Comedy and the Psalms

"The Kiss of Peace and Justice," Laurent de La Hyre

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
Praise the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name of the Lord
From this time forth and forever.
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the Lord is to be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations;
His glory is above the heavens.

Who is like the Lord our God,
Who is enthroned on high,
Who humbles Himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and in the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes,
With the princes of His people.
He makes the barren woman abide in the house
As a joyful mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

(Psalm 113)

We frequently sing this psalm in church, and - confession here - it wasn't until recently, when the tune was stuck in my head for a week, that I thought about its lyrics on any "deep" level. (Not sure if I should be proud of that sentence?) Anyways, what really stood out to me is how God's intervention in human affairs often has a topsy-turvy effect on whatever it touches. The poor sit with princes, the childless become parents, the disgraced become joyful. It is a complete disruption in the expected, conventional social order.

This phenomenon reminded me a lot of one of the major tropes you find in comedies, particularly those of the Renaissance. Upset of the existing order is present in almost any comic plot. The formula of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a perfect example. It moves from order (the city of Athens, rule of law, parental/governmental/patriarchal authority, objectivity) to disorder (the forest, rule of magic, a power struggle between Titania and Oberon, and a dreamlike escape into a world that blurs the participants' grasp of reality), and then quickly restores the old order, but with modifications (restoration, harmony, marriage, benevolent interplay between the two societies). The conclusion features justice and mercy coming together in peace.

Although I used a Renaissance play to illustrate my point, ancient culture is full of the same trope. The Athenian comedies feature women unexpectedly ruling their husbands, while the Roman holiday of Saturnalia included a day in which masters served their slaves. In this light, I think it can be a helpful way to read the psalm as reminiscent of the phenomenon of deep comedy. God's work in our lives often functions as an upset in what we expect, but that is not a bad thing.

Interestingly, the psalmist reinforces this effect of God in human affairs by also meditating on its theological context first. The works of creation, providence, and salvation are all intrinsically acts of condescension on God's part. God's "glory is above the heavens" but He "humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth." In Christ's work of redemption, we witness Him leave the throne room of heaven to become "lower than the angels" (Hebrews 2.9) by living a difficult human life and experiencing a horrific death. But this is followed by His resurrection, ascension, and - everybody leaves this one out - session at the right hand of the Father. The order is restored, but there is now peace between God and man. Righteousness and mercy kiss (Psalm 85.10).

Ironically, in this context, the chaos becomes a comfort. It is a reminder that the children of God receive in their salvation something that fallen creatures would never deserve - twisted criminals are now heirs. It is a meditation on the merciful and humble nature of God, who was willing to exchange glory for shame. It is the reassurance that God is not absent, but rather at work - the presence of chaos (the middle portion of the cycle), necessarily implies the return of order and harmony (the restoration in the conclusion).

Keach and poetics

The gardens of Canterbury Cathedral

If beauty, wealth or honour thou dost prize,
I do present one now before thine Eyes,
That is the Object, this alone is he;
None, none like him did ever mortals see,
He is all fair, in him’s not one ill feature,
Ten thousand times more fair than any Creature
That lives, or ever lived on the Earth,
His Beauty so amazingly shines forth;
Angelick Nature is enamour’d so,
They love him dearly, and admire him too,
His Head is like unto the purest Gold,
His curled Tresses lovely to behold,
And such a brightness sparkles from his Eyes,
As when Aurora gilds the Morning Skies.
And tho’ so bright, yet lovely like the Doves,
Charming all hearts, where rests diviner Loves,
Look on his beauteous Cheeks, and thou’lt espy
The Rose of Sharon deckt in Royalty.
His smiling lips, his speech, and words so sweet
That all delights and joy in them do meet;
Which tends at once to ravish ear and sight,
And to a kiss all heavenly Souls invite.
The Image of his Father’s in his face;
His inward parts excel, he’s full of grace.
If Heaven and Earth can make a rare Complexion,
Without a spot, or the least imperfection;
Here, here it is, it in this Prince doth shine,
He’s altogether lovely, all Divine.

(The Glorious Lover, II.iii.9-36)

Between studying for my MA exam, graduating, getting married, working, and moving across several states, my work on Benjamin Keach has been relegated to the back burner for the past couple years. Lately, though, I've found time to resume my transcription project on his "epic" poem, The Glorious Lover. There's material in here for a doctoral dissertation (wink wink), but for now, I'm especially interested in this passage I came across yesterday, in which Keach turns his attention to a prolonged discussion of the beauty of Christ. The excerpt above is merely the prologue to his eight-item exposition on the topic. There's several things going on here that are worthy of consideration.

