Reading Heresy: Religion and Dissent in Literature and Art 9783110556827, 9783110555943

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Reading Heresy

Reading Heresy

Religion and Dissent in Literature and Art Edited by Gregory Erickson and Bernard Schweizer

ISBN 978-3-11-055594-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-055682-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055603-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: manjik/Stock/Getty Images Plus Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Bernard Schweizer Preface VII Gregory Erickson, Bernard Schweizer Introduction 1

I. Heresy and Modern Literature Gregory Erickson Heresy and the Modernist Imagination

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Mark Hama “No, I better not say it. I might get punished”: Misotheism and Self-Creation in Tomás Rivera’s . ‥ And the Earth Did Not Devour Him 35 Thomas J. J. Altizer The Absolute Heterodoxy of William Blake

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II. Medieval Heresy Natalie Calder Unbelief and the Problem of Heresy: A Late Medieval Context

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Kathryn Green The Joys of Heresy: Benefits for Women in Medieval Heretical Sects

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III. Heretical Theology John Daniel Holloway, III Saint Augustine: The Neoplatonic Father of Heretical Orthodoxy Jordan E. Miller Making the World: Against Spirituality

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Bernard Schweizer The Heresy of Humor: Theological Responses to Laughter

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IV. From the Creators: The Artists’ Corner James Morrow The Novelist as Heretic

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Susan Hannon Beautiful Heresy: A Visual Artist’s Re-appropriation of Scripture Tasha Golden Pop Heresy: Songwriting at the Edge of the Speakable Stanton Wood Adapting Candide for the Stage

Gregory Erickson Epilogue: Heretical Unmaking Notes on the Contributors Index

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Bernard Schweizer

Preface This volume resulted from the inaugural conference of the International Society for Heresy Studies. In late May 2014, a sizable gathering of academics, artists, and performers met at New York University in downtown Manhattan to discuss and ratify the Society’s bylaws and to hear each other’s presentations about heresy, blasphemy, dissent, sacrilege, and unbelief in literature and art from early Christianity to the present. That several dozen artists and scholars from around the globe had followed the invitation to join the event sent a strong signal that there was a need for such an organization. These scholars and artists were clearly eager to enter into a dialogue about the intersections between heresy and art, sacrilege and literature, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, whatever their confession, belief, ideology, or affiliation. The use of the term “heresy” is of course in itself a contested choice, and it may be useful to say a few explanatory words about this. For some, the term “heresy” may seem a strangely archaic choice; for others, it may be too loaded a term to designate the society, without a clear-cut semantic consensus about its meaning. Against these caveats, three reasons prompted the founders to adhere to the term heresy: first, among the subjects of study that the society encourages are belief systems literally deemed heretical at one point or another (say, Gnosticism, Arianism, Catharism, etc.), as well as personalities such as Joan of Arc or Jan Hus who were actually condemned as heretics. Furthermore, the meaning of “heresy” as departure from reigning orthodoxy is inclusive enough to apply to all kinds of heterodox, non-conformist stances even outside of religious contexts, including political, social, and artistic heresies. Finally, there is something satisfyingly direct, unapologetic, and vibrant about this term “heresy,” and the Society decided to embrace its muckraking connotations as well. Moreover, the term’s usefulness derives partly from its family relationship to equally contested and loaded terms like sacrilege and blasphemy. Especially the latter term (blasphemy) has become centrally important in debates over religious dogma versus freedom of conscience. Specifically, the bloody attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January 2015 by jihadists demonstrated the need to clarify the religious and legal ramifications of the concept of blasphemy. Of course, it is one thing to provide a platform for scholarly inquiries into heresy, blasphemy, and sacrilege in culture and art; but it is quite another thing to realize that practitioners of blasphemy can become victims of Kalshnikov-wielding religious fanatics. This brutal act reminded the founders

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of the Society for Heresy Studies of the importance of upholding a definition of blasphemy as an attack against a deity rather than an attack against believers. According to the appendix of the Society’s bylaws, blasphemy is defined as follows: Blasphemy shall not be understood as a punishable offence or a form of hate speech directed against a specific group of believers. Instead, blasphemy denotes the insult and attack against a deity or deities. Although it may give offence to followers of a deity, blasphemy needs to be considered under the aspect of freedom of speech.

Thus, to attack blasphemers in the name of God is always inexcusable, misguided, criminal, and anti-humanistic. The Paris attacks were a sad reminder that we have not quite reached the point where we can take the free exercise of intellectual and cultural production for granted and that fanatics, including those appealing to religious principles, can pounce on the core values of liberal democratic society in order to silence heretics and blasphemers anywhere. Jason Frye put it well in an article for Humanist.com, when he insisted that in the aftermath of the shocking murders in Paris “Satire is more than a right, it’s an obligation. Satire is an obligation to continually connect ourselves to each other and break the bonds of what others say is impermissible for analysis. Satire gives power to the people of the day over those of the past and a ticket for participation for those yet to come.” Rather than seeing iconoclasm and mockery as a negative and derogatory act, Frye places satire—including religious satire— in the larger civic and civilizational context, casting it as a symptom of and constructive force toward furthering intellectual and rhetorical connectedness, cultural renewal, and freedom. This somewhat counter-intuitive—but nonetheless true—statement can be seen as coming from a position of heresy studies, insofar as the act of heresy/blasphemy is treated as the point of departure rather than the point of arrival of a thought process and a cultural phenomenon. Since heterodoxy is the principal subject of the Society of Heresy Studies, it behooves the Society to practice what it preaches. Accordingly, the Society for Heresy Studies has flexible and democratically ratified principles and it does not maintain an organizational orthodoxy cut in stone. Thus, when the Society responded to the Charlie Hebdo massacre—a tragedy directly relevant to the larger purposes and the aims of the Society—the response was a debate instead of a uniform position paper. Despite a principled condemnation of the crime by all who recorded their views in the Society’s newsletter, even the board members were not in full agreement over the degree of orthodoxy represented by the “je suis Charlie” slogan or over the ideological tendencies displayed by the cartoonists themselves. The result was an intellectually bracing discussion and an

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honest controversy in the best tradition of “constructive disagreement.”¹ The Society maintains that the subject of “Je suis Charlie” requires a debate rather than a standpoint, and that the debate itself should not shy away from violating orthodoxies, whether they are orthodoxies of conservatism, liberalism, or any other entrenched stances. It is a disruptive approach in the best sense of the term. The idea of a heresy studies society was hatched by James Morrow and me in the backroom of a small restaurant on New York’s Upper East side a few weeks after the passing of Hurricane Sandy, in November 2012. I wish I could say that the hurricane had led to a mystical epiphany, but that would be giving our foundation story too much of an apocalyptic spin. Rather, it was a case of the time having come for an idea to take root. Soon, Gregory Erickson joined the budding society and gave it fresh impetus and energy. This troika then grew to a band of five, as we managed to attract James Wood and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein as early-adopters of the movement. I am deeply grateful to these pioneers, whose expertise, energy, and wisdom enabled the foundation of the ISHS, the formalization of the Society’s (flexible) principles, and the organization of the first conference.² I hope to be able one day to say, “and the rest was history,” but for now it is far too early for such a retrospective commonplace. Let us, instead look to the future and encourage more scholars to help us break the mold of existing disciplinary boundaries by joining the exciting venture of a field of study that is explicitly interested in that which rearranges, reorganizes, and reforms existing patterns of thought while tracking the history of some of the most “dangerous” ideas that have been thought.

 See the Society’s newsletter, excommunicated, Vol. 1 No. 2: “The Wrath of Faith” by James Morrow; “Response to James Morrow” by John Daniel Holloway, Jr.; “Charlie’s Orthodoxy” by Jordan Miller; “Charlie’s Heterodoxy” by Edward Simon; “Je ne suis pas Charlie, mais…” by Richard Santana; and “Anti-Islam: The New Anti-Catholicism” by Geremy Carnes.  A second conference, “Heresy, Belief, and Ideology: Dissent in Politics and Religion,” was held at New York University, June 1– 3, 2016 and a third on “Heresy and Borders” is scheduled for London in June of 2018.

Gregory Erickson, Bernard Schweizer

Introduction

Why Heresy Studies? Heresy. Blasphemy. Atheism. Unbelief. Each of these words, in their contemporary usage, implies a stance against religion. But each of these words has a long and complicated history that is intertwined with religion, challenging, creating, and recreating ideas of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in doctrine, in practice, in history and in art. Recent years have seen a much-chronicled rise in both public and scholarly interest in marginalized and heretical religious stories. From Dan Brown’s wildly popular novel The Da Vinci Code to Elaine Pagels’ best selling study The Gnostic Gospels to the founding of the International Society for Heresy Studies, people are looking to read scripture and religious history against the grain, looking for meaningful, if concealed, narratives. Although such concepts as heresy, blasphemy, and atheism have deep and ancient roots, the essays found here stand at the intersection of contemporary streams of thought that, while they also have deep historical precedent, emerged transformed in the twentieth century to form new hybrid twenty first century manifestations. These streams include the “turn to” or “return” of religion, new models for the study of religion and literature, and a reinvigorated and robust use of the concept of heresy. It is the conviction of the organizers and editors that this collection of essays and the new academic society from which they emerge address a gap in religious studies and in studies of religion, literature, and the arts. In taking an interdisciplinary focus on literature and the arts through a lens of heresy, blasphemy, or unbelief, this collection attempts to open new channels of dialogue aimed at making connections across a divide between religious studies, theology, literary criticism, and creative art. Although there has been a recent reawakening of interest in the intersection of literature and theology or religion, these studies have not often enough challenged orthodox conceptions of religion or offered interdisciplinary perspectives. Too often these studies, whether from a confessional perspective or not, rely upon unproblematized definitions of religion, scripture, and religious dogma. Not long ago, as historian Bart Ehrman writes, the terms orthodoxy and heresy “were not problematic terms and the relationship between them was uncomplicated” (163). Today, however, words and concepts like heresy and blasphemy are, as Bernard Schweizer writes in the preface, fluid, complex, and contested https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-001

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terms. In a modern world, organized through networks and characterized by its attention to multiplicity and subjectivity, these terms are not so clearly demarcated. They are, however, we would argue, still powerful ideas that matter. And as much as we try to define or domesticate these ideas—or try to confine them to the past—they continue to assert their current importance. As late twentieth century theory taught us, creating categories and order always leaves a remainder, counter narratives that escape categorization. Heresy, hidden in the margins, tucked into the hesitations and ambiguities of orthodox doctrine, and speaking to us from both the distant past and the future, is another way to get at these remainders and to question how we continue to organize the texts, practices, beliefs, and histories that make our world. There are distinct aspects and approaches that are relevant to the practice of heresy studies, and this volume demonstrates a broad sampling of the various methods. Heresy studies can be understood, obviously, as a close and historically contextualized investigation into actual branches of major belief systems that have been (or still are) considered heretical—or orthodox, depending on one’s view. Traditionally, heretics have always been others, never the self (although that may have changed, as in our postmodern times when even a formerly unthinkable expression such as “I am a heretic” would not be inconceivable). For the majority of its history as a term, to identify somebody as a heretic was a gesture of exclusion, an incriminating rhetorical move, and quite often a literal barrier to keep people locked away, or even a word implying a death sentence. From a modern perspective, the history of heresy and religious dissent would seem to suggest that heresy is often just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many heretics from early antiquity would have fit in quite well in Reformation Europe or in the religious plurality of the New World. It was only a matter of circumstance that Martin Luther avoided being burned in the same way as Jan Hus for having similar ideas. On the other hand, other heresies, particularly early ones, hearken back to previous modes of thought; a heresy could sometimes claim greater antiquity than orthodoxy, a fact that goes against the idea that there was some pure original church or faith that we need to return to. It is important to note that the term heresy is an intensely deictic word, i. e. its meaning is dependent on the vantage point from which it issues. The Christian Gnostics were heretics from the point of view of many early Christians because they insisted that the Creator of the universe was a malevolent demiurge or because they denied the legitimacy of the Jewish scriptures. The twelfth-century Waldensians were heretical because they insisted on apostolic poverty at the same time that the Church was embracing its increasing wealth. From the perspective of Seventh-Day Adventists, Catholics are heretics because they revere

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the Virgin Mary, and so on and so forth. This raises the question whether orthodoxy is a concept with any corresponding reality, or if all systems of beliefs are either simply versions of orthodoxy or versions of heresy. Christ the heretic is also Christ the Truth, the Way, and the Life, depending on one’s stance. Gnostic cosmology is damnable heresy, but for some, it is perhaps the only cosmology that has truly accounted for the Problem of Evil. The Pope is the anti-Christ, but he is also the inerrant voice for God on earth. It is no exaggeration to say that somebody’s heretic is another person’s saint. Asking why certain theological positions won out is a lot like asking why New Criticism became the dominant mode of literary criticism in the mid twentieth century; not because they were superior ideas, but rather because they fit better with the political climate of the time. To continue with the analogy, these winning position then go on to determine what are canonical texts for coming generations. Like all historical narratives, the history of religious thought is usually constructed to appear linear, logical, and inevitable. Ways of thinking deemed “heretical,” on the other hand, can represent radical and unheard ideas, suggest historical directions not taken, and question the borders and definitions of concepts of orthodoxy. But while it is tempting to define heresy as just “an opinion held by a minority . . . which the majority declares unacceptable and is powerful enough to punish” (Christie-Murray 1), as these essays demonstrate, the matter is often much more complicated than that.

Definitions and Words Although the use of the word heresy in our organization and across the essays in this collection is a fluid one, the word’s meaning is rooted in the early centuries of Christianity. The term heresy comes from ancient philosophical and medical writers in Greek who used the term hairesis to denote a coherent doctrine. But the Christian polemicists used the term heresy in a pejorative way that was different than earlier Greek usage. “Heretics,” wrote the second century theologian Origen, “all begin by believing, and afterwards depart from the road of faith and the truth of the church’s teaching.” Like heresy, blasphemy has proved “malleable, slippery, and stubbornly defiant of disciplinary boundaries” (Nash 2). But if heresy, as Irenaeus wrote in his second century work Against Heresies, is “deviation from the standard of sound doctrine” (Pelikan 69), then to claim something as “blasphemous” is to identify an intentional act of desecrating or defiling that which is held to be sacred. This is not to deny blasphemy its “religious” nature. As Salman Rushdie writes in The Satanic Verses “Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy” (393). Furthermore, as many of the pieces in the

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collection will insist, blasphemy, like heresy, is also deeply intertwined with acts of writing. The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that blasphemy is “primarily a sin of the tongue,” but one could also add the pen to this metonymic formulation. From the perspective of both the Romans and the Jews, Christ was a heretic because he questioned conventional religious precepts of both communities, but he was blasphemous because he claimed to be God’s son. Like heresy, blasphemy is rooted in text, rhetoric, and language, which is what makes them such powerful interpretive tools for literature. While the ancient and modern debates over what constitute heresy and blasphemy have participated in the process of negotiating and constructing issues of language, knowledge, history, textual interpretation, human autonomy, freedom, and subjectivity, we want to be clear that the principal aim of heresy studies is not to be a cheerleader for all things heretical. While heresy studies gives its due to the inherently heterodox quality of invention, of the imagination, of reading, and of freedom, we are also aware of the potentially noxious side of formal, politically active, coercive heresies. Alister McGrath is quite right in pointing out that heresies are by no means synonymous with liberation and tolerance—on the contrary, they can be as oppressive as anything that coercive orthodoxy is capable of inflicting. From a stance of mainstream Sunni orthodoxy, the murderous Islamic State (aka ISIS) organization is indeed theologically heretical, especially in its millenarian apocalyptic ideology and its practice of treating as apostates all Muslims who are not followers of their own extremist branch of Islam. In ISIS, we have an authentic heresy that is as absolutist, ruthless, and tyrannical as the hordes of Genghis Khan were. We need to be vigilant to avoid practicing naïve “historical advocacy” (McGrath 232) such as embracing Gnosticism for its colorful cosmology and supposed egalitarian social ideology.

Scope of Heresy Studies In Peter Berger’s small but influential 1979 book, The Heretical Imperative, one of his main points is that in a world of bewildering choices, modern individuals are also faced with the necessity of choosing their religious beliefs. This necessity of choice is what Berger calls the “heretical imperative.” Heresy, for Berger, “once the occupation of marginal and eccentric types, has become a much more general condition” (28). Although Berger, like Charles Taylor after him, looks to find or create space for legitimate expressions of religious faith within the modern secular world, one can also see within this heretical imperative the possibility of choosing unbelief, disbelief, or non-belief. In contrast, McGrath’s book, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, goes to great lengths to demonstrate

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that the orthodox stance in Christian theology is indeed the better, the more coherent, logical, beautiful, and—yes—true position compared to various heterodoxies that have vied with the orthodox stance over the centuries. This view revives the etymological core meaning of heresy, i. e. “haeresis” as a choice, implying mistaken choice and deliberate error. So, with regard to one of the perennial sticking points of theological quarrels, i. e. whether Jesus was human or divine, with Arius proclaiming that Jesus was created and thus not on the same ontological level with God, McGrath defends the Nicean orthodoxy of compromise in response to Arius, that Jesus was both human and God, a man and incarnated divinity. To McGrath, “Arianism subverted some core themes of the Christian proclamation, offering aspirations where orthodoxy offered actualities, a shadow in place of a reality” (151). Of course, the “reality” that McGrath talks about is still bound up in a linguistic construct, a collection of words, a fact that opens it up to literary interpretations. The orthodox “actuality” that McGrath refers to is based on the axiom that “no creature can redeem another creature” (232), which is the argument used to discount Arius’s view that Jesus was a “creature” because he did not yet exist when God created the cosmos. The “actuality” he talks about is a pair of keywords—“redeem” and “creature”—both of which have multiple interpretive shadings, differing doctrinal connotations, and etymological histories of their own. None of these words or the meanings we construe upon them can stand the test of being an “actuality” or a simple, stable “reality.” Thus, rather than following McGrath’s model of validating orthodoxy by such arbitrary means, and rather than validating heterodoxy by equally arbitrary means, heresy studies must inquire into the histories, the contexts, the interactions, and the evolving meanings of both heterodoxy and orthodoxy. This is where Valentine Cunningham, McGrath’s colleague on the faculty of Cambridge University, comes into the picture. As a thinker, Cunningham is far more congenial to the project of heresy studies than is McGrath’s dogmatic stance toward heresy. Cunningham (full disclosure, Cunningham is a Board member of ISHS) starts from a dialectical premise: Heresy and orthodoxy, orthodoxy and heresy frequently exist as Doppelgängers, doubles of each other. Heresies and orthodoxies are often—and in classic deconstructionist style—utterly parasitical the one upon the other. . . . And given so many hazy borders and close cousinhoods, it’s no surprise to find that onetime heresies keep on being recuperated as truth and orthodoxy, and just taken as normality (7).

This is the direction of heresy studies, and we may take a further cue from Cunningham’s intellectual lead by validating the central role that art and the imagination play in the game of heresy and orthodoxy. With regard to English litera-

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ture (but the point could be made equally well about a number of continental or American literatures), Cunningham insists that these authors are in great numbers Christians who are unorthodox in their Christianity, who are actual religious heretics, material as well as formal. Our writers illustrate heresy in their texts, propagandize for it in their fictions. In our literature, heresy and heretics are offered as models of selfhood, existence, ways of writing. New forms are generated on the basis of heretical theology (13).

But Cunningham does not stop at the argument that practically all imaginative literature in the West (and why not include non-Western creative writing in this paradigm?) is inherently heretical, he concludes that the very act of reading, and especially of re-reading, is an inherently heretical activity: . . . translation, paraphrase, comment, analysis, and unending sequence of quarrels about what the highly regarded core texts might mean, disagreements even about what the canon actually consists of. The texts in contention are not just continually reread, but read perpetually against the grain of previous readings. . . . They’re read and reread by readers who see it as their proper business to get some new, some other-wise, reading out of the text—readers who, disrespectful of earlier readings, are thus eager and committed formal heretics (15).

Heresy, Literature, and the Arts One goal of this collection is to open up traditional models and schools of reading “religion and literature” to fresh perspectives. As Natalie Calder writes in her essay in this collection, “by beginning to break down the assumptions, biases and opinions that scholarship depends upon in defining the terms we use when we describe belief, unbelief and heresy, we can begin to comprehend more nuanced modalities of belief in the Middle Ages” (80). This point is equally true with reading modern literature and religion. Many critics working in religion and literature do so to legitimate or celebrate their own faith, taking an assumed confessional position. What often underlies this position is the assumption that religious studies would not be of interest to secular scholars and non-believers or perhaps, more troublingly, that non-religious scholars would not be competent to delve into religious thematics: why would an atheist care to analyze the theological underpinnings of C.S. Lewis’s imagery? According to this line of thought, C.S. Lewis criticism belongs in the hands of religious scholars. On the other hand, admittedly, much—perhaps the majority—of contemporary literary criticism (outside of “religious approaches”) is written from a secular viewpoint, that finds, for example, much twentieth cen-

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tury modernist literature as writing against or replacing a religious orientation. As this collection demonstrates, heresy studies has room for both the religious and non-religious participants, and more importantly, in not drawing them up as binary oppositions. For instance, two contributors—James Morrow and John Daniel Holloway—could be seen as occupying opposing poles of the spectrum from atheism to religiosity, yet both are welcome to the field of heresy studies. Indeed, the religious believer and the atheist should enter into the dialogue over the meanings of heresy, blasphemy, and iconoclasm and present their work—either creatively or analytically—to make this field of inquiry as wide and inclusive as possible and to allow a conversation between the arts, between the disciplines, between believers and non-believers, and challenge the very borders of these categories. If there is one important commonality across these essays, it is that heresy, blasphemy, disbelief, and even atheism, are not anti-religious so much as they are engaging religious belief, practice, and discourse as topics worth investigating, analyzing, and re-interpreting. Heresy studies further fill a gap in the current scholarly edifice because they value a specific kind of critical stance that the assumed confessional position in religious studies cannot satisfy. Indeed, openly pious commentators tend to overlook quite glaring heretical or blasphemous aspects of literary texts. To give an example, most Zora Neale Hurston scholars who approach her work from a religious perspective focus on anything but her religious non-conformism or, even more questionably, try to turn her work into a testament to conventional Christian values. Although Hurston was a religious rebel, a heretic, and occasionally a blasphemer, one could not tell this by looking at the work of many “religious studies” or “religion and literature” scholars. Overlooking heretical arguments and silencing non-conformist ideas in religious approaches to literature often bespeak a failure of reading and interpretation. Heresies are not always openly expressed—perhaps more often than not they are framed in indirect, ironic, veiled ways, using the time-honored technique of “esoteric writing,” a concept Arthur Melzer recently extended and adapted from the work of Leo Strauss. Until about 150 years ago, Melzer claims, artists and thinkers customarily “communicated their most unorthodox thoughts only between the lines—only in hints, riddles, and irony directed to the most careful readers, covered over by a veneer of conventional pieties. They did so for fear of persecution and other reasons” (B5). Melzer is not writing about heretics per se, rather his subject is our increasing inability in general to do justice to the great philosophical and literary works of the past which need to be read as “esoteric texts” because they were written deliberately in a semi-secret language. Although Melzer’s argument is not limited to religious heresies, his diction (“eso-

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teric,” “unorthodox,” “pieties,” “persecution”) indicates that he is making a point that is deeply relevant to the subject of heresy studies. In many cases it is not the writers themselves but the history of criticism and reception that has concealed or repressed heterodox or challenging meanings and interpretations. John Milton, for example, was a poet who denied both the Trinity and creation ex nihilo and insisted on the materiality and mortality of the soul, yet scholars have “often understated, explained away or otherwise soft-pedaled his heretical beliefs” (Dobranski and Rumrich 1). Or, as Thomas J.J. Altizer has been insisting for decades, most recently in this volume, interpreters of William Blake have often downplayed or even completely ignored Blake’s “dialectically uniting Christ and Satan” and his understanding of God as a malevolent force (he depicts the God who confronts the penitent at the end of the Book of Job as a being with cloven feet). For Altizer, in Blake’s vision the traditional God of power and glory is himself engulfed by apocalypse—another “God that died” both politically and theologically: “Great historical crises generate heterodoxy, just as does war and plague; powerful ruling bodies enforce orthodoxy as a primary means of control, just as it is heterodoxy that generates the deepest dissent and revolt” (56 – 57). In this regard, too, Blake was a child of the age of great revolutions, both in politics and in religion. Heresy studies attempts to study not only these fresh approaches but also the history through which they have been marginalized. Today’s readers, authors, and literary scholars may or may not be able to discuss the role Arius played in the ideology of the Nicene creed, they may not know the difference between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christianity, they may not know the theological reasons why Mormons must be re-baptized if they convert to Catholicism, but the tensions that accompany each of these religious issues come out of familiar passages in the Bible or out of political events in late antiquity or the Middle Ages that have been influential to the development of Western art and thought. In other words, even if the arguments over heresy and orthodoxy are not well known, they continue to accompany texts and interpretations. And while heresy studies may take actual heresies as their object of inquiry, they are equally interested in apostasy (the absolute rejection of a formerly held belief), in blasphemy (the insult of a deity), in sacrilege (the destruction of holy objects) and in unbelief. What ties these strands together is the abiding interest in the form and content of the non-traditional, the subversive, the progressive, and the radical, without making immediate and abiding claims about the truth value or superior moral status of these non-conformist systems of thought. Although scholars from Tertullian in the second century to Alister McGrath in the twenty first like to believe that the forms of belief that ultimately triumphed did

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so because of either their access to a higher “truth” or at least because of superior ideas, it is hard not see the variety of other factors—driven by politics and chance—that may have contributed to what we now see as a clear narrative. And while these are questions debated by historians and theologians, it is often within literature and art—from Milton to James Joyce, from Hegel to Jacques Derrida, and from Michelangelo to Andres Serrano—where these old questions, the original questions of early Christianity, have been and will continue to be reopened in multiple contexts.

Overview of Chapters: What distinguishes heresy studies from other branches of inquiry is its internal non-conformism when it comes to implementing the traditional structures of academic organizations and following the professional conventions of scholarly work. Specifically, heresy studies encourage the breaking down of boundaries between artist and critic, practitioner and theoretician, senior and junior academic. As this volume shows, artists have important things to tell scholars, and vice versa. Hence, we have included a section where artists are ruminating about their practice of heretical and sacrilegious work (in fiction, drama, song, and sculpture). We also mix the categories of senior, mid-career, and junior academics by including contributions from PhD candidates as well as widely known senior public intellectuals like Thomas J.J. Altizer. All of this stands under the aegis of “practice,” as heresy studies cannot simply be a discipline of abstract thought, but a discipline that needs to be aware of itself and cognizant of its own presumptions, values, and procedures. Only by being a self-aware, flexible, and meta-critical field, can heresy studies do justice to the key word in its name. The nine chapters contained in this collection are divided into four sub-sections: 1. “Heresy and Modern Literature”; 2. “Medieval Heresy”; 3. “Heretical Theology”; and 4. “From the Creators: The Artist’s Corner.” The first chapter, Gregory Erickson’s “Heresy and the Modern Imagination,” exposes the ancient roots of supposedly experimental formal heresies exemplified and practiced within modernist literature. Erickson demonstrates the continuities between the modernist aesthetic of disruption, fragmentation, re-invention, and alienation on the one hand, and the theological principles of such “ancient” heretics as Marcion (on historical discontinuity and teleological disruptions), and Arius (questioning immanence and arguing in favor of the contingency of meaning) on the other. Erickson’s essay serves not only as an exploration of continuities between ancient and modern(ist) disruptions and reigning orthodoxies (whether artistic or theological), but it also serves as a sweeping in-

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troduction (or re-acquaintance) with the fundamental debates and central figures that defined the most influential and consequential heresies in the first half of the Christian era. Mark Hama’s chapter “‘No, I better not say it. I might get punished’: Misotheism and Self-Creation in Tomás Rivera’s . . . And the Earth Did Not Devour Him” is a good example of the “esoteric” reading that Arthur Melzer advocates to do justice to heretical textual meanings that the author only half-reveals. Hama reads Rivera’s novel for subdued strains of what Bernard Schweizer has called “misotheism,” i. e. a visceral antipathy against the deity, coupled with an undying belief in God. The fact that the misotheism in Rivera’s story needs to be pointed out to be noticed shows once again that when faced with heretical thoughts, even contemporary writers will resort to the “esoteric technique.” “The Absolute Heterodoxy of William Blake” is Thomas J.J. Altizer’s elegiac manifesto for seeing William Blake as both a latter-day Gnostic visionary and one of the last truly heterodox thinkers in the West. In Altizer’s view, Blake thought that God had annihilated himself in order to make room for a post-apocalyptic resurrection of a new spiritual and worldly order. It is in Blake’s “totality of revolutionary vision” where both his ultimate heretical force but also his obscurities lie because the force of that totality surpasses our own mental and cognitive capacities. Altizer emphasizes the characteristics of Blake that make him a holy fool or a man whose madness bespoke an ultimate wisdom, a cosmic insight that surmounts the level of mundane human rationality. In this, perhaps, Altizer apotheosizes Blake the man, which would be only another reversal, befitting the vision Altizer has been developing all along: it is a paradoxical vision based on Altizer’s often invoked term of “coincidentia oppositorum” (or the identity of opposites) where extremes touch and become one again, as demonstrated in the dynamic interplay of apocalypse and redemption, demon and deity, revolution and conformism, death and resurrection, Milton and Blake. If we can hold such divergent thoughts together, we are exercising what Keats called “negative capability,” and it is safe to say that this “negative capability” is a good template for thinking heretically. The first essay of the next section, “Medieval Heresy,” Natalie Calder’s “Unbelief and the Problem of Heresy: A Medieval Context” begins by asking whether the late-medieval religious allegory Piers Plowman might actually contain hints of unbelief. Calder’s admission that “the capacity for late medieval texts to evince notions of unbelief within the laity has gone broadly unnoticed” (68) once again bespeaks the necessity of lifting such concealed aspects of heterodoxy to the surface. As Calder’s essay demonstrates, saying that heterodox views on religion were not openly voiced is not the same as saying that they were non-existent before the Enlightenment. In tracing the nuances of belief

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and unbelief among the laity of the late middle ages, Calder points to a creedal document stemming from the early 15th century that so painstakingly outlines the nature of “belief” as to suggest that the writer was clearly aware what belief’s opposite must be. In this sense, Calder’s essay is a model of heresy studies, complicating the notion of the Middle Ages as an era of total religious orthodoxy by developing a thick description of heterodoxy from evidence collected among canonical literature, creeds, exempla, and sermons. This work is clearly and importantly revisionist: “The capacity for a medieval religious text, historiographically labeled as ‘orthodox,’ to articulate and respond to complex issues of lay unbelief is so subtle that often it has been overlooked” (72). “The Joys of Heresy: Benefits for Women in Medieval Heretical Sects” by Kathryn Green sheds a revealing light on the gendered aspects of heterodoxy in the Middle Ages, especially in England and France. Relying on a range of non-literary documents such as wills, letters, and court and monastery records, Green explores the appeal of the Cathars, Lollards, and Beguines for women. She demonstrates that “the allure of inclusion and more authority over matters of particular importance to women, such as a greater level of involvement in religious performance and more influence in the home, could have been appealing enough for some to stray from convention” (84). In other words, because women were customarily excluded from participation and leadership roles in the official ecclesiastical organizations, they tended to flock to various dissenting faiths, which offered these women greater opportunities to exercise agency and take on responsibilities traditionally deemed a male prerogative, such as preaching. As Green’s essay shows, the implications for female agency of various medieval heresies were central factors in the complexion and the historical fate of these heresies. The first essay in the section on Heretical Theology is an ambitious project to challenge the dogmatic positions that one of the most influential Church Fathers has occupied for many centuries. John Daniel Holloway III takes on no less an authority than Saint Augustine, laying bare the aspects of Augustine’s theology that are deeply troubling and perhaps even “heterodox” to a person of the Christian faith who subjects them to rigorous analysis. “Augustine and His Heresies: The Neoplatonic Father of Heretical Orthodoxy” is a stringent theological critique of central Augustinian theological tenets, including his view on the love of God (both God’s love for his creation and for himself), the concept of divine timelessness, and the doctrine of meticulous providence. Holloway is well aware that characterizing Augustine as a Christian heretic could be dismissed as hyperbolic or fool-hardy, hence, he carefully lays out the theological grounds from which he operates and lays the cards open on the table as to the norms of Christian consensus (or orthodoxy) against which he contrasts Augustine’s ideas. This

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crucial move—i. e. showing his own bias and laying open the theological premises of his accusation—does not absolve Holloway from the possible accusation of building up Augustine as a straw man of bad faith, but Holloway’s analytical philosophical framework is well supported by scripture, theology, philosophy, and religious practice, thus carrying considerable weight. Clearly, Augustine will survive John Holloway’s attacks, but rather than approaching the outcome of such a revisionist enterprise in terms of losers and winners, it is exhilarating to see a theologically trained mind taking aim at one of the cornerstones of Christian orthodoxy, and to see the dialectical process of heresy production at work. In characterizing Saint Augustine as a heretic of sorts, John Holloway himself assumes a heretical position on the vast spectrum of Christian theology. If nothing else, this lets us see that orthodoxy and heterodoxy are indeed the twin brothers that Valentine Cunningham talks about when he says that “heresies and orthodoxies are often. . .utterly parasitical the one upon the other” (7). The next essay in the section offers an entirely different kind of challenge, one to the definition of religion itself. Religion has traditionally been defined through an analysis of scripture, belief, and dogma, and it has often been interpreted as a force for balance and order. But the study of heresy opens up other possible readings. In his essay “Making the World: Against Spirituality,” Jordan Miller draws together multiple schools of thought to offer an alternative reframing of religion outside of beliefs and dogma and as a subversive yet creative force within society. He defines religion, in the broadest sense, as a challenge to existing structures and about imagining and creating the possibility for political change. Miller weaves together strands from Freud, Marx, Tillich, and Weber, as well as Buddhist and Sufi philosophers, and contemporary theorists of political theology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and lived religion to build a theory that emphasizes a religion outside of traditional belief and faith claims. Miller’s ideal religion is, in his words, “religious but not spiritual” and is a model that expands what religion is and, more importantly, what religion does. For Miller, religion is about illusions, but illusions that are not a flight from reality, as Freud or Marx would say, but instead are part of the process of imagining and creating a better world in the future. A third perspective is given by Bernard Schweizer’s essay “The Heresy of Humor: Theological Reponses to Laughter” which starts by contrasting the long history of official Christian denunciations of laughter with the fairly recent “rehabilitation” of humorous laughter by theologians who focus on the salutary effects of healthy, positive laughter. Schweizer defines the binary fault line drawn by these “laughter theologians” regarding which kind of laughter is to be welcomed and which sort is to be shunned. Schweizer argues that any dichotomous view of laughter as either “positive” or “negative” fails to grasp the boundary-

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challenging, disruptive, and “heretical” aspect of laughter. Schweizer contrasts this prescriptive, high-minded laughter theology with the more daring and radical approach to humor advocated by theologians like Gisela Matthiae, Jacqueline Bussie, and Campbell and Cilliers, all of whom acknowledge the fact that laughter is a positional, contingent phenomenon. In certain situations such as oppressive conditions or crass misfortune, laughter can as a subversive or existential corrective. Matthiae instumentalizes laughter to decenter the authoritative image of God the Father by projecting an alternative view of God as a “female clown,” a highly provocative, laughter-based proposition. Not much less provocative, Campbell and Cilliers propose a Jesus who is quite literally a trickster, a sort of cosmic clown. Jaqueline Bussie, in turn, wants to harness humor to dislodge one-dimensional and oppressive theological (and worldly) dogmas, welcoming laughter as a means to empower the oppressed to cast off their shackles, including shackles of blind belief such as purveyed by conventional “solutions” to the Problem of Evil. In their different ways, these radical theologians of laughter embrace and give meaning to the disruptive, unruly, subversive side of laughter in ways that conventional theologians cannot do. The fourth section of the book concerns reflections on heresy by artists themselves, including the novelist James Morrow, the singer-songwriter Tasha Golden (of “Ellery”), the visual artist Susan Hannon, and the playwright Stanton Wood. Collectively and individually, they tell us what role heresy, blasphemy, unbelief (as well as belief) play in their work. Rather than further entrenching the traditional antinomy between the two camps of artists and academics, our collection is interested in the interaction and dialogue between practice and scholarship, the artist and the critic. We believe that artists and their critics have much to teach one another and that a mutual understanding and tolerance across the practice-analysis divide fosters new and exciting departures in the areas of culture, art, and academia. James Morrow’s essay “The Novelist as Heretic” dovetails with Schweizer’s preceding discussion of radical laughter theology as offering disruptive viewpoints vis-à-vis “iron theologies” and stiflingly conventional approaches to the conundrums of suffering and injustice. Here, we hear from the novelist himself, and his statement that he is “filtering speculative theology through my satirical sensibility” (149) validates Schweizer’s advocacy of radical theologies of laughter as forms of speculative thought that use humor as leverage to extend the territory of what can be thought and written about matters of faith. In this light, even Morrow’s most irreverent comical plot twists have a certain theological relevance. As Morrow states, “a thoughtfully designed novel can spark in the reader thoughts he or she has never had before” (150). This, of course, is precisely why authorities (including theological authorities like the Pope and philosophical authori-

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ties like Plato) have always been highly suspicious of the subversive freedoms of fictional writings. Indeed, a Christ figure trying in vain to nail himself to the cross, as happens in Blameless in Abaddon, is a comedy bit that nevertheless suggests a critical a re-imagining of the central drama of Christianity. Morrow explains that he—a confirmed atheist—is so attracted to gods and demons because although “the gods are not factual, but they are fecund” (151). As the reader will be able to discover, Morrow’s fictional universe is both sacrilegious and “suffused with qualified reverence.” How deeply Morrow is versed in the ecclesiastical and theological history of Christianity is demonstrated in his outlook for a planned novel that thematizes the Council at Nicea and Arius’ role in the proceedings at this seminal moment of Christian doctrinal formation. By bringing these theological, ecclesiastical, and divine figures alive on his pages, Morrow is himself doing what every fiction writer does—play God in the way of creating a world ex nihilo and pulling the strings that set in motion the figures that populate this world. The tension between propriety and responsibility on the one hand and freedom to explore heretical themes on the other, surfaces in the next contribution to the artists’ corner. Susan Hannon writes touchingly about the path that led her from her religious upbringing in Canada to abandoning religious belief, to conceiving artworks deemed “heretical,” to relinquishing plans for other works of art because of fears that their socially heretical content would be too emotionally upsetting to viewers. Hannon engages in the postmodern artistic practice of reappropriation, reassembly, and palimpsest, using countless pages of donated or discarded Bibles to use them as feathers in her stylized three-dimensional wing sculptures. Hannon sheds a revealing light on the process whereby her “heretical” or perhaps more properly called sacrilegious art comes about. The process was spontaneous and purely artistically inflected. No deliberately offensive or sacrilegious impulse underlies the decision to cut, fold, and reconfigure pages of the Bible as feathers of large wings, although such an intention could be— and was occasionally—alleged. Hannon ends her essay by speculating about the ultimate, unspoken, and perhaps unknowable motivation behind her sacrilegious ideas, and it is another indication that heretical, sacrilegious, or blasphemous works often come out of a sensibility that can be properly identified as spiritual, if not conventionally and institutionally religious Tasha Golden is a singer-songwriter who writes intimate lyrics about subjects she deems policed and suppressed by standards of propriety and considerations of commercial appeal, notably subjects of domestic violence and sexual abuse. What Golden calls “social heresy” is the expression of socially taboo subjects such as the wounds we suffer or inflict upon each other within the close boundaries of our privacy. Golden tells of the obstacles of civility, self-protection,

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and artistic convention that she had to overcome before she could express some of the traumas she wanted to sing about. But once the silence was broken, she found it not only liberating to address such difficult themes, but her audience tended to receive most enthusiastically the most socially heretical songs. Golden goes on to comment on and explicate several of her song lyrics before this background of social heresy as the processing or sublimating of trauma. Golden uses the term “heresy” in a mostly non-religious context, referring to psychological, domestic, and relationship issues that she considers as silenced, thus demonstrating both the scope of the applications of the term heresy as well as the breadth of the ways of thinking about transgression and non-conformism. In her final paragraphs, Golden, like Hannon, also muses on the tricky negotiation between complete self-revelation and artistic taste and propriety. The field of tension between the forces of social heresy, artistic integrity, and moral responsibility poses unique challenges for creative artists dealing with taboo subjects. It is up to the individual artist to negotiate this territory, and no universal prescription or ethical principle can be brought to bear on this question, so that committing social heresy, while often necessary, is never an easy artistic decision. The playwright Stanton Wood lets us peek behind the curtain of his writing lab from which emerged a modern adaptation of Candide’s story. Wood’s Candida Americana is satirical retelling of Voltaire’s mocking exposition of eighteenthcentury social, religious, and philosophical follies. Wood transports the framework of Voltaire’s satire into present-day America, giving us an absurdist tale that brims with contemporary references, thus demonstrating that the spirit of heresy which inspired Voltaire to write his devastatingly candid (pun intended) look at his own time has not gone out of style. Instead of the religious mania of the Inquisitorial system, we have the fanaticism of the 9/11 terrorists, instead of philosophical optimism we have creationism, and so on, as Wood reminds us of the enduring power of heretical literature. As long as laughter is employed in the service of shattering conventions, provoking a re-thinking of convenient myths, and encouraging critical thinking, heretical satires will continue to be written, and read. These four essays together all succeed in shedding light on aspects of heresy that come into play when artists are engaging ideas that are situated at the fringes of what is considered orthodox, acceptable, proper, and pious. It is this interplay between artistic inspiration and scholarly analysis that informs the field of heresy studies as a whole, and it is what this collection of essays sets out to present, both in theory and in practice.

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Works Cited Berger, Peter L. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. New York: Anchor Books, 1979. Cunningham, Valentine. “Introduction.” Figures of Heresy: Radical Theology in English and American Writing 1800 – 2000. Eds. Andrew Dix and Jonathan Taylor. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2006. Christie-Murray, David. A History of Heresy. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989. Dobranski, Stephen B. and John P. Rumrich. “Introduction: Heretical Milton.” Milton and Heresy. Eds. Dobranski, Stephen B. and John P. Rumrich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. McGrath, Alister. Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. New York: HarperOne, 2009. Melzer, Arthur. “The Lost, Secret History of Reading.” Chronicle Review (May 8, 2015). Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History Of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100 – 600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

I. Heresy and Modern Literature

The history of “modern” literature, or even just literature—as it used to be told— is part of a long inevitable march away from religion and toward secularism. Although most literary forms in the West have their roots in religious genres of writing, modern novels, plays, and poetry—so this narrative goes—gradually reject or move beyond the “fathering” narrative forms (Christian epic, saint hagiography, medieval mystery play) from which they were born. Georg Lukacs’ influential theory of the novel makes this point, when he characterized the novel as an “epic of a world abandoned by God” (88). In a later example (1965), the influential literary critic J. Hillis Miller followed his book on Victorian poetry, The Disappearance of God, with Poets of Reality, a book on modernism, in which he wrote “if the disappearance of God is presupposed by much Victorian poetry, the death of God is the starting point for many twentieth century writers.” Most of these writers and thinkers proposed an oppositional or antagonistic relationship between modernity and faith and between rationality and belief. “We must choose between God and Society,” wrote the early twentieth century theorist of religion, Emile Durkheim, confident that they were two separate entities. From the point of view of the twenty first century, it is clear religion and society are inextricably linked, and that religion did not go away, in practice, literature, art, or in academic discourse; we are now less prone to characterize modern literature as a harbinger of secularism’s ultimate victory. Yet old narratives die hard, and while the position that we were and are more religious than we thought (and think) has recently been accepted and theorized in many disciplines, it has perhaps come late to literary scholars who have characteristically defined literature and modernity itself as a reaction against traditional religious belief. However, various recent movements in literary studies—the post-secular and the various “religious turns”—offer evidence that this perspective has shifted, as does the foundation of a society for heresy studies, which opens doors to dialectical inquiries into the mutual imbrications of faith, literature, and secularism. From this somewhat altered interpretation, the history of literature looks quite different. The progression from Milton to Blake to Joyce now appears more like an evolving and changing of Christianity, not the decaying of Christian language and myth. In the twentieth century, figures from G.K. Chesterton to T.S. Eliot to John Updike to Marilynne Robinson represent a strong Christian strain in modern English language literature. Other modern authors like Ralph Ellison, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Tayeb Salib, reveal that the stubborn secularization thesis reflects a Euro-centric bias, and they further teach us not to associate “modern” with “secular,” or “progress” with Europe. But although every age of literature engages with religion, literature also finds ways to reframe, recreate, and redefine that elusive thing we continue to

call “religion.” As Pericles Lewis writes, if the Romantics found their religion in nature, just outside a church or above an abbey, the “modernists troop back into the churches, but they no longer expect traditional religious consolation from them.” They “find their own form of religious experience,” and they are “haunted” by the “image of the church as a broken container of a sacred essence” (4). Whether it is Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Wallace Stevens trying to find ways to reframe or replace the dead metaphors of religion, Gertrude Stein looking for new and less teleological artistic languages, or T.S. Eliot writing experimental forms of poetry and yet struggling to express older religious systems, modern literature is found in the dialectic between continued religious forms and forces influenced by newer theories of doubt and atheism. As literature echoes society in not secularizing as much as pluralizing, seeing its religious roots through the lens of heresy or heterodoxy allows us to see the plurality in a more historical light. The three essays in this section offer very different perspectives and what might be considered dissimilar subject matter. From Blake to Joyce to Tomás Rivera, what each essay has in common is a suggestion that literature does not either oppose or replace religion. Instead it is an important part of the creative process within religion. This process is dialectical, agonistic, and, yes, heretical, but it is central to shifting ideas of religion and integral to a process that has been part of Western book-based religions since Christian philosophers tried to accommodate Homer into their theological and cosmic view.

Works Cited Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. [1915] New York: Free Press, 1965. Lukacs, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. [1920] Boston: MIT Press, 1971. Lewis, Pericles. Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Miller, J. Hillis. Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1965.

Gregory Erickson

Heresy and the Modernist Imagination Around the turn of the twenty first century, cultural critics and philosophers began talking about a “return to” or “return of” religion. Although, as was often pointed out, religion had never really gone away, this phrase indicated a conscious move away from the stubborn “secularization thesis” that had dominated the twentieth century. By 2002, Gil Anidijar could write that “we may no longer be hearing simply about the demise of religion, most famously proclaimed by Nietzsche, but we keep hearing a great deal about what has been called its ‘return’” (1). This return sometimes referred to religion’s persistence and reemergence as a social and political force and sometimes to what was seen as its newfound presence in theoretical and philosophical discourse. But although the turn to religion visibly influenced works across disciplines from religious studies and philosophy to sociology and political science to literature and cultural studies, one critique, or at least observation, that I have, is that many of these scholars and texts seem not to be talking to each other. In other words, the various “returns of religion” aren’t really informing each other. The result is that a lot of terms and concepts—religion, God, belief, ritual, orthodoxy, body, eucharist, sacred—that have been theorized deeply in one field, remain unproblematized in others. So when literary theorists called out for or foresaw a similar return of religion in literary studies,¹ they were often unclear about what this return would look like and how it would be different from what had come before. A lot of recent work on literature and religion still seems to define “religion” by its mid-twentieth century Mircea Eliade-driven, a-force-against-chaos characterization. Pericles Lewis, for example, in his Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel characterizes “religion” as offering a “rational, intellectual coherence” (22). Much recent thought in philosophy and religious studies, however, has gone in the other direction—using religion or theology as an initiation of rupture, destabilization, and negation.² For Kevin Hart, if the “concepts upon which classical discourse on God have been founded—’origin,’ ‘end,’ ‘self-identity’—are . . . shown to be incapable of providing such a

 For example, Stanley Fish predicted religion would “succeed high theory” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2005) and Terry Eagleton claimed that religion was the one topic that literary scholars were still wary of addressing (After Theory).  For example, see works by Slovoj Žižek and Mark C. Taylor, both of whom I will address in this essay, and also the essays by Jordan Miller, Bernard Schweizer, and Thomas J. J. Altizer in this collection. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-002

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foundation . . . theology is shown to founder upon its own foundations” (38). These “foundering foundations” lead to new ways of conceptualizing God, religion, and scripture as irrational or incoherent, although, as Hart insists, these conceptualizations do not have to point away from theology. My core assumption is that theological claims are never only about God but must also entail beliefs about self and world. The debates over what constitute heresy have participated in the process of negotiating and constructing issues of language, knowledge, history, textual interpretation, human autonomy, freedom, and subjectivity in the Western world. Heresy, therefore, can provide a model for thinking about critical language; both as a way to break away from modes of thinking cemented as “normal” through Christian orthodoxy and to acknowledge ways in which Western theoretical and critical thought are still linked to patriarchal Christian theology. In this essay, I want to focus on what the study of heresy can bring to the field of modernist studies. Although scholars of modernism—perhaps because they had often defined themselves in relationship to a process of secularization—were a little slow to acknowledge and address the various returns of religion, recent books and conference seminars would seem to indicate moves in this direction.³ And while much work on modernist literature and religion still focuses on traditional figures within high modernism known for being “religious” (T.S. Eliot), as modernist studies has self-consciously expanded it own definition (“new” modernist studies, etc.), it has opened up fresh ways to bring religion into its interpretive models. What I would like to posit as a starting place is the realization that while modernism (with certain exceptions like Eliot or G.K. Chesterton) is traditionally understood as representing a decline in religious faith, the modernist questioning of epistemological and physical certainty is also inescapably contained within the theological fabric of Western thought. In other words, we don’t have to see modernism as denying, resisting, replacing, or even re-inventing a type of religiosity; instead we can see it as a continuum of interactions between art and religion. The study of the history of heresy— again, not as breaks in religion, but as debates over language, power, and identity—can help in locating modernist literature on this continuum. In addition to using heresy to address what I see as a need in studies of modernist literature, I also locate my ideas as a response to two recent theoretical  Several recent titles that offer new methodologies or paradigms for thinking about religion and modernist literature include Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel by Pericles Lewis, Joyce’s Misbelief by Roy Gottfried, and Angels of Modernism by Suzanne Hobson. In addition, four of the last six Modernist Studies Association Conferences (2011, 2013, 2014, 2016) have included seminars on modernism and religion.

