Lohengrin as Dramatic Theodicy

Lohengrin as Dramatic Theodicy

The myth Wagner set to music in the opera Lohengrin is a marvelous portrait of romantic chivalry. The mystery of the enduring power of this story may be explained by analyzing it as a dramatic theodicy. A philosophical theodicy poses an answer to the problem of evil in a world supposedly controlled by a God who is good. How atrocities can be permitted under the sun by a benevolent and omnipotent God is a question that does not completely relent under logical analysis. Dramatic renderings of the issue have had wider appeal and greater staying power. One of the oldest examples of dramatic theodicy is the story of Job in the Bible. Job suffers even in his innocence, and his complaint reaches the court of heaven where God permits the ordeal to continue, apparently to negate Satan’s taunt that Job is faithful only because God rewards him for his virtue. Making Job into an object lesson does little to relieve him, but, eventually, there is a thunderous conclusion in the firmament, more in resonance with operatic crescendo than philosophical abstraction.

Elsa, the heroine in Wagner’s Lohengrin, is accused of fratricide and trysting with an illicit lover by her antagonists, Telramund and his sorceress wife Ortrud. These two conspire in a plot as nefarious as that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Their intent is to usurp headship of the Duchy of Brabant, which rightfully belongs to Elsa’s brother, Gottfried, heir to Brabant’s Christian dynasty. Gottfried, now strangely absent, is presumed dead, and Ortrud is progressively corrupting her husband by her false testimony that Elsa has murdered him. The collapse of Telramund’s nobility under the influence of his wife is a significant subplot of the opera.

When King Heinrich arrives to investigate the strife attending succession of the Duchy of Brabant, Telramund has bought Ortrud’s lies wholesale and takes up her false witness against Elsa. Elsa is called upon to defend herself, but she only replies by relating a dream of a knight who has promised to defend her cause. A herald calls repeatedly for the defender, but none appears. Elsa prays that the chivalric knight of her vision will now come to her aid. At last, transcendence breaks into the world of human injustice. In the romantic illumination of Wagner’s music the knight Lohengrin appears on the River Scheldt in mythic splendor in boat drawn by a swan.

Lohengrin betroths himself to Elsa and answers her prayers for aid on the condition that she will never ask his name or lineage. He announces that he will prove her innocence in mortal combat, and King Heinrich prays that justice will be established in the ordeal. Lohengrin and Telramund draw their swords. The contest that follows is brief and decisive. The virtuous knight subdues Telramund. With blade poised above Telramund’s heart, Lohengrin says he will spare the accuser’s life. He exhorts him to spend his borrowed time in repentance for the evil he has perpetrated against Elsa.

The first act of Lohengrin has established the basic premises of a theodicy. Elsa’s innocent suffering poses a dilemma of the sort that, left unresolved, casts doubt on God’s goodness. The premise that God is powerful is assumed. A transcendent being unable to overcome the actions of human malefactors would not be God. Even in absence of Elsa’s prayers, God must act in her defense, or there must be a satisfactory explanation, should God permit the injustice to continue. Theology in a Calvinistic vein that sustains the inscrutable sovereignty of God against human comprehension does not play well on the stage. Sending the defender of Elsa’s virtue shows God’s benevolent intentions, but resolution of the problem in Act I would not provide sufficient time for Wagner’s music to elaborate.

Ortrud and Telramund plot in the night to reverse Elsa’s good fortune. When the opportunity arises, Ortrud attempts to dissuade Elsa from trust in the heroic virtue of her betrothed: if Lohengrin comes anonymously and inexplicably from a place that must remain a mystery, will he not someday depart as abruptly, leaving bereft both Elsa and the Duchey of Brabant of which he now has been proclaimed guardian? Magical in her own right, Ortrud calls upon her spirits to deceive Elsa and overthrow her defender. She invokes the ancient Gods, Wotan and Freia, of the Norse pantheon. Telramund listens to her oaths of vengeance and her invocations in service of the betrayal of trust she is building with Elsa. Telramund now understands that he was deceived by Ortrud’s lies about Elsa. He laments the loss of his virtue and recalls his valor in defense of land and people who gave him honor, now lost. Yet in full cognizance of the deception that, with Ortrude, his actions sustain, he enlists four nobles to strive with him against his new rival.