First, on a contextual level, Keach is obviously taking part in the ongoing Renaissance discussion of the relationship between beauty/aesthetics/poetic art and morality/didacticism/spirituality. Writers understood art and poetry to be more than ornamental forces; they were, more importantly, vehicles of communication. Sir Philip Sidney, whose Apologie for Poetrie has come to be the best-known Renaissance case for poetic art, explained it thus:

Poesie therefore is an arte of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in this word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or figuring foorth: to speake metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight... (p. 12)

Sidney goes on to pinpoint the "chiefe both in antiquitie & excellencie" of all poetic forms to be those that explicitly point their readers to the spiritual world by "imitat[ing] the inconceivable excellencies of GOD" (ibid.). He then goes on to list the major biblical and classical poets who produced devotional lyrics. Thus, in the world from which Keach emerged, the best poetry was that which encouraged its readers to be better (=godlier) people, and furthermore, the best type of this poetry was the kind which drew directly from Scripture itself.

Second, in grounding what follows in his discussion on the beauty of Christ, Keach is also taking part in the ubiquitous Western trope of courtly love (just a few examples include Dante, Spenser, and Herbert). In other words, by following the rules of the romance genre, he's connecting his work with that of his poetic predecessors (we know that Keach was familiar with the work of Herbert, for example). Interestingly, though, while he commits himself to following the generic romance conventions, he's also very invested in bending or outright flouting them. Whereas in Dante and Spenser, the beloved lady is a source of inspiration, the Soul of the Glorious Lover is a "vile wretched Creature" (I.i.208). Many times, there's more Hosea than Song of Solomon going on here. Keach is reinventing the genre, at once making it darker and yet simultaneously more wholesome.

Finally, speaking of the Song of Solomon, everything above comes together in the biblical book that inspired Keach to write his poem. Elizabeth Clarke reveals how significant the romance, or "mystical marriage" trope, is in Keach's thought by turning to his landmark guide to biblical metaphors, Tropologia. Describing what Keach called "the most pleasant metaphor of all...[the] Espousals," she observes that Keach gives this trope the most airtime of all, even concluding his exegesis with a marital poem on Christ and the Church ("The Glorious Lover," Baptist Quarterly 43.8, 458). In Keach's mind, the romance between Christ and the Church is the meta-theme that unites all of Scripture together. With this in mind, it's incredibly significant that, in The Glorious Lover, he combines the most prestigious form of literature - the epic - with the most important of biblical metaphors, using form and content to reinforce the legendary nature of its subject matter. Just as Milton wrote Paradise Lost as the great theodicy of Christian literature, Keach is setting forth the great romance of the Bible.

So those are just a few of the reasons I find The Glorious Lover fascinating. There is a lot of ambition on Keach's part. He, a puritan, is writing in the worldliest of genres, reinventing them, and using the product to "mythologize" the Christian narrative.

The beauty of impassibility

James Dolezal:

God need not experience changes of relation in order to meaningfully relate Himself to His creatures. He need only ordain a change in the revelation of His unchanging being in accordance with His wisdom and the needs and requirements or the creature in time. In this way, it is not God who changes but rather the manifestations of God, which are perfectly suited to the needs and circumstances of His creatures - whether according to wrath or according to mercy - at any given moment of their lives. It seems audacious to conclude that this unique manner of God's care for His creatures is somehow impersonal and lacking vibrancy. Why must God be personal and related to others in the same way as finite persons are? Why must He undergo change in order for His love or opposition to sin to be regarded as genuine? Indeed, it would seem that the One who is unchanging, simple, and purely actual in all that He is - which is exactly what classical theism claims about God - is the One who is most profoundly vibrant and powerful in relating Himself to others. Such a God may appear strange and unlike us in many significant respects. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: classical theism is not in need of a replacement model, as all other models must fall short of the true confession of God's infinite fullness of being - the confession that all that is in God is God. 

(All That Is in God, pp. 136-137)

Charity

This passage from C.S. Lewis' masterpiece “Weight of Glory” has become a guide for how I hope to approach 2019. Any further explanation feels like it takes away from the beauty of Lewis' text.

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in the society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

(“Weight of Glory,” pp. 45-46)

X

Today marks a decade of blogging. I’m thankful to have such a significant segment of my life preserved in writing, and only wish I had figured out a name for my blog sooner. Crazy to think that I started writing as a highschool freshman, and now I find myself married and holding a graduate degree, with so many new people, experiences, and places that have shaped my life in these past ten years. Hopefully I've grown since I've started (I always think back to this post around the turn of the new year). Here's to both the year ahead and my second decade of blogging!

Goodnight

 

Love built a stately house; where Fortune came,

And spinning phansies, she was heard to say,

That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,

Whereas they were supported by the same:

But Wisdome quickly swept them all away.