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trends in the comparative study of religion and modernity. The first trend is a recent series of philosophical claims for the role of religion and theological thought in the foundation of modernist sensibilities. Rather than seeing modernity as breaking with theological thought, authors like Jean-Luc Nancy, Slavoj Žižek, Mark C. Taylor, and Michael Allen Gillespie have emphasized the ubiquity and inescapability of Christian ways of thinking in the West. For Jean-Luc Nancy “the more invisible it [Christianity] becomes, the more we are bound within the very fabric of Christianity” (115). Each of these thinkers emphasizes that although by the late twentieth century, literary critics often claimed various branches of “theory” as a way to escape religiously grounded modes of thinking, they too can often be seen as unconsciously affirming much of traditional theology. If, as Nancy says, “all our thinking, our very being is Christian through and through,” then, although the existence of the Christian God that we have created can be questioned, its theological significance to our thinking cannot. For Gillespie, the “theological core of the modern project was concealed over time by the very sciences it produced . . . and it continues to guide our thinking and action, often in ways we do not perceive or understand” (xii). Despite its claims for secularity, modernity, these thinkers argue, must be understood as a theological invention.⁴ Although Taylor and Gillespie look back to and draw connections with the Reformation or medieval nominalism, it is perhaps in modernism where these tensions are enacted most dramatically and stylistically in the very fabric of the art itself. Modern radical theological thinkers, like Taylor, identify the modernist “death of God” as a crisis that has changed (or must change) our sense of history, identity, and writing (Erring 7). Each of these three elements—writing, identity, and history—is intertwined with creating and perceiving art, and our understanding of time, plot, narrative, and the purpose of art. Orthodox Christianity (and its heretical shadows) then, is passed down through Western tradition embedded within our construction of concepts such as a teleological history, the self-contained book, the autonomous individual, and through patterns of negation and creation, and transcendence and immanence. In particularly dramatic ways, twentieth century modernist literature, art, and music portray the struggle with epistemological shifts in the theological current and are ineffably caught in this web of history, identity, and art at the same time that they grapple with the idea of God’s death or absence. Examples of this grappling include the movements towards abstraction in the visual arts, the weakening of tonal harmony

 Similar claims, although arrived at through different processes and with different final conclusions, have been more recently made by Charles Taylor and Brad Gregory.

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in music, and multiple narratives in fiction. Because heresy is so often focused on words, documents, and reading, I will focus on literature in this essay. This brings me to my second critical trend: the recent application of the idea of “heresy” to the cultural history of the twentieth century. While an early example is Peter Berger’s The Heretical Imperative, more recent examples include Peter Gay’s Modernisms: The Lure of Heresy, Damon Franke’s Modernist Heresies, and Benjamin Lazier’s God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination Between the World Wars. Although each of these books makes valuable contributions, what they have in common is that they tend to focus on modern understandings of heresy (which is often closer to what we think of as blasphemy or iconoclasm) rather than on looking at the history of ideas and texts ruled heretical. Furthermore, works on literature that do focus on heresy as heresy tend to flatten out the theological positions, reducing them to a single Gnosticism or one characteristic theological trait. I include myself in the first trend of claiming the history of Christian thought as more important and inescapable to twentieth century art, literature, and theory than is generally acknowledged. I have written elsewhere about how modernist literature constructs alternative god-ideas rooted in absence and the JudeoChristian tradition as a form of negative theology.⁵ In this essay, I also want to bring in the second trend of using the concept of heresy as an interpretive lens for viewing modernity, but using a more focused methodology that works through specific theological texts and debates from Christian history. If Christian thought is often a hidden subconscious presence in modern secular thought, then heretical ideas are the hidden subconsciousness of Christian thought. What I will be developing are brief examples of twentieth century literature restaging heretical debates and theological positions within the context of both religion and formal experimentation. All stories, as Žižek writes, are complete only if they contain hidden “counter narratives” as a supplement to the standard self-enclosed linear narrative. So if Christianity is unconsciously written into all Western texts, then heresy, in my reading, is an ever-present counter narrative to orthodox Christian narratives. The New Testament is a counter narrative to the Hebrew Bible, the Gnostic Gospels are counter narratives to the canonical ones, and Arius is a counter narrative to Nicaea. In each case, the counter narrative is hidden in the original, a shadow that deepens the meaning, and is a continued presence into our time. Heresies are often romanticized as lost, forgotten, and fragmented voices from the past, but this is only partially true. Every heretical idea is buried within

 The Absence of God in Modernist Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007)

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the orthodoxy that refutes it; and repressed theologies, like neurosis or monsters, tend to hide in the margins and return in broad daylight (or in a modernist novel).

Early Christian Heresy: Alternate Modes of Reading History and Narrative Like the twentieth century, the early centuries of Christian history were times of political and social unrest; these times were also full of a questioning of the very ground of our perceptions of the real and solid, the very processes by which we arrive at truth claims. It is important to remember that this was not a period of an orthodox monotheistic and Trinitarian Christianity fighting against heretical positions, but rather a time of competing claims for orthodoxy. This is not a period of a defense of orthodoxy but a search for orthodoxy. For the first generations of Christians, the questions were all about continuity: Are we still Jews? Do we continue to read the Hebrew Scriptures in the same way? How do we maintain the movement after our leader has died? The Western concept of history can be traced to early Christian thinkers who “in their defense of the biblical view of creation [were] obliged to take up the question of the meaning of history” (Pelikan 37). They also knew the Greek theories of history that had often focused on cycles and repetition, but it was necessary for Christians to now proclaim historical events as unrepeatable and teleological. These early views of history as linear and directed are represented by Eusebius and Augustine, both strong voices for orthodoxy and against heresies. Like all dominant historical narratives, the history of Christian thought has been constructed to appear linear, logical, and inevitable. Ways of thinking deemed “heretical,” on the other hand, represent radical and unheard ideas, suggest historical directions not taken, and question the borders and definitions of concepts of orthodoxy. Marcion, a second century Roman often identified as an early Christian Gnostic, questioned the possibility that a “good, all-knowing, and all-powerful” God was in charge of history. How could such a figure have permitted the deception and fall of man? His solution, like many other thinkers we label Gnostic, was that there must be two Gods, one good and one evil, one the Creator of the world, one the Father of Jesus Christ. In order to separate the good Christ from the notgood man, Marcion attributes the creation of Christ to the one True God. He is not of a woman, not of a human body. Humans, on the other hand, come from the Creator God and are therefore flawed and corrupt. Above all, Marcion

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offered a Christianity that severed its connection to Judaism and the Jewish Scriptures. What is significant for my project is that Marcion’s positions represent alternative theories of reading, history, authorship, and language. Marcion continually stressed discontinuity: between the Hebrew Bible and the new Christian scriptures, between creation and salvation, between law and gospel, between Creator and Father, and between humans and Christ. As the nineteenth-century theologian Adolf Harnack wrote, Marcion still read the book from left to right instead of from right to left. The Christian interpretive practice of typology, reading the Old Testament through the New, was totally rejected by Marcion, who denied the Hebrew prophecies could refer to Jesus, instead insisting on their literal meaning. As we see in Marcion, early Christian heresies can always be seen as coming out of and reflecting different styles of reading. This observation can bring us forward almost 2,000 years to modern literature that also finds a religious component in the reversal of time and the redefinition of reading practices. One example is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a novel rooted in religious texts, where the reader must rethink the relationship of words to ideas and also to experience an entirely remixed chronology and sense of time and history where the past and present influence each other. In the Wake, the early histories of the central character HCE, for example, are layered across time, within sacred and classical texts, street gossip, folk songs, and electronic media, with other voices representing the people’s history or four old men (the four Evangelists) representing academic and orthodox ecclesiastical history. Another novel that echoes Marcion’s questioning of linear history through subverting the reading of scriptures is Thomas Pynchon’s cyclical novel Gravity’s Rainbow. Gravity’s Rainbow posits a fictional heretical tract, On Preterition, written by Tyrone Slothrop’s ancestor, William, in response to Calvin’s ideas of predestination. Like the recently translated Gnostic Gospel of Judas, this tract asks for less damnation in Christ’s name and more forgiveness in the name of Judas. William’s love for Judas plays on a classic Christian paradox: we are all guilty of the act of betrayal that nailed Christ to the cross, and yet it is this very act that redeems us. Pynchon uses this paradox in a very modern way by playing on the reversal of cause and effect; the V2 rocket travels faster than sound, therefore it kills first and only then do its victims hear it; if you hear the rocket, the danger has already past, it has not killed you. Pynchon implicitly asks if it is possible to make meaning out of living in a world where such a weapon exists, but then demonstrates that we are already there. Perhaps we are damned before we are

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born and the actions of Judas are all that offer even the Elect among us salvation.⁶

From Marcion to Dracula: The Monstrosity of the Infinite Marcion’s main points of contention with his opponents centered around the doctrines of the unity of God and the humanity of Christ. His plural divinities deny the idea of oneness and his Christ is rooted in divinity at the expense of his humanity. These issues—if we understand them as debates over the possibility of a single unchanging meaning and the irreducible acceptance of authorial intent—not only set up the main theological conflicts of the coming centuries, but also are central tenets in the interpretation of books and history. For early Christian thinkers, Christ represented a new type of being that forced them to develop new ideas, a true “event” in the philosophical sense of changing one’s sense of reality. To put it in contemporary thought, like Marcel Duchamp’s Dada machines, or the modern cyborg from sci-fi and cultural theory, Christ was an alien intruder into a world with which he had no ontological connection; the idea of Christ changes the conception of history and challenges categories of life and death. The cyborg figure resonates strongly within our imagination because it dissolves distinction between born and made, a dialectic that lies at the core of artistic creation, personal identity, and Christianity. The cyborg and Christ are both foundational and disruptive of our concepts of history, the book, and the human. The orthodox (and anti-Marcion) view, represented early on by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies, insists that the incarnation represents the unity of God with humanity and the unity of human history with God. To again turn back to a modern novel: Bram Stoker’s Dracula presents Catholicism and the physical body in both orthodox and in more disruptive heretical ways. The vampire, like Christ, represents a monstrous and not-quite human figure that alters how humans see themselves. If Christ was monstrous because he was God in finite flesh, then the vampire in Dracula represent a human in infinite flesh. The human, as Alain Badiou writes in Being and Event, is a “being which prefers to represent itself within finitude, whose sign is death” (149). For these finite humans, since the infinite is understood to be beyond our understanding, it is associated with the divine. Within this context, both Christ and vampire represent a new possibility, a theoretical and theological trope, and a  Thanks to J. Remy Green for pointing me toward this reading of Pynchon’s novel.

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type of thought experiment that changes the ways humans imagine themselves. In Dracula, after Jonathan Harker’s wife Mina has been bitten by and fed from the count, her group of male friends read the Anglican Order for the Burial of the Dead over her because the touch of the host has scarred her forehead, indicating to them that she is spiritually dead. This scene suggests that Mina’s faith is inadequate and that the power of Dracula somehow outweighs the ability of God to grant grace to those who believe in him. Although her counterparts describe her as “good,” and Mina herself defines herself as “holy,” God’s presence is indicated only by this physical marking of an individual as being lost to his divine favor. There is no doubt, among the men of the novel, that Mina is already damned and a creature of the dark despite her devout and unselfish nature. Is this view Catholic, Protestant, Anglican or heretical? The novel gives no consistent answer. Can Mina be “good” yet more a demon than Christian? Where does “goodness” come from? When Van Helsing places his putty compound of the Host around the recently turned Lucy Westenra’s tomb so that she cannot enter after her night of hunting, he remarks that it is only effective because she is newly a vampire, and is not effective against Dracula. The body of Dracula, in other words, is more powerful than the body of Christ. Is Dracula more real than God, more real than the Real Presence? The tension between the body as a source of empirical certainty versus complex ideologies, central to writings on vampires, is also a primary issue in debates over orthodoxy and heresy. Is there a Mina that is “good” if her body is damned? Orthodox Catholics, Gnostic Christians, Christian Scientists, and Mormons would all answer that question differently.

The Heresy and the Logic of Modernist Creation If early debates over Marcion and Gnostics point to contrasting reading strategies, then later debates over the nature of Christ point to word use, definition, and translation. By the fourth century, Christian thought was in a complex position, and the intellectual arguments of 325 are similar to say, 1914 or 1968, in the ways that their questioning of traditional assumptions about language led to larger questions about the metaphysical grounding of how we process perception and knowledge. During these formative years of Christianity, Jewish monotheism and Greek philosophy combined to create a contradictory notion of God, and made it virtually impossible to affirm both the divinity of Jesus and the unity of God. There were three basic options for dogma, although more marginalized (later heretical) branches of early Christianity offered more radical interpretation. 1. Father and son are somehow identical. 2. Father and Son are somehow

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different. 3. Father and Son are somehow identical in their difference, which resolves problems but requires a new notion of reason. It is the gray area of these “somehows” that is the birth of theology and is a source of a literary and linguistic ambiguity at the heart of Western Literature. “Somehow” becomes, to put it in more contemporary terms, a space of difference, on the edge between chaos and order, and a site of emergent creativity. The earliest Christian writers were subjected to radically different interpretations of these issues. The influential writings of the second century theologian Origen, were interpreted both to the left and right of what we now see as the orthodox position—to the right we find Sabellius who argued for a complete identity of Father and Son as one, as the same God, which leads to the stance the there was no actual suffering on the cross, since Jesus was in all ways only God. On the left, we find Arius and the Arians whose subordination, even humanizing, of the Son, if taken to its logical conclusion, actually involved a denial of the incarnation. In Arius’ view, to see Jesus as always already God denies the process through which Jesus ascended. Arius claimed that God, as pure spirit, could have no direct contact with the material world; the son therefore—Christ, the Word—could not be God, but could, at best, be a sort of intermediary. Arius became the archetypal heretic for reasons that are not so obvious today. Arius’s heresy was his claim that Christ came “out of nothing” and that “once he was not,” or, in other words, the creation and the non-eternity of Christ the Son. Although Arius’ position that there was a time when Christ did not exist and that he must therefore have been “created” was ultimately ruled heretical (hence the wording of the Nicene Creed, that Christ was “begotten, not made”), the creation and subordination of Christ was accepted by many (perhaps even most) Christians in Arius’s time, and the debate forced Christian thinkers to more clearly address and define complex issues regarding the nature of Christ. From the Arian point of view, Jesus’ ascent from man to God gives other humans a model for salvation. Metaphorically, this is a model of striving for creating meaning rather than discovering its eternal existence. Jesus, in other words, represents a model for becoming rather than the absolute itself. Christ, for Arius, is not an eternal transcendental signified, but is part of a model of the meaning-making process. Arius implicitly proposes a different way of reading more rooted in experience than in absolutes. Like other heretical moments, the fourth century Christological debate can be viewed through issues of writing and literary interpretation. Arianism forced Christians from every point of view to read and interpret scripture more intently. Both sides of the Arianism debate had to address issues of authority, intent, and meaning through negotiating the ambiguity of language, the multiple definitions and translations of words such as “substance” (ousia, substantia) and the diffi-

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culty (and necessity) of stepping outside of biblical language in order to comment upon it. Arius’s claim that Christ—like man—was also created, that he too came from nothing, forced thinkers to theorize the act of creation—and the concept of nothing and nothingness. All “creatures,” Christians had insisted, come into existence “out of nothing.” According to this theology, because man is by nature mortal, since he is made out of what is not, he is therefore always on the edge of being drawn back into this originary abyss, and his only salvation is to turn to the creative power of the divine Logos. God, as having never been “created,” was therefore safe from the fall into nothing; God, as he who is, was the only force against this sinful abyss. If a turn towards an eternal presence is a turn away from finitude, Arius’ created Christ is a move towards mortality, towards that abyss of nothing that undermines the idea of an eternal unchanging One. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Arius is mentioned at several key points in the text, a preoccupation of the fallen Catholic and budding poet Stephen Dedalus. In the very first chapter, Stephen thinks of “Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father” (Joyce 17). By introducing Arius and his heretical Christology in the first chapter and at several other key moments in the novel, Joyce opens an alternative path—theologically, aesthetically, and structurally—which poses multiple and subversive theological meanings about the body and about creation. While the idea of heresy is commonly acknowledged as being central to the themes of Stephen’s search for a father figure in Ulysses, not only is the presence of Stephen’s heretical thoughts, but the multiple and shifting styles of Ulysses itself is a comment on the impossibility of aesthetic fatherhood. With its various styles and structures and quotations of preexisting texts, Ulysses subverts the idea of language as attributable to any fathering source. Like the Christ of Arius, like Stephen himself, like a borrowed phrase of Homeric verse, the original source of creation, the original meaning is always on the other side of true presence. When Stephen remarks that the Church is founded upon the mystery of fatherhood—“upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood” (Joyce 170), it can be taken as expressing doubt in every aspect of artistic creation and meaning, including the novel. To imagine oneself or a text as being created necessarily introduces thoughts of a previous space or time of nonexistence: a theological problem in Christology, an identity crisis within psychology, and an aesthetic problem for an author or literary critic. Clearly the Arian debate is deeply embedded in the whole of artistic creation, an act which must come to terms with what exists before creation and out of what materials the artist creates. This anxiety is clear in Ulysses, but it manifests itself in other ways across the twentieth century as, for example, in the serialist compositional devices of Arnold Schoenberg, the found objects of Mar-

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cel Duchamp, and the literary theories of structuralism. Do artists create something from nothing, or do they merely rearrange material into a new ordered text? These assumptions are what new scientific, new historicist and post-structuralist thought were intent on breaking down in the late twentieth century. For many, like the results of fourth century theological debate, the inevitable result is a contradiction that seems to shatter reason.

Outside of Transcendence and Immanence One way to understand the binaries under pressure in these early theological arguments—God/human, spirit/flesh, creator/author, Christ/text—is to see them as participating in patterns of transcendence and immanence that are characteristic of theological movement and also that define much of the twentieth century’s artistic and philosophical imagination. We can find this pattern in the transcendence of Moses’ ineffable God versus the immanence of Aaron’s Golden Calf, or in the transcendence of an omnipotent unmoving cosmic creator and the immanence of a helpless naked man bleeding and weeping on a cross. In each case we desire both and find our art and our religion in the tension. From a modernist perspective, early twentieth century discourse about the death of the body and the afterlife of the soul can be found between the transcendence of a ghostly spirit and the immanence of the ectoplasm—a gooey material often photographed or found on the scene of ghostly apparitions. This repeated oscillation between transcendence and immanence in Western art—one good example in the twentieth century is the move from abstract expressionist art to pop art, from Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollack to Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol—can be traced back to the dual nature of Christ. The fourth gospel claims Jesus as the transcendent word and light but also claims that “we have seen him with our eyes, and we have touched him with our hands” (John 1.1), a construction of the dual nature of Christ that would characterize Christian thought for centuries to come. But within other early texts deemed heretical we can see alternative formulations: in the Gospel of Thomas, for example, when disciples plead with Jesus to “show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it,” Jesus deflects the questions, asking them instead to seek the light hidden within themselves. Unlike canonical gospels, this answer steps outside of the transcendent/immanent circle and instead makes a more mystical and subjective claim that involves a different kind of logic, a logic more Duchamp than Picasso, more Gertrude Stein than T.S. Eliot. These heresies still resonate today, both inside and outside of any religious or theological context. Slavoj Žižek, for example, builds his reading of Christian-

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ity upon a heretical interpretation that can only be fully understood within these debates. Žižek’s heresy is that “the Son was not present in the God prior to Incarnation, sitting up there at his side. Incarnation is the birth of Christ, and after his death, there is neither Father nor Son, but ‘only’ the Holy Spirit” (33). For Žižek, the Crucifixion represents a unique moment where “God does not believe in himself.” So for Žižek, as for Hegel and Thomas Altizer, “what dies on the cross is not only the earthly-finite representative of God, but God himself, the very transcendent God of beyond” (60). Žižek’s heresy finds us without a Christian God or without Derrida’s “transcendental signifier”; both Gods die and we are on our own, in charge of our own interpretation. From the point of view of Christian orthodoxy this may seem radical, contradictory, or atheistic, but these views are not unique or particularly modern if viewed from the perspective of the study of early heresy. Žižek’s “Son who was not present” prior to his birth echoes Arius, and Žižek’s death of God on the cross can be found in various versions of the apocryphal death of Arius that may also symbolize the death of the Arian concept of Christ. In Žižek as in much modern popular religion, we find a Christianity more Arian than orthodox. Arius’s Jesus—more man than god—will never die, but resurfaces again and again throughout a Christian history that desires immanence as much as transcendence, flesh as much as mystery, and the (heretical) story of a man who became God. These patterns bring us back to modernist literature and its scholars who continually kill and then resurrect their gods. The Joyce scholar Richard Ellmann predicted in 1975 that future critics of Ulysses would “pull the book together rather than apart” (341), and although we can argue the degree to which he was wrong or right, the tension between unity and fragmentation is significant. When Ellmann claims that the message of Ulysses is “that we are all members of the one body, and the one spirit,” it is a powerful statement of orthodoxy. These very concepts of spirit and body as argued within early Christianity demonstrate the impossibility of unification as much as they do a desire for it. The central questions of early Christianity—the questions that spawned what would later be labeled heretical thought: Was Jesus man or god? Who decides what writings are canonical? What is the relationship between body, soul, and text?—are questions that are essentially still with us, even if we express them outside of any confessional context. From Dracula to Ulysses to Gravity’s Rainbow, these questions are central to defining ourselves and our relationship to modernity, modernism, and the art and stories we continue to make and talk about.

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Works Cited Anidijar, Gil. “Introduction: ‘Once More, Once More’: Derrida, Arab, the Jew” in Jacques Derrida: Acts of Religion. New York: Routledge, 2002. Badiou, Alan. Being and Event. London: Continuum, 2005. Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Revised Edition. Oxford University Press, 1983. Fish, Stanley. “One University, Under God?” Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 7, 2005, Vol. 51, Is. 18, pg. C.1. Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Gospel of Thomas. Trans. Thomas O. Lambdin. The Gnostic Society Library. The Nag Hammadi Library. www.gnosis.org Gregory, Brad S. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2012. Hanson, R.P.C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318 - 381. Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006. Hart, Kevin. The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology, and Philosophy. 1985. New York: Fordham University, 2000. Joyce, James. Ulysses. [1922] Hans Walter Gabler, ed. New York: Vintage, 1986. Lewis, Pericles. Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “The Deconstruction of Christianity.” De Vries and Weber 112 – 130. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100 – 600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: The Viking Press, 1973. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. [1897] New York: Norton, 1997. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007. Taylor, Mark. C. After God. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007. —. Erring: A Postmodern A/theology. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984. Vries, Hent de and Samuel Weber, eds. Religion and Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Žižek, Slavoj and John Milbank. The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.

Mark Hama

“No, I better not say it. I might get punished”: Misotheism and Self-Creation in Tomás Rivera’s . ‥ And the Earth Did Not Devour Him From its inception, the Chicano cultural identity movement, along with much of the literature emerging from this movement over the past half-century, has sought to align itself spiritually with the Aztec culture that existed prior to the arrival of Europeans to Mesoamerica. In fact, as “El Movimiento” began in earnest in the 1960s, two of Chicano literature’s founding documents, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán and Corky Gonzales’s “I Am Joaquín,” consciously and definitively established the creation myth of the Aztecs and the fabled spiritual homeland of Aztlán as the source of Chicanismo.¹ Michael Pina highlights the significance of the spiritual element of Aztlán mythology to the Chicano community, observing that: Chicanos interpreted their nationalist cause as more than a political movement; they were involved in the regeneration of sacred time and space, as the ultimate concern of Chicano nationalism sought to transcend the existent temporal and spatial barriers and establish a homeland patterned after the primordial homeland from which the Aztecs originated. This would be a spiritual nation rooted in a sacred landscape charged with the power of an indigenous spirituality . . . (36)

At the same time, however, the Chicano community has historically embraced its equally close ties to the Catholic faith brought to the New World by Spanish missionaries,² symbolized by the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe, and it is from this divided spiritual allegiance that one of the central concerns of Chicano literature, how to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable religious traditions, emerges.  For a detailed overview of the myth of Aztlán and its relationship to the Chicano identity movement, see Luis Leal’s “In Search of Aztlán,” Michael Pina’s “The Archaic, Historical, and Mythicized Dimensions of Aztlán,” and Rudolfo Anaya’s “Aztlán: A Homeland Without Boundaries.”  Several useful texts on the history of Mexican Catholicism are available, including Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900 – 65, eds. Jay P. Dolan and Gilberto M. Hinojosa; Mario T. García’s Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History; and Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism, and Culture, eds. Gastón Espinosa and Mario T. García. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-003

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Surveying the more than four-century history of the encounter between the indigenous peoples of Mexico and the Europeans who arrived in the sixteenth century, “I Am Joaquín” ultimately resolves the dilemma with the speaker’s realization that he is not exclusively conqueror or conquered, Spanish or Aztec, but both at the same time, and that he therefore draws his strength equally from both traditions: I am Joaquín. The odds are great But my spirit is strong, My faith unbreakable, My blood is pure. I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ. I SHALL ENDURE! I WILL ENDURE !

Many of Chicano literature’s most prominent writers, such as Rudolfo Anaya and Gloria Anzaldúa, have affirmed the importance of embracing this spiritual synthesis, both to their own work as well as to the broader Chicano identity movement. In “Aztlán: A Homeland without Boundaries,” Anaya explains that the “Indohispano of the Southwest was influenced by the spirituality of the pueblos of the Río Grande, “even though the Catholic faith was imposed on the indigenous faith” (239). Over time, a synthesis began to take place between the Old World and the New World, which Anaya argues was accelerated by the Pueblo revolt of 1680, when the Pueblo people reasserted the value of respecting the earth as a source of spiritual strength. As a result, the newly emerging Indohispano religious sensibility incorporated a respect for the earth as mother, an idea “which permeated the spiritual life of Hispanic villages” and resulted in a “process of synthesis [which] fused Spanish Catholicism with Native American thought” (239). Anaya develops this theme of synthesis in Bless Me Ultima when the protagonist Antonio learns from the old curandera, Ultima, that he must seek his own spiritual path by borrowing from both the Catholicism of his mother’s family and the polytheistic practices of the people of the llano and forging them into his own belief system. Anzaldúa, for her part, speaks more autobiographically about how this blending process has shaped her spiritual life. The “grounding of my spiritual reality,” she relates, “is based on an indigenous Mexican spirituality, which is Nahualismo, which loosely translates as ‘shamanism’”: but she adds that with “the spiritual mestizaje there is a component of folk Catholicism in it,” which features more indigenous elements and “on top of the indigenous elements are put the Catholic scenes. . . . Therefore

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underneath all those Catholic saints and the Virgin Mary there are all these native American figures, these indigenous Mexicans like Tonantzín” (239).³ One cannot help but note, though, that what is elided throughout this discussion is the fact that the syncretic process these writers embrace directly contravenes the polytheism heresy as it violates the principle tenet of Catholic monotheistic orthodoxy as expressed in the Nicene Creed: “I believe in one God, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops).⁴ In fact, given these historical and cultural circumstances, the argument could be made that Chicano identity and much of Chicano literature is thus by its very nature heretical in the sense of radically departing from doctrinal orthodoxy. Even so, while these writers all celebrate the polytheistic elements of their religious heritage,⁵ they stop short of acknowledging that, ultimately, the god that resulted from this fusion process is still primarily the Judeo-Christian deity, and they therefore fail to scrutinize the philosophical implications of Catholic theological dogma and its effects on the Chicano community; instead, the issue is pushed to one side in favor of celebrating the strength and flexibility of a culture that has learned to embrace its multi-faceted religious heritage. A notable exception to this tendency, however, is Tomás Rivera, who, in And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, not only challenges this syncretic approach but does so in a manner that places the novel into the field of what Bernard Schweizer, in Hating God, describes as misotheistic literature. Instead of simply dramatizing the difficulty of reconciling the spiritual conflict intrinsic to Chicano identity, Rivera, directly questions the value to the Chicano community of worshipping a deity that would allow the level of unmitigated suffering depicted in the novel to happen to such poor, helpless, and faithful followers, and he further advocates a moral indictment of God for his acquiescence to such suffering as a first step towards rejecting theism altogether. Notably, though, despite the repeated, direct verbal assaults against the doctrine of the benevolence of the Christian divinity represented throughout the narrative, since its publication in 1971, critical commentary on . . . And the Earth Did

 On the Virgen de Guadalupe as a symbolic embodiment of the syncretic relationship between the Virgin Mary and the Aztec concept of Tonantzín, see Eric Wolf’s “The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol.”  Gerald Bray’s Creeds, Councils & Christ, Chapter Four, “The Rule of Faith,” pp. 92– 118, and Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition both examine the historical development of this inviolable tenet of Catholic faith.  Michael Smith offers a thorough overview of the pantheon of Aztec gods and religious practices in The Aztecs, Chapter 9, pp. 204– 43.

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Not Devour Him has virtually ignored this aspect of the novel, focusing primarily on two other aspects–its moving depiction of life in the South Texas migrant farming community and its complex narrative structure, in which Rivera employs a range of narrative voices and points of view to render the immediacy of the events he describes. Through the eyes of an adolescent boy struggling to reconstruct the previous year of his life, which has become fragmented and incoherent in his consciousness as a consequence of his own and his Chicano community’s harrowing existence as migrant workers, Rivera presents readers with a stark view of the brutal conditions under which this group lives. Narratively, the events are presented achronologically through a series of brief vignettes and stories told by a number of unidentified narrators rather than as a single unifying narrative voice, with the effect that the reader, like the boy, must work consciously to reconstruct fragmented memory into a coherent and meaningful whole. Nevertheless, even though Rivera’s brilliant thematic and formal rendering of the migrant experience has earned the novel its rightful place as a classic of Chicano literature and, in my view, argues for its inclusion in the broader canon of modernist American literature, it is still most often categorized together with other works such as Jose Antonio Villareal’s Pocho (1959) and Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), and read principally as a sociological document of Chicano and Mexican migrant experience, with the result that much of the philosophical significance of Rivera’s novel is obscured.⁶ This failure by critics to recognize fully the significance of the violent outburst depicted in the novel against the injustice of the Christian divinity is strikingly similar to what Schweizer observes about readers’ inability to see Zora Neale Hurston’s comparable misotheism in Their Eyes Were Watching God. In fact, according to Schweizer, this sort of oversight is to be expected, as the need of a misotheistic writer to disguise his/her intent represents a central feature of this type of literature. He notes that “this negative religious attitude has escaped detection partly because those practicing it tend to be secretive about it, fearing the consequences of owning up to their anti-God stance too openly” (Schweizer 2). Rivera, like Hurston, likely felt he had to be wary of the difficulties and even dangers of indicting God for his actions against his people, especially in a community that has traditionally relied so heavily upon Christian mythology to alleviate some measure of its suffering and from which many draw their only hope for a better future (Schweizer 2). Thus, he chose to obscure the full extent of his charge behind the very narrative disjuncture that he builds into the text both

 For a good overview of these types of novels, see Sherry York, “The Migrant Experience in the Works of Mexican American Writers.”

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in form and content. But when we trace the development of the boy’s distrust and eventually his hatred of God, we find an intensely passionate expression of what Schweizer terms agonistic misotheism,⁷ a moral position that finds efforts at theodicy wanting and thus determines to put the blame for the suffering of humanity, in this case the migrant farmworker community, directly on God who could have intervened on their behalf at any moment but did not. Schweizer explains that “a sense of divine injustice is a major factor in contributing to the development of a misotheistic outlook. The feeling of injustice can stem from personal misfortune, such as thwarted ambition or a frustrated love relationship, but it more often stems from undeserved suffering on a grand scale” (9). In Rivera’s novel, the full range of these injustices is explored, as some of the vignettes and stories describe more typical day-to-day personal misfortunes caused by language barriers or racism, while others relate experiences that rival and even eclipse the sufferings of Job, until finally the reader is drawn to sympathize with the protagonist’s misotheistic outburst. As he looks back on the events of the previous year (which he called “The Lost Year”), the boy remembers in “The Night Before Christmas,” for example, the claustrophobic fear of a young Mexican immigrant mother who because of her language barrier is afraid to leave her house to buy her children Christmas presents and so must lie to them to cover her fear. In one of the vignettes, the boy is humiliated when he is refused service at a barbershop and later told to leave the movie theater because he is Mexican. “When We Arrive” tells the story of a group of workers traveling north who must stand in the back of an open truck all the way from Texas to Iowa. One of the men is hit in the face by a dirty diaper thrown from up front, and through their conversations we hear the desperation and exhaustion of these people who have been standing up for twenty-four hours pressed in so tightly that an old man falls asleep and does not fall over. To illustrate the difficulty of obtaining even the most basic type of education necessary to break the cycle of poverty, Rivera depicts the protagonist being expelled from one of the many schools he sporadically attends for fighting to defend himself from a white boy who confronts him and taunts, “Hey Mex . . . I don’t like Mexicans because they steal” (93). But Rivera goes further to show that language barriers and racism, while common and obviously painful, form only a small part of the suffering God chooses to heap on this community. As he illustrates in several other episodes, due to their poverty and ignorance, conditions which are almost impossible to

 See Schweizer, pp. 17– 20, for detailed definitions of the three types of misotheism he identifies: agonistic, absolute, and political.

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overcome, the migrant workers are easy prey to exploitation, not only from outside their community, but from the very sources that they feel they can trust the most, their friends and fellow migrants. In “The Portrait,” for example, some traveling salesmen arrive in a small South Texas town from San Antonio just as the migrant families begin to return home after the season up north with the money they have earned. Because the salesmen are also from the Mexican community, they quickly gain the trust of the townspeople. We witness one of the con men sell a family a picture frame they cannot afford for the only remaining photo they have of their eldest son who was killed in Korea. He takes their cash and the photo and promises to return as soon as the portrait frame is finished while his partners do likewise with many of the other families. Two months later, the salesmen have still not returned when some children playing in a drainage ditch near the dump after a flooding rain find a sack filled with all their neighbors’ water-soaked photos. Even more brutally, in “Hand in His Pocket,” Rivera introduces Don Laito and his wife Doña Bone, the couple the boy’s parents have contracted to watch over him so he can stay enrolled in school. They represent themselves throughout the migrant community as benevolent and supportive. They sell homemade food and second-hand shoes and other items at the worksites, and do errands and favors for their neighbors, but they are actually preying on the people they are pretending to help. They have taken the boy’s parents’ money, while they feed him rotten meat and force him to work rather than go to school, and we hear Don Laito laugh as he makes contaminated bread to sell to the workers. Eventually it is revealed that Doña Bone is actually a prostitute, and she and her husband carry out a plot to rob and kill an undocumented worker because no one will be able to trace him there. The boy finds the body hidden in his bed in the storeroom where he is made to sleep, and he is even ordered to dig the grave to bury the man’s body. To ensure his silence when the boy’s parents return after the season, they force him to wear the dead man’s ring as evidence of his complicity in the crime. Further emphasizing the extent of God’s moral abandonment, Rivera shows that even religious leaders in the community—folk, Protestant, and Catholic alike—exploit the migrant workers. Although the boy’s mother is devoutly Catholic, she still believes in the originally Aztec fortune-telling traditions of Mexico, so when she receives frightening news about her older son fighting in Korea, she goes to an adivina (a folk fortune teller) for advice. The family gathers around as the woman falls quickly into an apparent trance. We suspect Julian is already dead because the family has just received a letter from the government telling them he’s missing in action, but the adivina callously tells his mother just what she wants to hear: “Have no fear, sister. Julianito is fine. He’s just fine.

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Don’t worry about him anymore. Very soon he’ll be in your arms. He’ll be returning already next month” (89). “Thank you, thank you,” they respond as they pay her with money they could have used instead for food for their remaining children, and leave, filled with empty hope. In another vignette, the men are between seasons and looking for any kind of work when the local Protestant minister tells them that he has hired a man to train them in construction skills so they will not have to work in the fields anymore. After standing in the hot sun all day, the workers find out the hired man has seduced the preacher’s wife and run off with both her and the money for the training program, and their hope is again shattered. Moreover, the Catholic Church is condemned as well in a vignette in which the local priest, a man from Spain, every year charges each of the families five dollars to bless their cars and trucks as they leave for the trip north. One year, he makes enough money to visit his family in Barcelona, and when he returns he brings back some postcards of a modern Spanish church, which he hangs by the door of their own dilapidated church so that these poverty-stricken manual laborers who can hardly afford to feed themselves “might desire a church such as that one” (135) and build one for him. But while all these incidents would be more than enough to lead anyone to question God’s benevolence and just plan for his worshippers, they are only the beginning of the “undeserved suffering on a grand scale” Schweizer refers to, which ultimately leads the boy to become enraged enough to curse God for his apparent complicity in the cruelty and emotional agony of the events which he allows to occur. For example, “The Children Couldn’t Wait” depicts a heartless farmer who has hired some families to work his farm in South Texas during an unusually hot late April. The boss comes by only twice a day to bring a single bucket of drinking water each time, but the water doesn’t hold out, so the workers begin to sneak drinks of water from the cattle trough. “The boss became aware of this almost right away,” Rivera writes. “But he didn’t let on. He wanted to catch a bunch of them and that way he could pay fewer of them and only after they had done more work” (86). However, when he sees one of the child laborers going to the trough repeatedly, he thinks of “giving them a scare. . . . He shot at him once to scare him but when he pulled the trigger he saw the boy with a hole in his head. And the child didn’t even jump like a deer does. He just stayed in the water like a dirty rag and the water began to turn bloody” (87). Rivera describes a truck wreck in another vignette. Late in the evening, the workers still out in the fields hear sirens and soon find out that one of the trucks transporting another group of workers back to camp had collided with a car and is burning. In graphic detail, Rivera describes the scene:

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When the car hit it, those who were not thrown out of the truck on impact were trapped. Those who witnessed the crash said that the truck had immediately burst into flames and that they had seen some victims, poor souls, running from the wreckage toward the thicket with their hair aflame. They say the Anglo woman driving the car was from a dry county and that she’d been at a bar drinking, upset because her husband had left her. There were sixteen dead. (129)

Finally, underscoring the truly profound suffering these people endure, there is “The Little Burnt Victims,” a story about a family with three young children. Because the children are still too young for fieldwork, their parents lock them in their shack to keep them safe before they leave for the fields each morning. One day, the children rub themselves down with alcohol as they had seen some boxers do in a movie and begin to practice their boxing. Afterwards, the oldest boy decides to fry some eggs for lunch, but the alcohol on his chest catches fire and sets off the kerosene, which explodes. The smoke can be seen from the field as the house burns to the ground with the children locked inside and the watching parents helpless to intervene. Through these episodes, Rivera shows that, day after day, incident after incident, the lives of the migrant community are filled with unimaginable suffering in a world supposedly created and watched over by an omniscient and all-loving God, a contradiction the boy struggles to comprehend and which provides a context for the boy’s developing ideas about the often malevolent nature of God’s character. Theodicy, of course, is the appropriate response for a Catholic when faced with this sort of paradox. Leibniz famously argued to the question of unde malum, or the presence of evil in the world, that God is the source of all good in a perfect universe and that physical suffering is therefore logically part of God’s divine plan. He states that, “one may say of physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to obtain greater good . . .” (Leibniz 200). This attitude of submission to God’s inscrutable but perfect will is illustrated in the novel through the unquestioning piety of the boy’s mother. In a story entitled “The Prayer,” she begs God to protect her missing son: Take care of him for me, please, I beseech you. I promise you my life for his. Bring him back from Korea safe and sound. Cover his heart with your hands. Jesus Christ, Holy God, Virgen de Guadalupe, bring him back alive, bring me back his heart. Why have they taken him? He has done no harm. . . . Bring him back alive. I don’t want him to die.

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Here is my heart for his. Here is my heart. Here, in my chest, palpitating. Tear it out if blood is what you want, but tear it out of me. I sacrifice my heart for his. Here it is. Here is my heart! (Rivera 90)⁸

But, despite her fervent appeal to God’s mercy, the only thing we hear again of her son Julian is the letter from the government reporting that he has gone missing in action, so we know even if she does not that her prayer will not be answered. Watching his mother’s and father’s prayers always go unanswered and unable to accept that he and the rest of his family are guilty of behavior so morally reprehensible that they would merit this sort of punishment, or to imagine a future goodness that would depend upon such undeserved suffering, the boy begins to experience his first real doubts regarding God’s benevolence. So he sets out one night to the local cemetery to test for himself whether God really even exists. Initially afraid to confront God directly, he decides to first call out the devil, who “had fascinated him as far back as he could remember” (104). Another voice enters the story, warning him: “I tell you, compadre, you don’t fool around with the devil,” but he is determined: “I’d just like to know whether there is or isn’t . . . If there isn’t a devil, maybe there also isn’t . . . No, I better not say it. I might get punished.” He begins to challenge the devil to appear, gaining courage as he senses that there will be no punishment forthcoming: “He kept calling him by different names. And nothing. No one came out. Everything looked the same. All peaceful. Then he thought it would be better to curse the devil instead. So he did. He swore at him using all the cuss words that he knew and in different tones of voice. He even cursed the devil’s mother” (105 – 6). On his way home, he thinks, “There was no devil.” But just as quickly, he echoes his earlier thoughts: “But if there is no devil neither is there . . . No, I better not say it. I might get punished. But there’s no devil. . . . What better time than at night and me, alone? No, there’s no devil. There isn’t” (106). With these halting efforts and elisions on the boy’s part as he attempts to articulate his growing skepticism about the existence of God, Rivera is demonstrating the process Schweizer describes in which the misotheistic writer employs coded language and leaves gaps “to conceal, even as they hint at, a view that they know would be considered grossly irreverent and blasphemous by many” (2).

 Her plea here clearly contains echoes of the Aztec blood sacrifice in which victims’ hearts were torn from their bodies, another example of the unconscious blending of pagan and Catholic religious practices. See Michael Smith, The Aztecs, pp. 222– 7 for a full discussion of the practice.

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Back home in bed, the boy thought one last time, “There is no devil, there is nothing. The only thing that had been present in the woods was his own voice. No wonder . . . people said you shouldn’t fool around with the devil. Now he understood everything. Those who summoned the devil went crazy, not because the devil appeared, but just the opposite, because he didn’t appear” (106). Despite his growing skepticism, the boy cannot yet abandon religious faith altogether because if he admits there is no devil and there is no God then he must also accept that there is no one left to blame for all the suffering he has witnessed, and he and his people would remain victims of a horrible injustice without any moral recourse. In other words, only by first assigning moral culpability to the figure he has been taught to believe to be responsible for the suffering can the boy derive any sense of meaning in his life. Regarding this impulse, Schweizer writes that, “enemies of God do not so much target religion as they attack the moral character of a god whom they hold responsible for moral tragedies, collective calamities, and the general imperfection of the universe” (14). The boy does just this through a direct challenge against a god in whom he at least for the moment chooses to maintain some belief but in front of whom he refuses any longer to cower helplessly. The narrative comes to a climax in the eponymous title story, “And the Earth Did Not Devour Him,” in which the boy thinks back over all the tragedies that have befallen his own family and begins to truly register his own anger: “The first time he felt hate and anger was when he saw his mother crying for his uncle and aunt,” who had both died of tuberculosis; “[he] became angry because he was unable to do anything against anyone” (108). Now, after an especially hot day out in the fields, his father has fallen victim to heat stroke and is near death, for which the boy feels responsible. As usual, his mother passively turns to God for help: “God willing, he’ll get well.” The boy initially does not respond, but he “became even angrier when he heard his father moan outside the chicken coop” where they had put him to keep him cool. During the night, “he heard his father start to pray and ask for God’s help. At first he had faith that he would get well but by the next day he felt the anger growing inside of him. And all the more when he heard his mother and his father clamoring for God’s mercy” (108 – 9). As he watches his mother wash the scapularies she had placed about his father’s neck and light some candles, he finally confronts her: What’s to be gained from doing all that, Mother? Don’t tell me you think it helped my aunt and uncle any. How come we’re like this, like we’re buried alive? Either the germs eat us alive or the sun burns us up. Always some kind of sickness. And every day we work and work. For what? And there you are, helpless. And them begging for God’s help . . . why,

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God doesn’t care about us . . . I don’t think there even is . . . No, better not say it, what if dad gets worse? Poor Dad, I guess that at least gives him some hope. (109)

His mother again defends God’s mercy, reassuring him, “that everything was in God’s hands and that with God’s help his father was going to get well.” He shouts back at her, “Oh, Mother, do you really believe in that? I am certain that God has no concern for us. Now you tell me, is Dad evil or mean-hearted? You tell me if he has ever done any harm to anyone.” “Of course not,” she replies. He responds, “So there you have it. You see? And my aunt and uncle? You explain. And the poor kids, now orphans, never having known their parents. Why did God have to take them away? I tell you, God could care less [sic] about the poor. . . . What have we done to deserve this? You’re so good and yet you have to suffer so much.” His mother continues her defense: “Oh, please, m’ijo, don’t talk that way. Don’t speak against the will of God. . . . You scare me. It’s as if already the blood of Satan runs through your veins” (109). His fear returns, and he pauses momentarily and says, “Well, maybe. That way at least, I could get rid of this anger.” But suddenly he is overcome by the empowering effects of his blasphemy, and retorts: “I’m so tired of thinking about it. Why? Why you? Why Dad? Why my uncle? Why my aunt? Why their kids? Tell me, mother, why? Why us, burrowed in the dirt like animals with no hope for anything? . . . And like you yourself say, only death brings rest.” She responds again, “That’s how it is, m’ijo. Only death brings us rest”; but he again replies in frustration, “But why us?” “Well, they say that . . .” she begins, but he again interrupts, “Don’t say it. I know what you’re going to tell me—that the poor go to heaven” (109 – 10). This final recourse by his mother to the traditional eschatological argument that the suffering of the faithful will be repaid in another life fails to persuade the boy, whose moral indignation has reached a breaking point. Now, because their father has not recovered, the children must go out into the fields to work in his place so that the family can survive. But like the previous day, the conditions are so harsh that the children begin to get sick, which for the boy represents a final injustice he simply cannot bear and which drives him to react. As he carries his brother out of the field, “he began asking himself why? Why Dad and then my little brother. He’s only nine years old. Why? He has to work like a mule buried in the earth. Dad, Mom, and my little brother here, what are they guilty of? . . . Each step that he took towards the house resounded with the question, why? (110). He begins to grow more furious at this point, until he starts to cry with rage. Finally,

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he started cursing. And without even realizing it he said what he had been wanting to say for a long time. He cursed God. Upon doing this he felt that fear instilled in him by the years and by his parents. For a second he saw the earth opening to devour him. Then he felt his footsteps against the earth, compact, more solid than ever. Then his anger swelled up again and he vented it by cursing God. (110)⁹

That night, his father and his brother are beginning to recover, and as he lies in bed, he “felt at peace as never before. He felt as though he had become detached from everything. . . . All that he awaited was the new day, the freshness of the morning.” Afterwards, he “thought of telling his mother, but he decided to keep it secret. All he told her was that the earth did not devour anyone, nor did the sun” (112). Having justifiably vented his anger, the boy experiences a sense of relief, but the point of misotheistic literature is not simply to curse God for countenancing so much undeserved suffering. The question remains regarding what is to be done to rebuild the lives and reconstruct the identities of this community of migrant workers on whom God has turned his back. For Schweizer, this is the crucial issue at the heart of what he terms “the morality of misotheism” (14). If God has heretofore been represented as the one source of universal morality and has been shown to have abrogated his responsibility in this regard, then morality must originate elsewhere, and for misotheists that source is humanity itself. Schweizer argues that if there is “a common denominator among the various God-haters . . . it is that practically all of them are beholden to ideas of liberation and justice” (14). “Taken together,” he writes, “they are committed to speak truth, to engage in humanitarian work, to seek social justice, and to oppose bigotry” (14– 5). Ultimately, misotheists, like the novel’s protagonist, are concerned with the conditions of human happiness and with the ultimate causes of suffering, and they cannot square their empirical knowledge about these matters with what they were taught to believe about God. They make a negative leap of faith, trusting their own judgment and placing their sense of moral outrage above the fear of God. (23)

Seen in this light, the ending of the novel is especially instructive because here Rivera posits that members of any community that has gone through these sorts of horrific experiences must heal themselves rather than appealing to God’s will,  Unlike Job, who had for many years enjoyed the fruits of his labor and therefore feels compelled to push aside his wife’s exhortation to “Curse God and die” and to accept that mankind must take trouble together with good as part of our covenant with God, the boy and his family experience only unrelenting suffering, and for this reason he feels justified in cursing God’s failure to show mercy to his faithful followers.

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and to do this they must join together and will themselves to remember the events in all their terrifying detail as the first step towards healing. They cannot live as though these horrors did not happen or appeal to God’s better nature to help them, but neither can they allow themselves to become lost in the past. In other words, like Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, no matter how disturbing, the boy must “rememory” the events of his past so that he can reclaim his future. “Freeing yourself,” Morrison writes, “was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another” (95). To this end, the heresy inherent in Chicano literature more generally and in this novel in particular functions as a means to reclaim the marginalized identity of the Chicano community. The final scene of the novel opens with a long stream-of-consciousness passage in which we discover that the boy has actually been narrating his story from underneath a house where he has taken refuge. As the memories of his lost childhood come flooding into his mind, he resolves: I would like to see all the people together. And then, if I had great big arms, I could embrace them all. I wish I could talk to all of them again, but all of them together. . . . From now on, all I have to do is to come here, in the dark, and think about them. And I have so much to think about and I’m missing so many years. I think today what I wanted to do was recall this past year. And that’s just one year. I’ll have to come here to recall all of the years. (Rivera 151)

As he finishes these thoughts, he is discovered, and, as he comes out from under the house, he hears a woman say, “That poor family. First the mother and now him. He must be losing his mind. He’s losing track of the years” (152). But unexpectedly, he smiles, and “immediately felt happy because . . . he realized that in reality he hadn’t lost anything. He had made a discovery. To discover and rediscover and piece things together. This to this, that to that, all with all. That was it. That was everything. He was thrilled” (152). The boy’s joy comes from his realization that he need no longer rely on whatever solace the church can offer, but is instead now free to begin his own process of self-actualization, which in this case is not a matter of merely reconciling antithetical pagan and Christian religious mythologies. It means turning away from religious faith altogether and creating himself anew through his own uniquely human powers of memory and reflection. This is the quintessential human act, an act of self-creation, as the boy, despite the perceived malignancy of God, takes agency over his own life and reconstructs himself as a human being through the power of his own will, his own mind, and his own creativity. Significantly, in one of the only positive scenes in the novel, Rivera also underscores the power of literary expression as a tool for speaking truth and seeking social justice as he introduces a character named Bartolo, an itinerant poet, who

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comes through each year at the end of harvest season, bringing his new poems. “And when he read them aloud,” the boy remembers, “it was something emotional and serious. One time he told the people to read the poems out loud because the spoken word was the seed of love in the darkness” (147).¹⁰ Clearly, Tomás Rivera aligns himself with this humanistic stance as he dramatizes in this novel a young boy’s awakening to the negative influence blind religious devotion has had on his community and the possibility of breaking the cycle of ignorance and servitude it has caused.