To compound the pathos of Elsa’s innocence, she tries to befriend Ortrude, even as Elsa is being undone by Ortrude’s insinuations. She pities Ortrude’s destitution, assuming that her husband invented the accusations from which Elsa was miraculously delivered. She invites Ortrude to join with her in the wedding procession at the cathedral and makes Ortrude her maid of honor. In return, as Elsa’s bridal procession is entering the cathedral, Ortrude and Telramund block the procession and demand to know the name and origin of the groom. Lohengrin’s enigmatic reply is that he is bound to no one, save Elsa, for an answer. Since she, in good faith on her agreement, refuses to ask the forbidden question, King Heinrich and the people of Brabant conclude that the wedding is legitimate and that it shall proceed.

It is clear in the story from which the composer began that Elsa’s faith is the critical factor in her relation to the figure of her redemption. She has every reason to trust the man who confounded the lies of her accusers and saved her from death or exile. As long as she doesn’t waver on her agreement, the romance continues. Ortrude and Telramund are now again in disgrace. The bride and groom retire to their nuptial bed. All is well until Elsa’s trust gives way to the suspicions planted in her by Ortrude. She begins to probe his anonymity. He first evades her queries then reminds her of her vow. She persists, and her inquisitiveness becomes more intent on having an answer. At the critical moment, when she finally insists on knowing her husband’s name and lineage, Telramund and his cohorts storm the house. Telramund’s sword is of no avail even in ambush, and Lohengrin slays him. Instead of the sexual evocation of a Wagnerian climax, this thrust disgorges Telrumund’s entrails on the bridal bed. A determined foe has been slain, but Elsa’s question has dislodged the balance that secures her place of safety in the universe of this drama. Her husband sadly tells her that he will publicly give answers to her questions.

In the morning, the assembled people of Brabant learn the name and status of their guardian. His song begins as the strings evoke the transcendent realm of his origin. “In far off land, to mortal feet forbidden, there is a castle, Monsalvat by name.” In the ethos of medieval chivalry Monsalvat is the sanctuary of the Holy Grail, the sacred challis Jesus shared with his disciples when he instituted the Eucharistic memorial of his death. The Holy Grail appears from the world of Celtic myth in Welsh legendary tales of The Mabinogion. Sir Thomas Malory continued the rich tradition in English literature with his tales of King Arthur’s Round Table. On the European continent the grail legend had a life of its own. An unfinished 12th-century poem by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes, describes the discovery of the grail by Parsifal. Wagner’s interpretation of the Grail motif comes from an epic by the 13th century German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In Spain Cervantes began writing a parody of chivalric ideals in Don Quixote only to find himself captivated by chivalry in the end.

So, in the first utterances of his song, Elsa’s defender and the acclaimed guardian of Brabant identifies his nobility as transcendent in origin. He is a knight of the Holy Grail. His strength comes from participation in a divine order that shares the mystery of the blood of Christ in the castle Monsalvat. “A gleaming temple therein is hidden, so rich as nothing on earth could frame/ Therein a cup most holy powers possessing/ Is guarded as a gift of heaven’s love/ To be to sinless men a boon and blessing/ It was brought to us by angels from above/ And every year a dove descends from Heaven/ The mystic might within it to resolve/ It’s called the Grail/ And purest faith it lendeth to all the knights who in its service strive/ He whom the Grail to be its servant chooses/ It arms with holy supernatural might/ Opposed to him deceit its magic loses/ The powers of darkness he can put to flight/ Though in distant lands the Grail may send him, the cause of injured virtue to defend/ Holy might will attend him, while unknown to all he can remain/ The art that in the Grail is hidden/ Its light no mortal eye can gaze upon/ From every doubt its knight must be protected/ If recognized, he must at once be gone/ Thus compelled, now I reveal my sacred story/ The Grail’s servant to you I hither came/ My father Parsifal reigns in his glory/ His knight I am/ And Lohengrin my name.” The crescendo in the brass and trumpet flourish that attends this revelation leaves no doubt of Wagner’s intent. He understood this story very well and the effect it would have on his audience. King Heinrich sheds a tear, and Elsa laments paradise lost. Aware that his hope of love in this world is also lost, Lohengrin grieves with Elsa that her sincere remorse is vain. The people of Brabant are bereft of their guardian. Against King Heinrich’s entreaty Lohengrin explains that should he, in disobedience, seek to remain, his power would be gone and his cause would fail. He reassures Heinrich with a premonition: the Eastern horde will not prevail against German lands.

