Archive for May, 2009

L

Don May 28th, 2009

L Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            It is now the Autumn of 1974 and the beginning of my Middler year in Seminary.  While adding Hebrew to my Greek and gaining additional grounding in biblical studies, theology, and church history, I managed also to find time for some walks in the woods before the onset of another winter and to experiment a bit with enjambment, the art of making your sentences end at different points in your lines of iambic pentameter to avoid predictable monotony and enhance the flow of your sonnet.

 SONNET XVI 

It was a deep, dark forest.  No wind stirred

The woven branches there.  No greater sound

In all that heavy stillness could be heard

Than worn-out oak leaves dropping to the ground.

The floor was covered with their rusty brown

As I, not unaffected by the gloom,

Came slowly shuffling through with eyes cast down.

The arching branches, closing in, assumed

The aspect of dim vaults in ancient tombs,

When, sudden, splashed amidst the brown, a small

Bright patch of gold I saw, the earth in bloom,

Where one lone maple’s let her leaf-cloak fall.

Tell me—was it leaves I saw that hour,

Or Zeus descending in a golden shower?

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Philosophy

Don May 26th, 2009

Part of the growth of a poet’s mind–or any mind–is learning how to think, to the end of discovering what to think.  Here is a wonderful passage from G. K. Chesterton on why philosophy is necessary:

 ”The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else’s thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else’s philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness. Men have always one of two things: either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and shattered and often discredited philosophy. Such broken bits are the phrases I have quoted: efficiency and evolution and the rest. The idea of being “practical”, standing all by itself, is all that remains of a Pragmatism that cannot stand at all.  Doing the work that is nearest is obvious nonsense; yet it has been repeated in many albums. In nine cases out of ten it would mean doing the work that we are least fitted to do, such as cleaning the windows or clouting the policeman over the head. “Deeds, not words” is itself an excellent example of “Words, not thoughts”. It is a deed to throw a pebble into a pond and a word that sends a prisoner to the gallows. But there are certainly very futile words; and this sort of journalistic philosophy and popular science almost entirely consists of them.

Some people fear that philosophy will bore or bewilder them; because they think it is not only a string of long words, but a tangle of complicated notions. These people miss the whole point of the modern situation. These are exactly the evils that exist already; mostly for want of a philosophy. The politicians and the papers are always using long words. It is not a complete consolation that they use them wrong. The political and social relations are already hopelessly complicated. They are far more complicated than any page of medieval metaphysics; the only difference is that the medievalist could trace out the tangle and follow the complications; and the moderns cannot. The chief practical things of today, like finance and political corruption, are frightfully complicated. We are content to tolerate them because we are content to misunderstand them, not to understand them. The business world needs metaphysics – to simplify it.

Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out. The latter is what we commonly call culture and enlightenment today. But man is always influenced by thought of some kind, his own or somebody else’s; that of somebody he trusts or that of somebody he never heard of, thought at first, second or third hand; thought from exploded legends or unverified rumours; but always something with the shadow of a system of values and a reason for preference. A man does test everything by something. The question here is whether he has ever tested the test.” 

The entire passage can be found at:
http://evans- experientialism. freewebspace. com/chesterson02 .htm

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XLIX

Don May 22nd, 2009

XLIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            The poem in entry XLVII stood alone at first; but as often happens with me, it soon begat companions that coalesced to form a larger group.    Terza Rima is the form Dante used in The Divine Comedy.  The lines come in triplets rhyming ABA BCB CDC, etc., until all ends in a couplet. 

 THREE ESSAYS IN TERZA RIMA I:  In Anticipation of Autumn 

Luxuriant, green-growth leaves that tower tall

Above our heads to form a mighty ceiling

Are surely destined down to die and fall,

 

The bare, left-lifeless, lifted limbs revealing

That bore them up until the fatal voice

Of Frost should come and whisper softly, sealing

 

Their fate.  They choose (and yet they have no choice)

To go a wandering, homeless vagabonds,

Seeking for a reason to rejoice

 

More than they had when, high, in soft green fronds,

The formed a restful, rustling canopy

To filter sunlight into summer ponds.

 

And I wonder why men (and I am one) must be

So like the leaves they see on every tree.

 II:  Natural Revelation 

The swooping, darting, soar-song flock of birds

That swift across the sunset takes its flight

Says something that cannot be said by words.

 

The piercing of the Stars through deepening night

Takes up the same theme, each in perfect time’

And in a burning pitch to match its height.

 

The Moon on wings of the same song doth climb

And wax and wane and never miss a turn

To treat the clouds like words that poets rhyme.

