When a story of his death reached the still living Mark Twain, he quipped that the rumor was exaggerated. Looking a collection of books by Otto Scott and remembering his writings and lectures makes me think the same of him. Besides the living voice of Otto Scott in his books and writings, there is also the joyful acknowledgment of his earthly passing being just that: a passing from this world to be with the Lord.
Otto Scott was a historian. While he was not one of the most widely acknowledged historians, those of us who have acknowledged him have esteemed quite highly. He lived and wrote outside of the academy, outside of university circles. He wrote quite a few favorable business and corporate histories. He wrote history from the vantage point of a journalist looking for a story. He wrote from a conservative perspective, but without a conservative agenda. His choices for topics were diverse and unorthodox. He seemed oblivious toward trends, impervious toward fads, obstinate toward political acceptability. He made irascibility a favorable trait.
What must have been his downfall in the narrow world of acceptable historians and histories was his canonizations, or rather, his anti-canonizations. Scott was a Christian; his earlier perspective was cultural Christianity; his more mature perspective was self-consciously committed Christianity. Had he chosen some safe Christian topics, he would have been politely ignored. He chose more controversial topics; hence he was rudely ignored.
Yes, it was the anti-canonizations that defined Scott’s histories. He wrote biographies of Robespierre, James I, and John Brown. He used biographies as good historians do as lenses to broader historical periods. So, Scott chronicled the French Revolution, the Stuart era of England, and the ante-bellum tensions of America. He pronounced a stern judgment of his three subjects: They were fools; no even worse, they were sacred fools. The trilogy of sacred fools was to have been a quartet. The candidates for that fourth position would be legion, but Scott’s choice was President Woodrow Wilson. Time and circumstances have spared Wilson from Scott’s wrathful pen, although others have exposed him.
Just as saints—at least in the more Roman Catholic sense—have miracles that occur in their names; just as saints influence not just their own age but the ages to follow; just as saints attract willing—and often gullible—followers; just as saints inspire others to take up the holy cause for which they spent their lives; so sacred fools forever change the world. That religious fervor of the saint is also found in the sacred fool. Just as a saint’s commitments rest upon a theological underpinning, so do those of the sacred fool. With that keen theological understanding as a starting point, Scott singled out his three choice candidates and gave them their just historical rewards.
While many historians separate the secular from the sacred with zeal, Otto Scott saw that all men act and function according to a set of presuppositions that are at heart religious and theological. My saint is someone else’s sinner, and vice versa. Dante put Mohammed in Hell. Muslim poets—if they have any—would rather put Dante there. Being polite, being politically correct, being non-judgment were the things that never crept into Otto Scott’s historiography. And that too, we are thankful.
Robespierre: The Fool as Revolutionary
Scott’s biography of Robespierre is subtitled The Voice of Virtue in the first edition. You can almost hear Scott’s chuckle and see his slight smile in reading that ironic subtitle. Robespierre’s political career consisted largely of denouncing his enemies as the people’s enemies. Under Robespierre and a host of fellow worthies, the guillotine grew fat under a steady diet of public enemies. Trials were fast and “justice” was swift. The crimes were simply defined: Anyone with ties to the old order was guilty; anyone hindering the revolution was guilty; anyone who was accused was guilty. What did it matter if some who were truly innocent or noble or good were killed? It was a new age; a new world was being created on the rubble and corpses of the old.
Robespierre died at the same guillotine at which he had hastily and randomly condemned others. But the Revolution lived on. It came in time to be embodied by Napoleon and his Grande Armee. The Revolution cropped up again and again opposing the old monarchies and political orders of Europe. Marx, Engles, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot were among the numerous progeny of Robespierre. The Islamic world may hate European culture, but the Islamic terrorists certainly have fed off the spirit of Robespierre.
All too often, the French Revolution has been portrayed as being only a slightly different species of what America experienced in 1776. We celebrate the 4th of July; the French celebrate Bastille Day. We have the Declaration of Independence; the French have the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Clearly, our revolution freed us from the shackles of monarchy, and subtly, we are told that it freed us from religious constraints. The French experience thus becomes the lens through which we interpret our own experience. Via France, we were freed from the past, from Christendom, the church, and from God.
Scott’s indictment of Robespierre was an indictment of the whole French Revolution, of the Enlightenment unbelief that preceded it, and the atheistic revolutionary philosophy that succeeded it. Too much of our political framework, too many of our autonomous attitudes, too much of our modern thinking is rooted in that era. For a time and in a very Orwellian sense, wickedness was called virtue. After the word virtue was used up, like other children of the Revolution, it was devoured.
James I: The Fool as King
James I was a different sort of sacred fool. He unwittingly left us one great and positive legacy—the Authorized Version of the Bible. Like so much that he did, like so much he sought to do, the good from James’s reign was the overruling providence of God rather than James’s actions. Otto Scott dealt with the life of James in James I: The Fool as King and also in The Great Christian Revolution. James’s foolishness was that of the squandered life and heritage. It was the foolishness of seeing the house built on rock, but choosing the house built on sand. It was the foolishness of preferring tyranny to wise counsel, perversion to grace, and pettiness to nobility. He clung to the doctrine of the divine right of kings, but he caused men to ponder the divine right to remove kings.
James was nursed in the strict Calvinism of George Buchanan and Samuel Rutherford. His tutorials were in the rudiments of what became the Westminster Standards a generation later. His schooling was harsh at times, but not radically different from the cane and birch pedagogy inflicted on most scholars of his age. Intellectually James had the ability to both learn and write. Politically, however, he was a fool, and spiritually and sexually, he was a pervert.
His mother, Mary Stuart, known as Mary, Queen of Scots, had failed as a leader due to her own personal wickedness, overreaching ambition, and political Catholicism. Her executor and distant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, died without a direct heir. Elizabeth, with all her failings and conniving, had proven to be an apt, even brilliant ruler. The kingdom she left her cousin was strong. Surging with energy within that kingdom and ready to fight foes both within and without that kingdom were the Puritans. Being the headstrong and stouthearted Calvinists they were, they were ready with Bible in hand to reform both church and state.
Scotland had become one big Reformed Calvinistic Presbytery. Puritans in England had forged a rugged Calvinistic coalition. Across the channel, Calvinists in the Netherlands, struggling for their own political identity, were valiantly contending for the faith. Calvinists in some of the German states stood steadfast on Reformed theology. Catholic Spain was forever vulnerable due to the defeat of the Spanish Armada and imperial overreach. France had its own internal problems with a Calvinistic element arising in its merchant classes. The spiritual gains of Luther, Calvin, Bucer, and Knox from an earlier century were all in place. The New World was beginning to be settled by Protestants.
James I wasted and squandered the greatest opportunity any king ever had to usher in an age of political Reformation. He could have championed the ‘Crown Rights of Jesus.’ Instead he championed himself. His memorable phrases are testimonies to his utter stupidity. Of the Puritans, he said that he would “Harry them out of the land.” Of the desire of many to establish more Biblical norms for church and state, he said, “No bishops, no king.” His inability to work with Parliament, his penchant for ruling tyrannically, and his hatred of Reformed theology all contributed to a miserable reign for him, near bankruptcy for the country, and political turmoil and threats on all fronts. Under his son’s rule, matter became worse and resulted in the English Civil War and Charles I’s execution. His grandsons—Charles II and James II—were likewise inept.