Works Cited Anaya, Rudolfo. “Aztlán: A Homeland Without Boundaries.” Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Eds. Rudolfo Anaya and Francisco A Lomeli. Albuquerque: Academia/El Norte, 1989. 230 – 41. —. Bless Me, Ultima. Berkeley: TQS Publications, 1972. Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. 1987. Bray, Gerald. Creeds, Councils & Christ. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984. Dolan, Jay P. and Gilberto M. Hinojosa, eds. Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900 – 1965. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1994. Espinosa, Gastón and Mario T. García, eds. Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. García, Mario T. Católicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History. Austin: University Of Texas P, 2008. Gonzales, Rodolfo. I Am Joaquín. Latin American Studies. n. d. Web. 16 Jan 2015. Gonzales, Rodolfo and Alberto Urista. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. Documents of the Chicano Struggle. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Leal, Luis. “In Search of Aztlán.” Trans. Gladys Leal. Denver Quarterly 16.3 (1981): 16 – 22. Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, The Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. Trans. E. M. Huggard. Chicago: Open Court, 1985. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Plume, 1987. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100 – 600). Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1971. Pina, Michael. “The Archaic, Historical and Mythicized Dimensions of Aztlán.” Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Eds. Rudolfo Anaya and Francisco A Lomeli. Albuquerque: Academia/El Norte, 1989. 14 – 48.

 Gregory Erickson’s excellent points in his essay in this current volume regarding the ways in which the modernist “Death of God” crisis has “changed (or must change) our sense of history, identity, and writing,” which he argues are “intertwined with creating and perceiving art, and our understanding of time, plot, narrative, and the purpose of art,” (23) are especially relevant to my reading of Rivera’s novel.

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Rivera, Tomás. . . . y no se trago la tierra/ And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Trans. Evangelina Vigil-Piñón. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992. Schweizer, Bernard. Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Smith, Michael. The Aztecs. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. What We Believe. “The Nicene Creed.” 2016. Wolf, Eric. “The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol.” Journal of American Folklore 71: 34 – 39. York, Sherry. “The Migrant Experience in the Works of Mexican American Writers.” The Alan Review. 30.1 (2002): 22 – 5.

Thomas J. J. Altizer

The Absolute Heterodoxy of William Blake William Blake is both commonly and critically known as our most revolutionary visionary, but precisely thereby he is deeply unknown to us all, and unknown because we have so little sense of what a genuinely revolutionary vision is. Perhaps this is more true today than previously, and true if only because of the advent of the most conservative world since the birth of modernity, a world in which even our most radical thinkers become conservative when they speak theologically, and in which a radical theology is more silent than ever before. Blake himself was almost universally judged to be a madman until a century after his death, and while his stature today is extraordinarily high, he has virtually no influence upon either our politics or our religion, and this despite the fact that he is hailed as our greatest modern prophet. Both our common politics and our common religion today can be known as true inversions and reversals of Blake’s vision, but that itself gives us a way into this vision, and a vision that is most revolutionary by being so profoundly centered in Jesus. Blake discovered an apocalyptic Jesus who was not historically discovered until the late nineteenth century, so Blake is unique in so deeply centering his vision upon Jesus, if only here he differs decisively from his poetic predecessors, Dante and Milton, just as he also here differs from his poetic successors in the twentieth century. Yet what is most uniquely Blake’s own is his progressive enactment of an apocalyptic and imaginative coincidentia oppositorum, one dialectically uniting Christ and Satan, and doing so only through a radical disruption of our language itself, a disruption issuing in the advent of a purely apocalyptic epic, and one only possible by way of the deepest transfiguration of epic itself. That transfiguration is inseparable from a transfiguration of Blake’s primal opponent and predecessor, Milton, and above all a transfiguration of Milton’s Satan. Milton’s Satan is Milton’s most original creation. There is simply nothing at all like this Satan prior to Milton, and certainly nothing like it in the Bible, apart from its partial predecessor in the Book of Revelation, and Milton was not only a great Biblical scholar and theologian, but he gave us in his Doctrina Christiana, perhaps our only critical and systematic Biblical theology, and not even this theology is open to the Satan of Paradise Lost. There is, however, a deep opening to this Satan in a late work of Blake’s, his illustrations to the Book of Job, for here on the eleventh plate the Creator and Lord who appears at the conclusion of the Book of Job is unveiled with a cloven foot, a decisive sign of Satan, and of that Satan who is absolute sovereignty and absolute sovereignty alone. This revoluhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-004

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tionary vision of Blake is in genuine continuity with Milton, but only by way of inverting Milton’s Creator, and inverting him so as to call him forth as his own ultimate opposite. Now the time of Blake’s most revolutionary vision is also the time of the advent of a purely dialectical Western philosophy. For the first time in the West a philosophical coincidentia oppositorum is purely and comprehensively enacted in Hegel’s philosophy, an enactment truly paralleling Blake’s vision. Thereby Blake’s vision, and, indeed, his truly revolutionary vision, has a profound philosophical ground paralleled by no other imaginative vision, and even if Blake could not possibly have understood Hegel, nor could Hegel have understood Blake, their ultimate enactments nonetheless coincide, and most manifestly coincide as purely dialectical enactments. Hegel, of course, was the first philosopher to enact the death of God, just as Blake was the first visionary to enact that death (in America, 1793), but Hegel is also the first philosopher to know the absolute self-alienation of God, for as he declares in his most revolutionary work, the Phenomenology of Spirit: Absolute Being becomes its own “other,” thereby it withdraws into itself and becomes self-centered or “evil,” yet this is that self-alienation culminating in death, a death which is the death of the alienation or evil of the divine Being (778 – 780). Blake names an absolute self-alienation as Satan, but this does not occur until his own transformation as a visionary, one wholly transforming his earlier vision of Satan, and only now is Satan called forth as the uniquely Christian Creator. This is just the point at which Blake is most deeply known as a Gnostic visionary, but it would be difficult if not impossible to imagine a more anti-Gnostic visionary than Blake, that Blake who is not only a purely erotic poet and visionary, but who has given us a total vision of Body itself, and of that Body which as body is the New Jerusalem. This is the body whose own opposite is the body of Satan, a body which only becomes fully incarnate with the birth of the modern world, but then it is truly and actually everywhere, and everywhere as an absolutely repressive body. Blake discovered repression before its discovery by Nietzsche and Freud, and discovered it by way of his discovery of the totality of Satan, a Satan who is not only the opposite of Christ, but whose very totality is the totality of old aeon or old creation, an old creation not manifest until the advent of the new creation, and a new creation whose name is Jerusalem or the apocalyptic Christ. In Blake’s mature vision, the enactment of Jerusalem or the new creation is the enactment of “The Self-Annihilation of God,” an annihilation calling forth the dead body of God, a body which is the body of Satan, and one only becoming incarnate through the Self-Annihilation of God. Here, we are at the center of Blake’s most revolutionary vision, one calling forth God Himself as Satan, or

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calling forth the uniquely Christian God as Satan, that very God whom Nietzsche in The Antichrist can know as the deification of nothingness or the will to nothingness pronounced holy (18). For this Satan is the very embodiment of the Nothing, a Nothing not fully envisioned until Blake, and one only enacted philosophically in Schelling and Hegel, but not until Schelling and Hegel is the imagination itself philosophically enacted, an enactment inseparable from an enactment of the depths of abyss. Certainly those depths are called forth by Blake, but they are most decisively called forth as the very body of Satan, and the self-annihilation of that body is the ultimate sacrifice, and hence a sacrifice inseparable from the sacrifice of Christ. Blake has given us our fullest imaginative and poetic enactment of the Passion of Christ, a passion even called forth in the Songs of Innocence and Experience, but one which is the very center of Milton and Jerusalem, and hence the center of Blake’s apocalyptic epic. Now that passion is envisioned as the “SelfAnnihilation of God,” one long known as such in the depths of Christian experience, but one always refused by Christian theology, a theology refusing to know the death of Christ as the death of God, and precisely thereby closed to the ultimacy of that passion. And only now is that passion fully enacted imaginatively, but now this ultimate death is only finally or apocalyptically realized by the death of Satan, and by that Self-annihilation of God which is the Self-annihilation of Satan. On the penultimate plate of Jerusalem, there is an illustration of the apocalyptic union of Satan and Jerusalem, one which is perhaps the most erotic in all of Blake’s art, as the body of Jehovah or Satan is about to ecstatically penetrate the body of Jerusalem, a penetration realizing an absolute apocalypse, and an absolute apocalypse occurring here and now. If we have ever been given a Christian Tantric art, this is surely its purest expression, and one truly reversing the Augustinian foundation of Western Christianity. Let us remember that in the City of God the most decisive sign of our ultimately pathological condition is the advent of sexual orgasm (Augustine XIV, 16), an orgasm that did not exist before the fall, for it is a consequence of a new dichotomy between the body and the soul, a violently discordant state in which passion and mind are wholly unlike but wholly commingled, thus making possible a climax wherein the mind is overwhelmed. This is the very moment and condition that makes possible the transmission of original sin, and also the moment in which the will is least free. Each of us has our origin in that moment of pure lust or pure sin, wherein original sin becomes the sin of all, and our actual origin becomes the very opposite of our origin in the creation. Now that pathological origin is totally reversed in Blake’s apocalyptic vision, and reversed by calling forth an apocalyptic orgasm, and an apocalyptic orgasm which is apocalypse itself.

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If nothing else, this vision brings a penetrating light to theology’s continual refusal of apocalypse. Perhaps nothing else so unites the innumerable expressions of Christian theology, and this despite the fact that Christianity was originally an apocalyptic faith or way. Yet no religion or way has so comprehensively reversed itself as has Christianity in its historical evolution, one already beginning in the later expressions of the Pauline tradition, and reaching a kind of consummation in the rebirths of theology in the twentieth century, all of which are truly non-apocalyptic theologies. Now even if Blake’s language and imagery is more comprehensively Christian than is that of another fully modern artist or poet, no poet or artist has been more refused or evaded by theology than has Blake, and refused if only because his is a revolutionary Christian language. It is fascinating that many forms of Marxism have been open to Blake, just as have been other forms of modern radicalism, but the name of Blake is virtually unknown in the world of theology, and even unknown to all but our most radical churches. We may see in Blake, more fully than in any other visionary apart from Dante, a totality of revolutionary vision, a totality comprehending all realms whatsoever, one wherein deity, nature, politics, religion, art, body, and interiority become conjoined, but only conjoined in their ultimate reversal, as each becomes the very opposite of its given or manifest expression, thus making possible a truly comprehensive apocalyptic vision. Nowhere is this reversal more decisively manifest than in this revolutionary vision of Godhead itself, as for the first time Godhead is envisioned as becoming the very opposite of itself, one wherein a “Self-Annihilation of God” becomes an absolute transfiguration of the Godhead, a transfiguration which is an absolute apocalypse. That is the apocalypse transfiguring Satan into Jerusalem, or the God of Judgment into the God of Grace, and only an absolute reversal of the depths of judgment makes possible a realization of the depths of forgiveness or grace, so that Satan as Satan is absolutely essential to this redemption. Thereby we can apprehend the ultimate necessity of Satan, one not known or enacted until Paradise Lost, and just as Blake knew himself as an epiphany of Milton, as recorded in his great epic Milton, Blake’s most revolutionary vision revolves about an absolute reversal of Milton’s Satan, a reversal in which Satan is envisioned as the absolute Lord and Creator, an absolutely solitary Lord not known until Milton, and that is the solitude and the absolutely sovereign solitude whose ultimate reversal realizes an absolute apocalypse. That reversal occurs through an absolute death, but that crucifixion is apocalypse itself, one first openly enacted by Blake, and only in the wake of that enactment did New Testament scholarship unveil the Pauline and Johannine enactments of crucifixion as enactments of apocalypse itself. Yes, Blake is a visionary of eternal

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death, but an eternal death which is an apocalyptic death, and precisely so as the eternal death of Satan. Only that eternal death realizes an absolute compassion, or the compassion of Christ, a compassion truly reversing all Satanic judgment and repression, but a compassion in actuality apart from that reversal, hence the absolute necessity of Satan, and the absolute necessity of Satan for apocalypse itself. Hence the primacy of Satan in all apocalyptic vision, and the fuller the apocalyptic vision the fuller the vision of Satan; inevitably Satan is absolutely primary in Blake’s vision, a primacy apart from which there is no possibility of that “Self-Annihilation of God” which is absolute atonement, and hence no possibility of an ultimate redemption or regeneration. A purely or finally apocalyptic redemption is not envisioned until Blake, and then it is envisioned as an absolute transfiguration of everything whatsoever, a transfiguration released by the “Self-Annihilation of God,” but that annihilation is an absolute sacrifice, and the absolute sacrifice of Satan, a Satan who thereby realizes a coincidentia oppositorum with Christ. Could there possibly be a greater or more absolute heterodoxy than that enacted in Blake’s mature vision? Yet this is a vision that deeply affected Yeats and Joyce, and a host of other artists and poets, and even if philosophy has not entered Blake’s vision, there is a full correlation between Blake’s “System” and Hegel’s. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the pure heterodoxy of Hegel’s philosophy, and if we can know that philosophy as the primary philosophical ground of a revolutionary modernity, this is a modernity in which Blake is truly embodied, and embodied as what he knew as Energy. Perhaps only Blake knows this Energy as Eros itself, and an ecstatic Eros, an Eros embodied in a uniquely Blakean apocalypse, but that is an absolute apocalypse, or that very apocalypse enacted by Blake. Blake is our fullest enactor of absolute Body, or a bodily totality, one that he can name as Albion, but an Albion that is finally regenerated as Jerusalem, a Jerusalem who herself finally becomes an absolutely transfigured Satan. Here, the concluding plates of Jerusalem are of decisive importance, plates giving us our most revolutionary vision of Satan, a Satan initially appearing as the absolutely sovereign and transcendent Creator, a Creator who undergoes an eternal death in the “Self-Annihilation of God.” The absolute scandal of the Crucifixion now becomes decisively clear, a scandal which Christianity itself has deeply resisted, and only after a millennium does the Crucifixion appear in Christian art, but then it overwhelms Christian art and iconography, and becomes the primary symbol of Christian art. Not even Dante could or would enact the Crucifixion, but his contemporary, Giotto, did, a Giotto who revolutionized painting, and even revolutionized painting in his absolutely new vision of Christ. Almost immediately the Crucifixion becomes all in all in Christian art, but only all too grad-

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ually did this transfiguration occur in Christian poetry, a transfiguration most profoundly occurring in Milton and Blake. Blake is our only major poet who is poet and artist at once, and if Jerusalem is his greatest work, here his illustrations and designs are overwhelmingly important, and if the greatest of these is the 96th plate, here the Creator/Satan is just about to sexually penetrate the beautiful body of Jerusalem, a penetration whose consequence is an absolute apocalypse. One only has to carefully examine this plate to realize this, yet it is an absolutely forbidden topic. Perhaps the most absolute of all blasphemies and heterodoxies occurs here, and all too significantly this is the conclusion or resolution of Blake’s greatest work. Another forbidden topic is Christianity’s absolute reversal of its original ground; this is primal for both Blake and Nietzsche, just as it is primal in a large body of our New Testament scholarship, but it is alien to Christian theology, or to the great body of Christian theology. While the apocalyptic identity of Jesus and his proclamation and enactment are commonly accepted by New Testament scholarship, this is a ground that is ever more decisively transformed in Hellenistic Christianity, and soon it disappears altogether, as the dawning Kingdom of God of Jesus and primitive Christianity is transformed into the absolutely sovereign and absolutely transcendent Creator. Ever since, the most revolutionary movements in Christianity have been apocalyptic movements, as exemplified by the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, a truly apocalyptic explosion which gave us Milton and a host of other revolutionary visionaries who absolutely assaulted the Church and an established Christendom. We shall never know how many radicals there have been in Christian history, but there can be no question of the existence of a Radical Christianity, and one that is most clearly manifest in a uniquely Christian heterodoxy. Milton and Blake are Radical Christians, but so, too, are Schelling and Hegel, and although each is a deeply individual enactor, all of them share a profound Christian heterodoxy, and one going far beyond the Christian orthodoxies of their worlds. The truth is that heterodoxy, or a deep heterodoxy, demands a far greater energy and power than does orthodoxy, which is precisely its attraction for many. Ernst Troeltsch showed us how monasticism could draw dissenters into its life who otherwise would have become sectarian, and it is not insignificant that the most powerful Catholic theology has been created by monks, monks far more disciplined than the great majority, a discipline necessary to preserve orthodoxy, but a discipline which could nonetheless sow the seeds of heterodoxy. Great historical crises generate heterodoxy, just as does war and plague; powerful ruling bodies enforce orthodoxy as a primary means of control, just as it is heterodoxy that generates the deepest dissent and revolt. Nothing is more controversial than

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the historical effects of the Reformation, but there is no doubt that it brought to an end a holy and universal order, an ending that finally results in the ending of monarchy itself, which may well be the greatest of all historical revolutions. Need we wonder that vast numbers of heretics were burned at the stake? What could be a greater sign of their power? Perhaps nothing is stranger about our new world than the apparent absence of heterodoxy; this is certainly not a sign of the goodness and justice of our world, but is it a sign of the absence of a deeper energy or a deeper engagement? Ultimate controversies such as the war between Catholicism and Protestantism have simply disappeared, and it is difficult to believe that controversies over gay marriage and contraception are signs of an ultimate conflict, just as it is certainly significant that profound problems such as the vast disparities in our incomes fail to generate an ultimate discord, and it appears that nothing could disrupt our tranquility. Is this a world at peace or a world asleep? Is heterodoxy impossible in our world? Would revolutionary prophets be impossible for us? Can Blake not be renewed for us? Or can Blake any longer even be encountered at all? Once there were radical religious bodies generating dissent, a dissent that is not even imaginable today; indeed, a profound dissent is now unthinkable. Has heterodoxy been so deeply conquered that it is no longer possible? Blake may have been blessed by having no formal education, and if he was almost wholly self-taught, is that essential for a genuine prophet? Blake is unique in having created both innocent and simple poetry and designs as well as the most complex and esoteric literature in our canon. Unfortunately, the most radical and heterodox Blake is only present in his prophetic poetry, a poetry which few can read, but his “Everlasting Gospel” which he left only in manuscript is both easy to read and genuinely explosive, just as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell can be read by all. Above all, Blake is a poet and prophet for Jesus, and his is a Jesus who is a truly universal Jesus, more universal than any other Jesus, but nonetheless a revolutionary Jesus, indeed, our most revolutionary Jesus. Our scholarship has so fully established Jesus as an eschatological or apocalyptic Jesus that it is difficult to realize how revolutionary Blake was in discovering the apocalyptic Jesus. The apocalyptic Jesus ushers in the end of everything that we know as world, a world that even now has come to an end, and that ending realizes apocalypse here and now. Yes, this is an absolute judgment, but it is simultaneously an absolute liberation, and above all a liberation of the weak and the oppressed. Only heterodoxy and an ultimate heterodoxy is open to apocalypse, and Blake is our most heterodox seer, but precisely thereby he is our most apocalyptic seer, and a seer who finally knows Yes and only Yes.

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Works Cited Augustinus, Aurelius. The City of God against the Pagans. Trans. George E. McCracken. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U, 2006. Blake, William. Jerusalem. Ed. Morton D. Paley. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. —. Milton, A Poem. Ed. Rober N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi. Vol. 5. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford U, 2013. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. John Leonard. 1st ed. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols ; And, the Anti-Christ. Ed. R. J. Hollingdale. Trans. Michael Tanner. London: Penguin, 2003.

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II. Medieval Heresy

If you asked a random person on the street what they know about heresy, the odds are that he or she would think of something generally medieval in character. Inspired by Hollywood movies from the silent Joan of Arc to the Name of the Rose to Monty Python, the word heresy invokes images of the Inquisition, witchcraft, wild-eyed revolutionaries, evil monks, and burning and torture. But understanding the historical, social, and theological significance of heretical movements in the Middle Ages is a complex task, and one that has changed its focus in recent decades. Once reductively characterized as the “Age of Faith,” the Middle Ages were thought to represent (depending largely on your confessional position) either the height of Catholic spirituality or the peak of Christian superstition and theological and ecclesiastical corruption. Protestant influenced scholars established a stubborn historical interpretation of medieval Christianity as decayed and incoherent, dominated by magical rites surrounded by relics, miracles, and fables, and ruled over by corrupt institutional practices such as the selling of indulgences. By the 1980s and 1990s, scholars such as Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy had influentially challenged that view, arguing instead for flourishing and robust medieval devotional traditions and a theology that was not inevitably in need of reform. It was around the year 1000 that alternative forms of Christian belief and practice, represented by movements such as the Bogomils, “signalled the revival of heresy through Latin Europe for the first time since late antiquity” (Frassetto 22). Although theological disputes had never ceased, the new millennium saw new understandings of church and world that created the climate for new marginal movements and new power struggles. The official Church deemed many of these emerging movements heretical, and the eleventh century saw the first officially sanctioned execution for heresy since antiquity. The most famous medieval heretical movements come from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period that saw rapid urban growth and an expansion of trade and manufacturing. These shifts led to a new class of people, people whose power and wealth was not based on inherited wealth or ecclesiastical bounty, but on money earned through business. The growing merchant and manufacturing class exhibited a rising literacy that resulted in a flow of biblical and theological texts, but that also created challenges to the Church, oftentimes resulting in heresy. The “return” or “revival” of heresy included such groups as the Waldensians, the Cathars, the Hussites, and the Beguines, groups who challenged the organization and ideas of the Church particularly around issues of dualism, Christology, apostolic poverty, and gender. Today’s historians continue to write new accounts offering explanation of medieval heretical movements, continually making the point that we rarely get to hear the heretics’ side of the story—in this case, too, history is told by the win-

ners. Although historically and theologically much work on heresy focused on locating the “roots,” it is an appropriate cautionary reminder that the founder of perhaps the first great heresy of the Middle Ages, Bogomil, is such a mysterious figure that some historians even question his actual existence. In his important work on medieval heresy, Malcom Lambert writes, “every historian of heresy must encounter the conflict of emphasis between the supporters of religious and of socio-economic factors as prime movers in the genesis of heresy” (xiv). Lambert’s work, like that of most early twentieth century historians of religion, clearly falls on the side of the “religious” view, but while heretical movements are still primarily defined and remembered through competing theological beliefs and by individual heresiarchs, recent researcher emphasizes that it has become impossible to deny that all medieval heresies can be traced to a complex blend of both social and religious developments. Of course the view that heretical movements might stem from something other than strictly religious or theological engagements—i. e. from oppressed populations seeking either better conditions or a different narrative of self-definition—is not one that would have occurred to the Church leaders who determined what was heretical and what was not; to them, heresy was the work of the devil. While twentieth century studies of medieval heresies did not experience the dramatic paradigm-shifting discoveries of the Nag Hammadi findings that transformed the study of ancient Christian Gnosticism, medieval studies have clearly moved in specific new directions, several of which are represented in this section. The study of medieval heresy, like the study of medievalism and religion in general, has shifted from a focus on doctrine, theologians and Church Fathers to the everyday experiences, lived practices, and devotional interactions of men, women, and children in specific times and places. In addition, the often accepted view of the Middle Ages in Western Europe as an era when the general public was not able and not encouraged to read and study the Bible or theology has also been challenged. For example, the idea of what it means to “read” or be “literate” is not as straight forward as it once seemed. Evidence suggests that biblical literacy was “actively encouraged by the Church” (van Liere 177), and that “there was both more illiteracy among the clergy, and more literacy among the laity than is often supposed” (179). More recently, scholars like the two represented in this section have paid more attention to local variations and particularities in faith and practice, and have looked to reveal grey areas of belief, blurred borders between theological positions and actual practices, and untold, repressed, or forgotten histories. The two subjects addressed in this section— Natalie Calder’s exploration of the complex and under-examined relationship between heresy and unbelief in medieval literature and sermons and Kathryn Green’s essay on why some

women were drawn to heretical sects —represent two important areas in the study of medieval religion and heresy that have been traditionally neglected.

Works Cited Frassetto, Michael. The Great Medieval Heretics: Five Centuries of Religious Dissent. New York: BlueBridge, 2010. Lambert, Malcom. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd ed. London: Blackwell, 2002. van Liereh, Frans. An Introduction to the Medieval Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Natalie Calder

Unbelief and the Problem of Heresy: A Late Medieval Context Thanne I [kneled] on my knees and cryed hir of grace, And preyed hir pitousely prey for my synnes, And also kenne me kyndeli on Criste to bileve, That I mighte worchen his wille that wroughte me to man. (Langland B.I.79 – 82)¹ (Then I kneeled on my knees and cried to her for grace, And asked her piteously to pray for my sins, And also show me how to believe naturally in Christ, That I might do the will of He who made me man).

The suggestion that late medieval English texts engage in the possibility of unbelief – especially to the extent of non-belief in God – is not a traditional viewpoint. Discussions of religious thinking that may engage in unbelief in any form (for example skepticism, doubt, atheism, apathy) are largely overwhelmed by a focus on heresy.² Indeed, until recently, scholarship of late medieval English religious texts habitually perpetuated a binary perception of devotional culture. Anne Hudson’s seminal The Premature Reformation, published in 1988, brought about an emphasis on the importance of Lollardy – that heresy of disendowment and the literal Word originating with the Oxford theologian John Wyclif – which has driven criticism of late medieval devotional culture for the past thirty years. Such a focus on heresy, however, created a dichotomy in historiography between supposedly “orthodox” and “heterodox” texts. Those which did not seem to fit the extreme ends of the spectrum were allocated a position in a homogeneous “grey area” – a notion which was proposed initially by Hudson in her 1981 essay entitled “Some Problems of Identity and Identification in Wycliffite Writ-

 All translations from Middle English into Modern English are my own unless otherwise indicated.  “Heresy” here is understood as the support of tenets of faith that are contrary to accepted doctrine. In this essay specifically, “heresy” refers to the deviation from Christian orthodoxy that is recorded in inquisitorial investigations and didactic materials from the period. While often encapsulating a difference in belief, heresy does not always constitute “unbelief,” hence the essay’s attempt to recalibrate this assumption. Indeed, as Kathryn Green’s essay in this volume shows, participation in heretical sects was not necessarily even a matter of belief, but rather a means of providing choices and freedoms for women that might not otherwise have been afforded to them. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-005

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ings,” and later expanded upon in The Premature Reformation. ³ It is in the seemingly homogeneous, ill-defined grey area which texts that patently refuse such identities must variously dwell. Moreover, the nature of the majority of source materials available is such that it encourages a “top-down” approach to the study of medieval religion. Given that religious writing of the Middle Ages remained primarily within the domain of the clergy, it is assumed that spiritual engagement is the reserve of the clerical elite, which is then passed down to a laity made up of “passive receptacles” (Davis 309), eagerly – and mutedly – awaiting instruction. Thus the capacity for late medieval texts to evince notions of unbelief within the laity has gone broadly unnoticed.⁴ John Arnold has stated that: There has been a long-standing tradition that claims that unbelief, in the sense of cynicism, atheism, irreligion and so forth, was “impossible” in the pre-modern period; that prior to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, nobody was mentally capable of thinking outside the accepted framework of religion. This is simply not true. (4)

One such example can be found in David Wootton’s “Unbelief in Early Modern Europe,” in which he suggests that “The Middle Ages . . . offered few alternative systems of thought, argument and belief. Rejections of Christianity are likely to have been only partial, inconsistent, and hesitant” (89). Such a reduction in the complexity of medieval religion (as identified here by Arnold) has created a problematic, two-dimensional conceptualization of history, one which portrays an overly simplistic view of late medieval spirituality, in which lay unbelief has no place. These caveats aside, one of the benefits of the increased focus on heresy studies of medieval literature has been to assist in deconstructing the assertion that the Middle Ages were a homogeneous “Age of Faith.” Indeed, in highlighting the extent to which Lollard thought appears in what are ostensibly “orthodox” compilations, Middle English heresy studies has shown that the capacity for critical engagement with faith is evident in lay communities of late medieval England. An important corollary of this, however, is that unbelief is paradoxically homogenized as Lollardy, increasingly in modern Medieval Studies scholar-

 The notion inspired later critics to focus on “grey area” texts; see Jill Havens’ work in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale.  Fortunately, medieval unbelief as a legitimate field of inquiry is being brought to the fore through the important works of John Arnold, Dorothea Weltecke, Steven Justice, Susan Reynolds and others.

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ship becoming a catch-all term for orthodoxy’s “other” in discussions of late medieval England. Narratives of secularization have also limited scholars’ ability to investigate fully the nuances of lay belief. The notion of “modernity” as constituting a nonmedieval “secular age” (the title of Charles Taylor’s 2007 history) has resulted in texts, political movements and philosophical ideas inherited from the Middle Ages being overshadowed in light of the Renaissance. (Hans Blumenberg’s The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, for example, repudiates any debt modernity may owe to medieval culture.)⁵ Such a notion has also caused critics to read phenomena of the Middle Ages with the superficial comfort of hindsight. Yet even as scholars attempt to refute the periodizing narratives which promote a divide between a homogeneous, pre-modern “Age of Faith” and the Early Modern “secular” state, the Middle Ages continue to be perceived in sectarian terms, terms which can limit our understanding of the subtleties of lay devotion. This is coupled with a rising interest in historiography of atheism: observed as the key marker of a “modern” age, scholarship of atheism is keen to trace its history from its Greek roots through the Enlightenment to the present, “post-secular” day.⁶ Invariably, narratives of atheism contain a thousand year-shaped gap in history as the Middle Ages are glossed over, too “religious” to be significant. The dichotomization of a “secular” present against a “religious” past serves to nullify, in our minds, the possibility of unbelief in late medieval devotional culture. Atheism is therefore presented as a post-medieval phenomenon. In light of such an assertion, this essay will draw attention to texts which problematize the assumption that unbelief was impossible in late medieval England. One such example can be found in the fourteenth-century English allegorical dream-vision Piers Plowman. In Passus I, Will begins his search for knowledge of God by asking Lady Holy Church – a personification modeled on Lady Philosophy from Boethius’s influential sixth century De consolatione philosophiae – to teach him how to believe in Christ. One of the most widely read and reproduced texts of the Middle Ages (extant in over 50 surviving manuscripts), Piers Plowman is also one of the most challenging to read. The poem forces the reader to examine and critique cultural, social, political and religious issues, without ever drawing a definitive conclusion to the questions it provokes. One such question lies in Will’s attempt to understand belief. Listening to Holy Church expound upon the necessity of “Trewthe” (“Truth”) (Langland B.I.85), Will struggles to grasp the meaning behind her repeated riddle of “Whan alle tre-

 For a convincing counter-argument, see Cole and Smith’s The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages.  A counterpoint emerges in Nick Spencer’s recent Atheists: The Origin of the Species.

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sores arne y-tried, Treuthe is the beste” (“When all treasures have been tried, Truth is the best”) (B.I.135). Unsatisfied with her answer, he asks Holy Church to clarify what she means: “‘Yet have I no kynde knowing,’ quod I, ‘yet mote ye kenne me better | By what craft in my corps it comseth and where’” (“‘Yet I have no natural knowledge’, said I, ‘yet you must explain to me better | By what means it appears in my body and from where’”) (B.I.137– 38). Lady Holy Church impatiently explains that “It is a kynde knowyng that kenneth in thine herte | For to love thi Lorde lever than thiselve” (“It is a natural thing that you know in your heart | To love your Lord better than yourself”) (B.I.143 – 44). It is both the concept and possession of “kynde knowyng” – or inherent, divinely seeded knowledge – with which Will struggles; Lady Holy Church’s repeated use of the phrase in her explanation does little to alleviate his confusion. Will’s difficulty in comprehending Lady Holy Church, however, lies much deeper than the superficial misunderstanding of the terms she uses (despite her disapproval of Will’s “To litel Latyn” (“Too little Latin”) (B.I.141)). In the oft-quoted passage included above, Will is asking Holy Church to explain the concept of belief itself. His lack of “kynde knowing,” of an innate sense of faith in Christ, causes him to seek to replace this with knowledge attained through Lady Holy Church. Significantly, the answer he receives is insufficient. For it is implied, at least at this early stage in the poem, that at the beginning of his quest for knowledge, Will has no natural belief in God.⁷ Will’s grappling with belief and unbelief in the Passus quoted at the beginning of this essay is included in all three versions of Piers Plowman; evident in his own search for truth is a search for what belief in God (and by extension, religion itself) entails. Such an exploration of what religion may involve in a medieval context is not unique to Langland; texts abound in manuscripts of late medieval England which detail exactly what one needed to believe, perform, recite and remember in order to be considered a good Christian. One such example can be found in the poems collected in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 102 and edited by Helen Barr as The Digby Poems: Poem 18, entitled “The Declaryng of Religioun,” sets out exactly what that particular writer understood – and thought others should understand – by “religioun.” And yet no solid, definitive answer has been given to Will’s question. It seems pertinent to query, then, why, in a corpus of texts so diverse as medieval “religious” writing, the label of “religious” is assumed to indicate homogeneity. Indeed, exploration of unbelief is not limited to poetic fiction such as Piers Plowman. Perhaps surprisingly, it is possible to trace unbelief throughout much

 Such a reading of Passus I is not new; see Harwood’s Piers Plowman and the Problem of Belief.

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“orthodox” writing of late medieval England, evidencing not only a distinct awareness of unbelief, but positively engaging with the risks it poses to orthodoxy. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 23 includes a version of the English Creed, one of twenty-seven texts in a devotional miscellany, which dates from the early fifteenth century.⁸ The opening lines of the Creed are as follows: Here sueþ a schort declaracion of bileue in general . Also as touchyng þe Crede : we schulen understonde þre maneres of bileeue On is to bileeue in to god . þe secunde is to bileeue god . þe þridde is to bileeue to god. (fol. 60v, 25 – 29) (Here follows a short declaration of belief in general. Also as touching the Creed, we shall understand Three manners of belief. One is to believe into God. The second is to believe God. The third is to believe to God.)

Preceding a sermon on Christian community, surrounded by other texts which instruct the reader on matters of sacraments, prayer, and spiritual and bodily “wits,” the Creed serves as clarification of what it means to “bileeue” (“believe”) in medieval lay devotional culture. Or, put more carefully, what the Church meant in its instruction to the laity to “bileeue”. The Creed goes on to dissect the three manners of belief stated in its opening lines: the first, “to bileeue in to god,” is “to cleue to hym bi loue in fulfillyng of his comaundements” (“to adhere to him in fulfilling his commandments through love”) (fol. 60v, 29 – 30); the second, “to bileeue god,” is “to bileeue þat þer is a god . & þat he is almiȝti withouten bigynnyng & endyng & þat he made alle þingis of nouȝt” (“to believe that there is a God, and that he is almighty without beginning and end and that he made everything from nothing”) (fol. 61r, 15 – 17); the third manner of belief, “to bileeue to god,” is “to bileeue þat is al trewe & may not lye & he may not be fals . & þat is his lawe is al trewe” (“to believe that all [that one is told] is true and may not be lies, and He may not be false, that is, his law is all true”) (fol. 61r, 18 – 20). The Church’s expectation of the laity – as represented in this Creed – in the practice of faith is therefore centered

 The manuscript has most likely been compiled for a clerical reader; frequent references to “brother,” along with the inclusion of didactic texts, suggest that the material perhaps was intended to assist the reader as a teaching aid. For a detailed description of the manuscript, see Ryan Perry’s description included in the Geographies of Orthodoxy project.

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around three aspects: primarily, that faith is shown through action, through the fulfillment of God’s commandments; secondly, that the individual must believe in the existence of God; and thirdly, that the individual trusts in the veracity of faith. It therefore provides an ostensibly simple set of criteria of belief for lay people to follow to achieve salvation. The simplicity of such criteria, however, belies the complexity of belief itself. For those without “kynde knowing,” the Creed’s instructions (allegorized in Langland’s Lady Holy Church) evade comprehension, rendering the task of believing in God more difficult than such didactic material may at first suggest. Moreover, the Creed articulates more than mere expectations of the Church in matters of lay devotion. The notion of unbelief (or at least an awareness of it within the Creed’s intended audience) can be seen less ostensibly – but no less resolutely – within the short text. The capacity for a medieval religious text, historiographically labeled as “orthodox,” to articulate and respond to complex issues of lay unbelief is so subtle that often it has been overlooked; instead, scholarship traditionally has rendered belief in the Middle Ages homogeneous, instead, scholarship has traditionally rendered belief in the Middle Ages as homogeneous and uncomplicated, based on accounts of “popular” lay religion.⁹ Nevertheless, in its attempt to anticipate the struggles and temptations with which an individual might be faced, the Creed provides an insight into the complexity of belief and unbelief within lay communities. The first indication of unbelief in this Creed is in the mention of the “heþen” (“heathen”) (fol. 61r, 2), he who may tempt the soul away from Christ with irreligion. Significantly, the text does not fit scholarship’s idea of a clean-cut dichotomy between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, an idea which historiography traditionally imposes upon medieval religious writing of this nature. Instead, the writer warns “þat if ony man . cristen or heþen wolde compelle þe to for sake þe articlis of þi bileeue : þou mostist haue vertu” (“that if any man, Christian or heathen, would compel you to forsake the articles of your belief, you must have virtue”) (fol. 61r, 2– 4). Unbelief for this writer, then, is not the reserve of heathens or heretics: the potential instead resides within “ony man” (“any man”). Similarly, the writer asserts that: þe articlis of þe crede þu most bileeue withouten ony doutyng . not bileeue þat on article is trewe & suppose þat anoþer is not trewe. (fol. 61r, 7– 10)

 For examples, see the later discussion of Sommerville and Bernard’s conceptions of “popular” medieval lay devotion.

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(the articles of the creed you must believe without any doubt, [you must] not believe that one article is true and suppose that another is not true)

Here the writer directly addresses the issue of doubt within lay communities. For him, the partiality of belief in some “articlis of þe crede” (“articles of the Creed”) and disbelief – or unbelief – in others is insufficient to achieve salvation. And yet, in order for the Creed to address such potential for unbelief, it must follow that the practice of not just doubt, but selecting some articles of faith to believe in and rejecting others, does exist already within the community the writer is trying to educate. Here in the Middle English text, contrary to historiographical representations, a homogeneous sense of orthodoxy within the laity is not assumed. The complexity of lay engagement with belief is thus articulated through the writer’s attempt to manage unbelief in such a way that encourages orthodoxy within the individual. The more surprising engagement with unbelief in the Creed, however, is found in the second manner of “bileeue” (“belief”): to believe that there is a God. Notwithstanding arguments which advise against reading negatively the evidence provided to us by source material,¹⁰ the assertion that one must believe that there is a God invites the critic to play devil’s advocate: to suggest that there are those who do not believe in God. (Indeed, such an assertion can be evidenced by Will’s lack of belief in Passus I as quoted above.) The historiography of atheism – and whether one can apply the term to this kind of evidence – is an issue too large for the present essay. For now, it is apparent at least that the English Creed not only articulates instructions on how to believe, but is responsive to potential threats to the integrity of the Church’s definition of belief. And it is interesting that these threats of unbelief – here at least – come not in the form of heresy, but of “ony person”. John Arnold has warned, in his discussion of uncovering unbelief, that “whatever strands of disbelief might have existed tend to be swamped by the programmatic depiction of ‘heresy’ in the available sources” (218). Such a programmatic depiction of heresy, it may be argued, is also apparent in critical writing of late medieval religious texts. To investigate a more nuanced perception of belief in the late Middle Ages, then, it is necessary to be more critical of the terms taken for granted in historiographical representations of lay religious culture. It has become commonplace to describe the Middle Ages as religiose, dichotomizing orthodoxy with heterodoxy, while assuming that the terms one uses are clear  See, in particular, Silvia Berti’s essay entitled “At the Roots of Unbelief.”

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cut or unproblematic. One key question which seems to present itself in such discussions (indeed, the same question which appears to have troubled Will), quite often without being articulated, is deceptively simple: what is religion? What do we mean when we describe a culture as “religious,” and how might the struggle for definition affect historians’ views of the Middle Ages? Christopher G. Bradley puts forward the question of defining “religion” in his discussion of The Cloud of Unknowing: “The underlying question in these pages is: do medieval English religious texts not seem somehow, and at least somewhat, recognizably religious, thus demanding of us some sort of scholarly consideration – say, even a theory – of what religion is or how it works?” (118). The attempt to pinpoint what religion is has been a concern not only in historical and literary scholarship, but also within anthropology, sociology, philosophy and theory for much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Religion as a concept, however, seems to elude definition (a point made manifest not least in Bradley’s repeated use of the term in the quotation above, both to describe and query his material). Indeed, Hent de Vries, editor of Religion: Beyond a Concept, points out that “In most intellectual efforts to define it, ‘religion’ seems to retreat. . . . Paradoxically, the more pressure one applies to ‘religion’, to its concept(s), referent(s), and requisite(s), the more resilient these categories tend to become” (9). Nowhere is this resilience more apparent than in discussion of lay belief in the medieval “Age of Faith.” If scholarship of the Middle Ages struggles to articulate what one means exactly when one uses the term “religious” as a means of habitually defining a culture such as that of medieval England, perhaps there is potential in querying one’s own assumptions about what religion entails. John Shinners has suggested that: all Christians, no matter their status, shared essentially the same religious world view and acted on it in similar ways. If for no other reason, almost everyone learned their earliest religious lessons at the knees of their parents or other lay people, so almost everyone started from the same point. (xv)

Setting aside the obvious problems with an all-encompassing, generalizing account of lay education for the moment, the quotation above draws attention to the necessity of querying standard assumptions about lay devotional culture, which appear to have become obtuse. As Arnold states in a later essay, “Generalist accounts of medieval religion, when they mention the laity, tend to ascribe to them a passive, accepting religiosity that admits little possibility of reflection or doubt” (“Materiality” 65 – 66). The characterization of a passive laity most often contributes in historiography to an overarching narrative of periodization that fa-

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vors the modern (or Early Modern) over the medieval.¹¹ It also simplifies our understanding of the way in which the laity engaged with “religion”. Such a reading dismisses the potential for divergent, critical thinking among the laity which does not necessarily amount to heresy. Similarly, in a chapter dedicated to the exploration of lay knowledge of religion, G. W. Bernard queries how far members of the laity in the late Middle Ages could be said to be Christian. He asks: But what of the people? How far were the people of England Christian [sic]? What did they grasp of the teachings of Christ? One of the greatest areas of vulnerability of the church was ignorance and misunderstanding of Christian[sic] theology. The richness and sophistication of that theology, not least as elaborated in the universities of high medieval Europe, could be grasped only by years of study and by the exercise of rare intellectual skills. It would have been too demanding to have required such depths of understanding from everyone. (87)

In querying one of the key assumptions historians have harbored – that everyone in medieval England was a Christian – Bernard appears at first glance to be complicating the standard perception of lay religion in the Middle Ages. Instead, he draws on the long-standing opinion that there was a significant disparity between the clergy and the laity, especially in terms of possessing the intellectual tools to grasp the nuances and sophistication of theological arguments. Religion – specifically Christianity – here is defined primarily as complicated, high theology that is rendered too difficult for the ordinary medieval mind to comprehend. An important corollary to this is that deviance from orthodoxy is characterized as “ignorance and misunderstanding of christian theology.” The possibility of unbelief – of critical, skeptical, divergent comprehension, however basic, of Christian doctrine – here is silenced. For Bernard, proper understanding of religion in the Middle Ages is rooted in intellect and years of critical engagement, two qualities in which the laity are, by his account, lacking. Instead, he postulates that “late medieval church-goers [might] know less, but feel more” (99). Bernard’s account of medieval lay knowledge is informed primarily by his work as an Early Modern historian. Explaining medieval belief by analyzing the period retrospectively, through reference to the Reformation, he goes on to suggest that “one of the most common explanations of the sixteenth-century reformation stresses the increasingly higher levels of

 For an analysis of the tensions that periodization produces between medievalists and Early Modernists (admittedly one which leans toward hyperbole), see Margreta de Grazia’s essay entitled “The Modern Divide: From Either Side”.

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learning and literacy, and consequently heightened intellectual expectations, of the laity” (87). Bernard’s representation of lay religious knowledge evinces the issues of historiography which, when unacknowledged or unrecognized, render accounts of medieval religion problematic. Michel de Certeau’s renowned work, The Writing of History, calls attention to the political nature of historiography. He asserts that modern Western history “forces the silent body to speak” (3), in effect, creating a new form of silence under the pretense of recovering a verifiable voice. Frank Ankersmit elucidates de Certeau’s conception of historiography through his suggestion that: [historical writing may] permit the historian to develop a construction of the past but not a re-construction of the past (as it actually had been). It may function as evidence for a certain conjecture of what the past may well have been like but can never amount to a revelation of its actual nature because we can never check these conjectures against the past itself. (113)

Such a theory of historiography – that what is represented is a construction of the scholar – is important not least because it reminds us that the prejudices, opinions and conceptions of the historian’s contemporary episteme, those which may have influenced the representation of religion in the Middle Ages, must be taken into consideration. The traditional perception of medieval religion is most often constructed in historiography out of periodizing narratives which read the late Middle Ages as a moment of decline: of a power-hungry, and yet failing, medieval Church which gives way inevitably to modernity, to interior spirituality, secularism and, most significantly (however misleading), new-found choice.¹² Kathleen Davis’s understanding of periodization is particularly apt here: By periodization I mean not simply the drawing of an arbitrary line through time, but a complex process of conceptualizing categories. . . . Periodization as I address it, then, does not refer to a mere back-description that divides history into segments, but to a fundamental political technique – a way to moderate, divide, and regulate – always rendering its services now. (3 – 5)

Davis emphasizes the notion that the perception of the past, and subsequently the determination to divide history into units of information of which we can  See, by way of example, Wootton’s assertion of “the fact that [the Reformation] offered men and women for the first time a choice as to what they should believe” (90). For examples of the traditional narrative of decline, see Huizinga’s The Autumn of the Middle Ages and Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic.

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make sense, is inextricable from historians’ conceptions of present circumstances. In its haste to transcribe its own narrative of progression, historiography relies on the inevitability of the “religiose” Middle Ages succumbing to a rational, Enlightened “modernity”, problematically presuming a definitive break in culture while relying on unproblematised terms to evoke, by its own admission, disparate circumstances.¹³ In his defence of Lucien Febvre’s thesis that atheism was impossible in the Middle Ages, C. John Sommerville elucidates – and perhaps unwittingly demonstrates – the confusion in potentia of relying on “modern” conceptions of terms to articulate the complexities of religious belief in the past. He contends that “the inversion of official religious standards – by blasphemy, heterodoxy, even demon-worship – does not show a decline of religious ‘belief’. Quite the reverse … for it shows that his subjects could best express their opposition to the religious establishment in religious terms” (152). For Sommerville, the use of “religious terms” to articulate dissatisfaction with the Church is correlative to religious belief; he goes on to assert that “they lacked the words and cultural foundation for a sceptical perspective” (153). Unbelief is impossible in the Middle Ages, according to this reading, because the terms used today to articulate it were unavailable in pre-modernity. In a strange projection of present-day conceptions of unbelief onto his subject, Sommerville finds the Middle Ages incapable of evidencing unbelief precisely because it is understood as a post-medieval phenomenon.¹⁴ Such a reading, however, ignores the textual evidence of church authorities’ attempts to combat unbelief through exempla and didactic texts. The twenty-second sermon of Stephen Morrison’s recently published collection entitled A Late Fifteenth-Century Dominical Sermon Cycle contains an exemplum that is specifically used to address people of uncertain belief. The exemplum depicts a woman who “was ever in perfit believe on the blessed sacrament on þe awter” (“always perfectly believed in the blessed sacrament of the altar”), but the devil, in his “grete envy” (“great envy”) of the woman, decides to tempt her to unbelief (142). Despite steadfastly believing for many years that at Easter she receives

 See Talal Asad’s introduction to Genealogies of Religion, wherein he states that “the West defines itself, in opposition to all non-Western countries, by its modern historicity. Despite the disjunctions of modernity (its break with tradition), ‘the West’ therefore includes within itself its past as an organic continuity. … A singular collective identity defines itself in terms of a unique historicity in contrast to all others” (18 – 19).  Sommerville is not alone in taking his cue from Febvre with regard to the medieval capacity for unbelief; Jan N. Bremmer suggests that “it was simply impossible to think Christianity away from medieval society” (11).

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“my saviowre Ihesu Criste his flesshe and his blode in forme of brede” (“my saviour Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood in the form of bread”), the woman is cast into uncertainty when the devil tells her “þu arte but a foole, for I knowe more þen þu” (“you are but a fool, for I know more than you”) (142). She is convinced to bring the Eucharist home to put the truth of the Church’s word to the test, wherein the devil assures her “þen schalt þu see verily that it is but brede and noþer flesshe ne blode, as þu sayste” (“then shall you see truly that it is only bread, and neither flesh nor blood as you said”) (142). The devil encourages the woman to slice into the host and the exemplum takes a dramatic turn to the domestically recognizable image of an injured child: And with the stroke þat sche stroke, soddenly there stode vp a lytyll childe as it had ben a ȝere of age. And in every honed and foote and [in] his syde he had a grete wounde, and ever þe woundis blede. And þe childe lokyd as [pituosly] vpon hyr as who seythe: “þu haste hurt me sore.” (143) (And with the stroke that she struck, suddenly a little child stood up, no more than one year of age. And in every hand and foot and in his side he had a great wound, and the wounds bled constantly. And the child looked as piteously upon her as though he said “you have sorely hurt me.”)

The woman, struck by the full force of her betrayal of God, laments and turns the knife on herself. Before she can fulfill her attempt to punish herself in a misguided effort to save her soul, however, “sodenly þat blessyd Lorde in þe lickenes of a chylde with a lawȝyng chere toke the woman by the honed and helde hyr so fast þat sche myȝt not bring hyr purpose abowte” (“suddenly that blessed Lord in the likeness of a child, with a laughing cheer, took the woman by the hand and held her so fast that she could not bring her purpose about”) (142). And so the devil is banished and the woman is brought back into the forgiving safety of the Church. How does one read unbelief in instances such as this? The reason such an exemplum was included in the sermon could be interpreted in a number of ways: perhaps the story stems from an actual incident that the preacher’s congregation would have experienced – someone voicing their incredulity over the status of the host. Or perhaps the sermon writer believed that his audience would intuit the symbolic meaning behind the dramatic representation of the Eucharist transforming from the figurative to the literal. Either way, what is clear is that the exemplum evidences the preacher’s awareness that uncertainty over the host was a possibility within his congregation. It is traditional to read an exemplum such as this with reference to heterodoxy, imperfect belief in the Eucharist being the well-known “litmus test” for Wycliffism that historians have adopted from inquisitorial materials. To do so, however, limits one’s reading to the restrictive dichotomizing narratives of orthodoxy

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versus heterodoxy. Such a reading masks the potential interpretation that the sermon writer is aware of the difficulty laypeople may have in understanding complicated tenets of faith over which even the most educated theologians debated. The exemplum holds the potential, then, to become a means of both addressing the situation of incredulity, and at the same time illustrating the support the Church would provide for the laity as they work through such uncertainties. Crucially, the woman is not condemned in this exemplum: the figure of Christ, in the form of an innocent child, prevents her suicide with a “lawȝyng chere” (“laughing cheer”). The exemplum works to illustrate the Church’s sympathetic, forgiving approach to doubt within the sermon’s congregation. Despite the ostentatiously sympathetic approach to doubt which this exemplum takes, however, there remains an anxiety over the power the Church wields over unbelief. By representing doubt in the sermon in the form of an exemplum, the writer can dictate its narrative conclusion: that of being drawn back into the safety of orthodoxy. The same image is used in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, in which three Jews experiment on the host, only for God’s presence to be proven before they – and the audience – are brought physically back into the church. The Jews are converted to Christianity and so too, in theory, the potential for unbelief is cleansed from the audience.¹⁵ The Dominical sermon also serves to present doubt on the Church’s own terms. The devil is the agent of unbelief in the exemplum: the woman is characterized as a pawn in his game to test the boundaries of faith, foolish enough to fall for the devil’s tricks. What is presented here is not a question of mindful skepticism, the ability to think critically about faith. Instead, unbelief is explained through the devices of faith: the devil, God’s antithesis, is responsible, and the woman is saved in heroic fashion by the Church’s willingness to forgive. But to encapsulate unbelief within religious writing is to articulate fear of its potentiality; under the auspices of a benign orthodoxy, unbelief can be controlled and remedied, in much the same way as the errant woman in the exemplum. The power balance between the Church and its enemies – be they in the form of unbelievers, the devil, heretics – is maintained through its rhetorical, almost propagandistic, portrayal of uncertainty in the sermon. Silvia Berti describes the study of unbelief in the Middle Ages as “a barren field, with poor harvests. . . . The proofs, often hard to find and almost never univocal, are usually hidden by dissimulation and concealment and where persuasion easily dominates” (555). It has been the argument of this essay, however, that, by beginning to discard the notion that unbelief was impossible in the Mid-

 For the play, see Greg Walker’s edition in Medieval Drama: An Anthology.