 

And just before the Dawn begins to burn

A hole in the dark tapestry of Night

And light dew-jewels on cobweb, leaf, and fern,

 

A distant, glowing, cabin-window light

Speaks of shelter, breakfast, warmth, and peace,

A circle of love formed firm against the Night

 

To join the birds, Stars, Moon, Dawn in the East,

And sing the self-same song.  Oh, seek to grasp,

For seek to grasp we must, and never cease,

 

These will-o-the-wisp, elusive notes that pass

Through restless minds like soft winds through the grass

 III:  The Pulley 

George Herbert tells us that You withheld Rest,

Of all the blessings that You gave to Man,

So that we might be tossed unto your breast

 

And not be satisfied with aught less than

That supreme Good for which we all were made.

And I confess, that seems to have been Your plan

 

In dealing with men like me, so apt to trade

The greater for the lesser good and lose

Both in the process as we watch them fade.

 

For whether paths of planets I peruse,

Or watch the wandering of the Autumn leaves,

Or see the sunset or sunrise’s hues,

 

That age-old wandering impulse I receive

To leave behind old Earth’s confining ring

And find the lasting Good we can’t conceive.

 

It is not of themselves that the spheres sing,

But of the One who wrote their melody.

It is the Truth, the Life; it is the thing

 

Some hide from, some pursue, and some few see:

Our hearts are restless ‘til they rest in Thee.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Critique Critiqued

Don May 20th, 2009

Note:  This review was published in Mythlore: The Journal of the Mythopoeic Society 105/106, Spring/Summer 2009): 168-70. 

C. S. LEWIS AND THE SEARCH FOR RATIONAL RELIGION.  Revised and Updated.  John Beversluis.  Amherst, N. Y.:  Prometheus Books, 2007. 363 pp.  $20.00, pbk.  ISBN 978-1-59102-3.

 

Surely one of the most controversial books in the history of Lewis studies was the first edition of John Beversluis’s C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, originally published by Eerdmans in 1985.  Billing itself as the only book-length critical study of Lewis’s rational apologetic for Christian faith, it concluded that none of his arguments succeeded.  Reviewing the first edition in Mythlore 43 (Autumn 1985), Nancy-Lou Patterson called it “as waspish a work” as it had ever been her “disagreeable task to review,” concluding that the faith, “including its reasoned elements” would survive the book (42).  Patterson was right: the first edition sometimes gave the impression that Beversluis thought accusing Lewis of a fallacy was equivalent to demonstrating that he had committed it.  Few readers who had appreciated Lewis’s apologetic works were convinced by Beversluis’s arguments.

 

Now we have a new revised, updated, and expanded edition.  It has already caused much exultation on atheist websites and much dismissive eye-rolling among Lewis fans.  Neither reaction is justified. 

Beversluis has responded to his critics, continued his own thinking, and rewritten each section to the point that this version is almost a completely new book.  In the process, he has strengthened his presentation considerably.  While in the end I still find it mostly unconvincing, it does keep its promise to provide the strongest sustained critique of Lewis’s apologetic on the market.  As such it performs a valuable service.  Those who wish to continue using updated versions of Lewis’s arguments for Christian theism will have to get past Beversluis in order to do so with credibility, and their arguments will be stronger for the exercise.

 

Beversluis sets out to take seriously Lewis’s statement in Mere Christianity that he does not ask anyone to accept Christianity “if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.”  Beversluis approves of Lewis for demanding evidence and wants to know if he has succeeded in showing that the best reasoning supports Christian faith.  Beversluis concludes that Lewis’s own best reasoning fails to do so.  While he examines several of Lewis’s arguments—the argument from desire, the moral argument for theism, the “trilemma” argument for the deity of Christ, the argument from reason for the self-refuting character of naturalism, Lewis’s theodicy, etc.—in great detail, his objections can be summarized in two points.  First, the “apparent cogency of [Lewis’s] arguments depends on his rhetoric rather than on his logic” (20).  Lewis was such a good writer that people are carried away by his words and do not notice the fallacies being committed under their cover.  Second, Lewis’s arguments are fallacious, and his besetting fallacy is the False Dilemma.  Lewis will say that there are only two (or three) choices, refute one, and thus seem to leave Christian theism standing in sole possession of the field; but in reality, there are other alternatives he has not considered, and the one he is rejecting is a straw man.  