This being James I’s record, Otto Scott gave him the much-earned mantle of sacred fool. All too many leaders have coveted those same honors. In God’s graciousness, more than one leader has had the opportunity to rule in good, wise, and godly ways, but have traded such chances for the world’s mess of potage.
John Brown: The Fool as Martyr
John Brown’s foolishness nearly destroyed our nation. Like Robespierre, like James, John Brown was not alone. The North had no monopoly on foolishness in the years leading up to the War Between the States. Otto Scott tells the story of Brown in his book The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement. In short, Brown the nation plagued with a great problem—slavery. Wiser men had struggled and agonized over it. Without the working class provided by Negro slaves, Southern agriculture would not have developed. Without Southern raw materials cultivated by slaves, Northern industry would have been hindered. All Americans profited from the system. Jefferson compared slavery to the dilemma of holding a wolf by the ears. Time, patience, economic and industrial development, and Christian sanctification could have solved the problem in history.
But John Brown, fool that he was, looked for a quicker answer: Terrorism. Long before either bombing of the World Trade Center, our nation was subjected to a political agenda that was advanced by violence. Brown cut his teeth on violence literally by cutting throats. Yes, America had a true civil war. It took a bit before 1861-1865, and it took place in Kansas. The guilt of “Bloody Kansas” falls on both Northern and Southern hands.
Brown was not content with simply seeing Kansas come into the union as a free state. As Churchill once said of Lenin: His goal was to save the world; his method was to blow it up. Brown and sons instigated a takeover of a weapons arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It was to have supplied arms to foment a slave rebellion. Virginians, led by Robert E. Lee, in a typically Southern way took out the terrorists and rescued the hostages. Significantly, the only Black American affected by Brown’s activities was a free Negro who was shot by Brown’s men.
Had Brown succeeded in securing arms and putting them into the hands of supposedly willing slaves, he would probably have caused the destruction of the entire black population in the United States. As bad as the War Between the States was, with huge armies clashing and grinding each other up for four years, Brown’s terrorism would likely have caused a real civil war with guerrilla bands fighting for decades. Northern Ireland and Lebanon would be viewed as mild and gentle by comparison.
Brown was just a crazy tanner turned sacred fool. He mouthed religious, even messianic, rhetoric. The state of Virginia disposed of him quite effectively via the gallows. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau drew comparisons between the death of Brown and the crucifixion of Christ. Emerson was aligned with other abolitionist factions in New England. This coalition consisted of upright, well-schooled, culturally groomed people who might never personally knife a slave owner. Yet they financed and promoted terrorism. Brown was their lackey, their martyr, their saint. The Constitutional avenues for dealing with slavery were of no interest to them. The Bible that motivated their Puritan ancestors was not their creed. They were gentlemen revolutionaries; they were refined, cultured paymasters to terrorism.
Otto Scott’s bestowing the title of sacred fool on John Brown was yet another evidence of his historical unorthodoxy. Why, you simply cannot blame Brown or the next thing you know, you find yourself defending the Southern Confederacy. Otto Scott did exactly that. He was not a Southerner by birth or ideology, but he never shied away from defending what he believed was a just cause.
Our Homework
I wish Scott had completed his book on Woodrow Wilson. I wish he had added a fifth, a sixth, and on up to a hundred biographies on the foolish men who have warped the ages. He left us lots of homework to complete. Perhaps we need to spotlight some more sacred fools. But even more important, we may now be able to navigate past the losers and find the greater lights of history.
The preacher of Ecclesiastes tells us, "Of the making of many books, there is no end." To which we add, "Of the buying and reading of many books, there is no end."
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Friday, May 05, 2006
Some Not So Good Ole Days
Being a history teacher, I’m occasionally asked the following question: “If you could be born at any time in the past, when would it be?” My answer: “Yesterday.” My life revolves around great heroes and epochs of the past, but I am content to know them through books.
I would like to have known Winston Churchill, but have no interest in dodging German Stutkas on the sands of Dunkirk or the streets of London. The Reformation was a glorious revival of God’s saving truth, but I prefer friendly disagreements with Catholics today to burning at the stake for the teachings of Luther and Calvin. And it’s not just the heat of fire, for the cold of the Delaware River in 1776 or of winter at Valley Forge makes me more of a sunshine soldier than a committed patriot. As a Southerner, I glory in the heritage of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but cannot contemplate death from the barrels of Yankee muskets or amputations from the saws of Confederate surgeons.
Even those most blessed days of the Apostles and early church fathers remind me of how comfortable I am and enjoy being far from the birthing days of the Christian faith.
I am content to be living in this glorious era, even with the threats of terrorism and irritations of telemarketers. But if I were forced to live in some distant era of the past, it certainly would not be the late Middle Ages of the 14th and 15th centuries.
I have visited those centuries—twice in recent months. First I journeyed to Canterbury with Geoffrey Chaucer and a host of pilgrims telling tales. Then I read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century for the third time. Tuchman’s book, first published in 1978, was written to mirror the upheavals of the calamitous 20th century. Having to choose between calamitous times, I am glad to have lived in the latter difficult times rather than during the late Medieval centuries.
Spiritually, politically, and personally, the 14th and 15th centuries seemed to herald the end of time to those who lived then. They lacked an eschatology of victory (to use Marcellus Kik’s book title). Indeed, the despair of that age was well founded and the only seeds of hope were just beginning to germinate. As Tuchman says, “The pessimism of the 14th century grew in the 15th to the belief that man was becoming worse, an indication of the approaching end.” The problems of that age were woven together in the fashion of Medieval tapestries at their best. War and brigandage, plague and social uprisings, heresies and corruptions, and immoralities and cruelties all combined to darken the spirits of a whole civilization. The more frightening images from John’s Revelation were seemingly being fulfilled in that age.
Little things, like the bacilli attached to fleas that infested rats, erupted into the Black Death, which stripped the population by thirty to fifty percent. The Bubonic Plague was exceeded only by the combination of madmen kings, vainglorious knights, political pawns, and religious charlatans who occupied or infected thrones, political principalities, and church offices.
The first great problem was the Hundred Years War between England and France (1337-1453. The war began over English claims of dynastic rights to the throne of France. England started the war and often seemed to have the upper hand, winning battles, such as Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. English armies occupied key ports and land areas of France throughout the war. Struggling to maintain some sense of unity of the different regions, France endured incompetent and insane kings, political betrayals, peasant revolts, and military defeats. The war itself stretched and tugged the once unifying and workable fabric of Medieval feudalism, ripping it to shreds. That France emerged from the war as one nation, that France even survived the war, that France—in some sense—won the war was due to endurance rather than brilliance. Like World War I, this was a war of attrition, but the attrition of leadership rather than of human life. In other words, France won because English stupidity exceeded their own.
But wars, even short ones, tend to bring out the worst in mankind—both incompetence and brutality. Even then, wars also display human skills and courage. Some brilliant lights lit up the French landscape. Bertrand du Guesclin, or Bertrand of Brittany, was an effective military leader, cut from the same cloth as William Wallace or Nathan Bedford Forrest. Joan of Arc proved adept at rallying the French cause, propping up the spineless Dauphin, and forcing the English into their worst long-term public relations act—burning a saint. Her religious impulses continue, to our delight, to baffle secularist historians.