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dle Ages, a more complex and challenging view of medieval belief, unbelief and heresy may be uncovered from the source material. Recognizing that unbelief is not necessarily dependent on a religious “other” may enhance scholarship’s understanding of the complexity of belief, not just as represented historiographically, but in our own conceptions of religion. By beginning to break down the assumptions, biases and opinions that scholarship depends upon in defining the terms we use when we describe belief, unbelief and heresy, we can begin to comprehend more nuanced modalities of belief in the Middle Ages. The complication of belief and unbelief with which this essay has been engaged is not intended to advocate for “modern” notions of unbelief within the Middle Ages. Rather, it stands as an attempt to question the assumption that the capacity for an individual – unremarkable, perhaps, in education, theological training or philosophical argument – to think critically, logically or skeptically about faith, to search for the “kynde knowyng” he cannot find without falling into the contours of heterodoxy, was unheard of in medieval England.¹⁶

Works Cited Ankersmit, Frank. Sublime Historical Experience. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Arnold, John H. Belief and Unbelief in Medieval Europe. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005. –. “The Materiality of Unbelief in Late Medieval England.” The Unorthodox Imagination in Late Medieval Britain. Ed. Sophie Page. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010. 65 – 95. Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Bernard, G. W. The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability Before the Break With Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Berti, Silvia. “At the Roots of Unbelief.” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 555 – 75. Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Trans. Robert M. Wallace. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999. Bradley, Christopher G. “Censorship and Cultural Continuity: Love’s Mirror, the Pore Caitif, and Religious Experience Before and After Arundel”. After Arundel. Ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Bremmer, Jan N. “Atheism in Antiquity.” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Ed. Michael Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Cole, Andrew and D. Vance Smith, ed. The Legitimacy of the Middle Ages: On the Unwritten History of Theory. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.

 I am grateful to Dr Stephen Kelly (Queen’s University Belfast) for reviewing and providing invaluable feedback on an early version of this essay.

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“Croxton, The Play of the Sacrament.” Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Ed. Greg Walker. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 213 – 233. Davis, Kathleen. Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time. Philidelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion”. The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. Ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman. Leiden: Brill, 1974. De Certeau, Michel. The Writing of History. Trans. Tom Conley. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. De Grazia, Margreta. “The Modern Divide: From Either Side.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 453 – 467. De Vries, Hent. “Introduction: Why Still ‘Religion’?” Religion: Beyond a Concept. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. The Digby Poems: A New Edition of the Lyrics. Ed. Helen Barr. Exeter: U of Exeter P, 2009. Harwood, Britton J. Piers Plowman and the Problem of Belief. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1994. Havens, Jill C. “Shading the Grey Area: Determining Heresy in Middle English Texts”. Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays In Honour of Anne Hudson. Ed. Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 337 – 52. Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. –. “Some Problems of Identity and Identification in Wycliffite Writings”. Middle English Prose: Essays in Bibliographical Problems. Ed. A. S. G. Edwards and Derek Pearsall. New York: Garland Publishers, 1981. 81 – 90. Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Justice, Steven. “Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 307 – 32. Langland, William. Piers Plowman: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Stephen H. A. Shepherd. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. A Late Medieval Dominical Sermon Cycle. Ed. Stephen Morrison. London: Early English Text Society, 2012. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 102. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 23. Perry, Ryan. “Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 23.” Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350 – 1550. n.p. 1 June 2010. Web. 31 Aug. 2014. Reynolds, Susan. “Social Mentalities and the Case of Medieval Scepticism.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser. 1 (1991): 21 – 41. Shinners, John. Introduction. Medieval Popular Religion, 1000 – 1500: A Reader. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1997. Sommerville, C. John. “Debate: Religious Faith, Doubt and Atheism.” Past and Present 128 (1990): 152 – 55. Spencer, Nick. Atheists: The Origin of the Species. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007. Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century England. London: Penguin, 1992.

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Weltecke, Dorothea. “Beyond Religion: On the Lack of Belief During the Central and Late Middle Ages.” Religion and Its Other: Secular and Sacral Concepts and Practices in Interaction. Ed. Heike Bock, Jörg Feuchter and Michi Knecht. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009. 101 – 14. Wootton, David. “Unbelief in Early Modern Europe”. History Workshop 20 (1985): 82 – 100.

Kathryn Green

The Joys of Heresy: Benefits for Women in Medieval Heretical Sects “Recognizing that the wickedness of women is greater than all the other wickedness of the world, and that there is no anger like that of women, and that the poison of asps and dragons is more curable and less dangerous to men than the company of women, we unanimously decree for the safety of our souls no less than that of our bodies and goods, that we will on no account receive any more sisters.” – Anonymous, Clunic Abbot at Marcigny

The above statement was one response to the growing number of medieval Western European women seeking the solitude and generosity of the new monastic orders. Up against such venomous criticisms and intimidating sentiments supported by papal authority, even the most pious women must have found themselves in quite a predicament. How did women with aspirations other than the traditional roles laid out for them (i. e., as nuns, wives or mothers) carve out a life suitable for supporting themselves, their families, or their spiritual natures? This study seeks to revisit the supposition that women may have leaned toward heretical sects that afforded more female agency. For the purposes of this discussion, the term “heresy” will be defined against the concept of Christian “orthodoxy”; that is, an organization of people bound together by a set of beliefs and norms as defined by Christian Church doctrine; hence, a heretic is simply one who has turned away from prevailing Christian dogma and, here, also choses to adopt a belief system and set of practices condemned by Catholic Christian tenets. Importantly, the subtleties of belief and “unbelief” are explored by my colleagues in this volume and further inform our understanding of the fundamental Christian belief system that permeated daily life during the Middle Ages and, therefore, emphasizes the gravity of heretical behavior for both men and women. In the past it has been argued that heresies somehow held a particular attraction for medieval women; more recently, however, this notion has been disputed. John Arnold contends “that heresy had no particular or notable attraction to women” (497). Shulamith Shahar believes it may be futile to even speculate on the concept because “without a female narrative to closely examine, it is almost impossible to specifically determine the motivations for women’s participation in heretical sects” (Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect 14). In addition, Anne Winston-Allen reminds us that men wrote down the history of mankind, noting that recorded histories only reflect what men “admired” or “abhorred” about women, leading others to question whether a “female voice can be distinguished at all” (4). This position is also supported by the observations that men and women https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-006

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were not always seen as separate groups, and women as a population is too large to categorize in terms of socio-economic status, family position, geographic location and occupation, for example. However, there still exists the opinion among some scholars that women may have been drawn to heretical movements because they provided more opportunities for religious participation and self-expression than was available to women of the dominant Christian religion. In regards to the Lollard heresy, Shannon McSheffrey writes “Women who became involved in the sect outside of familial and especially marital bonds were more likely to play independent roles in the movement . . . probably attracting more women to the sect, which in turn made female gatherings stronger” (36). Thus, although it is a generalization to state that women in general were drawn to heretical movements, it is still reasonable to conclude that some or even many women may have sought out heretical groups that afforded women agency and freedoms otherwise denied to them by the patriarchal doctrine they were instructed to embrace. While many scholars have pointed out a more varied role for some women in the medieval Christian Church (i. e. the mystic and abbess Hildegard of Bingen), there is no denying that organized Church practices in medieval Europe were male dominated. This paper will support the position that because women were largely excluded from organized Christian Church practices, and given that the Church was central to daily life, some women may have sought alternative practical means of physical and/or spiritual support, which could have led them to embrace heresies that more readily welcomed female membership and participation. Using the Cathars, Lollards, and the Beguines as prime examples, I will argue that the allure of inclusion and more authority over matters of particular importance to women, such as a greater level of involvement in religious performance and more influence in the home, could have been appealing enough for some to stray from convention. While the documented number of females in clerical roles in heresies is speculative,¹ there is no denying that females indeed held active roles, unlike Christian women who were forbidden to lead church practices and perform the sacraments. These statistics suggest that some women wanted to participate in religious practices and, therefore, may have been attracted to heretical communities that offered this benefit. It is also clear that a number of females were active and integral members of these communities, and, therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that they must  John A. Arnold referenced the 1979 article by Richard Abels and Ellen Harrison which compiled a statistical analysis of gendered participation in the Cathar Heresy. Forty-five percent of the sect’s spiritual elite members were women. Shannon McSheffrey conducted a parallel analysis of the Lollard Heresy and found that women made up twenty-eight percent of the total elite.

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have had a voice in some capacity. While a purely female narrative has not been discovered, a female presence can be identified. Thus, no matter how subtle the voice, it surely deserves to be a part of the ongoing dialogue. By the Middle Ages many lay European women had indeed achieved a certain degree of influence and equality with men. For example, Roman women of a high social class were typically free from male guardianship, and some AngloSaxon widows had considerable control over property. For example, historians Francis and Joseph Gies recount the story of an Anglo-Saxon widow named Wynflaed, in 950 A.D., who “made a will leaving some properties to her daughter and some to her son” (20). In the eleventh century, “a lady of Herefordshire willed all her property to her kinswoman, disinheriting her son” (21). Indeed many stories such as these exist in wills and other important court documents, such as charters, providing evidence that points to the notion that the lives of certain women were independent in some ways. Yet, there are also examples of inequality to draw from. Under Germanic law, during this same time period, women were not allowed to play a part in public affairs, and it was not until the eleventh-century that the buying and selling of women in England was outlawed. Likewise, under the laws of feudalism, a woman spent her life under the guardianship of a man. As early as the first-century, ecclesiastical authorities instructed women to “remain silent in the Church” (1 Corinthians 14:34 – 35), a concept developed with the aid of St. Paul. Because secular society and papal authority were indelibly intertwined, this double-standard was borne by women throughout the Middle Ages. Women could not participate in government and were not allowed to hold any public office, yet they were charged with the same crimes and suffered the same consequences as men. For example, Shahar points out that “the penalties were identical for men and women for heresy and witchcraft” (The Fourth Estate 18). However, it is generally accepted that more women were charged with witchcraft than men. Thus, the scales remain unbalanced. During the Middle Ages, various religious opportunities were indeed available for Western European women. Several established monastic and mendicant orders accepted women and allowed them to participate in a limited capacity. According to Shahar, “There had been a continuous tradition of female monasticism in the Christian Church” (28). Like monks, nuns’ lives were austere and dedicated first and foremost to prayer. However, though much of the scholarship describes the monastic lifestyle for both men and women as one of quite worship, there were comparable differences in their qualities of life. Because medieval monasticism was predominantly male, men’s needs were often given priority. According to Gies, “Male monasteries were nearly always larger and better endowed” (64). That is to say, many convents may have been cramped and, at times, basic needs may have not been met.

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While nunneries were open to young girls and women seeking pious lives, some also existed as alternative viable housing options. Gies writes, “The chief barrier in admission to a nunnery was money” (64). A religious calling was not mandatory for females to enter nunneries as long as there was a dowry of lands, rents or cash. In some cases, widows, unmarried older women, illegitimate daughters, and wives separated from their husbands were allowed to enter convents. For upper-class females, the convent could fill several needs: it provided an alternative to marriage for girls whose families could not find them husbands, a safe place for young women who did not want to marry, or a home for women wishing to dedicate their lives to God. Eileen Power describes the functions of nunneries: “They served as boarding houses for better-off wives and widows,” and she comments: “It was obviously convenient for gentlemen to have somewhere to send wives and daughters during a temporary absence, if for some reason they did not want to leave them at home” (90). The convent also served as a home for many female intellectuals, just as the monasteries did for males. Gies explains: “Although the majority of nuns were at best literate, most of the learned women of the Middle Ages – the literary, artistic, scientific, and philosophical stars – were nuns” (64). To the medieval observer, nunneries could have appeared as housing for unconventional women. However, this notion also supposes that these women chose this lifestyle, or it raises the possibility that certain women were perhaps disapproved of by society at large and deserved to be shut away. Hence, this segregated, somber, lifestyle may have been an option for certain women but still may have been less than desirable. By the early thirteenth century, the newly established Order of Preachers (Dominicans) welcomed nuns and even encouraged them to join the order. However, as time went on, numbers grew to such an extent that admittance was restricted. Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner reports: “Approximately three-hundred nuns were living in the five Strasbourg convents, but only one-hundred women could be supported by their incomes” (50). Thus, it appears that in some sense women became a burden on the order. Ehrenschwendtner offers other examples of hardships the Dominican nuns suffered, including “a shortage of food. . . . Some of them are reported to have starved to death” (50). If communal support and worship were motivating factors for choosing to live a monastic life, then, based on the evidence, it appears that women’s expectations may not have been met. Christian monasticism did not provide women with many options. Like their male counterparts, many women who were committed to the monastic orders sought the vitae apostolica (apostolic life), a desire to live a life of poverty, humility and obedience in imitation of Christ. Under the influence of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, an all-female segment was born, the Italian

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order of the Poor Clares, who also embraced religious poverty. In 1228, St. Clare, its founder, beseeched the Pope and was granted a Privilege of Poverty for the community. Although praised as models of holiness, unlike the male mendicants whose members acted as preachers, teachers, and missionaries operating in urban society under the common designation of “friars,” the Poor Clares were segregated and detached from the outside world. Shahar explains, “If they taught, it was in the schools for children attached to the nunneries” (The Fourth Estate 30). She goes on to point out that because female friars were forbidden to leave the confines of their convent, they could not tend to the poor, preach publically, or attend “supreme councils and chapters” of the order. Furthermore, Shahar underscores that because “nuns were not allowed to take the sacrament for acceptance into the priesthood, all female orders required the services of male priests” (31). From this perspective, it appears that the Poor Clares, as well as other female monastics, where not allowed to completely perform the duties that defined their faith. Therefore, to an extent, they were also being denied the full vita apostolica experience that they desired and required of themselves as servants of God. This is not to suggest that the Poor Clares were unhappy and thought about leaving the order to embrace heresy. However, it does imply that for women in particular, Christian ecclesiastical life could be restrictive. While it is important to note that male and female monastics had different experiences, it is also important to point out that the allure of heresy for medieval European women was not the promise of equality between the sexes. Indeed, women were not seen as equals within heretical communities any more than they were viewed as equals in secular or conformist ecclesiastical societies. Furthermore, it is difficult to assess to what extent women may have felt like second class citizens. However, it appears unlikely that women would have not felt some gender bias given their limitations outlined by Christian doctrine. Additionally, it seems logical to consider that, as human beings, women would have sought a life of fulfillment and self-worth, wherever possible. David Aers explains, “Just as it would be a mistake to think of the Middle Ages as a unified discrete period in history, so it is naïve to assume that medieval people had no conception of individuality, subjectivity, and identity” (qtd. in Watt 7). Perhaps what certain heretical movements may have offered was more agency over those areas of life that were unique to women, such as marriage and childbirth. Marriage, for example, in the early days of the Church was, according to Shahar, “permitted by St. Paul as a concession to the weakness of the flesh: ‘But if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn’ (I Corinthians 7:9)” (The Fourth Estate 65). Marriage was preferable to promiscuity and was deemed valuable in terms of procreating, therefore, during the eighth-century, the Church saw fit to make it a sacrament and, as such, continued to define

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the associated terms, including the belief that “the husband is lord and master over the wife.” The concept that woman was made from man’s rib likewise places her secondary in the union, a position that may have been objectionable for some. In turn, if a woman remained unmarried she had to support herself, and depending on her class, limitations and laws imposed upon acceptable work applied. Married or unmarried Christian women were not the ultimate decisionmakers, and their lives were pre-defined for them first by the Church and then by the men in their lives. It makes sense, then, that women, like men, could have sought out means for attaining distinctiveness and a sense of identity. If Christianity could not provide an outlet for fulfillment, then perhaps burgeoning heresies, growing in numbers that included females, did. Carol Lansing makes an important point regarding religions in general by reminding us that within each seemingly discrete denomination or belief system “there is a range of beliefs and concerns embedded within it” (119). That is, people make conscious and subconscious decisions regarding religious attitudes and tend to gravitate towards those that best support their convictions. For example, Cathars in Southern France had different basic beliefs than Cathars in Northern Italy. Lansing explains that in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Northern Italy, women’s roles were changing, and she points specifically to the predominantly Italian Cathar cities of Orvieto and Florence as examples “that denied contemporary gender roles,” supposing that women were attracted to the Cathar communities in these cities “because of the developing views about bodies and sexual difference” (119). Lansing also provides data regarding the impressive number of female Cathars in the area of Florence. When the Inquisition came to question two known Cathar brothers (Pace and Barone del Baroni), summaries of the testimonies recorded more than half of the witnesses as female, seventeen of the thirty-one. The witnesses also named at least fifty-three perfecti (Cathar Perfects, or priests), and of that group, at least twenty-three were women; over forty percent” (118). One explanation for the high concentration of females in these communities could have been the respect and freedoms enjoyed by these women. Lansing provides many examples of the exceptional treatment of the Cathar women in the area. She writes, “Elite men like Barone del Baroni made the formal bow of reverence to perfected women” (118). Lansing reports that the Baronis learned the heresy from “their mother.” While this may complicate matters in that this community may appear more exception than the rule, it also supports the assertion that affairs of particular importance to women may have played a role in their attraction to certain communities. Cathar female perfects broke with familial conventions, rejecting dowries, marriage, and childbirth to pursue autonomous religious careers and at times played a sacerdotal role. Lansing’s research expressly supports the argument

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that many women in certain Cathar communities had more agency and freedoms than lay Christian women and nuns when she writes, “They [women] did not live quietly in houses like Catholic convents. Instead, pairs of women stayed for a few months in a particular house, perhaps to instruct a new perfecta, and then moved on. They also administered the consolamentum, the sect’s main holy sacrament, at least to other women, and not only taught but preached. Their actions did challenge patriarchal authority in the household and in larger society” (119). The point is that Cathars, in many cases, could choose to what extent they wished to participate in religious ceremony. For example, Cathar life in Northern Italy may have afforded women more clerical freedoms than, say, life in the south of France. Heterodoxy, then, may have also enabled more choice for women and men alike. While medieval men were more accustomed to making their own decisions, many women were not, and this freedom of choice would certainly have been a welcome novelty for some. Catharism, thought to be rooted in the Bogomil tradition, entered Western Europe from Bulgaria. Some scholars believe the Bulgarian amenable attitude toward women may have translated to a more balanced view of men and women within Catharism. Georgi Vasilev writes, “Bulgarian heretics had a different conception of the woman and did not regard her as Adam’s rib, nor a creature inferior to man, nor an object of material and sexual domination” (326). Moreover, Western women born outside of the Bogomil sect could also reap the benefits of its teachings by joining the Cathar religion; but in doing so, they were risking their own lives and potentially the lives of their families and friends as well. As mentioned earlier, punishments for heresy and sorcery were severe and did not discriminate between the sexes. Regardless, for those women willing to gamble, Catharism provided several immediate benefits: freedom to participate openly in religious rites and the ability to enjoy the privileges manifested in the Cathars’ more liberal attitudes regarding women (328). Although Cathars had been persecuted from the early twelfth century on, membership grew rapidly in areas such as Northern Italy and Southern France. Anne Brenon points out, “As long as the Cathars were tolerated, they stood for a form of ordinary Christianity that authorized women as well as men to cleanse people of sin and to save souls, perhaps even to preach” (121). The Cathars first attracted noblewomen seeking to practice their religion openly both as devotees and as clergy. Like the Catholics, Cathars had establishments that housed and supported female clergy. Unlike the cloistered Catholic nuns, however, Cathar sisters were free to roam, greet visitors and meet with members of the laity. Brenon writes: “The absence of enclosure made these medieval sisters exceptional and enabled them to have a pastoral mission” (121). Cathar nuns moved openly about their communities and went out to nurse the sick and

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dying. They were not restricted to the rigors of fasting and long hours of prayer. Ordained Cathar women were present during the consolamentum (a spiritual baptism, as described in the New Testament, and the most significant ceremony in Cathar theology, marking the transition from ordinary believer to a perfect, one of the elect), and they were allowed to administer the sacrament in the absence of a male perfect, exercising their power as spiritual leaders within the sect. Because Cathar clergy also worked, in the tradition of Christ’s disciples, Cathar nuns performed manual labor as well. Brenon points this out as a major difference between the Cathar nuns and the Mendicant orders. Depending on their skills, Cathar establishments could resemble workrooms for sewing, weaving, leather working, among other valuable skills, each contributing to their communities in a useful way. Additionally, “Cathar community houses kept open board and provided lodging, some were run as hospices or almshouses” (122), which further highlights that they were not cut off from the outside world. It seems logical to consider that some women would have found the opportunity to work or perform religious duties outside of the home (be it household or convent) pleasing. This is not to say that orthodox women did not hold independent jobs within their communities; it is a fact that they did. However, Catholic women who chose conventional roles as wives or nuns were performing those roles under the clearly established and constricting boundaries of Church doctrine, unlike the Cathars whose boundaries were also clear for women, but much broader and indulgent. To further the argument, Brenen writes: Before the Inquisition finally wiped out their last surviving communities, “Good Women” were numerous in the ranks of the Cathar clergy. In the region of Toulouse, in the Albigeois and the Lauragais, they may well have been as numerous as “Good Men.” Less visible than their spiritual brothers, less likely to carry out sacerdotal and pastoral missions, they nonetheless rightly held and exerted a far more important function than Catholic nuns. (129)

Here, Brenon underscores that ordained Cathar women may not have been as visible as men, but that their participation was no less central to the overall well being and growth of the movement. Women were not locked away because they were considered a bother or unholy; indeed, for Cathars all earthly matter, which included all humans, carried the same stigma. Therefore, women were given supportive roles for the good of their communities, which could have led to a sense of importance or fulfillment. It is important to note that religious affiliation of any sort can come with guidelines; yet, for female Cathars, the required concessions may have been more tolerable than those demanded of Catholic women. In a similar vein, Lollardy, a world away and a century later, was also especially tolerant of female

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participation. By the inspiration of John Wyclif, Lollardy became known for its open criticisms of the Catholic Church and its dissenting doctrine regarding the Eucharist. Although the movement had no singular authority, the term “Lollard” (a negative name roughly translated as an idler or mutterer) was coined to label the followers of the teachings of Wyclif and belittle those uneducated or those educated only in the English language. What began as both a political and religious movement in England evolved into an attack on Christian orthodoxy; its primary doctrine was the call for a new church, based on scripture with a specific notion of priesthood. While at Oxford, Wyclif began his own translation of the Vulgate Bible into the vernacular, and translators published a more refined version. Copies of this Lollard Bible were made available to the public, enabling those literate in English to read the Bible. Because it is generally accepted that many women could not read Latin, this vernacular translation must have met a demand from women wishing a greater level of engagement with scripture. Lollards condemned the Catholic clergy, denying they had any divine power from God. Shannon McSheffrey explains: “The [Lollard] priest’s role was not to perform the sacraments but to preach and teach the word of God. The gap between priest and layperson was considerably narrowed” (Gender and Heresy 8). This view is perhaps also part of the thinking that narrowed the gap between Lollard men and women. It is a concept that has spawned much investigation. Margaret Aston explains: “We know that females participated as learners, readers, and expounders of the gospel and other vernacular texts, the question of whether they ever advanced to the point of acting as priests is less easily answered” (Lollards and Reformers 49). Indeed, we know very little about Lollard rites in general. Yet, what we do know is that Lollard women were able to publically exercise their spiritual beliefs as evangelists, reading and preaching the Word of God. According to our current understanding, then, is this not the defined role of the Lollard priest? At the very least, it sets Lollard women apart from the majority of their Catholic counterparts. Aston agrees when she writes: “This little is enough to show that at one formative stage at least in Lollard development, claims were being advanced for women as capable of priesthood” (49). While McSheffrey argues that men and women tended to participate in Lollardy in different ways, “because of the social and economic construction of male and female lives in late medieval England,” she does not speak of one sex as submissive or subservient to the other. McSheffrey also notes that the familial nature of the heresy set women at the center of the family, a similar position reserved for Catholic women within their family units. However, she clarifies, “Because Lollardism was family-centered and stressed the participation of the entire household, women were often unofficially given run of the household

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as men were more apt to participate in the movement through extra-familial ties” (Women and Gender 80). Of significance, here, is that Catholic women did not have oversight of their households. It is reasonable, then, to suggest that this process gave women more governance over a conventional role, which could have provided a deeper level of satisfaction with family life. At the same time, she affirms that “all [scholars] agree that Lollard practice, afforded to some women, particularly widows such as Alice Rowley of Coventry, a central role in the heretical gatherings in their communities” (497). While these broad statements may call for more clarification, it is clear that scholarship supports the claim that women of the Lollard heresy played “central roles” in the family and in the community. Contrary to Catharism, which regarded the physical world as evil and therefore, marriage and sex as practices to be tolerated only for the survival of the family, Lollardy viewed marriage and sex as natural and moral. There was a positive view of consummation of marriage and procreation, although early on, Wyclif felt that marriage should be reserved for laypeople. McSheffrey quotes Henry Hargreaves during her discussion of The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (which was composed by members of the movement and taken before Parliament in 1395) and outlines the laws of chastity and marriage. The Eleventh Conclusion of the text objected to the vows of chastity for nuns because they “commit unspeakable crimes such as abortion and infanticide when subjected to such promises” (qtd. in Gender and Heresy 83). Although uncomfortably negative, this statement is important because it shows that the behavior of nuns (female members of the Lollard clergy who were, by tradition, married to God) was considered and their needs given attention. Instead of instituting a decree that defined punishment for such actions, tolerance was exhibited. Later Lollard teachings also advocated the marriage of priests. (Records reveal several documented clerical marriages.) Moreover, Lollards believed that marriage did not have to be sanctioned by a priest. This endorsement of marriage – by high ranking church leaders – confirmed the importance of the family and, consequently, the role of the female. According to McSheffrey, “The emphasis on family and especially marriage in Lollardy affirmed the traditional roles of men and women as spouses and parents; in contrast to orthodoxy, which might lead believers to think that God favored the chaste nun” (Gender and Heresy 85). Unfortunately, however, this can be said to reinforce the traditional role of woman as wife subordinate to her husband, but it also meant that Lollard women felt free to perform their duties associated with marriage and motherhood and, therefore, had some agency over their actions in the home. Because sex was viewed as normal human behavior for married Lollard women, logically one can conclude that the shame and/or fear associated with it for some Christian women may

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have been lessened or removed for Lollards. In addition, McSheffrey also writes that “wives in lower levels of society had more influence in a marriage than upper levels, and artisan women had more authority and influence in their households, even going so far to say that these women may have had equal marriages” (86). This observation, at a minimum, implies that some Lollard women did indeed enjoy the freedoms associated with a balanced relationship in the home. In fifteenth-century England literacy was on the rise and many men and women were learning to read and write for a variety of reasons, one of which was influence – people who are literate have greater access to power within a society. The Lollard focus on “spreading the Word” meant that all members of the community should be or could be educated. Along with Bible study, the necessity to read was stressed and, therefore, became looked upon as a practical skill. Margaret Aston notes, “Lollard teaching certainly helped to produce some well-schooled women in the fifteenth-century” (Lollards and Reformers 49). This statement implies that some Lollard woman were educated and, therefore, may have been able, and allowed, to make their own informed choices. Aston’s research also recognizes a certain “self-confidence” and “assertiveness” observed in educated Lollard females. One could argue, then, that Lollardism may have even empowered women, or at least provided the means for empowerment. Lollards are well known for recruiting members through their use of the vernacular in preaching and teaching. Many lay women who knew how to read became evangelists and preached the word of the “Anglicized” gospel. Aston contends that “lay women were actively caught up in Lollardy alongside lay men” (51). She points to the words of a late fourteenth-century preacher who stated in one of his sermons that men and women alike were heard spreading the Word: “Behold now we see so great a dissemination of the Gospel, that simple men and women, and those accounted ignorant laymen in the reputation of men, write and learn the Gospel, and, as far as they can and know how, teach and scatter the word of God” (50). This is important in that the statement not only makes it clear that female Lollards preached, but that they were considered instrumental as builders of their church. Perhaps the best example of medieval female agency within dissenting religious groups can be traced to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, before Lollardy appeared. The Beguines, an all-female religious movement, flourished during this time as several completely independent communities throughout Western Europe. The Beguines were not only independent of the Church, but also independent of one another. A Beguine took no vows and did not renounce her property. She was free to work, did not accept alms and could return to the secular world whenever she chose. What tied a Beguine to her companions of the Be-

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guinage, or community, were similar values, pursuits, and worship. Because there was no overarching authority or governing doctrine associated with the movement, every Beguinage was a separate entity and developed its own tenets, though later many adopted the rule of the Third Order of Saint Francis (a popular branch of the Franciscans). Beguinages were also varied in terms of the social status of their members, some only admitting nobility, others catering to women of the lower classes, and others with mixed membership. Moreover, many of the latter became densely populated like the great Beguinage of Ghent, whose number of inhabitants grew into the thousands. Still many Beguines did not wish to relinquish the independence of their own households and their personal forms of worship. These women stayed in their own homes or lived with friends and did not withdraw from society and, as such, were independent and self-sufficient. It appears it was these blatant public displays of dismissiveness of conventional Christian values that in part lead to their disintegration and condemnation by the Church as heretical communities. Instigated by the Dominicans and Franciscans who favored the institutionalization of females for the sake of religious propriety and, as discussed earlier, were concerned with the great number of women wishing to adopt their way of life, the friars initially saw Beguinages as a practical addition to convents. Because the idea of women without a proper place in society could be disturbing, it is fair to say, then, that Beguinages could have been viewed as a means for housing lay women who did not want to become nuns but found themselves outside of societal conventions and wishing to serve God. Carol Bynum explains, “For the first time in Christian history certain major devotional and theological emphases emanated from women and influenced the basic development of spirituality” (34). Indeed, the Beguine movement produced two of the Middle Ages greatest mystical women, Hadewijch of Antwerp (thirteenth century) and Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212– 1301). Both women openly practiced their religion, were self-confident, and spoke of a personal relationship with Christ through divine authority. Additionally, both Hadewijch and Mechthild wrote in the vernacular. Preaching in the vernacular, just as the Lollards of England would do later, drew broad audiences by providing access to doctrine that was unavailable in any other form. It also likely provided mystical role models that young girls could understand, emulate, and aspire to. Eventually, the Beguine communities were growing at such a rate that the sect became a threat to the Franciscan order which it generally supported. Fiona Bowie writes: In a society which undervalues female perceptions and accords women little authority, mystical or ecstatic experience enables a woman to transcend the normal boundaries of her existence and to claim direct inspiration from God. This power is often used to good

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effect, providing a woman with a platform from which to enter and challenge the male world” (28 – 29)

In 1320 Cologne, it is reported that “at least one thousand women were living in Beguine communities, which accounted for about fifteen percent of the city’s population” (Bynum 18). It is the sheer number of followers which cannot be overlooked. Thus, it can be inferred that a Beguine community offered many women a way of life preferable to the contemporary Christian climate. Through the organization of the Beguines, women were also free to pursue the vitae apostolica as was associated with spiritual perfection. Unlike their cloistered sisters, some Beguines fulfilled their commitment to God by not only living in absolute poverty and simplicity, but by preaching the Gospel publically in urban areas. The first woman recognized as a Beguine was Mary d’Oignies (1177– 1213), who lived in the diocese of Liège, the home of the Premonstratensian order and an area of reformist activity. She was a pious married woman with “the calling” who convinced her husband to live with her in chastity and perform communal work at a leper colony. She quickly gained a large following of both men and women. With the support of a Dominican friar, Jacques de Vitry (1170 – 1240), Mary “renounced her wealth, practiced severe asceticism, and was one of the first women to receive the stigmata” (Stoner 4). Although scholars agree that Jacques de Vitry’s attitude towards women in general was not always amicable, we can say that with his help Mary and other lay women were able to experience a greater freedom of religious expression than the Catholic nuns and abbesses; with male support backing acceptance, perhaps a certain level of tolerance existed in Christian society. The well-documented histories of the Beguines, the Cathars, and the Lollards provide consistent and enduring examples of females exercising their independence and openly participating in their respective communities in significant ways despite the fact that during the same time frame the authority of Christian women was largely unacknowledged. With the ability to read scripture and comprehend the language of religious church services, and even participate in church services, women were surely better positioned to make notable contributions to contemporary religious thought. Therefore, by leaving the official Church to embrace these alternative spiritual movements, certain women did lead lives as agents of their own stories. Although, as Shahar pointed out, there may be no explicit “female narrative” to help us uncover the collective contributions of either Christian or heretical women, there does appear to be ample documentation exposing women not as men’s equals in a larger social context, but as vital members within some specific heretical environments. For those women, this must have been a vast im-

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provement compared to their options within the official Church. Catharism allowed women to become ordained church leaders and publically minister the sick, Lollard women preached the Word of God in the vernacular, and the Beguine movement provided sanctuary for pious lay women, encouraging independence and authority. It is important to remember that within these heretical communities there existed a wide range of beliefs, and women participated on a variety of levels. These heretical sects were no less complex than their contemporary secular and Christian institutions, but within them it appears that women experienced fewer restrictions in their roles as mothers, wives, and especially, as “clergy.” By embracing heresies that encouraged and sometimes depended upon female participation, women could cultivate their own identities, consciously or subconsciously, within the understood communal standard. Finally, it is important to note that many new heresies sprang up and gained momentum alongside the Christian reform movements and that throughout history both men and women have abandoned traditional Christian teachings for alternative religious communities. The new contention here is that women may have been drawn to certain heresies for reasons in addition to those they shared with men, and this debatable point-of-view should be revisited based on continued and renewed interest in the topic. John Arnold claims that “it is no longer useful to suggest that women were particularly attracted to heresy” but also contends that “gender and heresy as entwined categories of historical analysis are still worth some future thought” (497). Hence, the polemical nature of the subject implies ongoing engagement and perhaps modern gender studies, or even translation studies, may serve to further reveal a uniquely female voice that directly or indirectly discloses the desire for inclusion, responsibility, and more authority. Certainly, it would have been appealing for women to have some influence over matters of particular importance to their sex and defined performative roles in society, including childbirth, marriage, and household management, and more opportunities to participate in a religion that defined their daily lives; prospect may have been so appealing that some Christian women risked straying from religious conventions to embrace heresies that considered a female perspective to be legitimate and valuable.

Works Cited: Arnold, John H. “Heresy and Gender in the Middle Ages.” The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 496 – 510.

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Aston, Margaret. Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion. London: The Hambledon Press, 1984. –. “Lollard Women Priests,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31.4 (1980): 441 – 461. Bolton, Brenda. “Mulleres Sanctae.” Women in Medieval Society, Ed. Susan Mosher Stuard. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1976: 141 – 158.. Bowie, Fiona. Beguine Spirituality: Mystical Writings of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Hadewijch of Brabant. Trans. by Oliver Davies. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1990. Brenon, Anne. “The Voice of the Good Women: An Essay on the Pastoral and Sacerdotal Role of Women in the Cathar Church.” Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, Eds. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker. Berkley:California UP, 1998: 114 – 133. Broomhall, Susan, and Jennifer Spinks. Early Modern Women in the Low Countries: Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2011. Print. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Ser. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Classen Albrecht. The Power of a Woman’s Voice in Medieval and Early Modern Literatures. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Ehrenschwendtner, Marie-Luise. “Puellae Litteratae” The Use of the Vernacular in The Dominican Convents of Southern Germany.” Medieval Women in their Communities. Ed. Diane Watt. Toronto: Toronto UP, 1997. 49 – 71. Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Women in the Middle Ages: The Lives of Real Women in a Vibrant Age of Transition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1978. Hollister, Warren C., and Judith M. Bennett. Medieval Europe: A Short History. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002. Lansing, Carol. Power and Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. McSheffrey, Shannon. Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420 – 1530. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1995. –. “Heresy, Orthodoxy and English Vernacular Religion, 1480 – 1525,” Past & Present 186.1 (2005): 47 – 80. JSTOR. Web. 18 April 2014. –. “Lollards.” Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Margaret Schaus. New York: Routledge, 2006. Peters, Edward. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1980. Power, Eileen. Medieval Women. Ed. M. M. Postan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975. Shahar, Shulamith. The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1996. –. Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect: Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians. Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2001. Simons, Walter. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200 – 1565. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 2003. Vasilev, Georgi. “Bogomils, Cathars, Lollards and the High Social Position of Women During the Middle Ages.” Facta Universitatis 2.7 (2000): 325 – 336. Warren, Ann K. “Five Religious Options for Medieval Women.” Christian History 10.2 (1991):12. Print. EBSCO. 16 April 2014.

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Watt, Diane. Medieval Women in their Communities. Toronto: Toronto UP, 1997. Winston-Allen, Anne. Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 2004.

III. Heretical Theology

On first sight, the notion of “heretical theology” may strike one as a potentially oxymoronic construct. Indeed, one way of looking at the project of theology is to see it as a bulwark against heresy. Such classics in the annals of theology as Saint Irenaeus’s compendium Adverses Haereses (ca. 175 – 185), Origen’s Contra Celsum (248), Jerome’s Dialogus Contra Pelagianus (415), or St. Augustine’s Contra Julianum (421– 422) were written specifically against “heretics.” Judging by such examples, theological dogma is sharpened on the whetstone of heresy and religious doctrine is hardened in the furnace of dissent. The question whether a given theology or doctrine is inherently heretical or orthodox depends primarily on one’s point of view, as indicated in the introduction. What characterizes the contributions in this section of our book is that they re-negotiate the conventional split between orthodoxy and heresy. Taking a revisionist approach to the dichotomy itself, each of these contributions makes a vital intervention at the very nexus between the two monolithic terms—orthodoxy and heterodoxy— mutually destabilizing their taken-for-granted meanings. A greater champion of orthodoxy than Saint Augustine can hardly be imagined. By many considered the most influential of all the Church Fathers, he put his stamp on foundational Christian dogmas like original sin, grace, providence, and atonement. Although he never managed to disentangle himself entirely from the mutually incompatible demands of his simultaneous emphasis on strict divine predetermination and human free will, his legacy seems secure and his place in Christian ethics uncontested. Not so for John Daniel Holloway, a young theologian and heresy scholar who aligns himself with contemporary radical evangelical theologians like Thomas Jay Oord and Rob Bell. Holloway takes Saint Augustine to task over inconsistencies of his thinking in the context of providence, temporality, and love. By dismantling important aspects of Augustinian theology using the very instruments employed by Saint Augustine himself, i. e. Christian ethics, theistic theology, and logical reasoning, this heresy scholar demonstrates that there is no immutable essence of orthodoxy that cannot itself become the subject of a radical paradigm shift. To uncover heterodoxy existing within the very core of orthodoxy is a typical move of heresy studies. Another point of leverage for heresy studies is the question whether heterodoxy exists on a sliding scale, i. e. whether somebody’s heterodoxy turns out on closer inspection to be merely a minor adjustment of orthodoxy that can be challenged by more fundamental acts of disruptive thinking. A case in point is the recent rise of a “theology of laughter,” i. e. a revisionist form of thinking about religion and dogma that wants to rehabilitate the role of humor in a Christian religious context after many centuries of ecclesiastical and theological condemnations of laughter. But by taking a closer look at this supposedly radical departure from theological orthodoxy, Bernard Schweizer discovers that the laughter

theologians like Karl-Joseph Kuschel, Gerard Arbuckle, Conrad Hyers, and Richard Cote are not going far enough in their new turn toward accepting laughter. Advocating only joyful and harmless manifestations of humor as acceptable in a religious context negates the vital forms of comedy which thrive on subversion, surprise, attack (or defense), and disruption. But a corrective to this “hidden orthodoxy” has emerged in the form of a truly radical laughter theology, which accepts the unruly spirit of comedy, warts and all. Some may argue that seeing profane, mocking, and derisive kinds of laughter as productive in a religious context undermines the very foundation of sacredness and therefore poses a threat to theism itself. Rather than distancing itself from such radicalism, heresy studies appreciates the bracing honesty exhibited in the works of radical advocates of uninhibited laughter like Gisela Matthiae, Jacqueline Bussie, Charles Campbell, and Johan Cilliers. Jordan Miller is also interested in the breaking points of religious heterodoxy, where doubt and innovative thinking move to within an inch of deconstructing the whole fabric of traditional understandings of faith. Synthesizing the thoughts of religious thinkers as diverse as Paul Tillich, Roy Rappaport, Matthew Crawford, and Ehan Dōgen, Miller develops a challenging meta-theology that sees religion as a “subjunctive” phenomenon, i. e. an outlook that thrives on possibilities and wishes, rather than on dogma and certainty. In a move that resembles the break with heterodox theology explored in Schweizer’s chapter, Miller promotes a kind of theology that takes moderate heterodoxy merely as a starting point. His argument is starkly provocative, suggesting that “religion is protest” (rather than conformism or dogma), “material” (rather than spiritual), and that “theology is what creates God.” Miller here positions theology—a radical theology—as a world-making project rather than as an attempt to catch up cognitively with the mystery of transcendent divinity. The disruptive bent of such an argument is starkly non-conformist, even while it constitutes an apologia for religion rather than a dismissal of it. In these ways, heresy studies break new ground in thinking about the interplay of heterodoxy and orthodoxy and in opening up a space for meta-theological thinking that is free from traditional dogmas and independent of institutional doctrines of faith. Heresy studies provide a platform where atheists, evangelical Christians, and radical political theologians argue side-by-side because everything can be questioned, and new ideas about the sacred and the place of religion in contemporary society can be tested without fear of sanction, excommunication, or ridicule.

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Saint Augustine: The Neoplatonic Father of Heretical Orthodoxy It would not be farfetched to say that Saint Augustine was the single most influential post-New Testament theologian in the history of the Western church. Roger Olson in his book The Story of Christian Theology said it is “almost impossible to exaggerate the influence of this one man’s thinking on Western Christianity, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.” This is by no means a recent development, for Olson explains, “his influence became pervasive . . . in his own lifetime and semiofficial within a few decades after his death” (The Story 253). Examples of his signature ideas in Christian thought include the doctrines of original sin, double predestination, limited atonement, and meticulous divine providence. Additionally, he was a forerunner of “classical theism,” in which God is thought of as immutable, impassible, and timeless.¹ Augustine was also one of the first major Christian theologians to advocate just war theory and speak in favor of Christian participation in the military, whereas the early church was largely pacifist.² In fact, William Lyons notes that Augustine is widely recognized as “the father of modern ‘just war theory.’” Given his ubiquitous influence and enduring high esteem, many would say that the suggestion posed in this study—that portions of his theology may constitute heresy—is ridiculous (perhaps even heretical in itself). Could it be possible that such an outstanding Christian theologian has tucked neatly into his repertoire theologies which diverge from core claims at the original heart of Christianity? It will be demonstrated in this essay that such examples might indeed be found in Augustine’s theology of divine timelessness, in his understanding of God’s love, and in his theology of meticulous providence. The core Christian claims at stake here are that God is active in the world, that God loves the world, that God is good and opposed to evil, and that God is the creator of the world.

 See Sanders, “Historical Considerations”; also, Saia 29 – 50; Farley 47– 71 and 101– 106; and Hartshorne & Reese 76 – 164.  See Bainton, chapters 5 – 6. See also Yoder, chapters 3 – 4. For a brief survey, see Rae, “Unholy Notion.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-007

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Defining Heresy in Relation to Christianity The word “heresy” often provokes negative responses because it seems so condemnatory and because it appears to be so blatantly policing to borders of orthodoxy. The word is often used as a weapon or defense mechanism, designed to inspire people to reject or even fear that to which the label is being applied. It is further a way for many to excommunicate certain thinkers, casting them into the outer darkness for their rebellious and dangerous views. Far be it from me to use the word in such a way. The working definition of heresy for this study is simply that which contradicts basic tenets at the original heart of Christian belief. Of course, there is no universal consensus regarding all the basic tenets of the Christian belief. Many Christians are going to have different criteria for what can and cannot be considered central to their religion. So then, if heresy, in the words of Roger Olson, constitutes “a belief that clearly . . . opposes the heart of the Christian matter” (The Mosaic 41), how do we establish what makes up the heart of the Christian matter? Some may argue that such an enterprise is unnecessary and only opens the door for disagreement between people and groups who all call themselves Christians. While I sympathize with this view, Olson makes a compelling point that, without affirming to some extent the existence of heresy, the identity of Christianity is at stake. Without acknowledging certain things as not-Christian, the term “Christian” would be deprived “of all recognizable meaning” (32). Thus, rather than as a label-weapon, heresy can be understood for its utility—that is, as a tool for defining Christianity through the via negativa. Still, we are left with the problem of identifying a settled core of Christianity which can help us determine what is and is not heretical in relation to it. How we lay out such a core will also determine what effect our understanding of heresy/ orthodoxy has on the relationship between Christians of differing persuasions. If such a core claims too much, we pave the way for heresy to become a tool for other-ing and discrimination. Thus, it is necessary to establish a lowest-common-denominator set of core Christian beliefs, so that we may be fair to all those who use the term “Christian” as a self-proclamation, as well as to remain open for as much inter-Christian dialogue as possible. My suggestion is to define the core of Christianity as that which makes up the essential teaching of the person of Jesus Christ. The name of the religion itself draws us to this conclusion. Christianity has Christ as its center, and so it follows that the essential beliefs of Christ should make up the essential beliefs of Christianity. The difficulty, however, then becomes determining what his essential beliefs were.

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An argument could be made that the evolution of theology which occurred in the early Christian community culminating in the New Testament is what should define the Christian religion, so that the core truth-claims of the NT— or, realistically, the core truth claims of the early theologians interpreting the NT—should be considered the core truth-claims of Christianity itself. The difficulty here is that not all Christians feel this way. Others will say that only the core truth-claims of Jesus himself—the Jesus of history—should constitute the core truth-claims of Christianity. There is also the added difficulty that the NT does not paint one unanimous picture of Christianity. How do we determine what are the core-truth claims of the NT? Which developments do we privilege, and why? Since, at the very least, all should be able to agree that Christianity is characterized by the teachings of Jesus, the latter approach, which draws basic tenets of Christian belief from what we can know of the Jesus of history, will be used. My purpose is to show that Augustine diverges from the heart of Christianity, and to do that most persuasively, I refer to a set of lowest-common-denominator propositions. Here I do not wish to settle the question of orthodoxy (as if!), but rather, point out a few assertions that are so basic to Christian belief as to be incontrovertible. The basic tenets of Christianity which are relevant to our discussion are spelled out below. They do not depend on a positivist reliance upon the NT’s portrait of Jesus, but are flexible to the findings of modern historical-critical scholarship (this approach will hereafter be presupposed with all references to the teachings of Jesus or the biblical witness): 1) God is actively involved in human history.³ 2) God loves the world.⁴ 3) God is good⁵ and by nature fundamentally opposed to evil.⁶ 4) God is the creator of the world.⁷ These four claims are assumed throughout the biblical witness and are present in all major theories of the historical Jesus. Furthermore, they are cornerstones for other Christian beliefs, without which it would be difficult for one to selfidentify as a Christian. Thus, it is fair to understand them as essential. Now it must be determined whether or not Augustine is in fact diverging from these basic Christian principles.     

See Guthrie 75 – 77, and Sanders 80 – 91 and 238 – 248. Matt 5:43 – 48; 18:10 – 14. Also see Guthrie 104– 107. See Bassler, “God in the NT.” See Watson, “Evil.” Also, Boyd, God at War 171– 237. See Guthrie 78 – 79.

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Augustine’s Neoplatonism Before we enter into this part of the discussion, it should be said that while at certain points the terms Platonism and Neoplatonism are used interchangeably, it should not be inferred from this that I think they are one and the same. The question of whether or not Neoplatonism should simply be called Platonism will not be discussed, nor will the matter be assumed in either direction. It is only that any distinctions between Platonism and Neoplatonism will not affect this study, for the elements of Neoplatonism which we find in the theologies of Augustine discussed here can all be traced back to Plato, and so they are just as Platonic as they are Neoplatonic. It is no secret that Augustine was inspired significantly by Neoplatonism. He praised Neoplatonic thought in many of his works and often spoke of how it aided his intellectual development.⁸ As Michael Saia has stated, “we often see [in Augustine’s works] Platonic ideas recouched in Christian vocabulary and then the Scriptures are interpreted on the basis of these new formulas” (31). It is apparent to many that Augustine made a compromise between Neoplatonism and Christianity and produced a philosophy which was essentially a combination of the two, so much so that his theology is widely referred to as Christian Platonism.⁹ Indeed, it seems Augustine served two masters: Jesus and Plato. It is my estimation that in certain aspects of Augustine’s Neoplatonic tendencies conflicts with core tenets of Christianity arise.

Divine Timelessness One of these Neoplatonic tendencies was Augustine’s theology of divine timelessness, or atemporality. This view claims that God does not experience moment-to-moment succession. God does not remember a past and look toward a future; rather, God is in past, present and future all at once in what is popularly referred to as the “eternal now.” Augustine explains: In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present, [God is] before all things past and [transcends] all things future. . . . [God’s] “years” neither go nor come. Ours come and go so that all may come in succession. All [God’s] “years” subsist in simultaneity, because

 See for example Augustine, Confessions 111– 132.  See Armstrong, Augustine and Christian Platonism; O’Meara, “The Neoplatonism of Saint Augustine”; Cary, Augustine’s Invention; Chadwick 24– 25; and Evans 32.

