the harvard ichthus » Volume 2, Issue 2

Editor’s Note: In this issue, we are examining faith’s intersection with our educational experience. One of our most valuable guides to this pursuit is Father James V. Schall, S.J., who was recently interviewed by the Ichthus. Fr. Schall is a Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Register and Crisis magazine, and author of numerous books, including A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, and a forthcoming book entitled The Life of the Mind. We are honored to welcome him to our pages.

ICHTHUS: Did you know there were Christian students at Harvard College? or that they had a journal?

FR. JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.: On the first query, I strongly suspected so, on the second, negative. I am pleased to know of both. Indeed, by the very logic of the question, I am delighted to know “non-Christian” students are found at Harvard! Part of being a Christian has to do with “going forth” and having something important to say to all nations. Being Christian assumes that we do not have to be obnoxious to do the latter, though there are martyrs, including contemporary ones, that tell us it is often a dangerous project. Indeed, the creation of an atmosphere, of institutions and opportunities, for everyone to speak to everyone about fundamental things in relative peace has been the great project of John Paul II and carried on by Benedict XVI, themselves two of the most intellectually stimulating figures in contemporary public life. A most disturbing aspect of the mystery of evil concerns why this effort to speak of the highest things to one another is so difficult.

I have only been on the Harvard campus once, but I do recall the passage in Solzhenitsyn’s famous 1978 Commencement Address there during which he cited the college motto–Veritas. When I was on the campus, I remember standing before a Gate with the Veritas symbol, presumably the 1875 Gate. I have long been moved by the words about that motto that Solzhenitsyn addressed on that rainy day to Harvard graduates: “Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives,” the great Russian novelist told them, “that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.” Such are solemn, moving words that anyone with half a heart would be honored to have addressed to himself, to his college. Conversely, one would hate to have, as the epitaph on his tombstone, “Here Lies John Smith, ’04: Truth Eluded Him.”

The very first words in Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles are “Veritatem meditabitur guttur meum…,” which words, “my mouth (literally, ‘wind-pipe’) shall meditate on truth,” are taken from Proverbs, 8:7. Aquinas observes in the first question of this Summa, that “the ultimate end of the universe must be the good of intellect.” He adds, “This good is truth.” So I do hope students at Harvard College, Christian or otherwise, when they pass through this Veritas Gate, do not fail to ponder how this word, Veritas, takes them back to the core of their being, indeed to the origins of the universe itself.

Harvard College, from 1636, is the oldest college in this country. Georgetown, from 1789, is the oldest Catholic college. Its roots go back to the founding of the Colony of Maryland in 1634 when English Jesuits first came to this country.

As an aside, I might add here that in front of the lovely Gothic Healy Building on the Georgetown campus is located a statue of a seated John Carroll, of the founding Maryland Carroll family; his brother and cousin signed the Declaration and the Constitution. John Carroll was at the time a “suppressed Jesuit,” the Order having been disbanded by the papacy from 1773-1815. Carroll was the first Bishop of Baltimore and the founder of Georgetown.

The statue is said to have been conceived and erected in imitation of the statue of John Harvard on the Harvard Campus. In examining the two statues, the sharp eye will notice that space immediately under Harvard’s chair is empty, whereas that under John Carroll is obviously filled in and bronzed over. The reason for this filling in, according to legend, is that, over the years, the comparatively more undisciplined Georgetown students were recurrently wont to place a chamber pot under the sedentary Prelate. The Jesuits of an earlier age had to use a certain craftiness to foil further undergraduate blasphemy! I do not know whether earlier Harvard officials may have had the same problem or whether they solved it by more drastic measures. No doubt modern students find chamber pots more difficult to come by or, perhaps, see such bold use to be less witty.

We have an Argentine Jesuit with us in our community this semester who was till recently the president of the University of Cordoba there. This latter school dates back to 1621 and thus is older than Harvard. Moreover, the Argentine Jesuit, as had his father and grandfather, went to college at the famous Jesuit school at Stoneyhurst in England. Stoneyhurst was originally founded in 1593 at St. Omer’s in France during forced exiles of Catholics during the English Reformation. The school only made it to England after the French Revolution in 1794. I understand it is a beautiful place.

I taught for twelve years in the Gregorian University in Rome, the founding of which goes back to 1551. In all of these places, I suspect, students, in one form or another, once attentively reflected on the things found in Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, along with the Hebrew Bible and the Christian writers. They knew about Augustine in Carthage, Cyril in Alexandria, Bede in Iona, Aquinas in Paris, and Dante in Florence. I hope university students still reflect on these things even if they are not encouraged to do so. We cannot much know what we are unless we know what we have been. Indeed, on the Harvard Veritas Gate are also found the words of Isaiah, 25:2: “Open ye gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in….”

And, on this topic, thanks for your later e-mail information that the inscription on the 1881 Gate is St. John’s famous, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make ye free,” as well as that the original motto of Harvard was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, something that wisely appears untranslated in the identification box of your student journal, “truth for Christ and the Church.”

Such original things should be kept in stone to be remembered, even when one’s university drops part of its motto. At first it looked to me like the case endings in that Latin phrase are wrong. I thought it should have read, Veritas Christi et Ecclesiae, the truth of Christ and of the Church, both genitive. Then, on looking it up, one source said that the original motto was: Veritas pro Christo et Ecclesia, the study of truth “in behalf of” or “for the good of ” or “through the inspiration of” Christ and the Church. By way of further introduction, I cite these sundry local signs of what we are about, hopefully wherever we are– to meditate on truth, to keepeth it through all the turmoil of the nations that such schools have seen, to know how the end of the universe is intellect and its good is the truth itself, that truth it is that which makes us free, that this truth is, finally, Word, Person. Veritas Christi et Ecclesiae, Veritas pro Christo et Ecclesia, Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae.

ICHTHUS: Many people, whether religious or not, have a hard time seeing how reason could have anything to do with faith, or a belief in the incredible.’ Some scholars today (in the sciences, for example) talk about how important verification is in order for us to ground convictions. But what are the essential ways in which faith can intersect with reason?

JVS: First of all, this is a recurrent question that appears in every generation and in most cultures. I have dealt with it, in one way or another, as their titles indicate, in all my political philosophy books– The Politics of Heaven & Hell; Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy; At the Limits of Political Philosophy; Roman Catholic Political Philosophy, and Jacques Maritain: The Philosopher in Society. Its terms have to be understood.

Neither the word “faith” nor “reason” is totally unambiguous in actual usage. The first task of intellect is to clarify what exactly we are talking about when we use such terms. We need to state what a thing is and affirm or deny that it is. If you call a potato a banana and I call a banana a potato, until we decide what is what, we will have considerable difficulty in determining over what to pour the gravy. This pouring, to be sure, assumes in our culture that we both call gravy “gravy,” so that we do not subsequently pour gravy over bananas.

Men have thought about this issue of faith and reason almost since the beginning so that we ought not presume to talk about it as if we were the first people who ever broached the topic. But it is still ours to reflect on even if Aristotle explained it all, and he in fact explained an astonishing amount. Some things we need to think about ourselves even if nobody or everybody else also thinks about them. The perfection of intellect is also our perfection, no one else’s. And this perfection is, finally, to know the truth of what is. The great Socratic enterprise of knowing ourselves begins with the knowing of what is not ourselves, and, I suppose, with the being grateful that there is not only ourselves to know.

Take the word “incredible.” Strictly speaking if “faith” itself is “incredible,” it means that under no circumstances can it be believed, let alone understood. Christian faith does not understand “incredible” in this sense. The two most famous statements on the topic– fides quaerens intellectum and credo ut intelligam– are designed precisely to affirm that there is something intelligible about faith and something in revelation that is also aimed at intellect.

Faith and reason are not opposed as what is intelligible to what is in no way intelligible. Faith and reason are intended to go together as two ways to know the same ultimate truths about the same common cosmos. We do not have two “worlds,” one of faith and one of reason, neither of which is related to the other. Rather we have one world, knowable, according to the nature of each way of knowing, both by faith and by reason. We need to add that, according to the Christian faith, the world itself need not exist. It does not explain its own existence, but it does indicate that it does need explaining. God would be God even if the world did not exist. This implies, ultimately, that we are not solely products of cosmic or chaotic necessity but of a divine freedom and joy.

The problem with “faith,” if there is one, is not that it is irrational or unbelievable, but that our intellects, though truly intellects, are not the highest forms of intellect in the universe. For something to be “beyond” the power of my intellect does not mean that it is therefore unreasonable or unintelligible as such. It only means that Schall’s intellect is not powerful enough to see the scope of things in which the matter at issue becomes clear. Otherwise, if Schall insists that everything must be known first and foremost by Schall’s intellect, it follows logically that Schall is putting in a divine claim for his own mind. One ought, presumably, to be reasonably skeptical about such a claim. Aquinas noted this distinction when he said that some things are knowable in themselves, others are known first to us. From the latter we proceed to the former.

ICHTHUS: Are faith and reason the same as reason and revelation?

JVS: Such questions, I think, are better posed in terms of reason and revelation, rather than faith and reason. Faith or trust means the acceptance of something as true on the authority of another. Most of the things we do or make or know in everyday life, in fact, we know by authority, that is, by the testimony or guidance of someone who knows. Ultimately, no such thing exists as faith that is simply in yet another act of faith ad infinitum. All faith, by its own logic, finally depends on the testimony of someone who sees the truth or the fact at issue. The problem of faith is rather: “is this witness credible?” That is, is he telling me what he knows? Every revealed doctrine that is to be accepted by faith is rooted in someone who, on feasible grounds, sees its truth and testifies to it.

Basically, revelation is directed to reason. Aquinas, knowing the essential outlines of the content of revelation (one does not have to be a believer to know what this content is, anyone can read the General Catechism) proceeds to ask, “is this revelation ‘necessary’?” (I-II, 91, 4). The word “necessary” here means rather “persuasive?” Aquinas does not think, nor does any sound Christian, that one can argue directly from reason to the truths of revelation. If he could perform this intellectual feat of seeing the divine truths with the human mind, he would already be God and would not have to worry his head about it.

The question is rather, granted that these are the things found in revelation– basically, that there is an inner-Trinitarian life within the Godhead and that one of the Persons of this Trinity became Man, at a given time and place– are there any issues within reason that might indicate that this revealed understanding of reality might best correspond with issues that the human mind by itself did not figure out, but still wondered about?

What is characteristic particularly of Catholicism is a concern for philosophy as itself necessary to understand properly the meaning of revelation. Leo Strauss mentioned this in Persecution and the Art of Writing. It lies at the heart of John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, and of course also of Aquinas and Augustine.

I like to put the issue this way: unless one goes to the trouble to think things out, following the light of his reason, he will not be in a position to know whether or not something in revelation is addressed to him. He simply will not have reached the limits of reason, pondered sufficiently those questions that reason in fact does not by itself fully answer. But it is to these questions that revelation is primarily addressed. Revelation is not “irrationality” speaking to reason, but mind speaking to mind, ultimately Person speaking to person. This is why, in practice, the pursuit of an understanding of revelation is also a pursuit of philosophy, indeed often a bettering of philosophy.

Philosophy is not the history of philosophy, a confusion that many academic curricula make. But the history of philosophy indicates the myriads of ways the human mind seeks to pose and answer its own questions. Some responses are quite frankly nutty. Others are very dubious, some feasible, others make sense, but not wholly so. Nothing less than vision finally satisfies the mind. Revelation poses itself as a possible answer to real issues that the human mind has already sought to solve for itself. Revelation can thus indicate why it is not “irrational” to hold what it poses because it does address itself properly to questions that the human mind has raised and knows it does not answer adequately by itself.

Revelation does not exclude considerations of its historically proposed alternatives, rather it insists on dealing with them. From a philosophical view, it merely maintains that it poses a better answer, something at least plausible, but not understood as certain by human reason without faith. That is the barest of touch between human mind, in its weakness as intellect, and intellect as such. Acknowledging that a relation exists between reason and what is revealed is merely an affirmation of the fact that something is not wholly unreasonable, because the question revelation answers is itself something that arises in the only reason we have. The revelational answer still requires faith, but a faith that has the effect of making reason more reasonable because it needs to explain itself and acknowledge its limits. Added to this is the fact that also in revelation are found many truths and virtues that can be arrived at by reason, a fact that itself hints that mind is speaking to mind.

ICHTHUS: What do you think is the greatest problem with ‘the University’ and higher education today? How can it be improved?

JVS: The answer I will give you comes out of many years of reading Aristotle’s Ethics. I do not think I would have answered your question quite this way even a year ago.

First, and this is an aside, I think universities in general are too big. One of the really good things happening in this country is the multiplicity of new and improved smaller colleges. Very few foreign countries, however, have ever allowed our multiplicity of different schools even to happen. Most states insist on total control of higher education. The relation between research institutions, think tanks, colleges, professional schools, and whether they should be in the same institution, needs rethinking. In several ways, on-line access to knowledge and opinion can subsume and bypass universities. The connection between state-federal money and what schools get what is a long and twisted matter.

The greatest American educational law was the G. I. Bill of Rights after World War II. It provided that the money for education went directly to the student, not to the school. The student was the one who decided which school he would attend. The schools had to appeal to the student. The student was really free. As it is today, the cost of education, camouflaged by taxes, makes state schools almost mandatory for many students. I would like to see the choice and will of students and parents always to stand between the school, the teachers unions, and the faculty.

Somehow at bottom and not wholly unrelated, I think home-schooling has something right about it. Indeed, I think students today should attend college with the serious thought in mind that home-schooling their future children is at least an option for which they prepare themselves. There is also much to be learned from the modern distributists, in this connection, from men like Wendell Berry, Allan Carlson, and E. F. Schumacher. But these are opinions.

Aristotle, to return to my main point, asks the question about the relation between one’s moral life and one’s intellectual life. He is remarkably perceptive. Colleges and universities, as they appear today, usually confront the moral environment of their students, not as personal ones, but as some sort of social problems, even social science. The reform of the world, if it needs it, is thus held first to be accomplished at the political level. All sorts of ideologies are imposed on student living, things that affect the student’s inner freedom and capacity to know. Things are wrong in the world, it is said, because they are not “structured” correctly. Therefore, change the structures. All will be well. Go to law school. Get into politics. Do service. Rousseau has replaced Plato, but not for the better.