It should be immediately obvious to Beversluis’s readers that his first criticism of Lewis is valid only if, and only to the extent that, the second is upheld.  It is hardly a fault to write well unless that writing can be shown to be in the service of error.  The details of the second criticism will likely be debated in the journals for some time.  The question will be whether the additional alternatives Beversluis tries to posit do not in fact ultimately reduce to the set of choices that Lewis’s more incisive analysis had set before us in the first place.  In most cases, I believe that they do. 

For example, Beversluis argues that Lewis’s refutation of moral subjectivism is vitiated by the fact that he treats it as a single genus, when actually “there are more sophisticated and nuanced versions that . . . cannot be disposed of so easily” (83).  The example we are offered is Hume’s theory of morals as based on human feeling, which Beversluis claims is not susceptible to Lewis’s “loose-cannon generalizations” (87).  Well, I think it is.  In fact, I think it can be doubted whether Hume’s view is properly a theory of ethics at all, as it has absolutely no answer to Lewis’s charge that subjectivist ethics is unable to account for the word “ought.”  When the philosophical jargon is stripped away from the allegedly “more nuanced” views, it is not clear at all to me that Beversluis has made his charge of False Dilemma stick rather than just muddying the water.  The other forms of subjectivism remain species of the genus. 

In the discussion of the Trilemma (“Lord/Liar/Lunatic”—not Lewis’s words, by the way), the alleged missed alternatives include the possibility that Jesus did not actually say or mean the statements on which the argument is based, and that a person could be mistaken about being God and still be a great moral teacher.  In the first case, Beversluis himself commits the fallacies of dicto simpliciter and ad verecundiam, telling us that “All mainstream New Testament scholars agree that the synoptic Gospels are fragmentary, episodic, internally inconsistent, and written by people who were not eyewitnesses” (123).  All?  That generalization has never been true, and it is less true now than it has ever been.  (See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Eerdmans, 2006, as just one counter-example.)   Even if the “experts” were in fact unanimous, it would not make them right.  And surely one can be mistaken about a great many things, including one’s own identity, and still be a good moral teacher.  But we are asked now to believe that a person could wrongly think he is the Creator of the Universe, the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal Being who thundered from Sinai now incarnate in human flesh, and still retain any credibility on anything else he might say!  Beversluis argues that Jesus’ moral statements would still be true even if he were a lunatic; but this misses the point completely.  Lewis assumes the validity of the teaching; it is the credibility of the Teacher that is on trial.  To say the least, I do not find Beversluis’s “alternatives” to Lewis’s allegedly prematurely limited choices terribly impressive.

 

What my best reasoning tells me at the end of the day is that people who want to escape the conclusions of Christian theism can always find a loophole that will satisfy them.  John Beversluis is particularly good at doing so.  It does not follow that theism is false or that Lewis’s arguments for it are bad.  Whether you agree with me or with Beversluis about Lewis’s arguments, one thing is certain: the discussion is sure to continue.  I for one look forward to that.

 

Donald T. Williams         

  

XLVIII

Don May 18th, 2009

XLVIII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            The next two poems have no excuse for appearing together other than the fact that they are both too short perhaps to fill even a Blog entry by themselves.  Or perhaps they can claim to exemplify the fact that the one feature shared by both human philosophy and human experience is irony.

 

 ON THE PHILOSOPHER AFTER DEATH 

Riding high on the Life-Force’s tallest, triumphant wave,

Precariously poised above its lowest trough:

When first he saw things thus, his face turned grave,

And Bergson shuddered, and coughed a nervous cough.

 

 THE TRAFFIC ON ILLINOIS 294 

Still searching, yet not knowing what

Lies at the end of our long quest,

We love our restless life, and yet

We sorely long for rest.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 

STAR TREK: The Beginning of the Future

Don May 15th, 2009

Highly illogical.

All the things I was afraid of turned out not to be problems. The young cast does a good job of pretending to be my old friends from Classic Star Trek, and they have all kinds of fun with the shtick that comes along with that. The movie is fun to watch, for that and other reasons.

But . . .

You knew there was going to be a “but.” This is supposed to be the story of how the original crew came together. But it can’t be. Checkov didn’t join the bridge crew until the second year of their original five-year mission. Pike was captain of the Enterprise for much more than just one day–no time has been left for his trip to Talos 4. In every episode of every canonical series (Classic, TNG, DS9, Voyager–but not the clearly apocryphal Enterprise), the planet Vulcan exists; in many of them, Miranda is alive. (”Tell my mother I feel fine”–last line of Star Trek IV). So what is going on here?