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they do not change; those going away are not thrust out by those coming in. (Confessions [C] 230)¹⁰

This philosophy of the divine relationship to time stems from ancient Greek theology, beginning with Parmenides, adopted and made popular by Plato, and incorporated into Neoplatonism through Plotinus. Parmenides: the One (God) is “uncreated and imperishable, for it is entire, immovable and without end. It was not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once.” (qtd. in Sanders 62) Plato: “the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence: for we say that he ‘was,’ he ‘is,’ he ‘will be,’ but the truth is that ‘is’ alone is properly attributed to him, and that ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are only to be spoken of becoming in time.” (qtd. in Hartshorne and Reese 54) Plotinus: “to the divinity, the future is already present, there could not be anything posterior to Him.” (qtd. in Hartshorne and Reese 216)

What makes Augustine’s affirmation of this theology problematic is his simultaneous affirmation of the basic Christian tenet that God is actively involved in human history. A God who is completely outside of time cannot be actively involved in a time-bound world. If every second of human history is present for God in a fixed state of “now”, then God cannot relate to the world, because that would require moving with the world from one second to the next. As William Hasker states, “in responding to another it is of the essence that one first acts, then waits for the other to react, then acts responsively, and so on. There seems to be no way this sequence could be collapsed, as it were, into a single timeless moment” (155 – 156). Isaak August Dorner even suggested that the theology of timelessness implies Deism, because, the living participation of God in the world . . . [depends] upon our positing that God knows continually what is now present and that he does not have to the present simply the relation which he also has to the past and the future, as if these were just as much present for him . . . , since that would lead to a very lifeless and inadequate relation. (152)

For God to be involved in the world, God has to respond to what occurs; God has to act within human history. And as William Kneale says, “to act purposefully is to act with the thought of what will come about after the beginning of the action”

 See also Hartshorne & Reese 85 – 96.

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(qtd. in Hasker 148), which implies moment-to-moment succession. Thus, in order for Augustine to affirm divine timelessness, he would have had to deny that God is actively involved with this world, a claim that has heretical implications.

God’s Self-Love Augustine’s theology of love also raises the question of heresy. Unsurprisingly, it is another facet of Augustine’s thought which sprang from Neoplatonism.¹¹ First, Augustine says loving either means enjoying something for its own sake, or making use of something to enjoy something else: There are some things which are meant to be enjoyed, others which are meant to be used. . . . Enjoyment consists in clinging to something lovingly for its own sake, while use consists in referring what has come your way to what your love aims at obtaining. (Teaching Christianity [TC] 1.3 – 4)

Secondly, he says, “God alone is to be enjoyed,” and everything else should “be used in order that we may come at last to the enjoyment of that which is eternal and unchanging” (1.22).¹² He owes this concept to Plato, who suggested that all love should ultimately be directed toward the supreme Good. In the words of Slavoj Žižek, Plato advocated the “topos of love as Eros that gradually elevates itself from love for a particular individual, through love for the beauty of a human body in general, and the love of the beautiful form as such, to love for the supreme Good beyond all forms” (13). This clearly resembles Augustine’s notion of using all things to enjoy God. For Augustine, too, love should point beyond all forms to the supreme Good, which in his thinking is the God of Jesus Christ. Lastly, Augustine says, “God does not enjoy us, but makes use of us” (1.31). Furthermore, “Our making use of things is directed to the end of enjoying God’s goodness” (1.32), and since “God alone is to be enjoyed,” he follows his natural train of thought when he says, “God’s making use of us is directed to his goodness” (1.32). God uses us for the sake of enjoying God’s own goodness.¹³

 For an excellent overview and critique of Augustine’s understanding of love, see Oord 57– 84.  This concept was originally posited by Porphyry. See Chadwick 21.  For an example of a modern theologian who fleshes out the theology of divine self-glorification, see Piper, The Pleasures of God.

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What is problematic about these assertions is, first of all, the claim that one can love something in order to enjoy something else. Augustine does not explain how using A to enjoy B can be considered loving A, but he should have because it is very problematic. Love is directed at an object, and whatever object it is directed to is necessarily loved for its own sake. Making use of A to enjoy B can only mean loving B for that is the object at which the love is ultimately directed. If God uses us to enjoy God’s goodness, then God only loves God’s self, because God’s own self would be the object at which God’s love is directed. Augustine does go on to say that the use “by which God is said to make use of us is directed to our benefit and not to his, but only to his goodness” (1.32). When God does good to us, God does not do it for God’s benefit but for ours. However, Augustine contradicts himself, as he said earlier that God makes use of us for the sake of enjoying God’s goodness. That would mean enjoying God’s own goodness is the true purpose of God’s doing good to us. Thus, it is not that God loves us, but that doing good to us results in God enjoying God’s goodness. As Thomas Oord stated, “God’s love is ultimately self-focused in Augustine’s theology” (69). Fundamental to the teachings of Jesus is the claim that God loves the world. This Christian affirmation is contradicted by Augustine’s theology of love, for he understood God as only really loving God’s self. It also diverges from the Christian teaching that love “is not self-seeking” (1 Cor. 13:5), which is affirmed, and even assumed, throughout the NT witness.¹⁴ From this point of view, Augustine’s theology of love does appear rather heretical.

Meticulous Providence Finally, let us consider the heretical potential of Augustine’s theology of meticulous providence. According to this theory, everything that happens in life is understood as God’s will. He says: Nothing in our lives happens haphazardly. Everything that takes place against our will can only come from God’s will, his Providence, the order he has created, the permission he gives, and the laws he has established. (Enarrationes)

God’s omni-control even includes evil. Evil is not really evil, says Augustine, because if one were to “consider the totality,” one would see that all events have  See Lk. 19:23; Acts 20:35; Rom. 2:8; 12:10; 1 Cor. 10:24, 33; Phil. 2:3 – 4; Jas. 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:1– 2; et al.

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their place in God’s perfectly ordered plan. Consider the following quotes from Augustine’s work: For [God] evil does not exist at all, and not only for [God] but for [God’s] created universe, because there is nothing outside it which could break in and destroy the order which [God has] imposed upon it. But in the parts of the universe, there are certain elements which are thought evil because of a conflict of interest. These elements are congruous with other elements and as such are good, and are also good in themselves. . . . It is far from my mind now to say, ‘Would that those things did not exist!’ If I were to regard them in isolation I would indeed wish for something better; but now even when they are taken alone, my duty is to praise [God] for them. (Confessions [C] 125) Although evil, in so far as it is evil, is not good, still it is a good thing that not only good things exist but evil as well. For if it were not good that evil things exist, they would certainly not be allowed to exist by the Omnipotent Good, for whom it is undoubtedly as easy to not allow to exist what he does not will, as it is for him to do what he does will. (Enchiridion [E] 24.95 – 96)

Boyd suggests that Augustine’s theology of meticulous providence is a reflection of his “Neo-Platonic/Christian synthesis” (God at War 47).¹⁵ His claim rings true when we compare Augustine’s thought on evil to that of ancient Greek philosophers. Edwin Hatch describes two ancient Greek views on evil: [Evils] were all either forms of good, or incidental to its operation or essential to its production. . . . One view was based upon the teleological conception of nature. The world is marching on to its end: it realizes its purpose not directly but by degrees: there are necessary sequences of its march which seem to us to be evil. Another view, akin to the preceding, was based upon the conception of the world as a whole. In its vast economy there are subordinations and individual inconveniences . . . [which] are necessary parts of the plan. The pain of the individual is not an evil, but his contribution to the good of the whole. (218)¹⁶

The resemblance of these views to the quotes above from Augustine is uncanny. In both traditions, it is claimed that what we experience as evil cannot really be deemed evil when we consider the grand scheme of things, because in the grand scheme of things all events are parts of the divine will and as such are good. It should be noted that Augustine did believe in free will, but he qualified free will with God’s sovereignty over the will. James Henderson describes Augus Boyd is currently working on a two-volume overview of the history of meticulous providence entitled The Myth of the Blueprint, to be published by InterVarsity Press. It will trace the theology from its origins in ancient philosophy to its adoption by the church via Augustine and his influence.  See the whole discussion in Hatch 209 – 237.

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tine’s understanding of free will: “First, the will is free but . . . free to do only evil. Second, the will can choose the good only when God supplies the individual with grace, but God does not do so for all” (26). Furthermore, “God turns each will to good or to evil as he chooses” (27).¹⁷ This included for Augustine the wills of angelic beings, for he held that “even if the demons have any power . . . they have only that power which the secret decree of the Almighty allots to them” (City of God [CG] 2.23). Despite God’s sovereignty over the wills of humans and demons, Augustine understood wickedness to be freely chosen by the wicked. “In their very act of going against [God’s] will,” he said, “[God’s] will [is] thereby accomplished” (E 26.100). The implications of Augustine’s theology, however, do not allow for the freedom of anyone’s will but God’s.¹⁸ As Boyd says, Augustine’s “all-encompassing divine blueprint undermines the explanatory value of his free will defense [against the problem of evil]” (God at War 302, n.18). God as the only free agent is the only agent of evil, and so then God is at least partly evil. Augustine’s counter to this apparent problem was, unsurprisingly, an appeal to Neoplatonism, specifically to the Neoplatonic understanding of evil as “the absence of good.” God is not the author of evil because everything God creates is good; since evil is not good, God did not create it, and it therefore must be a non-creation. Like darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence, or privation, of good.¹⁹ Boyd astutely criticizes this understanding, saying that it is too abstract to have any coherence with reality. At best, he says, Augustine’s “definition describes the potentiality of evil but not the actuality of evil. Evil becomes actualized when it is chosen by an actual agent” (Problem of Evil 289). Hatch echoes this understanding, saying the ancient Greek approach to the problem of evil depended upon “a denial of the reality of apparent evils” (217– 218). In order for our analysis of evil to be valid, Boyd says, we have to deal with evil concretely, referring to our actual experience of it in the world. When Augustine does engage our actual experience of evil in the world, the result is quite troubling. He asserted that such things as “monstrous births, and unusual meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious” are all “arranged and appointed by Divine Providence” (CG 10.16). While we experience these occurrences as evil, Augustine attributed them to the good and perfect will of God. With such an understanding, God becomes the hideous dictator of evil. This theology contradicts the fundamental Christian affirmation of  See also Karfíková, Grace and the Will.  In assessing the contradictory nature of several of his claims, Augustine would appeal to mystery. See Henderson 15, 26 and 28.  See Evans, Augustine on Evil; Fleming 81; and Hartshorne & Reese 41– 42.

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God’s infinite goodness. Suggesting that God is good is meaningless if we also suggest that God can will evil. Furthermore, to suggest that what we experience as evil is not really evil because everything is part of God’s good plan is to render the words “good” and “evil” devoid of meaning. What makes Augustine’s theology of divine providence even more problematic is that psychological studies have shown that such a view of God is actually harmful to mental health. While the belief that everything that happens in life is the will of God may not be damaging by itself, when a tragedy occurs and one attributes the tragedy to the will of God, the result can be disastrous to one’s mental well-being. According to psychologist Timothy Jennings, in believing that God is the source of pain, suffering and death . . . [one’s] prefrontal cortex [sends] signals to the amygdala to fire the alarm. . . . Anxiety and fear [increase], reacting back on the prefrontal cortex, causing further threat-based interpretations of life, resulting in more fear and anxiety. (111)²⁰

If, for example, a mother’s child dies and the mother shares Augustine’s theology of providence, she has to struggle with the thought that God orchestrated it and had a reason for ending her baby’s life. As Augustine said, “Perhaps God is doing some good in correcting parents when their beloved children suffer pain and even death” (On Free Will 3.68). Such a belief system often inspires suffering in the face of tragedy that goes beyond the usual mourning, for not only did the baby die, but the God the mother worships is the author of the tragedy.²¹ It is hard to imagine this theology being anything but harmful in the face of utter, unrelenting, and arbitrary evil. While I was writing this, hundreds of people were gathering in Santa Barbara to mourn over the deaths of several young adults who were victims in a mass shooting. To explain to the victims’ parents that what happened to their children cannot really be considered evil because in the grand scheme of things it was part of the good and perfect will of God would almost be as horrendous as the tragedy itself. As Boyd rightfully states, “There comes a point when even suggesting such an overarching ‘good’ scheme becomes as cruel as it is ridiculous” (God at War 43). That this theology is unhealthy for the human mind contradicts belief in God as creator, for surely God would not create a mind that would be damaged by the truth! Thus, Augustine’s theology of divine providence could be considered heretical. In implicating

 Also see Newberg and Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain.  For real life examples, see Jennings 111; Boyd, Is God to Blame? 11– 13; and Boyd, God at War 33 – 34.

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God in the work of evil and in being potentially harmful to people’s health, it contradicts the basic Christian affirmation that God is a good creator.

Conclusion All of the theologies covered in this essay have continued to be popular views in the Western church since Augustine. They were adopted by major theologians like Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and many others. Meticulous providence in particular was extremely influential and made way for Calvinism/Reformed theology, which is thriving today through the work of John Piper, John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul. In the title of this essay, Augustine is called “the Neoplatonic father of heretical orthodoxy.” This reflects the dominance and popularity that his views have maintained since his lifetime. They are widely assumed to be orthodox, and yet there exists serious dissonance between what they entail and what is found in fundamental Christian affirmations. Thus, I give these theological teachings the ironic title of “heretical orthodoxy.” Under close scrutiny, Augustine’s Neoplatonic theologies of timelessness, of God’s love, and of divine providence all seem unfit for the designation “Christian.” Given this incongruity, we should subject Augustine’s thought to more critical analysis, expose the severe problems of some of his thinking, and recognize that they were innovative appropriations of the teaching of Jesus that may not be compatible with the original heart of Christianity. My point is not to brand Augustine a heretic, as if I expected all orthodox Christian theologians to stop reading him. Rather, I want to draw attention to problems inherent in labeling anyone as a heretic. Many Augustine-loving Christian theologians declare other Christian theologians like Rob Bell, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, and Thomas Oord to be heretics because of their innovative appropriations of Jesus’ teaching.²² Such stigmatization is not only objectionable because of its dogmaticism and intolerance, but also because of its failure to acknowledge that Christian theology throughout history has consisted of innovative appropriations and re-appropriations of Jesus’ teaching.²³ Therefore, depending on

 On these figures, see Holloway, “Heresy in the News.”  Many scholars even see a theological development within the NT, with claims about Jesus and God shifting and building over time. The process of appropriating and re-appropriating the teachings of Jesus began in his own generation. See James Dunn, Christology in the Making, Raymond Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology, and Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus.

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one’s point of view, many orthodox theologies can be considered heretical for one reason or another. If heresy means innovatively appropriating Christian teachings and intermingling them with other philosophies, then Augustine is certainly a heretic! But if that is what heresy is, then who isn’t a heretic?

Works Cited Allison, Dale C. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009. Armstrong, A. H. St. Augustine and Christian Platonism. Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1967. Augustine, Saint. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. New York: The Modern Library, 1993. –. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. –. On Free Will. Trans. John H. S. Burleigh. Library of Christian Classics. Vol. 6. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953. –. On Grace and Free Will (De gratia et libero arbitrio). Trans. Robert P. Russell. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Vol. 59. Ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1968. –. Enchiridion. Trans. and Ed. Aldbert C. Outler. The Library of Christian Classics. Vol. 6. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955. –. Enarrationes in Psalmos 18 – 32 (Sermones). Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2011. –. Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana). Trans. Edmund Hill. Ed. John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park: New City Press, 1996. Bainton, Roland H. Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation. New York: Abingdon Press, 1960. Bassler, Jouette M. “God in the NT.” Anchor Bible Dictionary. Ed. David Noel Freedman. Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 1049 – 1055. Boyd, Gregory A. God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997. –. Satan and the Problem of Evil. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to New Testament Christology. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994. Cary, Philip. Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Chadwick, Henry. Augustine. 1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Dorner, Isaak August. Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration. Trans. Robert R. Williams and Claude Welch. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994. Dunn, James D. G. Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989. Evans, G. R. Augustine on Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Farley, Benjamin Wirt. The Providence of God. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988. Fleming, William Kaye. Mysticism in Christianity. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2010. Guthrie, Donald. New Testament Theology. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1981.

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Hasker, William. God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Harsthorne, Charles and William L. Reese. Philosophers Speak of God. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2000. Hatch, Edwin. The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity. New York: Harper & Row, 1957. Henderson, James M. “Election as Renewal: The Work of the Holy Spirit in Divine Election.” Diss. Regent University School of Divinity, 2012. Ann Arbor: ProQuest LLC, 2012. Holloway, III, John Daniel. “Heresy in the News.” excommunicated 1, no. 1 (Sept. 2014): 6. –. “Heresy in the News.” excommunicated 1, no.2 (June 2015): 6. Jennings, Timothy R. The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013. Karfíková, Lenka. Grace and the Will according to Augustine. Trans. Markéta Janebová. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Lyons, William L. “Origen, Augustine, and Herem in the Bible.” The Annual Meeting for the Southern Commission for the Study of Religion. Hyatt Regency Greenville, Greenville, SC. March 16, 2013. Paper presented. Newberg, Andrew, and Mark Robert Waldman. How God Changes Your Brain. New York: Ballantine Books, 2010. Olson, Roger E. The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Unity & Diversity. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002. –. The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999. O’Meara, Dominic J. “The Neoplatonism of Saint Augustine.” Neoplatonism and Christian Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982. Oord, Thomas Jay. The Nature of Love: A Theology. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2010. Piper, John. The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God. Rev. ed. Sisters: Multnomah Publishers, 2000. Rae, Murray. “The Unholy Notion of ‘Holy War’: A Christian Critique.” Holy War in the Bible. Ed. Heath A. Thomas, Jeremy Evans and Paul Copan. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013. 287 – 311. Saia, Michael R. Does God Know the Future? Fairfax: Xulon Press, 2002. Sanders, E. P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: The Penguin Press, 1993. Sanders, John. “Historical Considerations.” The Openness of God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994. 59 – 100. Watson, Duane F. “Evil.” Anchor Bible Dictionary. Ed. David Noel Freedman. Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1992. 678 – 679. Yoder, John Howard. Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution. Ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009. Žižek, Slavoj. The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003.

Jordan E. Miller

Making the World: Against Spirituality Toward Subjunctive Theology Religion is subjunctive. In using “subjunctive,” I’m appropriating a term that refers to the grammatical mood of a verb used to express uncertainty, hypothesis, contingency, possibility, desire, potentiality, necessity, hope, or action that has not yet occurred.¹ This is to say that the subjunctive points to a void. In short, the subjunctive describes the world, not as it is, but as it might be. This “might be” is the root of religious world-construction through theology, myth, and ritual. Subjunctivity uproots the world the way it has been and plants new possibilities in its place. The world becomes meaningful through subjunctivity. As a result, subjunctivity has clear political implications in addition to its religious ones. I would like to investigate some of the ways in which subjunctivity might be thought in terms of lived religion—in terms of material conditions in everyday life—and in terms of political resistance. I conclude that religion creates the illusion of the social order in which we all might participate and that such work is usefully construed in terms of craft—the material building and repairing of the world in which we live. Sigmund Freud understood the subjunctive component of religion, if incompletely. He wrote, “Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities” (The Future of an Illusion 215). Here is the recognition of the subjunctive possibilities of religious belief, but as a danger, rather than a boon. Religion, for Freud, is a flight from life. Similarly, Karl Marx recognized this “wish-world” component of religion, but framed it in terms of protest. He famously wrote that, Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The de-

 See The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, Volume XVII: Su-Thrivingly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 35 – 36. “Designating or relating to a verbal mood that refers to an action or state as conceived (rather than as a fact) and is therefore used chiefly to express a wish, command, exhortation, or a contingent, hypothetical, or prospective event.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-008

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mand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. (42)

Religion is protest. Religion is what people turn to when their material conditions are intolerable. The implication of Marx’s insight is that instead of focusing on religion, one should be more concerned with the material conditions in which people live and upon which they depend. For Marx, if one changes the conditions, beliefs will follow, and illusions will evaporate. In religion’s being the expression of distress, if the cause of the distress is removed, so will be the need for religion. Abolish poverty and religion will disappear. This is particularly appropriate today in the marketplace of ideas wherein religion has itself become an object of consumption.² Only since the twentieth century with the widespread use of information technology, mass communications, and mass transit has it become possible to shop the marketplace of religions the way one would shop for most any other consumable object. Religion’s ties to communities, traditions, and geographies are loosening. Today, religion has become a product, bought, sold, and consumed. Religious paraphernalia and practices have become commodified. Illusory happiness is much more effective when it can be purchased. The anthropologist, Roy A. Rappaport, is no stranger to these types of critiques of religion, both of which focus on the psychological component of religious belief. There is, of course, much more to religion than its adherents’ beliefs. For instance, Emile Durkheim distinguishes between belief which he argues is private, and religion which is social. But even more recently, there has been an explosion of interest in the study of “lived religion”: emphasis on the experiential and material aspects of religious practice while deemphasizing issues of doctrine. Rappaport’s focus on ritual action as the solution to anxiety produced by language and rationality makes for an interesting point of contact with Freud and Marx on this subject. Interestingly, belief is not necessary for ritual to create a sense of alienation in its performers. Rappaport explains that insofar as anxieties, but not their causes, are alleviated by participation in ritual, then ritual is just as Freud and Marx argued: a neurosis or opiate. Rituals function as benevolent lies, reinforcing suffering while deluding the faithful, promising salvation. But the cost is great even for those who are not deluded. For them ritual becomes empty and meaningless, indeed the very term “ritual” comes to denote empty form (Douglas

 See, for instance, “Religion and Consumption: The Profane Sacred,” a special issue of Advances in Consumer Research, ed. Gü liz Ger, Vol. 32 (2005). http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/ v32/acr_vol32_44.pdf.

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1970:19). The act of ritual acceptance, once more profound than belief, becomes a proverbial form of hypocrisy. But in refusing to participate hypocritically no less than in hypocritical participation, the conscious minds of men and women become divorced from those deep and hidden portions of themselves to which ritual participation introduced and bound them. The self becomes fragmented and some of the fragments may be lost. The consciousness that remains is likely to remain trapped in its radical separation. For those not deluded there is alienation. (Ecology, Meaning, and Religion 241)

Freud wanted to heal suffering and Marx wanted to change the world. And they both thought the abolition of religion was a necessary precondition for significant progress to occur. But here we see that Rappaport is not so narrow in his understanding of religion. For him, religion creates the possibilities for both alienation and liberation, while the refusal to participate in the subjunctivity of ritual will indeed lead to alienation. Of course, given the right conditions religion both causes and is the result of alienation and neurosis. But religion might also provide us with a way out. Again, Rappaport argues, “that aspects of religion, particularly as generated in ritual, ameliorate problems of falsehood intrinsic to language to a degree sufficient to allow human sociability to have developed and to be maintained” (Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity 15 – 6). I should be clear that illusion is not the same thing as delusion or deception. Rappaport’s commenters, Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon write, “Illusions are not lies—they are a form of the subjunctive. Illusion is what can be, as indeed so many different symbolic worlds can” (22). Further, Seligman and his coauthors continue explaining that rituals, “create an illusion, but with no attempt to deceive. This is a crucial difference from a lie, which is an illusion with a clear attempt to deceive the other. In this ritual is much more like play, which is the joint entrance into an illusionary world” (22). Contrary to Freud and Marx, this understanding of ritual may now provide us with the ability to say that the work of religion is precisely and necessarily to create the illusion of the social order in which we all might participate. This implicitly requires an understanding of the world as inherently meaningless and requiring of our investing of meaning in it. Ritual is the method through which one makes such an investment. Religion’s illusions, if overcome, would result in social disintegration. Zen Buddhism is a religious tradition that self-consciously takes on its own illusions, promoting them as both useful and illusory. Rather than trying to establish its doctrines and practices as True, Zen owns up to the idea that religion plays with illusions and instead appropriates what has amounted to a critique for its own uses. Zen doesn’t deny that religion produces illusions; it emphasizes it. Eihei Dōgen, the medieval Zen philosopher, understood the power of illusion within religious thinking and its relationship to the inherent meaninglessness of

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the world very well. That is, Dōgen understood what Rappaport has been telling us—that the world means nothing until we create it subjunctively. It is useful to read Dōgen as a religious source for some of the positive possibilities of religion. For him, even religion’s illusions are beneficial, but in a counterintuitive way. Paradoxically, religion’s illusions confront the world as it really is—not as a therapeutic avoidance or existential flight from the absurdity or trauma of life. But— and this is the paradox—that as it really is is illusory. The world is subjunctive. Dōgen uses the phrase “flowers in the sky” as a metaphor for illusion. He recounts that, having an accurate outlook, “Shakyamuni Buddha said, ‘It is like someone with cataracts seeing flowers in the sky: when the affliction of cataracts is removed, the flowers perish in the sky’” (64). Dōgen’s translator and commentator, Thomas Cleary, explains that to make sense of Dōgen’s preoccupation with this phrase, one must understand that, “Reality, in Kegon [Buddhist] terms, means the interdependence of all things, which also means the ‘emptiness’ of things in themselves” (68). Cleary continues: The word for “sky” in the expression “flowers in the sky” is the same Sino-Japanese as the word for the Buddhist term “emptiness,” so this expression could also be read from Chinese as “empty flowers” or “flowers of emptiness.” Dōgen stresses that everything without exception is “flowers in the sky.” The traditional saying that “flowers in the sky” are due to cataracts or obstructions in the eye is here [in Dōgen’s essay] presented positively, with “cataracts” being used to refer to compassion, or nonextinction, the acceptance and recognition of life as it is. (65)

With all of this in mind, one should consider that Dōgen interprets the Buddha’s parable differently than might be intuitive. Know that the person with cataracts spoken of by the Buddha is the originally enlightened person, the ineffably enlightened person, the person of the Buddhas, the person of the three worlds, the person beyond Buddha. Do not ignorantly consider cataracts to be delusive factors and thus study as if there were something else which is real—that would be a small view. If cataract flowers are delusions, the agent and action wrongly clinging to them as delusions would have to be delusions. If they are all delusions, there can be no logical reasoning. If there is no reason established, the fact that cataract flowers are delusions cannot be so. (69)

Illusion, then, is enlightenment. These two categories cannot be separated in Dōgen’s Zen Buddhism. The older school of Theravada Buddhism stresses individual liberation through the annihilation of the illusion of permanence. This is the small view. But Dōgen’s variety of Mahayana Buddhism—the great vehicle— focuses instead on universal liberation by a different approach.

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Trying to annihilate illusion would paradoxically suggest that illusion is a thing to be annihilated and, therefore, is not properly an illusion at all. Dōgen suggests instead that everything, without qualification, is illusion—flowers in the sky. The goal of religious practice, as Dōgen would have it, is an attempt to attain liberation through comprehending illusion, not annihilating it. Cleary writes, “instead of treating illusion as something to be annihilated, Dōgen points out that all is illusion, and being empty in its very essence is in that sense identical to absolute reality.” Further, This is like saying that all existence is relative and therefore empty of absolutes, so to realize emptiness it is not necessary to annihilate existence. In fact, the very idea of annihilating presumes existence as something in itself real, hence is illusion within illusion. Dōgen points out that not only mundane things are ‘flowers in the sky,’ but so are the Buddhist teachings themselves. (64)

For my purposes here, Dōgen should be understood as arguing that religious subjunctivity is a creative enterprise. Religion’s illusions create the world. Or, in Dōgen’s own words, “Therefore know that flowers in the sky have the meaning of causing both earth and sky to bloom” (74). Contrary to Marx and Freud, illusion is not pathological in and of itself. In fact, illusion is one of religion’s most useful and powerful tools. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in Moral Man and Immoral Society that, “the truest visions of religion are illusions which may be partially realized by being resolutely believed, for what religion believes to be true is not wholly true but ought to be true; and may become true if its truth is not doubted” (81). The last comment about doubt is evidence of Niebuhr’s Protestantism. The truth of religion’s illusions is not a matter of their being believed, but being lived. Truth is not here an issue of belief and doubt, but of performance. Enacted illusions become real. Taking Niebuhr together with Rappaport—belief with self-referential action— the truth, the method, and the hope of religion are its subjunctivity. Underneath it all, religion is humanity’s subversive force. Religion’s subjunctivity has the potential—the charge, even—to undercut the status quo. That is, subjunctivity’s insistence upon alternatives is as much about the way the world is and might be as it is about the opposite. Subjunctivity has an apophatic component as well.³ The world might be otherwise. It also might not be. Subjunctivity allows the thinking of both what the world might be changed into  Apophasis is typically understood as providing information through negation. Rather than describing what something is, it describes what it is not. This is somewhat like sculpting stone by removing it, ultimately revealing an image through a negative process, rather than a positive one.

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and what it should be changed from. So subjunctivity has a dual perspective. Subjunctivity aims toward alternatives, but for another world to be possible, subjunctivity must also be in negative relation to the way the world is. This is why religion not only makes the world, it remakes it. Another world is possible, indeed. And religion is the method of its construction.

Against Spirituality The great twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich might help us think religion more fully by beginning with a liberatory conception of religion, rather than an oppressive one. Tillich takes Jesus’ great commandment as his point of reference. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is.⁴ Jesus appeals to Deuteronomy 6:4– 5 and says the Shema.⁵ Jesus explains that the greatest commandment is to love God fully and—in almost the very same breath—he supplements the Deuteronomic code with the requirement to love one’s neighbor as well. In contemporary language, one might say that the greatest commandment in the Gospels is to “love God and love each other.” Indeed, it appears that these two cannot be separated. For Tillich, this is the beginning of how one might think about religion itself. He explains, If we abstract the concept of religion from the great commandment, we can say that religion is being ultimately concerned about that which is and should be our ultimate concern. This means that faith is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, and God is the name for the content of the concern. Such a concept of religion has little in common with the description of religion as the belief in the existence of a highest being called God, and the theoretical and practical consequences of such a belief. Instead, we are pointing to an existential, not a theoretical, understanding of religion. (Tillich 40)

This might seem counterintuitive. The great commandment insists that one must love God, but Tillich is concerned that we not get too fixated on God’s existence as a matter of theoretical concern. I am arguing for an appropriation of Tillich— possibly his radicalization—to argue that a definition of religion abstracted from the great commandment has little to do with theistic belief. Such an understanding of religion, unlike traditional theism, is not a spirituality or a transcendence. These are the things that theistic belief points toward.

 See Matthew 22:35 – 40, Mark 12:28 – 31, and Luke 10:25 – 28.  The Shema is the name for one of the most commonly recited Jewish prayers, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

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Instead (to take Tillich and run with him), I argue that existential religiosity is a matter of binding ourselves to what concerns us in our practices and immediate existential conditions. It is an immanent religiosity, first and foremost. This is not necessarily a denial of transcendence or spirituality tout court, but rather a reemphasis on the immediacy and close proximity of religious concern. It does not happen over there in that holy place or oriented by a time we call eternity; religion happens here and now in front of us. This radicalization of Tillich is thus a call to reorient transcendence and to emphasize it as a horizontal structure, rather than a vertical one. To love one’s neighbor is to drop one’s eyes from their heavenly gaze and to look out—perhaps infinitely—over the world. Perhaps it is useful to consider Tillich through an inversion of the formula of the contemporary “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) trend.⁶ What would it mean to be religious, but not spiritual?⁷ That is, what of a religion of materiality and disappointment? What about a religious position that finds religion—but not necessarily spirituality—in everything, and yet never becomes satisfied. This would be a true risk, a radical leap of faith. Faith thus becomes possible through theological method rather than through its object. Once one becomes open to the idea of a theology of culture, rather than a theology of propositional statements

 In 2002 and 2003, Gallup found that, “50 % of Americans described themselves as ‘religious,’ while another 33 % said they are ‘spiritual but not religious’ (11 % said neither and 4 % said both). When respondents to a 1999 Gallup survey were asked to define ‘spirituality,’ almost a third defined it without reference to God or a higher authority: ‘a calmness in my life,’ ‘something you really put your heart into,’ or ‘living the life you feel is pleasing,’” (George H. Gallup, Jr.,”Americans’ Spiritual Searches Turn Inward,” February 11, 2003, http://www.gallup.com/ poll/7759/americans-spiritual-searches-turn-inward.aspx). The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life added to this finding in 2012. Pew found that “the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. … of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults who are religious or spiritual in some way . . . [two-thirds] say they believe in God (68 %). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58 %), while more than a third classify themselves as ‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious’ (37 %)” (“Nones on the Rise,” October 9, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/noneson-the-rise/). Furthermore a 2010 LifeWay Research poll found that 72 % of 18- to 29-year-olds identify as “more spiritual than religious” (Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Survey: 72 % of Millennials ‘More Spiritual than Religious,’” USA Today’s website, October 14, 2010, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/ news/religion/2010 – 04– 27– 1Amillfaith27_ST_N.htm).  Adam Kotsko has made a similar argument on his blog, an und für sich, in a post entitled, “Religious, but not Spiritual,” from November 18, 2011. http://itself.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/religious-but-not-spiritual/.

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about a supernatural being called “God,” one may recognize that the unconditional element that is constituent of religion for Tillich may of course be found in traditional mythological symbols like the gods, but that it may also appear in prophetic-political demands for social justice, if they are the ultimate concern of religious and secular movements. It can occur in the honesty and ultimate devotion of the servants of scientific truth. It can occur in the universalism of the classical idea of personality and in the Stoic (ancient and modern) attitude of elevation over the vicissitudes of existence. In all these cases the risk of faith is an existential risk, a risk in which the meaning and fulfillment of our lives is at stake, and not a theoretical judgment which may be refuted sooner or later. (28)⁸

This final critical line, of course, includes as its object theologically liberal theoretical judgments like religious holism, i. e. the idea that underneath it all, the world’s religions all aim at the same divinity, like different approaches to climbing the same mountain only to arrive at a single peak. Theological holism, also known as the perennialist position, is thus both naive and existentially trite according to this reading because it attempts to keep the winnings without the wager. Whether being spiritual but not religious is an existential risk is a matter for another paper. Nevertheless, the point here is sustained: that theology and religion are possible without any explicitly religious or theological content. Theology, for Tillich, is a way of thinking and experiencing rather than the study of a specific object in an attempt to open up to the need for an investigation of religious language. “God” does not carry the kind of currency it once did. We have thus arrived at the oddly heretical claim that it is not God who makes the world, but religion.

Subjunctive Apophaticism: Craft, Language, and Love The essential concern of this paper is the way in which the practice of subjunctivity is theological, regardless of its content. Far from theology being words about God (theo-logos), I am here making the heretical claim that theology may have nothing to do with God whatsoever. As systems of limits, orthodoxies have a fraught relationship with creativity. Heresy is a creative rebellion against those categories. The heretical imperative is to tear down those authorities which stand beyond critique. What greater authority is there than the world as it ap Emphasis mine.

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pears? While the other essays in this “Heretical Theology” section emphasize heresy as it relates to specifically Christian propositions and theological content, I prefer to approach heresy from structural or procedural directions. That is, heresy is the impulse that allows us to tear down the world as it appears and to remake it again, anew. That is why I’m arguing that theology is prior to God. Theology is what creates God, but also what creates the world and gives meaning to our experiences within. Religion makes meaningful worlds. But it is not what religion says that makes a world meaningful; it’s what it does. The heretic performs a religious operation. Meaning-making is a craft, not a proposition. This is the difference between doctrine and ritual. Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft describes the deep satisfaction of working with one’s hands, building, and fixing things. It is a religious text. As much as it is about making and repairing things – engaging in craft or trade – it is about ritual construction of the world. Working in a trade is not terribly far from Rappaport’s definition of ritual: “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers.” Additionally, Rappaport admits that, “this definition encompasses much more than religious behavior” (Ritual and Religion 24). Further, both religious ritual and craft require a particular stance toward language. For Rappaport, self-referential acts cannot be argued because they stand outside of language. Crawford is working in a similar but more familiar problematic. In the background of his text is the existential angst brought on by postmodernism and pluralism: It is difficult to discern meaning in the world. Similar to Rappaport, who posits ritual self-reference as the solution to dishonesty, Crawford’s solution to the problem of a world in which multiple authorities compete with one another putting values into question is to act objectively. When something breaks, the craftsperson fixes it. This is objective and satisfying. Acts do not need reason or language to make sense or be meaningful. The same is true within the realm of ritual. Marriage vows point at the possibility that we might remake our identities simply by ritually saying so. The plumber illuminates our uncomfortable dependence on infrastructure. Both situations reflect the very real possibility that the world as we know it may disintegrate before our eyes or be entirely remade. Our day-to-day lives may grind to a halt should the person in the coveralls be unavailable or unwilling to come to our aid. Weddings and power grid failures are both existentially liminal events. Coveralls are holy vestments. The key in all of this is the making. Language becomes impotent except insofar as it is deployed as an aspect of construction and repair. Rappaport and Crawford are both interested in action, rather than speech, that produces meaning. But the short-comings of language also have a specific theological dimen-

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sion. Apophatic mysticism – or negative theology – starts with a similar problematic, but challenges it differently. That is, apophaticism advocates the use of iconoclasm through negative language to self-consciously illuminate language’s short-comings. Language might be honest about its potential for dishonesty. Al-Qushayri, the great medieval sufi, writes in his Principles of Sufism, that “Those engaged in striving [mujahada] prefer silence because they know the dangers of words” (49). He explains that one of the major dangers of speaking is that the speaker tends to find comfort and pride in words. This wariness of speaking exists because language not only rationalizes and sows confusion, it also reifies. It creates things out of no-things. As such, language can never adequately express any experience, according to Al-Qushayri. This is the same with emotions such as sorrow, fear, and desire, which serve to ground us and force us to remember our contingency and the arbitrary nature of language as well as the constructed nature of culture. Silence, fear, sorrow, and desire are all opposed to institutional religion which reifies scripture, sermons, songs, traditions – praises aimed toward and descriptions of God – all the while forgetting that these are not actually God. Language conceptualizes the material world and our experiences, and concepts lose specificity. Any abstraction loses the specific idiosyncrasies of the particular. The problem is one of meaning and language. Language is a system of concepts and always falls short of what it attempts to describe. One can use countless words to describe an event or object, but one will never be able to describe everything adequately, not to mention the additional and unintended connotations that each word carries to its audience, which might further falsify an event or object. Language both falls short in accuracy and adds extras to what it describes. This is why one cannot say what is; one can only do what is.⁹ Reason based in language always breaks down to the point that a new and unencumbered authority becomes necessary. Farid ud-Din Attar, in The Conference of the Birds, writes, “Whoever is grounded firm in love renounces faith, religion, and unbelief” (33). All institutional structures crumble before love. Love cannot be institutionalized. Love is anarchic. The Hoopoe bird – the protagonist in that same text – comments that, reason cannot live with the folly of love; love has nothing to do with human reason. If you possessed inner sight, the atoms of the visible world would be manifested to you. But if you

 See Ralf Dahrendorf: “Homo Sociologicus: On the History, Significance, and Limits of the Category of Social Role,” Essays in the Theory of Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968).

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look at things with the eye of ordinary reason you will never understand how necessary it is to love. Only a man who has been tested and is free can feel this. He who undertakes this journey [to find God] should have a thousand hearts so that he can sacrifice one at every moment. (102)¹⁰

Love becomes the doing of what is when language loses its meaning. Love, then, is much closer to authoritative self-referentiality – an authority that holds its authority by appealing to itself, rather than to an external authority – than it might seem. As a result, language itself is the ultimate idol, just as representatives of the self-referential—charismatic, sovereign figures—are prone to be idolized. Maybe this is why God’s name is unpronounceable. Words are power and power corrupts.¹¹ Words divide and God is unified. To name God would be to cut God into parts. This is why mysticism seeks to move beyond language. Mysticism itself is the image of God in that it allows for possibility, resists definitional confinement, defies conclusion, and yet nonetheless creates and impassions. Meister Eckhart – the mystic who was tried for heresy before the Inquisition and Pope John XXII in the 1320s – wrote that God is nameless, for no one can speak of him or know him. . . . Accordingly, if I say that “God is good,” this is not true. . . . If I say again that “God is wise,” then this too is not true. . . . Or if I say that “God exists,” this also is not true. He is being beyond being, he is a nothingness beyond being. Therefore St Augustine says: “The finest thing that we can say of God is to be silent concerning him from the wisdom of inner riches.” Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin. . . . If you wish to be perfect and without sin, then do not prattle about God. Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master [Augustine, sermon 117] says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God. (129)

Eckhart then continues, explaining “that we should forsake God is altogether what God intends, for as long as the soul has God, knows God and is aware of God, she is far from God. This then is God’s desire – that God should reduce

 Another lovely quote on this point regards the seemingly reckless action that devoted mystics take. Attar writes, “His boldness then is good and laudable, because he is an idiot of love, on fire” (81).  Incidentally, this also seems to relate to God’s preference for the poor—those with less power —fewer words – testified to by liberation theologians. Furthermore, perhaps this is why so many have vilified sexuality – often, traditional sexual relationships are relationships of domination and submission. As God sides with the downtrodden, a system which dominates is rendered corrupt.

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himself to nothing in the soul so that the soul may lose herself” (207). Language does not provide comfort, only God can do that – the God beyond all words. Furthermore, Pseudo-Dionysius writes that “[God] is neither contained nor comprehended by anything. He reaches out to everything and beyond everything and does so with unfailing generosity and unstinted activity” (82). It is impossible to remain forever uncontained. This is the profound paradox of religious passion. How can one settle on that which shifts? Language inevitably falls short and disintegrates. Someone needs to come along and fix things. The negative path of the mystics points not to nihilism, but rather possibility. Crawford’s craftsman is a religious character in this sense. The repairman, according to Crawford, “seems to pose a challenge to our self-understanding that is somehow fundamental. We are not as free and independent as we thought. Street-level work that disrupts the infrastructure (the sewer system below or the electrical grid above) brings our shared dependence into view” (17). When the island is cut off from the mainland power grid during a storm, “shared dependence” is starkly illuminated. And the only thing that will turn the power back on is the hard work of craftspeople. It is this simultaneous issue of material dependence and the impotence of language that makes craft religious. “Because craftsmanship refers to objective standards that do not issue from the self and its desires, it poses a challenge to the ethic of consumerism” (17). The repairman and the mystic illuminate uncomfortable subjunctivity. And subjunctivity is what creates the world. Let us not forget that in the Bible, God’s first appearance is as a creator. It is true, initially God creates through speech. In Genesis 1:3, “God said: ‘let there be light.’”¹² This “God said” becomes a refrain, repeated nine times throughout the first chapter of Genesis. In chapter 1, verses 1– 4, the Gospel of John echoes the Creation in Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being through the Word was life” (Common English Bible). But this speech-creation was added as a clarification of an earlier crafting of creation.¹³ That older genesis appears second in the narrative.

 “Let there be” is an example of the subjunctive mood. God didn’t say “there is light” or “I hereby make light” or “light happens.” God spoke in the subjunctive when God created the universe.  According to the documentary hypothesis and other historical-critical understandings of the Hebrew scriptures, the two creation accounts in Genesis – Genesis 1:1– 2:3 and Genesis 2:4– 2:24 – were written by different authors and inserted into the story at different times. The version in chapter 2 in which God molds humanity from the earth was likely written first, while the version

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The Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. In the fertile land, the Lord God grew every beautiful tree with edible fruit, and also he grew the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:7– 9).

God’s creative power of speech was not enough. God is not just a sayer, but also a maker. When it came to the details, God did not let creation be. God became a craftsman, molding and cultivating creation with divine hands and breath. One cannot ever say what is. One can only do what is. Language only takes us so far before it breaks down requiring self-referential action. Apophatic mysticism leverages this approach to language in its understanding of the way religion should work. Mysticism is the critique of institutional religion, subjunctively, on the grounds of uncertainty. The mystic and the priest each represent these two broad categories of mysticism and institutional religion, respectively. The priest is official (because of ordination and the way that the institutional powers-that-be view the priestly office), upholds the status quo, and functions within a prescribed role—that is, the priest is entirely contingent upon his institution. The priest, to use Rappaport’s categories, acts within the canonical component of religious practice. The mystic, on the other hand, is not usually officially sanctioned by anyone, often makes radical or even heretical claims, and serves the institution by attempting to revive its un-institutionalizable passion. The mystic is attuned to the subjunctive at the outset. Mysticism is wary of those things which limit us, and language is their foundation. While the priest is a pillar of what is, the mystic is the usher of what might be. The priest and the mystic, when engaging in priestly and mystical activities, are always engaged in a struggle with each other. The priest is the champion of orthodoxy, struggling to reign in religious belief and delineate the experiences that stem from those beliefs. The mystic dabbles in heterodoxy, heresy, apostasy, something as-yet undefined in orthodox terms, or even something not contrary to orthodoxy, but deeper than what orthodoxy will allow. The priest and the mystic complement each other through this tension. The term “mysticism” itself is rather muddy and begs for clarification. However, it functions well muddily because to dry it up would make it crumble. Mysticism’s very essence is fluid. It always stands against institutions and, thus, cannot be clearly demarcated as institutions can. When Henri Bergson discusses mysticism, he means in chapter 1 in which God speaks creation into existence was likely added more than 100 years later.

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mystic experience taken in its immediacy, apart from all interpretation. True mystics simply open their souls to the oncoming wave. Sure of themselves, because they feel within them something better than themselves, they prove to be great men of action, to the surprise of those for whom mysticism is nothing but visions, and raptures, and ecstasies. That which they have allowed to flow into them is a stream flowing down and seeking through them to reach their fellow-men; and the necessity to spread around them what they have received affects them like an onslaught of love. A love which each one of them stamps with his own personality. (90)

Mysticism, because it is religious, must always be seen in relationship to institutional religion. And, in the sense that I am using the term here, mystics always come from within institutional religion and consider themselves religious (re-ligare), in the vocational sense of the word (that is, bound). I am content to let the definition of mysticism remain indistinct, as the crux of this argument depends on mysticism’s adaptability. To box it in with words and to make it finite would suffocate it. Perhaps ironically, mysticism thus requires the apophatic approach to its own understanding. We must perform a kind of apophasis as regards the concept of mysticism itself. As institutional religion and mysticism – the canonical and the self-referential – are inherently in relationship with each other, they cannot ever be separated or they would each lose their identities. Both are necessary for a balance of power. For either to take complete control would be tyranny on either side—either a tyranny of rigid totalitarianism or of spiritual depths so deep, most religious adherents would drown. To put it another, more mundane, way: not everyone would make either a good priest or a good mystic. These two vocations are highly selective. However, there is an element of the priestly and the mystical each in all religious adherents. The mystical critique of religion is not necessarily intentional; often mystics do not mean to directly criticize religion. But since mystics are more concerned with a relationship with God than with other people, a criticism of other people tends to come about. As apophasis requires a kind of critical distance upon which one must insist between language and what it signifies, so must there be two social spheres of religious experience maintained separately by a similar critical distance. The apophatic may thus be read as a form of repair. The mystical and priestly roles are similar to the two forms of charisma that Max Weber describes in Economy and Society. Weber divided charisma into a pure form and an institutional form. The pure form, loosely speaking, looks a lot like mysticism. It is extraordinary, outside of the realm of daily life, stands opposed to ordinary structures such as the family and religious institutions, is rebellious and individualized. In other words, it sounds a lot like the mystical path. On the other hand, Weber asserts that institutional charisma, which is char-

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acterized by social roles, is contained within structures of authority, thus legitimized by the existing structures of society. Yet again, this looks a lot like institutional religion. For Weber, the two cannot exist without each other. A people’s need for order, says Weber, and the simultaneous desire to overcome that order always come together because each is insufficient to keep a community going individually. Order (read: religion) is always constraining, but is always necessary – otherwise, at the most basic level, no one would be producing food. On the other hand, because order is constraining, people hungrily desire to break free of their restraints. Still, the two types of charisma, structure and anti-structure, religion and mysticism, need to co-exist. They correct each other. Albert Schweitzer once wrote to his (scandalously) Jewish girlfriend, referring to the Pauline dimension of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, that, “in the end, only the blasphemous is true” (24). For this reason, the mystical impulse is necessary to keep religion from strangling itself. Or, in the words of Paul Tillich, In its prophetic role the Church is the guardian who reveals dynamic structures in society and undercuts their demonic power by revealing them, even within the Church itself. In so doing the Church listens to prophetic voices outside itself, judging both the culture and the Church in so far as it is a part of the culture. We have referred to such prophetic voices in our culture. Most of them are not active members of the manifest Church. But perhaps one could call them participants of a ‘latent Church,’ a Church in which the ultimate concern which drives the manifest Church is hidden under cultural forms and deformations. (50 – 1)

The iconoclastic, apophatic mystic-craftsman might not be as obvious and visible a character as one might expect. And yet this counter-intuition might be the most significant evidence of its accuracy. One might consider that the heretic – the one who rails against religious formations, or who doesn’t feel the necessity of recourse to religious terminology and concepts while nevertheless acting subjunctively – is radically religious precisely for that refusal. But while craftsmen and mystics may work by themselves, their work is socially constructive. So the irony has compounded: religious community arises from atheistic religiosity. It is this paradoxical posture that religious practice and conviction work best without God that leads to the suggestion that religious community works best when God is not its object, but rather the production of meaning. This is inherently a social procedure, rather than a religious one, because it requires cooperation in the production of social solidarity. It is how we make new worlds together. It requires either the unmaking or the abandonment of the world the way it currently is – an apophatic move – and then the ritual cooperation to develop an alternative. This is what I mean by “religion.”

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I’m advocating for a heretical inversion of priority. Whereas the tradition would have us understand theology as that which makes sense of a preexisting and given world through a faith which seeks understanding, I’m arguing that the theological is less of a search and more of a project. Rather than defining theology as faith seeking understanding, we may then propose theology as acts making understanding. Such theology is not a passive, recipient process of “seeking,” but rather an active, productive one which results in a meaningful, potentially understandable world. This redefinition, or at least new emphasis, is enough to set most theologians on edge. But this is a double heresy because it also indicts the scientists who assume that they have the alternative to theology. Under the old “faith seeking understanding” definition, it is the “faith” with which scientists tend to take issue, not the search or the understanding. Theology does not derive from creation through natural law. That’s science. Theology instead produces the possibility of a creation which might actually mean something to us. And it produces for us our place within that creation. Indeed, theology is what names chunks of material “creation” in the first place. “Religion” is another word for a procedure, not a content. It means how we act together, not specifically what those acts might mean or say. It means that we are ultimately concerned, regardless of the content of that concern. I’m proposing that we morph our understanding of theology into something closely resembling craftsmanship or repair. To be clear, I am here making the heretical claim that theology has nothing inherently to do with God whatsoever. Theology is prior to God. It is what creates God. But more importantly, it is what creates meaningful worlds. This is why it is not what religion says that makes a world meaningful; it’s what it does. Meaning-making is a craft, not a proposition.

