Many have attempted to create a universal Southern identity during the American Civil War. While the works of Southern writers during the 1860s highlight the fact that experiences and perspectives greatly differed throughout the south, many southerners were, in fact, united by general patriotism towards the Confederacy. The wartime diaries of Sarah Morgan and Cornelia Peake McDonald provide small glimpses into two uniquely different parts of the Confederacy. Though experiencing many dissimilar events, both held a staunch Confederate patriotism that lasted through varying hardships.
Cornelia Peake McDonald’s wartime diary, entitled “A Woman’s Civil War: A Diary with Reminisces of the War, from March 1862,” describes the daily life of a wife and mother of nine children struggling to provide for her family while living on the front lines in Winchester, Virginia. At times, she and her children could even watch the battle from their front porch. Although from a middle class family and the wife of an officer in the Confederate army, McDonald struggled to provide sufficiently for her large family. Throughout the war, troops moved back and forth through Winchester, with an incessant fluctuation of control by north and south. Constantly in contact with various Union officers concerning the fate of her beloved home and family, McDonald managed to keep a staunch Confederate sentiment while befriending several Union officers and managing to keep her property relatively intact for quite some time.
Shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the McDonalds decided to flee their poverty- stricken home for safety further behind the Southern lines. They were not alone; everyone realized the danger that surrounded them. McDonald records, “The whole town seemed to be trying to get away…few were willing to risk another Federal occupation.” Escaping to Amherst Courthouse, McDonald left most of her children in the care of a family friend, while taking two of her older children to Richmond to visit her husband, who was ailing, and possibly on his deathbed. Deciding to move the family to Lexington, McDonald retrieved her family and set about the difficult task of finding a home while waiting for her husband to gain enough strength to make the journey. There she stayed for the remainder of the war, fighting the desperate domestic battle that was then commonplace in the vast majority of the South- the crusade for food, for clothes, for warmth in winter, for a roof in rain: the crusade to keep a family together.
On the other hand, Sarah Morgan, only nineteen years old at the outbreak of the war, was from a wealthy, highly respected and aristocratic family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her wartime diary, consisting of five books in all, entitled “Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman,” not only holds a detailed account of her daily life throughout the war, but also a record of her feelings, her thought processes, and her philosophies of life and the world. While Morgan saw very little fighting, her family spent much of the war in fear of imminent attacks. In 1862, the northern army had arrived at Baton Rouge, and there were constant threats that the city would be shelled, as it was close to the river. Once, when a shelling commenced, men, women, and children all evacuated the city in great haste for fear of their lives, only to return a couple of days later to find their homes relatively untouched. Finally, however, after several more scares, the Morgan family decided to leave their beautiful, stately home.
First, the family stayed in Westover with Dr. Nolan. Morgan began her third diary by wondering, “Will the blank pages record the burning of Baton Rouge, and the loss of our all? Will the close of it find me running, or at last settled in what is to be our future dwelling in New Orleans?” How prophetic her words, foreshadowing much of what was to become of the Morgan family! Moving to General Carter’s plantation at Linwood to be out of the reach of the shells that bombarded Baton Rouge, Sarah and her sister Miriam remained there from August 1862 until April 1863. Then they departed for Clinton to meet their mother, and with her, to escape to the Union lines in New Orleans.
During their stay at Linwood, the Carters treated them as family. The pages of Morgan's diary record an enjoyment not to be found in those of McDonald’s journal, complete with a great multitude of soldier suitors constantly calling. Part way through their stay, in November 1862, Morgan had an accident while going to visit her brother Gibbes at a nearby Confederate camp in which the buggy they were riding in was overturned, and Sarah’s back severely injured. For about six months she was mostly confined to bed, not fully healed when they reached New Orleans at the end of April 1863. This accident colored her view of the war, being mostly confined to bed and constantly receiving the attentions of doting soldiers. She wrote almost daily of the occurrences around her, though rarely receiving accurate news about the Confederate army. Morgan herself never truly experienced the horrors or poverty of war. When those she loved, such as her mother and sister-in-law in Clinton, faced food shortages, the Morgans had the influence and resources to escape to the home of Morgan's unionist brother Judge Morgan in Union-held New Orleans. Their circumstances there were better than the troubles that were ever-increasing in the Confederacy, as neither crippled Sarah nor her weak mother could have survived.
Although McDonald and Morgan were from two very different areas of the Confederacy with vastly different positions, experiences and perspectives, there are many similarities to be found in the pages of their diaries. The primary similarity between McDonald and Morgan is their Confederate patriotism, which, despite the general loss of morale as the war progressed, remained unwavering. Both realized the treasonous natures of the books they wrote, yet continued to pick up their pens, attempting to accurately record what they faced each day. On May 15, 1863, McDonald records,
Last night I left this book in which I am writing lying on a table and went down stairs. Nell [her seven year old daughter] spied two officers approaching the house, and supposing they were coming for a search, first concealed the book and then went to see what they might want… I asked her why she did it, and she said she thought there might be something in it the Yankees ought not to see. I had not thought her knowing the character of the book.
Unable to vent her true sentiments publicly, McDonald daily recorded her staunch Confederate views, many of which would have placed her in dire trouble if read by a northern official. On many occasions, Morgan denotes the treasonous nature of her writings. “At first I avoided mention of political affairs, but now, there is nothing else to be thought of; if it is not burnt for treason, I will like to look it over one of these days- if I live.” Later, on June 29, 1862, while still in Yankee-occupied Baton Rouge, she again mentioned the treacherous nature of her book, writing, “one line of this, surrounded as we are by soldiers, and liable to have our houses searched at any instant, would be sufficient indictment for high treason.”
Another form of patriotism, thought short-lived on both accounts, was the proud public display of the Confederate flag. In July 1862, McDonald records “I am to have a small Confederate flag on the tea table tonight to celebrate our 4th of July.” And the next day she states, “We did celebrate our fourth…The little flag waved over the table.” Morgan is a bit bolder in her display in 1862, recording,
“All devices signs, and flags of the confederacy shall be suppressed.” So says Picayune Butler. Good. I devote all my red, white, and blue silk to the manufacture of Confederate flags…. Henceforth, I wear one pinned to my bosom- the man who says take it off, will have to pull it off for himself; the man who dares attempt it- well! A pistol in my pocket will fill up the gap.
In addition to their patriotism, McDonald and Morgan’s writings place a noteworthy importance on home and family. Neither relish the idea of relinquishing her home and both cling to what little hope they have until forced to flee to preserve their lives and those of their families. Next, although staunchly Confederates, both learned that the soldiers of the Union Army, though their enemies, were humans too, with home and family of their own. Once, McDonald records of a Union soldier who was punished by his commanding officer for stealing milk from her cow, “He had such a human look, so dejected and wretched, that Yankee as he was, and milk the cow as he did, I could not help feeling self reproach at being the cause of his punishment.” Morgan also ascribed to this courteous sentiment, as she wrote, “I wont be rude to any one in my own house, Yankee or Southern, say what they will.” Later, she also wrote, “I am a Southerner, and not ashamed to say I admire our foes.”
The final element of uniformity between the diaries of McDonald and Morgan is that both have family members fighting in the war and both deal with the grief of death. McDonald suffered the loss of a son in battle, while her husband became so weak and ill from starvation and lack of proper medical care that eventually he passed away as well near the end of the war. In an entry on September 26, 1862, McDonald records the events surrounding the death of her infant daughter- an occasion that deeply effects the rest of her writings, as she continues to grieve this loss, mentioning it frequently.
Morgan also faced the loss of loved ones and was most deeply affected by the loss of both her father to an asthmatic illness and her brother “Hal” in an unfair duel, both in early 1861. Throughout her five books she frequently longs for their presence. She deeply respected her brother. Likewise, she acutely grieved the passing of her father and often would write as though talking to him. At the very end of the war, she also sadly loses two of her three brothers who fought in the Confederate army- Gibbes and George.
Although there are numerous similarities in the perspectives of McDonald and Morgan, there are also several differences. The most obvious contrast between them is their respective stations in life. While McDonald is a wife and mother of nine children and works throughout the war simply to clothe and feed her children, Morgan lives a life of relative ease in which, although losing one lovely home, she moves to another equally fine setting. She continues to have additional suitors with whom she can toy and flirt. Never does Morgan seem to question the source of her next meal, while McDonald often fears that her family will die of starvation. Morgan, always knowing a life of luxury, laments the loss of several dresses, while McDonald sadly writes,
My poor little boys were still barefooted, and it made me so sorry their little red feet as they went out in the frost of November mornings. Night after night I laid awake, trying to devise plans for getting them shoes, and paying for the weaving of the cloth.
Morgan experienced mere inconveniences as compared to McDonald's fight for survival.
Next, because of their respective geographic locations in the Confederacy, each woman saw quite different sides of the war. Morgan, once outside of Baton Rouge, saw very little fighting of any kind. Once, on August 6, 1862, while still in Westover, Louisiana, she records one encounter with the Confederate ironclad Arkansas which, old and virtually unusable, was burned by her own Southern sailors, who evacuated when they realized they were no match for their Federal opponent.