This position looks very nice, I suppose, but if we look at western nations, including segments of our own, the most striking thing about them is the rapid decline in population and their replacement by peoples from different areas who actually have children and youth. Nothing, including no theory, is changing our world faster than this. We seem blind to it. I suspect, in this regard, to voice a minority opinion, that Paul VI’s much maligned encyclical, Humanae Vitae, may well turn out to be the most prophetic document of the last half of the twentieth century. The people who rejected it are rapidly disappearing in our very midst. Already the grand tour to Europe is not quite a tour to Europe. Indeed, Europe itself denies much of its own culture. We have forgotten to read Christopher Dawson, who was once at Harvard.

This situation is an aspect of the proper understanding of what is the family, something our own Constitution neglected. But not merely is the family the best and proper place in which to beget and raise children, but the family, husband, wife, and children, is the basic unit of human happiness such as we have it in this world. I know of no better two books on these topics than Jennifer Robak Morse’s Love and Economics and Smart Sex: How to Stay Married In a Hooked-Up World. The latter title is a bit flashy, if not fleshy, but it is a book that gets to the heart of the issue, beginning with college life.

And what is that heart? The question as asked has to do with “improving” higher education. My answer is that nothing will really much improve higher education until the question of virtue and its relation to truth is frankly faced. The task of the university is truth, not directly virtue, but the former is not possible without the latter. And by virtue I mean at bottom the moral virtues as described by Aristotle, with the Christian caveat that the problem with virtue is not knowing what the various virtues are, the pagans certainly knew what they are, but, as Augustine said, the problem is the practice or keeping of them. My suspicion is, take it or leave it, that the intellectual disorders of the modern world, within the university and in most individual souls, are almost invariably rooted in moral disorders. There is a very intelligible reason for this connection.

I do not suggest that moral disorders in the souls of individual students somehow lessen IQ’s or SAT scores. I am reminded that Lucifer was one of the most intelligent of the angels, which intelligence, as such, remains even in his Fall. Likewise, little or no difference in raw intelligence is found between the tyrant and the philosopher-king. What is different is the use to which the intelligence is put as a result of what one chooses to define as his happiness or end. In this sense, much modern thought is a brilliant, ever subtle, attempt to justify deviations from the good that is virtue. And once the deviation is accepted, when it is chosen as a way of life, the will to live according to it follows.

In this sense, intellect now becomes a faculty encumbered by one’s own chosen disordered passions. It becomes itself an instrument constantly at work giving reasons, both in private and in public, for what is, in effect, a disordered life. I suspect that until this connection of mind and virtue is again recognized, the university, in the sense of the mission to pursue truth as the affirmation of what is, will be constantly deflected to the mission of justifying what is in effect a disordered life and, following Plato, a disordered society. Aristotle remarkably said that if we are brought up with good habits, we will not have to worry about understanding first principles when we are old enough to know them because we are already habituated to understanding them, to what is good.

ICHTHUS: While teachers are an essential part of successful learning, at the end of the day, much of the responsibility for our education falls on our own shoulders. In your work, you talk about ‘another sort of learning,’ and the search for the ‘higher things.’ What do you mean by that? What do students have to do to pursue the ‘higher things?’

JVS: In some sense, this question follows on the previous one. In his wonderful, not-to-be-missed book, A Guide for the Perplexed, E. F. Schumacher has a moving description of his own experience on arriving, as a young man, at Oxford, the great center of learning. By all objective standards, he was where he should have been. He was a very bright young German in the best of the English universities.

Yet, his soul was torn and empty. What he was encountering was utterly unsatisfactory. Not that it was not the product of the great professors. Indeed, that was the problem. His soul was empty. None of the great personal questions that moves the human soul were really addressed because the methods proposed for study, in principle, prevented them from being seriously asked.

So “what do student have to do to pursue the ‘highest things’?” The first thing they need to do is examine their own souls. I recall a number of years ago, I do not remember where, I found myself chatting with a young Harvard student. Bemusedly, I recalled to him the passage in The Closing of the American Mind, in which Bloom quipped the most unhappy souls in this country are those in the students of the twenty or thirty best and most expensive universities. The young man solemnly told me that he “was not unhappy.” All I could do, of course, was laugh.

But Bloom’s point was the same as that of Schumacher. Really perceptive students knew that their souls were empty precisely because the logic and methods of what they were learning led to skepticism and meaninglessness. By every objective standard, by an act of faith, that is, they were among the brightest and the best and in the right place, but it wasn’t working. It is like the cartoon I once saw in The New Yorker, of a group of aging Buddhist monks in a barren monastery. All were sitting on the cold floor in meditative posture, when one very grizzled monk looks up and mutters, “Is this all there is?” I suspect something like this still analogously happens in our universities and to their best students.

If someone is perfectly content with his life and what he is being taught, there is not the slightest possibility that he will ever wonder about its inadequacy. This is why, I think, there must always be a large element of “private initiative” in our own education. I think, in a way, that one can find the basic tools for life– the reading, writing, arithmetic– in almost any school. If one has learned how to read, he has a possibility to be free to educate himself in the highest things over against the ideologies that often, knowingly or not, storm through modern universities. Ironically, universities today are criticized for nothing so much as being totally onesided politically and for their almost universal conformity to a secular view of the world and a corresponding view of human life as itself having no inherent order other than whatever we will.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with knowing both that something is wrong and in what this wrongness consists. In fact, we are supposed to know not only the truth, but the arguments that can be leveled against it. The highest things are the living a life of virtue that itself points to and accomplishes a life of truth, a knowledge of the truth of things. This involves reason, moderation, and a consideration of revelation. But in addition, both reason and revelation point back to the fact that we live among others and in fact the highest things include others. The contemplative life both presupposes and leads to the realities of our world. Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, about active, personal charity, directly recalls that we also encounter the highest things in a love of God that includes the love of our neighbor. This latter emphasis seems to have been one of those things that revelation added to reason.

ICHTHUS: College students understand that great grades and test scores were an important reason why they had the opportunity to continue learning in a university. In this world that values measurable performance in the form of GPAs, LSATs, and ‘resume building,’ how should Christians, who ought to value more enduring qualities, contextualize such metrics?

JVS: Your phrase “contextualize such metrics” amuses me. I fortunately grew up in an era when such things as GPA, SAT, LSAT, and what all, were not yet invented. We did, I believe, have some sort of IQ’s administered out of the State of Iowa. I remember being somewhat relieved to learn I was not an idiot, as I think some of my classmates with reason suspected. But this pervasive quantification of criteria is a function of equality theory. Even the slightest preference has to be justified, and the only justification permitted is one based on numbers. This criterion means that courses have to be conceived and taught as if intelligence is capable of being so rendered.

What is not capable of being measured in this way, then, is said not to be intelligence. The whole directly intuitive side of reason is suddenly eliminated. Intelligence is claimed to be only what is measured by these systems, not by what is. And since everyone is in institutions because of these tests, it looks like the value of the system is proved when those who are selected, are the very ones who reap its rewards by having license to enter the system.

How do Christian students “who ought to value more enduring qualities” cope with such numbers which are in fact the only ticket that will let them into institutions of higher learning? One might say initially that one’s Christian values will not in all likelihood be promoted in institutions whose criteria is measured in this way. So again, Christians must be prepared to use their own enterprise and intelligence to encounter what is lacking. To fight for the truth is not all bad.

I have been struck in recent years by what I detect to be an overload in student academic life. To put it in its most succinct terms, students have no time really to learn anything. They are busy, as you say, with “great grades and test scores.” Every moment of the day, they are filling up their resumes. They are doing what they think is required to get on, once the university life is over.

There is a remarkable passage in book seven of the Republic about the dangers of being exposed to the higher things too soon. Both Plato and Aristotle give us little grounds for thinking that once we have finished college at twenty-two or so we will have learned much that is really important. Not only are we too young for politics, as Aristotle tells us, but we are too young for philosophy.

We thus lack experience of virtue and vice, or perhaps, in view of my earlier observation, all we have is a world initially seen through our own disorders. We have not read widely enough in literature to understand virtue and vice in others. Indeed, we no longer see the books that call vice vice and virtue virtue, to see what happens to both. And yet, Socrates spent his whole life seeking out the potential philosophers. And the Christian experience adds repentance to the mix, just as Plato suggested that we should wish to be punished for our own faults and crimes precisely to acknowledge that the norm that we broke was, none the less, the correct one for human virtue.

ICHTHUS: Christians today might believe that they don’t have much use for non-Christian ideas, both from today and from the ages.

JVS: One probably needs to distinguish somewhat between dealing with ideas with no intellectual background available to one and dealing with ideas when one is familiar with them. The phenomenon of the Da Vinci Code, as I understand it, depends on a massive popular ignorance in the simplest of historical facts and theological concepts, even common sense. However, in principle, ideas from whatever source are to be taken seriously, yet neither naively nor innocently nor uncritically. The famous phrase of Richard Weaver, “ideas have consequences,” contains a basic truth– both good and bad ideas have consequences. The origin of almost any political, religious, or cultural change is in the brain of some thinker, usually occurring long before the idea ever reaches the arena of active life.

The contemplative intellectual life is of vital importance both in the Church and in society. Ideas need to be examined, analyzed, criticized, yes, often combated. Aristotle’s “small error in the beginning leads to a large error in the end” is painfully true. But so is the truth that great things begin in hidden, obscure places, like Nazareth. The great wars are first in the minds of what I like to call the “dons,” intellectual and clerical. Religious orders in the Church were once designed, in part, to meet this need. But in principle, never neglect the fact that a truly “intellectual life,” to use the title of A. D. Sertillanges’ famous book, is a much needed and worthy one, one that honestly and honorably pursues the truth for its own sake. Each of us should have something of this pursuit in our own lives whatever our particular vocation turns out to be. Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas can still be our models.

ICHTHUS: In your book, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, you said that an “academic experience at its highest level requires spiritual vision.” Why is that the case? And before we wrap up, what are a few books that you would recommend to students who have a budding interest in Christianity and some books you would recommend to students who are already Christian?

JVS: Perhaps I should say, “academic experience at its highest level leads to spiritual vision.” From personal, literary, and anecdotal evidence, my “vision” estimates of folks in academia is modest. But St. Ignatius’ principle that we should find God in all things keeps us from forgetting that this vision is also to be found in our daily lives, in those we know and love, in finding the truth of things wherever things are found. Ultimately, any given thing can lead us to all things. Likewise, the understanding of what is the origin of all things takes us back to particular existing things.

With regard to what to read, as you know, advice on what to read has long been a theme of mine. My books, Another Sort of Learning, A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning, and The Unseriousness of Human Affairs, have in various ways addressed this topic. Each of these books contains various lists of books that touch, in one way or another, on the issue of what and why to read. Another Sort of Learning has a very long sub-title that I am rather inordinately fond of, but the short sub-title that I give to it is “how to get an education even while in college.”

Though I do not concentrate on them in these books, I am obviously not unconcerned with what are called the classical books. I am always most delighted to spend a whole semester with a class when we read together only Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas. Life is not long enough to do any one of them justice, but a semester is long enough to open our eyes and be astonished. And I am a great believer in C.S. Lewis’ admonition that you have not read a great book at all if you have only read it once. He says somewhere that when you have read it thirty or forty times, you will still learn something new. He is right, I think.

I have two other books that will be out shortly on these topics, The Sum Total of Human Happiness, by St. Augustine’s Press, and The Life of the Mind, by ISI Books. First, I begin by recommending certain authors that one should read. Everyone should have and read Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson. Pascal is not to be missed, nor C. S. Lewis. Chesterton and Josef Pieper should be collected and read again and again. Nothing better will be found. I love Belloc’s The Path to Rome and Four Men. Belloc’s essays are as good as essays can be, which is very good. Likewise, his book, The Crusades, will be more instructive about what and why things are happening in today’s world than almost anything written in the daily papers.

Recently, I have finished Robert Sokolowski’s Christian Faith & Human Understanding. This is a basic book, not to be missed. His God of Faith and Reason, Eucharistic Presence, and Introduction to Phenomenology are of major insight and importance.

In 1936, at the school’s 300th Anniversary, the William James Lecture at Harvard was given by Etienne Gilson under the title, The Unity of Philosophical Experience. This book is as fresh and as important today as when it was written. It is simply a must, as are, for those with scientific interests, William Wallace’s Modeling of Nature: The Nature of Science and the Science of Nature and Stanley Jaki’s The Road to Science and the Ways of God. I am also fond of Dennis Quinn’s Iris Exiled: A Synoptic History of Wonder.

No one should miss Peter Kreeft. I particularly recommend Gertrude von le Fort’s Eternal Woman and Leon Kass’The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfection of Our Nature, along with Hadley Arkes’ First Things. Charles Schultz’s Peanuts is great. Flannery O’Connor’s letters, The Habit of Being, are as illuminating a book as one will find. John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope and Cardinal Ratzinger’s Salt of the Earth and The Spirit of the Liturgy are mind openers.

Three books to start with are Josef Pieper– an Anthology; Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien; and Ralph McInerny, the Very Spiritual Hours of Jacques Maritain.

There are the three “after” books, as I call them, each rather heady, Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, David Walsh’s After Ideology, and Catherine Pickstock’s After Writing. Hans Urs von Balthasar is always good, as is Eric Mascall. Henri de Lubac is very basic. I just came across a little book of Jean Daniélou, La crise actuelle de l’intelligence, which I have found very insightful. I have always liked Daniélou’s The Salvation of the Nations. I do not see why anyone should miss reading Wendell Berry’s novels or Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, or Sigrid Undset, or Mauriac. The more Newman you have the better.