England had her days of glory during those same years. Edward, Prince of Wales, ‘the Black Prince,’ won glory at the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, where his army captured the French king. Edward’s brother, John of Gaunt, enjoyed political fame rather than military success. In a later phase of the war, Henry V gained glory for his victory at Agincourt and the political alliance he affected with the French king. Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, further enhanced his glory, which was all lost under his son Henry VI. Besting all these nobles and besting the knights of both England and France were the unnamed English archers whose longbows leveled the French cavalry on many occasions.
Shakespeare’s Henry V at the start of the battle of Agincourt exclaimed, “And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here….” But it was the war itself with its seeming inability to end, its dynastic rivalries, its political ruthlessness, and human depravity that was accursed. The Anglo-French hostility did not completely abate until the Twentieth Century World Wars. (And even then, the French quipped that the English would fight the Germans down to the last Frenchman.)
Parleys were often conducted. Peace was often proposed, and sometimes actually achieved for a season, upon the bases of reason, or dynastic marriages, or upon a common desire to unite in a crusade against more distant enemies. Reasonable men on both sides could have halted the war at many points, but such reasonableness rarely happens in history. So for over a century, a conflict over rival claims to the throne of France settled one issue, and that was that this war would be ranked as history’s longest.
But a threat greater than the war engulfed all of Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. Like the war, it attacked, then withdrew, but then would come back to attack again. Four times it swept through Europe. It was the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague. The plague is horrible to read about no matter how it is viewed: whether by the astronomical death tolls, the shocking percentages of the population destroyed, or the anecdotes, grim humor, art, and personal testimonies that remain. The plague resulted in insanely silly actions, as in the case of villagers who danced to drums and trumpets believing it gave them immunity. It also resulted in insanely wicked actions, such as killing Jews.
Just as there is a ripple effect to war and battles, so there are ripple effects of diseases and plagues. Amidst the Black Death, some people looked to God for answers and some people resorted to lawlessness and debauchery. The depletion of the population reconfigured the working class, land ownership, and the make-up of society at all levels. It spawned some good effects. Universities, a Medieval development, were advanced by the desire to preserve learning and save civilization. But on the negative side, the fear of sin and death caused the sale of indulgences to skyrocket. Many of the paintings of the time reflected the horrors of the disease and the morbidity of a people plagued in mind and body.
Those spared by the war and plague still faced roving bands of outlaws or brigands. These brigands were generally soldiers, yes, even knights, who maintained a profession of arms even during the lulls in the war. Decrees from both church and government officials warned against brigandage, but the idleness between wars, the callousness toward life caused by war, and the lure of goods caused the brigands to ignore the decrees. Knights all too often lacked shining armor, chivalry, or virtue.
On the other hand, the commoners, the peasants, were not morally much better. Happy serfs, tilling the land, harvesting crops, and celebrating the seasons may have existed, but the historical records more often depicted a darker side to the lower classes. Peasant uprisings generally had two bad results. The first was extreme violence. Peasants grabbed whatever implements they worked with in the fields or shops and wielded them as weapons in the streets. The governing officials often chose to deal with the peasants, making promises of tax relief and other benefits. The Wat Tyler rebellion in England was one such example where the king himself, the boy Richard II, rode in amongst the rebels and promised to lead and protect them. Government promises –even those granted by the king—were then immediately forgotten and the rebel leaders were soon left hanging from gibbets about the land. The bloodshed and sacrifices of such peasant uprisings did make a long-term contribution to human freedom and eventual participation in the affairs of government by common men.
The Christian Church had great opportunities to minister to a civilization reeling between war and plague. But rather than being salt and light, the Church was filled with corruption and darkness. Medieval Catholicism had its glorious moments, but the 14th and 15th centuries are more often remembered for spiritual decay. As always, there were faithful churchmen. This was the age of John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Gerard Groote (founder of the Brethren of the Common Life), and Thomas a Kempis. Chaucer highlights a faithful parson and a godly knight among his many portrayals of ungodly, hypocritical, and licentious church leaders on the road to Canterbury. Chaucer’s art reflected a stark spiritual reality that many noticed, but few endeavored to change.
We Protestants argue with Medieval Catholicism from a particular set of premises based on the Bible and restated in the theologies of Luther and Calvin. But on the basis of Medieval Catholicism’s premises, one can argue against the Church of that time. Besides a host of problems ranging from wicked and immoral clerics to political wheeling and dealing by the prelates, the Roman Catholic Church’s highest office, the papacy, seat of the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth, lost honor and authority. The French captured the papacy in 1303, moving the Pope and his see to Avignon so as to guarantee French control. This event turned further south in 1379 when political and religious maneuverings resulted in two rival claimants to the papacy. Political states and entities lined up behind one pope or the other based on previous conflicts and alliances. Hence, England supported the pope in Rome, while France backed the Avignon pope.
It might have helped matters if either of the original popes in the Papal Schism had buttressed his claims to the office with displays of any godliness. That was not to be. The Avignon pope, Clement VII, came to office with the nickname “Butcher of Cesena” as a result of events in his life prior to being pope. His rival, Urban VI, was both insane and vicious, which is illustrated by his hiring of mercenaries to protect him by force. Both popes promptly excommunicated each other. Tuchman writes, “When each Pope excommunicated the followers of the other, who could be sure of salvation?” In time, a council would depose both popes and appoint a new man as pope. The result for a time would be that now three men would claim to be the sole ruler of Christ’s church.
As a way of uniting the factions of Europe divided by war and religion, some church leaders resorted to calling for a crusade. The need was there and was great. By the early 1400s, the Ottoman Turks were battering down the last vestiges of the Byzantine Empire and were advancing into Europe. A coalition of Serbs, Rumanians, and Moldavians had been crushed in their efforts to stem the Muslim tide at Kossovo. The Muslim Turks, under a Sultan named Bajazet, advanced into Bulgaria on the Danube River and were poised to take Hungary. King Sigismund of Hungary appealed to the rest of Europe for help. An army, largely French, advanced into eastern Europe to deal with the Muslim threat. This coalition was well provisioned with silks and wines, but neglected such matters as carrying along siege equipment and catapults.
Great confidence in the glories of the French cavalry led the leaders to plunge into battle with a frontal assault. The result was defeat of the crusaders and the capture of many of their leaders by the Muslims. Europe was saved only later when Mongol-Turkic forces under Tamerlane diverted Sultan Bajazet’s attention from his conquest of Europe.
In the year 1453, with an English defeat in battle at Castillon, the Hundred Years War came to an end. The war’s end did not undo the century of damage to Christendom. Tuchman says, “The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity. The brotherhood of chivalry was severed, just as the internationalism of the universities, under the combined effects of war and schism, could not survive.” England’s peace was short-lived, for soon after continental hostilities ceased, King Henry VI’s madness became so intense that rival factions began vying for his throne. The result was the civil war in England known as the War of the Roses. In that same year of 1453, Constantinople fell before the Turkish Muslim armies of Mahomet I.