Works Cited Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Translated by C. S. Nott. Accord, NY: Pir Press, 1998. Augustine. Confessions. Translated by H. Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University, 1991. Bergson, Henri. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1963. Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class as Soulcraft. New York: Penguin, 2009. Dahrendorf, Ralf. “Homo Sociologicus: On the History, Significance, and Limits of the Category of Social Role.” Essays in the Theory of Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968. Dōgen and Thomas F. Cleary. Shōbōgenzō: Zen Essays by Dōgen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991.

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Pseudo-Dyonysius. “The Divine Names.” Light from Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism. Edited by Louis Dupré and James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001. Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Translated by George Elliot. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989. Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. The Freud Reader. Edited by Peter Gay. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Co., 1989. 685 – 721. –. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: Vintage, 2001. Gallup, Jr., George H. “Americans’ Spiritual Searches Turn Inward.” February 11, 2003. “Religion and Consumption: The Profane Sacred.” Advances in Consumer Research. Edited by Gü liz Ger. Vol. 32 (2005). Grossman, Cathy Lynn. “Survey: 72 % of Millennials ‘More Spiritual than Religious.’” USA Today. October 14, 2010. Web. Kotsko, Adam. “Religious, but not Spiritual.” an und für sich. November 18, 2011. Marx, Karl. “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. On Religion. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1964. 41 – 58. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson and translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Edited by T. S. Eliot. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1958. Al-Qushayri. Principles of Sufism. Translated by B. R. von Schlegell. Oneonta, NY: Mizan Press, 1990. Rappaport, Roy A. Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1979. –. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Schweitzer, Albert. The Albert Schweitzer – Helen Bresslau Letters: 1902 – 1912. Edited by Rhena Schweitzer Miller and Gustav Woytt and translated by Antje Bultmann Lemke with Nancy Stewart. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Seligman, Adam B., Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. The Oxford English Dictionary. Second edition. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, Volume XVII: Su-Thrivingly. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Tillich, Paul. Theology of Culture. Edited by Robert C. Kimball. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. “Nones on the Rise,” October 9, 2012. Web. Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1975.

Bernard Schweizer

The Heresy of Humor: Theological Responses to Laughter

Laughter and faith have a vexed relationship with one another: laughter tends to pull us in the direction of irreverence and subversion while (monotheistic) faith pulls us in the opposite direction of reverence and dogma. Religion is involved in regulating emotions, ideas, and actions, while laughter loosens us up, brings about transgression, and encourages eccentricity. Humor can shift our perspective on a subject, it surprises and defamiliarizes, and it undermines our sense of fixed meanings and established orders. Although humor can also have a normative function, when it is deployed to smooth social relations and ease tension,¹ but laughter aimed at a target often entails a withering, a chastising, and a downright subversive effect. Mark Twain was thinking of this aspect when he said “Only laughter can blow [a colossal humbug] to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand” (132). What kind of “colossal humbug” Twain had in mind can be inferred from the context in which this quote appears in The Mysterious Stranger, namely, the mind-numbing effects of conformity and the deadening consequences of blind faith. In the Judeo-Christian context, the Bible offers few, if any, support of laughter but many dire warnings against it, such as in Ecclesiastes 2:2: “I said of laughter it is mad, and of mirth what good doeth it?” Christian theologians across the ages, relying on Holy Scripture and mindful of the circumstance that “Christ never laughed”² (Kuschel 43), have gone out of their way to discredit and vilify laughter. The Church has further intensified that hostility to the spirit of mirth (Sanders 70). By contrast, neopagans embrace laughter as central to their worldview (Morreall 139 – 145), Buddhists worship a “laughing Buddha” (called Budai), and the enlightening potential of laughter in a Zen context is well documented (McDonald 101– 104). In comparison with religious traditions that welcome laughter, Christianity appears to be positively humor challenged. Yet, there has been a bit of movement on this front lately. In the last few decades, some Christian theologians have come forward actively trying to heal the

 So-called “Non-Duchenne laughter” does not occur in response to an external humor stimulus but rather constitutes a behavior aimed at negotiating social tension or showing “no threat.”  Saint Chrysostom originated the notion that while the gospels show Christ exhibiting different emotions “but nowhere laugh nor smile even a little” (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, VI.8, written in the late 4th century). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-009

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rift between humor and religion and to re-introduce a healthy dose of laughter into the Christian life of faith.³ These “theologians of laughter” (as I call them informally) have employed a number of strategies to rehabilitate laughter. One of them is combing the Bible for instances of humor, and arguing that God has a genuine sense of humor. This enterprise has had doubtful results. While the Bible does have some lighter moments,⁴ to treat the Book of Job as comedy, as William Whedbee has done in a bewildering reading, shows a rather desperate need to find humor where most likely it is not hiding. Other scholars have reacted skeptically to claims that humor is widespread in the two Testaments. The philosopher John Morreall has subjected a whole roster of so-called humorous passages in the Bible to critical scrutiny, and he writes mordantly: I conclude that the God of the Bible has no sense of humor, and that while Biblical writers may have inserted bits of humor here and there, it is false that ‘Humor permeates the Holy Scriptures.’ If the Scriptures are God’s revelation of himself and his will for human beings, humor has no place in God or in his plan for human beings.” (301)

Theologians of laughter operate on safer ground when they encourage the use of mirth as a didactic tool in ministerial work or when they insist on the psychological and social benefits of laughing. None of this is controversial or doubtful. The same goes for the fact that laughter has endured a bad reputation throughout Christian ecclesiastical history, something theologians of laughter are ready to admit: “In some religious circles, joy, humor, and laughter are viewed . . . as excessive, irrelevant, ridiculous, inappropriate, and even scandalous. But a lighthearted spirit is none of those things. Rather, it is an essential element of a healthy spiritual life and a healthy life in general” (Martin 2). Traditionally, the faithful have been enjoined to piety, reverence, and sincerity and discouraged from indulging their sense of humor, especially in a religious context. Jacqueline Bussie reminds us that “the church, from Augustine on down through the Middle Ages, thus interprets laughter vis-à-vis Christianity, the church, and God, as a pernicious phenomenon that seeks to undermine ecclesiastical authority and doctrine” (17), and she adds that even Reinhold Niebuhr’s modern theology re I am not referring to the “Toronto Blessing” or any other of the charismatic evangelical groups that have made convulsive laughter the centerpiece of their ministry. These religious laughter happenings (where uncontrollable laughter is a sign of being “drunk in the Holy Spirit”) have drawn bemused smiles from the secular community and severe criticism from mainstream religious authorities, who have associated this type of “holy laughter” with demonic seduction (Fruchtenbaum), spiritual deception (Needham), and cultish absurdity (Hank Hanagraaff).  The Book of Jonah is an example, as is Abraham’s bargaining with God over the future of Sodom (Gen. 18:16 – 33)

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inforces the view that “faith and laughter emerge as contradictions, and laughter has no place within the ultimately sacred” (20). By making an argument for the importance of mirth, Christian theologians of laughter place themselves outside the theological mainstream. But while all theologians of laughter lament the all-too-serious mood in institutional Christianity and while they all advocate more levity in religious life, it is necessary that we distinguish two directions within the theology of laughter. One direction—representing the majority view—is mainly concerned with forging the link between laughter and spiritual joy, as well as opening people’s eyes to the parts of the Bible that are supposedly funny. This group includes Karl-Joseph Kuschel, Gerald Arbuckle, William Whedbee, James Martin, Conrad Hyers, Richard Cote, and others, all bent on rehabilitating laughter and making humor “safe” for the use of the faithful, even encouraging laughter and good-natured joking in ministerial work. “Holy people are joyful,” writes James Martin, and he asks rhetorically, “Why? Because holiness brings us closer to God, the source of all joy” (2– 3). To make sure that “bad” or “corrosive” laughter is excluded from this sunny view of laughter, Martin adds the caveat, “As long as [laughter] remains firmly in that first category of ‘joyful’ and does not transgress into ‘mocking,’ human laughter is a gift from God, a spontaneous expression of delight at the world” (21). Thus, in order to count as a “gift from God,” only the “lite” version of laughter—joyful, clean, good-natured, harmless—is considered acceptable. This theology of laughter has no room for comedy that issues from a place of resistance, parody, satire, mockery, and excess. Such unconstrained uses of laughter are more than the mainstream theologians of laughter can handle, but as I arguing here, these unruly and sometimes x-rated forms of laughter are an inherent part of humor’s wide range. Karl-Joseph Kuschel formulates the following prescriptive view of unacceptable laughter: “An objection will be raised to the tendentiously destructive and nihilistic character of a certain kind of laughter: laughter at the expense of any truthfulness, laughter which arises out of a delight in one’s own wittiness. . . . It will be an objection to mocking laughter from above downward . . . . It will be an objection to cynical laughter: the proverbial laughter of hell, which stems from the denial of truth and ethics” (xx-xxi). This restrictive set of unwelcome and “forbidden” kinds of laughter almost threatens to choke the fun out of the whole humor project. What are we to do with the sharp witticisms of Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde, what of George Carlin’s caustic attacks against religious dogma, what of the cynical laughter of a Robert Heinlein? And what are we to think of Mikhail Bulgakov’s mischievous Satan in The Master and Margarita whose pranks expose both the shortcomings of the Soviet Union’s infernal bureaucracy, while lampooning Christian demonology along with it? A theology

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of laughter that conducts pre-emptive campaigns against so many domains of legitimate—though admittedly subversive and sometimes disturbing—areas of humor is already chipping away at the foundation of its own pro-laughter project, not to say sawing off the comical branch on which it is sitting. Indeed, Kuschel’s tirade against the superior, mocking laughter “from above” almost leads him into denouncing God himself! When discussing the Book of Job, Kuschel is disturbed that God uses precisely a kind of superior, mocking laughter when he has his fun with Job (“When disaster brings sudden death, He mocks at the calamity of the innocent” [Job 9.21– 23]). Kuschel admits that “There is no doubt about it, in such a laugh all trust in God threatens to be lost; God becomes enigmatically unscrutable, arbitrarily uncanny” (62). Kuschel circumnavigates that cliff by maintaining that God only appears to be indulging in mockery, i. e. that the accusation of divine mockery merely represents Job’s perception of God’s attitude, not necessarily God’s actual attitude. It is not a satisfactory explanation. Given that we do not share the same ontological horizon with God, what other means of assessing the quality of divine laughter do we have than judging it from the effect that it has on the butt of the divine “joke,” be it Job or anyone else? This insistence on separating good and bad humor, holy and unholy laughter, runs like a motif through the work of moderate theologians of laughter. Gerald Arbuckle sums it up as follows: We need to distinguish negative and positive humor so that it can be viewed in terms of a continuum. At one pole of the continuum there is negative humor marked by bitterness, hostility, humiliation. . . . At the other pole there is positive humor characterized by pleasantness, joy, happiness, and other qualities that energize the mind and heart. Negative humor is directed against others. Positive humor is about ‘laughing with’ others, that is, the humorists explicitly or implicitly acknowledge that they themselves have comic-evoking weaknesses in common with others. Unless otherwise indicated, humor in this book refers to positive humor. (4)

On one level, these are admirable sentiments. We have enough aspersion, bitterness, and antagonism in this world, and who needs further dissonance, even comically inflected? However, simply condemning superiority laughter and satirical attacks as “negative humor” is an extremely short-sighted view of things. Such a view does not take into consideration the power-differential out of which the “bad” kind of laughter often emerges. For disempowered people, cynical, mocking laughter is often the only means at their disposal to create some breathing room for protest or to generate opportunities for relief. Thus, while theologians of laughter such as Kuschel and Arbuckle condemn the superiority laughter which manifests itself in mockery and scorn, they fail to recognize

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that “inferiority laughter,” i. e. laughter issuing from a place of disempowerment and oppression, also tends to take on a bitter, mocking, and sardonic tone. And even if the power-differential between joker and jokee is not particularly uneven, human folly, wrongheadedness, stupidity, and obfuscation often call for the sting of satire or the caustic application of sarcasm as a corrective. Laughter, including that stemming from such “negative” forms of humor, may often be the only way to rattle the status quo, to shock people into new ways of seeing, or to cut through what philosopher Harry Frankfurt eloquently calls “bullshit.” A theology of laughter that cannot handle the moralistic needling of satire, the bitter laughter of the oppressed, the sardonic sting of ridicule, and the profane exuberance of playfulness will always remain a well-meaning but tame, obedient, and ultimately ineffective way of dealing with the unruly, heretical nature of laughter. Fortunately, there are exceptions to such complacent and narrow views of laughter. A minority among contemporary theologians of laughter holds a more inclusive, provocative and, to my mind, a much more relevant view of laughter—a view that is aligned with starkly heterodox theological positions. These radical theologians of laughter welcome process, uncertainty, and interruption, and they favor liberation from purveyors of authority, including ecclesiastical and theological authorities. One representative of this more radical religious approach to laughter, the German theologian Gisela Matthiae, begins her treatise by specifically acknowledging the relational aspects of her subject: “Laughter draws lines of demarcation, and it both fortifies hierarchies and subverts them. When we consider laughter as a social phenomenon, we always have to consider power relations as well” (Kindle Locations 436 – 437).⁵ This is a welcome corrective to the naïve view that simple distinctions between “good” and “bad” laughter can be drawn irrespective of context. Matthiae is very clear on the contextual nature of humor, and she does not unconditionally reject the kinds of humor that have a “negative” connotation: Satire . . . issues from a critical-superior position that scorns individuals or circumstances, though usually it conveys clear and important analyses of catastrophic conditions, hypocrisies, corruption, exploitation, and the like. Thus, it is important to be aware about what happens to mockery, sarcasm, or satire if they issue from the mouth or the pen of the oppressed, of minorities, of excluded groups. In such cases, those expressions of humor scratch at oppressive power structures and serve as a political weapon in the service of self-defense. That bespeaks a will to change or at least a hope for change. (Kindle Locations 424– 429)

 I have translated this, as well as all other quotations from Gisela Matthiae’s book Wo der Glaubt ist, da ist auch Lachen, from the German original.

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Matthiae, who is herself a trained clown, only cultivates the “positive” kinds of laughter when she performs. But she does not, therefore, condemn the more caustic, problematic, and aggressive forms of laughter that arise from humor dealing with oppression and critique (although she draws the line at straight-forward cynicism). To her, clowning—even in a religious context—is not merely about feel-good entertainment, rather “clowning has a political mandate. It wants to give different perspectives a hearing, trigger dialogue and ultimately aim for greater social justice. There’s something wittily subversive about it” (Kindle Locations 158 – 159). How Matthiae uses these precepts in her own ministerial practice and theological work has startled many fellow Christians. In one of her more provocative moves, she insists on a God image that pictures the deity as a “clownin” or female clown (Kindle Location 2112). Matthiae rationalizes this by saying that people of faith construct the God image that suits them best, including imagining “God as eagle, as birthing woman, as midwife, as source of comfort, fire, wind, and much more. With such figures of speech people attempt to capture the majesty of God” (Kindle Locations 341– 342). Matthiae simply devised a different and perhaps more unusual imaginative correlative for God by conceptualizing the deity as a woman jokester. Of course, from a normative, conventional theological position, to think about God as a clown—particularly a female clown—would seem nothing less than sacrilege. In this case, an inclusive, tolerant understanding of humor goes hand-in-hand with an opening-up of conventional theological thinking and a loosening of the limits of what can be thought and said about God, thus aligning humor with heterodoxy. But Matthiae is not alone in developing a God concept based on ideas of clowning. Two other radical theologians of laughter, Charles Campbell and Johann Ciliers, have advanced similarly provocative ideas by approaching the Gospels as a “rhetoric of folly.” Essentially, these two theologians compare Jesus to a holy fool and trickster. Taking their cue from Apostle Paul’s admonition that “God has chosen what the world counts folly” (1 Cor. 1.27) and that “we are fools for Christ’s sake” (1 Cor. 4.10), Campbell and Cilliers argue that “folly” is indeed intrinsic to the Gospel message and that Christ’s “rhetoric of folly” was instrumental in dislodging the old orthodoxy of Rome and its imperial religious system. But Campbell and Cilliers don’t stop at discussing Jesus, however respectfully, in the context of holy foolishness; they go one step further by saying that “in many ways, Jesus is like a trickster figure… Jesus, like a trickster, is the boundary crosser par excellence. In the course of the gospels, he transgresses almost every social and religious boundary an convention imaginable” (105). Here, they argue that the very basis of Christianity is built on a kind of cosmic, existential clowning. This may be a hard pill to swallow for many pious Christians, especially since Campbell and Cilliers roll with the humorous punches by argu-

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ing that the destabilizing operations of humor are highly relevant to the whole spirit of Christianity. In their view, laughter makes sure that the ongoing discovery of religious meaning continues to unfold, with no endpoint or theological finality in sight. To me, this is a meaningful way of dealing with laughter in a faith context, but it surely is an approach that is situated at the far end of the spectrum of theological thinking, i. e. at the very edge where that thinking tips into “atheology,” a theology that resists and radically questions received theological norms. The radical project of Matthiae, Campbell, and Cilliers is aligned with the equally unorthodox approach that Jacqueline Bussie takes in her book The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo. Bussie argues that “laughter of the oppressed functions as an invaluable means of ethical and theological resistance” (4). In this sense, laughter is the key to an inner resistance, a liberation from all kinds of repressive systems of authority, including the authorities of the clergy and theology. Bussie insists that “laughter deconstructs either/or thinking and unmasks [the fact] that polarizing thought masks a hegemonic consciousness” (187). She further applauds those radical theologians who, like her, “insist that theology can and should think creatively and subversively, providing an alternative consciousness to collide with the dominant consciousness when necessary” (187). The result of such an approach—an approach that reflects laughter’s heretical potentials—is that it “attests to the worthiness, yet provisional and fragmentary nature of all theological statements and doctrines” (Bussie 189). This is where the full force of this provocative theology of laughter comes into focus, i. e. where laughter is acknowledged as a force that can unsettle dogmas and expose the “provisional and fragmentary nature of all theological statements.” From the point of view of orthodoxy, this is, of course, pure heresy. Would Christianity without the Nicaean creed still be Christianity? Could we imagine a Christianity in which the doctrine of atonement is negotiable, where the Virgin birth is not an absolute truth? Well, if we follow Bussie’s theology of laughter to its final consequence, then the answer would be “yes,” i. e. we can and should imagine a Christianity in which laughter has helped to detach or at least to question such monoliths of orthodoxy as the Nicaean Creed, the doctrine of Atonement, and the Virgin birth. To her, laughter is precisely the operative principle to “disturb” such theological hegemonies. To Bussie, the heretical role of laughter emerges most clearly in a context of oppression. It is people in positions of structural inferiority—specifically women, non-whites, working-poor, children, outcasts—who use laughter as a means of unsettling established orthodoxies and of subverting arrangements of power that have consistently acted against their interests and caused them suffering.

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From the viewpoint of these suppressed individuals or groups, laughter is liberating, hopeful, and inspiring. But from the perspective of the reigning order and hegemonic status quo, whether it represents worldly or religious power, that same laughter is usually seen as a threat and a subversive force to be reckoned with. Campbell and Cilliers insist that “laughter plays an important role in deconstructing ideologies and iron theologies that so often drive the church. No wonder the ecclesiastical authorities often want to silence laughter” (133). I can only imagine what the representatives of “iron theologies” and the gatekeepers of doctrinal purity would have to say to this. But the authors do not stop there: “Laughter also reminds the church that its dogma can in fact be nothing more than a stuttering about things too profound to be encapsulated in precise grammatical or theological structures” (135). If these words were uttered by an antitheist or New Atheist, they would probably not cause much of a stir. But since they were actually written by devout Christian theologians, they are therefore doubly unsettling of established orthodoxy. Thus, a deep, disarming, and utterly radical honesty is at work here, an honesty that recommends a “hermeneutics of suspicion with regard to answers and claims of conclusiveness, with regard to the problems of evil and human suffering” (Bussie 188). Specifically, Bussie singles out “solutions” to the problem of evil (so-called theodicies) as overdue for a shock treatment with such laughter-honesty. She acknowledges the inadequacy of these theodicies because “religious faith as well as reason, in short, are wounded and fractured by the litany of atrocities we call history, and particularly the twentieth century” (188). Bussie practices precisely what she “preaches”: “Modern events such as the Holocaust have rendered us strangers to God” (189). Because of this, “a theology of laughter unveils the potential failure of theodicy. . . . Insofar as theodicy does not acknowledge its own incapability fully to overcome the problem of evil, theodicy must be abandoned as an affront to the real memory of suffering” (191). Against this radical re-assessment of the problem of evil, the more upbeat, complacent, and uncritical affirmations of traditional theodicies seem like childish refrains. Tellingly, laughter plays an important role in this re-assessment because it is often the only power that humans are left with when thrown back on their own devices by misfortune or oppression. That is why a theology of laughter according to Bussie’s conception— i. e. a theology of laughter that is rooted in resistance, protest, and emancipation—will ultimately end up promoting an “antitheodicy.” In keeping with the work of John Roth, who propagates such a theodicy of protest, Bussie holds that a proper theology of laughter is equivalent to a “position of antitheodicy that acknowledges the incomprehensibility of suffering yet encourages us to continue the fight of resistance” (192).

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Thus, in the end we have a choice between seeing laughter as either sweet, holy, and harmless or as a force that cannot be so easily corralled. For Matthiae, Bussie, Campbell, and Cilliers, laughter is a valuable instrument of liminality, critique, and revisionism, undercutting dominant orthodoxies and decentering theological systems. This does not mean that their radical theology of laughter wants to undermine belief itself. Indeed, their project is informed by a genuine spirit of faith, as they explore the meaning of the Gospels and search for answers to the big questions about God, the problem of evil, and the destiny of man. However, these thinkers also hold that the presence of laughter in a faith context is important precisely because rigid doctrines, dogmas, and orthodoxies need to be occasionally doubted, challenged, and renewed. Also, radical theologians of laughter do not deny that laughter can have “negative” implications, even to the point where it serves to reinforce existing boundaries and promotes shaming and exclusion. But, they are realistic enough to understand that you have to take laughter, warts and all, or to deprive humor of its vital elements of surprise, liminality, and freedom. In other words, these radical theologians are willing to risk laughter. As Gisela Matthiae has written: “Humor is not an attitude that simply shoves aside conflicts and avoids unpleasantness. It does not sidestep these things. Rather, it meets them head-on” (Kindle Locations 231– 233). Only the radical theology of laughter is willing to take the risks that humor entails, and that is a good thing. It is a bit like saying that the best, most relevant, and exciting theologies are willing to risk heresy. And so, once again we arrive at the juncture where humor and heresy are seen as sharing fundamental qualities. The same spirit that prompted Gisela Matthiae to say, “humor and faith are twin sisters,” (Kindle Locations 123 – 124) prompts me to think of humor and heresy as “best friends forever.”

Works Cited Arbuckle, Gerald A. Laughing With God: Humor, Culture, and Transformation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008. The New English Bible. New York: Oxford University Press & Cambridge University Press, 1970. Bussie, Jacqueline. The Laughter of the Oppressed: Ethical and Theological Resistance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Endo. New York: T&T Clark International, 2007. Campbell, Charles L. and Johan H. Cilliers. Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. Fruchtenbaum, Arnold. “The Toronto Phenomenon.” Hanagraaff, Hank. Counterfeit Revival. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001.

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Kuschel, Karl-Joseph. Laughter: A Theological Reflection. Trans. John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1994. Martin, James. Heavenly Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. New York: HarperOne, 2012. Matthiae, Gisela. Wo der Glaube ist, da ist auch Lachen: Mit Clownerie zur Glaubensfreude. Freibug, i.B.: Kreuz Verlag, 2013. McDonald, Paul. The Philosophy of Humor. Cornmarket, Penrith (UK): Humanities Ebooks, 2012. Morreall, John. “Sarcasm, irony, wordplay, and humor in the Hebrew Bible: A response to Hershey Friedman.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 14:3 (2001), 293 – 301. Needham, Nick. “The Toronto Blessing.” Web. 18 Aug 2014. Roth, John. “A Theodicy of Protest.” Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. Ed. Stephen T. Davis. Revised edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001. Twain, Mark. The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories. New York: Harper & Row, 1950. Whedbee, J. William. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

IV. From the Creators: The Artists’ Corner

Since the Romantic period, artistic practices have been habitually associated with ideas of innovation, rebellion, superseding tradition, and re-inventing the world—all concepts that have at least a tangential, if not a central, relevance to the idea of heresy. Harold Bloom has formulated the concept of the “anxiety of influence” to theorize the need of every artist to free himself (in Bloom’s world, the artist is distinctly male) of the shadow of his most formative influence, like a son needing to escape from the penumbra of a powerful and admired but also inhibiting father figure. In this view, too, art necessitates an act of protest, rebellion, and re-invention vis-à-vis values of tradition and orthodoxy. The fact that narrative literature has since its inception been powerfully attracted to characters who are outcasts, misfits, and rebels is a further indication that art has an affinity with the inconvenient, troubling, and provocative mindset of the dissenter and iconoclast. More recently, many artists and writers have used heretical/ subversive themes to create challenging and experimental art: Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, Colm Toibin’s Testament of Mary or Chris Ofili’s painting of the Virgin Mary come to mind. It is no wonder, then, that Plato would have booted poets from his ideal Republic. A utopian society based on clarity, order, consensus, and rational norms would be sorely tested by the fanciful and irreverent innovations of artists who create undreamt-of worlds and think thoughts beyond the pale. Bearing this in mind, it is imperative that a book featuring essays on the role of heresy in literature and art include the voices of the very subjects that these critics and commentators talk about, i. e. the artists themselves. This final section of our book opens the door to self-reflections of a number of artists: a singersongwriter (Tasha Golden), a novelist (James Morrow), a playwright (Stanton Wood), and a sculptor (Susan Hannon). Discussing their own working principles in handling material and pursuing ideas that push boundaries, these four artists also breach the conventional divide between artist and commentator. Many academics tend to perpetuate a rigid division of labor, i. e. that the artist makes and the scholar takes (apart) the work of art. To many academics, an artist analyzing his own work may seem about as suspiciously transgressive as a scholar making art. Needless to say, practitioners of heresy studies welcome both forms of heterodoxy! While it is possible to view all creative artists as beholden to a heretical ethos in one fashion or another, the following four essays leave convenient abstractions and generalizations behind to answer specific questions about the sources and challenges of non-conformist artistic projects. Whether it is the novelist’s attraction to heretical thought experiments (Morrow), the violation of social taboos by singing about domestic abuse (Golden), the desecration of Bibles to create transcendent sculptures (Susan Hannon), or the provocative use of 9/11

in a satirical play (Wood), these contributions enable readers to peak into the “laboratory” of artists who consciously operate at the boundary of the acceptable and sanctioned, while flirting with heresy. The artists represented in this section struggled to various degrees with the provocative, disruptive, and heretical nature of their works, and the essays presented here offer valuable insight into the issues that arise for artists handling particularly sensitive, transgressive, and heretical materials in their works. Audience reaction is a crucial factor in any artist’s conscious or unconscious calculations when it comes to producing art that is pushing boundaries. The following essays are particularly revealing when it comes to the transactions between artist and audience (or producer and consumer) of artworks that are either situated at the very boundary between norm and taboo or strike out boldly into uncharted territory.

James Morrow

The Novelist as Heretic Not long after my fortieth birthday, in the spring of 1987, I sat down at my KayPro II, fired up my PerfectWriter software, and wrote this sentence: “On the first day of September, 1974, a child was born to Murray Jacob Katz, a celibate Jewish recluse living across the bay from Atlantic City, New Jersey, an island metropolis then famous for its hotels, its boardwalk, its Miss America Pageant, and its seminal role in the invention of Monopoly.” The key word here is “celibate.” How does a sexually inactive bachelor become a father? The answer is baroque. A sperm bank has returned Murray’s most recent donation in a bell jar, the seed in question having been fertilized by “an egg of unknown origin.” A humanoid female fetus is growing within the glass walls, and the clinic cannot take responsibility for it. Gradually the reader becomes aware that Murray Katz is a contemporaneous Mary of Nazareth, entrusted by the cosmos to nurture the divine half-sister of Jesus Christ. Although I had already published three novels—two science-fictional fables about futuristic entertainment media and a Vonnegutian fantasy keyed to the nuclear arms race—I immediately realized that with the opening beats of Only Begotten Daughter I’d entered a rather different zone. This literary space felt at once strange and convivial, and I sensed that, long after Only Begotten Daughter saw print and presumably found a readership, I would still be filtering speculative theology through my satiric sensibility. The 1990s found me composing the Godhead Trilogy, a cycle of novels comprising Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, and The Eternal Footman, each predicated on the conceit that the Almighty has died, leaving behind a twomile-long corpse. In more recent years I’ve tried my hand at historical fiction, publishing The Last Witchfinder, a kind of Restoration tragicomedy savaging the psychotic theologies that empowered clerics to persecute alleged “witches” for nearly three hundred years in Western Europe, and Galápagos Regained, a steampunk-inflected Victorian extravaganza that turns on the hypothetical Great God Contest of 1848 – 1851: £10,000 to the first petitioner who can prove, or disprove, the existence of a Supreme Being. A paradox lies at the heart of my project. I can find no evidence that the universe contains a supernatural stratum, and I feel that belief in the supernatural has often proved an impediment to human moral and intellectual progress—and yet I routinely drive my plots via disruptions in the natural order. (The Last Witchfinder is written by a sentient book, and Galápagos Regained turns Gregor Mendel, Teilhard de Chardin, and Rosalind Franklin into time travelers.) This https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-010

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move comes at a price. The writer who populates a novel with noble elves, incendiary dragons, or talking cats is not tacitly asserting the existence of such creatures. But this dispensation does not extend automatically to the deployment of seraphs, demons, and other entities drawn from the Western religious heritage. Bring Jesus Christ on stage, as I did in Only Begotten Daughter, and you’re stuck with him. The Nazarene’s mere presence gives a qualified credence to supernaturalist arguments about how the universe works. To resolve this paradox, I have occasionally indulged in psychologizing about myself. Perhaps I’m a theist at heart, only I don’t know it. Or maybe my oeuvre represents a personal quest for the divine, even if I’m loath to admit it. Neither of those solutions appeals to me. About a decade ago, I encountered an arresting thought in a New Yorker article by one of my favorite public intellectuals, Adam Gopnik. In talking about the incongruity between the intemperate self-righteousness of Karl Popper and that same philosopher’s books celebrating self-criticism in political and scientific discourse, Gopnik observed, “We write what we are not.” For Gopnik this phenomenon, which he calls the Law of the Mental Mirror Image, leads us into a zone of disequilibrium and bewilderment: Rousseau’s self-exile from human society versus the affirmation that suffuses his writing, Thurber’s crabby personality versus his sweetly humorous pieces, and so on. And yet I believe that Gopnik’s Law, slightly reframed, provides us with a bracing insight into the medium of fiction. You write the book you are not. A valuable novel typically gets away from its creator, taking on a life of its own and generating a world that does not map precisely onto the writer’s intentions and opinions—and that is all to the good. In recent years I’ve come to understand Only Begotten Daughter, the Godhead Trilogy, and my historical epics not as the effusions of an unequivocal atheist but rather as thought experiments, akin to the Gedanken games in which physicists, cosmologists, and philosophers routinely engage. Whether I knew it or not, my primary agenda was never to contrive dialogue and rig plot twists on behalf of my deity-free Weltanschauung (though I’ve done plenty of contriving and rigging over the years). Rather, my self-commission was always to generate experimental conditions of sufficient richness and complexity that the composition process would yield both the book I was and the book I was not. This Necker-cube aesthetic has become fundamental to my understanding of how a carefully designed novel can spark in the reader thoughts he or she has never had before. To put the matter another way, I am an atheist whose novels are not essentially atheistic. They are heretical. By playing Gedanken games with the memes of Christian theology—deities, angels, malign spirits, miracles—I’m paying hom-

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age to the creative accomplishments of that heritage. In certain contexts, the supernatural can be good to think with. Unbeliever that I am, it behooves me to come to terms with the heretical rhapsodies of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, and William Blake, keeping their sublime verses in mind even as I attempt to dramatize why the supernatural is often so abominable to think with. There is, I would argue, an ontology of nonexistence. The gods are not factual, but they are fecund. Yahweh may be a wholly human construct, but he occupies a different plane of nonexistence than does Bugs Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. And it’s at this juncture, I suppose, that I part company with the New Atheists, though that is another day’s conversation. The thought-experiment model of fiction does not imply that the author ceases to function as a puppet master. Why write novels if you can’t play God? But fiction-makers must always be open to the latent potentialities of their experimental designs. They must be prepared for narrative developments that feel wholly unexpected—though in retrospect, I find, such bolts from the blue seem mysteriously foreordained. Call them surprising inevitabilities. Towing Jehovah tells of Anthony Van Horne, a disgraced supertanker captain who holds himself responsible for an oil spill that ravaged the Gulf of Mexico. In chapter one, my hero is given a shot at redemption. While performing a ritual ablution in the Cloisters of uptown Manhattan, using the waters of the Cuxa fountain in a futile attempt to scour the petroleum stains from his soul, Anthony receives a visitation from the Angel Raphael. This molting and miserable creature has a unique assignment for the master of the Carpco Valparaíso. God has died, and Anthony must tow the two-mile-long Corpus Dei from its present aquatic location, zero degrees latitude, zero longitude, to its final resting place, a tomb fashioned from a hollowed-out Arctic glacier. Anthony accepts the mission, and soon he is back on the bridge of the Valparaíso, flying the Vatican flag, supervising a perplexed crew, tilting with a scientifically-minded papal delegate called Father Thomas Ockham, coping with a sassy nun who invited herself along on the expedition, and searching for the divine cadaver. The premise of Towing Jehovah is preposterous. It’s actually a terrible idea for a novel: bald, jejune, not a little embarrassing. But I went ahead and played the Gedanken game anyway, feeling obliquely confident that the design harbored surprising inevitabilities of a felicitous sort. Once Anthony connects the Valparaíso to the Corpus Dei—the trick is to affix anchors to the divine ear bones—an ethos of depravity descends upon the supertanker. Certain that Jehovah is no longer cognizant of their behavior, the crewmen indulge in binges, brawls, larceny, and orgies. Even the moral compasses of Thomas Ockham and Sister Miriam prove vulnerable to the crisis. Shortly after driving their Jeep Wrangler into the holy omphalos in hopes of exposing

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the floating corpse as the remains of a mere Demiurge, Thomas and Miriam realize they are not immune to the temptations of a post-theistic world. (Nota bene: I have slightly condensed this scene—and the three that follow—to omit potentially confusing allusions to previously established characters and plot points.) Within minutes they were at the bottom of the navel, a half-acre of flesh mottled with chunks of coral, swatches of algae, and an occasional dead crab. Thomas rotated the ignition key, shutting off the engine along with Sister Miriam’s audiocassette of Richard Strauss’s Salomé. He inhaled. The fog filled his lungs like steam rising from a Mesozoic swamp. In a move the priest found perplexing, Miriam leaned over and aggressively rotated the ignition key, restoring Salomé to life. He unhooked his seat belt, climbed out of the cab, and made his way across the damp, briny basin. Dropping to his knees, he ran his palm along the epidermis, searching for some clue that an umbilicus had once towered, sequoia-like, from this spot—evidence of a proto-Deity, sign of a pre-Creator, proof of an unimaginable placenta floating through the Milky Way like an emission nebula. Nothing. Zero. Not a nub. He’d expected as much. And yet he persisted, massaging the terrain as if attempting some eschatological variety of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. “Any luck?” Until that moment, he hadn’t realized Miriam was beside him. Or naked. What astonished him was how detailed she was, how wonderfully particularized. The blue veins spidering across her breasts, the wiry twists and turns of her pubic hairs, the cyclopean gaze of her navel, the tampon string dangling between her legs like a fuse. This wasn’t Miss November. This was a woman. So Neil Weisinger had called it right. Anyone, even Miriam, could find the freedom that travels in God’s wake. “No luck,” Thomas replied nervously, lifting his palm from the cavity’s floor. A loud glunk escaped his throat. “I don’t f-feel a thing.” “What we’re really talking about, of course,” said Miriam, sucking in a deep breath, “is Gnosticism.” Her clothes—dungarees, khaki work shirt, underwear, all of it—lay puddled at her feet. Stepping uncertainly forward, she called to mind Botticelli’s Venus emerging from her seashell, a humanoid and endlessly desirable scallop. “True.” Sweat circled Thomas’s neck. He popped open his saturated collar. “We’re praying our cargo will t-turn out to be the D-Demiurge,” he continued, unbuttoning his black shirt. “We’re hoping it’s not God at all.” “Except Gnosticism’s a heresy,” the priest noted, climbing out of his Levis. A furious drumming poured from the Jeep Wrangler’s speakers.

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“The Dance of the Seven Veils,” Miriam explained nervously, wiggling her epic hips. “The trumpets and trombones speak up next, and then it becomes a waltz. Have you ever waltzed naked in God’s navel, Tom?” The priest removed his shirt and jockey shorts. “Never.” Trumpets shrieked, trombones bleated, a lone tuba blared. At first Thomas simply watched, wearing nothing but his bifocals. He imagined he was Herod Antipas, beholding the impossibly sensual dance that, in a paroxysm of pedophilia, he’d commissioned from his nubile stepdaughter, Salomé. And Miriam’s movements were indeed sensual—not lewd, not lascivious, but sensual, like the Song of Solomon, or Bathsheba’s ablutions, or the Magdalene washing the Lord’s dusty feet. Taking his friend’s hand, he encircled her fine, substantive frame. They waltzed: awkwardly as first, clownishly, in fact, but then some buried engram took over, some latent feeling for rhythm and form, and he guided her across the rubbery floor with bold, sweeping strides. The strange fog hung everywhere, blankets of mist wrapping their spinning bodies in a thick, delicious warmth. Something stirred in his mothballed loins. No erection followed. No lust consumed him. He was glad. This dance went deeper than loins, well beyond lust, back to some ancient presexual existence they shared with sponges and amoebas. “Nobody’s watching,” noted Miriam. Their bodies pressed tightly together, like hands clasped in prayer. “We’re alone,” Thomas corroborated. So true, so pathetically true: they were orphans in Anno Postdomini One, beyond good and evil.

The idea of God’s death triggering anomie aboard the supertanker was not in the original outline for Towing Jehovah. It emerged in the telling. By pursuing this surprising inevitability, which culminates in several crew members murdering each other in gladiatorial combat, I realized I was ratifying what I regard as one of the worst pieces of received wisdom on the planet, the notion that virtue can be grounded only in the divine. For me, when Ivan Karamazov asserts that without God everything is permitted, he gets it exactly backwards. (I would argue that within a theistic worldview everything is permitted, for once you apprehend the divine will, doing right by your fellow human beings becomes a secondary consideration.) And yet I felt compelled to ask myself, “Okay, Jim, suppose you were confronted with ponderous evidence that God once existed, but now He’s dead and no longer spying on you—might not this state of affairs take a toll on your conscience?” Eventually the Valparaíso’s officers and crew acquire non-theistic reasons to stop exploiting one another. They discover within themselves the Kantian categorical imperative, concluding that it’s intrinsically wrong to treat another person as a means to an end. But until that turn of events, I found myself willing to give Ivan Karamazov’s irritating formula its due.

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Shortly after Father Ockham and Sister Miriam waltz together, an arcane island rises, Atlantis-like, from the sea, stranding the supertanker, snapping the tow chains, and setting the Corpus Dei adrift. The situation goes from bad to worse. Famine stalks the ship’s decks and the island’s hills, the Valparaíso’s larders having been emptied by epic bacchanals. It appears that the entire company may die of starvation. Owing to the North Atlantic Drift, or so Anthony Van Horne presumes, the Corpus Dei floats back into view. A terrible obligation now falls upon Thomas Ockham. He must lead the ship’s officers on a hike across the divine bosom, there to do what is necessary to end the famine. Opening his knapsack, Thomas drew out the sacred hardware: candlesticks, chalice, ciborium, silver salver, antependium (the pride of his collection, pure silk, printed with the Stations of the Cross). The congregation awaited the sacrament eagerly but respectfully—all except Van Horne and Cassie Fowler, who both looked highly annoyed. Eight communicants, Thomas thought with a wry smile, the most he’d ever had at a Valparaíso Mass, either before or after His death became known aboard the tanker. Sister Miriam reached into her seabag and removed the altar: a situational-ethics altar, he had to admit, for in truth it was a Coleman stove fueled by propane gas. While Miriam unfolded the aluminum legs and dug them into the soft epidermis, Thomas spread out the antependium like a picnic basket, fastening the corners with candlesticks. “Can’t he move any faster?” grumbled Fowler. “He’s doing his best,” snapped Miriam. As Sam Follingsbee handed the nun a battery-powered carving knife, Crock O’Connor gave her one of the waterproof chain saws he’d used to open up God’s eardrums, and she in turn passed these tools to Thomas. In the interest of speed, he elected to dispense with the normal preliminaries—the Incensing of the Faithful, the Washing of the Hands, the Orate Fratres, the Reading of the Diptychs—and move straight to the matter of deconsecration. But here he was stuck. There was no antidote for transubstantiation in the missal, no recognized procedure for turning the divine body back into daily bread. Perhaps it would be sufficient simply to reverse the famous words of the Last Supper, “Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes, hoc est enim corpus Meum.” Take and eat ye all of this, for this is My body. Very well, he thought. Sure. Why not? Thomas hunkered down. He yanked the starter cord. Instantly the chain saw kicked in, buzzing like a horror-movie hornet. Clouds of black smoke poured from the engine housing. Groaning softly, the priest lowered the saw, firmed his grip, and stabbed his Creator. He jerked the saw away. “What’s the matter?” gasped Miriam. It simply wasn’t right. How could it be right? “Better to starve,” he muttered. “Tom, you must.”

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“No.” “Tom.” Again he lowered the saw. The spinning teeth bit into the flesh, releasing a stream of rosy plasma. He raised the saw. “Hurry,” rasped Lou Chickering. “Please,” moaned Marbles Rafferty. He eased the smoking machine back into the wound. Languidly, reluctantly, he dragged the blade along the horizontal path. Then he made a second cut, at right angles to the first. A third. A fourth. Peeling away the patch of epidermis, he inserted the saw clear to the engine housing and began his quest for true meat. “Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria Tua,” Miriam recited as she primed the altar. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Opening a box of Diamond kitchen matches, she ignited a stick, cupped the vulnerable flame, and lit the right-hand burner. “Hosanna in excelsis.” Instinctively they were opting for the grand manner, Thomas realized: an old-style Eucharist, complete with the Latin. The fog hissed as it hit the little flame. Miriam seized Folllingsbee’s eighteen-inch iron skillet and set it atop the burner. “Meum corpus enim est hoc,” muttered Thomas, cutting and slashing as he desacralized the tissues, “omnes hoc ex manducate et accipite.” As heavy magenta blood came bubbling to the surface, Miriam took the chalice, knelt down, and scooped up several pints. “Omnes eo ex bibite et accipite,” said the priest, filtering the holiness from the blood. He kept working the saw, at last freeing up a three-pound swatch of flesh. Shutting off the vibrating blade, he carried the fillet to the altar and dropped it into the skillet. The meat sizzled, pink juices rushing from its depths. A wondrous scent arose, the sweet aroma of seared divinity, making Thomas’s mouth water. “It’s done,” seethed Cassie Fowler. “It’s fucking done.” “Patience,” snarled Miriam. Sixty seconds passed. Thomas grabbed the spatula and flipped the fillet. A matter of balances: he must heat the thing long enough to kill the pathogens, but not so long as to destroy the precious proteins for which their bodies screamed. “What’s next?” snorted Van Horne. “The Fraction of the Host,” said Miriam. “Screw it,” he said. “Screw you,” she said. Sliding the spatula under the meat, Thomas transferred it to the silver salver. He took a breath and, switching on the carving knife, divided the great steak into nine equal portions, each the size of a brownie. “Haec commixtio,” he said, slicing a tiny bit off his own share,

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“corporis et sanguinis Dei”—with the particle he made the Sign of the Cross over the chalice and dropped it in—“fiat accipientibus nobis.” May this mingling of the body and blood of God be effectual to us who receive it. “Amen.” “Stop stretching it out,” gasped Fowler. “This is sadistic,” whined Van Horne. “If you don’t like it,” said Miriam, “find another church.” Squeezing his portion between thumb and forefinger, feeling the sticky warmth roll across his palm, Thomas raised it to his lips. He opened his mouth. “Perceptio corporis Tui, Domine, quod ego indignus sumere praesumo, non mihi proveniat in condemnationem.” Let not the partaking of Thy body, O Lord, which I, though unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my condemnation. He sank his teeth into the meat. He chewed slowly and gulped. The flavor astonished him. He’d been expecting something manifestly classy and valuable—London broil, perhaps, or milk-fed veal—bit instead it evoked Follingsbee’s version of a Big Mac. And the priest thought: of course. God had been for everyone, hadn’t he? He belonged to the fast-food multitudes, to all those overweight mothers Thomas was forever seeing in the Bronxdale Avenue McDonald’s, ordering Happy Meals for their chubby broods. “Corpus Tuum, Domine, quod sumpsit, adhaereat visceribus meis,” he said. May Thy body, O Lord, which I have received, cleave to my inmost parts. He felt a sudden, electric surge, though whether this traced to the meat itself or to the Idea of the Meat he couldn’t say. “Amen.” Myriad sensations gamboled among Thomas’s taste buds as, silver salver in hand, he approached Follingsbee. Beyond the burgerness lay something not unlike Kentucky Fried Chicken, and beyond that lay intimations of a Wendy’s Triple. “Father, I feel real bad about this,” said the plump chef. “I’m sure you could’ve cooked it better. Don’t tell the stewards’ union.” Follingsbee winced. “I used to be an altar boy, remember?” “It’s perfectly okay, Sam.” “You promise? It seems sinful.” “I promise.” The chef opened his mouth. “Corpus Dei custodiat corpus tuum,” said Thomas, inserting Follingsbee’s portion. May God’s body preserve thy own. “Eat slowly,” he admonished, “or you’ll get sick.” As Follingsbee chewed, Thomas moved down the line—Rafferty, O’Connor, Chickering, Bliss, Fowler, Van Horne, Sister Miriam—laying a share on each extended tongue. “Corpus Dei custodiat corpus tuum,” he told them. “Not so fast,” he warned. The communicants worked their jaws and swallowed. “Domine, non sum dignus,” said Miriam, licking her lips. Lord, I am not worthy.

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“Domine, non sum dignus,” said Follingsbee, eyes closed, savoring his salvation. “Domine … non … sum … dignus,” groaned the radio officer, shuddering with self-disgust. For a committed vegetarian like Lianne Bliss, this was obviously a terrible ordeal. “Domine, non sum dignus,” said Rafferty, O’Connor, and Chickering in unison. Only Van Horne and Fowler remained silent. “Dominus vobiscum,” Thomas told the congregation, stepping onto the areola. Under the captain’s direction the loyalists drew out their machetes, stilettos, and Swiss Army knives and set to work, systematically enlarging the original indentation as they carved out additional fillets for their mates back in the shantytown, and within an hour they had flensed the corpse sufficiently to fill every pot and pan. “You know, I probably believe in Him more strongly right now than I ever did when he was alive,” said Van Horne, joining Thomas on the areola. “It’s an absolute miracle, don’t you think?” “I don’t know what it is.” Fanning himself with his Panama hat, Thomas turned toward the communicants. “Either that, or His body got caught on the crest of the Canary Current, entered the North Atlantic Drift…” “Ite,” Thomas announced in a strong, clear voice. “… and then came ‘round full circle.” “Missa est.” “So what do you think, Father? A miracle, or the North Atlantic Drift?” “I think it’s all the same thing,” said the dazed, exhausted, satiated priest.

