--
It is no exaggeration, I think, to say that “Piled Higher and Deeper” is the single greatest comic strip ever, in all the venerable history of comic strips—or at least, the best one about grad school, even if it does portray mostly engineering students. One strip from 2003 recounts a few of what it calls “questions not even 5+ years of grad school will help you answer.” For the PhD in physics: “But, uncle, what exactly causes gravity?” For the PhD in political science: “Why war?” And of course, for the PhD in mechanical engineering: “So, son, think we can fix this old car?” To each of these questions, the poor confused grad students can only respond “um,” no doubt with visions of equations and conference papers dancing before their eyes. Perhaps if the father had asked about fixing jet engines, he’d have gotten a better response.
Now, tragically, this list leaves out my personal favorite question, and one I’ve gotten far too often since I first declared an English major in ‘96 or so: “What’s your favorite book?” As glad as I am to see the general public recognize that the primary business of literary studies is literature—otherwise they might be asking “What’s your favorite discursive literary artifact that tries to mask its own bourgeois capitalist ideological agenda?”—this question still tends to unnerve me. This is mainly because I have no idea how to answer it. At least until the dissertation, my official academic reading during any given quarter spans plenty of authors, genres, and periods—and multiple countries are by no means out of the question. During one, well, hectic semester in college, I took six classes on literature from six different continents, so you can imagine how muddled my poor type-A brain got by finals week. And even now, when most of my readings are from dead white Anglophones, the impulse for comparison often prevents me from picking the best book to defend a given philosophical point, let alone picking one to elevate above everything else. Asking me to choose a favorite book is like asking a food critic to pick his favorite entrée or a musician to pick her favorite melody. For a hundred different reasons, I relish a hundred different authors: Nabokov’s wordplay, Jane Austen’s wit, Melville’s brooding, Dostoevsky’s rants, Tolstoy’s sweep, Douglas Adams’ absurdity—and that’s just some of the fiction. Don’t get me started on theory and philosophy-- we might be here all night!
But while variety makes a convenient excuse for my not choosing one book to rule them all, actually I don’t think it’s the greatest obstacle. That honor, it seems to me, belongs to an ambivalence in many Christian circles over just what makes a good book—one that ought to be the Christian’s favorite tome. Recently I visited a new church, and after the worship service I made a beeline for the church library: since the church was a large one, I figured the library would be accordingly respectable. And, placed alongside similar libraries I’ve seen, it was indeed. Between the commentaries, subject studies, church histories, and biographies, there was more than enough for a lifetime’s serious study—not to mention the potential for amazing improvement in one’s walk with God. But I must admit, I’m a bit of a literary snob, and I paid particular attention to the shelves labeled “fiction.” Here, too, there was quite a lot of reading material: Jan Karon’s Mitford series, several volumes of the ever-expanding Left Behind franchise, and scores of brightly-colored but rather forgettable paperback novels. Now, having occasionally tried my own hand at creative writing with generally ugly and clichéd results, I must doff my cap to anyone who’s managed to finish a whole novel and get it published to boot. And I don’t doubt that God has used even the least palatable and most formulaic Christian fiction to teach and encourage its readers. But what dismayed me about the library’s selection was what was missing from its offerings. Yes, there was…plenty of Tim Lahaye, but Narnia was nowhere to be seen—and ditto for G.K. Chesterton, Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, or even Milton and Dante. And even that list doesn’t account for the thousands of writers who espoused a Christian worldview but didn’t explicitly write “religious” stories—or, horror of horrors, used their fiction to critique the Church of their day. As Gene Veith puts it, “[f]rom the beginnings of the church to the present day, Christian writers have explored their faith in books, and in doing so have nourished their fellow believers. Some of the best writers who have ever lived have been Christians, working explicitly out of the Christian worldview” (xiv)[1].