God was not yet through with Europe. (I believe He is still not yet through with Europe.) This same time, roughly 1453-1454, was when a German devised a movable type printing press and produced his first document from it. Gutenberg’s invention would pave the way for a new age. Within the next fifty to one hundred years, Columbus would discover the New World and Luther would rediscover the New Covenant. The greatest products of the 14th and 15th centuries, particularly the poetic works of Chaucer and Dante and A Kempis, would be preserved and disseminated. The wars, plagues, rebellions, insanities, and evils would be seen in time as simple stepping-stones on the rocky paths of God’s providential dealings with His people. A Reformation was being born.
I would like to have known Winston Churchill, but have no interest in dodging German Stutkas on the sands of Dunkirk or the streets of London. The Reformation was a glorious revival of God’s saving truth, but I prefer friendly disagreements with Catholics today to burning at the stake for the teachings of Luther and Calvin. And it’s not just the heat of fire, for the cold of the Delaware River in 1776 or of winter at Valley Forge makes me more of a sunshine soldier than a committed patriot. As a Southerner, I glory in the heritage of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but cannot contemplate death from the barrels of Yankee muskets or amputations from the saws of Confederate surgeons.
Even those most blessed days of the Apostles and early church fathers remind me of how comfortable I am and enjoy being far from the birthing days of the Christian faith.
I am content to be living in this glorious era, even with the threats of terrorism and irritations of telemarketers. But if I were forced to live in some distant era of the past, it certainly would not be the late Middle Ages of the 14th and 15th centuries.
I have visited those centuries—twice in recent months. First I journeyed to Canterbury with Geoffrey Chaucer and a host of pilgrims telling tales. Then I read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century for the third time. Tuchman’s book, first published in 1978, was written to mirror the upheavals of the calamitous 20th century. Having to choose between calamitous times, I am glad to have lived in the latter difficult times rather than during the late Medieval centuries.
Spiritually, politically, and personally, the 14th and 15th centuries seemed to herald the end of time to those who lived then. They lacked an eschatology of victory (to use Marcellus Kik’s book title). Indeed, the despair of that age was well founded and the only seeds of hope were just beginning to germinate. As Tuchman says, “The pessimism of the 14th century grew in the 15th to the belief that man was becoming worse, an indication of the approaching end.” The problems of that age were woven together in the fashion of Medieval tapestries at their best. War and brigandage, plague and social uprisings, heresies and corruptions, and immoralities and cruelties all combined to darken the spirits of a whole civilization. The more frightening images from John’s Revelation were seemingly being fulfilled in that age.
Little things, like the bacilli attached to fleas that infested rats, erupted into the Black Death, which stripped the population by thirty to fifty percent. The Bubonic Plague was exceeded only by the combination of madmen kings, vainglorious knights, political pawns, and religious charlatans who occupied or infected thrones, political principalities, and church offices.
The first great problem was the Hundred Years War between England and France (1337-1453. The war began over English claims of dynastic rights to the throne of France. England started the war and often seemed to have the upper hand, winning battles, such as Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. English armies occupied key ports and land areas of France throughout the war. Struggling to maintain some sense of unity of the different regions, France endured incompetent and insane kings, political betrayals, peasant revolts, and military defeats. The war itself stretched and tugged the once unifying and workable fabric of Medieval feudalism, ripping it to shreds. That France emerged from the war as one nation, that France even survived the war, that France—in some sense—won the war was due to endurance rather than brilliance. Like World War I, this was a war of attrition, but the attrition of leadership rather than of human life. In other words, France won because English stupidity exceeded their own.
But wars, even short ones, tend to bring out the worst in mankind—both incompetence and brutality. Even then, wars also display human skills and courage. Some brilliant lights lit up the French landscape. Bertrand du Guesclin, or Bertrand of Brittany, was an effective military leader, cut from the same cloth as William Wallace or Nathan Bedford Forrest. Joan of Arc proved adept at rallying the French cause, propping up the spineless Dauphin, and forcing the English into their worst long-term public relations act—burning a saint. Her religious impulses continue, to our delight, to baffle secularist historians.
England had her days of glory during those same years. Edward, Prince of Wales, ‘the Black Prince,’ won glory at the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, where his army captured the French king. Edward’s brother, John of Gaunt, enjoyed political fame rather than military success. In a later phase of the war, Henry V gained glory for his victory at Agincourt and the political alliance he affected with the French king. Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, further enhanced his glory, which was all lost under his son Henry VI. Besting all these nobles and besting the knights of both England and France were the unnamed English archers whose longbows leveled the French cavalry on many occasions.
Shakespeare’s Henry V at the start of the battle of Agincourt exclaimed, “And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here….” But it was the war itself with its seeming inability to end, its dynastic rivalries, its political ruthlessness, and human depravity that was accursed. The Anglo-French hostility did not completely abate until the Twentieth Century World Wars. (And even then, the French quipped that the English would fight the Germans down to the last Frenchman.)
Parleys were often conducted. Peace was often proposed, and sometimes actually achieved for a season, upon the bases of reason, or dynastic marriages, or upon a common desire to unite in a crusade against more distant enemies. Reasonable men on both sides could have halted the war at many points, but such reasonableness rarely happens in history. So for over a century, a conflict over rival claims to the throne of France settled one issue, and that was that this war would be ranked as history’s longest.
But a threat greater than the war engulfed all of Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries. Like the war, it attacked, then withdrew, but then would come back to attack again. Four times it swept through Europe. It was the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague. The plague is horrible to read about no matter how it is viewed: whether by the astronomical death tolls, the shocking percentages of the population destroyed, or the anecdotes, grim humor, art, and personal testimonies that remain. The plague resulted in insanely silly actions, as in the case of villagers who danced to drums and trumpets believing it gave them immunity. It also resulted in insanely wicked actions, such as killing Jews.
Just as there is a ripple effect to war and battles, so there are ripple effects of diseases and plagues. Amidst the Black Death, some people looked to God for answers and some people resorted to lawlessness and debauchery. The depletion of the population reconfigured the working class, land ownership, and the make-up of society at all levels. It spawned some good effects. Universities, a Medieval development, were advanced by the desire to preserve learning and save civilization. But on the negative side, the fear of sin and death caused the sale of indulgences to skyrocket. Many of the paintings of the time reflected the horrors of the disease and the morbidity of a people plagued in mind and body.
Those spared by the war and plague still faced roving bands of outlaws or brigands. These brigands were generally soldiers, yes, even knights, who maintained a profession of arms even during the lulls in the war. Decrees from both church and government officials warned against brigandage, but the idleness between wars, the callousness toward life caused by war, and the lure of goods caused the brigands to ignore the decrees. Knights all too often lacked shining armor, chivalry, or virtue.
On the other hand, the commoners, the peasants, were not morally much better. Happy serfs, tilling the land, harvesting crops, and celebrating the seasons may have existed, but the historical records more often depicted a darker side to the lower classes. Peasant uprisings generally had two bad results. The first was extreme violence. Peasants grabbed whatever implements they worked with in the fields or shops and wielded them as weapons in the streets. The governing officials often chose to deal with the peasants, making promises of tax relief and other benefits. The Wat Tyler rebellion in England was one such example where the king himself, the boy Richard II, rode in amongst the rebels and promised to lead and protect them. Government promises –even those granted by the king—were then immediately forgotten and the rebel leaders were soon left hanging from gibbets about the land. The bloodshed and sacrifices of such peasant uprisings did make a long-term contribution to human freedom and eventual participation in the affairs of government by common men.