McDonald, however, living directly on the front lines in Westchester, Virginia, records that skirmishes and enemy occupations were a part of daily life. One day she even found a severed foot in her garden! On June 8, 1862, she records one of many times in which various Union soldiers tried to occupy her home and destroy her property. She was forced to apply to the commanding officer for protection for her large and impoverished brood, who would surely all die if turned out of their home. She often witnessed unspeakable acts of violence committed against her neighbors and friends. For example, when a certain Mr. Wilson allowed Confederate men to stay in his home, Union soldiers rewarded him so that he “was not quite dead when found; a sabre across the head had struck him down, and after he fell a pistol had been fired at his temple, so near that his eye was shot out, and his face filled with powder.”
A final difference between the two women is their views of slavery. The McDonald’s did not own a slave; although a relative lent them a slave women to help care for the large family. The woman became a part of the family as any domestic servant and, when her master threatened to send her further south as the Union advanced toward Winchester, McDonald begged for the slave to stay with her family. Later, in her “Recollections of 1861” which she appended to her wartime diary, McDonald discussed her true beliefs about slavery.
I never in my heart thought slavery was right, and having in my childhood seen some of the worst instances of its abuse, and in my youth, when surrounded by them and daily witnessing what I considered great injustice to them, I could not think how the men I most honored and admire, my husband among the rest, could constantly justify it, and not only that, but say that it was a blessing to the slave, his master, and the country; and (even now I say it with a feeling of shame), that the renewal of the slave trade would be a blessing and benefit to all, if only the consent of the world could be obtained to its being made lawful.
Though surrounded by anti-abolitionist sentiments, McDonald appears to have independently realized the evils of slavery.
In contrast, Morgan, although speaking of her own slaves and the issue in general on several occasions, does not seem to have as maturely considered the matter to develop a decided opinion one way or the other. She shows a certain naïveté in that she appears to be generally swayed by the cultural norm of the day in Baton Rouge. On April 19, 1863, en route to New Orleans, Morgan mentions a trusted family slave, Tiche, as she writes in a paragraph describing the lack of bedding one night,
To my share fell a double blanket, which, as Tiche had not cover, I unfolded, and as she used the foot of my bed for a pillow, gave her the other end of it, thus, (tell this not in Yankee land, for it will never be credited) actually sleeping under the same bed clothes with our black, shiny negro nurse!”
With Confederate patriotism as the common thread between them, Cornelia Peake McDonald and Sarah Morgan depict two very different accounts of everyday life in the south during the Civil War. Although different in their respective stations in life as well as their resources and wartime experiences, the two are unified in their staunch Southern sentiments that drive them to remain loyal to the Confederacy throughout the trials and hardships of war.
Bibliography
McDonald, Cornelia Peake. A Woman's Civil War: A Diary, with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862. Edited by Minrose C. Gwin. New York, New York: Gramercy Books, 2003. 3-269.
Morgan, Sarah. The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman. Edited by Charles East. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. 5-612.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Problem of God
Highly controversial, Holocaust literature raises many difficult questions about God’s role in evil and suffering in the world. In his world-renowned autobiography Night that describes his experiences surviving the Nazi concentration camps, Elie Wiesel presents three primary complaints that question the existence and character of the traditional God of the Jewish Scriptures: God’s unfaithfulness, injustice, and silence. Before discussing his criticisms, however, a brief background in his writings and beliefs is necessary.
The book begins with Elie Wiesel recalling the early days of his training in the Hebrew Talmud as well as that in the Kaballah under the tutelage of a Hasidic Jew named Moshe the Beadle. Born in Sighet, Transylvania, the son of well-respected, civic-minded Jews, one day Wiesel and his family were deported from their home and sent to a ghetto with other Jews. Despite the substandard living conditions imposed upon them, the Jews continued life as normal, with little protest. After several deportations to smaller ghettos, the Jews of Wiesel’s community were finally herded into overloaded cattle cars and sent to the concentration camps. At the first stop, after being separated from mother and sisters, who were promptly burned in the crematorium, Wiesel and his father learned to combine efforts as a means of survival. Possessing the courage to live despite the unprecedented suffering that surrounded them, Wiesel and his father labored gruelingly to prove themselves useful in order to escape the dreaded selection by the Nazi doctors for the crematorium. Wiesel witnessed many appalling scenes-- such as innocent children burning alive in a pit, and a young boy horrifically living for half an hour while hanging by his neck from a rope-- that colored his view of God for the remainder of his life. His father died. But Wiesel, weak from dysentery, starvation and abuse, preternaturally survived to be released from Auschwitz by the Allied Forces, living to tell the story of the untold millions who died at the hands of Nazi brutality. Through these events, Wiesel’s knowledge of the traditional God of the Hebrews was called into question. God is faithful and loving towards His people, keeping His promises throughout the ages, yet exacting strict justice and revenge on the enemies of His people--the Jews. He revealed His nature through His word. Among numerous other denotations, Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that, “[God] is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.” He also promises to keep His covenant with His people if they keep His commands (Deuteronomy 7:9). Throughout the Psalms, God’s faithfulness and enduring love are affirmed.
Wiesel first disputes the faithfulness of God. Wiesel was well aware of the traditional view of the God of Israel as faithful, just, merciful, and loving; however, as he and his family were subjected to the dehumanization of the Nazi concentration camps, not surprisingly, Wiesel doubted whether his God was truly faithful. Despite the pleas of the innocent victims surrounding him, God appeared to ignore their cries for mercy (Wiesel 20). Regardless, the Jewish prisoners continued to petition God, saying, “God is testing us. He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming our base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if He punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more” (45). When God still did not show Himself faithful by liberating His people, they persisted in their praises, as they said, “We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we are capable of singing His praises” (69). Such a response was common among Jews in the Nazi death camps, as they believed that, by silently facing death without fear, they were accepting the sentence God had justly and lovingly prepared for them, ardently hoping for redemption and rewards in heaven for their obedience to His will (Cohn-Sherbok 125). Although initially Wiesel joined in this traditional worship, he soon began to question why he should bless God in light of all the terrible things He had allowed (67). “What are you, my God?” Wiesel angrily inquired of his Creator, “How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (66). Wiesel inculpated God as weaker than man because, despite incredible suffering, His people still praised Him, while God destroyed them simply for causing Him displeasure. Wiesel so discredited the faithfulness of God as to pen the horrific words: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people” (Wiesel 81).
While this statement might seem rash and insensible, in light of the acts of inhumanity Wiesel witnessed coupled with the destruction of the faith of even the most faithful Jews, his statement is justifiable. Wiesel reminisces an anecdote of how an unfortunate Polish rabbi lost his faith. After daily examining his personal knowledge of God and the Talmud, he finally gave up, telling Wiesel,
It’s over. God is no longer with us…I know. No one has the right to say things like that…Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways. But what can someone like myself do? I’m neither a sage nor just a man. I am not a saint. I’m a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes and I see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy? (Wiesel 76-77).
Shortly thereafter, Akiba Drumer, one of the most zealot Jews who had come with Wiesel from Sighet to the concentration camps, gave up his faith and died. Wiesel begins to surmise that life and faith are interconnected as he writes,
If only he could have kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test, he would not have been swept away by the selection. But as soon as he felt the first chinks in his faith, he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death (77).
What kind of God allows even His most ardent followers to lose their faith and die atrocious deaths? How can a faithful God even allow those faithful to Him to experience suffering at the hands of arguably the world’s worst evil?
As he considers God’s faithfulness, Wiesel takes two stances: 1) that God is both indifferent to the plight of His people and in complete contradiction to the compassionate and gracious God of the Old Testament, and 2) a Job-like perspective that indignantly censures God and sees a void in His silence (Cohn-Sherbok 101-102). For Wiesel, God cannot be placed in both of these categories—He must be either a ruthless despot or a benevolent patriarch (102-103). As Robert McAfee Brown notes, “Every religion that affirms a God either omnipotent or omniscient, or both, is perilously close to proclaiming a God who is ultimately executioner… If God is truly in control, all that happens, not only for good but also for ill, is finally traceable back to God” (156). If the events of the Holocaust are traceable back to God, it is no wonder that Wiesel had trouble considering God faithful. Were Wiesel a Christian, perhaps he would agree that in “[a] world like the present one, with a Messiah…[it appears] that the redemption efforts failed, and that rather than God conquering evil, evil appears to have conquered God” (186). The faithful God of the Old Testament is impugned in the very occurrence of the Holocaust, calling into question the efficacy of His promises. However, despite Wiesel’s apparent denial of God, he cannot altogether dismiss the existence of God, and he even intones quiet prayers to the God whom he has forsaken (38,91). Viewing the entirety of the world, the existence of God is undeniable; nevertheless, “The dilemma is created by belief, not disbelief. It would be hard to live in a world without God…but it is even harder to live in the world with God” (142). Furthermore, “man can live with a cruel God, who creates men to murder them, who chooses a people to have them slain on a sacrificial altar, but he cannot live in a world without God. Better to search for the hidden God, the eclipsed God, than to be without Him” (Greenberg 126-127). Wiesel knows that God exists, but it is his childhood knowledge of this God that creates such despair for him and for other Jews as they realize they have been forsaken by the One who claims to be faithful.
