Institute for Christian Teaching
Education Department of Seventh-day
Adventists
AN
ETHICAL-THEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LITERATURE:
SOME
SUGGESTIONS FOR ADVENTIST TEACHERS
By
Luz L. Barayuga
English Department
Northern Luzon Adventist College
Artacho, Soson, Pangasinan
Philippines
Prepared for the
Integration of Faith and Learning Seminar
Held at the
Adventist International Institute of
Advanced Studies
Lalaan 1, Silang, Cavite
July 18-30, 1993
141-93 Institute for Christian Teaching
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring Md 20904, USA
Introduction
There are two schools of thought at war
against each other concerning the nature and function of art: didacticism on
one side and aestheticism on the other.
Both concepts are believed to have evolved from the teachings of two
famous Greek philosophers: Plato and Aristotle.
The concept of the didactic traces its
inception to the doctrines of Plato which was chiefly centered on the
aspirations of the human spirit and which exalted the mind above matter. Today the term Platonic criticism is used in
literary circles to describe that type of criticism, which finds the value of
art in its extrinsic rather than in its intrinsic qualities, in its usefulness
outside the province of art rather than on its aestheticity.[1]
Aestheticism, on the other hand, rests on
the hedonistic credo of "art for art's sake." Although aestheticism as a literary movement
started only in the late 19th century, its roots may be seen as
reaching back to the poetry of John Keats ("A thing of beauty is a joy
forever") and William Wordsworth ("Beauty is its own excuse for
being") and Edgar Allan Poe whose "Poetic Principle" rejected
the "heresy of the didactic."
The term Aristotelian criticism has come to be applied to the aesthetic
theory to provide a contrast for Platonic criticism.[2]
The Roman author Horace takes a middle
position, reconciling the two extremes of thought. Art, he says, has a dual function: dulce et utile. It is both delightful and useful, beautiful
as well as meaningful.[3]
Is literature compatible with
Christianity?
God is the author of beauty. He created a beautiful world and used the term "good" to describe the "beauty" he had created. Evidently he establishes a close kinship between the two: "goodness" and "beauty." In creation God used the medium of beauty to convey the truth about himself--which is goodness.
Because the fall had marred creation and
rendered it inadequate to reveal the nature and character of God, it became
necessary to resort to other means of revelation. God inspired men to write the Bible.
The Bible is the literature, undoubtedly
one of the greatest that has ever been produced. It is often considered to be the yardstick of all
literatures. In its pages God's truths
are presented through the medium of various literary forms: narrative, drama, poetry, essay. Jesus himself employed in his teachings the
literary devices of parable, metaphor, symbolism, paradox, hyperbole,
rhetorical question, apostrophe, etc.
Ryken vouchesafes the biblical
endorsement of literature and the literary method as follows:
The
point is not simply that the Bible allows literary forms of communication. It is rather that biblical writers and Jesus
found it impossible to communicate the truth of God without using literary
discourse. The Bible does not merely
sanction literature. It shows how
indispensable literature is.[4]
The literary method of theology is
endorsed by McFague in the following words:
There is
a way to do theology, a way that runs from the gospels and Paul through Augustine
and Luther to Teilhard and the Berrigans…, which relies on various literary
forms--parables, stories, poems, and confessions.[5]
Wright confirms the effectiveness of the
literary method of theology by saying that,
Poems,
stories and plays…can express important theological truths. In some respects they provide a more
acceptable means of talking about God than does systematic theology…[6]
Literature is not only compatible with
Christianity; it is the language of Christianity. In fact, Broadbent refers to Christianity as "the most
literary religion in the world" whose doctrine is largely "enshrined
in poetry."[7]
The fall of Literature
Literature was primarily the vehicle for
conveying religious truth not only among biblical writers but also among non-biblical
authors. In addition to the Old
Testament, the earliest surviving literary works are invariably religious in
nature. The Bhagavad-Gita, the Eddas,
the myths and legends of Greece all had a religious tenor and arose out of the
nature of belief and worship. Literary
scribes and scholars were men of the different religious orders. Literature was regarded as the handmaiden of
religion.[8]
But as the enemy had succeeded in
distorting creation, the visual revelation of God, so he succeeded in tampering
with literature, the mode of the written revelation. Thousands who appreciate the literary qualities of the Bible are
insensitive to its truths. And as the
seeds of secularization were scattered and started to take root, literature
ceased to be the faithful conveyor of religious truth that it was meant to
be. Wright said that,
"God…disappeared from literature in the 19th century…when
Nietzsche said that he had died."[9] By the second decade of the 20th
century, literature had come to be considered as a distinctly secular
activity. In the universities it became
the dominant academic study, replacing the study of theology. Religion became just one of the myriad
subjects of literature. If at all.