The Christian Church had great opportunities to minister to a civilization reeling between war and plague. But rather than being salt and light, the Church was filled with corruption and darkness. Medieval Catholicism had its glorious moments, but the 14th and 15th centuries are more often remembered for spiritual decay. As always, there were faithful churchmen. This was the age of John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Gerard Groote (founder of the Brethren of the Common Life), and Thomas a Kempis. Chaucer highlights a faithful parson and a godly knight among his many portrayals of ungodly, hypocritical, and licentious church leaders on the road to Canterbury. Chaucer’s art reflected a stark spiritual reality that many noticed, but few endeavored to change.
We Protestants argue with Medieval Catholicism from a particular set of premises based on the Bible and restated in the theologies of Luther and Calvin. But on the basis of Medieval Catholicism’s premises, one can argue against the Church of that time. Besides a host of problems ranging from wicked and immoral clerics to political wheeling and dealing by the prelates, the Roman Catholic Church’s highest office, the papacy, seat of the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth, lost honor and authority. The French captured the papacy in 1303, moving the Pope and his see to Avignon so as to guarantee French control. This event turned further south in 1379 when political and religious maneuverings resulted in two rival claimants to the papacy. Political states and entities lined up behind one pope or the other based on previous conflicts and alliances. Hence, England supported the pope in Rome, while France backed the Avignon pope.
It might have helped matters if either of the original popes in the Papal Schism had buttressed his claims to the office with displays of any godliness. That was not to be. The Avignon pope, Clement VII, came to office with the nickname “Butcher of Cesena” as a result of events in his life prior to being pope. His rival, Urban VI, was both insane and vicious, which is illustrated by his hiring of mercenaries to protect him by force. Both popes promptly excommunicated each other. Tuchman writes, “When each Pope excommunicated the followers of the other, who could be sure of salvation?” In time, a council would depose both popes and appoint a new man as pope. The result for a time would be that now three men would claim to be the sole ruler of Christ’s church.
As a way of uniting the factions of Europe divided by war and religion, some church leaders resorted to calling for a crusade. The need was there and was great. By the early 1400s, the Ottoman Turks were battering down the last vestiges of the Byzantine Empire and were advancing into Europe. A coalition of Serbs, Rumanians, and Moldavians had been crushed in their efforts to stem the Muslim tide at Kossovo. The Muslim Turks, under a Sultan named Bajazet, advanced into Bulgaria on the Danube River and were poised to take Hungary. King Sigismund of Hungary appealed to the rest of Europe for help. An army, largely French, advanced into eastern Europe to deal with the Muslim threat. This coalition was well provisioned with silks and wines, but neglected such matters as carrying along siege equipment and catapults.
Great confidence in the glories of the French cavalry led the leaders to plunge into battle with a frontal assault. The result was defeat of the crusaders and the capture of many of their leaders by the Muslims. Europe was saved only later when Mongol-Turkic forces under Tamerlane diverted Sultan Bajazet’s attention from his conquest of Europe.
In the year 1453, with an English defeat in battle at Castillon, the Hundred Years War came to an end. The war’s end did not undo the century of damage to Christendom. Tuchman says, “The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity. The brotherhood of chivalry was severed, just as the internationalism of the universities, under the combined effects of war and schism, could not survive.” England’s peace was short-lived, for soon after continental hostilities ceased, King Henry VI’s madness became so intense that rival factions began vying for his throne. The result was the civil war in England known as the War of the Roses. In that same year of 1453, Constantinople fell before the Turkish Muslim armies of Mahomet I.
God was not yet through with Europe. (I believe He is still not yet through with Europe.) This same time, roughly 1453-1454, was when a German devised a movable type printing press and produced his first document from it. Gutenberg’s invention would pave the way for a new age. Within the next fifty to one hundred years, Columbus would discover the New World and Luther would rediscover the New Covenant. The greatest products of the 14th and 15th centuries, particularly the poetic works of Chaucer and Dante and A Kempis, would be preserved and disseminated. The wars, plagues, rebellions, insanities, and evils would be seen in time as simple stepping-stones on the rocky paths of God’s providential dealings with His people. A Reformation was being born.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Holy Week Sonnets
Poetry for Dominion
One of the greatest theologians failed to write a systematic theology for later generations. Even though he had great trials as a spiritual and political leader, he left no manuals for pastors or statesmen. Instead, his inspired gift to the church was a collection of poetry that we call The Book of Psalms. Christians through the centuries have continued in David’s footstep and have written poetry. The Christian centuries have included such poets as Prudentius, Caedmon, the anonymous author of Beowulf, William Langdon, who wrote The Vision of Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, and Christina Rossetti. Many we know because we sing their poems, and here we think of such lyricists as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. The poetic Muse has long been a faithful church member in good standing.
Certainly the great theological and polemical tracts and treatises have enriched the Christian faith. Of a truth, the great apologetic works have confounded the enemies of the faith and comforted the faithful. Commentaries on the Scriptures continue to bless both clerical and lay Christians. Books on pastoral theology, guides for Christian living in the home, and devotionals for personal piety all have their places and have played key roles in edifying Christians. Whether one looks to the early church fathers, the Medieval theologians, the Protestant Reformers, the Puritans, or the theologians of more recent centuries, Christianity filled the earth with great books. Not to be neglected, but to be included in this embarrassment of riches is the great heritage of Christian poetry. Imagine a meeting of Christian leaders who are discussing ways to bring revival to the church and reformation to the land. In other words, men who seek be like the sons of Isaachar of whom it was said that they had “understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (I Chronicles 12:32). Such a group would discuss the need for Christian institutions and Christian culture. They would propose schools and universities, ministries and missions, books and media. Frequently, they would be brought back to that most central mission of Christianity, which is preaching the Gospel to the lost and the whole counsel of God to the saved. In the midst of such a meeting, imagine the silent reaction to the following proposal: “Perhaps we need some good poetry to change the world.”
Such a notion seems limp and dreamy. Surely at such a meeting, after a polite silence, someone would politely say, “That’s a good thought. Now back to funding for a chair in Christian studies at the Harvard University….”
So is poetry merely bric-a-brac? Is it leisure activity for the faint of heart? Can poetry play a role in sanctifying the soul or changing the culture? Do real men read or need poetry?
First, to determine this issue, we need not be distracted by bad poetry. Bad poetry exists in abundance. Just look at almost any greeting cards or find some frilly-cutesy books of inspiration thoughts. Such poetry is filled with sing-song rhymes and sentimental thoughts of love, family, motherhood, and friendship. It is dangerous for intellectual diabetics. A dash to the modern poetry journals yields a different type of revulsion. Much modern poetry is simply rehashed Walt Whitman without Whitman’s literary discipline and religious orthodoxy. (Let the reader ponder and understand.) Bad poetry—whether bad because of syrup or bad because of rebellious disorder—cannot make the case for or against poetry any more than bad music or bad art annuls good music or art.
The case for Christian poetry as a tool for cultural transformation begins with history. Christian transformation always begins with the Bible and then quickly transitions to history. This happens in part because the Bible itself is structured as history rather than as philosophical or theological abstracts. Genesis begins with history, not with a systematic theology on the doctrine of God. In all areas of Christian cultural endeavors, wisdom says to look to the old paths. Look at the history, and go to the sources. Christians did not wake up to the need for cultural transformation with the Moral Majority or the Religious Right.