Some of you, no doubt, noticed that the list of favorites I rattled off earlier was decidedly non-Biblical. After all, the Bible includes loads of wordplay, wit, brooding, and all the other characteristics that keep even the oldest literary work fresh and alive. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t know the Bible nearly as well as I wish or ought to do so, though more than one of my so-called secular favorites picks up themes I first heard in Sunday School. You see, the more I study literature the better I understand the Bible, and the more I study the Bible the better I understand literature—especially literature written outside the Christian tradition. For while I firmly believe that God has directly inspired one and only one Book, and included in it all we need to know about God and about ourselves, the fact remains that all literature in a sense treats the same subject matter. Cleanth Brooks, an important literary critic during the first half of the 20th century, puts it this way:
Like religion, literature is suffused with terms that appeal to the human heart. The interpretation may be merely implicit in the work, as when a lyric poet meditates on a flower, or it may be quite explicit and circumstantial, as when a novelist traces the history of a family or a society. But whether implicit or explicit, slightly or massively detailed, the literary artist brings together events and observations and moods into a pattern which has its coherence of attitude. The poem or novel or play gives us—if we want to use polysyllabic terms—a value-structured experience (51)[2].
Though Brooks’ phrase “value-structured experience” has some important differences from James Sire’s “reading for worldview” model, as set out in his book How to Read Slowly, it’s worth unpacking a bit. Indeed, I would argue, such a self-conscious preoccupation with values forms the bedrock of many major theories of literary aesthetics, particularly those concerned with the interplay between Christianity and literature. Tolstoy, for instance, argues that “[a]rt is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them” (123)[3].
While not all theorists share Tolstoy’s insistence on the primarily emotional impact of art, even those who decry Christian literature as so much ideological pandering admit that all literature transmits and promotes a set of values. More to the point, of all the humanities literature offers the strongest evidence that art and its values are mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing. The phrase “What Would Jesus Do?”, which all of us probably encountered in junior high, originally appeared (to my knowledge) in In His Steps, a novel by Charles Sheldon. And for Sheldon to present that question as he does requires a belief that Jesus, as both a literary character in the Gospels and as a real historical figure, can and ought to be imitated. I include both these categories because I think the combination is crucial to Sheldon’s understanding of Jesus’ character, and thus to the ways in which his characters decide just what Jesus would do. As a character in the Gospels, texts which though often biographical and expository are nonetheless literary, Jesus’ specific actions are limited by the stories’ various settings and the author’s various choices. For instance, the line “Peace, be still,” which Jesus says in Mark’s account of the calming of the storm, wouldn’t make sense, say, during the wedding at Cana. Now, given this particular scene we might extrapolate how Jesus might have behaved during Hurricane Katrina (and thus, in Sheldon’s logic, how we as Christians ought to behave) but those speculations would be, strictly speaking, extra-literary. And though we as readers generally assume that literary characters do exist “outside” the narration—that there is, in fact, more than one day to the life of Ivan Denisovich—we hardly expect to meet Huck Finn on the road to Emmaus. However, the fact that Sheldon’s characters apply Jesus’ example to situations not found in the Gospels (such as one character’s decision whether to advertise a brutal boxing match in his newspaper) suggests that they—and Sheldon-- could keep asking “What Would Jesus Do” because they believed the representation corresponded to a real person.
So, in this case, we can certainly analyze Sheldon’s novel in terms of Christian discourse. But we should not stop there! For even as In His Steps uses Christian language to describe social action, it in turn affected and still affects conversations about Christianity and social action today. “WWJD” become a byword, an advertising slogan, and the basis for many a youth group homily about the latest Hollywood-hatched heresy to come down the pipeline. But this process is not unique to the twentieth century: we also see it in Scripture itself. When God identifies himself to Moses as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:15), He appeals to an intertextuality of sorts—the knowledge that Moses (and the story’s later audience) would recognize the reference to Israelite history now recorded in Genesis. Likewise, the New Testament, at several crucial junctures, takes on imagery and language from OT texts: see, for instance, the book of Hebrews. There, the author opens with an even more explicitly intertextual assertion: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things” (Heb. 1:1-2a).