The New Critics, who believed in the
objective theory of art, "tried to seal off literature from any contact
with faith and history."[10]
What used to be thought of as the handmaiden of theology was soon
regarded as its rival. Wright confirms
this when he says that
…there is, in the modern period at least,
a tension between the two subjects, a tension which has been exacerbated by the
decline of belief in Christianity and the rise of literature as the provider of
a new canon, a new set of scriptures endorsing an alternative set of
liberal-humanist values.[11]
The divorce between literature and
religion makes the work of integration all the more relevant and necessary. The
secularist takes God out of literature; the Christian puts Him back in.
Modern Literature and the Christian
Is modern literature compatible with Christianity?
Thorns sprouted among the roses as a
result of sin, but the mere fact that roses have thorns does not make the roses
bad. It is quite possible to enjoy the
flowers while carefully avoiding the thorns.
While the storehouse of literary treasures
has become littered with dangerous atheistic ideologies, with trash posing
under the guise of literature, in there are many precious gems with which the
Christian may enrich his Christian experience.
Described by Ezra Pound as "often
dangerous, subversive and chaotic, an anarchic celebration of the power of
language", [12]
and by Wright as "either explicitly or implicitly hostile to the
faith,"[13] modern
literature poses grave implications for the Christian teacher. Literature can be an instrument in his hands
with which he could guide his students toward salvation--or damnation. Selection and handling material could spell
the difference.
A safe guide for selection of materials
by the Christian teacher is implied in Paul's injunction to the Philippians: "…whatsoever thins are true, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report…think on
these things." (Phil. 4:8)
The teacher would also do well to consider
the age and maturity of his students.
The younger in age and Christian experience the students are, the
greater care should be exercised in the selection of materials to be presented.
The teacher, however, may "err"
in the matter of his selection, but he cannot afford to err in the manner of
his presentation. It would be a serious
mistake to classify authors into Christian and non-Christian and adopt a
"touch-not, taste-not, handle-not" stance against the second group,
and a "swallow-everything-including-hook-line-and-sinker" attitude
toward the first. It is quite possible
for a teacher to teach a class in Biblical Literature and yet fail to make any
moral or ethical impact on his students.
On the other hand another teach could teach an existentialist or
naturalist novel like Sister Carrie and lead his students to contemplate
matters of eternal consequences.
Gallagher says that, "to confine our
reading to literature written by professed Christians would significantly limit
our understanding, cultivation, and enjoyment of God's creation."[14]
She says further:
…works of literature that do not
articulate specific Christian ideas can express ideas that are congruent with
our Christianity…. Often we will agree with and learn from part of a poem or
story but disagree with other parts. A
work might strike certain notes that resonate with Christianity, but also sound
some discordant notes.[15]
We may disagree with Thoreau's pantheism
and his disregard for the sinful nature of man, but we can learn from his Walden. We may not know for sure if Shakespeare had
been a Christian, but we can learn the Christian values of love from his Romeo
and Juliet and forgiveness from his King Lear.
Reading texts by non-Christian authors
can help us conceive of the various ideas about life.
We can learn much from the works of the
nineteenth century English and American romantics; the turn-of-the-century
realists, naturalists and determinists; the mid-twentieth century
existentialists, and our contemporary parodic meta-fictionalists. All these writers explore new ways to
interpret life and employ new kinds of metaphor and narrative.[16]
The subject of literature is human
experience. Modern definitions call the
study of literature "the study of life." The secularist's philosophy is that literature helps man to see
and better understand himself, period.
The Christian teacher sees literature as a means by which man can see
and better understand himself as a creature--in relation to his fellow
creatures as well as to his Creator.
Fiction, which has of late dominated the
literary scene, is said to be a "mirror of life." Modern secular literature portrays the
chaos, the meaninglessness and hopelessness of man's life in the plotless stories,
the stream-of-consciousness technique, and the theater of the absurd. The Christian teacher sees the absence of
God as the reason for chaos, the lack of order and direction in man's life, the
absurdity of his condition.
Gallagher expresses the same idea in the
following words:
The loss of faith in a God, who creates,
reveals, and redeems is no doubt a major source of the sense of meaninglessness
one finds in much modern literature.[17]
The naturalist depicts man as an animal,
deprived of will power, helpless against the overwhelming forces of his environment
and circumstances. The Christian
teacher sees man as negating the transforming power of God's love by refusing
the hand stretch out to help him.