Paul admonished Christians to “take every thought captive to Christ” sometime before 70 A.D. Even earlier, Jesus said believers are to be salt and light in a decaying and dark world. Even earlier, prophets foretold of godly realms where even the bells on horse harnesses would be engraved with the saying, “Holiness to the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20). Even before that mandates and decrees went forth from Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon to establish righteous kingdoms, cultures, and laws. The mandate for culture finds its origins in God’s command to Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over an unfallen world, and that command was not annulled or abrogated by the fall.
In Christian theology, the foundations are found in the early church fathers, the Reformers, and their successors. In Christian music, the creative impulses trace back to Christian musicians like Bach and Watts. In fields such as architecture, painting, sculpture, politics, and law, Christians find precedents in history. So, for certain, a defense of poetry begins with an examination of Christian poetry in history.
An historical study of Christian poetry entails enlistment in warfare. But all cultural interaction is warfare, hence Paul’s martial language in II Corinthians 10:3-6. Larry Woidode calls attention to this matter:
Historically, Christian poetry reinforced Christian doctrine. Christian poetry established norms of language and usage. Christian poetry set ideals of manhood, of courage, and of chivalry. Christian poetry established boundaries and etiquette of male-female courtship and relationships. Christian poetry, in other words, created pictures of how the Christian was to incarnate Christian living in a fallen world.
In some cases, Christian poetry displayed not only the life of faith, but also the world outside of or unfaithful to Christ. Chaucer’s band of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury presents a vision of the very mixed lot of the people that make up the church. The church then (which was the Medieval Christian church at a low ebb), like the church in Corinth, and like the church today, consisted of some very faithful believers, but also people whose motives, lifestyles, and language was far from sanctified, devout, or exemplary. Fittingly, The Canterbury Tales ends with a sermon—a much-needed sermon—admonishing the pilgrims to live holy and chaste lives.
The Inferno, which is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, takes the reader on a journey with Dante and Virgil through hell. There are plenty of screams of anguish and gory images in The Inferno. But the most frightening part of Dante’s Inferno is the mirror it provides us of our sins, whether actual sins or sins toward which we have a propensity. Even a Protestant, yea, even a Calvinist, finds much joy in the middle portion of Dante’s epic, Purgatorio. For here on Mount Purgatory, the sinner finds sanctifying grace and fellowship and the singing of Psalms. The entrance in Hell contains the frightening words, ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here.’ But Purgatory is a place of hope, just as in reality and a more Biblical theology, sanctifying grace gives us a sure hope in this world, in spite of remaining indwelling sin. The final portion of Dante, The Paradiso, brings Dante to a vision of the Triune God before he returns to his earthly task, now certain of what he must do as a redeemed man.
Whether one considers the longer epic poems, and put Milton’s Paradise Lost near the top, or shorter lyrics, time spent with the poems show the boldness, the beauty, and the power of the Christian faith in past eras. Sometimes, the poems let slip a weak theological strand or an overly mystical interpretation. All ages have their blind spots. Still, a survey of Christian poetry has much potential for changing our culture.
Holy Week Sonnets
It should be obvious now that reestablishing the Christian tradition in poetry is quite easy since we are surfeited with riches. Whether Anglo-Saxon and Medieval, Renaissance, or later centuries, Christian poets and poetry exists in abundance. The great epics, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, are each almost complete educations in the theologies of their times, with insights into the historical events, the mythological traditions, and literary conventions common to the educated classes. Such lyric poets as John Donne and George Herbert have never been bested at poetic arts. Gerard Manly Hopkins and Christina Rossetti created a great counter-witness to the apostasy of the late 19th century. Roman Catholic poet Francis Thompson wrote “The Hound of Heaven,” which is the greatest poetic description of irresistible grace ever written. Like the faithful heroes of Hebrews 11, time would fail us to even list the names of the great Christian poets of past centuries.
For most of us, the roll call of Christian poets begins running thin as we delve on into the Twentieth Century. But while the wellsprings of Christian culture and art ran dry in many areas in the Twentieth Century, God graciously raised up C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, converted T. S. Eliot, and even gave the American South Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon. With the legion of evils, such as theological liberalism, Darwinism, Nihilism, Freudianism, and Marxism, surrounding the shires, the need for Christian theologies and apologies (defenses, not excuses) arose. So God gave revived the Faith through theologians, preachers, and book reprinting.
Christian artistic endeavors have continued to lag behind. Yet there are hopeful signs. Certainly, movies such as “To End All Wars,” “The Passion of the Christ,” and the Middle Earth and Narnian movies show us the potential and range of Christian cinema. The Christian community is awakening to the world of art. But we still need more Christian painters, poets, novelists, and musicians.
Since poetry does not get the kind of billing that music and movies attract, the Christian poets of our day are still largely unknown. So, let me introduce you to Philip Rosenbaum and his collection of poems titled Holy Week Sonnets.
Posterity Press (www.posteritypress.com) has published this collection of twenty-four sonnets in a beautiful small red book. The type and lettering, the ornamental decorations, and the paper in this book are all quite attractive. The beauty is matched by the price of $25, but the production of that which is beautiful cannot be mass-produced and dished out of a drive-through window. The book is small and can be quickly read, but the book is deep and meditative and should be frequently reread. It lends itself to a yearly reading during holy week, hence the title, but is still appropriate for any time of the year.
Sonnets are delicate things—small, dainty, and focused. Yet the form of fourteen lines with a set number of meters per line and a structured rhyme scheme reveal a power—a toughness—to the form. Literary critics of the New Criticism school saw irony as an essential element of poetry. Powerful imagery was always vital in good poetry. The short length of a sonnet demands highly compressed imagery and revels in ironic stances.
As Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” While Dickinson’s definition of poetry is itself poetic, it helps define the art.
Philip Rosenbaum has some outstanding qualifications for being a poet. He is a Christian. He survived growing up in Washington, D.C., obtaining an English degree from Harvard, and working as a school counselor and director. He lives in a blessed rural region of Virginia with his wife and five children. He authored How to Enjoy the Boring Parts of the Bible and The Promise. This poetry collection, Holy Week Sonnets, was first published in 1999.
Each sonnet in the book is preceded with one or more Scripture references. These Scriptures are printed in the back of the book for easy access. What we found successful in my high school class was to read a poem, read the Bible verses, and then read the poem again. These sonnets are built upon particular phrases—often unnoticed in casual Bible reading—or viewpoints of participants in the Gospel stories.
So we see Christ through the love of the Mary who anointed His feet. We feel the consolation of Christ through Martha who served Jesus. We even experience Palm Sunday through the experience of the donkey carrying Christ into Jerusalem. Such poetry takes what we know in general from the Bible stories and microscopically examines the event afresh. Each sonnet brings the reader back to his own relationship to Christ and to his own realization of Christ’s sacrifice for him.
Certain images remain with the reader. Consider a line like this: “The Tree that looms beyond these scattered palms.” The Christian’s sense is always heightened with foreboding expectation when the Palm Sunday account is read, for we know the where all is leading. Sometimes we learn new things about what was familiar. Gethsemane means “olive press.” Olive oil is a symbol of life and health in the Bible, so we see Jesus in Gethsemane being crushed—in effect—in this olive press for us. In another poem, Christ is likened to a perfect student in class—an ‘omniscient Scholar’—who is beaten for the fools in class, with the subtle reminder that we are those fools. Abraham’s task of offering up Isaac contains powerful typology of Christ’s sacrifice, and this theme finds powerful expression in the poem “The Man Who Walked.”