To everyone’s dismay, the swan returns on the River Scheldt. In Lohengrin’s greeting another mystery begins to unravel. If Lohnegrin had been able to remain one year in Brabant, Elsa’s brother Gottfried would have been released from the servitude to which he is bound by Ortrud’s magic. Lohengrin gives Elsa his sword and horn and a ring, which, should Gottfried ever return, will give him strength in battle, succor in danger, and remind him of the one who took up their cause. With this, it is time to say, “Lebwohl”. In the tradition of Knights errant, and rangers in American Westerns, Lohengrin must depart to find service elsewhere and to others. As he heads up the riverbank to the boat, Ortrud explicates the mystery of Gottfried’s fate. She verifies, by the gold chain around the swan’s throat, observable to all, that this swan is Gottfried transformed. The true heir to the throne of Brabant is now engaged hence. This, she says, is vengeance from the gods of the Norse pantheon on apostasy by the Christian dynasty of Brabant. But the Grail has one final consolation. Lohengrin kneels in silent prayer, and the white dove of Monsalvat hovers over the boat. Lohengrin perceives it with gratitude and springs up to unfasten the chain from the swan’s throat. The swan sinks into the water, and Lohengrin lifts to the bank a youth in gleaming silver garments. Ortrud collapses with a shriek, and Lohengrin steps onto the boat. The dove seizes the gold chain and draws it off Gottfried’s neck while Elsa gazes on him with rapture. He makes obeisance to King Heinrich. The men of the community kneel in homage to Gottfried. He hastens to Elsa’s arms, and she, in joy, turns hastily toward the shore, but Lohengrin is gone.

Wagner didn’t invent this story, but it is his rendition that endures in the modern world. The opera is one of the standards of companies with the resources to mount a production. Singers still aspire to the vocal challenges it presents. The familiar motifs of an inspired quest in defense of the powerless continue in modified form in cinematic drama, and, of course, every film score uses techniques Wagner invented or adapted for his purposes. In the productions of Lohengrin being mounted, however, many directors try to mute the clear demarcation between good and evil evident in the work. In an unsigned essay in a subscribers booklet circulated prior to Seattle Opera’s 2004 production, the author calls Ortrud a “rationalist”. Ortrud is clearly the force for evil in the drama, yet this writer asks, under the heading Wagner’s Moral Complexities, “How do we know Ortrud is so wicked? Her questions about Lohengrin are perfectly sensible. And if her tactics seem ruthless, remember that Ortrud truly believes that the throne is rightfully hers, that it was usurped from her family by Elsa’s. And why do we believe Lohengrin is so wonderful? The trial-by-combat scene in which he defeats Telramund, although sanctioned by King Henry’s medieval government, was as barbaric and foreign to Wagner’s audience as Ortrud’s black magic. By putting this scene onstage, Wagner was asking: Does might make right?”