So far, I’ve suggested some ways in which we can understand the relationship between religion and literature, and how each one’s role complements the other. Now I want to turn specifically to the question of reading literature, which is the subject of James Emery White’s third chapter in A Mind for God. White titles his chapter “The Library as Armory,” a phrase originally from the writings of a 12th-century monk but also reminiscent of Paul’s account in Ephesians 6 about the “whole armor of God” (6:11). (And just as a side note, I’d like to point out that the whole “library as armory” idea originally depended on a pun: the Latin words for “library” and “armory” are similar. None of you should be surprised, then, that I was drawn to this chapter.) Now the point of this metaphor is not to recruit one’s books as physical weapons—though I’ve got some nice hardback anthologies at home that would work—but as in Paul’s metaphor of armor to use reading to prepare for both intellectual and spiritual battle. Here, as in Ephesians, we would do well to note that both sets of arms serve primarily defensive functions. A good library, like a sharp mind, may not protect us from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but it will serve us well against what Paul labels “the fiery darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).
Now wait a second here. Didn’t we already hear this lecture a few weeks ago, from some nerdy character with an orange hat? You know—all that stuff about the mind being important, how we should think smarter not harder, why Billy Sunday played ping pong with jackrabbits, yada yada yada. Well, yes: a lot of the best arguments for serious and conscientious reading are the same ones for a serious and conscientious mental life in general. After all, if our human minds are to reflect some small part of God’s mind, and if we are to use our minds to interact with the outside world, obviously we’re going to have to do our homework. I somehow doubt that Paul’s sermon in Acts 17 came out of Mars Hill Cliff Notes. Furthermore, as graduate students we are perhaps the last group that needs a homily about the importance of reading more—our advisors demonstrate that truth every time we meet with them! What is probably clear by this point in the quarter is that the specific disciplines and topics we discuss in these Friday sessions are not meant to be mutually exclusive: indeed, any one of them can hardly function without the others. In recent weeks, we have heard from Salena about the importance of engagement with cultural models of diversity, and from Millie about the importance of, as one of our summer posters has it, thinking Christianly. Reading literature does not replace these disciplines—it was never meant to do so—but in fact augments them. For as James Sire’s more recent work suggests, the expression of one’s worldview is as likely to appear in a creative and/or narrative format as in a systematic list. Perhaps more to the point, your classmate or coworker will likely shy away from formal theological debates about Gnosticism or redemption, but may be quite willing to chat about The Da Vinci Code or Lord of the Rings. In White’s opening chapter of A Mind for God, he argues that a solidly Christian mind allows us to “stride forward and engage the world at the point of its great need” (12). Though literature does not contain or express all of that need—this is why not all Christians should be English majors—it forms, as White points out, a vital armory with which to battle this world’s powers and principalities.
But as with study in general, a deeper study of literary forms and traditions does far more than improve our defenses, for it opens the doors to depths of profundity and beauty that we might otherwise miss. For Christians, the most obvious first step for this study is of course the ultimate bestseller: the Bible. Besides the fringe benefit of knowing the single most important and influential text in the whole of literature, an appreciation of the Bible’s literary depths helps bring its ways and truths into focus, and ultimately to bring the Way and the Truth in focus as well. White reminds us of the words of Hebrews 4:12: “the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two–edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Naturally, this quality of Scripture ultimately comes from God, but nonetheless it comes about partly through literary devices. And it is precisely the Bible’s remarkable literary sweep and brilliance that keeps believers enthralled and even outsiders interested. In my experience, Biblical literacy is not simply a method for producing quaint footnotes to the rest of the canon, but rather a prerequisite for approaching the canon in the first place. Harold Bloom has described the “anxiety of influence” (in his book of the same name) among authors in the Western tradition; for Bloom, Shakespeare is the central figure of all literature, dominating and ultimately subduing all those who wrote after him. The Bible seems to me to have had a similar effect, though over a longer time span and with much more significant consequences. Upon encountering the Bible, one may object to it, snarl at it, argue with it, read into it, or live by it—but one may not simply pretend it never existed. For the Christian, of course, this effect is even greater, for we are not simply called to appreciate Scripture’s literary artistry and historical importance, but rather to submit our whole lives to it. White describes the difference thus:
As one would expect, the Bible is not to be read like any other book. More than concentrated study of the Scriptures is called for; this is a book to be obeyed. Other books are to be engaged, understood and evaluated as to the truth and wisdom, place and purpose of their contents. The Bible must also be engaged and understood, but not for the purpose of determining whether we should take it into consideration. The Bible alone calls for complete and utter submission of life and thought. As New Testament scholar N.T. Wright observes, “The Christian is prepared to say, ‘I don’t like the sound of this, but golly, if this is what it really means, I’m going to have to pray for grace and strength to get that into my heart and by shaped by it” (46).