Secondly, Wiesel challenges the justice of God, virtually putting Him on trial, indicting Him for His injustice towards humanity. “Some men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sin of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come,” he writes. “As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). In the scene vaguely mentioned above, Wiesel witnesses the brutally barbaric hanging of an innocent, angelic, and beloved child who is too lightweight, due to his age and the emaciating effect of hunger, to die instantly. In a graphic yet moving scene, the prisoners of the camp are required to look the dying child in the eye to learn their lesson in the consequences of disobedience while they march to a dinner of soup that tastes like corpses (Wiesel 63-65). Many men cry out in anguish at this scene, “Where is merciful God, where is He?... For God’s sake, where is God?” (64-65). Agonizingly, Wiesel inwardly responds to these inquiries, “Where He is? There is where- hanging from this gallows…” (65). For the onlookers in the camp, the cruel death of this innocent young boy symbolized the death of the just God whom they believed should be preventing such injustices from occurring.
While the idea of the death of God presents a dire view of deity which some view as atheistic, the nature of the circumstances only allows for such a conclusion. However, “this death of God does not appear to be an acceptance of atheism on Wiesel’s part….[he] cannot get a living God out of the picture…the part of God that is dying might be designated as that which can be loved…in witnessing the death of a child, Wiesel suggests that to be with God is to be with a presence that leaves us alone” (Greenberg 61-62). Furthering Wiesel’s suit against God, to be left alone by God is in terrible contradiction to the God of the Bible who will “never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). This scene may also present a hopeless and desperate parody of the crucifixion, with “God on the gallows, God subjected to human demonry, God at the mercy of evil, God embodying death and impotence rather than life and death, God whose ‘real presence’ is such that soup transubstantiated into corpses” (Brown 56). By asking where God is and also praying to this absent God to not betray his father, Wiesel contradicts the moral order that had been accepted prior to the Holocaust while also insisting upon its assertion upon this new world of amoral atrocities. This calls for realignment in his relationship with God “in light of the devastating new evidence about the nature of the God he formerly worshipped and the universe created by that God in which there are burning pits of infants…the newly revealed God of silence” (34).
To further the picture of the death of God, Wiesel describes the Nazi selection process, which all prisoners in the death camps underwent at least once. Stripped naked to expose every inch of their wretched, emaciated, and malnourished bodies, men and women alike were quickly herded before SS doctors, who made a list of colorless, lackluster, useless individuals that would later be taken to the gas chambers prior to cremation (71). Wiesel paints a heinous picture of God when, after describing the selection process, he states, “This must be how one stands for the Last Judgment” (Ibid). Although he acknowledges the miraculous manner in which his father twice escaped selection by proving himself useful, Wiesel still indicts a God who could allow innocent people to be entitled to life or death on the basis of their utility (76). According to Dan Cohn-Sherbok, “If God were ultimately responsible for the horrors of the death camps, it seems impossible to reconcile such mass murder with the traditional concept of God’s nature. Surely if God is all-good, he would have wished to rescue innocent Jewish victims from the hands of the Nazis; if he is omnipotent, He would have the power to do so” (25). Arguably, there is evil in the world only because God allowed human beings to have free will. Logically, therefore, He should be able to fabricate a world that contains both freedom of choice and absence of suffering, being an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good God (Cohn-Sherbok 65). Although the events of the Holocaust seem to suggest that God does not fit into the aforementioned categories, Michael R. Steele quotes Wiesel as saying that, “man is not created in order to suffer. If this were so, then God could not be holy. God does not want man to suffer; man suffers against God. [Jews] believe that suffering is not the answer; suffering is only the question” (146). Wiesel struggles to come to terms with the existence of both God, like the one whom he studied in his youth, and Auschwitz, as one seems to negate the possibility for the other, leaving for the human faith and intellect a harrowing struggle with which to grapple (Brown 54). Ultimately, there seems to be a power struggle as the Nazi regime challenges the omnipotence of God, and Wiesel desires to believe in the holiness of God in the face of such evil.
As the celebrations and ceremonies of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, (in which Wiesel refused to participate) began, shortly after the tragic hanging scene and just before the selection process, so commenced Elie Wiesel’s indictment of God. “I was the accuser, God the accused,” he desolately writes.
My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in the world without God, without man…I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger (68).
Brown justifies this indictment of God, stating that in quarreling with God, Wiesel pays Him the “supreme compliment” by acknowledging that He is worthy of anger rather than insouciance (148). Eliezer Berkovits extends Wiesel’s accusations, proclaiming them to be proof of his faith, as “faith, because it is trust in God, demands justice of God. It cannot countenance that God be involved in injustice and cruelty. And yet, for faith God is involved in everything under the sun. What faith is searching for is, if not understanding fully, at least to gain a hint of the nature of God’s involvement” (68). Additionally, if God’s trials of His people are seen as a declaration of His love for them, then their indictment of Him might also serve to express their love for Him, not as an arrogant child, but as one disappointed in the morality of their parent and desirous of an explanation (van Inwagen 126).
Thirdly, Wiesel questions the silence, and therefore seeming absence of God, in the face of the Holocaust. On almost every page of Night, God’s silence is visible. In every unanswered prayer and every apparently ignored complaint against Him, God responds with silence. Finally, Wiesel admits that, “I no longer accepted God’s silence” (69). In the face of the evil he experienced, it is a wonder that, rather than simply rejecting God’s silence, he did not reject God Himself altogether. God’s silence suggests “the collapse of language” in the face of such evil (Greenberg 4-5). When Wiesel and others try to speak about the brutality of the Holocaust, “part of what we hear is the silence—the silence of God in Auschwitz, the silence of the world as it turned deaf ears on atrocity, the silence of the victims as they recognized their awful fate. But the silence does not issue from a void; it surges around the words that conceal it. One hears it because the sounds of language: if we did not speak about the Holocaust, we would not be able to hear its silences” (Greenberg 39). In other words, in studying the silence of God in the Holocaust, one learns much about who God is and how He manifests Himself to His people. A difficult struggle for reason, “God’s presence is most strongly felt through His absence” (57). His silence often is equated with absence, causing great agony for believers who wonder why God is not answering their prayers, their cries for help.
In some ways, Wiesel may be compared with Job of the Bible who endured suffering as a trial of His faith in God. The primary difference between Job and Wiesel, however, is that Job receives an answer of sorts while Wiesel only receives silence. He prays “for God and against God, as well as to Him, wrestling with His silence—a continuing source of anguish” (Greenberg 47). According to Thomas A. Indinopulos, “the sufferer raises his eyes toward Heaven, where God always sits in silence. What [Wiesel] perceive[s] in the pain and humiliation that human beings endure on earth is not the non-existence of God, but the ineffectiveness of divine will…What [he] dramatize[s]…is not the death of God, but the death of God’s creation” (52). Although he receives silence, Wiesel cannot accept the conclusion that there are no supernatural deities, and so he “instead maintains that God exists, and his protest is in essence a longing for the God of the Bible” (Cohn-Sherbok 102)
In conclusion, in Night, Wiesel arraigns God on charges of unfaithfulness, injustice, and silence in response to the evil of the Nazi regime. However, although he indicts God in the face of atrocious evil, he still concludes that there is a God and that He is worthy of worship. Wiesel seems to acknowledge the inherent problem of the fallen human race, and acknowledges that part of separation from God is “being the playthings of chance. It means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly, and it means something worse than that: it means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly for no reason at all” (van Inwagen 72). Although such an occurrence decries God’s omnipotence, perhaps He could not precipitate greater good without permitting the evil seen in the Holocaust (62). Perhaps the allure for the extermination of evil pales in comparison to whatever basis God may have for sanctioning the existence of evil in the world (60-61). Although Wiesel may desire a theodicy, or an explanation for men of God’s ways, part of the answer is the unknown. God’s ways cannot be understood by the finite human intellect, which is so limited in not only its scope of knowledge but in its perspective of the world. Wiesel, and other readers and writers of Holocaust literature, must be content to simply accept the acts of God on a faith-basis, without knowing what purpose evil may serve or how it can support the goodness of God.
Works Cited
Berkovits, Eliezer. Faith after the Holocaust. New York: Ktav House, INC, 1973. Print.
The Bible. New International Version ed. Grand Rapids. BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 100 versions and 50 languages. Nick Hengeveld, 1993. Web. 28 Nov. 2009.
Brown, Robert M. Elie Wiesel: Messenger to all Humanity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1983. Print.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Holocaust Theology. London: Lamp, 1989. Print.
Ininopulos, Thomas A. "The Mystery of Suffering in the Art of Dostoevsky, Camus, Wiesel, and Grunewald." Journal of American Academy of Religtion 43.1 (1975): 51-61. JStor. Web. 30 Oct. 2009.
Rosenfeld, Alvin, and Irving Greenberg, eds. Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. London: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.
Steele, Michael R. Christianity, Tragedy, and Holocaust Literature. London: Greenwood, 1995. Print.
Van Inwagen, Peter. Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Company, 2004. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Print.
