner of my shelves in various editions throughout multiple housing situations since I was in high school. I didn’t know much about it, but as a young man (boy) the idea of it, as encapsulated in whatever marketing copy was on the back of that original tattered paperback, thrilled me.

But I always put off reading it, imagining it would be an experience I could savor at any time. Last summer I found a very nice Modern Library edition at a bookstore in Maine, and then last week, when asking myself, What’s the book for me right now?, I decided to answer myself, Why, it must be The Magus, finally.

Oof. Wrong answer. 700 pages of, to be frank, absolute shit, which does not qualify as the most insightful book review ever written, I agree. But this book started off as the sort of faux intellectual potboiler I would ordinarily enjoy, and very quickly devolved into what can only be termed a “hate read.” I finished it only because I couldn’t believe it was as bad as it was. I sometimes wondered if Fowles was pulling my leg.

But, no. This was his first book, though he worked on it for years and published it as his third, and then later revised it again in 1977. (If this edition was an improvement, I shudder to think what the original was like.) Fowles was as serious as the seriously despicable-yet-dull narrator he had created.

I hated this book so much that I don’t even want to dwell on all the reasons why I hated it — the complete misunderstanding of women (or men), of sex, of religion, of simple adult human living and decision-making. I wasn’t bothered by how horrible all of the characters were, I was bothered by how boring they all were, despite the author’s desperate, interminable attempts to make them all seem so sinister and twisty and interesting.

Anyway. Even Fowles admitted in a foreword that he didn’t quite understand the book’s popularity, and that said popularity seemed to be centered among adolescents. If I’d read the book when it first caught my eye, instead of putting it off for 30 or so years, I might have found it just as transformative as some of the gaga Amazon reviewers. I was a pompous ass, after all — God is dead, so let’s drink coffee, and all that crap — and the book’s naive ramblings and endless circularities would probably have struck me as profound when I didn’t know what profundity was.

This isn’t the only time this has happened; I had a similar experience with John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. It was first published when I was in college, and reviews convinced me so thoroughly that I would love the book, that I always held off on reading it until there might be a time when I felt the need for a truly transformative reading experience. Such a time finally came, and I read the novel while in the waiting room every day for six weeks undergoing radiation treatments.

And oh my God, I hated that book, all of it, every word. Again, perhaps I would have loved it, if I experienced it earlier in life.

I know, some will say — life’s too short, stop reading if you don’t like it. And generally, I do; there are lots of books I’ve started and set aside, but I don’t hate those books, they just weren’t for me at that time. (Some of them I return to, and find it has become the right time.) The books I loathe, for some reason, I tend to finish. It may be that the books which engender such strong feelings have other compensatory traits that drive me forward.

So I’ve learned that the books I self-consciously put aside as a younger self to read later may not scratch any particular itch I develop in, shall we say, middle age. But I’m not sure this lesson is compelling enough to change my haphazard approach to selecting books, even though a schedule, or at least a goal, might be helpful. For example, I’ve been toying with the idea of declaring 2024 a “big book” year, and focus on finishing a few big novels I feel guilty about not having read.

But I’m hesitant to make a commitment. After all, any fiction I read is in addition to all of the Kierkegaard, Ellul and similar authors I am determined to continue absorbing. Can one actually read Either/Or and Moby-Dick in the same year?

Hmm. Come to think of it, perhaps one can and should.

Don’t forget, you’re alive.

A few years ago, a high-concept app called WeCroak gained a bit of buzz in circles both mainstream and religious. Installed on your phone, several times a day the app will send you a reminder that says, “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.”

What peace, many wrote, to be reminded that our existence is but a blink of time! The argument you are currently having with your spouse, the project due this morning that completely slipped your Wordle-playing mind, the cruel things you snarled at the customer service rep over the phone last night: Who cares? None of it matters! Soon, you’ll be dead.

In his book Low Anthropology, Christian author David Zahl writes that, in addition to reducing anxiety by focusing the user on something beyond the present, the app also reminds us that all people experience death, of themselves and others, which makes grief a bridge across difference. “[L]oss is a touchpoint with our fellow citizens,” he writes, “however differently we may interpret that loss. More than that … it motivates sympathetic outreach to others who are suffering, regardless of what else we may or may not have in common.”

Which may be true, although you might think otherwise if you’ve ever seen how toxic Twitter can get following the tragic death of anyone associated with either political party.

I thought of this app today because I’ve been reading Kierkegaard (of course), and though I’m not in a position to presume to fully understand his work, it occurred to me that the reminder I need several times a day is not that I’m going to die, but that I’m alive.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard wrote, “If a human being did not have an eternal consciousness … if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?”

His point (despite his morose reputation) is that life is not despair, or not despair alone. Because we do, in fact, have eternal consciousness. (Later, in Sickness Unto Death, he wrote, “If there were nothing eternal in a man, he could not despair at all.”)