One must build his own lifetime library– in which he should have the basic works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and the rest, along with the Bible, a good commentary like the Jerome Biblical Commentary, and some fathers of the Church, especially Irenaeus. Books are to be marked, kept, cherished. A subscription to L’Osservatore Romano (English), Crisis, First Things, Catholic World Report, among others, would not hurt. The web site– www.ignatiusinsight.com– is good. Well, even though I have left out too much, this is probably enough for here. Check the above books on learning if you can stand more.

ICHTHUS: One last question. What do you think are the most important things we all must study before leaving college?

JVS: The most important thing that you all must learn before leaving college is that you must leave college. College is a privileged place. It was once a place, called by Plato, “the Academy,” to which knowledge fled when it could not live in the city. It may yet be a place from which one has to flee to know the truth. The most important thing that you must learn is that you may not find the most important things in college. Then again, you may, at least some of them.

I suppose the better question is: “what are the most important things we must study after leaving college?” But this is the same question, in a way. Plato said in the Laws and also in the Republic that human life is not particularly “important” or “serious.” What we must learn is why did he say this. He said it because he understood that our delight is in beholding what is really serious, that is, God. Our existence comes to us not by chance or by necessity, but as a gift and as a project. Aquinas said that homo proprie non humanus sed superhumanus est, and Augustine explained that, because of this, we have “restless hearts,” which we do, in case you have not noticed. But really, the most important thing you must study before you leave college is at least one novel of P.G. Wodehouse. I suggest Leave It to Psmith or Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets. Why? Because you must see at least one perfect thing in this world, so that you will finally recognize what it is all about when you finally encounter it. This is called the “analogy of being” in metaphysics.

No, on second thought, the one thing you must study before you leave college is the answer to the question that Walker Percy asked in Lost in the Cosmos: “Why is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life?”

Stop, the one thing you must learn before leaving college is why Chesterton said at the end of Orthodoxy (which, I think, is still the greatest book of the twentieth century) that the one thing Christ concealed from us while He was on earth was His “mirth?”

Father James V. Schall, S.J., is a Professor of Government at Georgetown University.

Towards the Lights of Veritas

Jordan D. Teti — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:13:07 +0000

In the bowels of McCosh Hall the competition had not yet ended. After spending the day delivering direct examinations and closing arguments for my Harvard mock trial team, I was outside, biding time in the brisk night-winter weather of Princeton, New Jersey. I had had enough of watching courtroom quarrels all day—it was time for a moment of tranquility. It was time that I could use to think—to consider why I was thousands of miles away from my family, why I was in that mock trial competition, and why many of the participants had such a cutthroat desire to win. I stared up at the stars, which I could faintly see through the streetlights around me. And then my gaze shifted downward to a massive stone church—Princeton’s famous University Chapel. Surprised that the doors were open and the lights on so late on a Saturday night, I walked inside. Despite my initial amazement at the grandeur of the architecture, I felt a striking loneliness— I was by myself in a chamber meant for two thousand people. So I went into a small prayer room which had a couple of pews and knelt down, trying to ameliorate my solitude with the comfort and presence of God. I must confess, I don’t often open the Bible to pray, but I did so that night for some reason. And I opened it to Psalm 41—not knowing the late-night lesson I had coming. On the left side of the page, I read:

For the leader. A psalm of David. / Happy those concerned for the lowly and poor; when misfortune strikes, the LORD delivers them. / The LORD keeps and preserves them, makes them happy in the land, and does not betray them to their enemies / “For my integrity you have supported me and let me stand in your presence forever. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from all eternity and forever. Amen. Amen.” (Psalm 41, NAB).

It was the perfect prayer—a prayer that came directly from God. I had done all my college schooling up to that point at Harvard, but I think the single greatest lesson I’ve learned in college thus far took place in a church hundreds of miles away.

While I’ve heard much about how to “become a great leader” and how to take control and inspire others to “follow you,” I quickly understood that in the eyes of God a leader is someone who is faithful to Him—someone who upholds morality; who simply has integrity. It’s not enough to ascribe to a moral code in some context-less vacuum. There will be times when “misfortune strikes,” when enemies appear, and even times when friends whom we trusted turn on us. But such times are tests of our integrity, moments when our faith in the righteousness of God will be challenged; when we are tempted to think about us instead of Him. The true leader is a leader not for the sake of himself, but for the sake of others and for the sake of what’s right.

This Scripture passage connects to our discussion of education in this issue of the Ichthus because it alludes to the various “tests” we will encounter in our lives, as leaders on Earth and followers of Christ. As Chiduzie Madubata writes in this issue, these tests are always learning experiences; moments in which we discover more about what is good, and how to pursue it. God isn’t so concerned with some Psychology of Leadership exam we’re going to be taking next week. Indeed, there are more enduring, more important things that will enable us to pass the most difficult tests. Such examinations of our moral caliber and faith in God can come at any time and from anywhere. And perhaps they will continue for the duration of our lives.

Considering this idea of the true “tests,” we should now try to consider how it applies to young Christians who are constantly tested on the seemingly trivial things in college. Some might believe it is more important to spend time developing our soul; learning how to be a good Christian, rather than brushing up on astrophysics. Indeed, my real education—the many tests of my integrity and faith—may just await me years beyond Commencement 2008.

What relationship does education in college have with the education of our soul? G.K. Chesterton has been someone I often look to for advice on such matters (and most recently, Father James V. Schall, S.J., who we are grateful and fortunate to have in our pages for this issue of the Ichthus). Not surprisingly, I found that Chesterton wonderfully described the purpose of education for a Christian in his essay entitled “The Superstition of School”:

The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education… Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars.

We cannot pursue education solely for ourselves—to make us smarter; to have a few extra letters by our names; to pile up the number of articles we’ve published in some journal. Winning a mock trial competition also isn’t reflective of a superior education. Such accomplishments are temporal— they’re fleeting victories we can enjoy but not really appreciate in our path of learning. Instead, real education is for exploration—for attempting to discover and realize the highest thing—the Truth of God.

This brings us back to Psalm 41 and the dictum that we should not be corrupted by selfish, short-term desires. Indeed, if we do, we will never learn anything—we will succumb to the vanity of false education. That, I believe, is a central connection between Christianity and learning. Harvard’s motto, Veritas, even without its original addendum, can only be pursued with a certain faith that Truth exists, and a certain willingness to dedicate oneself to pursuing Truth through learning. This learning can be in any field—philosophy, biology, theology, politics. But we must remember why we are doing it: so that we can learn more about ourselves and God through our search after Truth.

And in order to strive towards this horizon, we must focus on how we are learning. In the same fashion as the “leader,” the dedication to searching for Truth is selfless—it is not for any sort of personal material gain. In turn, the Lord supports those with unselfish motivations because of the integrity they employ in their pursuit of the Truth. If we are not distracted from the purpose of education by competing for personal accolades, ribbons, or plaques, we will be supported by God. The things worth having—integrity, faith, and a yearning for the Truth—cannot be found in such objects.

I’d be willing to bet that not one person in the history of Harvard has claimed, after four years of liberal arts studies, to have understood Veritas. The understanding of Truth does not come from a textbook, although it may begin there. Indeed, as Chesterton says, the University is not a “miraculous moral factory, in which perfect men and women are made by magic.” Instead, it simply gives us the lights to be able to find Truth in the darkness. This was exactly the lesson I received that night in Princeton. I could barely see the stars, for the many spotlights outside the competition were blazing brightly, but I found a stronger light where God resided. Together, let us use that light to search for Veritas.

Jordan Teti ’08, Editor-in-Chief, is a Government concentrator in Winthrop House.

Redeeming Grace: A Perspective on the Journey Back to Christ

Kevin Jonke — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:12:43 +0000

My life as a Greek Orthodox Christian began with great pomp and circumstance, when just two weeks after I made my debut into the world, a priest gravely dipped me into an old, ornate basin of holy water and cleansed me of my sins. I must admit at the outset that I was on very bad behavior throughout my Baptism. My family is fond of reminding me that my indignant wails pierced the air of the church for the duration of the ceremony, and my godmother insists that even the priest heaved a sigh of relief as he completed his task of indoctrinating me into the Brotherhood of Christ.

I recount this particular anecdote with no intention of cheapening the sacraments; on the contrary, I mean to explain— albeit facetiously—the beginning of my complicated struggle to appreciate and understand my faith. I am a steadfast Christian today, but my surety has come only after having faltered at the border of that shadowy region where God seems to fade away. I am not familiar with most of the intricacies and paradoxes of the Bible, and I cannot quote Scripture at will, but I do know the simple truth that it feels right to give myself to Christ—largely because I have experienced the listlessness and desperation of a consuming doubt. I write today not so much for those fortunate in the blessing of a strong conviction or for the biblical scholar; rather, I hope to reach some of those who stumble where I floundered, who are flustered in their search for a meaning that eludes them.

Everyone’s relationship with God is intensely personal, and the criteria of my spiritual fulfillment differ from those of my parents, my siblings, and my friends. My early Christian environment was in no way flawed; it only failed somehow to resonate with me. By describing my own search for truth, I do not intend to dissuade anyone from the spirituality that suits them; rather, I hope primarily to encourage the dissatisfied to persevere on their troubled paths to God.

In the Greek Orthodox Church, Baptism transpires concurrently with First Communion and Confirmation. As my disgruntled howling rose to the rafters, I simultaneously shed the Original Sin, received the sacrament of the Eucharist, and—by the tacit consent of being present at the ceremony—declared myself a true member of Greek Orthodoxy. While I respect that many people feel rightfully fulfilled by this formula, I struggled personally with the situation as soon as I matured enough to ponder it. I lamented that I had not made the choice of my religion, and my passive acceptance of something imposed on me externally planted the seed of religious uncertainties that burdened me for years.

At the beginning, I tried to conform to what I had been labeled. I went to Greek school and learned the Lord’s Prayer in Greek by mimicking the sounds of a language I could not understand, but my spirituality felt both false and forced. I gleaned no meaning from the church services conducted all in Greek, but I continued to hum earnestly along with the choir as they chanted ancient hymns—waiting with a dying hope for the moment when I might finally feel God. I could not find the transcendent link from me to Christ in the ceremony and the ambiance of the Greek Church. For many years, though, I did not expand my search beyond its borders. I had been confirmed in my faith; if going through the motions of religion left me with an emptiness, I concluded that that void must have been an eternal hollowness in me. I stood frozen in quiet resignation as I gradually lost the Lord in imperfect translation, failing to see beyond the swirling smoke of censers and stained-glass-filtered light. Because I allowed myself to stay bounded by a structure I had not chosen and that did not resonate with me, I mistook one perception of Christianity for the entirety, and nearly abandoned the faith.

I tell the story of my personal struggle because I see within it the symptoms of a larger social phenomenon. In recent years it has come increasingly into vogue for individuals to distance themselves from Christianity as such, to declare their opposition to the institutional nature of organized religion. A detached and more freeform spirituality has been on the rise, as the structures of traditional religion have been exchanged for vague acknowledgements of a higher power. While I understand that agnosticism and other nonreligious spiritual orientations offer many people the satisfaction they seek, I contend from personal experience that some who subscribe to these philosophies acutely feel the absence of the definite God from Whom they could have drawn their strength. Frustrated by some quality of their traditional religion, but also unsatisfied by the alternative they adopt to replace it, these defeated searchers sink into the religious apathy that permeates much of our generation. But this downward spiral away from God is not the inevitable result of personal dissatisfaction with Christianity. In my case, and perhaps for others, the crippling crisis of faith ultimately revealed itself to be only a crisis of agency masquerading as something more.

Feeling defeated, desperate, and alone one night, I promised to give religion one final chance; only this time, I made the strangely freeing decision not to return to my old church. I was not entirely aware of what was missing for me there, but I knew that it could never offer me the support I needed. I began to try new churches with different approaches, and while I still have not quite found the perfect fit, I derive a profound and soothing satisfaction from the elusive something I am working to understand. Agency is the antidote to apathy, and giving up is giving in. That is the final message I hope to convey to those peering wearily over the edge: look more deeply, engage more completely, and—most importantly— push more forcefully beyond the boundaries that constrain. My suggestion is admittedly a tall order; it is certainly difficult to chase after a goal without knowing the real nature of what we hope to find. But that is what faith is all about. We try our best to understand a God whose perfection is beyond our comprehension, and we attempt to puzzle out the nature of our relationship to Him. In pursuit of understanding, faith is never passive, never “given.” Few external forces have the power to define its particulars for us; we need to discover for ourselves how we best fit into the scheme, but—luckily—there is a deep and peaceful power in the search. None of us knows precisely where we are going or how we ought to get there, but we should all draw strength and meaning from the challenging journey that leads us closer to the truth.

Kevin Jonke ’09 is a Social Studies concentrator in Straus.

Stuck in a Moment

Jeffery David Dean — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:11:56 +0000

Napoleon once famously said that history is the account of the battle as described by the victors. The human understanding of time is inextricably tied to the wielding of power, and where we believe that power rests defines our expectations of time. Ultimately, however, we are all victims of powers that we have no idea are conspiring against us. Indeed, the manner in which we view time rarely corresponds to the reality of our experiences.

The vast majority of world cultures have espoused belief that time began with an original perfection, but all things since that origin have been steadily deteriorating. This faith manifests itself in devotion to “tradition,” and the highest authority is the cult of the ancestors. Creation myths are of key importance, and adoration of “founding fathers” or Promethean figures abounds. In this Traditionalist system, whoever controls the means by which the present is brought back to the perfection of the past ultimately controls the fate of the future and therefore also the present. In contemporary American society, this conception of time predominates in “Red States,” where individuals are apt to glorify particular historical events as discrete entities that were the result of no historical development. Their religious books fell from the sky in perfect, completed form, and their religious institutions have no origins in previous systems of thought. Preservation of the past is essential, and those who seek to alter the status quo are the most vile of offenders. This conception might be summarized by reference to that classic Beatles song “Yesterday”: Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away! …/ Oh! I believe in yesterday!