Newman says that modern literature
reflects the 'natural man' with all 'the
leapings and the friskings, the plungings and the snortings, the sportings and
the buffoonings' to be expected of the 'noble, lawless savage of God's
intellectual creation' unenlightened by revelation.[18]
The teacher is the final arbiter of the
morality of the text. He can choose the
vantage point from which to look at the literary piece to make it, if not
congruent with Christian ideals, at least reflective of Christian virtues. For example he can use the subject of
revenge to teach forgiveness, or pride to teach humility, or hate to teach
love. The teacher who succeeds in
leading his students to an aesthetic appreciation of a literary piece but fails
to sound them of its moral and ethical implications labors in vain.
T. S. Eliot says:
Literary criticism should be completed by
criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint…. it is the more
necessary for Christian readers to scrutinize their reading especially of works
of the imagination, with explicit ethical and theological standards.[19]
Wright believes in a universal theory
that suggests "an underlying pattern of life, death and resurrection…even
in literature, which is not overtly Christian."[20]
It is the moral duty of the Christian teacher of literature to bring the
religious dimension of literature into a sharp focus for his students to
see. But he should exercise great care
to as not to sacrifice the integrity of the subject matter.
An Ethical-Theological Approach to Fiction
Fiction provides an excellent window for
looking at life both objectively as well as subjectively, for identifying
people's value and making value judgments, for contemplating the immediate
and/or eternal consequences of man's doings and undoing. Fiction provides "practice
exercises" for learning how to live, for "experiencing" life in
its varied aspects and grappling with its problems at a safe distance.
One way by which the teacher may engage
his students in moral reflections is to have them evaluate the action of the
characters of fiction against Christian or biblical standards of right and
wrong. A horizontal line may be drawn
to set the limits between right and wrong, salvation and damnation, life and
death. At the start and at the end of
the story, characters are evaluated in terms of their position with relation to
the horizontal. A character, for
example, could start form beneath and end up above, or he could start from
above and end up under. That is, the
character change could be from bad to good or from death to life, or the other
way round: from good to bad or from
life to death.
There are six general directions with the
characters of fiction are bound to take; the first three move toward
connectedness or restoration and salvation while the other three tend toward
greater disconnectedness or damnation.
In diagram the character change is shown as follows:
Toward Connectedness Toward
Greater Disconnectedness
1. From BAD to GOOD 4.
From GOOD to BAD
2. From NEUTRAL to GOOD 5. From NEUTRAL to BAD]
3. From GOOD to BETTER 6. From
BAD to WORSE
The Christian teacher would do well to
avoid stories where character change goes from bad to worse as in diagram No.
6. Such stories do not have any
redemptive value and will not aid in the development of Christian character.
The writer has chosen three short stories
to illustrate this approach, which should be considered merely as an added
touch to formal or structural criticism, instead of as a substitute.
LOST
AND FOUND: Roy
Octavus Cohen
This short story shows two characters tending
toward opposite directions. A young man
picks up an expensive, eight-hundred-dollar bracelet. After trying in vain to locate its owner, he gives it to his
fiancée, Elinor. About a month later,
the young man sees a notice in the Lost and Found section of an out-of-town
paper. The bracelet belongs to a woman
from Nashville who had been vacationing in town. He tries to persuade Elinor that the jewelry must be returned,
but she refuses to give it up.
"You gave it to me; it is not fair to take it back," she
shouts at him. Unable to have his way,
the young man takes a loan, buys his fiancée a similar bracelet, and returns
the first to its rightful owner. We can
guess what happens to the relationship from the young man's concluding
statement--"It's cheap at he price--fifteen a week for what I found
out--and found out in time."
The young man may be seen as starting
from above the horizontal; he rises to even greater heights. Elinor, on the other hand, takes a downward
course. In diagram the change that
takes place in each of the two characters is shown as follows:
Young
Man Elinor
The young man's values: honesty,
integrity. Elinor's: love of material things like the bracelet.
THE NECKLACE: Guy de Maupassant
The change that takes place in the
protagonist of de Maupassant's story is not as obvious but no less
significant. Matilde Loisel at the
beginning of the story is young, beautiful, ambitious, vain and very unhappy
about her deprived circumstances.
Her husband, a clerk in the Bureau of Public Instruction, manages to
wangle an invitation to a ball at the palace of the ministry. Matilde borrows a necklace of pearls from a
friend, Madame Forestier--which she loses.