The book begins with Elie Wiesel recalling the early days of his training in the Hebrew Talmud as well as that in the Kaballah under the tutelage of a Hasidic Jew named Moshe the Beadle. Born in Sighet, Transylvania, the son of well-respected, civic-minded Jews, one day Wiesel and his family were deported from their home and sent to a ghetto with other Jews. Despite the substandard living conditions imposed upon them, the Jews continued life as normal, with little protest. After several deportations to smaller ghettos, the Jews of Wiesel’s community were finally herded into overloaded cattle cars and sent to the concentration camps. At the first stop, after being separated from mother and sisters, who were promptly burned in the crematorium, Wiesel and his father learned to combine efforts as a means of survival. Possessing the courage to live despite the unprecedented suffering that surrounded them, Wiesel and his father labored gruelingly to prove themselves useful in order to escape the dreaded selection by the Nazi doctors for the crematorium. Wiesel witnessed many appalling scenes-- such as innocent children burning alive in a pit, and a young boy horrifically living for half an hour while hanging by his neck from a rope-- that colored his view of God for the remainder of his life. His father died. But Wiesel, weak from dysentery, starvation and abuse, preternaturally survived to be released from Auschwitz by the Allied Forces, living to tell the story of the untold millions who died at the hands of Nazi brutality. Through these events, Wiesel’s knowledge of the traditional God of the Hebrews was called into question. God is faithful and loving towards His people, keeping His promises throughout the ages, yet exacting strict justice and revenge on the enemies of His people--the Jews. He revealed His nature through His word. Among numerous other denotations, Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that, “[God] is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.” He also promises to keep His covenant with His people if they keep His commands (Deuteronomy 7:9). Throughout the Psalms, God’s faithfulness and enduring love are affirmed.
Wiesel first disputes the faithfulness of God. Wiesel was well aware of the traditional view of the God of Israel as faithful, just, merciful, and loving; however, as he and his family were subjected to the dehumanization of the Nazi concentration camps, not surprisingly, Wiesel doubted whether his God was truly faithful. Despite the pleas of the innocent victims surrounding him, God appeared to ignore their cries for mercy (Wiesel 20). Regardless, the Jewish prisoners continued to petition God, saying, “God is testing us. He wants to see whether we are capable of overcoming our base instincts, of killing the Satan within ourselves. We have no right to despair. And if He punishes us mercilessly, it is a sign that He loves us that much more” (45). When God still did not show Himself faithful by liberating His people, they persisted in their praises, as they said, “We needed to show God that even here, locked in hell, we are capable of singing His praises” (69). Such a response was common among Jews in the Nazi death camps, as they believed that, by silently facing death without fear, they were accepting the sentence God had justly and lovingly prepared for them, ardently hoping for redemption and rewards in heaven for their obedience to His will (Cohn-Sherbok 125). Although initially Wiesel joined in this traditional worship, he soon began to question why he should bless God in light of all the terrible things He had allowed (67). “What are you, my God?” Wiesel angrily inquired of his Creator, “How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” (66). Wiesel inculpated God as weaker than man because, despite incredible suffering, His people still praised Him, while God destroyed them simply for causing Him displeasure. Wiesel so discredited the faithfulness of God as to pen the horrific words: “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people” (Wiesel 81).
While this statement might seem rash and insensible, in light of the acts of inhumanity Wiesel witnessed coupled with the destruction of the faith of even the most faithful Jews, his statement is justifiable. Wiesel reminisces an anecdote of how an unfortunate Polish rabbi lost his faith. After daily examining his personal knowledge of God and the Talmud, he finally gave up, telling Wiesel,
It’s over. God is no longer with us…I know. No one has the right to say things like that…Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways. But what can someone like myself do? I’m neither a sage nor just a man. I am not a saint. I’m a simple creature of flesh and bone. I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes and I see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy? (Wiesel 76-77).
Shortly thereafter, Akiba Drumer, one of the most zealot Jews who had come with Wiesel from Sighet to the concentration camps, gave up his faith and died. Wiesel begins to surmise that life and faith are interconnected as he writes,
If only he could have kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test, he would not have been swept away by the selection. But as soon as he felt the first chinks in his faith, he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death (77).
What kind of God allows even His most ardent followers to lose their faith and die atrocious deaths? How can a faithful God even allow those faithful to Him to experience suffering at the hands of arguably the world’s worst evil?
As he considers God’s faithfulness, Wiesel takes two stances: 1) that God is both indifferent to the plight of His people and in complete contradiction to the compassionate and gracious God of the Old Testament, and 2) a Job-like perspective that indignantly censures God and sees a void in His silence (Cohn-Sherbok 101-102). For Wiesel, God cannot be placed in both of these categories—He must be either a ruthless despot or a benevolent patriarch (102-103). As Robert McAfee Brown notes, “Every religion that affirms a God either omnipotent or omniscient, or both, is perilously close to proclaiming a God who is ultimately executioner… If God is truly in control, all that happens, not only for good but also for ill, is finally traceable back to God” (156). If the events of the Holocaust are traceable back to God, it is no wonder that Wiesel had trouble considering God faithful. Were Wiesel a Christian, perhaps he would agree that in “[a] world like the present one, with a Messiah…[it appears] that the redemption efforts failed, and that rather than God conquering evil, evil appears to have conquered God” (186). The faithful God of the Old Testament is impugned in the very occurrence of the Holocaust, calling into question the efficacy of His promises. However, despite Wiesel’s apparent denial of God, he cannot altogether dismiss the existence of God, and he even intones quiet prayers to the God whom he has forsaken (38,91). Viewing the entirety of the world, the existence of God is undeniable; nevertheless, “The dilemma is created by belief, not disbelief. It would be hard to live in a world without God…but it is even harder to live in the world with God” (142). Furthermore, “man can live with a cruel God, who creates men to murder them, who chooses a people to have them slain on a sacrificial altar, but he cannot live in a world without God. Better to search for the hidden God, the eclipsed God, than to be without Him” (Greenberg 126-127). Wiesel knows that God exists, but it is his childhood knowledge of this God that creates such despair for him and for other Jews as they realize they have been forsaken by the One who claims to be faithful.
Secondly, Wiesel challenges the justice of God, virtually putting Him on trial, indicting Him for His injustice towards humanity. “Some men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sin of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come,” he writes. “As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (45). In the scene vaguely mentioned above, Wiesel witnesses the brutally barbaric hanging of an innocent, angelic, and beloved child who is too lightweight, due to his age and the emaciating effect of hunger, to die instantly. In a graphic yet moving scene, the prisoners of the camp are required to look the dying child in the eye to learn their lesson in the consequences of disobedience while they march to a dinner of soup that tastes like corpses (Wiesel 63-65). Many men cry out in anguish at this scene, “Where is merciful God, where is He?... For God’s sake, where is God?” (64-65). Agonizingly, Wiesel inwardly responds to these inquiries, “Where He is? There is where- hanging from this gallows…” (65). For the onlookers in the camp, the cruel death of this innocent young boy symbolized the death of the just God whom they believed should be preventing such injustices from occurring.
While the idea of the death of God presents a dire view of deity which some view as atheistic, the nature of the circumstances only allows for such a conclusion. However, “this death of God does not appear to be an acceptance of atheism on Wiesel’s part….[he] cannot get a living God out of the picture…the part of God that is dying might be designated as that which can be loved…in witnessing the death of a child, Wiesel suggests that to be with God is to be with a presence that leaves us alone” (Greenberg 61-62). Furthering Wiesel’s suit against God, to be left alone by God is in terrible contradiction to the God of the Bible who will “never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). This scene may also present a hopeless and desperate parody of the crucifixion, with “God on the gallows, God subjected to human demonry, God at the mercy of evil, God embodying death and impotence rather than life and death, God whose ‘real presence’ is such that soup transubstantiated into corpses” (Brown 56). By asking where God is and also praying to this absent God to not betray his father, Wiesel contradicts the moral order that had been accepted prior to the Holocaust while also insisting upon its assertion upon this new world of amoral atrocities. This calls for realignment in his relationship with God “in light of the devastating new evidence about the nature of the God he formerly worshipped and the universe created by that God in which there are burning pits of infants…the newly revealed God of silence” (34).
To further the picture of the death of God, Wiesel describes the Nazi selection process, which all prisoners in the death camps underwent at least once. Stripped naked to expose every inch of their wretched, emaciated, and malnourished bodies, men and women alike were quickly herded before SS doctors, who made a list of colorless, lackluster, useless individuals that would later be taken to the gas chambers prior to cremation (71). Wiesel paints a heinous picture of God when, after describing the selection process, he states, “This must be how one stands for the Last Judgment” (Ibid). Although he acknowledges the miraculous manner in which his father twice escaped selection by proving himself useful, Wiesel still indicts a God who could allow innocent people to be entitled to life or death on the basis of their utility (76). According to Dan Cohn-Sherbok, “If God were ultimately responsible for the horrors of the death camps, it seems impossible to reconcile such mass murder with the traditional concept of God’s nature. Surely if God is all-good, he would have wished to rescue innocent Jewish victims from the hands of the Nazis; if he is omnipotent, He would have the power to do so” (25). Arguably, there is evil in the world only because God allowed human beings to have free will. Logically, therefore, He should be able to fabricate a world that contains both freedom of choice and absence of suffering, being an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good God (Cohn-Sherbok 65). Although the events of the Holocaust seem to suggest that God does not fit into the aforementioned categories, Michael R. Steele quotes Wiesel as saying that, “man is not created in order to suffer. If this were so, then God could not be holy. God does not want man to suffer; man suffers against God. [Jews] believe that suffering is not the answer; suffering is only the question” (146). Wiesel struggles to come to terms with the existence of both God, like the one whom he studied in his youth, and Auschwitz, as one seems to negate the possibility for the other, leaving for the human faith and intellect a harrowing struggle with which to grapple (Brown 54). Ultimately, there seems to be a power struggle as the Nazi regime challenges the omnipotence of God, and Wiesel desires to believe in the holiness of God in the face of such evil.