In my view, a curious species of awe hovers over the inverse Eucharist in Towing Jehovah. The scene is surprisingly—and inevitably—suffused with qualified reverence. To be sure, there’s plenty of sacrilegious satire going on here. After critiquing the manuscript of the famine chapter, a fellow workshop member told me, “Congratulations, Jim, this is state-of-the-art blasphemy.” But more theistically-minded readers have appreciated the fact that God returns when He is most needed, sacrificing Himself to the chain saw. Blameless in Abaddon, the sequel to Towing Jehovah, tells of Martin Candle, a small-town, small-time magistrate mourning the death of his wife while simultaneously coping with prostate cancer. Driven to Job-like rage, Martin proposes to drag the Corpus Dei—in this second component of my trilogy, God is comatose but not neurologically inert—before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Enter amateur theologian and professional literary scholar G. F. Lovett, a roman-à-clef C. S. Lewis, whose wildly popular children’s books have made him a wealthy man. Lovett agrees to finance the Trial of the Millennium, Interna-

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tional 227: Job Society, et al., plaintiffs, versus Corpus Dei, Defendant, on the condition that the case for the defense will be orchestrated by Martin and Martin alone. To learn how he might counter the ingenious theodicies that Christian philosophers have devised over the centuries, Martin turns to the most intelligent force at hand: Jehovah’s damaged but still active cerebrum. The second act of Blameless in Abaddon finds Martin joining an expedition into God’s brain, where he makes the acquaintance of Saint Augustine and enters into theological conversations with famous biblical figures. Before his odyssey is over, Martin has discussed the disciplinary defense with Lot’s daughters, the hidden harmony defense with Noah, the ontological defense with Job, the free-will defense with Adam and Eve, and the eschatological defense with the players in the Binding of Isaac. “I’m not thinking very clearly right now,” said Isaac to Martin. “My father is on the point of killing me. Otherwise, I’d be happy to talk about evil.” “I’m pretty confused, too,” said Abraham, staring straight ahead with weary, bloodshot eyes. “Please, Lord, give me strength…” As Father Ockham aimed his camcorder at Abraham and ran off several feet of tape, the patriarch raised the knife, bringing it level with his gaze. The blade glittered in the fading sunlight. Augustine moved into Martin’s field of vision, confronting him with his lustrous, black-eyed stare. “You’re looking at the eschatological defense,” the bishop explained. “At the moment Abraham and Isaac are both suffering terribly—” “You can say that again,” moaned the boy. “I wish I were dead,” wailed his father. “—and yet, in the fullness of time, the child will be rescued.” Augustine smiled expansively at the patriarch. “Have patience, sir. The material world is a vale of tears, but ultimately you ascend to Heaven.” By way of retort, Abraham pointed the tip of his knife toward Augustine, curled his lip contemptuously, and burst into song. Just around the corner, There’s a rainbow in the sky. So let’s have another cup of coffee, And let’s have another piece of pie. “Well, yes—if you must put it that way,” sneered Augustine. “Read Contra Caelum by Bishop Origen,” he said to Martin, “and you will realize all our earthly miseries are transient as grass.” Extending an index finger, he indicated a nearby thicket, where a plump ram

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stood frozen in a posture of fatalistic resignation, its horns ensnared in the branches. “See that ram, Isaac? You deliverance is at hand. Any second now, Abraham will noticed the creature and make the swap.” “I know, I know,” said the boy sarcastically. “It’s an old story.” “You don’t sound satisfied,” said Martin. “Satisfied? How can I be satisfied? My father hears a Voice from on high commanding him to immolate me and hand the charred meat over for His delectation and delight. ‘Make me an offering I can’t refuse,” says Yahweh. Then, at the last second, He withdraws the demand. Do you imagine I’ll go home now and simply forget the whole thing? The smell of the smoke, the gleam of the knife, the thongs chafing my wrists—do you imagine these facts aren’t etched permanently into my brain? Do you imagine I’ll ever be able to look my father in the eye without thinking, ‘He would have done it’?” “Or for that matter,” said Abraham, “do you imagine I’ll ever be able to look Isaac in the eye without thinking, ‘I would have done it’?” “You’re both missing the point,” Augustine insisted, frowning extravagantly. “The binding of Isaac is a symbolic story.” “Your symbol, my son,” said Abraham. “Excuse me,” said the ram in a plaintive voice. “I don’t mean to butt in. But if you want to destroy the eschatological defense, Judge Candle, don’t start with the psychodynamics of the situation. Start with the crude truth that, wonderful as this boy’s incipient deliverance might be, such happy endings are the exception, not the rule.” “The beast has a good point,” said Abraham. “Call me Gordon.” Breaking free of the thicket, the animal stepped tentatively toward the altar. “Consider my own predicament. As Abraham starts to sever my jugular, will Yahweh drop by and say, ‘Stop, hold it, only kidding, April fool?’ Will an alternative sacrifice appear in the next thicket over—a rabbit, maybe? And if it does, then what about justice for the rabbit? Will Yahweh be satisfied with a toad instead?” Gordon pawed the soggy ground. “Admittedly, I can’t be objective here. But the fact remains that when child abuse is about to occur in the real world, it is not commonly canceled by divine intervention.” Augustine whipped off his horn-rimmed glasses and pointed them toward Gordon. “The correct interpretation of this incident does not lead us to expect justice in the here and now. The Binding of Isaac helps us remember that, through the atoning death of Jesus Christ—represented in the story by you yourself, Gordon—humankind has been redeemed.” He gave the ram a firm pat on the rump. “When our Savior comes again, the dead will be raised, the wicked punished, and the virtuous blessed with eternal life.” “I cannot respect any theory of evil that so nearly immunizes itself against empirical disconfirmation,” said Gordon. “All theodicies requiring belief in an afterlife are manifestly begging the question.” The ram cast his limpid brown eyes on Martin. “Are you getting this? If the pre-coma God were as loving and powerful as His supporters claim, then He possessed no warrant, absolutely none, to wait until some hypothetical Judgment Day before

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eradicating evil. A father doesn’t have the right to sexually molest his children simply because he intends to take them to Disneyland in the spring.” The Disneyland Defense, Martin typed into his laptop. “In your opinion,” said Augustine huffishly. “In my opinion,” said the ram evenly. For the second time that day, Abraham began to sing. Just below your pelvis, There’s a tumor in your thigh. So let’s have another shot of morphine ‘Cause cancer is a rotten way to die. He sheathed his knife, hobbled over to Isaac, and loosened the thongs from the boy’s wrists and ankles. “Here,” he said, presenting the bindings to Martin. “Tell the tribunal, ‘Behold Exhibit A. Perhaps Yahweh saw fit to call off Isaac’s private holocaust, but since then His record has been atrocious.’ “ Climbing off the altar, Isaac addressed his proxy. “You are a truly marvelous beast.” He jumped free of the flames, hit the ground, and rubbed Gordon’s woolly head. “I shall always be in your debt.” “Go to Hell,” rasped Gordon. “You’re spoiling my whole fucking afternoon.” “Is there no other way?” Isaac asked his father. “If it were my decision, I’d let the animal live.” With a single, fluid movement, Abraham unsheathed his knife and thrust it into Gordon’s neck. “Do you believe that, son?” “I do, Father.” “Aaaiiihhh,” bleated Gordon as a stream of blood, red and rich as the Hiddekel, spurted from his innocent throat.

Before writing act two of Blameless in Abaddon—the brain odyssey scenes—I had not foreseen the thematic implications of Martin’s engagement with scriptural avatars. By equipping my hero with counter-theodicies, God is in effect arguing against His own goodness. At first blush, that made no sense. But then I said to myself, “That’s God for you—of course He would do that. This is not some evangelical pastor in Dallas; this is the King of the Universe. Being all-encompassing, He is quite prepared to acknowledge his depravity.” The outline for Blameless in Abaddon did not indicate how the story would end. I had to feel my way to the climax. In the penultimate chapter, the Tribunal delivers its verdict: not guilty. Martin becomes so furious that he destroys Jehovah’s life-support system with an axe, then rides a tide of divine blood into God’s cerebrum, his second sojourn among the holy neurons. This time around Martin

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encounters G. F. Lovett, and before long both former opponents in International 227 find themselves in the presence of Jesus Christ. Before the scene is over, Martin and Lovett witness a transformation of particularly surprising inevitability. “Fate has appointed me the bearer of sad tidings,” said Yeshua, tugging absently on his ponytail. “My disease? said Martin. Yeshua nodded. “It’s beyond the reach of everything. Feminone, Odradex, radiation, prostatectomy, divine intervention.” “Everything,” Martin echoed. “I was hoping I’d been summoned to … you know.” “Receive a cure? Sorry. Not possible.” Yeshua closed his piercing Jeffrey Hunter eyes. “You’re here to learn the solution, Mr. Candle. You deserve to know it.” He opened his eyes and spun toward Lovett. “You deserve to know it, too, though now I’m using ‘deserve’ in rather another sense.” “That would be the ontological solution, right?” said Lovett. “Maybe the judges didn’t buy it, but it stands to reason you do.” “The ontological?” said Yeshua, incredulous. “The ontological? Do you really think you’re living in the best of all possible worlds? Where I come from, an eighth grader would be ashamed to enter planet Earth in a junior high school science fair.” “If the universe is to be predictable, it must be governed by laws,” Lovett persisted. “Imperfections are inherent in matter. The Creator had no choice but to—” “Shut up, Lovett,” said Yeshua. “You give me a pain in the ass.” “Are you perhaps alluding to the free will argument?” asked Martin. Yeshua screwed his face into a sneer. “If free will is such a good thing—if it’s the blessing that can reconcile us to Hiroshima and Auschwitz—I’d like to know why there’s so little of it.” “Have you noticed that whenever a debater gets desperate, he drags out Hiroshima and Auschwitz?” grumbled Lovett. “Hiroshima and Auschwitz,” echoed Yeshua tauntingly, extending his tongue and aiming it at the professor. “Hiroshima and Auschwitz, the big H and the big A, H and A, HA, HA, HA!” “What do you mean, ‘why there’s so little of it’?” asked Martin. “Most animals don’t have free will.” Rising, Yeshua procured a Rolling Rock from the refrigerator, the bright green bottle slick with condensation. “Neither do the destitute, the addicted, the senile, the stupid, or the psychotic. If I were God—which, by the way, I am—I wouldn’t go around touting the merits of freedom until I’d made the stuff more generally available.” Martin said, “Surely you’re not about the resurrect the hidden harmony, the disciplinary, or the—”

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“Don’t worry.” “So what is the solution?” Yeshua sneezed. “God bless you,” said Martin. “I intend to,” said Yeshua, opening his Rolling Rock. He curled his hand around the dislodged cap and fixed Lovett with an iridescent stare. “You know, Professor.” “I haven’t the foggiest—” “Oh, yes you do.” “No.” “Oh, yes.” Yeshua flipped the bottle cap into the air like a coin. He caught it, palmed it, and took a swig of beer. Lovett was trembling now. His face assumed the color of Swiss cheese. He set his Guinness on the floor. “Surely not…” “Yes.” “Dualism?” “Dualism,” Yeshua confirmed, grinning ear to ear. “The Manichean heresy, the Gnostic dichotomy, the Albigensian blasphemy, the Mephistopheles hypothesis—call it what you will.” “Lovett’s pallid face reddened, a flush flowing all the way to the hairless dome of his head. “I cannot accept a dualistic God.” “Oh? We accept you, fat boy—HA, HA, HA!” Barely had this last speech escaped their host’s larynx when something astonishing occurred. A lycanthropic change overcame Yeshua. Lock by lock, his hair dissolved, leaving him balder than Lovett. His neck thickened, his lips swelled, his eyebrows proliferated, his forehead ballooned, his eyes turned bright red. He grew seven inches in as many seconds. Martin and Lovett gasped in unison. “No,” wailed the professor. “Jesus,” moaned Martin. “Indeed,” said the Devil, his hairy shoulders and broad back bursting the seams of Yeshua’s shroud. “I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz.” Smiling sardonically, Lucifer lumbered up to Lovett. “Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde.” He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. “Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It’s called ‘The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.’ On second thought, why bother? You know the plot: the title gives it away. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be

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thrown onto an open fire?” Swallowing the bottle cap, he swerved toward Martin. “Don’t you see? It’s the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of course God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.” “Why didn’t you tell me this the last time I was in His brain?” demanded Martin. “If I’d walked away with a deposition from you arguing for a dualistic—” “A deposition from me? From the Devil? The judges would have shredded it on the spot.” “I’ll have you know I passed up a meeting of the Beer and Beowulf Society to come here tonight,” said Lovett scoldingly. “I must admit, I expected something more enlightening.” “Tough cookies,” said the Prince of Darkness. “You aspired to be God’s advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God’s advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy’s a sucker’s game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity’s obligation wasn’t to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe with Auschwitz … that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil’s work for him.” “So I was right to pull the plug on the Corpus Dei?” asked Martin. Yeshua nodded and said, “Indeed, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to let you off the hook either. In your own way you’re as sorry a phenomenon as Lovett here. Bitterness is not a philosophy, friend. Outrage is not an ethic. Stop counting corpses and reach a truce with the universe, or you’ll be stuck on the dung heap forever.”

In the final pages of Blameless in Abaddon, Martin is carried through the divine cerebrum to a simulacrum of his childhood home, borne to the bedroom, and connected to a morphine drip. Friends and relatives gather around the dying magistrate. Still obsessed with theodicy, he tells the vigil-keepers how wrong the judges were to vindicate God, for the only viable solution to the problem of evil is dualism. Martin’s final gesture recapitulates Ivan Karamazov’s rejection of the hidden harmony defense: flinging a hand toward Heaven, he splays his fingers and respectfully returns his ticket. I am not finished playing Gedanken games with biblical characters. Ever since spending a day in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer during a visit to France in 1995, I’ve wanted to recast the apocryphal Voyage des Trois Maries as a philosophical quest narrative along the lines of Towing Jehovah and Blameless in Abaddon. This legend holds that, several years after the crucifixion, vindictive Roman soldiers set a half-dozen members of Jesus’ inner circle adrift in an open boat, including Lazarus, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Mary Salomé, Mary the mother of James, and Cedonius, born blind but cured by Christ. Eventually the precarious craft reached the coast of Gallia Narbonensis, the region of ancient Gaul that lay across the Alps from northern Italy. The voyagers

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disembarked and set about spreading the Christian message throughout the province and points west. According to the present outline of my Trois Maries novel, tentatively titled Lazarus Is Waiting, the action will center on Lazarus. Instead of attempting to reach Gaul in a mere dory, the refugees take refuge in a much larger vessel, the Neithhotep, an Egyptian barge capable of moving through time as well as space. For poetic purposes I intend to alter the ship’s manifest slightly, omitting Cedonius and swapping Mary Jacobe for the Virgin Mary. Eventually everyone ends up at the A.D. 325 Council of Nicaea, near Constantinople, where they take the side of the Egyptian cleric Arius, who held that the Son of God, though surely divine, was not coeternal with the Father, nor consubstantial. The stakes are high. Unless Bishop Arius’s controversial theology triumphs at Nicaea, the woman Lazarus loves, Celaeno—a pagan philosopher turned Christian convert—will be executed in Alexandria as a heretic. It seems to me that, if any biblical figures can speak authoritatively about Jesus’ essential nature, it would be the company of the Neithhotep. I’m envisioning an epic showdown between the Virgin Mary and Bishop Athanasius, the villain of the story, whose goal at Nicaea was to destroy the Arian heresy. In making her presentation, the Madonna will solicit testimony from Lazarus, the Magdalene, the Arimathean, and Mary Salomé, each of whom has reasons for doubting that Jesus was commensurate with God. Will this theological battle of wits provide Lazarus Is Waiting with a dramatically satisfying climax? Or will my experimental design propel the plot and the characters in unforeseen directions? I haven’t the foggiest idea. I can only do what I’ve always done: visit my cerebral garden store, purchase an unlabeled packet of seeds, plant them in the ground, tend the plot as best I can, and see what sprouts from the soil.

Susan Hannon

Beautiful Heresy: A Visual Artist’s Re-appropriation of Scripture Text-Wing Sculptures: The Genesis of my Heretical Art I needed a pair of wings to go on the back of a male figurative sculpture. He was nude, and he looked vaguely like Jesus on the cross. I wanted wings for him that were different from anything I had ever seen. I needed something no one had ever thought of for this visually iconic figure. This happened during a phase in my life when I was not feeling particularly kind or open to people who talked a great deal about the Bible. I come from Canada, which—contrary perhaps to popular imagination—is actually a rather religious (especially Catholic) country. All children here are given their very own New Testament in fifth grade. There was religious instruction every week. So we were well-versed in the stories of the Bible and its dramatic visuals. However, I was dismayed to realize that the concepts from the Bible (example A, example B) that I knew as a child bore no resemblance to the wild reinterpretations that I was seeing in contemporary society to fit situations and justify political positions that I knew they were not intended for. Regarding my religious upbringing, I was formed by a circumstance from before I was even born that would confound and bother me most of my life. My parents were in a mixed religious marriage. My mother was a Lutheran and my father a Catholic. He had been baptized into Catholicism, so he would be able to remain in the Catholic orphanage he had been placed in. My parents were kind, fair, and tolerant people, but they loved to argue over religion. Since they couldn’t agree on a religious denomination for me, I was only Christian through traditional association. I really didn’t know much about organized religion, doctrine, and liturgy. All I knew were the basic stories (e. g., the Good Samaritan, David and Goliath, the Ten Commandments) and basic concepts of theism (e. g., that God is everywhere, and that he’s always looking after you). I got the fringes but not the core. So, during my childhood, I remained rather ignorant regarding the specifics of Christianity. It was common then for priests and nuns to go door to door to collect money for the local church. I was about five when I saw for the first time a priest and two nuns coming through our neighborhood collecting. I https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-011

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very bravely ran ahead of them, knocking on all our neighbors’ doors and telling them, “You better stay inside. There are two witches and a devil coming down the street.” So, as sketchy as my past with religion was, I was still weary of the word “Christian” being tossed around casually, especially in politics. Many of those who endlessly invoked Christian values were not showing us Christian deeds. When it came to the tenets of tolerance, I didn’t see much tolerance demonstrated by many self-described Christians, especially tolerance toward LGBT/trans people, non-white races, and the economically struggling. When I thought about contemporary social, racial, and other problems, I would always remember the Bible’s onion skin paper between my fingers. This thin, sacred, revered paper made me think of flight: it was light, airy, you could turn the pages by blowing on them. I would think, “How lovely this paper would be to fold, the words ceasing to be text that could be distorted, and instead devolving into their own patterns, with the divide down the center separating the two columns on the page looking like the shaft down the center of a feather.” It seemed a way to liberate this beautiful book whose words had been twisted for insidious purposes. In my mind, if I was folding and pruning the text so that you couldn’t read it anymore, I was liberating the text from being misread and misused. I was rendering it into a visual form in order to save it. Why not? Who had done it before? No one. And who would be upset? We are living in a world where we see more images than any other generation in the history of the world. And many are not pleasant. We see more images than any other living creature on this Earth. Here was my attempt to create an image that saved a sacred text from being further perverted.

How I Developed My Technique For years and for no particular reason, I collected bird feathers and stored them in a Tiffany’s box. Most were picked up on the cement banks of the Los Angeles river. I got others from various local parks that I hiked in. I loved the little bits and pieces of wing sections from birds because some lovely piece of them survived even though the animal had probably met a violent end. Feathers from morning doves and pigeons were the most common among those finds. I studied these feathers and drew a wing pattern that would be the right proportion for the male sculpture. An average person’s standing height would be one wing’s length. I cut drywall cloth (a wire mesh) for the two wings.

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Then I found a discarded Bible that was falling apart and was about to be thrown away. From the inscription inside, I learned that it had once belonged to a woman named Lettie Osborn. It was a Catholic teaching Bible from the 1940s, and it had just that onion skin paper I had always thought about. I cut out the feather patterns from the pages of the Bible, folded them down the middle, and adhered them to the thin galvanized wires that formed the shaft. I used an acid-free adhesive and reinforced the feather by using another page of the Bible on the back so the wire was completely sealed in. I liked using the wire as it gave me the random variety of positions that you see in nature and that I needed in order to make the piece look as life-like as possible. I used the Old Testament on the left wing and the New Testament on the right wing. It was when I was assembling these scripture-feathers that I noticed there were passages underlined in the text. At first I was annoyed. I wanted a pristine wing on each side of this sculpture. But when I took a closer look, I realized that someone had underlined every reference to adultery throughout the entire Bible, in pen or pencil. Now, all of a sudden, I had a whole different vision of this Bible which had become a palimpsest. A human layer of interpretation, judgment, sadness or anger had been superimposed over the Holy Writ. I pictured Lettie Osborn sitting in her kitchen, reading her Bible and underlining passages about adultery in pen, waiting for her husband to come home. I pictured a younger Lettie Osborn, using a pencil (since children weren’t allowed to use pens), sitting in her room, reading her Bible, underlining passages in pencil, waiting for her father to come home to her and her mother. A small light shone on this little life. I used as many of these pages with the underlined passages as I could find. When I finished that first set of wings, they looked great on the male sculpture. But at that moment, I felt that they should really hang on their own. Indeed, when I saw them alone on the blank white wall, I was very moved. They were so compelling and soulful. The absence of the body between the wings rendered them into a sort of invitation to step in, try them on, and take flight. The dilapidated, crumbling Bible had been given new life as a preserved sculpture. Lettie Osborn had been given new life, too, in a sense, free from anguish. I felt I had performed a kind of alchemy, a sort of baptism/confession/ exorcism/resurrection/salvation. I looked at the wings and said to myself, “I have to make more.”

The Texts That I Use I started trying to find more Bibles. How many hands had these books passed through? And under what conditions? Friends freely gave me Bibles they no lon-

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ger wanted, such as Bibles that they had themselves collected for whatever personal, nostalgic, or romantic reason. I have found as a general rule that people are only keeping Bibles that they consider their family Bible. The ones that are kept are filled with the lives of their owners. These were Bibles that had been prayed over, cried over, taken to church, carried to funerals, held by invalids, and hugged tightly during storms. And yet, even such family Bibles found their way to me in the end. Some of these Bibles had pressed flowers, leaves, or tiny scraps of paper with notes saying things such as, “Read Ezekiel chapter 4:22 or John 5:17 3Xs a day” laid in between the pages. There are scribbles of children pretending to write, or children trying to color in the old lithograph pictures. I found familyhistory pages with the lovely, loopy penmanship declaring who was born, who died, and on what occasion these Bibles were given and gifted, such as for a marriage, at a birth in the family, or at the bequest of the original owner upon death. I found out that Olive, Ellie, and Sarah, all sisters, had passed away within a year of each other after leading long, good lives. Then there are the addresses: 51 Dolan Street, 12 Water Street, with no city or state. One of the leather-bound Bibles had the gold O and L in HOLY worn right off. When I put my hand on it, my thumb fit perfectly in the soft leather divots were the letters had been. These books vibrated with human history. A Bible from 1865 or 1818 has lived a long time and seen more of human history than the average person will ever see. These discoveries opened up a whole world for me as I worked. They kept me thinking about the larger human picture. Some of them were old, old Bibles. Frequently, they had no binding left, no cover and no back. They were split in halves or thirds, just barely holding together whatever spirit remained in their pages. I felt that many of them had reached me just in time to be saved.

My Intent to Commit Heresy I suppose that my work can be called sacrilegious because I am seen as destroying Bibles and turning them into something that gets sold for thousands of dollars to wealthy collectors. Turning Bibles into raw material for art works could be seen as not only sacrilegious but perhaps even as blasphemous. However, these terms doesn’t really mean anything in my world. I have always lived more or less outside of conventions. I do not feel guilty about using these source materials and exploring these themes in my art. Still, I spend a lot of time thinking about my obligation to be respectful to Christian believers in my work. After all, I was raised in the tradition (although not baptized). The Christian faith is

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my main source of inspiration. My imagination has deep roots in it, and yet I didn’t start this series merely to provoke a conversation about the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable in the context of producing works of art. I do think there are some things that are offensive and should be banned. Any perversion to do with children should be banned. As for art and images, I think there are ideas or expressions that some people don’t want or need to see. But that doesn’t mean they should be banned. I was never a fan of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” I didn’t care for it, but I didn’t think it should be banned either. I want to open an umbrella over most art and say that it should be shielded from limitation, with very few exceptions. I have contacted the Vatican for its opinion of how to properly dispose of a Bible and whether what I was doing was considered sacrilegious. I was instructed that burning is the proper, preferred, respectful method to destroy a Bible that has physically outlived its usefulness. There are others who think that if the Bible is no longer wanted but not falling apart, you should leave it in a public place so that hopefully someone who needs counsel or comfort can pick it up, open up a page, and receive divine inspiration. I have chosen to do neither of those things. So, under literal definitions of sacrilege or heresy, yes, I am probably engaging in such conduct. But it’s beautiful heresy! It’s heresy that makes one think and feel. It’s enriching heresy. My art is not about destruction. It’s about resurrection, transformation, and ultimately salvation. I create my work because I am compelled to keep making it. It is my solitary prayer every day. I know that people are affected by my work. People are fascinated and intrigued. And when viewing my work, many experience a deep sense of reverence as well.

Self-Censorship There are things that I’ve thought about exploring but then ultimately decided not to pursue. Sometimes I know why I censor myself. Sometimes I don’t. For example, I wanted to do an art calendar of supremely thin anorexic woman. I don’t know on a conscious level why I wanted to do it, and I am not sure, either, why I finally decided to abandon the project. Perhaps the fact that I didn’t know why I wanted to do it made me suspect I didn’t have the authority or understanding to do it in a respectful way. I also thought about a project that I wanted to do entitled “Spoils of War.” It was basically about human body parts taken as trophies. I wanted to take molds of a lot of different people’s ears. I was then going to reproduce them in different skin shades and string them on dog tag necklaces like they did during the Viet-

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nam War. When I talked to a friend of mine about this new project, she started to cry and begged me not to do it. Her husband had fought in Vietnam, and she felt it was a dark image that would definitely have a traumatizing effect on anyone deeply involved with that war. So I passed on it. Back then, I was a different me. Now I would never entertain the idea of making artwork that is so hopeless and bleak.

Reactions to My Work I am cautious about listening to feedback from the world about my work, positive or negative. As I discussed above, I didn’t do this to start a conversation about the place of art in the world today. I did this out of a powerful personal impulse. I don’t want the world’s reactions to divert me from that, so I try to keep some filters and boundaries. This is a fortunate thing because the reactions to my work have been very passionate and polarized. I met an entertaining woman at a meeting and gave her my business card. She remarked on how lovely the card was but asked what the wings were made of. I said, “Bibles, Bibles that people don’t want or use anymore – they’re discolored, missing entire sections, the edges are eaten by insects and worms.” Her hair practically stood on end and steam poured out of her ears. As I quickly tried to get away from her, she yelled at me across a lobby, “How dare you! There is no such thing as a Bible that cannot be used.” I took refuge in the elevator and was saved from further rebuke only by the closing doors. On the other hand, I called up a very dear friend of mine who is an ultra-religious, born-again Christian. I was wondering how long our friendship was going to last after I told him what I was doing with the Bible. He said, “It’s just words on paper. It’s only the actions that are important.” Luckily, now I have my art dealer, Henry Lien of the Glass Garage Gallery, to shield me from the public and only to feed me the nice or useful bits.

My Relationship with God and the Afterlife I do believe in God now. I did not for a very long period of time, for a number of reasons. As for the afterlife, it is not even a question for me. I deal with it on a pretty regular basis. My earliest dreams as a small child were of falling from great heights and hitting bottom, and the awful feeling that came with it. Contrary to popular reports about such dreams, I do not wake up right before the moment of impact. I

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remember vividly what the feeling of hitting the bottom is like. This was further compounded by a near plane crash that I experienced over the Pacific Ocean on the way to Japan as a teenager. One day, I was working on a sculpture, cutting out feathers and listening to Dr. Brian Weiss, a psychiatrist who is a renowned expert in past life-regression therapy. He was talking about how some people have a fear of heights and that it may relate back to a past life. “You could have been pushed from a parapet,” he said. I looked up at my walls of wings and my male nude sculptures diving through the air. Air is in everything I do right now: wings, flight, flying, diving, the body suspended in air. At first, I assumed that maybe I make these wings because in a past life I was pushed off a parapet and I’m trying to save myself. Then, another thought occurred to me. Maybe I was the one who pushed people off the parapet. And I’m making wings for all those people I pushed. Maybe this is my way to repent and honor them. Maybe these books that I am destroying and transforming in my hands are a code, signaling to me from another existence the great lesson that I have to learn from this lifetime. So maybe in some way, my art truly is about resurrection and salvation. My own.

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Pop Heresy: Songwriting at the Edge of the Speakable In 2006 I wrote a song about my family’s history of domestic violence. It was angry and personal, and I never thought I’d perform it for anyone. The idea of going public with it felt distinctly heretical, in that it broke the social contract demanding that family traumas be kept behind closed doors. Exposing my story was inconceivable, and exposing my listeners to unwelcome subject matter was absurd. Who’d want to hear it? For reasons I may never fully understand, I decided one December night to include the song in our set. And after the show, it was the one song everyone wanted to talk about. Wives, daughters, boyfriends, sisters, and sons lined up and confided in me their own experiences with domestic violence. Suddenly, private relational dysfunctions were out on the public table for raw commiseration, and I was rethinking everything I knew about transgression, heresy, and songwriting. By the end of 2007, I had recorded and released the song, titled “You Did Everything Right,” and it had permanently altered my understanding of my role as a writer, a performer, and a disturber of the peace.

Silence and Heresy Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, known for his research in the area of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), has argued that the silencing of trauma and the now-notorious phenomenon of victim blaming are based on society’s collective horror at “being reminded of the fact that [we], too, can be struck by tragedies beyond [our] control” (27). We want to believe that the world is just, or at least that humans are the masters of their own fates. To maintain this belief, van der Kolk notes, we are willing to silence ourselves, family members, and entire populations. Perhaps it is this dynamic that is responsible for the expectation that, particularly in public spaces, we refrain from speaking too much about difficult realities of the human condition. Unfortunately, this expectation creates active and policed silences that have been shown to negatively impact the physical and mental health not only of silenced victims but also of communities and cultures that refuse to bear witness to difficult narratives. “Unless the reality of trauma is acknowledged,” van der Kolk writes, “and bystanders can somehow deal with https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-012

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their own revulsion at being confronted with these realities, effective treatment is impossible” (44). Certainly we have come some distance from the repressive strictures of our Victorian forbearers, but as a culture we are still largely and dangerously incapable of articulating unsettling experiences in social settings. Perhaps even more problematically, we are too often incapable of actively listening—and effectively responding—to those who do speak up. This remains true in spite of an Internet that makes sharing, speaking, and testifying ever more possible and productive. Too often, we are conversationally inept when it comes to issues beyond the safe and sanitary, and the resulting silences are both personally and socially corrosive. In response, my songwriting, poetry, and performance work is now driven by an imperative to intentionally commit what I’ve come to call social heresy. Broadly speaking, I define social heresy as a willful transgression of the orthodox bounds of public discourse. It does not refer merely to violating courtesy or notions of politeness; it instead implies breaches of that social contract which prohibits conversational confrontation with such realities as suffering, ignorance, disability, sexuality, mental health and, of course, religious heresy. In other words, social heresy requires initiating conversations that would typically spoil a polite dinner-table gathering—discussions that escape the policed bounds of the normative. The song “You Did Everything Right” threw me into the role of social heretic before I knew what was happening. In the several years since its release, it has connected me with domestic violence awareness campaigns, women’s crisis centers, campus sexual assault awareness events, and an unimaginable number of confiding victims. Before writing this song, I had felt—as many do—that my family’s history was anomalous, and that it would therefore be crazy to “go public” with it. Looking back, I almost certainly had encountered statistics that should have revealed the regrettable commonality of my experience; apparently, they left no impression. They could not overcome an ingrained sense of stigma and taboo. But performing and publishing a song about it was an inescapable education: I saw firsthand how common the story of domestic violence is, how rampant and debilitating, how privatized and silenced. The result of my social heresy is not just that I learned the truth about dark intimacies and family secrets, but that my audiences and listeners learned it along with me. As we were exposed to one another, live music events became public forums for this and other socially-silenced issues that, as it turns out, we can talk about.

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Repression and Public Health But why make a big deal of it? Because the suppression of suffering is physiologically and psychologically damaging. Over decades of research, psychologist James Pennebaker has confirmed that, regardless of the trauma—sexual abuse, divorce, the loss of a loved one—those who do not talk about their experiences suffer more over their lifetimes than those who do: they are hospitalized more often, develop suppressed immune function, and experience depressed and/or suicidal thoughts at higher rates. A disturbing illustration of this can be seen in the fact that experts once perceived victims of child sexual abuse as being more severely affected over the long term than victims of other traumas. But Pennebaker has shown that it is not the kind of trauma that predicts longterm suffering; rather, it is a victim’s ability to articulate via language—in therapy, writing, or with family and friends—what she experienced. In other words, it is our society’s difficulty in discussing child sex abuse that has led its victims into silence—causing them to suffer physically and mentally more than others, and for longer periods of time. “Those who reported a sexual trauma,” Pennebaker writes, “evidenced more health problems than any other group we had ever seen” (14). Social and cultural norms regarding the conversationally permissible keep us from ready, informal discussions about sexual trauma, domestic violence, mental health, sexuality, poverty, suicide, racism, misogyny, death, and many other issues. This is troubling not only because such silences erode health, but also because they keep each of us isolated, ignorant, and disempowered. In spite of Western society’s supposed reverence for individuality and education, we consistently cede control of both our knowledge and our relationships (we are only as intimate with others as what we can share with them) to entrenched notions of The Appropriate – the one god we cannot seem to let die.

Creative Writing, in Public Meanwhile, literature has a long history of overcoming the limitations placed on social discourse. I could list hundreds of novels and stories that have been criticized, if not censored, for such trespasses; by way of example, I have recently been drawn again to these few: Fernando Pessoa’s poetry, with its wandering, depressive nihilism; Walt Whitman’s audacious worship of self and mankind; Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky, which confronts the facts both of rape and of its ongoing trauma; and Jeffrey Eugenides’ bestselling Middlesex, which elegantly

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manages to narrate incest, intersexism, gender identity, and the inevitability of confronting the repressed, often with traumatic results. These and many other works ask readers to dive headlong into topics and moral communities they might otherwise avoid or suppress. David B. Morris, whose research has revolved around the expression of pain in literature, acknowledges the power of literature’s portrayal of the Other: We do not acknowledge the suffering of beings outside our moral community as suffering; we detach ourselves from their pain as if it were an incomprehensible behavior on some Swiftian island. Within a moral community, we employ names like martyr or hero and inscribe the suffering of our own people within narratives of hallowed sacrifice and epic achievement. Literature clearly plays a significant role in orchestrating the language that validates or invalidates certain experiences as suffering. (40)

By participating in a literary narrative, the dichotomy of “us” and “them” is often productively destabilized. This does not mean that we agree with every decision a protagonist makes; rather, we are able to disagree more intelligently and sympathetically. More importantly, the presence of disagreement or discomfort does not prevent us from continuing a “relationship” with a given character. We instead push beyond the safe, typical bounds of discourse; in the process, we learn to distrust binaries and easy dismissals of the other. “One important function of literature,” Morris writes, “is to challenge and stretch—even to transgress —the boundaries of a moral community” (40). I propose that there are even greater gains to society when we not only read privately but also discuss literature in social settings. For example, discussing Middlesex in a book club or at a public reading requires participants to engage topics that are (assumed to be) socially taboo; in the process, they must confront not only their personal resistances and inhibitions, but also those that arise strictly in social settings. And we must interrogate the latter, because our social inhibitions may not represent personal values so much as our adherence(s) to normative discourse: our fears of awkwardness, confrontation, or reminders of suffering. By publicly engaging literature, we may transform not only our individual perceptions, but also our collective sense of what is “talk-about-able.” This could ultimately improve public discourse surrounding silenced issues. That such a transformation regularly happens in public literary settings has been verified by studies of both reading and writing therapies (Kidd and Castano, Stepakoff, Blake). And I would push described benefits even further, noting that “many [trauma] victims suffer from an impaired capacity to articulate their intense emotions and perceptions related to the trauma into communicable language” (van der Kolk 27). In such cases, literature provides not only occasions and forums for productive and transformative discussion, but also the very pos-

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sibility of discussion: functioning literally as a voice for those with unutterable stories. My personal work has engaged these public-literary benefits not via prose narratives, but via song, poetry, and other language-centered art forms. Of course, songs have long been associated with transgression and/or political protest, but I’d argue that pop music and performance are under-researched for their contributions to community health via public disclosures of stigmatized experiences. Given the negative health impacts of repression, and given that heretical topics are regularly engaged by songs and performers (both at live shows and in online communities), songwriters can and should be explicitly encouraged to consider how our creative disclosures and explorations connect with the public’s need for information, articulation, and commiseration. In other words, how might songs more productively and intentionally commit social heresies? Of course, a songwriter or performer doesn’t have to intend heresy to execute it; consider Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” which triggered public discussions about feminism and rape culture that likely surprised the songwriters themselves. On the other hand, many artists do seem to intend their heresies; for instance, drag queen and recording artist Conchita Wurst won the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, prompting predictable levels of global support, fury, and fevered debates regarding gender identity. Other examples include Radiohead’s “Creep,” which confesses depression and the desire to fit in; Rufus Wainwright’s “I’m Going to a Town” castigates America for its foreign policy and regressive views of homosexuality; and Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go Round,” in which Musgraves details and critiques the tendency of smalltown residents to convince themselves they’re happy with whatever they already know of the world. Pop music regularly brings controversial topics and questions into both intimate and crowded spaces; it inserts them into quotidian moments (shopping, commuting, dining), and often drives them into memory via musical hooks and catchy turns of phrase. These aspects of the artform increase its potential for effective social heresy. Perhaps most provocatively, songs invite listeners to sing along, aligning them—albeit often unconsciously—with the “I” of the lyric. For example, in singing along with Radiohead or Musgraves, a person implicates herself in the personal and/or political history of the song’s subject. She not only bears witness to heretical material, but actively participates in it. Add to this music’s ability to stimulate and direct emotion, and one can sense the genre’s potential for increasing empathy and expanding the bounds of our moral communities. In light of this, the question is not whether pop music is (at least occasionally) socially beneficial; it is instead what we—as listeners and as writers—will do with

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the knowledge that its verbalizations of traumas and diverse narratives could have real and measurable effects on individual and community health.

Creating Social Heresy While I hope wholeheartedly that performing artists will actively explore this question, I am justifiably wary of moralizing art or its effects. So to clarify, no artist should feel obligated to consider public health or private traumas when creating. In fact, such considerations would likely result in mediocre songwriting and/or a distinctly inartistic over-emphasis on audience. Most songwriters didn’t sign up to be music therapists, and when art becomes mere Reaction-Gathering, it usually suffers—even if it’s well intended. Fortunately, songwriters and performers who wish to explore their possible impact on public health and discourse can do so without sacrificing artistic integrity. In my experience, this effort begins with an intentional investigation of the topics or ideas I’ve unconsciously censored as a writer: What have I left off the page? What do I let myself write when I’m confident no one will read it? I regularly find that the answers lie not only in suppressed stories or beliefs, but also (and more commonly) in compulsive editorial decisions that deem certain topics “too cheesy,” “too crass,” “too morbid,” or otherwise off-limits. For instance, when I first wrote a song called “Pieces,” I feared it was too melodramatic or indulgent. Perhaps it was; it includes lyrics like “I’m in pieces / I’m invisible” and “I’d make a mess of plenty more if it was up to me.” But its explicit confessions of shame have regularly initiated conversations about depression, especially at college shows—where I’ve participated both in serious mental health dialogues and in raucous faux “club meetings” for anyone on antidepressants. Both approaches have resulted in destigmatizing and affirming moments that I consider well worth the risk of self-indulgence. The takeaway is that, by deliberately writing in the direction of their fears, writers can disrupt the selfcensorship that limits their creative output. By doing so, they may produce work that is not only bold and innovative, but also productively heretical. But notably, opportunities to intentionally engage heretical discourses often happen when the writing is already complete. For example, in the singer/songwriter tradition, performances are often forums for songs as well as for stories and monologues, the addition of which extends the impact of the songs themselves. Bruce Cockburn, Leo Kottke, David Wilcox, Tori Amos, and Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist (of Over the Rhine) participate in a folk lineage known for guiding audiences into vulnerable, complex discursive spaces, while remaining engaging as entertainers. As a result, public intimacies are fos-

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tered that then invite conversation and disclosure. These artists did not need to consider heretical impact while songwriting, but they do consistently engage its discursive potential once they take a song to the stage. In my own performances, I often speak about depression or grief because my songs suggest these topics and invite elaboration. As a result, listeners regularly approach me in person or online to share their stories of loss or mental illness. I don’t mean to suggest that songs do not, on their own, invite valuable sharing responses; they absolutely do. But a performer’s willingness to address difficult issues in her conversational voice demonstrates that doing so is possible: that we can talk about difficult issues; we don’t have to relegate them to formal moments or artistic structures. Moving difficult social issues from formality into casual conversation is a meaningful and necessary leap, and it requires role models and practice. I would suggest that live performances provide forums for both. At a show, among a crowd policed by its conceptions of the conversationally orthodox, the most heretical act may not be the speaking of the suppressed via song, but rather the moving of it from the safer bounds of music into the relative nakedness of conversation. Of course, this movement is not limited to typical live performances. Some of my most challenging and poignant experiences with social heresy have occurred when I’ve been invited to speak about specific songs in new settings. For example, when I sang a song about sexual assault at a “Take Back the Night”¹ event, otherwise opaque poetic lines were suddenly obvious. Listeners brought them up after the show, asking pointed questions, and our resulting conversations quickly moved to a vulnerable and intimate territory. Similarly, singing about depression or domestic violence to young women in juvenile detention facilities always results in highly personal questions, followed by decidedly unorthodox conversations that (productively) transgress the boundary between “inmates” and authority figures. If I had considered these scenarios while writing, I would likely have produced shoddy art, if any at all. But once a song exists, responding to the conversations and opportunities it invites becomes its own heretical work.

Moving Forward Over the last several decades, scholars have studied the physical and mental damage caused by repression, inhibition, and silence, and we know that verbal-

 “Take Back the Night” walks and vigils, held in communities and on college campuses around the world, publicly campaign for an end to sexual violence.

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izing our difficulties significantly improves individual and community health. I believe we are due for an investigation of live music performances as sites at which silences are productively broken, and at which beneficial social heresy regularly occurs. As invested as I feel in the art of social heresy, I’ve only begun considering its complex and varied implications. Much of my current work, rather than initiating truly new approaches, merely takes note of opportunities that naturally exist within performance/songwriting—and deliberately starts talking. It’s a start, but I look forward to seeing the artistic community lend to this project its energy and creativity. From the stage of pop music shows, I’ve witnessed large groups of adults accommodating, with stunning consistency, socially-heretical topics with ease, gratitude, and even enjoyment. After years of this, I couldn’t help asking: what’s going on here? The question deserves wider attention. How might we use this phenomenon in other arenas: for therapeutic, educational, and/or social justice purposes? How might we make live music performances themselves even more psychologically and socially beneficial—and can we push our imaginations here? (Could advocates or therapists be available at live shows? And how could we make such a thing appealing rather than devastatingly awkward?) Could we be doing more with live performances in schools, colleges, rehab facilities, and prisons? If doctors are required to read fiction in order to learn empathy, what might they learn from songwriters’ stage narratives? What could touring authors and professors learn from performers who regularly disclose and discuss difficult themes? What about politicians, reporters, pundits? And how might we help performers themselves be even more socially constructive²—not by pushing them into “music therapy,” but by helping them creatively engage the social impact of the heretical work they’re already doing? If we wish to improve and expand public discourse by defying oppressive and corrosive conversational orthodoxies, we have a model. What will we do with it?

Works Cited Jack, Dana Crowley., and Alisha Ali. Silencing the Self across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Kidd, D. C., and E. Castano. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342.6156 (2013): 377 – 80.

 I’m aware that determining what is constructive or beneficial for a diverse society can be a harrowing project of its own, requiring the consideration of varied and often contradicting values. I nevertheless find the exploration of these questions both significant and necessary.

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Kleinman, Arthur, Veena Das, and Margaret M. Lock. Social Suffering. Berkeley: U of California, 1997. Morrison, Blake. “The Reading Cure.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Jan. 2008. Pennebaker, James W. Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. New York: Guildford, 1997. Stepakoff, Shanee. “From Destruction to Creation, from Silence to Speech: Poetry Therapy Principles and Practices for Working with Suicide Grief.” The Arts in Psychotherapy 36.2 (2009): 105 – 13. Van Der Kolk Bessel A., Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisæth. Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. New York: Guilford, 1996.

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Adapting Candide for the Stage In 2008, Rabbit Hole Ensemble commissioned me to write a play specifically for the company. Rabbit Hole is distinctive in that they focus on producing theatre that is highly minimalist and physical. Actors create sound effects and mime actions. The physical set is sparse—a curtain, a chair or a few tables is about as elaborate as it gets. Actors play multiple roles and transform between characters within the sight of the audience. Costumes are simple, to facilitate these transformations. Actors, in character, might narrate their own activities, or speak directly to the audience. Multiple actors might play one character, as in an adaptation of Dracula, in which three actors played Jonathon Harker in order to dramatize his inner life and the contrast between what he was saying, what he was thinking, and what he was ignoring. This is an unusual approach, particularly in an era in which the theatre appears to be moving toward technology, not away from it. Focusing on simple technology (the company often uses hand held lights manipulated by actors) and actors moving in space puts an emphasis on strong stories told simply, and it asks an audience to work harder. While the productions are not interactive, (i. e., the audience is not physically incorporated into the show as participants), they are especially active in the sense that an audience must contribute to imagining the setting and the actions of the characters much more than they would in a more realistic production. Language, gesture, and world building become more important, because there are fewer technical clues to help an audience imagine the world presented on stage. A low-tech production thus becomes an act of collective imagining. A previous production was likened to “a ghost story told around a campfire.” Rabbit Hole was intending to produce the play I wrote as part of the New York International Fringe Festival, and then tour it, in partnership with human service agencies like homeless shelters and community centers, throughout the five boroughs of New York City. I suggested that I adapt Voltaire’s novel Candide. Voltaire’s eighteenth century French philosophical and religious satire is one of the world’s greatest novels. It is packed full of sedition, blasphemy, subversively heretical thinking, and intellectual mockery, all delivered through the wide-eyed experiences of the title character, an innocent European trained by his teacher Pangloss in the philosophy of Leibnitz. Both travelogue and picaresque, Voltaire ricochets Candide across the known world, from one calamitous disaster to another, in the process revealing a chaotic, unpredictable world filled with both natural and man-made evils seemingly unsupervised by any deity. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-013

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Candide’s story was one that I felt would be equally at home in a lower Manhattan theatre and a Brooklyn community center. It’s a simple story, but enormously rich and intensely human. Anyone who has suffered hard knocks in life can empathize with the experiences of the characters in Candide. And in 2008, many people in America had experienced hard knocks. I also felt that the story’s ongoing coincidences, the way characters leave, die, disappear, and then miraculously return to the story, would lend itself well to actors playing multiple roles; in the end, the only actor single-cast was the actor playing Candide, and the other six actors played almost 30 different characters over the course of the play. Finally, there is something intensely theatrical about not just these coincidences and dramatic reappearances, but also about the way Voltaire telescopes events in order to create comic effect. It was also timely that in 2009 the book would mark its 250th anniversary. Voltaire published Candide in 1759 under a pseudonym, well aware of the furor it would cause. There were attempts by institutions to suppress it, but the book was too popular, and it wasn’t long before its authorship was associated with Voltaire. The book went on to be hugely successful and is now considered Voltaire’s masterpiece (Davidson). Candide ridiculed the nobility, mocked organized religion, and satirized a variety of philosophies, but it saved its sharpest barbs for Leibnitz and his philosophy of optimism—Voltaire even subtitled the book “or optimism.” Leibnitz is known for formulating an influential theodicy, i. e. an attempt to answer to the problem of evil. Leibnitz’s solution was to maintain that we lived in the best possible world created by God. However, we could see only a tiny part of a massive tapestry, and since we can’t see all of it, we can’t know how our individual part fits into the whole. As a result, any “seemingly” evil act, no matter how heinous, may actually be part of a greater good if perceived from a different, higher perspective. Ironically, Leibnitz, who co-created the calculus, believed that it would be science, not religion, which would one day reveal the totality of God’s plan. He also believed that science would one day make conflict obsolete because we would all resolve arguments by consulting our “universal calculus,” which would more or less scientifically calculate who was right, thus resolving any disagreement. With his philosophy of optimism, Leibnitz is essentially defending God against the heretical claim, as articulated by King Alfonso X of Castile in the thirteenth century (and many other people before and since), that, “if I had been of God’s counsel at the Creation, many things would have been ordered better.” Candide has been adapted for the stage, not surprisingly, many, many times. The most well known version is arguably Leonard Bernstein’s justifiably wellloved comic operetta, first produced in the 1950’s but substantially revised

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over the next 30 years. This version, while faithful to the book, has a weakness that I felt many adaptations shared—it kept the events of Candide firmly in the eighteenth century. While the events are still comic, the outrage and immediacy are missing. There is an abyss between contemporary America and the disastrous events in Voltaire’s book, events that were visceral and close to home for an eighteenth century reader. The Lisbon Earthquake had happened only a few years before, for instance, and the philosophical arguments that Voltaire was exploring and mocking were part of an ongoing dialogue of which he was a part. When these events become part of a costume drama set two and a half centuries in the past, they arguably lose some of their edge. In addition, Voltaire’s comic outrage over the hypocrisy of religious and political institutions is still relevant, and so are the questions that Leibnitz was trying to answer. The basic question of theodicy, i. e. of “why bad things happen to good people,” of why there is seemingly no correlation between virtue and reward, of why we continually create human institutions that promote injustice rather than justice, have never gone away. Voltaire’s book is a satire, but it is also a form of philosophy. Voltaire is not just mocking the philosophers and the leaders of organized political and religious institutions of the time, but he is also revealing the inadequacies of their answers, as well as the limitations of reason itself when confronted by evil, both man-made and natural. So I decided to create a version of Candide that would be both true to Voltaire’s intentions and his comic style, while also having the same immediacy and relevance for a twenty first century audience of New Yorkers that it had for his audience of eighteenth century Europeans. That meant a loose adaptation that was an act of creation as well as interpretation, and it meant localizing the story. It meant, essentially, mapping the eighteenth century events of Candide onto a twenty first century American universe while remaining true to the ideas and the humor of the book. It’s easy to mock Leibnitz now; it’s harder to dramatize why Leibnitz was worth mocking in the first place. One of the first things I did was read Susan Neiman’s fine book Evil in Modern Thought, which is an alternative history of philosophy that focuses on how philosophers over time have dealt with the problem of evil. The book pays particular attention to the Enlightenment. Neiman asserts: The problem of evil can be expressed in theological or secular terms, but it is fundamentally a problem about the intelligibility of the world as a whole. Thus it belongs neither to ethics nor to metaphysics but forms a link between the two. (8)

She writes extensively of both Leibnitz and Voltaire. I came across this quote, which both validated and guided my process:

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The book begins in the Seven Years’ War, in which people really were butchered for no reason whatsoever. The inquisition really did burn strangers in the name of God. European conquerors really did murder millions of native inhabitants in their search for gold. African slaves really were mutilated in the colonies of such enlightened countries as Holland. . . . Women really are raped as a matter of course in wartime. (8)

Neiman goes on to catalogue the more mundane evils committed by the characters Candide meets, including the snobbery of Cunegonde’s brother, who continues to claim that he is better than Candide because he is royalty, even as they work a galley next to each other as kidnapped slaves. She also highlights the real world relevancy of the natural events in the book, such as the Lisbon Earthquake and the shipwreck before it, and how the good people in Candide, like the disposable red shirt crewmen on Star Trek, are frequently rewarded with disaster. She follows, finally, with this statement: This is all just to say: Candide is short, compressed and satirical, but it isn’t for that reason false. As a description of reality, it’s remarkably accurate. Any good European could have drawn up a similar list of atrocities by reading a newspaper. (8)

And so this was both the guiding principle and the task for my adaptation: to conjure a similar truth and a similar immediacy. What was the “list of atrocities” that any New Yorker could draw up in 2008 just by consulting a newspaper? Where would Candide begin his journey? Where would he end it? And what modern events would feel organic to the world of Candide? Could real events be compressed in time to conjure the same comic intensity of the original novel? And what kinds of heretical lines would I be crossing in dramatizing, with Voltaire’s comic tone, real world American tragedies still fresh in peoples’ minds? In the end, I identified a series of events that I felt would mirror the events of Voltaire’s novel, while being true to the energy and structure of his original story. Those events also had the capacity to support a key message that Voltaire dramatizes, i. e. that our human response to disasters is often worse than the disasters themselves. I also focused on events that I myself was confused or outraged about or wanted to understand better. In many cases, I compressed the time between events or rearranged their historical order to create comic effect and mirror the way that events cascade and create a build-up of tension in the original novel. As a story adapted for the American experience, I decided to begin it shortly before the Balkan conflict and end it a few minutes after the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president, which took place as I was writing the play. I chose a European beginning because that allowed the character of

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Candide to be a refugee in America, both a quintessential and a polarizing role in American society. The Balkan conflict was also shockingly violent, featuring both genocide and systemic rape, and disorienting, coming with remarkable suddenness on the heels of what was then thought to be a new era of peace and democracy in Eastern Europe. It was almost comically confusing, as different religions, ethnicities, and countries both past and present were in conflict. In the end, this is how I began the play, which I titled Candide Americana: CANDIDE: (to the audience) Welcome to my childhood home. This is the best of all possible castles in the most beautiful and peaceful country in the world, known as Bosnia. (Wood 7)

Minutes later, the war begins. Sadly, there was no better way of conjuring the unending rape, chaos, and incessant war crimes of the Seven Years’ War than by setting the beginning of the play during this modern conflict, which is also centered on the Balkans. Here’s how Voltaire describes a battlefield scene that Candide passes through in the novel: …it was an Abare village, which the Bulgars had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters, disemboweled and breathing their last after having satisfied the natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the flames, begged to be dispatched. The earth was strewed with brains, arms, and legs. (25)

With minor modifications, this passage, as Candide walks through various destroyed villages, could easily apply to the Bosnian conflict (just read the above and exchange Bulgars and Abarians for Serbian and Bosnian). In the play, Candide comes across a kind soldier, who gives Candide his helmet and helpfully summarizes the conflict (as in the novel, Candide is clueless because of his sheltered existence before being exiled). SOLDIER We’re killing the Croats and the Serbs, and the Croats and Serbs are killing us and sometimes when they get tired of killing us they kill each other. The Christians are also killing the Muslims and the Muslims are killing the Christians in response. It’s sort of like the Crusades, except that everyone is staying at home. (10)

This modern conflict was notable for its systemic emphasis on rape, which Voltaire consistently depicts in Candide as being an integral part of warfare. In the book and the play Candide’s love, Cunegonde, is raped by soldiers.