Too proud to let her friend know, she persuades her husband to buy a
replacement. They get one for 36,000
francs and spend the next ten years working hard to pay for the loan. At the end of the story, Matilde is a
changed person. Prematurely aged by
hard work, she has lost much of her original physical attractiveness. She has also become humble enough to admit
to her friend the ordeal she had gone through to replace the lost
necklace. She is struck by the
realization that the lost necklace was made of paste. It had cost no more than 500 francs; she had replaced it with one
made of pearls. The story is
symbolic. The replacement of paste by
pearl represents the change in the character of Matilde who from a phony had
become the real thing.
In diagram the change in Matilde proceeds
from beneath the horizontal to above:
Matilde's original values: love of material things, emphasis on
external appearances. Her new set of
values: hard work, honesty, and integrity.
LOTTERY
TICKET: Anton Chekov
Ivan Dmitritch moves from above the
horizontal to below. The whole story
happens in no more than an hour, but the change in Dmitritch's character is
spectacular. As the story opens,
Dmitritch and his wife, Masha, present a picture of marital bliss, of peace and
contentment, in spite of their modest surroundings. The change occurs as they fantasize that they had won 75,000
rubles in the lottery. Dmitritch's
interests converge on himself as he dreams aloud what he would do with their
"winnings." The first person
pronouns--I, me, my, mine--dominate his conversation. His wife reminds him--not too kindly--that it is "her"
ticket, not "his". At the end of the story the picture of
marital bliss is gone, replaced by one of hostility. The final blow comes when
they realize that, after all, their ticket did not carry all the digits of the
winning number. Suddenly the house has
become too oppressive for Dmitritch, and he storms out with a pretense to hang
himself in the nearest aspen tree.
The character change in Dmitritch follows
a downward course, starting from above the horizontal:
Dmitritch's original values: contentment, selflessness, peace. His new set of values: self-gratification, love of material things,
personal happiness.
One of the many ways by which the teacher
could help stimulate critical and creative thinking as well as engage the
students in moral or ethical decisions is to ask for alternate courses of
action. The question "If you were
in this character's place, what would you do?" will set students thinking. It will give them a sense of active
participation as well as force them to make moral decisions. They will also have the opportunity to
evaluate their decisions sin the light of possible consequences, immediate and
ultimate, temporal and eternal.
The alternate courses of action that
students may suggest for the young man in "Lost and Found" could take
the following forms:
1.
I would ignore the newspaper notice, go ahead and marry Elinor and be
happy.
2.
I would forget about Elinor and the jewelry. That way I take the responsibility off my shoulders.
3.
I would contact the owner of the bracelet and tell her where she could
get back what rightfully belongs to her.
4.
I would tell Elinor that if she does not return the bracelet, our
relationship is over.
5. I would buy Elinor her own bracelet just like the young man did, but I would go ahead and marry her.
As for the character of Matilde Loisel in
"The Necklace" the following could be suggested:
1.
I would tell my friend at once what happened and arrange a way to pay
for, or repalce, the lost necklace.
2.
I would buy a "fake" to replace the lost "pearls."
In the case of Dmitritch:
1.
The first thing I would do is to ascertain that I have the winning
ticket.
2.
My wife and I together would work out a plan for spending or investing
the money.
The students are, in fact, being asked to "rewrite" the ending of the story. They could do so orally, or for variation and added activity, they may put it down on paper. A different course of action will naturally result in a different ending, a fact that should help students appreciate the importance of making the right decisions. For instance, alternate course of action No. 1 for the young man in "Lost and Found" could set him in a downward direction. Alternate course No. 2 in "The Necklace," however, would pull Matilde farther down, while alternate course No. 2 in the "Lottery Ticket" would have taken Dmitritch and wife farther up. This the teacher could use to show how values can influence decisions and how decisions can affect destiny.
Conclusion
Literature provides a way for us to
interact with our world in a manner that will help in the restoration in man of
the lost image of God. We can use many
works of literature for multiple purposes.
"Some text teach, others amuse, others give us joy in the gifts of
God. All provide various ways to
participate in God's world."[21] "In literature life is writ larger than
life."
There are no absolutes, no hard and fact
rules for the integration of faith and learning in the study of
literature. For a teacher who is
steeped in the principles and ethics of Christianity, integration will come
easily and naturally. It is imperative,
therefore, that the teacher of literature must first be a Christian in the real
sense of the word, a Christian whose greatest concern is to lead his students
to a oneness with Christ. Such a
teacher cannot help but consciously and systematically engage
Christian values throughout the reading and teaching of a text.
NOTES