Relocating To Elfland

Here Mencken is lamenting the state of a particular strand of American literature:

“What ails it, intrinsically, is a dearth of intellectual audacity and of aesthetic passion. Running through it, and characterizing the work of almost every man and woman producing it, there is an unescapable suggestion of the old Puritan suspicion of the fine arts as such – of the doctrine that they offer fit asylum for good citizens only when some ulterior and superior purpose is carried into them. This purpose, naturally enough, most commonly shows a moral tinge. The aim of poetry, it appears, is to fill the mind with lofty thoughts – not to give it joy, but to give it a grand and somewhat gaudy sense of virtue. The essay is a weapon against the degenerate tendencies of the age. The novel, properly conceived, is a means of uplifting the spirit; its aim is to inspire, not merely to satisfy the low curiosity of man in man. The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it only when it is broken to moral uses – in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.”

I’ve been on an H. L. Mencken kick of late. Sometimes there’s nothing so refreshing as a truly brilliant critic. A taste:

“We all play parts when we face our fellow-men, as even poets have noticed. No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man’s wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there. What she sees, even at times of the most appalling domestic revelation and confidence, is not the authentic man at all, but a compound made up in part of the authentic man and in part of his projection of a gaudy ideal. The man who is most respected by his wife is the one who makes this projection most vivid – that is, the one who is the most daring and ingratiating liar. He can never, of course, deceive her utterly, but if he is skillful he may at least deceive her enough to make her happy.”

Boosts the self-esteem, does it not?

I’m reading through David VanDrunen’s recent work, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought, and I’m a bit hung up in his analysis of Augustine’s City of God (see pp. 22–32). I do want to be clear that in what follows I am simply making notes and asking some questions; I’m nowhere near ready to offer any kind of review of VanDrunen’s work as a whole.

Here is a summary of VanDrunen’s reading of Augustine (p. 32):

“[Augustine] refused to embrace an idyllic, theocratic, or Christianized view of the world. Christians here on earth are a people on pilgrimage, their citizenship and their hope lying in an everlasting, heavenly city. Civil society (the Roman Empire), roughly associated with the City of Man, is ultimately vain and condemned, but serves limited, yet good, earthly and temporal purposes of which Christians ought to make use. Thus, on a certain level civil society is characterized by things that are religiously indifferent per se, though at a more ultimate level – concerning what one loves and what one’s supreme good is – there is no commonality at all with the City of God.”

It’s that little phrase “roughly associated” that keeps blinking at me. Just for fun, let’s replace it with a symbol (=?). On the left side of the “equation” (=?) we have “civil society” with “Roman Empire” immediately following in parentheses. Let’s bracket that first:

[Civil society / Roman Empire] (=?) City of Man

Civil society cannot and should not be equated (=) with a particular civil society. Civil society is ordained by God, and is therefore good; particular civil societies (Rome, for example) are deeply corrupted by sin; so identification of these two things on the left side of the equation introduces a very big question mark into the overall equation. Because, spiritually and morally speaking, civil society really doesn’t equal (≠) the Roman Empire (or any other particular civil society), we have to introduce the question mark (=?).

Civil society (≠) Roman Empire (=?) City of Man

Maybe if we use just one of the terms on the left side, we can erase the question mark? Let’s see. We certainly can’t say that civil society itself is identical to (=), or directly associated with, the City of Man, for this would confuse a good ordinance with its corruption by sinful humans. We might be on firmer ground if we tried to equate the Roman Empire (or another particular civil society) with the City of Man; but, as both Augustine and VanDrunen acknowledge, this doesn’t quite work, either, because there are both lovers of God (citizens of the City of God) and lovers of self (citizens of the City of Man) in any particular civil society (including Rome).

Civil society (≠) City of Man

Roman Empire (≠) City of Man

Hmmm . . . no wonder there’s a question mark. (In fairness to VanDrunen, the question mark is mine; but I think it is definitely implied in his phrase “roughly associated.”) Let me wrap up by offering a few suggestions for further exploration:

Scripture plainly teaches what some have called “the antithesis”: the irreducible distinction, and conflict, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. I think we could equate the seed of the woman with Augustine’s City of God and the seed of the serpent with his City of Man. Scripture also teaches that God has ordained distinct spheres of human association: church, family, and state, for example. Let’s diagram these two biblical distinctions thus:

1. Seed of woman (City of God) / seed of serpent (City of Man)

2. Ecclesiastical sphere / non-ecclesiastical spheres (e.g., family, state)

I think just setting it out like this underscores the need for extreme caution in collapsing these two sets of binaries into each other: it is hugely problematic, for example, to identify the seed of the serpent with the non-ecclesiastical spheres. Now VanDrunen doesn’t read Augustine as doing this, precisely (and neither do I); but he certainly seems to read Augustine as doing so “roughly,” and that’s where my questions come in. But there’s more: VanDrunen wants to show that early Reformed thinkers, drawing on Augustine and others, “grounded social life in God’s work of creation and providence, not in his work of redemption” (p. 15). Here’s a third set of binaries:

1. Seed of woman (City of God) / seed of serpent (City of Man)

2. Ecclesiastical sphere / non-ecclesiastical spheres (e.g., family, state)

3. Redemption / creation and providence

Did the early Reformers, drawing on Augustine and others, “roughly associate” redemption, the ecclesiastical sphere, and the City of God, while also “roughly associating” creation/providence, the non-ecclesiastical spheres, and the City of Man? I’ll have to read on to see how VanDrunen parses the historical details. And I think I will probably have some more questions.