One of my class’s favorite lines is found in “The Old Man’s Prophecy”: “The Carpenter is tortured by the wood.” Sometimes the effect is heightened by capitalization, as in this case with Carpenter, for Jesus was more than a woodworker. The irony of Christ’s submission to those who should have submitted to Him is powerfully shown here. Likewise, the poem “And Jesus Stood” ends with the seemingly mild and passive line “And Jesus stood before the governor.” The humility of Christ, or to use the Westminster Catechism word, the humiliation of Christ, as shown by Him standing—in the position of the accused and guilty—before a governor (little g) simply gives me that sense of body chill and of head explosion that Emily Dickinson referred to.
So, how do we change the world for Christ? Be part of a faithful church, commit your soul and family to Christ, support Christian schools and missions, acquire lots of books on Christian topics, and read poetry. Whether you are beginning your study of poetry or are well read in the field, Holy Week Sonnets is a great read and great spiritual experience.
Arthur Quiller-Couch said, “ [N]either in these days nor any other can one afford to disregard Poetry without cutting himself from one of the best rewards of living, at once the cheapest to purchase and the most refined to enjoy. To listen to a man or a woman who ‘has no use’ for Poetry is like listening to a husband or wife who ‘has no use’ for children. They can never be answered, and for the simple and sufficient reason that they know not what they are talking about.”
Mr. Quiller-Couch and I stand together. You now have the testimony of two witnesses. Holy Week Sonnets by Philip Rosenbaum: buy and read.
One of the greatest theologians failed to write a systematic theology for later generations. Even though he had great trials as a spiritual and political leader, he left no manuals for pastors or statesmen. Instead, his inspired gift to the church was a collection of poetry that we call The Book of Psalms. Christians through the centuries have continued in David’s footstep and have written poetry. The Christian centuries have included such poets as Prudentius, Caedmon, the anonymous author of Beowulf, William Langdon, who wrote The Vision of Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, and Christina Rossetti. Many we know because we sing their poems, and here we think of such lyricists as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. The poetic Muse has long been a faithful church member in good standing.
Certainly the great theological and polemical tracts and treatises have enriched the Christian faith. Of a truth, the great apologetic works have confounded the enemies of the faith and comforted the faithful. Commentaries on the Scriptures continue to bless both clerical and lay Christians. Books on pastoral theology, guides for Christian living in the home, and devotionals for personal piety all have their places and have played key roles in edifying Christians. Whether one looks to the early church fathers, the Medieval theologians, the Protestant Reformers, the Puritans, or the theologians of more recent centuries, Christianity filled the earth with great books. Not to be neglected, but to be included in this embarrassment of riches is the great heritage of Christian poetry. Imagine a meeting of Christian leaders who are discussing ways to bring revival to the church and reformation to the land. In other words, men who seek be like the sons of Isaachar of whom it was said that they had “understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (I Chronicles 12:32). Such a group would discuss the need for Christian institutions and Christian culture. They would propose schools and universities, ministries and missions, books and media. Frequently, they would be brought back to that most central mission of Christianity, which is preaching the Gospel to the lost and the whole counsel of God to the saved. In the midst of such a meeting, imagine the silent reaction to the following proposal: “Perhaps we need some good poetry to change the world.”
Such a notion seems limp and dreamy. Surely at such a meeting, after a polite silence, someone would politely say, “That’s a good thought. Now back to funding for a chair in Christian studies at the Harvard University….”
So is poetry merely bric-a-brac? Is it leisure activity for the faint of heart? Can poetry play a role in sanctifying the soul or changing the culture? Do real men read or need poetry?
First, to determine this issue, we need not be distracted by bad poetry. Bad poetry exists in abundance. Just look at almost any greeting cards or find some frilly-cutesy books of inspiration thoughts. Such poetry is filled with sing-song rhymes and sentimental thoughts of love, family, motherhood, and friendship. It is dangerous for intellectual diabetics. A dash to the modern poetry journals yields a different type of revulsion. Much modern poetry is simply rehashed Walt Whitman without Whitman’s literary discipline and religious orthodoxy. (Let the reader ponder and understand.) Bad poetry—whether bad because of syrup or bad because of rebellious disorder—cannot make the case for or against poetry any more than bad music or bad art annuls good music or art.
The case for Christian poetry as a tool for cultural transformation begins with history. Christian transformation always begins with the Bible and then quickly transitions to history. This happens in part because the Bible itself is structured as history rather than as philosophical or theological abstracts. Genesis begins with history, not with a systematic theology on the doctrine of God. In all areas of Christian cultural endeavors, wisdom says to look to the old paths. Look at the history, and go to the sources. Christians did not wake up to the need for cultural transformation with the Moral Majority or the Religious Right.
Paul admonished Christians to “take every thought captive to Christ” sometime before 70 A.D. Even earlier, Jesus said believers are to be salt and light in a decaying and dark world. Even earlier, prophets foretold of godly realms where even the bells on horse harnesses would be engraved with the saying, “Holiness to the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20). Even before that mandates and decrees went forth from Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon to establish righteous kingdoms, cultures, and laws. The mandate for culture finds its origins in God’s command to Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over an unfallen world, and that command was not annulled or abrogated by the fall.
In Christian theology, the foundations are found in the early church fathers, the Reformers, and their successors. In Christian music, the creative impulses trace back to Christian musicians like Bach and Watts. In fields such as architecture, painting, sculpture, politics, and law, Christians find precedents in history. So, for certain, a defense of poetry begins with an examination of Christian poetry in history.
An historical study of Christian poetry entails enlistment in warfare. But all cultural interaction is warfare, hence Paul’s martial language in II Corinthians 10:3-6. Larry Woidode calls attention to this matter:
Arbiters of consensus, let’s call them, who are largely drawn from the academic community, are working to erode the central fact of history—anyway for those in the Christian community. They would like to remove the slightest suggestion that God, as Jesus Christ, appeared incarnate on the same earth as the poets they celebrate, so they are now busy changing the designation AD (the Latin Anno Domini meaning ‘in the year of our Lord’) to CE, Common Era.
No matter how you fuddle with naming or centuries of acknowledgement of historical fact, however, or even artfully sift the entries in the pantheon of poets of the past, you always come up against that unassailable truth: the tradition in western literature is Christian.
Historically, Christian poetry reinforced Christian doctrine. Christian poetry established norms of language and usage. Christian poetry set ideals of manhood, of courage, and of chivalry. Christian poetry established boundaries and etiquette of male-female courtship and relationships. Christian poetry, in other words, created pictures of how the Christian was to incarnate Christian living in a fallen world.
In some cases, Christian poetry displayed not only the life of faith, but also the world outside of or unfaithful to Christ. Chaucer’s band of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury presents a vision of the very mixed lot of the people that make up the church. The church then (which was the Medieval Christian church at a low ebb), like the church in Corinth, and like the church today, consisted of some very faithful believers, but also people whose motives, lifestyles, and language was far from sanctified, devout, or exemplary. Fittingly, The Canterbury Tales ends with a sermon—a much-needed sermon—admonishing the pilgrims to live holy and chaste lives.