On the opposite end of the spectrum is a cultural faith in the future—a faith that is relatively recent in world history, but nevertheless pervasive throughout modern Western societies. Individuals in this culture believe that history is a steady march from chaos toward order. Wars and other catastrophes are not the product of the decay of civilization, but rather merely occasional blips on the chart of human progress. Furthermore, deviations are to be expected, for the power of the primordial ooze from which civilization is dragging itself, but awareness of the difficulty is precisely that which affects the pathos of this Progressive culture’s heroic ideals. Those who oppose and overcome the powers-that-be are deified, and “revolution” or “reaction” for its own sake is fetishized. The past is ultimately irrelevant, except insofar as it provides models for overcoming the tyranny of the even more distant past. In our society, this conception of time is overwhelmingly found in “Blue States,” where individuals express naïve hope in the human capacity to effect change in the world. They are likely to have no religious book at all, for such is a trapping of devotion to the primeval. They are nevertheless found of stories that inspire them to keeping fighting the good fight, and religious literature may provide such inspiration. There are many songs that might evoke the ideals of the Progressives, but the theme song of Bill Clinton’s 1992 President campaign, Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” is perhaps the most perfect example: Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow /Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here / It’ll be, better than before / Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone. / Don’t you look back. / Don’t you look back.

The problem with these two conceptions, however, is that irrespective of one’s political or religious affiliations, no one experiences the impingement of time as a product of the idealized past or glorified future. For most individuals, there is a particular moment in his or her experience that defines the interpretation of both the past and the future. For instance, the victim of a tragic break-up is likely to believe that no one ever loved him in the past, and that furthermore no one will ever love him in the future. A young girl who is called “fat” by her dance instructor might convince herself that she has always been overweight and will always be so, necessitating drastic action if she is ever to be accepted. A stray word from a parent, professor, boss, or lover is apt to throw any man or woman into a tailspin, drastically reevaluating the past and the future in light of that particular moment. Such traumas are nearer and dearer to our hearts than our beliefs about origins or destinations. Despite what control we think we derive from the past or force we believe we apply toward the future, we find ourselves the victim of a damning power that is vested in a private memory that has come to define us. The U2 song “Stuck in a Moment” best summarizes this existential reality: You’ve got to get yourself together / You’ve got stuck in a moment / And you can’t get out of it / Oh love, look at you now. What we need, then, is not to look toward the future or the past as an escape from the moment in which we are trapped, for our conception of each is tainted by the pain of our individual sufferings. We are in need of a theory of time that simultaneously accounts for the power vested in particular moments while also opening a future that is more than a simply a reaction to that invested power.

There exists only one moment in time that accounts for decay of the original perfection, thus satisfying the demands of the Traditionalists, while also providing a means to realize a brighter future, thus fulfilling the expectations of the Progressives. That moment is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, where the sins of the whole world (our individual “pasts” that would otherwise be left behind when we die) are erased, and where the hope for the Resurrection of the flesh (our collective “future” that would ultimately always prove just out of reach) is born.

Though you publicly protest, in your heart you know that you are stuck in a moment. You have tried deference to tradition in order to recapture an original perfection, and you have tried to push toward progress in order to attain some ultimate culmination. Each of these attempts to exert a power of your own has proven unable to overcome that outside force that has captured you prevented your flourishing.

There exists only one moment that has a power to free rather than to bind. Until you have faith that the power oppressing you has been broken by the cross of Christ, you will hopelessly look toward “Yesterday” and “…Tomorrow,” all the while knowing that You’ve got yourself stuck in a moment / And you can’t get out of it.

Jeffery David Jean ’06 is a Religion concentrator in Adams House.

Walker Percy: Doctor of the Soul

Jordan Hylden — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:10:51 +0000

(Or, Why Steven Pinker Has One)

Some months ago, I received a check for several hundred dollars from Harvard University, because I had been authorized by President Lawrence H. Summers to attend church regularly and tell children about Jesus. No, I am not joking. Believe it or not, that is a true statement, although I acknowledge its wild incongruity.

In fact, the incongruity of that statement is in a sense the point of this essay, but we will get to that in a moment—but first, I will explain how it is that President Summers paid me money to teach children about Jesus. For the past two years, I have taught Sunday School at the Memorial Church, where I have regularly read the Bible lesson and taught the Affirmation class, meaning that I have been responsible for teaching children the Bible and the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Although I love my job and would do it for free, it comes with a small stipend which I have received each year. Now, where does President Summers come in, you ask? Well, as it happens, the Memorial Church is a somewhat unusual entity here at Harvard, reporting to no one but the Office of the President. Its esteemed minister, Prof. Peter J. Gomes, is thereby authorized to preach and maintain the activities of the church, and in turn, he has made sure that the church maintains a healthy children’s education program. And so, as you can see, there is a sense (albeit stretched, I know) in which I can truthfully claim that I was authorized by President Summers to tell kids about Jesus, and even got paid to boot.

But you and I both know that this is, shall we say, not the normal course of events here at fair Harvard. By some combination of hard work, Providence, and the sheer force of inertia, the Memorial Church continues to function and thrive as a Christian house of worship here on campus. Even so it has become increasingly odd, with each passing year, for a Christian church to stand in the middle of a great secular university. It isn’t very difficult to measure the vast cultural change that has taken place since the days of old Mather, Dunster, and Winthrop. To take only two examples, I seriously doubt that pious old Mr. Winthrop would have cared much for the annual Debauchery party in the house that bears his name, and I cannot even begin to imagine what Rev. Cotton Mather would have thought of the Lather festivities held yearly in his memory. Somehow I’m guessing he would have called down fire from heaven, rather than just calling up HUPD to help usher drunk soapy kids into the shuttle bus.

You begin to catch my meaning, I am sure. To put it bluntly, it is no longer clear to many of us how religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has anything to do with our lives. This is not to say that religion has ceased to be a significant force in the world—all one has to do to disabuse oneself of that notion is to read the morning paper—and nor is it to say that the modern university has ceased to concern itself with matters of religion. But there is an important difference, as I am sure you will recognize, between acknowledging that religion is a significant force within the world at large, and acknowledging that the doctrines of religion are in any meaningful sense true, such that they make absolute claims over your life and give it purpose, direction, fulfillment, and meaning. A great many of us, here in the liberal secular Northeast, are quite wary of religion, and apart from maintaining the traditions of our ancestors (Passover and Yom Kippur; Christmas and Easter), we do not consider ourselves to be very religious, and in fact likely have a difficult time even conceiving of what that might mean. Oftentimes we consider ourselves to be spiritual, but would never think of ourselves as religious, seeing as how that rings uncomfortably with echoes of the past—with old-fashioned notions of guilt and sin, with unscientific anti-modern fundamentalism, with unfashionable moral codes and sexual strictures, and with any number of other items that we’d much rather leave behind us, gently but firmly consigned to the dustbin of history.

And so, given all this, you may be justly wondering why we even bother to have a church in the middle of Harvard Yard, seeing as how our culture has, in large part, moved on. Certainly you might wonder why it is that I bother to attend—besides, that is, my handsome paycheck from President Summers. In fact, given all the nasty baggage that goes along with organized religion—like patriarchy, war, discrimination, absolutism, harsh moral codes, and all the rest—I would completely understand if you simply threw up your hands, put this magazine in the recycling bin where it belongs, and dedicated your time to something a bit less nebulous and a lot less dangerous.

You could, I suppose, do all of this. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you for a moment to suspend judgment and take me up on a modest proposal. Quite simply, I would like you to entertain the possibility that the entirety of human experience cannot be explained by the current methodology of natural science—such as it is practiced by Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett, and Jared Diamondand, consequently, that something like “religion” is therefore a possible, and even a necessary, way to understand who we are as human beings. I am not asking you to discard science, evolutionary biology, or anything of the sort. Instead I am asking you to consider that there might be something unique about the human experience that does not so easily lend itself to these sorts of explanations—something that points, in fact, to a realm of human existence that can only be described with rather old-fashioned words like authenticity, meaning, purpose, soul, and even God.

During this past semester, I have been taught by Prof. Steven Pinker that the human soul does not exist, and that religion is a natural phenomenon, thus making religious belief incompatible with science. In what follows, however, I aim to suggest a way in which Steven Pinker might be wrong, pertaining to the uniquely human phenomenon of language. Unfortunately I am not nearly as learned as Prof. Pinker, and so cannot hope to provide anything more than an amateur’s analysis, based upon ideas that are not even my own. By the end of this essay, however, I hope to have shown you that some notion of the “soul,” and also of religious belief, is in fact the best way to make sense of our unique status in the world as the only species that talks, laughs, lies, weaves fables, cracks jokes, searches for meaning, and gets itself into the crazy, glorious, and often disastrous predicaments of humankind.

Sadly, there will not be time to address the many objections you undoubtedly have about organized religion, and about Christianity in particular. And we will not even be able to touch on the innumerable other ways in which men and women have come to faith in God—if you come to the end of this essay and think it is quite shaky indeed to rest the edifice of religion upon the logical argument which we shall here lay forth (or, indeed, upon any sort of logical argument at all), you would be right. I am not a religious person because of this argument, and I would not expect anyone else to be either. Even so, I hope you will soon begin to agree with me that the gift of language is exceptionally curious, and in fact seems to point to the necessary existence of a human self, or soul, that produces it—and (if you like) why Steven Pinker actually might have a soul after all. Our guide, in the task ahead, will be a somewhat unusual figure in twentieth-century letters, whom I like to call, for reasons that will soon become clear, a “doctor of the soul”—the philosopher and novelist Walker Percy.

If you have been previously introduced to Walker Percy, it is most likely by means of his first novel, The Moviegoer, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1962. Percy was trained as a physician, but spent forty years of his life as a novelist and philosopher, producing six novels, two book-length essay collections, and an extended theoretical work, Lost in the Cosmos, that can best be described as a sort of existential self-help book. One year before his death in 1990, he was presented with the prestigious Jefferson Award by the National Endowment for the Humanities, in recognition of his status as one of America’s leading men of letters. Proof of his enduring impact may be had simply by walking over to Widener Library, where one will find row upon row of literary criticism devoted to his work. Still today, it is remarkable how many Percy devotees one may find—and when I say devotee, I do mean it. There are a multitude of writers, of course, with well-earned reputations for brilliance of style, keenness of wit, and profundity of thought, but there are only a few whose books have a way of changing people’s lives.

Walker Percy is such an author, and while his writings are widely regarded for the consummate skill with which he weaves his plots and turns his phrases, his books are perhaps most remarkable for the often deep effect they have upon their readers. They seem to diagnose something, as it were, about the soul of modern man, and prescribe a solution that continues to arrest and compel. But I must apologize, since I am getting ahead of myself. You will no doubt be wondering how a man who began his career as a medical doctor ended it as a philosopher-novelist. I shall do my best to explain.

Walker Percy was born on May 28, 1916, in Birmingham, Alabama, to an aristocratic old Southern family of considerable means. His father, Leroy Percy, was an Ivyleague educated Birmingham lawyer with a country-club house and a great deal of respect in the community, who nevertheless committed suicide when young Walker was only thirteen. Two years later, his mother followed him in death due to an automobile accident, which Walker believed all his life to have also been suicide. Thus orphaned at the age of fifteen, Walker and his two younger brothers were adopted by their bachelor uncle, William Alexander Percy, who thankfully did not commit suicide but nonetheless was constantly plagued by a deep depression. Upon graduating high school and leaving the dark, gloomy world in which he was raised, Walker studied at the University of North Carolina and at Columbia Medical School, from which he obtained his M.D. in 1941. Later in life, he commented that his pursuit of science as a young man was due in large part because of its order and regularity—perhaps his own life did not make sense, but science did, and for a time it provided the youthful Percy with a way to make sense of the world. No sooner had he gained his M.D., however, than he contracted tuberculosis, and was hospitalized for three years in a New York sanitarium.

It was here, isolated and ill, that the ordered world of science began to fail Percy, forcing him to finally face down the demons that had haunted him since his troubled childhood. All his scientific training, Percy realized, was not enough to give his life meaning and purpose, and he struggled mightily with the same feelings of despair that had led both his parents to suicide. He began to read widely among the existentialists: Heidegger, Kafka, Marcel, Kierkegaard, Camus, Dostoyevsky, and Sartre, who put into words what Percy had begun to suspect: that science, despite all its successes, “cannot utter one single sentence about what a man is, or what he must do.” In the existentialists, he found a diagnosis of the disease that had taken his parents, quite different from the one he had been taught in medical school: instead of clinical depression, negative environmental stimuli, and chemical imbalance, the existentialists wrote about malaise, inauthentic existence, the dread of nothingness, the void of meaninglessness, and the terrible emptiness of everyday life. From them he learned that there are some diseases that cannot be found in textbooks of medicine, and that the wild, dark despair he felt in his soul was not due to any conventional malady, but rather instead was brought on by a crisis of meaning. It was not long before Percy abandoned the practice of medicine, seeing as he did that it was inadequate to provide him with answers to the questions of purpose that begged for solutions. He did not, however, leave off being a doctor, for in his long years of searching he had not only found a diagnosis for the modern malaise, but also, so he thought, had discovered a prescription, perhaps even a cure. Consequently he left off being a doctor of the body, and began practicing as a doctor of the soul. Percy, it might be said, took the temperature of the Western world, and found it dangerously ill. In his fiction and non-fiction alike, he spoke of the chronic “everydayness” which pervades modern life; trapping millions in numbing lives of empty banality; and leading men and women who should, by rights, be the most blessed of all people, with every conceivable material need fulfilled, living in the freest, most prosperous society the world has ever known—the men and women of American suburbia, just like Percy’s parents—to the point of madness and despair; to steep their flesh in antidepressants, alcohol, and pornography; to spend their lives in endless pursuit of material wealth; to stoke their latent rage with films and television shows and wars so violent as to recall the brutality of the ancient Roman Empire; to give themselves over to every sort of deranged political ideology and system of belief; and even, as did Percy’s parents, take their own lives in despair. “Why is the good life,” Percy asked, “which men have achieved in the twentieth century so bad that only news of world catastrophes, assassinations, plane crashes, and mass murders can divert one from the sadness of ordinary mornings?” Why indeed, Percy asks. We should be happy, but we are not—what is the matter with us? Do we know what is the matter? Do we know why we are here? Do we even know who we are?