This analysis is missing a salient theme in medieval literature. At the heart of the Grail legend and the chivalric code is the idea of might for right. If Ortrud is fighting for what she thinks is rightfully hers, she has no moral compunction about destroying the innocent in her ambition. In this vein one might also say of Lady Macbeth that she is fighting for what she thinks is rightfully hers. The opera Lohengrin is not morally complex. Though the composer certainly was morally compromised, he found truths in his art that were probably beyond him. The essayist, still anonymous, unlike Lohengrin, says “Wagner’s Lohengrin uses this popular pattern, and this old story, to talk about a central issue of the day: the crisis of faith in nineteenth-century Europe. During Wagner’s lifetime, the rise of science, technology, and industry were shaking to its foundations people’s faith in the church, long the mainstay of European society. Wagner shows us how Elsa’s pure faith in Lohengrin’s virtue evaporates when she listens seriously to the intelligent questions of Ortrud, who is competing with Lohengrin for power over the community. Ever the rationalist, Ortrud demands proof, and Lohengrin’s powerful mystique, penetrated by her piercing light of logical inquiry, turns out to be airy nothing.” Ortrud the rationalist! This is akin to calling her invocations of the Norse deities Logical Positivism—absurd. Elsa’s fragile faith is an important element of the story, but in this drama, at least, the church isn’t in crisis. The crisis is, indeed, correctly identified as within the human soul. It is a crisis of finding the spiritual resources to continue living in an unjust world, not a crisis of the church. In the world of this opera injustice is perpetrated by Ortrud and Telramund as he becomes complicit in Ortrud’s lies. You couldn’t find a less ambiguous case of false witness in the book of Leviticus.

Nietzsche admired Wagner, and for a while they were fellow travelers, but analysis of this medieval plot will be better served by leaving the Nietzschean will to power and its moral ambiguity aside. The profound and truly human question is why the innocent suffer while God remains inaccessible? The answer, in a bald-faced abstraction of the sort that is not consoling in absence of myth like that of Lohengrin, is that supernatural assistance, transparent and clearly evident to all observers, would irrevocably compromise human freedom. Despite the weight of postmodern ideology and the theory of evolution, there are moral truths, and there is some help to be found in transcendental categories. Suffering, when it has meaning, ceases to be unbearable suffering. This is a reasonable literary explanation for Lohengrin’s extraction of the promise that Elsa never ask his name or lineage. If he were to remain in Brabant after everybody knows that his strength is divinely ordained, his authority would be unquestionable, and human actions could never, for long, diverge from virtue as established by the community. The Christian Dynasty of Brabant would be eschatological. In this sense the story says the same thing as the Genesis account of the fall, and Elsa’s part resembles that of Eve under the influence of the serpent. A clearer case for archetypes in the collective unconscious could scarcely be found. Thankfully, Wagner is better dramatist than Carl Jung. Whether Wagner accepted the tale, as truth, is certainly questionable; the substance of the issue involved isn’t. Listen to the music with suspension of judgment, and draw your own conclusions. In contemporary productions, you might have to close your eyes to what they put on the stage.

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Beethoven on Justice, Human and Divine

In the year of the premier of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro Beethoven was sixteen years old. The innovator who took classic musical forms into new territory only wrote one opera, and it has been eclipsed by the brilliance of his nine symphonies. In contemporary productions the opera is known as Fidelio, after the pseudonym of the courageous wife of Florestan, who is a political prisoner under a corrupt administration. It can be seen as visionary art on Schiller’s model wherein art leads in the creation of a civic religion undergirding human rights and freedom. Leonora finds a way to subvert Governor Pizarro’s intent to murder her husband, whom Pizarro has unjustly imprisoned. Like Mozart, Beethoven lived during the birth of the modern era. Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, was originally dedicated to Napoleon before the general, on the success of his wars of liberation, became a tyrant himself. Beethoven then withdrew the original dedication of his music.

The subject of Beethoven’s opera was derived from a play by Bouilly called Leonore, or, Conjugal Love. The opera was first performed in Vienna on November 20, 1805. The vocal parts are so difficult that the first cast complained they were impossible to sing. The city of Vienna was in disarray because the French had occupied it several days before the premier, and most of the city’s music patrons had fled. The plot of the opera turns on the rectification of injustice by a noble woman who disguises herself as a boy called Fidelio. She gains employment in the prison where her husband Florestan is incarcerated and held in solitary confinement. Under threat of the impending visit of a prison inspector who might discover Pizarro’s plot, Pizarro tries to persuade the warden Rocco to murder Florestan. Rocco refuses but agrees to dig his grave if Pizarro will commit the crime.