Then Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,

Began to make Balcones, Terraces,

Till she had weakned all by alteration:

But rev’rend laws, and many a proclamation

Reformed all at length with menaces.

Then enter’d Sinne, and with that Sycomore,

Whose leaves first sheltred man from drought & dew,

Working and winding slily evermore,

The inward walls and sommers cleft and tore:

But Grace shor’d these, and cut that as it grew.

Then Sinne combin’d with Death in a firm band

To raze the building to the very floore:

Which they effected, none could them withstand.

But Love and Grace took Glorie by the hand,

And built a braver Palace then before.

George Herbert - “The World”

Coming clean

My dad’s parents - 1945

My mom’s parents - 1952

My parents - 1990

Us - 2018

Two years ago today, I wrote this post. Less than 3 weeks later, this guy a friend of mine had been telling me about for a year sent me a friend request on Facebook. Over the next two years, one thing led to another, and in addition to picking up a graduate degree and new job, I thought, “why not add a husband to the mix as well?”

Back when I was in college, I decided that as long as I was unmarried, I’d stick around in school collecting degrees. In keeping with this sentiment, he waited until the day after I handed in my last paper to propose, choosing the gardens surrounding a transplanted medieval French chapel situated in the middle of my university as the scene of the crime. There were some serious Gaudy Night vibes. We got married on the day he - a year earlier - realized he wanted to marry me (September 28th). The English major in me is so proud of all this allusiveness.

I still stand by the spirit of everything I wrote in my post two years ago, although the Reformed Baptist landscape is radically different now. As a result, I suspect it is even more difficult to find a like-minded spouse. However, as someone who became an exception to her own forecast, I am thankful I didn’t compromise. You know you picked the right one when you come back from your honeymoon, which included visits to three schools, three bookstores, and three libraries, with a trunk-load of books. LIVING THE DREAM.

Sacramental history

 

"We must be consumed either by the anger of the storm god or by the love of the living God. There is no way around life and its sufferings. Our only choice is will we be consumed by the fire of our own heedless fears and passions or allow God to refine us in his fire and to shape us into a fitting instrument for his revelation, as he did Moses. We need not fear God as we fear all other suffering, which burns and maims and kills. For God's fire, though it will perfect us, will not destroy, for 'the bush was not consumed.' 

This insight into God is the unearthly illumination that will light up all the greatest works of subsequent Western literature. From the psalms of David and the prophecies of Isaiah to the visions of Dante and the dreams of Dostoevsky, the bush will burn but will not be consumed. As Allen Ginsberg will one day write, 'The only poetic tradition is the voice calling out of the burning bush.'"

Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews, 164.

I've been drawn to this quote for several years now. It brings to mind recurring themes of fortitude and hope that I never seem to stray very far from in my reading. Cahill's statements are reminiscent of Peter Leithart’s notion of “deep comedy,” which, in a literary context, is analogous to Shakespeare's genre of the tragicomedy. Although I’ve previously written on the reassuring nature of a “literary” reading of history, I hadn’t thought till now of this as also being an eminently sacramental practice as well (You can probably blame my recent medievalist joyride for this one).

A sacramentalist conception  of history is one with a high view of providence.

A high, sacramental view of providence offers an alternative perspective to the conventional idea of history as a series of events carried out by us. We do not create history - it is something we receive. This is not to mitigate our role as agents in the plan of God’s providence. We receive, but we are not passive. When engaging in baptism or the Lord’s supper, we are active participants - there isn’t a supernatural tsunami of water that envelops us, nor are we force-fed the elements. However, even though we truly partake in the sacraments, the focus is not on our actions as such, but on what God does for us through them. It’s the same in history. To view it primarily as a transcript of human actions can only lead to despair; it is an endless, steadily-escalating spiral of self-destruction. However, if we consider it a record of God’s gracious intervention in this cycle, drawing our attention by types and shadows to a promised restoration, it is great cause for hope.

Not only does a sacramental view of history consider providence as something we receive, it is also an emphatic belief that we will be helped by what we experience in life. If the sacraments are not meant to be seen as things we do, they must be something more than mere memorials; rather, they are the means of grace by which God strengthens our faith. To see history sacramentally, we stand confident that God will use these events both for his glory and our benefit. It’s easy for me to assent to this claim when I can see the direct connection between what I’m going through and a positive trajectory in my spiritual life; when I’m encouraged by fellowship with other Christians or witness new converts join the church, I have no problem believing that I will benefit from what I see. It’s much more difficult to trust this when providence pushes me to rely on God’s promises. The times when God seems to be working against his revealed will, when a hopeful explanation for what is happening to me is impossible to recognize, when people go through apparently senseless suffering - these are the moments that force us to live in faith. We must look back in history, not only to times when good this came out of evil, but also to God’s promises that, though there might never be a satisfying explanation in this life, all will be made well in the one to come. It is both forward and backward thinking.