We do not, Percy said, and in this lies the root of our problems. Ever since the nineteenth century, the halls of Western civilization had echoed with what Matthew Arnold named the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the sea of faith. For centuries, the idea of God had been the capstone of Western thought—God was, so to speak, a part of the air that one breathed. Even when Western men and women were not particularly pious (and many of course were far from holy), they regarded God and his Church as an essential part of their societal fabric. Westerners were possessed of a sense of place: they looked up at the stars, and knew that they were God’s stars. They looked around at the world, and knew that it was Gods world. They looked at themselves, and knew that they were God’s people. Their lives were endowed with purpose; their actions had eternal import; their souls were immortal. They knew that life at times may not make sense, and indeed, often would not: wars raged, plagues ravaged, and thieves plundered throughout their difficult lives. But suffering was eventually to be redeemed; in fact was redemptive, for so it had been made by Christ’s suffering on the cross. In this world they would have trouble, but they did not fear, for they knew that Christ had overcome the world. By faith, they were sure of what they hoped for, and certain of what they did not see; this defined their lives, and anchored their world.

But of course, as beautiful and as comforting as all this was, it was not to last. Changes came to the Western psyche, which were to forever change the way in which they saw the world and their place therein. In the High Middle Ages, the theological certainty of St. Thomas Aquinas had reigned supreme: all truth was God’s truth, and all the world was God’s. By the nineteenth century, however, the rigid proofs and postulates of Aquinas had long been a thing of the past. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution had all burst upon the scene with their freewheeling, freethinking ideas. Religious doctrines were no longer secure, and even God’s existence was very much in doubt.

The publication of Darwins Origin of Species had dealt the last remaining argument for God’s existence a fatal blow, the result being that the framework by which Western man had long understood himself had disappeared, virtually overnight. Even the cherished human soul was not safe—Herbert Spencer, in his widely influential Principles of Psychology, asserted that our minds were nothing more than stimulus-response machines created by the process of evolution. Evolutionary psychologists confidently stated that our so-called “souls” were really nothing more than physical functions caused by simple chemical reactions. It is difficult to underestimate the seismic shift represented by all of these changes: no longer were the stars God’s stars; no longer was the world God’s world; no longer were we God’s people. Man’s life was not endowed with purpose; the soul was not immortal, in fact did not even exist; and God, who had benevolently watched over us all these long years, was dead.

Many wondered, as did Nietzsche’s madman, if the entire Western world was now “straying as through an infinite nothing,” and it is from this world that the existentialists grew. Their differences notwithstanding, each of them in their own way diagnosed the symptoms of the modern malaise. Dostoyevsky’s tortured underground man spoke of the loss of human freedom that accompanied scientific determinism: “Science itself” has taught us, he wrote, “that in fact man possesses neither a will nor a whim of his own, that he never did, and that he himself is nothing more than a kind of piano key or organ stop.” Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Morals, wrote of the eclipse of traditional notions of morality, which had long been underwritten by divine revelation, but must now be understood as historically contingent, mutable, and lacking in any intrinsic force. Sartre spoke of the fundamental human need for transcendence; and Marcel of our need for relatedness; neither of which could be satisfied in a world without God, ruled not by divine love, but instead by the cold, hard, and arbitrary laws of nature. Life, in a sense, had become impossible, since the very things which man most required to live had disappeared, seemingly never to return. Percy of course knew this, and the protagonists of his fictional work reflect all the symptoms of existential angst that had long been the hallmark of existentialist fiction. In this Percy is not unique—his most enduring characters, such as The Moviegoer’s Binx Bolling, The Last Gentleman’s Will Barrett, and The Thanatos Syndrome’s Tom More, have much in common with J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, and even little Alfie Singer in Annie Hall, who refuses to do his homework because the universe is expanding. The question Percy asks, then, is a common one, and indeed might be said to be the central question facing modern society: “What does a man do,” Percy writes, “when he finds himself living after an age has ended, and can no longer understand himself because the theories of man of the former age no longer work?” What, indeed, do we do, when we no longer know who we are? Professor E.O. Wilson, who teaches right here in our very own department of biology, has said forthrightly that a proper understanding of science cannot include a belief in God, and that theology will not survive as an independent discipline. Likewise our famed professor of psychology, Steven Pinker, has clearly stated that modern science has made religious belief impossible, and that the old notion of the “human soul” is entirely obsolete. How, then, can we heal our empty souls if they no longer even exist? How could we possibly regain a new sense of meaning and purpose, when the words themselves have become impossible anachronisms of a former age? Where do we start; where do we begin?

It is here that Percy is unique, and in my opinion absolutely fascinating. “There is,” Percy tells us, “only one place to start,” if we mean to build up, from the rubble as it were, a new understanding of humankind: “The place,” he writes, “where mans singularity is there for all to see and cannot be called into question, even in a new age in which everything else is in dispute. That singularity is language.”

Now, you will have to bear with me for a moment. I realize that statement may sound at first a bit like the ravings of the folks on the street corner who promise that Lyndon Larouche is the savior of all mankind, or perhaps the fellow on television in the question-mark suit who sells that book, or whatever it is, that somehow makes you fabulously wealthy simply by dialing a telephone number. But I promise you, Percy is after something quite different here; something that I think is absolutely revolutionary. His argument is somewhat complex, and it will take us a bit of work to get through. Nevertheless, it is exceptionally important, because it is nothing less than an argument for the existence of free will, meaning, purpose, the human soul, and yes, even God.

To begin with, let’s go back to the mention I made of Dostoyevsky’s underground man, whom I said lamented the loss of human freedom that accompanied scientific determinism. Now, you may never have had occasion to believe that science is in the business of taking away your freedom—unless, in my case, you have a great deal of reading to do for next week that rather interferes with your videogame plans—but, let me assure you that that is in fact what the men in white coats over at the Science Center are doing. I am not really joking: if you have a passing familiarity with physics, chemistry, or biology, you will begin to understand my point.

Take any elementary physics problem: if little Johnny pitches a baseball to little Susie at a velocity of 30 kilometers per hour, and little Susie’s bat hits the baseball with a velocity of 40 kilometers per hour, at what speed will the baseball be traveling when it breaks your living-room window? A simple problem, quite easily solved by applying a simple formula, which essentially is a derivation from the law of cause-and-effect. Johnny pitches ball; Susie hits ball; ball breaks window. This, you see, is the way in which science understands the world: as a series of physical phenomena; an interaction of matter; all operating according to readily derivable laws in a relationship of cause-and-effect. Physics, chemistry, and biology all operate in essentially the same way, meaning that if you sign up for a biology class on evolution and human behavior (which I did last semester), you will receive an explanation for human phenomena that is, at bottom, the same as that given for little Johnny and Susie’s baseball game.

Why do we act the way we do? Why do we build empires, explore the unknown, and wish upon stars? Why do fools fall in love? Because, you will be told, the human mind is a collection of instincts that have developed through time by the process of evolution, each of which respond in regular ways to the stimuli they receive from the environment. This, you will learn, is all the product of the sociobiological revolution, led in fact by our own fair Harvard, which is in fact nothing less than an entirely materialistic attempt to provide a “scientific” explanation for all human activity. Free will, of course, and notions of “mind” and “soul” must go completely out the window. Tom Wolfe, in his marvelous essay collection Hooking Up, expresses doubt that anyone “ever believed so completely in predestination as these, the hottest and most intensely rational young scientists in the United States.”

But you of course know better than that, because you know that really we have not gotten beyond Herbert Spencer, who believed it might one day be possible to plot all of human activity on a well-ordered chart, just like a train schedule, or Freudian psychology, which firmly held that all mental activity is entirely material and therefore completely determined. Dostoyevsky’s underground man knew this, and so do you. This is how all human activity can be explained, including the quintessentially human activity of language.

Almost. You will have heard, perhaps, of B.F. Skinner, who also incidentally both studied and taught psychology at Harvard. Skinner was for years the principal exponent of behaviorism, which was, like Spencer and Freud and everything else, a dyadic system for understanding human behavior as a set of responses to given stimuli. Among other things, Skinner wrote the magisterial Verbal Behavior, which quickly became the standard in its field. Skinner’s explanatory model for human language, in Percy’s own words, was rational and elegant, standing “in a direct line of continuity with chemistry and physics. The happenings in a speakers mouth, in the air, in the ear of the listener, along the nerves, could all be understood, at least in principle, as chemical and physical interactions occurring between molecules or electrons.” The behaviorist model of language was precisely what one would expect, given that the entire range of scientific knowledge in mans possession depended upon the assumption that all observable events take place in a dyadic, stimulus-response relationship. “Particles hitting particles, chemical reactions, energy exchanges, gravity attractions between masses, field forces, and so on,” explained Percy, “can all be explained as an interaction of elements in a dyadic system.”

The only problem with the behaviorist model, however, for all of its rational simplicity and scientific elegance, was that it didnt work. Noam Chomsky’s famed review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in 1959 dismantled the behaviorist paradigm, permanently changing the field of linguistics. Not since then, Percy wrote, “has it been possible to take seriously the application to language of the old stimulusresponse theory, however refined and modified it might be.” A look at Chomsky himself will be useful to understand the import of this paradigm shift: in his 1963 book Language and Mind, he recounts the general consensus among language scholars during his time as a graduate student at Harvard—”that the framework of stimulus-response psychology would soon be extended to the point where it could provide a satisfying explanation for the most mysterious of human abilities [e.g., language].” This approach, however, was shown by Chomsky and those who followed him to be “not only inadequate but misguided in basic and important ways.” By an analysis of actual human language, Chomsky discovered that all known languages share what he called a “universal grammar” based upon an unchanging “deep structure.” To make a very long story short, Chomsky was saying that language is not explicable in terms of learned behavior in interaction with the environment, but instead only in terms of a universal, built-in structure, unique to humans and qualitatively different from stimulus-response phenomena. As he explained:

This system of linguistic competence is qualitatively different from anything that can be described in terms of the taxonomic methods of structural linguistics, the concepts of S-R [stimulus-response] psychology, or the theory of simple automata. …Mental structures are not simply more of the same but are qualitatively different from the complex networks and structures that can be developed by elaboration of the concepts that seemed so promising to many scientists just a few years ago.

This of course was a remarkable assertion to make, both then and now. If human mental structures could not be explained in terms of stimulus-response mechanisms, then they apparently had no analogue in the rest of the natural world, and became exceedingly difficult to account for by the processes of natural evolution. Indeed, Chomsky recognized the import of his claim, writing that the radical uniqueness of human language made it “quite senseless to raise the problem of explaining the evolution of human language from more primitive systems of communication than appear at lower levels of intellectual capacity.” Natural selection, he wrote, could only be put forward as an explanatory device so long as it was recognized that “there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena.” Skeptical that human language could be accounted for in such a manner, Chomsky wondered aloud “whether the functioning and evolution of human mentality can be accommodated within the framework of physical explanation,” and even cited Descartes old idea of mind-stuff, while being careful not to quite go so far as accede to the notion of an immaterial mind. In the end, although Chomsky had decisively dismantled Skinners behaviorist model of human language, in doing so he had opened a veritable Pandoras box of questions about the nature of the human mind. If human mental activity could not be explained in terms of dyadic, stimulus-response activity, then what did make sense of it? Chomsky ultimately defaulted on this question, pointing suggestively in the direction of Descartes but finally concluding that “the processes by which the human mind achieved its present stage of complexity and its particular form of innate complexity are a total mystery.”

It was precisely this ambiguity that Percy picked up on in his own work. “While the prevailing behaviorist theory has been dismantled,” he noted, “no other theory has been advanced to take its place… It is somewhat as if the Ptolemaic geocentric universe had been dismantled but Copernicus had not yet come along with his heliocentric model. ” The behaviorist theory, although wrong, at least gave a coherent picture of how language worked. Chomsky’s “universal grammar” hypothesis fit with the actual phenomenon of language, but did not really explain it: as later critics (like Hilary Putnam) were to point out, positing “innate ideas” was another way of saying that no one quite knew how it worked.

To his credit, Chomsky did in fact admit that he could not give a good explanatory model, calling the processes by which the human mind acquired the capacity for language a “total mystery.” Nevertheless this did not satisfy Percy: in Chomskys schema, the infamous “Language Acquisition Device” remained a “black box whose contents were altogether unknown.” The current state of knowledge, Percy thus argued, did not even reach “the level of explanatory adequacy of, say, seventeenth-century biology, [in which] the work of Harvey and Malpighi [constructed] crude but accurate models of cardiac and renal function; to suppose, for example, that the heart is like a unidirectional pump or the kidney is like a filter. One may not say as much at the present time about the unique human capacity for language.” Into this void, Percy proposed to place not Descartes mind-stuff, but instead the semiotic philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce: the only theorist, Percy held, who had provided an adequate explanatory model for the unique phenomenon of non-dyadic human language.

C. S. Peirce is an extraordinarily important figure in American philosophy: a brilliant polymath whose writings ranged over a wide range of topics, he managed to found both philosophical pragmatism and semiotics while never holding tenure at a university or, indeed, becoming very well known outside of a small circle of friends during his lifetime. His writings are unapologetically technical, containing dozens of terms which he coined himself as he went along, making his work at times extremely difficult to decipher. While his writings had an important impact on twentieth-century philosophy, however, Percy contended that their full import was never realized. He argued:

The extraordinary insight of Peirce into the triadic nature of meaning for humans has been largely perverted by the current European tradition of structuralism and deconstruction and the American version of ‘dyadic’ psychology, that is, various versions of behaviorism. It would be nice if someone pursued Peirces breakthroughs.