As the celebrations and ceremonies of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, (in which Wiesel refused to participate) began, shortly after the tragic hanging scene and just before the selection process, so commenced Elie Wiesel’s indictment of God. “I was the accuser, God the accused,” he desolately writes.
My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in the world without God, without man…I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger (68).
Brown justifies this indictment of God, stating that in quarreling with God, Wiesel pays Him the “supreme compliment” by acknowledging that He is worthy of anger rather than insouciance (148). Eliezer Berkovits extends Wiesel’s accusations, proclaiming them to be proof of his faith, as “faith, because it is trust in God, demands justice of God. It cannot countenance that God be involved in injustice and cruelty. And yet, for faith God is involved in everything under the sun. What faith is searching for is, if not understanding fully, at least to gain a hint of the nature of God’s involvement” (68). Additionally, if God’s trials of His people are seen as a declaration of His love for them, then their indictment of Him might also serve to express their love for Him, not as an arrogant child, but as one disappointed in the morality of their parent and desirous of an explanation (van Inwagen 126).
Thirdly, Wiesel questions the silence, and therefore seeming absence of God, in the face of the Holocaust. On almost every page of Night, God’s silence is visible. In every unanswered prayer and every apparently ignored complaint against Him, God responds with silence. Finally, Wiesel admits that, “I no longer accepted God’s silence” (69). In the face of the evil he experienced, it is a wonder that, rather than simply rejecting God’s silence, he did not reject God Himself altogether. God’s silence suggests “the collapse of language” in the face of such evil (Greenberg 4-5). When Wiesel and others try to speak about the brutality of the Holocaust, “part of what we hear is the silence—the silence of God in Auschwitz, the silence of the world as it turned deaf ears on atrocity, the silence of the victims as they recognized their awful fate. But the silence does not issue from a void; it surges around the words that conceal it. One hears it because the sounds of language: if we did not speak about the Holocaust, we would not be able to hear its silences” (Greenberg 39). In other words, in studying the silence of God in the Holocaust, one learns much about who God is and how He manifests Himself to His people. A difficult struggle for reason, “God’s presence is most strongly felt through His absence” (57). His silence often is equated with absence, causing great agony for believers who wonder why God is not answering their prayers, their cries for help.
In some ways, Wiesel may be compared with Job of the Bible who endured suffering as a trial of His faith in God. The primary difference between Job and Wiesel, however, is that Job receives an answer of sorts while Wiesel only receives silence. He prays “for God and against God, as well as to Him, wrestling with His silence—a continuing source of anguish” (Greenberg 47). According to Thomas A. Indinopulos, “the sufferer raises his eyes toward Heaven, where God always sits in silence. What [Wiesel] perceive[s] in the pain and humiliation that human beings endure on earth is not the non-existence of God, but the ineffectiveness of divine will…What [he] dramatize[s]…is not the death of God, but the death of God’s creation” (52). Although he receives silence, Wiesel cannot accept the conclusion that there are no supernatural deities, and so he “instead maintains that God exists, and his protest is in essence a longing for the God of the Bible” (Cohn-Sherbok 102)
In conclusion, in Night, Wiesel arraigns God on charges of unfaithfulness, injustice, and silence in response to the evil of the Nazi regime. However, although he indicts God in the face of atrocious evil, he still concludes that there is a God and that He is worthy of worship. Wiesel seems to acknowledge the inherent problem of the fallen human race, and acknowledges that part of separation from God is “being the playthings of chance. It means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly, and it means something worse than that: it means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly for no reason at all” (van Inwagen 72). Although such an occurrence decries God’s omnipotence, perhaps He could not precipitate greater good without permitting the evil seen in the Holocaust (62). Perhaps the allure for the extermination of evil pales in comparison to whatever basis God may have for sanctioning the existence of evil in the world (60-61). Although Wiesel may desire a theodicy, or an explanation for men of God’s ways, part of the answer is the unknown. God’s ways cannot be understood by the finite human intellect, which is so limited in not only its scope of knowledge but in its perspective of the world. Wiesel, and other readers and writers of Holocaust literature, must be content to simply accept the acts of God on a faith-basis, without knowing what purpose evil may serve or how it can support the goodness of God.
Works Cited
Berkovits, Eliezer. Faith after the Holocaust. New York: Ktav House, INC, 1973. Print.
The Bible. New International Version ed. Grand Rapids. BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 100 versions and 50 languages. Nick Hengeveld, 1993. Web. 28 Nov. 2009.
Brown, Robert M. Elie Wiesel: Messenger to all Humanity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1983. Print.
Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Holocaust Theology. London: Lamp, 1989. Print.
Ininopulos, Thomas A. "The Mystery of Suffering in the Art of Dostoevsky, Camus, Wiesel, and Grunewald." Journal of American Academy of Religtion 43.1 (1975): 51-61. JStor. Web. 30 Oct. 2009.
Rosenfeld, Alvin, and Irving Greenberg, eds. Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. London: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.
Steele, Michael R. Christianity, Tragedy, and Holocaust Literature. London: Greenwood, 1995. Print.
Van Inwagen, Peter. Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Company, 2004. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Trans. Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Print.
Doubt
In today’s Christian culture, doubt is often repressed because it is considered to be denying your faith rather than working it out for a better understanding of Christian beliefs. In their writings, Elie Wiesel, Thomas Hardy, and Dorothy Sayers, address this issue of doubt; but perhaps Alfred Lord Tennyson best sums up the proper view of doubt with his words, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds” (340).
In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night,” he relays how doubting led to his loss of faith in God. Yet, inexplicably, he holds a subconscious belief in God, as he later prays “a prayer to the God in Whom [he] no longer believed” (91). Wiesel also describes the loss of faith on the part of a couple of rabbis when their doubts finally overwhelm them. One man, Akiba Drumer, shown throughout the first part of the book to be one of the more faithful Jews, finally has “no more strength, no more faith” and is lost to the Nazi selection process (76). Wiesel speculates that “if only he could have kept his faith in God, if he could have considered this suffering a divine test” he would not have died. By losing his faith “he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death” (77). Ironically, Wiesel speaks about his own loss of faith, yet he never dies, causing one to wonder at his words about Drumer. Perhaps Wiesel’s doubts kept his faith alive while Drumer’s ardent grasp on a doubt-free faith in God ultimately caused his downfall when he realized he could no longer believe without exploring the why questions about God. An unnamed rabbi also lost his faith around the same time as Drumer. “He recited entire pages from the Talmud,” Wiesel records, “arguing with himself, asking and answering endless questions” (76). Sadly, one day, he gave up that faith as he told Wiesel “It’s over. God is no longer with us…Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways…I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes to see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?” (76-77). As he recited Scriptures, daily forcing himself to believe without question in the God of his ancestors, the poor rabbi finally reached the point in which he no longer had the capacity to believe, doubting too late to work through his faith by questioning it thoroughly. Unwittingly, Wiesel presents doubt as a key to survival in a world of evil and suffering. Furthermore, he proposes an idea that faith can become dormant only to later be revived. When his mind could no longer fathom the works of God, he quit trying to understand His ways, instead allowing his faith to reach a comatose state of denial until he could properly reach conclusion about the works of God in the lives of men.
Next, Hardy presents doubt through several of his characters in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Angel Clare, while still believing that one should live out the principles of Christianity, struggles with its doctrines, doubting many of the integral building blocks of his parents’ and brother’s faith. Unfortunately, in his case, reason undermines faith, portraying doubt in a negative light. In Clare’s day, unbelief had fast become socially acceptable among Christians, causing him to continue in his doubt rather than resolving his questions and moving into a deeper faith in God. On the other hand, Alec D’Urbervilles’ questioning led to his conversion to faith in God (301-309). Undoubtedly Tess doubted God, especially when the dashing son of a minister, Angel Clare, forsook her shortly after their marriage when he discovered that she had been raped in former years. Eventually, her doubts lead her to such a loss of faith that she returns to her former abuser Alec D’Urbervilles and later becomes so desperate that she takes his life so that she can escape him.
Dorothy Sayers, in her work “The Mind of the Maker,” addresses the need of nominal Christians to think through their beliefs. Although many feel a need to try to resolve seeming biblical “contradictions,” there is a clear difference between knowing God and exhausting all knowledge of God. Likewise, doubting can lead “man [to make] God in his own image” instead of acknowledging that he is made in His image. She uses the example that just as one cannot correlate a dog’s nature or behavior to that of a human, one cannot compare God’s actions to those of human beings on the same basis that the two are completely separate and utterly different entities. Sayers, in her writings, presents the idea that doctrine led to faith while doubt may improperly lead to unequal and inappropriate comparisons of the morality and actions of God to that of human beings.