I know about death. I’ve seen loved ones die, and I was told, a few years ago, that I was going to die myself — and not in the usual, happens-to-all-of-us sort of way.

Tell me I’m mortal and I’m apt to roll my eyes at the obvious. I mean, I get the utility of it: Yes, someday I’ll be dead and none of this will matter, and with any luck it will happen before I have to go to that dentist appointment next Tuesday.

What I need is an app that will remind me several times a day that I’m alive, and eternal, and to ponder that, even if only for a moment.

Ellul: Do Not Confuse Christian Ethics with Morality

This entry is part 5 of 27 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Returning to Chapter 1 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World. (Remember, I’m taking these notes as I go, section by section, so I reserve the right to realize later that I’m making incorrect assumptions and assertions! In other words, maybe I’m getting it wrong; feel free to tell me so.)

In my last post, we discussed Ellul’s contention that only laypeople can present “theological truth” to the world, since unlike clergy, they have no separation from the world.

This means that we must live our daily lives as “salt of the earth, light of the world, sheep among wolves” — essentially, pointing the world to Christ — not by following any formula or set of rules, but by the way we act in any particular situation.

It would be easier to grasp Ellul’s point here if he offered concrete examples about what exactly it might mean to live as salt/light/sheep, but maybe he is avoiding examples on purpose. A concrete example would suggest that there is always a single behavior required for a particular situation, or a set of guidelines we can follow for living as Christians. But those guidelines would add up to “morality.”

And that, Ellul says, is the problem: we confuse “Christian ethics” with morality, or virtues. But moral systems are what we use to try and improve the human world, and that’s exactly what we cannot do. We’re so desperate to relieve the tension of living in a sinful world that we create moral systems to try and improve that world. But that world cannot be improved, and Christianity does not equate to morality. (EDIT: Maybe that would more accurately read “that world cannot be made less sinful.” There are things about the world that can be improved at a certain objective level, I think, but the sinfulness — and ultimate collapse — remains.)

If we want to understand this, we need to understand Ellul’s definition of Christian life, which he views as a state of constant struggle between judgment and grace.

At every moment, we are being judged, and we are being forgiven. It is the struggle between these two states that ensures our freedom because, at every moment, we are being “placed in a new situation.” That new situation sets us free from both “satanic fetters” and any pre-determined, legalistic program of morality.

Ellul’s Christian faith certainly reminds me of Kierkegaard and his “individual before God.” For Ellul, there can be no accounting of God’s ethical demands appropriate for every circumstance, because “all Christians are in fact responsible for their works and conscience.” Each individual’s faith is a “living attitude” and that faith is what will determine their individual actions in every circumstance, as opposed to a specific moral guideline.

But, and here’s the requisite complicated rub, just because there are no guidelines, doesn’t mean there isn’t any guidance. We are able to (and in fact, required to) “trace the outlines” of Christian ethics, so that we might better respond in “specific, variable situations.” But these ethics cannot replace the “combat of faith” within each individual Christian for determining their behavior.

So, as we struggle each day to deepen our individual faith in Christ, we decide on which actions to take based on that faith, along with the broad lessons (not hard-and-fast rules) we learn from Christian ethics. Those ethics themselves, Ellul says, should be “continually subject to question, review, and reformulation through the efforts of the whole church community.”

In this discussion of ethics and individual action, Ellul appears to embrace a Kierkegaardian existential faith, while also preserving a role for the church, of which Kierkegaard thought little.

Note: I’m going to try to figure out how to better track these Ellul posts, perhaps by creating a single page listing them in chronological order.

Ellul: Do Not Confuse Christian Ethics with Morality

Returning to Chapter 1 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World. (Remember, I’m taking these notes as I go, section by section, so I reserve the right to realize later that I’m making incorrect assumptions and assertions! In other words, maybe I’m getting it wrong; feel free to tell me so.)

In my last post, we discussed Ellul’s contention that only laypeople can present “theological truth” to the world, since unlike clergy, they have no separation from the world.

This means that we must live our daily lives as “salt of the earth, light of the world, sheep among wolves” — essentially, pointing the world to Christ — not by following any formula or set of rules, but by the way we act in any particular situation.

It would be easier to grasp Ellul’s point here if he offered concrete examples about what exactly it might mean to live as salt/light/sheep, but maybe he is avoiding examples on purpose. A concrete example would suggest that there is always a single behavior required for a particular situation, or a set of guidelines we can follow for living as Christians. But those guidelines would add up to “morality.”

And that, Ellul says, is the problem: we confuse “Christian ethics” with morality, or virtues. But moral systems are what we use to try and improve the human world, and that’s exactly what we cannot do. We’re so desperate to relieve the tension of living in a sinful world that we create moral systems to try and improve that world. But that world cannot be improved, and Christianity does not equate to morality. (EDIT: Maybe that would more accurately read “that world cannot be made less sinful.” There are things about the world that can be improved at a certain objective level, I think, but the sinfulness — and ultimate collapse — remains.)

