Chris Oldfield comments that "the gospel dignifies who we are by calling us into question."
Few people I have read calls humanity to question more than John Calvin. Marilynne Robinson (Pulitzer Prize winning novelist) observes that the extreme disparagements of humanity under sin by theologians such as Calvin comes from an understanding that we have dignity as creatures made just a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:5).
Cauvin [Calvin] employs a characteristic language [...] including extreme disparagements of the physical body, and more generally of humankind under the aspect of sin or fallenness. [This is done] in the service of an extraordinarily exalted vision of the human soul. It is a form of hyperbole - purity is corruption, pleasure is illusion, wisdom is folly, virtue is depravity, by comparison with the holiness that can be imagined, not as the nature of God only, but as the nature of humankind also [...]
The self-abnegation that is always the condition of a true perception of the self or of God can only be understood as the rigorous imagination of a higher self. This is more complex than it sounds. Cauvin has an unsettling habit of referring to himself or to any other human being as a "worm." [Understood as a reference to Psalm 22] the word describes temporal estrangement from God and at the same time ultimate identity with Christ. In context it is the farthest thing from a term of contempt.
(pp. 182-183, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought)
Thank you Steve for lending me that book all those years ago.
hey dave! I'd love you to pursue this more.
ReplyDeleteJust been reading more of John Gray's Straw Dogs, and found to my shock that he refers to Pascal, who I'm sure is motivated by Calvin's 1st chapter on self-knowledge. I found yesterday that John Gray had written an entire chapter in Black Mass called 'enlightenment and terror', too -
I'm increasingly thinking John Gray is almost a prophet for our time, except for one thing - what if there's a God after all? What if we can find security in his grace rather than seek to hedge our anxiety using terror? It's powerful stuff.
Here's one of Pascal's famous Pensées, it's one Amy Orr-Ewing used in Bristol 2004 and it's stuck with me. It's along the lines of Nietzsche's "we are unknown to ourselves", & Chesterton's paradox in the Everlasting Man. I'm convinced it flows out of Calvin, and has a lot to say to Dawkins, so I'll try to develop it in a full post some day soon, but I won't use the quote in full, so I thought I'd give it for your enjoyment here. It's hard to translate the colour of the French - the first line could read "what kind of freak, then is man?"!!
ReplyDelete"What a figment of the imagination human beings are! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how contradictory, how prodigious, judge of all things, mindless worm of the earth, repository of truth, cesspool of uncertainty and error, glory and reject of the universe. Who will unravel this tangle?
It is certainly beyond dogmatism and Pyrrhonism and the whole of human philosophy. Man is beyond man. Let us allow the Pyrrhonists what they have so often claimed, that truth is neither within our grasp nor is it our target. It does not reside on earth but belongs in heaven, in God's bosom, and we know it only as much as he is pleased to reveal. Let us then learn our true nature from the uncreated and incarnate truth. You cannot be a Pyrrhonist without stifling nature, nor a dogmatist without repudiating reason. Nature confounds Pyrrhonists and reason confounds dogmatists. What will then become of you, men who are looking for your true condition through your natural reason? You cannot avoid one of these sects nor survive in either. Be aware then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourselves! Humble yourself, powerless reason! Be silent, foolish nature! Learn that humanity infinitely transcends humanity and hear from your Master your true condition of which you are unaware. Listen to God!" (it's hard to translate the imperative, it's more like "hear God!")
Ooo that is a good quote.
ReplyDeleteI read John Gray's Straw Dogs when I was at Uni (my housemate lent it to me). I did find it quite prophetic as you say.
I'll do my best to pursue it more. But as I have so little time to think properly. Hence a constant flow of quotes and half-baked thoughts.
Having been listening to Colin Gunton over the last few days I suspect that the incarnation of the Son is the place to begin.
Hmmm too tired to think sorry. I've had too many late nights recently.