I find that in my life, viewing history sacramentally means that I must be stubbornly submissive to God’s will. Trusting him doesn’t always make sense, and it often feels more terrifying than comforting in the moment. It requires me to go against all of my fallen instincts. Sometimes the only thing keeping me going is stubbornness (which itself is a divine intervention in my life). But it is the only way we can view history as a deep comedy, as an experience in which God sacramentally draws us closer to himself. Suffering is an inevitability in a fallen world, and as Cahill writes, we can either entrust ourselves to God’s hand or else plunge ourselves deeper into destruction. Grace may be painful, but that is not a fault on the part of God; it is ours for distorting it in our perception. Gracious fire perfects rather than destroys.

Medieval safari

Leaving grad school, I vaguely knew that the brave new world of Nine-to-Five Desk Job I was stepping into would introduce changes into the lifestyle of the beautiful and fabulous that I had grown accustomed to, but, as everything goes in life, it doesn't quite hit you until you're in it. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T SPEND THE AFTERNOON RESEARCHING?* Several weeks of not reading recently made me realize that intellectual stimulus is forever tied to my mental health, and so out came those life-long, marketable skills liberal arts graduates always gush about: reading scheduling and annotating. Somehow, things got out of control and I find myself in the middle of a medieval literary extravaganza. Even so, I've still felt out of sorts lately, which I'm diagnosing as a major case of writer's block; I thought I'd force some writing out of me by talking about what I've been reading.

After steady urging by my peers, I read Craig Carter's Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition, which is based on the assumption that the Enlightenment has undermined the foundation of Western culture by attacking its hermeneutic of reading, specifically in a biblical context. Carter had me at: "This book tries to restore the delicate balance between biblical exegesis, trinitarian dogma, and theological metaphysics that was upset by the heretical, one-sided, narrow-minded movement that is misnamed 'the Enlightenment'" (26). I've been saying for years that the Enlightenment ended Western Civilization, so I find it extremely satisfying to have this prejudice validated in an academic, peer-reviewed text. ANYWAY, Carter devotes the rest of his book to advocating a return to a medieval ethic of interpreting Scripture, specifically its use of allegory in tandem with literal readings of the texts. Much of this would be familiar to old-school English students, who are taught to approach reading as Keats did, as something that is self-reflexive and that necessarily changes those who encounter it. I'm still not entirely sure about how much I track Carter on his (reductionist?) analysis of Nominalism as the ultimate culprit (though as a Realist I have no sympathy for the movement), but it gives much to think about. I was also particularly interested in the juxtaposition of his extensive use of Tolkien and Lewis and his deflationary discussion of the idea of the "Christian Myth" - I think there are a lot of potential nuances waiting to be teased out here. All in all a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

I just finished Ian Levy's Introducing Medieval Biblical Interpretation. We share an alma mater, which thus gave him instant credibility with me. As you might suspect from the title, he takes a different approach from Carter by producing a survey of medieval writers, rather than pursuing a thesis-driven argument. While I would have enjoyed the latter more, I appreciated the chance to read this as a companion text to Carter, as it gave me the chance to see what the literary milieu Carter describes was doing on the ground. In the recurring game I play with myself, if I were a professor, I would definitely assign the two texts together.

Other books I’ve gotten through lately have been Madeleine Miller’s Circe, Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key, and The Church’s Book of Comfort (a collection of essays on the Heidelberg Catechism  put out by Reformation Heritage), and I’m currently reading Trueman’s Grace Alone. However, to keep these medieval vibes going, I’ve got my eye on Chris Armstrong’s Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians and Christine de Pisan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies. I still owe the blog my thoughts on Marie de France, because, months later, she is still a legend in my mind. But I’ll have to schedule all this writing in.

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*you know, chasing that dopamine high we all get when we encounter an out-of-print lyric text by Hercules Collins

Memento mori

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,

Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

And yet not so, for what can we bequeath

Save our deposèd bodies to the ground?

Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke’s,

And nothing can we call our own but death

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings—

How some have been deposed, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,

Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,

All murdered. For within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!

Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood

With solemn reverence. Throw away respect,

Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,

For you have but mistook me all this while.

I live with bread like you, feel want,

Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus,

How can you say to me I am a king? 

(Richard II III.ii.150-182)

I didn’t appreciate Richard II in quite the way that Shakespeare intended it until I encountered corruption myself. Richard II was a far cry from the ruthlessness of Richard III, but his weakness is just as reprehensible as the latter’s criminality. I am naturally cautious, and I have learned that timidity can wield just as much injustice as tyranny. Sin overturns kingdoms with disturbing rapidity.