If we want to understand this, we need to understand Ellul’s definition of Christian life, which he views as a state of constant struggle between judgment and grace.

At every moment, we are being judged, and we are being forgiven. It is the struggle between these two states that ensures our freedom because, at every moment, we are being “placed in a new situation.” That new situation sets us free from both “satanic fetters” and any pre-determined, legalistic program of morality.

Ellul’s Christian faith certainly reminds me of Kierkegaard and his “individual before God.” For Ellul, there can be no accounting of God’s ethical demands appropriate for every circumstance, because “all Christians are in fact responsible for their works and conscience.” Each individual’s faith is a “living attitude” and that faith is what will determine their individual actions in every circumstance, as opposed to a specific moral guideline.

But, and here’s the requisite complicated rub, just because there are no guidelines, doesn’t mean there isn’t any guidance. We are able to (and in fact, required to) “trace the outlines” of Christian ethics, so that we might better respond in “specific, variable situations.” But these ethics cannot replace the “combat of faith” within each individual Christian for determining their behavior.

So, as we struggle each day to deepen our individual faith in Christ, we decide on which actions to take based on that faith, along with the broad lessons (not hard-and-fast rules) we learn from Christian ethics. Those ethics themselves, Ellul says, should be “continually subject to question, review, and reformulation through the efforts of the whole church community.”

In this discussion of ethics and individual action, Ellul appears to embrace a Kierkegaardian existential faith, while also preserving a role for the church, of which Kierkegaard thought little.

Note: I’m going to try to figure out how to better track these Ellul posts, perhaps by creating a single page listing them in chronological order.

Ephemera, 8/15/23

I recently read Clare Carlisle’s biography of Kierkegaard; it was illuminating about Kierkegaard, but also a well-written and insightful work in its own right. She writes here about the way in which marriage impacted the life and work of both Kierkegaard and George Eliot. Of SK, she says:

“Kierkegaard once wrote that marriage requires complete openness between husband and wife, and that he could not open himself to another person in this way. Perhaps he was driven by his artistic and philosophical vocation to seek a solitary life. Or perhaps his decision to stay single (and celibate, as far as we know) was shaped by the belief, held as sacred by his Christian church, that certain forms of desire — homosexuality, for example — were sinful and shameful. Kierkegaard took these questions to the grave, boasting that no one would ever discover the secret that explained his inner life. All we know is that he felt unable to become a husband, and that he interpreted this incapacity as a spiritual situation.”

* * * *

I wrote earlier about the film Passages; the wonderful Garth Greenwell writes about it with much greater insight and greater style, and at greater length. His piece reminds me that there is so much more in the film than I could wrap my head around in my single viewing — including Tomas’ career as filmmaker. Of the Tomas character, Greenwell writes:

“He put me in mind of a line from the theologian Denys Turner, whom I’ve quoted before in this newsletter. Talking about the ascetical practices of certain mystics, Turner makes a quip about the ‘pre-ascetical self’ — the self before it’s submitted to any kind of discipline — being ‘a riot of desires,’ hardly a self at all. Art can come from that, of course — Tomas doesn’t hold a candle to the giants of artistic bad behavior; but Tomas’s emotional riots, his fervors, his temper tantrums, his utter disregard for others, are no guarantee of the quality of his art … The only thing they can guarantee — for everyone around him, for himself above all — is pain.

* * * *

So that people don’t think I only write snarky comments about Covenant blog posts, this one about Paul Simon, his career and his beautiful new album is quite enlightening and worth a read. I saw Simon perform during his “Rhythm of the Saints” tour a lifetime ago, and remember it as a great show. Most vividly I recall, before playing “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” he said something like, “There are two definitive versions of this song, one sung by Art Garfunkel and the other by Aretha Franklin. I only sing it to remind people that I wrote it.”

Kierkegaard as Poetry (Part 1)

Yes, It Is Nothing

But what does this
mean, what am I to do,
or what is the effort
that can be said to seek,
to aspire to God’s kingdom?

Shall I see about getting
a position commensurate
with my talents and abilities
in order to be effective in it?

No, you shall first seek God’s kingdom.

Shall I give all my possessions to the poor?

No, you shall first seek God’s kingdom.

Shall I then go out and proclaim this doctrine to the world?

No, you shall first seek God’s kingdom.

But then in a certain sense it is nothing I shall do?

Yes, quite true,
in a certain sense
it is nothing.

In the deepest sense
you shall make yourself
nothing,
become nothing
before God,
learn to be silent.

In this silence
is the beginning,
which is to seek first
God’s kingdom.

(From “Look at the Birds, Look at the Lily,” by Kierkegaard, included in Without Authority, translated by Howard & Edna Hong; italics in original.)

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