By this, Percy meant that although different sections of Peirce had been appropriated by various schools of contemporary philosophy, his central idea—the notion of Thirdness, or “triadicity,” that was central to his entire metaphysic had been largely ignored and distorted by modern philosophy and psychology. Percy’s official biographer, Patrick Samway, traced back Percy’s interest in Peirce to a book which a friend had given him in the late 1940′s, containing a short passage which bears striking similarity to Percy’s later recorded opinions: “Peirce was a lone voice in the howling wilderness of late nineteenth-century irrationalism; he was not appreciated during his lifetime, and has hardly been recognized since. The full consequences of his thinking have not had their effect on philosophy.” Percy could not have agreed moreall his life, he intended to write a book on Peirces philosophy and theory of language, although he never was able to do more than write up his ideas in essays. In a 1971 letter written to Shelby Foote, he explained the reasons why he thought such a book would be important:

I still think it would be as important as I told you. I would even say that it is revolutionary: that 100 years from now it could well be known as the Peirce-Percy theory of meaning. No kidding. Im not even being vain. It just so happens that this old fellow, Charles Peirce laid it out a hundred years ago, exactly what language is all about and what the behaviorists and professors have got all wrong ever since. I propose to take his insight, put it in modern behavioral terms plus a few items of my own, and unhorse an entire generation of behaviorists and grammarians.

For Percy, Peirce’s notion of “triadicity” (which he was to call the “Delta Factor”) provided a way to understand the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of human language, and in fact, laid the foundation for a new theory of the human self.

You are, of course, likely wondering what precisely I mean by “triadicity,” and how on earth it is supposed to relate to language and the human soul. Thankfully, it is actually quite simple, and was explained very nicely by Percy himself. In what is perhaps his most important essay, “The Delta Factor,” Percy begins by asking a simple question: how did Helen Keller learn to use language? The story, of course, is familiar to all of us: for years, Helen had lived in a sort of shadow world, unable to communicate with those around her except by emotional acting out, pointing, gesturing, and so on; indeed, her communicative capacity was roughly equivalent to Washoe the chimpanzee and other trained apes who communicated in similar fashion. One morning, however, thanks to the determined efforts of her nurse, Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller broke out of her prison of silence and into the light of language. Her autobiography tells it best:

Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away…

Something remarkable happened in that moment, Percy believed: in fact he wrote that “if one had an inkling of what happened in the well-house in Alabama in the space of a few minutes, one would know more about the phenomenon of language and about man himself that is contained in all the works of behaviorists, linguists, and German philosophers.” How did Helen Keller come to understand that the word water meant the cool liquid running over her hand? And perhaps more significantly, how did she immediately know that everything had a name, and so subsequently ran around the house and yard asking Anne Sullivan what everything was called? What was going on in Helen Kellers mind at that moment?

We have already seen, thanks to Chomsky, that the behaviorist theory of language acquisition does not work. Chomsky, however, declined to draw a diagram relating the elements together: his “Language Acquisition Device” remained a mysterious and inviolate black box. Percy, however, following Peirce, drew a diagram representing the relationships between all the elements at play:

The word “water”
/         \
/            \
/                 \
/                     \
Helen _______ The object
Keller                        “water”

The three elements of the triad, Percy argued, were completely irreplaceable: the word “water” was a symbol for the actual object (water), or the referent, both of which were joined by a coupler: Helen Keller. All three were joined in real relationship to each other, but their relations could not be described in terms of a dyadic, stimulus-response interaction. Skinners behaviorism was ultimately described by Chomsky as inadequate because it attempted to draw stimulus-response arrows between a series of related items. Peirces triad, however, did not commit this error, since it was not possible to draw such arrows between three equally related and irreducible elements. The word and the object are not inherently related to each other, but rather are arbitrarily coupled together. Language is fundamentally an act of symbolic naming and coupling: in Hellen Keller’s example, it is of course the case that the word “water” is not actually the object water, but instead is an arbitrary set of vocables. But when Helen learned from Miss Sullivan that the word “water” is water, she engaged in an act of symbolic naming, by which she understood the actual object through a symbol which stands for it. Here, then, comes the crux of Percys point: the word and the object are not in any way independently related to each other, and yet they are joined together, in a real relationship in which the symbol is understood to stand for its referent. This, Percy and Peirce argue, can only be done by a coupler: by a third element which is capable of joining the two other elements together.

It is in this precise sense that Percy believed himself not merely to be constructing a plausibly diagrammed description of language acquisition and use, but something which to him was far more important: a semiotic of the self. Language makes no sense at all as a phenomenon of naming and communication, Percy argued, unless a Third entity exists capable of joining the symbol to its referent: here, Helen Keller; more generally speaking, a self, or a coupler. There is no other way by which Helen could have joined the two disparate elements together and understood immediately that they were part and parcel of an entire system; that everything in fact had a name: if Helen had merely been an organism in an environment, she could not have done so. Skinners pigeons and Washoe the chimp could learn to press a button or make a hand signal in exchange for food, but they could not learn to understand a symbol to mean its referent, and so could never approximate the human use of language. Consequently, animals are unable to break out of the dyadic, stimulus-response relationship in which the universe of matter interacts: by breaking out of the endless chain of dyadic relations, however, Helen Keller (and by extension, mankind) gained the sovereign ability to name, and therefore to stand apart, as it were, from the universe of objects, connect and comprehend and judge them, and so to create from them meaning. Unlike the animals, Percy argued, we do not exist solely in the dyadic environment (Umwelt) of sensory experience, but also and most fundamentally in the “triadic” world (Welt) of linguistic signs, from which we create meaning and derive understanding and purpose. Through language, humans create a “world of signs” by which they communicate to one another about themselves, about their environment, and about their world, and it is “in this immaterial world of meaning that they achieve whatever consciousness they have of the self and world.” This world of knowing is also one of relatedness, in which we depend upon our relationship to other humans (in Helens case, upon Anne Sullivan) to “name” and thus make sense of our physical environment and mythological universe: together, we name chairs, dogs, winter, December, punctuality, jealousy, love, Leviathan, and God.

This, then, is what Percy meant by the “Peirce-Percy theory of meaning”: when Helen Keller understood “water” to mean water, the full light of language opened up to her the door of understanding, naming, comprehending, asserting, willing, and knowing. In short, she entered into her full personhoodand by extension we, human beings, have done the same. Percy thus believed firmly that language, the “Delta Δ factor”, mans “singularity” which stood for all to see and could not be called into question, could provide a firm ground for a new theory of man: as Homo loquens, Man-the-Talker. Using this concept, Percy set out to “understand Man as the languaged animal,” arguing that one might “even begin to understand the manifold woes, predicaments, and estrangements of man—and the delights and savorings and homecomings—as nothing more nor less than the variables of the Delta phenomenon, just as responses, reinforcements, rewards and such are the variables of stimulus-response phenomena.”

Percys criticisms of behaviorist psychiatry, which regarded man as simply an organism in an environment, were thus resolved: the uniquely human feelings of angst, alienation, homelessness, and transcendence could not be understood by modern psychiatry precisely because such feelings lay in the domain of the Welt, mans symbolic world of meaning. One could make sense, finally, of the claims of the existentialists, and understand how one might begin to live “authentically” or “inauthentically”—one must learn how to live meaningfully within the meaning-world of symbols.

So, too, could one begin to understand how to give a real ground to the old notions of “dignity,” “freedom,” “morality,” and the “sacredness of the individual”: if Man had broken out of the deterministic sequence of dyadic energy exchanges, and had begun to give names to the items, persons, ideas, and myths with which he filled his world, then it began to make sense to talk of human beings as willing individuals, possessing sovereignty, freedom, and the capacity for moral action. And in his last public lecture, delivered in 1990, Percy spelled out what he (along with Peirce) saw as the inevitable implication of the new theory of Homo loquens; man the triadic creature:

Once one concedes the reality of the triadic event, one is brought face to face with the nature of its elements. A child points to a flower and says “flower.” One element is the flower as perceived by sight; and the spoken word “flower,” a Gestalt of a peculiar little sequence of sounds… But what is the entity at the apex of the triangle, that which links the other two? Peirce, a difficult, often obscure writer, called it by various names, interpretant, interpreter, judge. I have used the term “coupler” as a minimal designation of that which couples name and thing, subject and predicate, links them by the relation which we mean by the peculiar little word “is.” It, the linking entity, was also called by Peirce “mind” and even “soul.” Here is the embarrassment, and it cannot be gotten round, so it might as well be said right out: By whatever name one chooses to call itinterpretant, interpreter, coupler, whatever it, the third element, is not material. It is as real as a cabbage or a king or a neuron, but it is not material. No material structure of neurons, however complex, and however intimately it may be related to the triadic event, can itself assert something. If you think it can, please draw me a picture of an assertion. A material substance cannot name or assert a proposition. The initiator of a speech-act is an act-or, that is, an agent. The agent is not material.

Peirce, he said, insisted on “both the reality and the nonmateriality of the third element,” and so did Percy. Choosing to reject both German and Berkeleyan idealism as inconsistent with what he regarded to be the real findings of science, and likewise convinced by Chomsky that man could not be regarded as merely an organism in an environment, Percy was left with Peirces triadic theory of meaning as the only explanation consonant with both the uniquely human phenomenon of language and the uniquely human feelings of angst, alienation, homelessness, and transcendence. Peirce understood that his linguistic triad, along with his acceptance that the scientific method offered an avenue to real truths about the world, involved him “in a realism and not in a nominalism,” and thus was led to reconcile “medieval realism with scientific empiricism.” Percy, too, agreed with Peirce that the best explanation of the facts at hand led to a metaphysical realism, and so to a robust definition of the human self within an ordered world. Given this understanding, then, even old notions like “dignity” and the “sacredness of the individual” could be seen to make sense, even in light of great trials and suffering.

You see what Percy has done. On purely empirical, indeed, on scientific grounds, using nothing but the everyday phenomenon of human language and solid logic, he has rehabilitated the old, musty doctrines of the human soul, free will, meaning, and the supernatural realm. In fact he has shown that such ideas are necessary to understand the phenomenon of human language. In a real sense, the only way to understand the fact that I am sitting at my desk writing to you, is to first believe that I possess an immaterial soul. And while, of course, Percys argument does not prove the existence of the Christian God, it does point to the existence of the supernatural and breaks the back of scientific determinism. And, once that dam is burst, all the old reasons to believe in God come rushing back. Religion is no longer the crazy old aunt in the attic, lingering around long past its glory years. It is in fact, precisely the best way to understand the human predicament, and to find a cure for the existential malaise that plagues modern society. Philosophical theology, of the sort done by Aquinas, and also of the more phenomenological, existential sort done by Walker Percy and the late Pope John Paul II, is the best way we have to understand the problems we face in this life, and to perhaps find an answer to them.

It may be that you have some idea of what Percy meant when he spoke of despair, suffering, and the crisis of meaning. It may also be that you have been in search of this sort of meaning for quite some time; for some sort of answer to the all-too-human crises of angst, loneliness, and despair, but did not think it was possible to find it. Percy, however, in his books would remind us not to forget that, in a real sense, to be human is to suffer, because to be human is to exist as a wayfarer upon this earth; as a pilgrim in search of a homeland. And if the suffering we face in this life is a result, as the existentialists held, of our unfulfilled needs for transcendence and relatedness, and if in fact we do live most fundamentally in relation to others through our meaning- world of linguistic signs, then it may be that our angst is due to the disordered way in which we relate to each other, and to the way in which we have forgotten what is truly meaningful in our lives. It could be that we are all disordered and fallen creatures, turned inwards upon ourselves, who will never really become who we truly are until we turn outwards again, towards our neighbors, in the fundamental human relationship of love. It may also be that we will never be able to do this on our own, and that we stand in need of being loved if we are to learn how to love—that Someone else must first love us. A wise pilgrim, of course, will keep close watch for signs pointing the way home, and if during the night he loses his way, then he will seek guidance from the stars above. Perhaps, the light from the heavens will show him the true way home—perhaps there is even a message sent from above; one of grace, and love, which can make him whole again. And the message just may be found in these very words, written down long ago: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. And this is how God showed his love for us: He sent his one and only Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”

Jordan Hylden ’06, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, is a Government concentrator in Currier House.

The Christian Mind at Harvard: A Visitor’s Perspective

Anne Snyder — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:09:40 +0000

Is the expression “Christian mind” an oxymoron at Harvard? Can the two entities coexist not only in the abstract, but also within the individual? In the rewarding experience I have had studying at Harvard this semester, I have pondered this question seriously., Here at Harvard, the intellect is nurtured, scholarly pursuits are in abundance, and the mind is king. But what about the Christian mind? Can we integrate faith and learning while at an overtly secular university? In short, I believe we can. But before we can explore how this can be accomplished at Harvard, we need to look at the importance of using one’s mind for Christ and to examine the current situation at this university, as I have observed it.

What does it mean to think Christianly and why is it important? A few years ago, I read a book that affected me profoundly: Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In this indictment of American evangelicalism, Noll does not see the scandal in a failure of theology or biblical studies; rather, the scandal is in the “historical experience of an entire subculture” that has refused to confront the “whole spectrum of modern learning.” Indeed, the exercise of the mind for Christ is not merely studying theology. It also does not mean publicly participating in the secular academy while privately having a spiritual life full of “quiet times,” social justice debate during fellowship, and church attendance. All of these are wonderful aspects of the life of faith and should not be disregarded. However, Noll asserts that the Christian life of the mind consists in understanding the entire continuum of learning, relationships, and daily life with reference to Christ, in whom we believe all truth and goodness cohere. We constantly need to ask ourselves this question: As a Christian, how do I think about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human social structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature and purpose of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending my perception of the world outside myself ?

Some might say: if we diligently pursue our studies, treat others with respect and kindness, and dedicate ourselves to serving as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, both to the world at large and to those at home, what could we possibly be missing? But Paul, the New Testament lover of the mind, demands more. He exhorts us to “not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults” (1 Cor. 14:20, NRSV). Unfortunately, it is all too easy to forget his last five words. Contrary to popular dialogue within Christian circles, our God demands not only the obedience of our hearts and souls, but that of our minds as well. The traditional doctrine of creation holds that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing and intrinsically good. As part of his creation, we are to delight in the world and the cosmos which God created good. We must take the world seriously for its own sake as well as for what it may teach us about God. To study it reverently is already an act of worship, and to deny this is to deny God’s power, wisdom, love, and holiness evidenced by his creative work.