“[Greek education (paideia) had] a wider sense than our modern concept, including not only the communication of basic knowledge and skills but the transmission of the entire way of life of a civilized people. Students in Greek schools would not have been trained for ‘jobs’ but would have been formed into mature Greeks. Greek education inculcated the values of the city into the next generation, and thus educational methods and goals determined the moral climate of life in the future. Thus, the form of education shapes the form of culture.” (Peter J. Leithart, Heroes of the City of Man, p. 380)

“A Deist is a person who in his short life has not found the time to become an atheist.” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 2.603)

“Believe me, the worst and most miserable sort of idiot is he who seems to create and contain all things. Man is a creature; all his happiness consists in being a creature; or, as the Great Voice commanded us, in becoming a child. All his fun is in having a gift or present; which the child, with profound understanding, values because it is ‘a surprise’. But surprise implies that a thing came from outside ourselves; and gratitude that it comes from someone other than ourselves. It is thrust through the letter-box; it is thrown in at the window; it is thrown over the wall. Those limits are the lines of the very plan of human pleasure.” (Gabriel Gale, in The Poet and the Lunatics)

“One can not speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.” (Karl Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie)

If Christianity is to remain true to itself, it must insist that there is no such thing as “the secular.” Which is to say, it must insist that there is no sphere of human thinking or doing ungoverned by the divine will and word. Precisely how God governs all things continues to be a matter of fierce debate, but that He speaks with sovereign authority in all created spheres cannot really be denied by those who take the Bible seriously.

I would not have thought of connecting Christianity’s resistance to the autonomy of the secular with the name(s) of God, but here Bavinck, though dead, yet speaketh:

“Nothing exists outside of or apart from God. This truth, it must be said, has over and over been violated: Plato’s dualism, Neo-platonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism – they all put a limit to God’s revelation and posited a material substance hostile to God over against him. And in all sorts of ways these dualisms have for centuries impacted theology. The same dualistic principle is at work when in modern times, under the influence of Kant and Jacobi, the revelation of God is restricted to the sphere of religion and ethics, when only the religious and ethical content of Scripture is recognized, when the seat of religion is found only in the heart or the conscience, in the emotions or the will.”

Now notice the dire consequences of dualism:

“In this way nature with its elements and forces, human life in society and politics, the arts and sciences, are assigned a place outside the sphere of God’s revelation. They are considered neutral areas existing apart from God.”

In other words (and if the reader will pardon a double negative), we simply cannot accept the notion that God is not speaking in and to everything under the sun. All things – certainly all spheres of human thought and enterprise – are both instruments of His revelation (bearing witness of Him) and subject to His revelation (“normed” and governed by Him). Admittedly, Bavinck has the former primarily in mind: he is not dealing with God’s speech to all things so much as His speech in and through all things. As we shall see, however, these two aspects of God’s revelation cannot finally be separated.

If nature and human life come to be regarded as “neutral areas,” what follows?

“Then, of course, a proper appreciation of the Old Testament and a very large part of the New Testament is no longer possible. Nature and the world no longer have anything to say to believers. Revelation, which comes to us in the Word of God, loses all influence in public life. Religion, now confined to the inner recesses of the heart and the privacy of one’s home, forfeits all claim to respect. Dogmatics, specifically the doctrine of God, shrinks by the day, and theology is no longer able to maintain its place. Theology is no longer able to speak of God because it no longer speaks from him and through him. It no longer has any names with which to name God. God becomes the great Unknown; the world first becomes a domain without God [atheos], then a domain that is anti-God [antitheos].” (Reformed Dogmatics, p. 2.103)

There is a lot going on here, and in multiple directions. To begin with, a secularized realm is one in which the name of God has been erased, to the impoverishment of theology. One may say the firmament shows God’s handiwork, but while Darwinistic materialism reigns in the sciences, we all know this really ain’t so – it’s just the stuff that makes religious folk purr. One may say God reigns over the nations, but while political theory is ceded to Machiavelli and Hobbes, we all know this is mere pious metaphor – the kings of earth actually do as they please. Our conception of God does indeed “shrink by the day.”

But the problem runs the other direction as well. “Neutral” spheres not only deprive religion and theology of important funds of revelation (God is, as it were, gagged in such spheres), they also emancipate themselves from the claims of revelation. God is not only gagged, He is dethroned. His voice is silenced not only through these spheres but also within them. “Nature and the world no longer have anything to say to believers,” on the one hand. “Revelation, which comes to us in the Word of God, loses all influence in public life,” on the other.

Bavinck’s reference to the Old and New Testaments is important here, because it reminds us that our knowledge of what God is saying/revealing in nature and to the world must be derived from biblical revelation. Put differently, if we are to know that God is speaking in the firmament, we must learn this from scripture; and if we are to know what He has to say to the kings of the earth, we must learn this, as well, from scripture.

“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.” (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “The Maniac”)