I am currently reading two very dissimilar books, the one being a long, scholarly theological rumination by David Bentley Hart called That All Shall be Saved--Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, the other a zombie apocalypse novel, Zone One, by Colson Whitehead.
I do hope I don't get the two confused!
The Hart treatise is a very welcome modern offering on the matter of eternal salvation and tackles as its central challenge the often confused or misinformed theologies that have led to such sad abominations as Christian fundamentalism, Catholic purgatories, Calvinist dungeons of eternal suffering, and so on. Hart himself, of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion, explains, very compellingly, in my mind, how the purity of New Testament scripture has been compromised over the centuries by misinterpretation of the original Greek, misunderstanding of Jewish tradition and practices, misapprehension and rampant category error regarding the place, purpose, and meaning of myth, parable, and prophesy, and eschatological catch-22's wherein the logic of acquired theologies traps interpretation into grim, not to mention contradictory, conclusions.
How do we approach scripture intelligently, humbly, faithfully. As Hart writes:
I am not very tolerant of what is sometimes called “biblicism”—that is, the “oracular” understanding of scriptural inspiration, which sees the Bible as the record of words directly uttered by the lips of God through an otherwise dispensable human intermediary, and which entails the belief that the testimony of the Bible on doctrinal and theological matters must be wholly internally consistent—and I certainly have no patience whatsoever for twentieth-century biblical fundamentalism and its manifest imbecilities.
And again, regarding our dutiful affection for our own constructs, no matter how jarring in the compassionate light of scripture itself:
There are, I admit—unfortunately, I have met some of them—those Christians who are earnestly attached to the idea of an eternal hell not just because they feel they must be, but also because it is what they want to believe. For some of them, in fact, it is practically the best part of the story. It gives them a sense of belonging to a very small and select company, a very special club, and they positively relish the prospect of a whole eternity in which to enjoy the impotent envy of all those writhing, resentful souls that have been permanently consigned to an inferior neighborhood outside the gates. That is the sort of prestige that cannot be bought where the common people shop.
It is all, as I have suggested, a refreshing correction to so many misguided doctrines, which have come to stand on their own almost despite scripture, and so, for me, especially encouraging in our day of popular blasphemy.
Zombies, on the other hand, seem to represent the hell we have inflicted on ourselves, making Zone One, oddly enough, a rather appropriate companion for Hart's philosophy of eternal mercy in light of the threat of eternal damnation--for zombies are, of course, mindlessly merciless creatures, though they do not know it, being obedient only to hunger and rampage. What makes Zone One a good novel by any estimation, leaving the zombies out of it for a moment, is the exceptional prose of its author coupled with his artful examination of the rot, the infection, that plagued western society far before the un-dead ever started to shuffle about and outright devour people. Skels, they are called throughout the novel--which may be short for 'skeletons', given that zombies can be considered human beings only in the most elementary form, but is also an obscure word (skell), defined as a stereotypical or archetypal designation referring to a person who is homeless, vagrant, or derelict, as well as, typically, violent and criminal, without moral sense. We have, then, the complex, tower-ridden jewel of civilization known as New York City and its ironic millions of vagrant inhabitants, quite despite the conglomerate miles of steel and concrete and high windows that house them.
Zone One rather reminds me of another excellent zombie tale, The Girl With All the Gifts, for its excellence of style and thoughtful accomplishment of theme--and both The Girl and Zone One remind me of the best of Poe and Hawthorne. Admittedly, I am only a quarter of the way through Zone One, but I am so far impressed as hell, and, I suppose, rather envious. Why couldn't I have thought of all this! The key, of course, is that Zone One is not really about zombies at all. It is about us.
How do we approach scripture intelligently, humbly, faithfully. As Hart writes:
I am not very tolerant of what is sometimes called “biblicism”—that is, the “oracular” understanding of scriptural inspiration, which sees the Bible as the record of words directly uttered by the lips of God through an otherwise dispensable human intermediary, and which entails the belief that the testimony of the Bible on doctrinal and theological matters must be wholly internally consistent—and I certainly have no patience whatsoever for twentieth-century biblical fundamentalism and its manifest imbecilities.
And again, regarding our dutiful affection for our own constructs, no matter how jarring in the compassionate light of scripture itself:
There are, I admit—unfortunately, I have met some of them—those Christians who are earnestly attached to the idea of an eternal hell not just because they feel they must be, but also because it is what they want to believe. For some of them, in fact, it is practically the best part of the story. It gives them a sense of belonging to a very small and select company, a very special club, and they positively relish the prospect of a whole eternity in which to enjoy the impotent envy of all those writhing, resentful souls that have been permanently consigned to an inferior neighborhood outside the gates. That is the sort of prestige that cannot be bought where the common people shop.
It is all, as I have suggested, a refreshing correction to so many misguided doctrines, which have come to stand on their own almost despite scripture, and so, for me, especially encouraging in our day of popular blasphemy.
Zombies, on the other hand, seem to represent the hell we have inflicted on ourselves, making Zone One, oddly enough, a rather appropriate companion for Hart's philosophy of eternal mercy in light of the threat of eternal damnation--for zombies are, of course, mindlessly merciless creatures, though they do not know it, being obedient only to hunger and rampage. What makes Zone One a good novel by any estimation, leaving the zombies out of it for a moment, is the exceptional prose of its author coupled with his artful examination of the rot, the infection, that plagued western society far before the un-dead ever started to shuffle about and outright devour people. Skels, they are called throughout the novel--which may be short for 'skeletons', given that zombies can be considered human beings only in the most elementary form, but is also an obscure word (skell), defined as a stereotypical or archetypal designation referring to a person who is homeless, vagrant, or derelict, as well as, typically, violent and criminal, without moral sense. We have, then, the complex, tower-ridden jewel of civilization known as New York City and its ironic millions of vagrant inhabitants, quite despite the conglomerate miles of steel and concrete and high windows that house them.
Zone One rather reminds me of another excellent zombie tale, The Girl With All the Gifts, for its excellence of style and thoughtful accomplishment of theme--and both The Girl and Zone One remind me of the best of Poe and Hawthorne. Admittedly, I am only a quarter of the way through Zone One, but I am so far impressed as hell, and, I suppose, rather envious. Why couldn't I have thought of all this! The key, of course, is that Zone One is not really about zombies at all. It is about us.
No comments:
Post a Comment