Even more central to the pulse sustaining the life of the Christian mind is God’s incarnation in Christ Jesus. The great truth of the Incarnation is that the Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us in a time, culture, and place. All too often, we Christians forget this foundational truth, and instead overemphasize Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity– God’s taking on flesh and dwelling among us. Our Lord chose this world—a world embodied by material things as well as spiritual things, a world of human institutions as well as divine realities—as the arena in which to accomplish the salvation of humanity. He has great regard for the material realm. To worship and respond lovingly to such a being demands our contemplation of Him and of the wonders of His creation, including science, politics, the academy, family, the arts, and our relational, vocational, and temporal pasts, presents, and futures.

In a self-help culture of feel-goodisms, material wealth, consumerism, immediate results, and a fevered work ethic, it seems natural to separate the spiritual realm from the corporeal. At Harvard, I have been overwhelmingly impressed by the drive and sophisticated thought occurring in the classroom. At the same time, the level of urgency and expectancy in prayer as students gather for spiritual food and mutual encouragement in the various Christian fellowships has both refreshed and inspired me. The individual’s dedication to a wise stewardship of his God-given gift of intelligence combined with this Truth-seeking community of love and accountability is truly laudable.

I find myself bewildered, however, at the lack of thoughtful dialogue occurring in the arenas of faith and private life when these same people so diligently devote themselves to deep and sophisticated secular scholasticism. How can young persons of such brilliant intelligence neglect the thought life of their Christian walks, and succumb on one level to the pervading American Christian culture of simplistic clichés and quick- fix evangelism, and on another level to the Harvard culture of type-A egoism, self-perpetuated stress, and individualistic success? If we separate the mind from the spirit and thus withdraw from thinking Christianly about every aspect of life, are we not reverting to a mild form of Gnosticism and ignoring the good gifts of a loving God? In our neglect of a Christ-centered mind, not only are we forfeiting the opportunity to impact our peers, the university at large, and eventually, the intellectual forces of the world—all of which mold the conditions of influential public discussion—but we are also displaying a dismaying lack of interest in God’s creation and ignoring the message of the Incarnation.

~~~

We are all products of our culture, and Christians, let alone Harvard students, are no exception. What is unfortunate is the higher calling we seem to have ignored in our mindless acceptance of Americanized Christian, and in this specific case, “Harvardian” norms. Countless Christians throughout the country regard scholarly matters as of secondary importance if not as direct impediments to the urgent business of saving souls, and have so intertwined culture with faith that it is almost impossible to think Christianly without cultural blinding. Harvard Christians, while obviously not disregarding the world of learning, appear to have inherited the separatist tendencies of American evangelicalism. While their hands and mouths proclaim good works on a macrocosmic level, they have a limited reputation for scholarship with a holistic and informed biblical worldview. Ironically, Harvard also holds claim to perhaps the strongest reputation in elite academic circles, and yet its students are so goal-oriented that their potential for Christ-like character gets eclipsed in place of the more immediate and seemingly superior goals within reach. What results is not only a somewhat sectarian, particularist understanding of the Bible, but also a disengagement of a biblically-informed mind from the rigorous classes, ongoing academic dialogue, and relationships embodying grace, patience, and Christcenteredness (rather than self-centeredness). Some students also seem so fearful of the politically and culturally loaded “Christian” label that they refuse to say anything in the public forum that even hints of normative conviction founded on a Christian worldview. Instead, a reticence to engage in Christ-centered discussions (even within gatherings of supposed believers!) is perpetuated. On the rare occasion when students boldly decide to speak up, they are so out of practice and paralyzed by an overwhelming awareness of all of the possible conclusions on the part of the listener that they do not conduct themselves in a manner reflective of a considered biblical worldview—loving, steadfast, open, honest, and sufficiently nuanced to reflect the complex truths of Christ’s teachings. As a result, discouragement and defeat set in as their spiritual selves retreat into the private realm, escaping the needed exposure and nourishment from outside dialogue as they refuse (perhaps unconsciously) to engage the world of contemporary culture and learning.

On another level, the pervading influence of Harvard student status—stressing, striving for the perfect GPA, strategizing to construct the most compelling resume—can creep unawares into our Christian walk as we worry in unnecessarily depressing tones about what bad Christians we are, or strive to prove one’s “spiritual accomplishments” publicly in a moralistic and self-righteous manner. How much freer would we feel if we lived humbly in God’s grace and rejoiced in His overflowing mercies that allow us to love life and one another without the self-afflicted and selfdirected pressures of perfectionism! We each have distinct personalities and ways of expressing our love toward God and others, and I’m definitely not advocating the hunky dory behavior and fake smiles unfortunately associated with much of Christian culture. But I am encouraging a healthier perspective toward life and the world, in which God is recognized and praised genuinely for His supremacy and goodness, not simply as the cosmic crutch to which we turn upon realizing our limits.

I fully empathize with the hard fact that time is short and college can feel like all of life compressed into four breathless years. We struggle to keep our heads above water as new information, ideas, relationships, and fresh levels of awareness overload our senses without pause, and the idea of adding the unpopular and unappreciated endeavor of thinking Christianly can seem like too much to ask of students who already fight to fan the flame of their faiths in an unsupportive environment. I also feel more forgiving toward myself and fellow Christians here when I realize that the lack of “integration” is due in part to originally pure intentions. Indeed, part of the genius of the Christian groups on campus is their populist approach toward outreach. Such evangelism and openness is a good thing. But we need to beware of allowing too much of our creative energy to be pulled away from the sustaining of serious Christian intellectual life and consistent Christian behavior. If we overemphasize the conversion experience and the larger-than-life social justice agendas without developing our Christian minds, we shortchange our potential for far-reaching influence and also miss out on the joyful investments in reciprocal, compassionate, selfless, and Godgiven friendships and interactions at the present time—with believers and unbelievers, students and faculty, strangers on the street and roommates in the dorm. We forget that “saving the lost” is not the sole purpose of the gospel message. It is more critical that we ponder the more indirect, difficult, even mundane ways in which God may be known. We must think carefully about how the Christian life might be lived out in the institutional settings of politics, science, the arts, the marketplace, and relational interactions on an individual level. If we do not, not only will the world never be able to distinguish us from our non-Christian cohorts (and if they do, we will only be seen as inappropriately activist and extremist), but we forfeit an opportunity to obey God in allowing one of the three major gifts he gave us (mind, body, and spirit) to become atrophied.

I must admit that such intentional mental exercise for Christ and the lifestyle choices it produces are often difficult. In my own recent faith journey, despite enjoying a classical liberal arts education combined with an abundance of meaningful relationships rooted in a Christian worldview at Wheaton College (IL), the past two years have not been easy. The experience at Wheaton has furthered both my certainty and confusion surrounding the proper manner in which to think Christianly. Yes, I have come to treasure my courses in international relations that discuss political forgiveness and a biblical code of peace and justice, bioethics classes agonizing over the morality of in-vitro fertilization, and literature professors delighting in the timeless beauty of words and profound Christian truths through poetry and prose. And I cherish the long conversations with thoughtful friends who have helped to erode my partial subscription to “cultural Christianity,” and instead encourage a methodical, thorough, and prudent exploration of God’s created order and my activity in it. However, while I now possess a nuanced and biblical framework on which to rest my opinions, thoughts, and decisions, the actual realization of my response to the world at times seems paralyzed by an awareness of all the gray areas. I have been persuaded that no complex question has a simple answer, and thus I sympathize with the frequent reticence of Christians at Harvard. The sophisticated addressing of such questions requires the scrupulous investigation into foundational and fundamental questions about ourselves and our world, and such exploration is difficult, frustrating, and at times seemingly fruitless.

~~~

How can we cultivate this precious frame of mind at a place like Harvard, where there is no spoonfeeding and the forums for spiritual nourishment and discussion are few and far between? Individual internalizing of God’s call to wise mental stewardship is the first step. We must revel in the beauty of His created order and understand the significance of the Incarnation in order to see through the eyes of faith while still on this earth. This worldview must then replace the cultural spectacles distorting our vision, and in that separation, we can then successfully engage that very culture with our newfound sight. Reading the Bible critically and often, outside reading and reflection during breaks and free moments, and intentional conversations with small groups and believing friends can help us engage every discipline—academic, athletic, humanitarian, extracurricular, social—with our Christian lenses firmly in place. Group sharing and accountability is indispensable in helping us to be consistent in our private and public spiritual lives—we must use discernment in how to spend our free time, what movies and music we expose ourselves to, how we treat our blockmates and the homeless persons in the Square. We must listen to one another both thoughtfully and openly, always guided by a firm theological roadmap and wary of judging quickly from first impressions to final conclusions. We must become “bilingual”—addressing the world with our well-loved and oft-used words of faith while simultaneously learning to translate those words into the vernacular of public academia. Ultimately, however, we must rest in knowing that God, who places supreme value on wisdom and understanding, will continue to help us cultivate intellectual virtues (i.e. wisdom, discernment, love of truth, interpretive sensitivity) while avoiding intellectual vices (i.e. willful naiveté, sinful ignorance, closed-mindedness, egoism). By prayer and obedience, God can train the cognitive faculties of Harvard students to mature excellence so as to win important truth and live out to the fullest our love for Christ.

Interestingly, the first devotion I had in my Harvard dorm room was a reading of Deuteronomy 4:39: “Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.” In heaven above and on the earth below. I am convinced that the integration of faith and life is a simple response of obedience to a loving Creator who is Lord of all. Only in this way may our love “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that we may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ” (NIV, Phil 1:9-10). In taking seriously the life of the mind, we are picking up the Cross and asserting the sovereignty and lordship of God over the world he created by his power; that he redeemed through Christ’s death and resurrection; that he continues to sustain through the power of the Holy Spirit. No longer can we in good conscience do any less.

Anne Snyder ‘07 is a Philosophy and International Relations double major at Wheaton College, IL. She is a Visiting Undergraduate at Harvard for Spring 2006.

Jesus, Not Christ

Adam Hilkemann — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:08:37 +0000

When Jesus Came to Harvard by Harvey Cox. Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

In When Jesus Came to Harvard, Harvey Cox, currently a Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, seeks to explain who Jesus is, and more importantly, His significance in the world today. In a surprising collision of faith and elite higher education, Cox asks what it would look like if students at Harvard followed the teachings of this man who lived 2,000 years ago. However, it is the subtitle, standing firm on the brick pillars of Johnston Gate pictured on the cover, which sums up the book best: “Making Moral Choices Today.” Cox frames his exploration into the life of Jesus by relating anecdotes from his very popular “Jesus and the Moral Life” course at Harvard College. In his course, Cox asked students of all faiths how they discerned right from wrong and to look to Jesus for one example for moral living in a post-modern world. Cox moves forward through events in Jesus’ life using descriptions of his evolving teaching methods and the subject matter of his course to mirror changes in his own life.

Jesus is freshly presented in his Jewish context as a rabbi, who, like other rabbis, taught through stories. For Cox, stories provide us with the inspiration to do what we know we should, and allow Jesus the rabbi to continue to speak to our hearts. With great ingenuity and literary talent, Cox describes most major events in Jesus’ life by showing the reader how Jesus was consciously acting and teaching within a pre-established Jewish tradition. This, Cox argues, is the only way Jesus can be truly understood. As Cox then fleshes out this Jewish tradition, he, like many others before him, develops a method of looking at the Bible as a collection of powerful but largely fictional stories that are based on true principles. Following these principles, says Cox, is a way to stop from falling into moral relativism.

Despite the benefits that can be derived from this approach, Cox leaves the unique, messianic Jesus behind. “Christ,” “the Anointed One,” becomes subordinate to a larger Jewish tradition. More specifically, Cox, following the lessons of various rabbis throughout history whom he praises, attempts to extend his version of God’s covenant with the Jews to all of the Gentiles. Jesus is simply another rabbi, albeit perhaps an especially radical and creative one. No serious reference to Jesus as God or the Son of God coming to earth to die for sinners is ever made. Christ’s crucifixion is not even mentioned until well into the book, and when it is finally mentioned in detail, Cox uses it as only an opportunity for meditation. His resurrection from the dead is left by Cox as relatively unimportant, possibly only another helpful story. His unique teachings of salvation are almost completely ignored, and Pelagianism, the idea that man can make himself right with God through works alone, is preached in order that the renewal of creation through moral action might be effected. Cox even seems to support an “easy” Pelagianism: “It [the kingdom of God] was for ‘sinners,’ for those who – mostly – tried their best to do the right thing…” (pg. 258).

In doing so Cox creates a Jesus who is empty and deceitful. Jesus claims, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Even by looking at this as part of a fictionalized story, such a claim leaves little doubt in the reader’s mind as to the “true principles behind the story.” Jesus leaves no other option for his identity. Either he was who he said he was as recorded by all four Gospel writers, or he was not. If Jesus was not, then he was a liar or crazy at best—not exactly a moral example for the ages. If he was telling the truth, it demands a response. That the very Son of God would love humanity enough to come and die a humiliating death, even death on a cross, is scarcely conceivable let alone inconsequential. It is more than just a “moral” example. It offers hope and demands a faith unlike any other.

At one point where Cox does carefully look at what Jesus was actually saying, he examines the now famous “Sermon on the Mount.” Cox starts with what have come to be called the “Beatitudes,” a series of blessings for the righteous, which call for people to follow an extremely difficult moral path to live life. One might even say impossible. Taking a somewhat Kantian approach, Cox maintains that because we should do what is set forth in these statements, we can.

Quite interestingly, Cox completely skips the next part of Jesus’ testimony, where Jesus explains his relation to “the Law” and “the Prophets.” He says, “I have not come to abolish them [the Law and the Prophets] but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). One might think then that Cox would find this essential to interpreting a Jesus working consciously within the Jewish tradition. However, it is this claim— Jesus as the Messiah foretold in the covenant with Abraham— which Cox repeatedly denies. Cox does this fairly explicitly in a conversation he describes with a friend of his who is a distinguished Jewish scholar and rabbi. His clever twists of wording and meaning in this passage render it inconvenient for citation here, but, with some minor qualifications, Cox agrees with his Jewish colleague in calling Jesus a “failed” Messiah and denies Jesus as Savior (on pages 218-19).