How, then, should we go about getting this singular book into our hearts, and what does literature have to do with it? Well, as with literary texts, there is certainly no shortage of instruction booklets! At least according to Amazon.com, one can read the Bible as a business textbook, a devotional guide, a political manifesto, a little instruction book, and even a weight loss manual. Fortunately, the choice of your particular method does not fall to me to dictate, or even to suggest. But I will insist on one thing-- however you read the Bible, read it for what it is: a literary masterpiece. I quite like Leland Ryken’s opening remark in his book on the Bible as literature: “The one thing the Bible is not is what it is so often thought to be—a theological outline with proof texts attached” (9)[4]. Certainly, the careful study of Scripture has generated enough writings on theology to fill our libraries to overflowing. But even that theology flowed from an understanding of literary conventions. The smallest detail of genre, tone, or imagery might make the difference in an entire passage. Likewise, how we understand a given passage—say, the line “This is my body”—often hinges on how we interpret a given literary device in it. Even if you never plan to write a book on hermeneutics or even to set foot in another literature classroom as long as you live, you owe it to yourself to approach the Bible on its own terms—and thus approach God on His. Gordon Fee’s How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth is a good starting point, as is Ryken’s How to Read the Bible as Literature, among other books. And frankly, your average Freshman English textbook will do quite nicely in a pinch—the older the book, the better the advice.
Speaking of old books, what about the rest of literature—the stuff White says we’re to engage with, understand, and evaluate? After having heard what I said earlier about my trouble picking a favorite book, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t spend the next hour rattling off titles for you to read and English classes for you take. You see, though I do have a handout for you with some suggested readings, I don’t think there is a single perfectly foolproof method for choosing what to read or in choosing how to interpret it. Planning a reading list, I think, is a lot like planning a meal. Yours will likely be guided by what materials you have access to; your ethnic, cultural, and linguistic background; and frankly, what kind of stuff you like. The list I prepared for tonight, for example, is rather heavy on American literature and critical theory, two of my academic interests and specialties. Likewise, nearly all the books on my list were ones I’ve read for one literature class or another, and most were originally written in English. Does this mean, as some critics of the Western canon have alleged, that only dead white Christian males have anything worthwhile to say? Hardly. But it does mean that my tastes and recommendations in reading are shaped by my background and my personality, just as many books I’ve read have influenced how I think and act. So when you read my suggestions in a few minutes, you’re perfectly welcome to mutter about how dare I leave off such-and-such a book or author. And if you should choose to email your mutterings to me, I promise not to make fun of you for reading Harry Potter. Much.