Leonora overhears the rudiments of the plot and suspects that her husband is the intended victim. Her plight is made clear in the aria she sings after Pizarro and Rocco exit. Pizzaro’s fury is incomprehensible to her, but she clings to transcendent hope beyond the darkening clouds.

Come to me, hope, let not the last star
That guides the weary fade from sight
Be it ever so far, light my goal,
Sweet love, that I may reach it

I follow my inner desire
I waver not
I am strengthened by the duty
Of true married love

To make sure married love is understood for the courage and vigor it inspires in Leonora, Beethoven repeats and extends the phrase and the word Gattenliebe through the final thirty two bars of the aria.

Ich folg dem innern Triebe
Ich wanke nicht
Mich stärke die Pflicht
Der treuen Gattenliebe

Leonora persuades Rocco to allow her to accompany him to the darkest cell. Before they descend, however, the prisoners are allowed briefly into the sunlight for exercise in the prison yard. The prisoners’ chorus is another expression of spiritual perseverance against injustice. The singing as prisoners come out of the darkness of their cells into daylight is like a chorus of souls liberated from hell. A solo tenor voice accentuates the only basis for hope.

Trusting we shall ever
Count on help from God
Hope whispers softly
We shall be free
We shall find peace

Pizarro is informed by an officer that the prisoners have been granted this moment of air and sunlight, and he comes in to angrily interrogate Rocco for taking this liberty. Rocco deflects his anger, telling him it is in celebration of the King’s festival and that it will keep everyone occupied while the man still in his cell dies. Pizzaro tells Rocco to go down and dig his grave. As the act concludes, the prisoners are sent back to their cells, and Rocco and Leonora prepare for their descent.

The final act begins in the darkness of Florestan’s cell. Florestan’s aria is among the most difficult in the repertoire. For most of the dramatic tenors in the world in any generation it is impossible. Beginning on a sustained G with the words: God, what darkness here! it is the contemplation of a man who has had the courage to speak truthfully against evil and now finds himself in chains. He takes consolation in having done his duty and commits his fate into God’s hands.

Oh painful trial!
But God’s will is just
I complain not
This allotment of sorrow
Is in thy hands

A key change signals the vision of Leonora coming to console him, light in the darkness, the breath of a murmuring breeze, an angel like Leonora in rose colored mist. The new theme ascends repeatedly into the upper extremes of the tenor range. Stentorian B naturals accent the phrase. My angel Leonora, my wife, leading me to freedom in the heavenly domain.

Ich seh, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft
Ein Engel sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet
Ein Engel Leonora, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich

The exultation of the vision dispels the gloom for while before the prisoner sinks back down on the floor.

During the interval Leonora and Rocco have been descending into the darkness of the prison. Florestan sees the visitors as another hopeful sign and calls to them. While Leonora tries to determine if this is her husband, he sings, You will be repaid in a better world. Heaven has sent you to me. Once inside the cell, Leonora recognizes her husband, even while helping Rocco to dig the grave being prepared for him. Rocco gives Florestan a little wine and a piece of bread.

Pizarro descends into the dungeon brandishing a knife. He tells the prisoner he will die, but first he must recognize the man whom his testimony was intended to depose. Pizarro throws off his cloak and says, “The avenger now stands before you.” He attempts to stab the prisoner, but Leonora throws herself between Pizarro and Florestan, declaring that she is the wife of the prisoner who will expose the plot. Pizarro in rage is about to kill both of them, but Leonora draws a pistol and threatens to use it. At the critical moment the inspector arrives heralded by trumpets. Pizarro runs out to meet his superior officer. Florestan and Leonora embrace.

The ensuing dialogue leaves little doubt about the outcome. Rocco recognizes his freedom no longer to serve the tyrant Pizarro and cries, God be praised! Leonora and Florestan sing, the hour of retribution has come. Unspeakable sorrows now end in overwhelming joy!