There are three logical possibilities. 1. The new movie is apocryphal. 2. The future supernova and black hole, by sending Nero and Spock back in time, have created an alternative time line, a parallel universe. 3 The future supernova and black hole, by sending Nero and Spock back in time, have altered the Trek universe timeline so that its whole history is going to be different.

In one way, the plot is a brilliant solution. Reboot the series in such a way that you don’t have to worry about nasty little inconveniences like an elaborate previously established timeline, and you can therefore do anything you want in the sequels. In another, it’s highly problematic. Which of the three options above is being actualized here? The evidence of the movie itself is inconclusive; it contains lines that could be taken as suppporting either 2 or 3. But the mere possibility of possibility 3 is deeply troubling to anyone already invested in the Trek universe. The entire history that we know has just been erased in order to make new movies? There are lots of things to like about this one, but if that is the case, well, the price is just too high.

I devoutly hope the sequel will clear this little problem up. Until then, in the immortal words of Miles O’Brien:

“I HATE temporal dynamics!”

From the bridge,

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XLVII

Don May 12th, 2009

XLVII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            The passage of time never ceases to be a wonder and a mystery.  How, for example, do so many days manage to elapse between these blog entries?  As the years lengthen and the ones remaining shrink, one begins to notice about Spring not only the rebirth of nature but just as much the stage being set for another Fall.  I noticed this rather early, as you can see.  It is an inescapable part of the human condition.  It comes home especially strongly in the upper Midwest, where Spring is so late and so fleeting a phenomenon.

 IN ANTICIPATION OF AUTUMN(ON SEEING THE NEWBORN LEAVES)June, 1974 

Luxuriant, green-growth leaves that tower tall

Above our heads to form a mighty ceiling

Are surely destined down to die and fall,

 

The bare, left-lifeless, lifted limbs revealing

That bore them up until the fatal voice

Of Frost should come and whisper softly, sealing

 

Their fate.  They choose (and yet they have no choice)

To go a wandering, homeless vagabonds,

Seeking for a reason to rejoice

 

More than they had when, high, in soft green fronds,

The formed a restful, rustling canopy

To filter sunlight into summer ponds.

 

And I wonder why men (and I am one) must be

So like the leaves they see on every tree.

 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Review: “Beowulf”

Don May 4th, 2009

REVIEW: “BEOWULF”A Robert Zemeckis Film with Screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger AvaryReleased December, 2007 

I am not even going to get started on the differences in plot between the new Beowulf movie and the original poem; or even the differences in the characters. If a student watched this movie to learn about Beowulf for his English class and tried to substitute that viewing for reading the book, he would most deservedly fail. But all that I will not touch, nor will I comment on the annoying inconsistency in how realistic the various computer-generated humans look, being studious of brevity. Instead, let me try to address the differences in philosophy or world view between the two works.

 The poem was written by a medieval Anglo-Saxon Christian who used Beowulf’s character to address issues of Christ and culture that still resonate with us today. What does accepting Christianity mean to Anglo-Saxon heirs of the Germanic tribal tradition of Norse gods and a heroic warrior culture who still live in a very dangerous world? The poet went out of his way to set up parallels between Beowulf and Christ: Beowulf’s “baptism” in the mere, his apparent death at the “ninth hour,” his subsequent “resurrection,” his fight with a dragon at which he has twelve companions, one of which is a traitor and eleven of which abandon him (with the exception of Wiglaf, who thus represents John the beloved disciple), etc.

The poet’s point is that Beowulf is the modern model for the Christ-like man. This theme seems strange until you compare Beowulf with the other heroes of that culture. It often doesn’t come across to today’s reader because we are no longer familiar with the old warrior culture. But Beowulf stands out as one who does not slay his kin out of drunkenness or for personal gain. He only fights to defend the weak and innocent. And when he gives his Battle Boast, he strikes a radically new note. Rather than boasting about how his own prowess and superiority will win the day, he says, “I will fight Grendel, and may the true God [not Fate, as in the movie] then assign victory to whoever pleases him.” Beowulf’s boast gives the ultimate glory if he wins to God, not to himself. The word may sound ironic to us moderns, but Beowulf stands out from his contemporaries like a sore thumb as precisely meek. Beowulf is the Christ-like hero that the poet thinks his generation needs, because he acknowledges his strength as a gift from God, uses it for good, not personal gain or power, and gives the glory to God. 

 

This reading of Beowulf’s character and of the poem that came down to us is confirmed by a comparison with that other brilliant Anglo-Saxon portrayal of Christ as hero, “The Dream of the Rood.”  There, far from being a passive victim, Christ is the one supremely in control of what is happening at the crucifixion.  It is his strength that enables the Cross itself to bear him, and as a conquering hero he “mounted the cross to redeem mankind” (emphasis added).  If that is the portrait of Christ that resonated with Anglo-Saxon Christians, then Beowulf is the portrait of the Christ-like man.