It is admirable that Professor Cox was able to draw moral lessons from Jesus for the inquisitive students in his many discussion sections. Nevertheless, in turning almost to universalism, Cox fails to address the source of morality, and more importantly, the role of the wholly undeserved grace of God in salvation.The reader, like the many students Cox himself describes, is left with more questions than answers and a Jesus who brings plenty of beautiful moral prescriptions, but frighteningly little hope. This “moral” Jesus is not the Son of God, did not die for our sins on the cross, and therefore cannot save us from ourselves. As St. Paul wrote, “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, … [and] we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

Adam Hilkemann ‘07 is a History concentrator in Dunster House.

Saviors in the Jungle

Jonathan Lai — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:07:17 +0000

As a child, I was fascinated with monsters. And not just any monster would do—it had to be big, ferocious, and savage, capable of drawing fearful gasps from its beholders. It had to have sharp fangs and talons, and if it could spit acid or breathe flame, that was even better. Shape-shifting ability and bulletproof skin constituted an additional bonus.

King Kong, the monstrous ape in Peter Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic, fits the bill nicely. From the moment Kong first appears on the movie screen to snatch blond heroine Ann Darrow (played by Naomi Watts) from the sacrificial post of the Skull Island natives, we know we are in for a ride. Kong, a 25-foot package of black fur, deafening roars, and bestial wrath, shakes the ground with each stomp and swats aside palm trees as he walks. When Kong is on the screen, he rivets our attention with magnetic power. Whether bashing dinosaurs, climbing the Empire State Building, or enjoying the sunset, Kong is the star of the movie and the main hero, as Peter Jackson intended. In contrast with Kong’s arresting presence, most of the human cast is expendable. After the initial 70 minutes, where Jackson sets up Carl Denham (played by Jack Black) as a fugitive filmmaker who travels to Skull Island to “view the beast unshackled,” the human actors seem to have little to do but die. And die they do – in horrible, fantastic, and altogether pointless ways. Denham’s filmmakers and the ship crew launch a doomed expedition to recover Ann from the clutches of Kong, only to be crushed underfoot by a brontosaurus stampede, dashed to smithereens by Kong himself, and finally torn apart by three-foot cockroaches and car-sized crabs.

Meanwhile, King Kong’s curiosity with Ann begins to develop into love. He chooses to let her roam free instead of eating her, and swings to her rescue when she is attacked by Tyrannosaurus Rexes in the jungle. In a crowd-pleasing action sequence, Kong fights three T-Rexes simultaneously while protecting Darrow from their salivating jaws. As Kong rips apart the last dinosaur and stands atop its carcass, bellowing and beating his chest, we see how Ann begins to appreciate the unique ape. Kong is truly a king among beasts and lord of the Skull Island jungle. Powerful and savage in dealing punishment to his foes, Kong is also a loyal protector and a savior to the woman he loves. With unparalleled loyalty, Kong follows Darrow to the very shores of the island when she is rescued, but in Kong’s eyes kidnapped, by writer Jack Driscoll (played by Adrien Brody). Even after being hit by bottle after bottle of chloroform and harpooned in the knee, Kong never gives up his attempt to rescue Ann, crawling on all fours towards her boat before passing out in the end.

This image of a loyal protector and all-powerful savior figure in the form of an animal brings to mind the lion Aslan from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. In the first book of the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which came out in theaters earlier this year, Mr. Beaver describes Aslan: “I tell you he is the King of the wood… Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts?… He isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” Like Kong, Aslan is the indisputable King of the wood and the Beasts, not “safe” but “good” nonetheless. In Lewis’ tale, Aslan returns to Narnia as a savior, freeing the land from the 100-year winter of the White Witch and offering himself up as a sacrifice on the Stone Table in the place of Edmund. As King of the Beasts, Aslan is a dangerous and powerful foe, leading the Narnians into battle and slaying the White Witch with his own paws. A protector of Narnia and those he loves, Aslan is the perfect savior figure.

While not nearly as noble as Aslan, Kong bears many similarities with the lion. Both show deep, sacrificial love toward humans. Aslan so loves Edmund that he is willing to die in his place on the Stone Table so that Edmund might be saved, while Kong’s love for Ann drives him to fight dinosaurs and face certain death by human weapons in order to rescue her. In the rescue attempt, Kong is eventually subdued by the ship crew’s chloroform and transported to New York City to be displayed as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” As Kong escapes the theatre and searches for Ann in the streets of the city, the film closes in with unforgiving intensity on his death. We follow Kong as he runs from mechanized infantry in Times Square, to tanks in Central Park, and finally to his inevitable death atop the Empire State Building, his body riddled with machine gun fire from fighter planes.

Yet while Kong is being strafed by planes and gradually grows weaker, Ann chooses to climb the tower to stay close to Kong even after he repeatedly pushes her back into the building. Darrow remains at his side continuously, from the beginning of the agonizing death sequence, when the first bullets slam into Kong’s body, to the very end of the movie when Kong releases his final breath and slips off the tower. In the moment of Kong’s death, we see another striking similarity—both Aslan and Kong are protective of and loved by young women, as the women—Ann with Kong, and Lucy and Susan with Aslan—are the only ones who remain with them as death approaches.

Yet here, at the moment of death for these two figures, the similarities between Aslan and King Kong end. Kong dies a permanent death, hurtling 85 stories down to crash in the streets of New York with the finality of no return. Aslan, on the other hand, dies and rises again to finish the fight against evil and save Narnia. While Kong and Aslan may both be kings of the jungle, King Kong is a flawed savior – one who is too human, so to speak. Kong made himself King of Skull Island by force and does not understand anything outside of his animal kingdom. Ruling by might and size, Kong was, in the end, doomed to fail and die like all mortal beings. On the other hand, Aslan created Narnia and understands perfectly the world he rules. Far from ruling by might or size —human concepts—Aslan was simply the True King, the perfect savior from the beginning of time. Consequently, Aslan is able to resurrect himself after death and save the Narnians from evil. For all of Kong’s might and power, he is unable to save anyone, not even himself, in the end.

What makes King Kong a flawed savior? The nature of his love. Kong’s love for Ann is an all-too-familiar human love – one that is born out of Ann’s beauty and characterized by natural instinct. Kong’s love is something intrinsic that he cannot explain or grasp, but which draws him inexorably toward Ann and ultimately toward his death. As Carl Denham concludes upon viewing Kong’s battered corpse in the street: “twas beauty that killed the beast.” Only the love Aslan bears for Edmund and his fellow Narnians – the love of Christ – can save a person beyond even the doors of death. It is this love that King Kong lacks. Kong’s love, derived from instinct and based upon superficial beauty, is limited by his understanding of Ann. Kong does not know who she is, who he himself is, or even what the world is and the place love has in the greater scheme of events. In the end, we see the King of the Jungle is just a much larger version of everyday man. Unable to understand how limited we are, we human beings often believe that we can love, protect, and save the people around us. In reality, we are easily defeated, and even the strongest of us, like King Kong, cannot endure because of our limited nature and our inability to understand and master the world around us. Kong loved Ann for her beauty, believing he could save and protect her from dangers he could not understand, and paid the price with his own life.

Christ, in comparison, does not love us for anything. Rather, Christ, embodied in Aslan, loves us despite everything—despite our sins, our ugliness, our very nonbeauty in his eyes. Christ understands us completely —knowing our weakness, our sin, all the things that are ugly and all the things that are beautiful, the parts of us that are like King Kong and the parts of us that are like Ann. Christ has such a perfect understanding of the world and of our sad situation, that He alone can be the perfect savior and have perfect love, for He knows all our faults and knew exactly what He was dying for when He died on the cross. Aslan knew the price of Edmund’s sinful betrayal, and still loved the boy completely as he submitted to death under the White Witch’s knife. In contrast, Kong could not comprehend why he died, and only saw Ann’s beauty, not her flaws. Thus his love was limited, as all human love is. What is true love? Being willing to give up everything for someone despite their imperfections and offenses against us (as Aslan gave up his life for Edmund despite his betrayal), not for the good things about them (as Kong loved Ann for her beauty).

This is the essence of Christ’s love. As Christians watching this movie, what can we take away from an overly-indulgent, overly-long, and overlyextravagant blockbuster flick about a 25-foot tall ape who fights dinosaurs and bats airplanes off the top of the Empire State Building? A new appreciation of the power and uniqueness of Christ’s love for us all, and how difficult it really is to be a savior to even one person, let alone all the masses of humanity.

Jonathan Lai ‘06, former Business Manager, is an Economics concentrator in Currier House.

Broken Mountain

Mattie Germer — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:05:40 +0000

Brokeback Mountain . Dir. Ang Lee. Focus Features, 2005.

A few Saturday mornings ago at a local coffee shop, I overheard a group of middle aged men discussing Brokeback Mountain. One particular remark seemed to sum up the group consensus:

“There is absolutely nothing my wife could do,” one of the men said, with a glint in his eyes and a clearly sexual smirk across his lips, “that could get me to go to a movie to see two dudes have sex.” If box office receipts are indicative, most people, my coffee shop buddy included, have not seen Brokeback. Nevertheless, the film has been satirized on Saturday Night Live, protested at Wal-Mart, and discussed in coffee shops around the nation. Brokeback Mountain has made an indelible mark on American life.

The movie unfolds like this: Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) spend the summer of 1963 herding sheep on Brokeback mountain, just outside Signal, Wyoming. Despite their different personalities, the two develop a friendship. After a night of drinking and laughing by the campfire, the two engage in a sexual encounter marked by both violence and tenderness. As the summer progresses, the two explore their sexual attraction, all the while reminding each other that they “ain’t queer.” When the summer ends, Ennis and Jack part ways, both marry, and both have children. After a few years, Jack sends Ennis a postcard and the two set up a series of “fishing trips” – their cover story for twice yearly sexual trysts in the wilderness. As the years go on, Ennis divorces but continues to rebuff Jack’s repeated proposals to build a life together. Jack begins to admit his sexual identity and has encounters with other men; Ennis, on the other hand, tries to date, but finds himself perpetually confused and unfulfilled.

In the New York Times, reviewer Steven Holden writes that Brokeback Mountain “is ultimately…about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart.” Roger Ebert says that the film is about the “forbidden love” of two men “forced” (by a repressive culture, one assumes) to “deny the only great passion either one will ever feel.” And, in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane claims that Brokeback is “a study of love under siege.”

What all these eminent reviewers assume is that Brokeback is a love story. Because love, to these critics, looks like it always does in a Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts movie. Two people meet and feel an incredible sexual and/or emotional connection. Something conspires to keep the lovers apart – cultural constraints (Mona Lisa Smile), personal doubts (When Harry Met Sally), social status (Pretty Woman), the difficulty of celebrity (Notting Hill), romantic unavailability (Runaway Bride) or geographic distance (Sleepless in Seattle). This formula even applies to such seemingly insurmountable barriers as marriage (Closer), the limits of linear time (Kate & Leopold) and, yes, death (City of Angels). The movies have taught us that if there isn’t a spark felt and an obstacle overcome, it mustn’t be love. Or, more fittingly in this case, because there was chemistry felt and complications to encounter, it must be love.

What we, as followers of Christ, should be worried about is not that people are talking about Brokeback as a gay love story. We should be concerned that anyone can see this movie and think that it is a love story at all. At every turn our society tries to persuade us that attraction, lust, economic or political compatibility, common interests, shared experiences, and even legitimate affection are tantamount to love. I’m sure this isn’t unique to our postmodern experience; after all, St. Paul had to remind some of the very earliest Christians that their understanding of love was skewed. In writing to the believers at Corinth he says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). That passage has been read at countless weddings, and for good reason. It is beautiful, inspirational and true. But, it is not what our society tells us love is. In fact, this Christian conception of love is remarkably countercultural.

Jack and Ennis give us glimpses of patience – they are able to wait years to be with one another. But when they do come back together they don’t even have time for coffee before they find themselves in a dirty hotel room. There are moments of kindness, but they are always punctuated with outbursts of violence. Trust never develops, in large part because of the envy each harbors for the way the other one lives—Ennis is jealous of Jack’s other sexual encounters; Jack longs to leave his wife and have the freedom that Ennis experiences. While there isn’t much boasting or pride in their relationship, they both suffer from the equally sinful inversion of those crimes—self-loathing and mutual denigration. Both men have pent-up anger that, while mostly about one another (what does this mean? They’re angry that they can’t be together?), is only occasionally directed toward one another. Jack lashes out at his fatherin- law; Ennis starts (and loses) a bar brawl. They both lie to their wives and neglect other obligations to pursue their secretive encounters. Their relationship, unfortunately, is almost the exact opposite of Paul’s exhortation to the believers at Corinth.

And why? Because just as in Paul’s time, we don’t understand what it means to love. In his recent encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI tells us that while erotic human love is initially “covetous and ascending,” through the process of developing a mature relationship “the element of agape thus enters into this love.” Without agape (self-sacrificing love), “eros is impoverished.” Jack and Ennis never move from the eros into the agape. This is not because they weren’t serious about their Christian faith. Or because they lived in Wyoming during a repressive era. Or even because they were gay. This is because it takes faith, grace, and deliberate commitment for any of us to move beyond our selfish and fallen desires into true life-giving relationships.

Nevertheless, Brokeback Mountain is a brilliant movie, mostly because it captures the brokenness of two men desperate to be known and loved. This film is too complicated to be a polemic. Jack and Ennis care too much about their wives and children, talk too much about their fathers, and hate themselves too much for this to be homosexual propaganda, as some of the film’s harshest critics would have you believe. Instead, Brokeback is a realistic account of the devastation that comes when we try to fulfill our desire to be satisfied instead of the call to satisfy one another. In retrospect, perhaps this movie is a great love story for our time. But, if it is, it is only because we have absolutely no idea what it means to love.

Mattie Germer AB ’03 is a Government graduate from Kirkland House. She is currently completing an MA in Christian Spirituality at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.