The high ranking inspector liberates the prisoners, all victims of Pizarro’s tyranny. They sing, Justice, arm in arm with mercy, appears at the door of our grave. The inspector recognizes his lost friend Florestan, now in chains. He begins to unlock the shackles, but then turns to Leonora. The woman who saved her husband’s life should be the one to set him free.

Beethoven rewrote the overture to the opera Fidelio, entitled Leonora, four times. It has such nobility in its own right that it is often played as a concert piece. Yet none of the early performances of this opera were successful. Weber tried to revive it in Prague where it was again badly received. During Beethoven’s lifetime it was never recognized as the masterpiece it is now acknowledged to be. Beethoven said God never deserted him. Apparently, in faith like that of Florestan in chains, he was able to accept God’s will.

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Holy Juxtapositions for Lent

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ our Lord.

We have the stories in the Bible. We have the church traditions. We have the scholars and theologians who have studied them in detail… and are still studying. We can learn and understand much, but, at the same time, this crux of history brings heaven, earth, and hell together in ways that we can only begin to comprehend. For the artistically-minded, there is plenty of space for the imagination to soar. For the Christian, it can all be devotion to the Holy Son of God.

In this post, I journey toward comprehension of the cross through juxtapositions that are present at it. For example:

These are just some of my own. For more, I draw from the riches of Western hymns and Eastern liturgy and tradition.

Cross of Jesus from John Stainer’s The Crucifixion

Once the Lord of brilliant seraphs, / Winged with love to do His will,
Now the scorn of all His creatures, /And the aim of every ill.

Alas! and Did my Savior Bleed? by Isaac Watts

Well might the sun in darkness hide / And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died, /For man the creature’s sin.

Selections from an Eastern Orthodox Holy Saturday liturgy:

In a new tomb He is laid, Who empties the tombs of the dead.
Light of salvation, how art Thou hidden in a dark tomb?
By dying, O my God, Thou puttest death to death through Thy divine power.
Hell was wounded in the heart when it received Him whose side was pierced by the spear.
The most pure Temple is destroyed, but raises up the fallen tabernacle.
The second Adam, He who dwells on high, has come down to the first Adam in the depths of hell.

Joseph of Arimathea receiving the body of Jesus from Pontius Pilate.

St. Epiphanius says: “…A mortal went in before a mortal, asking to receive God; the God of mortals he begs; clay stands before clay so as to receive the Fashioner of all! Grass asks to receive from grass the Heavenly Fire; the miserable drop seeks to receive from a drop the whole Abyss! Who ever saw, who ever heard such a thing?”

A hymn of Joseph of Arimathea speaking to Pilate:

Give me this stranger, who from infancy has been as a stranger, a sojourner in the world.
Give me this stranger, whom His own race has hated and delivered unto death as a stranger.
Give me this stranger, who in a strange manner is a stranger to death.
Give me this stranger, who has received the poor as guests.
Give me this stranger, whom His people from envy estranged from the world.
Give me this stranger, that I may hide him in a tomb, for as a stranger He has no place to lay His head.
Give me this stranger, whose Mother seeing His dead body cries out: ‘O my Son and my God, I am sorely wounded within me and my heart is rent, seeing Thee as one dead; but in Thy Resurrection I take courage and magnify Thee.’

How now can we respond to such things, too wonderful for us by far? We cannot, if we hope that our response will equal them. But, by faith, we can simply embrace, trust, die, and be reborn. And give thanks, now and forevermore.

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Transfiguration

During the 2nd week of Lent, I began to read a book suggested by a friend who is an atheist.  I had some interest in the book, Sense and Goodness without God, by Richard Carrier, and I thought I might agree that that ethics and epistemology can be justified on the basis metaphysical naturalism. The contention that humanity is capable of goodness without God is not untenable even for the religious.  Historic theology includes doctrines of an existing moral order, referred to variously as natural law or general revelation that precede explicit revelation to prophets or saints.  The Apostle Paul begins his Epistle to the Romans with, among other things, a discussion of the “law” that is known to Gentiles because it is “written in their hearts”.  The world’s religions, even while they are divergent theologically, have come to many similar conclusions about ethics.  Christians do not assume they are superior to others but that that they are beneficiaries of God’s grace.