 

The movie goes out of its way to contradict the message of the poem at every possible point. There is no sense in acknowledging or praying to the gods–especially the “new Roman god, Christ”–because the gods will not do anything for us that we don’t do for ourselves. Far from being a Christ-like hero, Beowulf sells his soul to Grendel’s mother for absolute power and then lies about having killed her when he returns from the mere. The movie’s writers apparently believe that real personal integrity is just inconceivable, for the only person who appears to have any–Wiglaf–is walking out into the water towards the she-demon (Angelina Jolie) with lust in his eyes in the very last scene that we see at the close. This is a Beowulf that is not only secular but also cynical. Though the dragon is slain, there is really no basis for any kind of hope at all in the movie’s imaginative world.

 

Robert Zemeckis is at least honest about his approach to retelling the story.  “Nothing about the original poem appealed to me,” he writes on the film’s website (www.beowulfmovie.com).  Quite so.  Neal Gaiman and Roger Avary profess in their screenplay to have undone the “editing” that the monks who presumably gave us our version of the story supposedly did to the original.  But their proffered “restoration” is based on no scholarship about that supposed original at all, other than the supposition that it must have existed.  (There is evidence that the story is older than the version we have, and probably did have pagan origins.  For more on the real significance of this fact, see J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”)

 

So what is the basis for this allegedly original version?  As I was watching the film, I kept thinking, “This movie is what you would get if you tried to morph a secular and cynical Beowulf with–of all things–C. S. Lewis’s pre-conversion epic poem Dymer.” The movie Grendel is actually Hrothgar’s illegitimate son through his illicit sexual union with the seductive demon Jolie. Beowulf has had evidence for this astounding fact presented to him before he encounters Jolie, but forgets it and repeats the same tragic mistake, so that the dragon is actually his son; and Wiglaf’s first act as the new king is apparently going to be to repeat the same pattern. It is Lewis’s myth, of the man who has to confront the monster he himself begot, on steroids. If one wanted charitably to find a positive lesson in this hopeless mishmash, it could be to “be sure that your sin will find you out.” But the problem is that, with the gods (not just including Christ, but especially Christ) having been dismissed as irrelevant, no possibility of redemption from this inevitable fate is ever held out.

 I kept thinking, “This couldn’t be an unholy marriage between Beowulf and Dymer!” But then I saw Neal Gaiman’s name in the credits. Whatever else you may say about Mr. Gaiman, he has read his Lewis–how profitably is a matter of some debate. So I am now setting it forth as a reasonable hypothesis that Dymer does have something to do with this Beowulf. If so, the end result is the worst of both worlds.  It should be seen only by the mature and spiritually fortified adult—not, despite its misleading PG-13 rating, by children of any age.  Donald T. Williams, PhD, is professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in the hills of Northeast Georgia.  His most recent books are Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007), and The Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice, 2008).  His website is www.doulomen.tripod.com.

XLVI

Don May 1st, 2009

XLVI Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            In “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned,” Wordsworth defends his practice of mooning around the Lake Country waiting for inspiration against those who think he ought to be doing something more edifying, like reading a book.  Nature, he claims, is a superior teacher.  “One impulse from a vernal wood / Can teach me more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.” 

            Oh, really?

 A REJOINDER TO MR. WORDSWORTH 

“Will” bids us Nature’s students be

And treats book learning with contempt.

We wonder if his poetry

From this fine maxim is exempt?

 

I think that what we learn from her

Of moral good and ill is fine;

But after all, I must aver,

It’s Man that has a mind!

 

And God supremely, who doth teach

Truth absolute in Holy Books,

In number sixty-six, and each

A guide to help us look

 

At Nature’s pages, there to see

Aright and not be sore confused.

For Arrogance, who tries to be

His own guide, is with ease abused.

 

I do not seek to minimize

That which from Nature we can know;

I only wish to emphasize

We cannot hope to learn it so.

 

An impulse from a vernal wood

Could never do me half the good

Without long, careful, studious looks

Between the pages of my books.

 

            Nature does not and cannot teach positive moral content.  Look at her from one angle and she is our benevolent mother; from another and she is red in tooth and claw.  What she can provide is a metaphorical language that gives meaning to our concepts.  That is a great gift.  So we need the Library Carrel and the Lake Country to be whole men and women.

 

Donald T. Williams, PhD