Tennyson, on the other hand, depicts doubt as a healthy and necessary aspect of faith. In the prologue of “In Memoriam”, he portrays knowledge and faith as inseparable, introducing the concept of doubt as a means of obtaining knowledge by working out faith (285). Tennyson’s work follows the form of a typical elegy, causing doubt and inquisition to be an acceptable form of dealing with grief. He seems to juxtapose doubt and unbelief, defining the former as questioning while the latter as outright rejection of beliefs. In section XCVI of “In Memoriam” he characterizes “honest doubt” as an attempt to understand or work out faith through questioning rather than just solely for the sake of sowing seeds of unbelief (341). By doubting and wrestling with one’s beliefs, one begins to internalize the values of the creeds. Although Tennyson seems to suggest that doubt is essential to faith, he does not deny the importance of creeds. Tennyson, rather, considers questioning necessary in order for believers to thoroughly understand the reasons behind these foundational values. Wisely, Tennyson concludes that at some point doubt can lead to unanswerable questions, in which case, faith must overarch these questions rather than letting unbelief encroach, as he penned the words, “I cannot understand: I love” (341). Eventually, a decision to simply accept God must occur or else unbelief will ensue.
In conclusion, when honestly pursue, doubt can be an important aspect of the Christian faith. However, care must be taken not to doubt merely for the sake of doubting, nor to let unbelief infiltrate doubt to the point of loss of faith. Likewise, the importance of Christian doctrine and creeds should not be dismissed, but rather, sincere questioning should lead to confirm their answers.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard Reader, An. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 279-414. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Bantam Classic ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy L. "Dorothy L. Sayers:The Mind of the Maker." World Invisible, The Real Invisible World behind the material world. Web. 25 Oct. 2009..
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Poetical Works Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library). Boston: NTC/Contemporary Company, 1998. 285-365. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night,” he relays how doubting led to his loss of faith in God. Yet, inexplicably, he holds a subconscious belief in God, as he later prays “a prayer to the God in Whom [he] no longer believed” (91). Wiesel also describes the loss of faith on the part of a couple of rabbis when their doubts finally overwhelm them. One man, Akiba Drumer, shown throughout the first part of the book to be one of the more faithful Jews, finally has “no more strength, no more faith” and is lost to the Nazi selection process (76). Wiesel speculates that “if only he could have kept his faith in God, if he could have considered this suffering a divine test” he would not have died. By losing his faith “he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death” (77). Ironically, Wiesel speaks about his own loss of faith, yet he never dies, causing one to wonder at his words about Drumer. Perhaps Wiesel’s doubts kept his faith alive while Drumer’s ardent grasp on a doubt-free faith in God ultimately caused his downfall when he realized he could no longer believe without exploring the why questions about God. An unnamed rabbi also lost his faith around the same time as Drumer. “He recited entire pages from the Talmud,” Wiesel records, “arguing with himself, asking and answering endless questions” (76). Sadly, one day, he gave up that faith as he told Wiesel “It’s over. God is no longer with us…Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways…I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes to see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?” (76-77). As he recited Scriptures, daily forcing himself to believe without question in the God of his ancestors, the poor rabbi finally reached the point in which he no longer had the capacity to believe, doubting too late to work through his faith by questioning it thoroughly. Unwittingly, Wiesel presents doubt as a key to survival in a world of evil and suffering. Furthermore, he proposes an idea that faith can become dormant only to later be revived. When his mind could no longer fathom the works of God, he quit trying to understand His ways, instead allowing his faith to reach a comatose state of denial until he could properly reach conclusion about the works of God in the lives of men.
Next, Hardy presents doubt through several of his characters in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Angel Clare, while still believing that one should live out the principles of Christianity, struggles with its doctrines, doubting many of the integral building blocks of his parents’ and brother’s faith. Unfortunately, in his case, reason undermines faith, portraying doubt in a negative light. In Clare’s day, unbelief had fast become socially acceptable among Christians, causing him to continue in his doubt rather than resolving his questions and moving into a deeper faith in God. On the other hand, Alec D’Urbervilles’ questioning led to his conversion to faith in God (301-309). Undoubtedly Tess doubted God, especially when the dashing son of a minister, Angel Clare, forsook her shortly after their marriage when he discovered that she had been raped in former years. Eventually, her doubts lead her to such a loss of faith that she returns to her former abuser Alec D’Urbervilles and later becomes so desperate that she takes his life so that she can escape him.
Dorothy Sayers, in her work “The Mind of the Maker,” addresses the need of nominal Christians to think through their beliefs. Although many feel a need to try to resolve seeming biblical “contradictions,” there is a clear difference between knowing God and exhausting all knowledge of God. Likewise, doubting can lead “man [to make] God in his own image” instead of acknowledging that he is made in His image. She uses the example that just as one cannot correlate a dog’s nature or behavior to that of a human, one cannot compare God’s actions to those of human beings on the same basis that the two are completely separate and utterly different entities. Sayers, in her writings, presents the idea that doctrine led to faith while doubt may improperly lead to unequal and inappropriate comparisons of the morality and actions of God to that of human beings.
Tennyson, on the other hand, depicts doubt as a healthy and necessary aspect of faith. In the prologue of “In Memoriam”, he portrays knowledge and faith as inseparable, introducing the concept of doubt as a means of obtaining knowledge by working out faith (285). Tennyson’s work follows the form of a typical elegy, causing doubt and inquisition to be an acceptable form of dealing with grief. He seems to juxtapose doubt and unbelief, defining the former as questioning while the latter as outright rejection of beliefs. In section XCVI of “In Memoriam” he characterizes “honest doubt” as an attempt to understand or work out faith through questioning rather than just solely for the sake of sowing seeds of unbelief (341). By doubting and wrestling with one’s beliefs, one begins to internalize the values of the creeds. Although Tennyson seems to suggest that doubt is essential to faith, he does not deny the importance of creeds. Tennyson, rather, considers questioning necessary in order for believers to thoroughly understand the reasons behind these foundational values. Wisely, Tennyson concludes that at some point doubt can lead to unanswerable questions, in which case, faith must overarch these questions rather than letting unbelief encroach, as he penned the words, “I cannot understand: I love” (341). Eventually, a decision to simply accept God must occur or else unbelief will ensue.
In conclusion, when honestly pursue, doubt can be an important aspect of the Christian faith. However, care must be taken not to doubt merely for the sake of doubting, nor to let unbelief infiltrate doubt to the point of loss of faith. Likewise, the importance of Christian doctrine and creeds should not be dismissed, but rather, sincere questioning should lead to confirm their answers.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard Reader, An. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 279-414. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Bantam Classic ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy L. "Dorothy L. Sayers:The Mind of the Maker." World Invisible, The Real Invisible World behind the material world. Web. 25 Oct. 2009.
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Poetical Works Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library). Boston: NTC/Contemporary Company, 1998. 285-365. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
The Problem of Evil
Throughout the history of mankind, the problem of evil is a universal theme expressed in ethical, moral, and social problems, creating personal and corporate suffering. Under this expansive theme, Annie Dillard, Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Elie Wiesel address different instances and forms of evil based on unique experiences in their own lives or imaginations.
Annie Dillard, in her work “The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” approaches the problem of evil in terms of the natural world. Despite its apparent beauty, the natural world is harsh and full of violence. Dillard begins by imparting a story about an old tomcat that she used to have at the creek that would come in and out of her window as he pleased. At times, in the middle of the night, he would come with blood-covered paws to awaken her with his purring caresses so that she “looked as though [she]’d been painted with roses” (281). As she cleaned the stains in the morning, she would wonder, “What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth” (Ibid). Although the cat seemed so friendly and gentle toward her, in the night he prowled as a murderer. As another example, Dillard relates an anecdote of her life as a young school girl, when she discovered that, if left together unreleased after hatching, young preying mantises will devour one another until only the strongest is left. “They ate each other until only two were left,” she records. “Tiny legs were still kicking from the mouths of both. The two survivors grappled and sawed in the Mason jar; both died of injuries” (310). Regardless of their incredible complexity, these creatures are quite amoral.
Based on these and other encounters with the vicious essence of nature, Dillard raises several thought-provoking questions as she investigates the cause or reason for this evil and suffering in the world. She conjectures as to where humans fit in the universe, wondering why “we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world” (382). “We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet”, she states, questioning where human beings have obtained their sense of morality if not from a deity (Ibid). Animals have no emotions, for “What creator could be so cruel, not to kill otters, but to let them care” (Ibid)? Debating whether humans are the freaks of nature, she points out that humans have emotions that set them apart from the rest of the natural world. “It is our emotions that are amiss,” she writes. “We are the freaks, the world is fine” (383). The problem of evil for Dillard essentially encompasses the question of why God allows humans to have awareness and to care while the rest of the world submits to violence as part of nature without cognizance or emotional pain.
Hardy’s exploration of the problem of evil is much more on a sociological level, raising many societal issues related to evil and suffering. While Dillard feeds off of a basic assumption that there is a God, in Hardy’s novel “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, if there is a God, He is absent or at least uncaring and interested in the fate that befalls the characters. Near the beginning of the story, Tess and her younger brother Abraham talk about the world as a star while they travel to the market. Perhaps unwittingly, and before anything terrible befalls her, Tess already realizes the evil nature of the fallen world in which she lives, as she responds to his question “Which one do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?” by saying, “A blighted one” (25-26). Not long thereafter, Alec D’Urberville rapes Tess, raising many questions about how such bad things can happen to good, innocent people and go unpunished, as Alec escapes chastisement for his felonious deed while Tess receives harsh censure from all sides. The culture and society that surround her create a double standard, even disallowing her to baptize her infant daughter in the church. The child later dies, and the church minister tells her that, without proper baptism, the innocent child will spend eternity in hell (94-96). Again, questions arise about the evil done to innocents, in this case the undue damnation of infants. Unfortunately, in the world, Tess repeatedly encounters evil that encroaches upon her despite her innocence, without relenting, in keeping with Hardy’s anti-providential theme that events happen, not because of a benevolent order or design, but rather due to something more deterministic. Fundamentally, Hardy raises an ethical question about the problem of evil, wondering how a loving and just God can allow such misfortunes to befall innocent people.