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At the end of this scene, the kind soldier is killed and Candide flees once again. For the next event, I turned Candide into a refugee and sent him to New York City. The following line in Voltaire’s novel… He asked alms of several grave-looking people, who all answered him, that if he continued to follow this trade they would confine him to the house of correction, where he should be taught to get a living. (26)

became this moment in my play: CANDIDE Once in New York, I quickly find myself in that most democratic of spaces, where the poor are always taken care of in this most generous of cities. (CANDIDE is now on the SUBWAY. Sound of a subway door opening. To the subway riders.) Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry to interrupt. My name is Candide, and I’m homeless. I arrived here from Bosnia six months ago. I can’t find a job and I’m hungry. (10)

Candide is subsequently reunited with Pangloss and taken in by a good Samaritan who runs a shelter on Staten Island. The next scene happens on the way to Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry: CANDIDE: Um. There’s the dock. PANGLOSS: I’m new to sea travel, but shouldn’t the ferry be stopping now? CANDIDE: (to audience) As a matter of fact it should. But it doesn’t, because the captain is drunk and has fallen asleep. The ferry slams into the concrete dock. My new good friend Jack is decapitated by a detached pylon. Ten people immediately die. (JACK is decapitated. His head bounces across the ground. PANGLOSS picks it up.) CANDIDE: Jack! PANGLOSS: I’m certain that this decapitation is for the best. This ferry was actually created so that Jack could have his head cut off and those other nine people could be ferry slammed into a concrete pier. CANDIDE: But it’s so random. And Jack was such a good person. PANGLOSS: There can’t be any doubt, because everything is for the best. It must happen as it did. CANDIDE: That’s probably true, but we need to get off this ship before it sinks. (16)

This scene was based on a 2003 accident in which eleven people died when the Staten Island Ferry crashed into a pier after the pilot had fallen asleep as a result of taking multiple painkillers that can cause drowsiness. While the event made

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the national news, it was most significant for New Yorkers, both a disturbing random event and the worst accident in the ferry line’s history. The ferry accident is meant to mirror Candide’s shipwreck at sea off the coast of Portugal. That shipwreck sets up Candide’s experience of the Lisbon earthquake, a monumental event for Europeans. I’ll yield to Neiman’s description: The sequence of the disaster was unremitting. The earthquake itself struck the city on the morning of November 1 and lasted about ten minutes. This was long enough to destroy a vast number of buildings, bury thousands of people in the ruins, and turn the sky dark with dust. (242)

As with the San Francisco earthquake at the beginning of the twentieth century, fires swept the city afterwards, killing many and destroying both buildings and the possessions that people attempted to rescue. But that wasn’t the end: For even as the fires ravaged parts of the city, a series of tidal waves smashed the port, tearing ships from their anchors and drowning hundreds of people who sought shelter on the coast. Earth, fire, and water were together perfectly relentless. With all the elements combined to orchestrate destruction, even coolheaded observers might suspect a design. (242)

The Lisbon Earthquake was a significant turning point in European history, which made people across the continent rethink their attitudes about natural disasters and moral and natural evil. At the time it was not uncommon for an eighteenth century thinker to believe that a natural disaster was not a random accident but rather evidence of God’s divine punishment, the result of a correlation between sin and suffering. Lisbon at the time was one of the world’s wealthier cities, a powerful and cosmopolitan port city, but in no way could it be characterized as a den of sin. As a result, the earthquake shocked the entire continent. Voltaire’s outrage at any attempt to see the Lisbon earthquake, or other disasters, through a complacent rationalizing lens is one of the engines that powers the novel. It is also, of course, a modern attitude. Most of us no longer blame natural disasters on God’s wrath. Since the twentieth century, it has not been natural disasters but man-made disasters like genocide and terrorism that have changed the way we see things. For contemporary Americans, it was the events of 9/11 that made us again ponder our place in the world. It had its share of monumental destruction, of shock, and of larger questions of evil. The randomness of the terrorist attack, the lack of warning, and the suddenness and speed both evoked a natural disaster and underscored a new sense of fragility. And the aftermath carried its share of ironies that Voltaire probably would have appreciated. On The 700 Club, Reverend Jerry Falwell claimed that the attack was a punishment for New York’s “alternative

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lifestyle.” This was obviously not a mainstream point of view, but it was certainly indicative of a need to find meaning in a tragedy that felt surreal in its scale and inexplicable in its unexpectedness. It was the first foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and the first attack in the northeast since the War of 1812. It was also, in its own way, as inexplicable for ordinary Americans as the Lisbon Earthquake was for eighteenth century Portuguese. In 2009, it felt risky to incorporate the event into the play. At the same time, I didn’t see how I could do a contemporary American adaptation of Candide without that event being something that Candide responds to and Pangloss has to explain. If I was going to adapt a heretical novel, I had to be willing to identify similar atrocities and create the same kind of satire and resonance that gave the original novel its life. After all, Voltaire published Candide in 1759, just four years after the Lisbon Earthquake. That event was just as fresh for Europeans as 9/11 was for New Yorkers in 2009. 9/11 was not immediately followed by an auto da fe or a debilitating fire, but the city’s response must be distinguished from the regional and national one. The event was certainly followed by some extreme behavior that even a few years earlier would have been considered shocking. In the days and months afterwards there were numerous attacks against Sikhs in the tri-state area, who were mistaken for Muslims because they wear a turban. Many Sikh business owners put up signs trying to explain that they weren’t Muslims, but that didn’t necessarily stop people from telling them to “go home” or mockingly accusing them of being in league with Osama Bin Laden. At the national level, our response to the event was less violent but arguably more dramatic. Congress created a color coded alert terrorist watch system that basically modulated our levels of anxiety, passed a “Patriot Act” that authorized secret courts, the suspension of habeas corpus and the implementation of unheard of levels of surveillance, legitimized torture (which was and still is an internationally recognized crime) by redefining it as “enhanced interrogation,” created a shadowy rendition program that kidnapped people overseas and transported them to secret prisons in other countries where human rights laws were slack, and finally invaded Iraq based on doubtful intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. Many of those events and their ramifications appear in the play in one form or another as Candide travels across America, because Voltaire was not just satirizing theodicy in his description of the Lisbon Earthquake, he was also criticizing how human responses to inexplicable tragedy lead to yet more human suffering, and how attempts to explain a disaster of this magnitude through philosophy or religion or politics are both inadequate and inhuman. So, after the death of their benefactor in the ferry accident, Candide and Pangloss encounter the World Trade Center on 9/11. I drew on Voltaire’s descrip-

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tion of the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake for Candide’s narration as he walks through the area after the fall of the towers. Voltaire does not go for comedy in this moment, and neither did I. CANDIDE: (focused on his world, as he experiences it) When we reach Fulton Street, still lamenting the death of our benefactor, we feel the earth tremble under our feet. Whirlwinds of fire and ashes cover the streets and public places; everywhere there is chaos and screaming and howling sirens. The smoke is so dense that I can barely see the block in front of me. And when we get to our destination, we find thatPANGLOSS: The building is gone. What can be the sufficient reason for this phenomenon? CANDIDE: What do you mean? PANGLOSS: Have you forgotten your lessons, Candide? The principle of sufficient reason is the idea that everything happens in response to something else. It’s the basic structure of reasoning itself…it’s the demand that the world make sense. I wonder about the sufficient reason for this event. CANDIDE: It’s the end of the world. (16)

It matters, of course, what the sufficient reason for 9/11 is, and there are multiple perspectives that can range from irrational hatred of anti-American religious extremists to a failed mid-east policy that fueled legitimate anger that eventually warped into illegitimate terrorism, to Jerry Falwell’s idiotic theory that it is God’s punishment for creating Sex and the City. At the same time, over and over in Candide (and in my play), Pangloss insists on explaining tragedy as it’s happening, and it’s up to Candide to say, essentially, “that’s all fine and dandy, but that building is about to fall on us.” Philosophy can try to explain the world, but it is more limited when it comes to actually trying to save it in real time. Shortly afterward, Pangloss, feels compelled to philosophize: PANGLOSS: I have no doubt that this terrorist attack will lead to greater peace and understanding and a renewed commitment to diplomacy. (16)

Subsequently, Candide is reunited with Cunegonde (in the play renamed Cinnabunsa), only to lose her again after killing her boyfriends (a priest and a rabbi) and having to flee and then separate. Candide follows Cinnabunsa to New Orleans, is thrown into jail with a homeless man named Carlos, and abandoned in the evacuation during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Escaping a jail with his fellow prisoner, they flee the flood and end up in El Dorado, a secluded southwestern city in the mountains. As in the book, El Dorado is a fantasy of a

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utopia that ultimately leads to boredom because the wealth is meaningless, and Candide misses his love. Candide and Carlos leave El Dorado, leading ten sheep laden with riches that the people of El Dorado consider to be “worthless stones.” Unfortunately, Candide cannot board a plane because he is on the terrorist watch list, and so they charter a plane from a private pilot who flies off with Carlos and virtually all of the treasure, stranding Candide. Still bound west to reunite with Cinnabunsa, he meets a female equivalent of Martin, the Manichean from the novel, now named Martina, whom he finds by posting a craigslist ad saying he will pay the person with the most miserable story to drive him to San Francisco. Manicheans, of course, believe that God and Satan are equally matched heavyweights duking it out for supremacy. Evil exists because God is not all-powerful. MARTINA: Oh, you’re going to give me that whole “God has a plan that we can’t see” thing. Listen, God does not have complete control of the world. There’s no secret plan. There’s no infinitely powerful God. There’s just two warring deities, neither of which can gain control and both constantly fighting over us. You said El Dorado was different, but I’ve never seen a city that didn’t desire the destruction of a neighboring city, or a family that doesn’t want to exterminate some other family. I’ve never seen a country that didn’t abuse its minorities or take advantage of its poorer neighbors. I see no evidence that anything is in control, let alone God. CANDIDE: But there are some good things. MARTINA: No there aren’t. CANDIDE: So you don’t believe that the earth was designed? MARTINA: I see no intelligent design. Quite the opposite. What watchmaker would design a watch where the three hands move around randomly? CANDIDE: But perhaps it’s just that we don’t understand how it works. MARTINA: I can see how it works with my own eyes. CANDIDE: But then why does the world exist? MARTINA: To drive us insane and send us screaming in horror to an early grave.

She then hands him a cheeseburger to shut him up. Unfortunately, the cheeseburger makes him excruciatingly ill because the meat is tainted as a result of an E-coli outbreak that Candide encountered after leaving El Dorado. Martina takes him to the nearest clinic, which unfortunately is being boycotted by anti-abortion activists. Candide has just managed to get into the clinic and be seen by a doctor when a domestic anti-abortion terrorist drives her car into the clinic to “stop the murder.” It turns out, the clinic doesn’t actually perform abortions; the terrorist had faulty information, although she still sets herself

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on fire and explodes a bomb. Abortion bombings and attacks are of course all too common in America. This was based on a true incident and was actually featured in a Time Magazine retrospective called Top Ten Inept Terrorist Plots. When Candide finally reaches San Francisco, he finds that Cinnabunsa never made it there. In despair, he makes a bet with Martina that there must be at least one happy person in the world. They go to a party hosted by a wealthy Bay Area intellectual, only to discover that even a woman who has everything is still unhappy. Candide lists the amazing things she has in her house, though she denigrates them all, including her poetry collection: CANDIDE: Well how about the poetry? You have Milton here. GATHER: I liked Paradise Lost better when it was called “The Book of Genesis.” Listen, no offense, but your enthusiasm is starting to bore me. (52)

At the party, Candide reunites with Carlos, who tells him that after getting pushed out of the plane (which subsequently crashed and exploded), he learned that Cinnabunsa has been taken to a secret government prison in Mexico because she was a suspected terrorist (Candide, after all, did kill several religious leaders in her apartment). Candide goes to rescue her, only to discover that the enhanced interrogation she has endured has aged her and made her ugly. But he has promised to stay with her and love her, and so Candide, Cinnabunsa, Martina, Carlos, and Pangloss all settle down on a farm bought with the last of the riches of El Dorado. This leads to the cultivation of the garden, and the story’s melancholy ending. One goal of the project was to find ways to explore the original story’s philosophy and satire in ways that would resonate for a modern audience. We no longer believe that disasters happen because of the moral failings of the victims, so there has been progress in the last two hundred and fifty years. At the same time, the concept of theodicy is still relevant if one believes in a good God, no matter what one thinks about Leibnitz. In addition, it is not uncommon to hear people in the face of tragedy utter the platitude “that everything happens for a reason.” Since people usually don’t mean for a bad reason, this can be conceptualized as a pretty close cousin to Leibnitzian optimism, i. e. that “everything is arranged for the best”. We may not literally believe to be living in the best of all possible worlds, but in ways small and large, many of us want to believe, despite often overwhelming evidence, that when bad things happen to us, it’s because they need to happen so that we can prosper or grow in other ways. Voltaire’s novel condemns the obscene inadequacy of any framework that attempts to explain away or justifies innocent suffering.

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Throughout Candide, Voltaire sardonically dismantles the principle of sufficient reason, the idea that there is meaning in the universe and that all things happen for a reason (oh, the causes and effects!). Most witnesses in Voltaire’s Candide say that the world is confusing, violent, and inexplicable, even as priests, monks and philosophers maintain that it all makes good sense. This conflict creates comic tension, reflected in my adaptation by keeping everything relentlessly upbeat, even in the face of outrageous tragedy. Yet in the context of the novel and its events, this drive to find meaning promotes a practical morality. Candide is driven by hopes of being reunited with his love and finding happiness, but he is also driven by a need to understand why the world would not conform to his hopes. While Candide has been indoctrinated by Pangloss’s theodicy for most of his life, the events he has experienced since leaving home have consistently contradicted his learning. The characters he meets, many of whom have their own philosophies, are no better at explaining the world. Martina’s Manichean universe, for instance, leaves us in permanent conflict. Here humanity is stuck between two battling deities, like the tiny soldiers in a post-war Japanese horror movie staring up at Godzilla and Mothra as they destroy Tokyo in a fight that barely makes sense. In Voltaire’s novel, Pangloss never changes. He begins with Leibnitz and ends with Leibnitz. In many respects that was the point. For the adaptation, I felt that Pangloss deserved some growth, and so I found that my Pangloss adjusted his thinking to become more Kantian. While Leibnitz believed that there was a plan that we could not see, he also believed that science would one day reveal the underlying design of the world. One day we would see the whole picture as God sees it. Kant reasoned that not only could we not see this plan, it was actually important that we never see it. Free will demanded that we be free to act, and freedom to act came from ignorance of God’s cosmic plan. Knowing that there was a guaranteed correlation between virtue and reward would lead us to perform good deeds by rote. In the end, it is hope that drives Candide, just as, in many respects, it is hope that drives us all. As Voltaire writes: Candide, however, had one great advantage over Martin, in that he always hoped to see Miss Cunegonde; whereas Martin had nothing at all to hope. (141)

And why shouldn’t he find Cunegonde by chance? Coincidence (and luck) is part and parcel of Candide. As always, Voltaire exaggerates, he piles coincidence and lucky chance onto one another with dizzying, impossible quickness. Certainly these moments provide comic relief, both as plot device and as a way of satirizing literary forms, among other things. Yet, they also reinforce the idea that we

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are somehow connected, and that we can actually find each other (and a better life) as we blunder around in this chaotic world (and experiencing the story as live theatre only reinforces this feeling). Voltaire himself must have thought hope was important (even if it is so consistently dashed in Candide). He ended his poem The Lisbon Earthquake by writing that hope was “man’s sole bliss.” He may mock the hypocrisy of organized religion and the corruption of political institutions and the failure our own human relationships, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like the universe to make sense. Most of us would like to live in a universe where good is rewarded and evil punished, no matter who or what created it. Voltaire spent the later years of his life working tirelessly to right wrongs, working as a politically engaged artist on behalf of civil and human rights cases he believed in. While Candide describes the experience of an optimist crushed by the realities of the world, it is also at least partly rooted in a desire to take a clear-eyed accounting of the world, to delineate the limitations of religion and philosophy. Voltaire dismissed Leibnitz precisely because his worldview left no hope. After all, if we already live in the best of all possible worlds, we are, by definition, powerless to improve it. CANDIDE: (to audience) And here, at the end of my journey, one day at lunch, after a morning of hard work in the garden, I join Pangloss on the porch. (PANGLOSS approaches with a bowl of oranges and pistachios.) PANGLOSS: Have an orange. CANDIDE: This morning I was thinking about God and chaos. If there is no God, then the world is frightening and random and unknowable. And yet if there is a God, the world is also frightening and random and unknowable. I’m not sure what the existence of God does, except encourage people to form religions and create yet more chaos. PANGLOSS: Ah, but there is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cinnabunsa: if you had not been nearly drowned in New Orleans: if you had not walked across America: if you had not stabbed poor Adolphina: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here with me eating oranges and pistachio-nuts. All of your supposed randomness and chaos was actually part of a grand design. CANDIDE: I’ve had to renounce optimism, Pangloss. PANGLOSS: Yes, well, truth be told, I must admit that my philosophies have been tested throughout all the lynching, dissecting, and disease. CANDIDE: And yet you still believe that this is the best of all possible worlds? PANGLOSS: I still believe that everything we take for evil is in fact a necessary part of a greater plan that we can’t see.

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CANDIDE: But if I can’t see the truth, and if evils are only apparent, and everything is for the best, then there’s no reason to do anything about evil. There’s no reason to try to improve the world. In fact, I can’t improve it. It’s already the best. PANGLOSS: Yes, that’s a weakness in the theory. At least from our point of view. CANDIDE: Well what I’ve seen throughout all the fork murders, decapitations, explosions, selfimmolation, and torture is that the world needs to be improved. It needs to make sense. I need it to make sense. I need to know that virtue will be rewarded. I need to know that evil will be punished. Reason demands it. We must know that our actions have consequences. PANGLOSS: No. If we absolutely positively knew that evil would be punished, what would we do? We’d do good deeds like poodles performing tricks. We’d have no choice. No. We must never know the consequences of our actions. We must never know if virtue is rewarded. We must always be blundering about in the dark, wondering why we’re lost. Trusting that there’s a meaning to it all. That’s what it means to be free. CANDIDE: Then I must hope that the universe somehow makes sense, God or no. Hope is my only happiness. (61)

This seems like a hopeless ending, but only if you think the garden is small. If we think of the garden as a microcosm, our perspective can change. And if we view optimism itself, with its baked-in despair, as hopelessness, then Candide’s rejection of it carries its own positive outcome. In Candide, Voltaire relentlessly mocks a number of human constructs, including the church, aristocracy, imperialism, and war. As Neiman writes, …the work can be read as radical demand that we stop viewing the present state of reality as determined by Providence; that we stop describing it as the best world in the service of making it a better one.” (145)

While there’s certainly ambiguity, it’s hard to deny the undercurrent of activism in the book. The play continues after this melancholy moment and ends with a moment of comedy between Candide and Cinnabunsa that implies that there is hope for a meaningful relationship between them. It’s fitting that the play ends with both hope and humor. After all, any cataloguing of the world’s absurd deficiencies must ultimately end in laughter. It often felt heretical to examine events like 9/11 and hurricane Katrina through Voltaire’s comic lens. Yet in many respects this was an extraordinary period of time: 9/11, Katrina, and the economic recession in 2008 were remarkable in their impact on our nation, and in how they made us ponder our national destiny. America is very much a country rooted in optimism. We’re entitled to the pursuit of happiness. We still believe in the American dream. We think of ourselves as defenders of freedom and human rights. Yet that optimism was sorely

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tested through this period. The communal nature of the theatre felt like an ideal way to explore the incomprehensible nature of these events in a way that united us rather than dividing us, and Voltaire’s story, ultimately so human, was a perfect medium for pondering what it meant to be an American at the beginning of the twenty first century.

Works Cited Davidson, Ian. Voltaire in Exile. New York: Grove Press, 2005. Fletcher, Dan. “Top 10 Inept Terrorist Plots.” Time, 2009. Web 21 Jan 2016. Wood, Stanton. Candide Americana, New York: Indie Theater Now. 2011. Web. 20 Jan 2016. Voltaire. Candide, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918.

Gregory Erickson

Epilogue: Heretical Unmaking In this volume, heresy has been depicted as a tool for literary interpretation, as an atheistic or misotheistic impulse, as a metaphor to visualize and realize a more progressive democratic future, as a trope for preaching the Death of God, and as an accusation aimed at Augustine. Like any divinity or any dogma, heresy is best defined through negation, multiplicity, and indirection. But what does it mean to have an organization, a conference, and an essay collection devoted to something called “heresy studies?” What binds these pieces together? What do these essays contribute? The essays in this collection demonstrate that heresy, in all of its various shades of meaning, is always a moving target and one that forces us to think about the power of language, the importance of definition and interpretation, and the relationship of the present to the past. Although the term “heresy” may conjure images of burning at the stake, itinerant long-haired preachers, and ancient councils in Constantinople, the modern idea of heresy is a twentieth-century concept with a twentieth-century history. Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (published in German in 1934 but not in English until 1970) set much of the tone that the essays in this volume follow. Bauer’s main point in his book, as stated in the foreword to the second German edition, was that “in earliest Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy do not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary” (xi). This idea—familiar and even domestic sounding to many of us today—was a paradigm shattering concept, and it changed the idea of an ideal pure orthodoxy that had existed since the “beginning,” forever putting orthodoxy and heresy in quotes. Yet authors, scholars, and critics writing about heresy in the twenty first century still face difficult definitional problems. As is often maintained, heresy both is and isn’t a technical term, and this tension and flexibility is felt throughout this collection. But whether the word heresy refers to a specific theological meaning within a certain tradition (usually Christian), or to a broader meaning within popular discourse, its usage blurs and challenges the division from orthodoxy. Heresy, many would perhaps cynically say, is just an opinion held by a minority that the majority deem unacceptable and then use their power and privilege to punish. This might lead us to think that the word and concept have lost their significance. Yet, the various authors and approaches in this book claim otherwise. Whether the essays are about medieval Cathars or postmodern theorists, popular music or fantasy fiction, they share a sense of urgency for our own time. Heresy, for our contributors, is a way to locate buried themes and forhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-014

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gotten histories from the past, but it is also a way to visualize a different future, perhaps even a better one. As several of the essays in this collection urge, it is not enough to deconstruct previously held theories of religion, alternative structures must be imagined and enacted. Looking for alternative visions of the future requires a rethinking of the past and involves expanded notions of religion. Heresy—they all say in one way or another, as word, concept, history, or action—still matters. These concerns are woven in with the other set of ideas that the essays in this collection have in common: the conviction that religion (however defined) shapes our lives and narratives in ways beyond what we are aware of and that beginning to think through this influence involves thinking historically, thinking artistically, and thinking theoretically. Or to put it more concisely: we cannot understand today’s world if we do not understand religion. Perhaps the best way to think about this collection is to experience the various interdisciplinary and unexpected connections between the different essays —much the way the participants experienced the conference out of which these essay came. For example, Mark Hama uses Bernard Schweizer’s work on misotheism to discuss ways that authors “disguise” their intentions in outbursts toward the injustice of a Christian God. Like critics of James Joyce, Hama and Schweizer point to the complexities of framing these outbursts which can be seen as both religious and anti-religious. Hama points to the joy that a boy in Thomas Rivera’s novel And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, feels at finally turning away from his childhood religion and church. This turning away points to one of the important questions developed across this collection: whether turning away from religion can be a religious move in itself. A radical turning away as a theological move is what Thomas Altizer finds (and has claimed throughout his long career as a radical theological thinker) in Blake and Milton. He sees their subversive depictions of divinity as examples of a great and “absolute heterodoxy” that is ultimately the “forbidden topic” of “Christianity’s absolute reversal of its original ground” (p. 56) and is finally a type of affirmation. Bernard Schweizer finds these movements of turning or breaking away from monotheistic faith in moments of laughter—also affirmations that both break from and yet participate in the practices of religion. Schweizer, like many of the scholars and artists in this collection, looks for a heretical or blasphemous positions of instability that can expose—and perhaps celebrate —what Jacqueline Bussie calls the “fragmentary nature of all theological statements” (qtd in Schweizer p. 141). Religion can be, from this perspective, indeed “subjunctive,” as Jordan Miller writes in his essay. For Miller, this word points to uncertainty and potential, and it “describes the world, not as it is, but as it might be” (p. 117). Miller

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finds this possibility through the idea of “craft,” emphasizing religion’s affinity with “practice” or process. When Miller concludes his essay by claiming that “meaning-making is a craft not a proposition,” it can be seen as pointing to the practice that I see this collection and this organization as taking part in. This contradictory craft or practice of religious meaning making and unmaking was dramatized for me in the summer of 2015, as this collection was first coming together. I was exploring and hiking in Cappadocia in Turkey, a particularly apt location to ponder issues of orthodoxy and heresy. Cappadocia housed a large Christian community as early as the second century and, as the home of Basil (“the Great”) and his brother Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, it was the birthplace of an early and influential theory of the Trinity, that distinguished, for example, how Father, Son, and Spirit could be different and yet of the same “substance.” As I walked through valleys, hills, and open-air museums, my main focus was on the spectacular cave churches that dot the landscape and that date from early Christianity into the thirteenth century. The churches vary in size but are, for the most part, small, single nave structures built into cliffs and caves. The interiors feature colorful fresco paintings of saints, biblical scenes, and devotional images covering the curved walls, domes, and ceilings. I was aware, as I walked from one cave church to another, that I was seeing images that were essentially unknown in the West until the early eighteenth century and that were also inaccessible between World War I and 1950. This knowledge, along with the quiet and solitude of many of these churches, exuded a sense of timelessness. This sense of timelessness shaped my viewing—I imagined seeing images of Christ, Mary, John the Baptist, Basil, and St. George as they would have been looked at in the twelfth century. But as I have learned from studying with medieval art historians: a work of art does not just belong to its point of origin, it lives, it changes, and it interacts with people, weather, and events. In a work of art we see the stages of construction, the imperfections, the damages, the alterations and restorations as a conversation and journey over time rather than as an idealized clear window to a single imagined point in the past. Like so many intersections of religion and art, the experience is about understanding the desire for an impossible real. A pristine fresco that—no doubt due to restoration— denies the passage of time and the effects of man and nature is similar to defacement in that it represents one culture’s view of what the image should look like in the present. It is a modern fantasy. Once we start to notice these interplays of history, we see them everywhere: images representing different cultures, styles, and ideas and offering both harmony and discord. Some of the more striking cave church walls in Cappadocia revealed more primitive nonrepresentational, simple images in faded earth colors: decorative geometric shapes, crosses, and floral patterns, later echoes of

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the aniconic images from a ninth-century Eastern Christianity that found the representation of religious scenes and figures heretical. Islamic images were painted into Christian scenes, decorating the shields of the soldiers at the crucifixion. Centuries, theologies, and religions blur together: East and West, Christianity and Islam, medieval and modern. At Saint George’s Church (Kirkdamalti) in the Ihlara Valley, I found what the guidebooks describe as “damaged” and “vandalized” images of saints, the birth of Jesus, angels, the death of Mary, and the Crucifixion. Faces and eyes were scratched out or removed, dark shadows of discoloration obscured details (the former location of lamps and candles, perhaps), and layers and layers of graffiti were written over, through, and around the various scenes. The sometimes carefully, sometimes aggressively scratched out faces of saints and removed images of Jesus suggest obviously intentional acts of disfiguration, but committed in what spirit? For James Simpson, iconoclasm paradoxically “wants to reinstate true history by subtracting accretions; it attempts to reinstate true history by an act of violence that is always anti-historical; by that anti-historical act it activates a new historical tradition” (15). Like similar images on medieval rood screens in England, these damaged images (whether from Protestant, Byzantine, or Muslim hands) can be seen as acts of devotion and creation as well as destruction; the afterlife and legacy of the images contain both the original artist and the defacement. Religious iconoclasm creates and destroys in ways that thread into both past and future. The more I looked around the walls of the cave, the more words—painted, drawn, and etched—became my focus. Conditioned by my experience with modern art to see letters as images as well as communicative language, I first looked at the original Greek names, inscriptions, and invocations, some probably painted at the same time as the original images. But, unlike the more restored churches, in this space the images receded under a sea of painted and scratched words: Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and even English. Some were faded, only visible by flashlight, others sharp and fresh. The words wrapped around the images, inscriptions, and scriptural quotations, augmenting them with names, curses, dates, drawings, and declarations of love. Without the appropriate language skills, I couldn’t even guess most of what was written, but the growing impression was that these walls represented an 800 year old dialogue across faiths, cultures, practices, and beliefs—existing somewhere between institutions, theology, lived religion, and everyday life. My experience of looking at and thinking about church graffiti had been sharpened the previous summer when I spent an afternoon with archeologist Matthew Champion, studying medieval graffiti in York Minster Cathedral. Looking at the oldest stones and bricks in the building, peering behind walls and

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tombs, we found charms, curses, mason marks, musical notations, crosses, ritual markings, word puzzles, ships, and heraldic designs. What interests me about this graffiti is that, counter to modern sensibilities, it does not seem to have been seen as desecration or blasphemy, but was instead an accepted and expected practice. And while these faded lines are almost invisible today, if one remembers that the inside walls of churches and cathedrals were brightly colored surfaces, these markings stood out for all to see. They would have been, as Champion remarked, “as much a part of medieval church as the mass.” Indeed graffiti patterns indicate that their creators were often drawn to areas of religious importance: the back of rood screens, baptismal fonts, chapter houses, and funerary sculpture. It is at this point that I want to return to the idea of heresy. Standing alone in a silent damp cave in Central Turkey, thinking about a cathedral in Northern England and a conference in New York City, I arrived at my concluding metaphor for this collection. Church graffiti—these palimpsests in stone—offers a way to talk about popular expressions of the relationship between word, image, theology, and practice. In Northern England and Central Turkey, as centuries old markings become visible, they transform church walls into interactive surfaces and into spaces for alternative expressions of belief: a gray area between orthodox and heretical. Heretical writing and study, like the graffiti in York Minster and a Cappadocian cave, are attracted to religious images and language, are written over, through, and intersecting with scriptural writing; they can be celebratory, antagonistic, blasphemous, and worshipful—but always in relation to religious signification. For Matthew Champion, my guide in York, the importance of medieval church graffiti is that it helps us glimpse beliefs of the average medieval parishioner that are not to be found within mainstream areas of medieval studies. As late twentieth century theory taught us, categories always leave a remainder, a trace; heresy, hidden in the margins, tucked into the hesitations and ambiguities of orthodox doctrine, and speaking to us from both the distant past and the future, is another way to get at these remainders and to question how we continue to organize knowledge. One way of understanding what we are doing in this volume is to see it as a form of graffiti on a very old but constantly restored church wall—a graffiti that resonates with letters on an abandoned New York subway car as well as medieval scratches in an English cathedral or on a Byzantine cave church fresco. As James Morrow writes in this collection, “the supernatural can be good to think with” (p. 151). In his fiction, Morrow, a self-identified atheist writing about the death and the body of God, makes a move similar to an iconoclast scratching out the face of Jesus. These are acts of blasphemy and of creation; both actors

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are drawn to images and narratives of religious power. Or we can look to the essay by John Daniel Holloway where, seeking both to tear down and to create, he scratches away at a portrait of Augustine and tries to rub out or write over the Greek letters to find the words of Jesus hidden underneath. Many of the essays in this collection suggest indirectly that if one of the purposes of studying religion is to understand why and how humans divide up and classify certain behaviors as “religious,” then the study of heresy, like pondering church graffiti, destruction, and defacement, allows us to interrogate important interrelated dichotomies such as sacred/secular, myth/history, self/other, and orthodox/heterodox. These essays—like graffiti—are sometimes worshipful, sometimes exegetical, sometimes blasphemous, and sometimes playful; we write on, through, over, against, or in dialogue with more institutional scriptures and religious spaces. Metaphorical and literal acts of graffiti and iconoclasm echo throughout this collection from Susan Hannon’s tearing apart an old Bible to reconstruct the pages as wings to Thomas Altizer’s powerful distortion of Blake’s erotic images of Satan. In Jordan Miller’s essay—as on the wall of my Cappadocian cave—we see multiple languages, methodologies, traditions, and faiths overlapping and blending as he cites Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist thinkers into a forward looking collage of religion outside of the explicitly theological. As thinkers like Michel Foucault remind us, discourse does not simply describe, it also creates, and in the context of heresy and orthodoxy, this insight is of vital importance. When Altizer’s words thunder off the page, claiming that “Great historical crises generate heterodoxy, just as does war and plague, powerful ruling bodies enforce orthodoxy as a primary means of control, just as it is heterodoxy that generates the deepest dissent and revolt” (p. 56 – 57), it is a discursive act of creation. Heresy (or heterodoxy) for Altizer is a necessary tool to break down belief in order to rebuild it. For Holloway, as well, heresy “can be understood for its utility—that is, as a tool for defining Christianity’s via negativa” (p. 104). These two essays—perhaps the two most “preacherly” pieces in our collection—by authors almost seventy years apart in age, share the sense that negativity, chaos, and instability offer new possibilities for change. Miller calls this kind of heretical or radical theology “subjunctive,” a grammatical term that he borrows to express “uncertainty, hypothesis, contingency, possibility” (p. 117). Although the contributors come from a wide array of religious and faith positions and from multiple disciplines, each essay participates in a practice of thinking, reading, writing, and creating art that performs and repeats these subversive and yet affirmative acts. The collection, as a whole, builds on traditional and innovative ways of connecting ideas. When Natalie Calder shows how ideas

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of unbelief—previously underexplored—are surprisingly a part of devotional medieval interaction, it creates an unexpected conversation with how Mark Hama locates unbelief in the religious imagination of twentieth century Chicano literature. When Jordan Miller builds his theory of political theology, he grafts twenty-first century ideas of radical orthodoxy upon radical theology developed by thinkers like Thomas Altizer. Although this collection may bring us no closer to establishing a stable definition of heresy, or blasphemy, or even religion, it is our hope that it will be read as part of a larger ongoing conversation of what Robert Orsi calls the “media of making and unmaking worlds” (xxxvi), and that it will play a small part in more deeply understanding where we have been and where we are going. Pulled into religious spaces and words, we are not content to just look or study or dismiss, but we are instead drawn to participate, a participation that, done well, takes knowledge and courage. Whether Christian, atheist, Muslim, Jew, other, or none, we—like those before us—are not willing to view religious writing as a “read-only” document. Heresy studies is not a discipline. It has no set methodology, no gurus and no disciples. Instead we are an interpretive community or a discourse community drawn together by the similar images and texts where we each offer our own scratches and glosses. We leave them there to interact with the surrounding words, images, and natural elements, to become part of the conversation, and to be found, read, and written on or blasphemed about again.

Works Cited Champion, Matthew. Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches. Ebury Press, 2016. Simpson, James. Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition. Oxford University Press, 2011. Bauer, Walter. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. [1934] 2nd edition. Sigler Press, 1996.

Notes on the Contributors Thomas J. J. Altizer has given his life to a quest for a systematic or comprehensive Blakean theology, incorporating Hegelian philosophy in this quest, as well as a truly radical Nietzsche. He is a radical theologian in quest of the most radical possible Christianity. Altizer’s many publications include Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity, The Gospel of Christian Atheism, History as Apocalypse, Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir, New Gospel of Christian Atheism, and Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today. Natalie Calder received her doctorate from the Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland in 2016. Her thesis, entitled “Modalities of Belief in the ‘Long’ Fifteenth Century: Rethinking English Religious Writing” analyses the ways in which nuances of religious belief are explored, expressed or made manifest in English writing of the “long” fifteenth century, taken here to mean roughly the decades from 1370 to 1509. Her research explores the potentiality for critical, divergent interpretation of, or “unbelief” in, tenets of Christian faith among members of the laity in fifteenth-century England, in an attempt to contribute to the development of critical analysis of medieval belief that goes beyond the long-prescribed scholarly dichotomy of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy. Gregory Erickson is an Associate Professor at The Gallatin School of New York University where he teaches courses on religion, literature, popular culture, and James Joyce. He is the author of The Absence of God in Modernist Literature (2007 Palgrave Macmillan), and the coauthor of Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred (2008; 2016 McFarland). He is also a co-founder and the current president of the International Society for Heresy Studies (ISHS). He is currently writing a book on the history of heresy and James Joyce. He is also writing a book on religion and television. Tasha Golden is the frontwoman and songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery (ellerymusic.com). Her songs have been heard in major motion pictures, TV dramas, radio, etc, and her prose and research have been published in Ploughshares, Pleaides, and Ethos Journal, among others. Her first book of poetry, Once You Had Hands (Humanist Press, 2015) explores violence in both intimate relationships and religion. Currently a PhD student at the University of Louisville, Golden researches the impact of the arts on stigmatized issues, and leads creative writing workshops for incarcerated teen women. www.tashagolden.com Kathryn Green is a PhD student in the Division of Humanities at the University of Louisville studying medieval literature and culture. Her primary research interests include Anglo-Saxon and medieval English literature, Anglo-Norman literature, women and gender in medieval Europe, women and heresy, and translation studies. Mark Hama is a Professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, where he teaches a broad range of courses, including Mexican American literature. His research interests are in modern and contemporary literature, and he has published on James and Conrad, among others.

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Susan Hannon is a Canadian-born sculptor, working in clay, inks, oils, and paper. Her most recent body of work is a series of sculptures made of paper feathers resembling vast wings. The feathers are cut and hand-wired from the pages of antique and vintage Bibles in various languages and scripts, including from 1840s France, Civil War-era America, and Depressionera America. The wings serve as a metaphor for their medium. They make explicit the resurrection theme inherent in all found-media sculpture, of making something new out of something discarded. Further, destruction of a “holy” book is usually considered blasphemy but Hannon explores the theme of transforming an act of destruction into an act of transformation and beauty. Hannon lives in Los Angeles, California. She is represented by the Glass Garage Gallery (www.glassgaragegallery.com). John Daniel Holloway is a graduate student at Union Theological Seminary and Secretarytreasurer of the International Society for Heresy Studies. He holds a B.A. in biblical and theological studies from Regent University. While his research is predominantly in biblical studies and theology, his interests stretch into the areas of political economy, philosophy, sociology, music, and film. Jordan E. Miller received his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary humanities from Salve Regina University, where he currently teaches in the religious and theological studies department. His research centers on resistance and radicalism. He is an advisory board member for the International Society for Heresy Studies. James Morrow is the author of ten novels, three novellas, and over three dozen stories, an oeuvre composed largely in a satirical-theological mode. He has won the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Prix Utopia, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Morrow’s recent books include Galápagos Regained (St. Martin’s Press), an eccentric historical epic about the coming of the Darwinian worldview, and Reality by Other Means (Wesleyan University Press), a collection of his shorter works. Bernard Schweizer is a professor of English at Long Island University (Brooklyn). His research focuses on heresy studies, humor studies, travel studies, and gender studies. Schweizer has published three monographs to date: Radicals on the Road: The Politics of Travel Writing in the 1930s (Virginia, 2001), Rebecca West: Heroism, Rebellion, and the Female Epic (Greenwood, 2002); and Hating God: the Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford, 2010). Schweizer has further edited four collections (on the female epic; on the politics of travel; on quest narratives; and on Rebecca West), and he has edited Rebecca West’s previously unpublished papers titled Survivors in Mexico (Yale, 2003) as well as produced a critical edition of West’s first novel The Return of the Soldier (Broadview, 2010). Schweizer has founded the International Rebecca West Society in 2003 and was the Society’s second president. Schweizer then founded the International Society for Heresy Studies (ISHS), serving as vice president. He is currently writing a book about the connections and tensions between religion and comedy. Stanton Wood is a playwright, screenwriter, and game designer whose plays include Eating Dirt, Down the Drain, and The Night of Nosferatu. He is the recipient of an ACTF Playwriting Award, a City Theatre Hamburg Partnership Grant, and the Urban Stages Emerging Playwright Award. Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Class Company, The Hangar Theatre, Primary Stages, and New York Theatre Workshop have supported the development of his work, and he is a

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resident artist at Off World Theatre Company and Rabbit Hole Ensemble. As a game designer, he has worked on award winning projects at Zoesis Studios and Pandemic Studios, including Otto and Iris, Mr. Bubb in Space!, and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers.

Index Abraham 136 f., 158 – 160 Altizer, Thomas J.J. 8, 10, 21 f., 32, 202, 206 f. Anaya, Rodolfo 35 – 37 Anzaldúa, Gloria 19, 36 Apocalypse 4, 18, 51 – 57 Arbuckle, Gerald A. 102, 127, 137 – 139 Arianism (see Arius) 5, 29 f. Arius 5, 8 f., 14, 24, 29 f., 32, 164 Atheism (see unbelief) 1, 7, 20, 67 – 69, 73, 77 Attar, Farid ud-Din 126 f. Augustine 11 f., 25, 53, 101, 103, 105 – 114, 127, 136, 158 – 160, 201, 206 Aztlán 35 Badiou, Alain 27 Bauer, Walter 201 Beguines 11, 63, 84, 93 – 95 belief (see unbelief) 10 – 14, 44 – Christian 88, 104 f., 159 – history of 6 – 8, 67 – 80, 88, 91, 96 – interpretations of 117 – 119, 121, 129, 143, 149 – modern 4, 19, 21, 112 – secular 22, 175, 180 – systems of 2 f., 32, 63 f., 83, 204 – 207 Berger, Peter 4, 24 Bible 8, 14, 24, 26, 51, 64, 91, 93, 128, 135 – 137, 165 – 170, 206 Blake, William 8, 10, 19 f., 51 – 57, 151, 178, 202, 206 Blameless in Abaddon (see Morrow, James) 14, 149, 157 – 163 Body of Christ (see Eucharist) 38, 52 f., 154 – 157, 205 Bussie, Jacqueline 13, 102, 136 f., 141 – 143, 202 Campbell, Charles L. and Johan H. Cilliers 13, 102, 140 – 143 Candide 15, 185 – 199 Cappadocia (Turkey) 203 – 205 Catharism 88 – 90, 92, 96 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110556827-015

Champion, Matthew 204 f. Chesterton, G.K. 19, 22 Christ (see Jesus) – as heretic 3 f., 8 – disciples of 90 – in history 69, 72, 75, 86, 94, 203 – in literature 14, 36, 42, 51 – 53, 55, 67, 78 f., 149 f., 159, 161 – 163 – theology 25 – 32, 104, 108, 135, 140 Christianity 9 – history of 24 – 26, 28, 32, 63, 68, 75, 77 f., 79 – modern 8, 19, 23 f., 27, 32, 165 – politics 88 f. – theology 3, 6, 14, 53 – 56, 103 – 106, 113, 135 – 137, 140 f., 201 – 204, 206 Christology 29 f., 63 City of God (see Augustine) 53, 111 Cleary, Thomas 120 f. Confessions (see Augustine) 106 f., 110 Council of Nicaea (Nicaean Creed) 24, 141, 164 craft (craftsmanship) 117, 124, 128 f., 131 f., 203 Crawford, Matthew B. 102, 125, 128 Cunningham, Valentine 5 f., 12 cyborg 27 Death of God 19, 23, 32, 48 f., 52 – 55, 153 f., 159, 201, 205 disciplinary defense 158 d’Oignies, Mary 95 Dracula (see Stoker, Bram) 27 f., 32, 185 dualism 63, 162 f. Duchamp, Marcel 27, 31 Durkheim, Emile 19, 118 Eckhart, Meister 127 Ehrman, Bart 1 f. Eliade, Mircea 21 Erickson, Gregory 48 f. Eucharist 21, 78, 91, 157 Evil – Biblical 129

214

Index

– Defining 45 – In literature 153, 158 – 163, 185 – 188, 194, 197 f. – In theology 25, 42, 52, 92, 103, 105, 109 – 114, 191 – Problem of 3, 13, 142 f. Finnegans Wake (see Joyce, James) 26 fools 88, 140 free-will defense 110 – 112, 158 Freud, Sigmund 12, 52, 117 – 119, 121 Gedanken games 150 f., 163 Gillespie, Michael Allen 23 Gnosticism 4, 24, 64, 152 God 122 – 132 – Disappearance (death) of 19, 52 – 56, 205 – In Christianity 3, 5, 10 – History 67, 79, 86, 91 – 96, 149, 188, 191 – theology 103, 105 – 113, 136 – 138, 140, 142 f., 186 – trinity 13, 27, 29 – 32 – In Judaism 4 – In literature 8, 14, 21 – 25, 27 f., 32, 37 – 47, 69 – 73, 78, 151 – 154, 156 – 165, 193 – 198 Gonzales, Rodolfo “Corky” 35 graffiti 204 – 206 Hart, Kevin 21 f. Hasker, William 107 f. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 9, 32, 52 f., 55 f. heresy – and gender 84 f., 87 – 89, 92, 96 – and modernism 22 – 24, 30 – defining 1 – 15, 28 f., 32, 73 – 75, 80, 83, 101 – 104, 108, 124 f., 132, 141, 143, 169, 201 – 203, 205 – 207 – history of 63 – 65, 68 – in literature and art 37, 47, 147 f., 152, 162, 164 – mysticism 127, 129 – “social heresy” 176 f., 181 f. heterodoxy 1, 5, 8, 11 f., 20, 55 – 57, 72, 77 – 80, 89, 101 f., 129, 140, 202, 206

historiography 67, 69, 72 – 74, 76 f. Humor 12 f., 101 f., 135 – 143, 187, 198 Hurston, Zora Neale 7, 38 f. … I Am Joaquín“ 35 f. illusion 12, 117 – 121 Islam 4, 204 Islamic State (ISIS) 4 Jesus (see Christ) – In Christianity 25 f., 31, 56, 78, 104 – 106, 108 f., 113, 140, 165, 204, 206 – In Judaism 28, 122 – In literature 42, 51, 57, 159, 161 – 164, 205 – Ontology 5, 13, 29, 32 Joyce, James 9, 19 f., 22 f., 26, 30, 32, 55, 202 Kuschel, Karl-Joseph

102, 135, 137 f.

laughter 12 – 15, 91 f., 135 – 143, 198, 202 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm 185 – 187, 195 – 197 Lewis, C.S. 6, 157 Lewis, Pericles 20 – 23 lived religion 12, 117 f., 204 Lollardy 67, 90 – 93 Luther, Martin 2, 113 Manichean heresy 162 Marcion 9, 25 – 28 Martin, James 136 f. Marx, Karl 12, 54, 117 – 119, 121 McGrath, Alister 4 f., 8 medieval – and modernism 201, 204 f. – belief 10 f., 23, 63 – 65, 80, 119, 126 – texts 67 – 77 – women 83 – 87, 89, 91, 93 Melzer, Arthur 7, 10 mestizaje 36 meticulous providence 11, 103, 109 – 113 Milton, John 8 – 10, 19, 51 – 54, 56, 151, 195, 202 misotheism 10, 38 f., 46 Modernism 22 – 24, 32 Morreall, John 135 f.

Index

215

Morris, David B. 178 Morrison, Toni 47 Moses 31 mystic (mysticism) 84, 94, 126 – 131

rhetoric of folly 140 ritual 10, 21, 117 – 119, 132, 151, 205 Roth, John 142 Rushdie, Salman 3

Nancy, Jean-Luc 23 Neiman, Susan 187 f., 191, 198 Neoplatonism 106 – 108, 111, 113 Niebuhr, Reinhold 121, 136 Nietzsche, Friedrich 21, 52 f., 56, 131

Satan 8, 45, 51 – 56, 137, 162, 194, 206 satire 15, 137, 139, 157, 185, 187, 192, 195 Schweizer, Bernard 10, 12 f., 21 f., 38 f., 41, 43 f., 46, 101, 139 f., 202 secularization 20 – 22, 69 Seventh-Day Adventists 2 spiritual but not religious (SBNR) 123 f. Stoker, Bram (see Dracula) 27 subjunctive (subjectivity) 102, 117, 119 – 122, 124, 128 f., 202, 206

Olson, Roger 103 f. ontological defense 158, 161 Oord, Thomas 101, 108 f., 113 Order of Preachers (Dominicans) 86, 104 f. Origen 3, 29, 101, 158 Orsi, Robert 207 Orthodoxy – Controversies 1 – 5, 8, 21, 37, 101 f., 113, 124, 141 – 143, 201, 206 f. – History of 9, 11, 25, 67, 69, 72 f., 75, 91 f., 203 – in Christianity 11 f., 22, 32, 56, 104 f., 140 – in literature 28, 78 f., 147 – mysticism 129 Pagels, Elaine 1 Paradise Lost (see Milton, John) 51, 54, 195 Parmenides 107 Pelikan, Jaroslav 3, 25, 37 f. Pennebaker, James 177 periodization 74 – 76 Piers Plowman 10, 69 f. Plato 14, 106 – 108 Platonism 106 Plotinus 107 Poor Clares 87 Popper, Karl 150 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) 175 providence 11, 101, 103, 109 – 113, 198 Pynchon, Thomas 26 – 28 Qushayri

Taylor, Charles 4, 69 Taylor, Mark C. 21 f., 23 theodicy 39, 42, 142, 163, 186 f., 192, 195 f. Theology of laughter 12 f., 101, 139 – 144 Third Order of Saint Francis (Franciscans) 86, 94 Tillich, Paul 12, 102, 122 – 124, 131 Tonantzín 37 Towing Jehovah (see Morrow, James) 149 – 164 trauma 15, 120, 170, 175, 177 f., 180 trickster 13, 140 Twain, Mark 135, 137 Ulysses (see Joyce, James) 30, 32 unbelief 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 f., 64, 67 – 73, 75, 77 – 80, 83, 207 Vitae apostolica 86, 95 Voltaire 15, 185 – 193, 195 – 199 Waldensians 2, 63, 97 Weber, Max 12, 130 f. Weiss, Brian 171 Wyclif, John 67 – 69, 90 f.

126 York Minster Cathedral

Rabbit Hole Ensemble 185 Rappaport, Roy A. 102, 118 – 121, 125, 129 return of religion 1, 21 f.

204

Zen 119 f., 135 Žižek, Slovoj 21 f., 23 f., 31 f., 108