In the time we have left, then, I want to talk a bit about reading for worldview, which assuredly does not mean only reading books which agree with your own worldview. So how do we go about this? Well, the most thorough instructions from an explicitly Christian perspective are in James Sire’s book How to Read Slowly, though he covers some of the same ground in Discipleship of the Mind and Habits of the Mind as well. But Sire points out, and I quite agree, that attention to worldview is by no means limited to Christians, but rather is a rather widespread academic exercise in critical thinking. For example, David Richter, in the preface to his wonderful anthology The Critical Tradition, proposes a similar model for unpacking the insanely dense theoretical essays that are a staple of every humanities student’s academic diet. The first step is fairly straightforward: “clarify the vocabulary” [5] of whatever you’re reading. Admittedly this can be difficult in literary contexts, especially with older texts or those using specialized vocabulary, but it’s both necessary and a great way to get deeper into an argument. Once that’s done, we can start asking questions about genre, thesis, evidence, and possible objections (hmm, sounds like my freshman comp class!). For instance, how does Paul’s letter to the Romans differ in generic form from David’s psalms? Or how does Richard Dawkins approach quantitative scientific evidence as compared to Francis Collins? The final step—and admittedly, it’s common for all these steps to happen more or less simultaneously—is to analyze the text in terms of worldview, whether that worldview belongs to a character or an author. Sire has written widely on his model of determining worldviews, primarily in The Universe Next Door, so I won’t go over it now. But the point is recognizing that every text, whatever the genre, content, or historical circumstances, acts on a set of philosophical principles and assumptions that can and should inform how we read and interpret it.
That, then, is the basic plan, and one I’ve found applicable to a whole range of texts. But since my topic tonight is reading literature, I want to conclude with some practical advice about applying Sire’s model to literary texts. First and foremost, remember that both literary language and literary form do not work the same way as other types of language. (Just how they differ is a fascinating debate in itself, but that’s for another time.) Clues to a text’s worldview can appear anywhere: in its vocabulary, in its style of argument, in its form, and of course in its actual content. For instance, Wordsworth’s poem “The World is Too Much With Us” and Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur” treat the same problem—the drudgery of human activity—but from very different stylistic, formal, and philosophical premises. And I need hardly add that novelistic or theological treatments of that problem will look much different from either poem. Secondly, even when you’re reading for worldview or a philosophical point, don’t neglect the aesthetic aspects of a work, and don’t simply put it aside when you’ve “figured out” the author’s worldview. During my freshman year of college, I assembled a far too ambitious term paper on worldviews in three American literature texts we’d read that semester. And while I made enough valid philosophical points to convince my TA to give me an A on the paper, looking back I wish I’d paid more attention to how the various worldviews made an artistic difference in each work—for it was that artistry that drew me to them in the first place. Thirdly, and this applies primarily to those pursuing English as an academic discipline, anticipate and be prepared for resistance from within the academy. In preparing for this talk, I sent out a notice to my department faculty and grad students, and received two responses. One, from a former grad student who recently graduated in Medieval Literature, wished me well and pointed out that “we need more open discussion of Christianity as a presence in literature.” The other response, from a retired faculty member who never has and probably never will meet me, mocked my talk and said that “the relationship between Christianity and literature is that the latter has the possibility of saving us from the former.” I hope I’ve shown tonight that such an adversarial relationship is both unrealistic and unnecessary, but like all scholars I and my Christian colleagues have a long road ahead of us.
The best advice I can give you, however, is to keep reading: passionately, omnivorously, and, yes, Christianly. Though no other book can compare to the Bible in authority and trustworthiness, as I said earlier they all have something in common: they’re about us. They trace the words we live by, the words we run from, and ultimately our relationship with the Living Word. It can be a bit disconcerting to find yourself in a book, particularly when you find Someone demanding your worship and allegiance at the same time. But keep reading, and keep thinking: your armory can always use another shelf.
References
1. Veith, Gene Edward. “Preface.” Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990.
2. Brooks, Cleanth. “Religion and Literature.” 1974. Community, Religion, and Literature. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri Press, 1995. 50-62.
3. Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art? 1898. Trans. Aylmer Maude. London: Oxford UP, 1962.
4. Ryken, Leland. “Preface.” How to Read the Bible as Literature. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.
5. Sire, James. How to Read Slowly: Reading for Comprehension. New York: Random House, 1989. 31.