The Inferno, which is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, takes the reader on a journey with Dante and Virgil through hell. There are plenty of screams of anguish and gory images in The Inferno. But the most frightening part of Dante’s Inferno is the mirror it provides us of our sins, whether actual sins or sins toward which we have a propensity. Even a Protestant, yea, even a Calvinist, finds much joy in the middle portion of Dante’s epic, Purgatorio. For here on Mount Purgatory, the sinner finds sanctifying grace and fellowship and the singing of Psalms. The entrance in Hell contains the frightening words, ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here.’ But Purgatory is a place of hope, just as in reality and a more Biblical theology, sanctifying grace gives us a sure hope in this world, in spite of remaining indwelling sin. The final portion of Dante, The Paradiso, brings Dante to a vision of the Triune God before he returns to his earthly task, now certain of what he must do as a redeemed man.
Whether one considers the longer epic poems, and put Milton’s Paradise Lost near the top, or shorter lyrics, time spent with the poems show the boldness, the beauty, and the power of the Christian faith in past eras. Sometimes, the poems let slip a weak theological strand or an overly mystical interpretation. All ages have their blind spots. Still, a survey of Christian poetry has much potential for changing our culture.
Holy Week Sonnets
It should be obvious now that reestablishing the Christian tradition in poetry is quite easy since we are surfeited with riches. Whether Anglo-Saxon and Medieval, Renaissance, or later centuries, Christian poets and poetry exists in abundance. The great epics, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, are each almost complete educations in the theologies of their times, with insights into the historical events, the mythological traditions, and literary conventions common to the educated classes. Such lyric poets as John Donne and George Herbert have never been bested at poetic arts. Gerard Manly Hopkins and Christina Rossetti created a great counter-witness to the apostasy of the late 19th century. Roman Catholic poet Francis Thompson wrote “The Hound of Heaven,” which is the greatest poetic description of irresistible grace ever written. Like the faithful heroes of Hebrews 11, time would fail us to even list the names of the great Christian poets of past centuries.
For most of us, the roll call of Christian poets begins running thin as we delve on into the Twentieth Century. But while the wellsprings of Christian culture and art ran dry in many areas in the Twentieth Century, God graciously raised up C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, converted T. S. Eliot, and even gave the American South Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon. With the legion of evils, such as theological liberalism, Darwinism, Nihilism, Freudianism, and Marxism, surrounding the shires, the need for Christian theologies and apologies (defenses, not excuses) arose. So God gave revived the Faith through theologians, preachers, and book reprinting.
Christian artistic endeavors have continued to lag behind. Yet there are hopeful signs. Certainly, movies such as “To End All Wars,” “The Passion of the Christ,” and the Middle Earth and Narnian movies show us the potential and range of Christian cinema. The Christian community is awakening to the world of art. But we still need more Christian painters, poets, novelists, and musicians.
Since poetry does not get the kind of billing that music and movies attract, the Christian poets of our day are still largely unknown. So, let me introduce you to Philip Rosenbaum and his collection of poems titled Holy Week Sonnets.
Posterity Press (www.posteritypress.com) has published this collection of twenty-four sonnets in a beautiful small red book. The type and lettering, the ornamental decorations, and the paper in this book are all quite attractive. The beauty is matched by the price of $25, but the production of that which is beautiful cannot be mass-produced and dished out of a drive-through window. The book is small and can be quickly read, but the book is deep and meditative and should be frequently reread. It lends itself to a yearly reading during holy week, hence the title, but is still appropriate for any time of the year.
Sonnets are delicate things—small, dainty, and focused. Yet the form of fourteen lines with a set number of meters per line and a structured rhyme scheme reveal a power—a toughness—to the form. Literary critics of the New Criticism school saw irony as an essential element of poetry. Powerful imagery was always vital in good poetry. The short length of a sonnet demands highly compressed imagery and revels in ironic stances.
As Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” While Dickinson’s definition of poetry is itself poetic, it helps define the art.
Philip Rosenbaum has some outstanding qualifications for being a poet. He is a Christian. He survived growing up in Washington, D.C., obtaining an English degree from Harvard, and working as a school counselor and director. He lives in a blessed rural region of Virginia with his wife and five children. He authored How to Enjoy the Boring Parts of the Bible and The Promise. This poetry collection, Holy Week Sonnets, was first published in 1999.
Each sonnet in the book is preceded with one or more Scripture references. These Scriptures are printed in the back of the book for easy access. What we found successful in my high school class was to read a poem, read the Bible verses, and then read the poem again. These sonnets are built upon particular phrases—often unnoticed in casual Bible reading—or viewpoints of participants in the Gospel stories.
So we see Christ through the love of the Mary who anointed His feet. We feel the consolation of Christ through Martha who served Jesus. We even experience Palm Sunday through the experience of the donkey carrying Christ into Jerusalem. Such poetry takes what we know in general from the Bible stories and microscopically examines the event afresh. Each sonnet brings the reader back to his own relationship to Christ and to his own realization of Christ’s sacrifice for him.
Certain images remain with the reader. Consider a line like this: “The Tree that looms beyond these scattered palms.” The Christian’s sense is always heightened with foreboding expectation when the Palm Sunday account is read, for we know the where all is leading. Sometimes we learn new things about what was familiar. Gethsemane means “olive press.” Olive oil is a symbol of life and health in the Bible, so we see Jesus in Gethsemane being crushed—in effect—in this olive press for us. In another poem, Christ is likened to a perfect student in class—an ‘omniscient Scholar’—who is beaten for the fools in class, with the subtle reminder that we are those fools. Abraham’s task of offering up Isaac contains powerful typology of Christ’s sacrifice, and this theme finds powerful expression in the poem “The Man Who Walked.”
One of my class’s favorite lines is found in “The Old Man’s Prophecy”: “The Carpenter is tortured by the wood.” Sometimes the effect is heightened by capitalization, as in this case with Carpenter, for Jesus was more than a woodworker. The irony of Christ’s submission to those who should have submitted to Him is powerfully shown here. Likewise, the poem “And Jesus Stood” ends with the seemingly mild and passive line “And Jesus stood before the governor.” The humility of Christ, or to use the Westminster Catechism word, the humiliation of Christ, as shown by Him standing—in the position of the accused and guilty—before a governor (little g) simply gives me that sense of body chill and of head explosion that Emily Dickinson referred to.
So, how do we change the world for Christ? Be part of a faithful church, commit your soul and family to Christ, support Christian schools and missions, acquire lots of books on Christian topics, and read poetry. Whether you are beginning your study of poetry or are well read in the field, Holy Week Sonnets is a great read and great spiritual experience.
Arthur Quiller-Couch said, “ [N]either in these days nor any other can one afford to disregard Poetry without cutting himself from one of the best rewards of living, at once the cheapest to purchase and the most refined to enjoy. To listen to a man or a woman who ‘has no use’ for Poetry is like listening to a husband or wife who ‘has no use’ for children. They can never be answered, and for the simple and sufficient reason that they know not what they are talking about.”
Mr. Quiller-Couch and I stand together. You now have the testimony of two witnesses. Holy Week Sonnets by Philip Rosenbaum: buy and read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)