Tennyson deals with the problem of evil on a personal level as he grieves the loss of his best friend Hallam, who died at an early age while traveling abroad. Tennyson questions why good, intelligent people die without cause, and why those left behind must so suffer because of their loss. For Tennyson, grief, encompassing also the act of doubting, is a means of working out ones faith in the face of hard times. In addition to expressing his bitterness toward nature directly, he also indirectly expresses it toward God for prematurely taking Hallam. “Man thinks he was not made to die”(285). He has “The wish, that- of the living whole/No life may fail beyond the grave,/derives it not from what we have/The likest God within the soul?” (314). Despite the inevitability of death, all men long for immortality, evidencing that they are made in the very image and likeness of God; yet, Tennyson wonders why all men must have such desire, as they cause such deep grief and anguish over loss. In contradiction to Hardy’s deterministic view of life, Tennyson trusts that nothing will happen without a purpose, saying, “We trust that somehow good/Will be the final goal of ill…That not one life shall be destroy’d,/Or cast as rubbish to the void,/When God hath made the pile complete” (313). Tennyson concludes that “no man understands” the evil in the world, but must trust Divine Providence regardless, working out ones faith through doubt and suffering.
In his autobiography “Night”, Wiesel portrays a silent God who has absented Himself from the suffering of His people. The questions he raises are more accusatory of God than an attempt to work out his faith through doubt. Witnessing and experiencing the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, Wiesel wonders how a just, merciful and loving God, such as the One in the history of the Jews, could allow such evil and inhumanity to occur to relatively innocent, good people. In a moving scene in which an innocent child is brutally hanged, a man sums up one of Wiesel’s essential questions when he asks, “Where is merciful God, where is He? For God’s sake, where is God?” (64-65). Wiesel relates his view of God based on his loss of innocence and his sufferings in the Nazi concentration camps when he replies, “Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…” (65). Despite his apparent loss of faith, later, “a prayer formed inside [him], a prayer to this God in whom [he] no longer believed”, projecting a question about the nature of faith: can it go into a comatose state and them be later revived? (91). Although Wiesel later renews his faith in God, he voices very troubling questions about the silence and absence of God in the face of untold evil in the world, conjecturing about what he views as the death of God.
Although each version of the problem of evil is singularly difficult to come to terms with in individual lives and circumstances, universally, the type as discussed by Wiesel is the most difficult challenge to faith and practice, as it questions the very omnipotence of God. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could become so godless, cruel, and immoral that they would stoop to commit such horrible, dehumanizing acts towards other people as the Nazis did to the Jews. Although God allowed bad things to happen to His chosen people in the past, such as the Babylonian exile, it is hard to understand how a God, Who continually claims to be merciful, loving and just, could choose to stand silently by while such atrocious deeds were performed. Since He chose to forsake His chosen people during the Holocaust, Christians must conjecture whether their God, Who has claimed to be faithful throughout the ages, is a liar. They must ask whether He cares what happens in the lives of His creation or if, in fact, He “has the same affectionate disregard for us as we have for barnacles” (Dillard 373). As he contemplates how he will spend Yom Kippur in the concentration camp, Wiesel accuses God of allowing such evil to happen. One must wonder how God can be considered the just and righteous judge when it seems that He, Himself, is in need of a trial. Wiesel shares his frustrations with God when His people gather to praise Him in the midst of their sufferings, yet God still remains utterly silent. A difficult question arises as to whether or not this God that believers serve is worthy of praise, love or trust at all. God’s silence in the events of the Holocaust arguably undermines His omnipotence and, until one resolves the problem in one’s mind, places in question the entire foundation of Christianity.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard Reader, An. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 279-414. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Bantam Classic ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy L. "Dorothy L. Sayers:The Mind of the Maker." World Invisible, The Real Invisible World behind the material world. Web. 25 Oct. 2009..
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Poetical Works Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library). Boston: NTC/Contemporary Company, 1998. 285-365. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
Annie Dillard, in her work “The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” approaches the problem of evil in terms of the natural world. Despite its apparent beauty, the natural world is harsh and full of violence. Dillard begins by imparting a story about an old tomcat that she used to have at the creek that would come in and out of her window as he pleased. At times, in the middle of the night, he would come with blood-covered paws to awaken her with his purring caresses so that she “looked as though [she]’d been painted with roses” (281). As she cleaned the stains in the morning, she would wonder, “What blood was this, and what roses? It could have been the rose of union, the blood of murder, or the rose of beauty bare and the blood of some unspeakable sacrifice or birth” (Ibid). Although the cat seemed so friendly and gentle toward her, in the night he prowled as a murderer. As another example, Dillard relates an anecdote of her life as a young school girl, when she discovered that, if left together unreleased after hatching, young preying mantises will devour one another until only the strongest is left. “They ate each other until only two were left,” she records. “Tiny legs were still kicking from the mouths of both. The two survivors grappled and sawed in the Mason jar; both died of injuries” (310). Regardless of their incredible complexity, these creatures are quite amoral.
Based on these and other encounters with the vicious essence of nature, Dillard raises several thought-provoking questions as she investigates the cause or reason for this evil and suffering in the world. She conjectures as to where humans fit in the universe, wondering why “we are moral creatures, then, in an amoral world” (382). “We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet”, she states, questioning where human beings have obtained their sense of morality if not from a deity (Ibid). Animals have no emotions, for “What creator could be so cruel, not to kill otters, but to let them care” (Ibid)? Debating whether humans are the freaks of nature, she points out that humans have emotions that set them apart from the rest of the natural world. “It is our emotions that are amiss,” she writes. “We are the freaks, the world is fine” (383). The problem of evil for Dillard essentially encompasses the question of why God allows humans to have awareness and to care while the rest of the world submits to violence as part of nature without cognizance or emotional pain.
Hardy’s exploration of the problem of evil is much more on a sociological level, raising many societal issues related to evil and suffering. While Dillard feeds off of a basic assumption that there is a God, in Hardy’s novel “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, if there is a God, He is absent or at least uncaring and interested in the fate that befalls the characters. Near the beginning of the story, Tess and her younger brother Abraham talk about the world as a star while they travel to the market. Perhaps unwittingly, and before anything terrible befalls her, Tess already realizes the evil nature of the fallen world in which she lives, as she responds to his question “Which one do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?” by saying, “A blighted one” (25-26). Not long thereafter, Alec D’Urberville rapes Tess, raising many questions about how such bad things can happen to good, innocent people and go unpunished, as Alec escapes chastisement for his felonious deed while Tess receives harsh censure from all sides. The culture and society that surround her create a double standard, even disallowing her to baptize her infant daughter in the church. The child later dies, and the church minister tells her that, without proper baptism, the innocent child will spend eternity in hell (94-96). Again, questions arise about the evil done to innocents, in this case the undue damnation of infants. Unfortunately, in the world, Tess repeatedly encounters evil that encroaches upon her despite her innocence, without relenting, in keeping with Hardy’s anti-providential theme that events happen, not because of a benevolent order or design, but rather due to something more deterministic. Fundamentally, Hardy raises an ethical question about the problem of evil, wondering how a loving and just God can allow such misfortunes to befall innocent people.
Tennyson deals with the problem of evil on a personal level as he grieves the loss of his best friend Hallam, who died at an early age while traveling abroad. Tennyson questions why good, intelligent people die without cause, and why those left behind must so suffer because of their loss. For Tennyson, grief, encompassing also the act of doubting, is a means of working out ones faith in the face of hard times. In addition to expressing his bitterness toward nature directly, he also indirectly expresses it toward God for prematurely taking Hallam. “Man thinks he was not made to die”(285). He has “The wish, that- of the living whole/No life may fail beyond the grave,/derives it not from what we have/The likest God within the soul?” (314). Despite the inevitability of death, all men long for immortality, evidencing that they are made in the very image and likeness of God; yet, Tennyson wonders why all men must have such desire, as they cause such deep grief and anguish over loss. In contradiction to Hardy’s deterministic view of life, Tennyson trusts that nothing will happen without a purpose, saying, “We trust that somehow good/Will be the final goal of ill…That not one life shall be destroy’d,/Or cast as rubbish to the void,/When God hath made the pile complete” (313). Tennyson concludes that “no man understands” the evil in the world, but must trust Divine Providence regardless, working out ones faith through doubt and suffering.