I admit I have only begun to read the book, but I started without any particular expectation that I would be so astonished by the author’s incomprehension of things that most civilized people take for granted.  Mr. Carrier is former editor-in-chief at Infidels.org. His comments on the Bible are informed by so little imagination that he seems tone deaf to poetry and the dramatic texts that have inspired art and faith for millennia.  In brief, his claim is that the only viable methodology for knowing anything is rigorous logical analysis based on “experience”.  What he’d make of Shakespeare is anybody’s guess.  He thinks his methodology is the norm in science and technology and that everything we need to know can be ascertained through application of empirical rigor.  Apparently he’s unaware that enthusiasm for logical positivism dwindled off somewhere the middle of the twentieth century and that the rigor and professionalism, which he says he admires in industry and academe, are also applicable to the facile ideas he generates.  None of the four hundred pages of his book will ever see light of day in any noteworthy philosophical journal.

A teaching assistant at Columbia University, the writer claims some expertise in ancient languages and philosophy.  It seems abrupt then when he writes off ancient philosophy in less than one sentence: Plato, he thinks, “Made a mistake”.  He takes a couple of pages to dispatch the arguments of Alvin Plantinga, professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame, who, incidentally, does publish his work in reputable philosophical journals.  Mr. Carrier justifies this end-run around the professional rigor of the field in which chooses to publish by noting that philosophy only matters when it is intelligible in non-technical language to those who seek values grounded in experience that can be applied in real life.  Unimpressed by the Bible, he nonetheless claims to have read the New Testament in the original Greek.  This is dubious because the Koine Greek of the New Testament is, by any measure, dissimilar to the Attic Greek of philosophy and ancient history.  Koine resembles Modern Greek, not the language of Plato and Aristotle, just as Carrier’s language resembles the daily bilge of the Internet, not philosophy.

Reading Carrier’s book thus far has made me doubt that the groundswell of activity in the blogosphere is adding much to the public discourse, regardless how many infidels are making names for themselves online.  He says confidently that in school he mastered any science to which applied his nimble mind, but after graduation he was not in possession of any skills by which he could earn a living.  He admits spending years doing menial jobs such as gardening and waiting tables.  By now he might be qualified for service as a maître d’ in a good restaurant, but he has chosen to disencumber the world of its philosophical pretensions and religious illusions.  While he raised himself from “poverty”, he was content with the life of the mind and of good friends because in his youthful quest he had discovered the truths of the Tao. The Tao is self evident, coherent, and practicable as opposed to the childish nonsense of the Bible, he says, though he doesn’t enlighten us in these profundities.  As I recall, “The Tao that can be told is not the Tao”, a tenet that Lao Tzu seems to have neglected in writing about a hundred pages on the subject.  Richard Carrier does claim transcendental experience of all an encompassing unity and being.  He enlisted in the Coast Guard, and one night at sea, after being awake for something like 35 hours during training exercises, he attained cosmic consciousness or the equivalent.  He tells us that he continues to seek to improve his mind, but now “in maturity” he knows everything required to live a satisfying, knowledgeable, and moral life.

The writer’s misapprehension of how ethics might be theoretically grounded is very unlike ancient philosophy.  Plato’s discussions of justice are engaging dialogues that explore many facets of the ideal.  Carrier’s sophomoric monologues go on for hundreds of pages in such digressions as the kind of evidence that might indicate the truth of the proposition “I have a cat” –creaturely claws, hair on the sofa, vet bills, etc.  Some of Carrier’s role models, notably A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, wrote like this, but it wasn’t long until people like G. J. Warnock and J. L. Austin dismantled silly arguments about sense data and evidence for things nobody would ever doubt.  When the cat is purring in my lap, I don’t need to produce evidence for its existence. 

I rehearsed most of this on the way to choir practice last Thursday night.  By the time I got to church, I was in a mood to demolish Carrier for anybody who would listen.  Of course, that was not the reason I was there.  I got involved in the Lenten music we were preparing.  Our conductor is a musical whiz and does not waste time.  If your mind wanders under her direction, even for a minute, you end up feeling as negligent to detail as is this infidel PR hack, Carrier.  We sang for a couple of hours.  Beyond our illuminated loft the music resonated in the distance of the darkened sanctuary.  Near the end of the rehearsal the conductor read the following notes on the transfiguration as related to the music she had selected for this Sunday:

In every year of the lectionary cycle, the particular Gospel proclaims the Transfiguration of the Lord on the 2nd Sunday of Lent.  In addition to the image of the glory that Christ would receive in his Resurrection, the church has always seen in this event a glimpse of the promised glory that each follower of Christ receives as a baptized member of His Body the Church.  In a sermon about the Transfiguration, Pope Leo the Great wrote, “With no less forethought, Christ was also providing a firm foundation of the hope of the holy Church.  The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as His gift.  The members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.”

One thing missing in the work of currently fashionable advocates of religious abnegation is any sense of how faith, particularly Christian faith, provides hope in the face of unbearable sorrow.  The story of Jesus is hope starkly defined against the passion of the man of sorrows.  For Jesus, opposition is unrelenting, and there is treachery even among those he loves.  While he heals the diseases of the throng, he knows that suffering will continue and that the poor–and the poor in spirit–will be always among us.  Liturgical worship is a rehearsal for the passion none of us will ultimately evade.  Familiarity with it helps us to recognize ourselves in Jesus.  The crucifix behind the altar represents more than recurring cycles of the Lenten progression.  Everyone will eventually carry or hang on the cross.  Hours spent in contemplation in this atmosphere may improve our prospects.

We concluded our musical rehearsal by singing O Lux Beatissima, by Howard Helvey.  This is a setting of a text attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, deceased in 1228, that was used in the ancient Catholic Pentecost Sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

O lux beatissima                              O light most blessed
Reple cordis intima                         Fill the inmost heart
Tuorum fidelium                              Of all thy faithful.
Sine tuo nomine                               Without your grace
Nihil est in homine                          There is nothing in us,
Nihil est innoxium                            Nothing that is not harmful.

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Names and Words– an end, for a while

It is not easy to characterize people by one criterion.  I spoke at the funeral of my friend Bill earlier this year and talking with the kids afterwards provoked the same thought in all of us. Bill had bought one of the first Apple ][+ computers in the late ‘70’s and one would have said he was technologically advanced.  However, to my amuse/amaze-ment and his children’s consternation/horror, he stuck with dial-up until his death.

Why do I bring this up here?  My last two posts have had opposite views on modern hymnody – gender neutrality in hymns is not an absolute for me – “give me that old-time hymn” expresses my view if the substitution upsets the textual flow.  However, I am willing to consider God both as masculine and feminine – far from that “old-time religion”.

Continuing in that line, in general I am not wild about (or to be more correct, I dislike, but not rabidly) the substitution  of “you” for “thou” – the latter is archaic but still easily understood and expresses to me a feeling that God is different than the ordinary people we know and consider.  As Brian Wren so nicely puts it (see previous post) “Great, living God, never fully known”.  This of course is contrary to the German usage, which uses the 2nd person pronoun “du”, which is normally only used for family, little children, animals, and close personal friends.

To me, a formality in worship helps separate worship from everyday life, in a way I suspect like some Catholics feel about the Tridentine Mass.  Worship is both part of  and separated from everyday life. As Moses was told to remove his sandals because he was on sacred ground, I like to think that going to worship requires some preparation and some focus.

A final thought to toss into this stewpot of ideas. Bishop Muskens has said:

“Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah?” he said.

“What does God care what we call him? It is our problem.”

I agree, it is our problem.  However because it is a problem to some of us, it will affect our worship experience and our response to God.  But, from the hymnody point of view, we could have more mellifluous hymns.

So what am I – conservative, liberal or what?  As a friend at our high school reunion commented; he would get together with two other friends from high school and one was very liberal and the other was very conservative.  My comment was “does that make you just right?”  Of course there is no just right – we all grow and develop in life in different ways. Hopefully my way is best for me (but possibly/probably not for you).

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