In his autobiography “Night”, Wiesel portrays a silent God who has absented Himself from the suffering of His people. The questions he raises are more accusatory of God than an attempt to work out his faith through doubt. Witnessing and experiencing the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, Wiesel wonders how a just, merciful and loving God, such as the One in the history of the Jews, could allow such evil and inhumanity to occur to relatively innocent, good people. In a moving scene in which an innocent child is brutally hanged, a man sums up one of Wiesel’s essential questions when he asks, “Where is merciful God, where is He? For God’s sake, where is God?” (64-65). Wiesel relates his view of God based on his loss of innocence and his sufferings in the Nazi concentration camps when he replies, “Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…” (65). Despite his apparent loss of faith, later, “a prayer formed inside [him], a prayer to this God in whom [he] no longer believed”, projecting a question about the nature of faith: can it go into a comatose state and them be later revived? (91). Although Wiesel later renews his faith in God, he voices very troubling questions about the silence and absence of God in the face of untold evil in the world, conjecturing about what he views as the death of God.
Although each version of the problem of evil is singularly difficult to come to terms with in individual lives and circumstances, universally, the type as discussed by Wiesel is the most difficult challenge to faith and practice, as it questions the very omnipotence of God. It is difficult to imagine how anyone could become so godless, cruel, and immoral that they would stoop to commit such horrible, dehumanizing acts towards other people as the Nazis did to the Jews. Although God allowed bad things to happen to His chosen people in the past, such as the Babylonian exile, it is hard to understand how a God, Who continually claims to be merciful, loving and just, could choose to stand silently by while such atrocious deeds were performed. Since He chose to forsake His chosen people during the Holocaust, Christians must conjecture whether their God, Who has claimed to be faithful throughout the ages, is a liar. They must ask whether He cares what happens in the lives of His creation or if, in fact, He “has the same affectionate disregard for us as we have for barnacles” (Dillard 373). As he contemplates how he will spend Yom Kippur in the concentration camp, Wiesel accuses God of allowing such evil to happen. One must wonder how God can be considered the just and righteous judge when it seems that He, Himself, is in need of a trial. Wiesel shares his frustrations with God when His people gather to praise Him in the midst of their sufferings, yet God still remains utterly silent. A difficult question arises as to whether or not this God that believers serve is worthy of praise, love or trust at all. God’s silence in the events of the Holocaust arguably undermines His omnipotence and, until one resolves the problem in one’s mind, places in question the entire foundation of Christianity.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard Reader, An. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 279-414. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Bantam Classic ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy L. "Dorothy L. Sayers:The Mind of the Maker." World Invisible, The Real Invisible World behind the material world. Web. 25 Oct. 2009.
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Poetical Works Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library). Boston: NTC/Contemporary Company, 1998. 285-365. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
My Paso Fino (A Memoir)
Clicking with my tongue and raising the whip ever so slightly with my right hand, I sent Rio to the left around the red metal ring. His feet seemed to never leave the ground as he moved from the paso fino walk to the intricate paso corto gait of his breed. With its icy blasts, the wind whispering through the trees lifted his silky mane that never tangles, giving him a wild and untamed looked. Glancing at the skies, I wondered if it would snow, covering the ground with powder the color of Rio’s fur. I shivered in apprehension, and turned my full attention to the task at hand.
After a few turns around the edge of the ring, I moved the whip to my left hand to see how well Rio was paying attention to me. Snorting at the loud sound of the dual-mufflers of the early 90’s Pontiac Grand Am that sped by on the country road bordering the field, Rio ignored my subtle command to change directions. Okay. The time had come to pay attention, to get down to business. It was time to whip Rio into shape. Establish control. Demand respect. Show the beautiful but young and green-broke Paso Fino who was boss and bridge the gap that hindered him from being a good partner.
Pushing him to his fast, four-beat gait, the paso largo, my vision narrowed, focusing in on the muscle tone that covered his massive, powerful shoulders and hind quarters, which carried him careening around the ring almost as quickly as the Grand Am that had sped by moments earlier. Within seconds, all I could see were flaring nostrils, gliding muscles, glossy mane and tail floating through the still, cold air, and the glistening of sweat on the sleek white coat that sported tiny flecks of barely perceptible brown interspersed at regular intervals throughout the graceful hide of my Paso Fino, Rio. Colors whirred by and blended into one at the edges of his white coat as we turned about the ring, around and around and around. I was at the center, barely moving in a circle as he floated rapidly around me, yet he was the focal point, the true the center, the object of all my attentions and the concentration of all my senses. The affect was almost dizzying as the horse and I became like one.
Rio tested the limits by periodically trying to come into the center of the ring to stop and change directions before I have the command, but I scolded Rio and moved my body according to the language of his species, the language he knows, to send him loping on as I instructed. Despite the tunnel vision and incredible focus I had on him, my thoughts drifted to memories of the times I’d almost hated this infernal horse, and I wondered how we were now so much alike, so one, so in complete and perfect understanding of one another. I remembered the time he’d knocked me flat on the ground in an attempt to steal the bucket of food from my hands before I was ready to give it to him. Oh, I had been furious, ready to sell the little fiend and have him off my hands! Growing up with horses, I had always been unquestioningly in control and never afraid of these large beasts that weighed endless hundreds of pounds more than I. At that moment though, when the fierce and hungry aggression of my little but feisty Paso Fino took me off my feet, I felt a moment of fear. It angered me because I had never been one to feel fear. Today I would win back my confidence, gain my control, and demand the respect of this spirited gelding.
Duh-duh-dah-dum, duh-duh-dah-dum, duh-duh-dah-dum… as I heard the rapid, four-beat cadence of Rio’s hooves on the ground, I couldn’t wait for the moment when I could feel that smooth and even rhythm beneath my knees, and I relished the thought of how wonderful that wild and untamed speed would be when it was a controlled power under my direction. This time, as I switched the whip to my left hand, Rio immediately whirled around, changing directions to canter to the right around the ring as naturally if there were a fork in the river that he was navigating. We were getting there. He was listening. He was paying attention to my every move. He was giving me the respect I demanded.
I recalled the anger I felt towards him not many weeks before when he had been so defiant and difficult to saddle and bridle, and nearly impossible to ride. I felt a twinge of remorse as I remembered how infuriated I had become with the noble beast, only to later find out that he had been bitten on the underside of his jaw by the baby Copperhead snake I had killed right outside of his stall not long after. I had completely mistaken his behavior as defiance and rude impulse, when, in reality, he was hurting and didn’t understand what had happened to him or how to convey his pain to me.
It wasn’t like that now. Now we understood each other perfectly. I breathed to the tempo of his flaming nostrils. My heart beat to the wild yet peaceful sound of his hooves moving in their unique way around the ring. We were one now. As I dropped my whip, stopped moving, and yelled “Whoa! Whoa there Rio!” The beautiful, graceful horse stopped immediately, lowering his head in a sign of submission and obedience as he walked to stand behind me in the ring. As I walked in tight circles or drunkard-like zig-zags around the pen, Rio followed me and emulated my every turn. This was it. This was what it was all about. I demanded respect, and now he gave in full. I knew that with a flick of my whip and the click of my tongue he would go instantly careening around the ring again as I instructed, and remain at whatever speed I commanded without stopping until I said so- even if it were for days on end.
As I mounted onto his bare back, it felt as if the horse and I were molded into one creature, never to be separated again. Leaning down to open the gate, I directed him through it with my knees. Then, away we galloped into the fields that surrounded the barn, moving rapidly towards the horizon where the sun was setting in a vibrant array of colors that made the wintry clouds look like cotton balls dipped in paint. My hair whipped in the wind in just the way I had watched Rio’s mane earlier. When finally I slowed him down and we halted near the pond to look at the gentle ripples from the wind and the reflection of the sunset in the water, I was breathless with the exhilaration of the oneness and control that two wild and untamed sprits could experience through simple understanding. We meandered back to the barn, and when I slid gently off his back to the ground, Rio lowered his head for me to rub his face in encouragement. I knew at that moment that I had a companion and a confidante that would remain loyal to me until the day he dies. No more anger, frustration and misunderstanding. Now I knew his language and he knew mine. Now we understood each other utterly and completely. He knew what I expected and wanted to give that in return. Now he would listen to me, and serve me, and follow me forever. I had a friend for lifeFriday, September 18, 2009
Hell: A Gateway for Change
There has been an ongoing debate over exactly who and what sparked the Renaissance and the Reformation. In his work The Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno significantly influenced the appearance of these great reforms and modernizations, depicting many of the social and religious issues of the day during his journey through the seven layers of Hell.
The Renaissance, meaning rebirth, was a time of intense social, political and moral change (Estep 22). Generally, the era is defined between the dates of 1300 and 1517, with Dante and Luther acting as bookends on each side (20). According to “The Magazine of Christian Literature”, Dante inaugurated the Renaissance in his hometown, Florence, Italy (96). Known as “the antipapal polemicist” the Catholic church disliked Dante’s works because they seemed to favor Protestantism as a lead into Luther, even greater evidence that he influenced this period of prodigious reform (Friedrich 44, 48). One renowned Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmine argued that the Inferno was very similar to the works of Luther, escorting literature in to the Reformation and Renaissance that Luther so greatly expanded (49).
Interestingly enough, while Dante may have influenced Martin Luther in the writings of his Reformation theologies, in turn, Virgil “is above all Dante’s master in style” (Clarke 13). Despite Dante’s role in the Renaissance and Reformation, he was influenced tremendously by the classics of the Middle Ages, yet he raised their art to a new level. However, this preoccupation with classical writers, such as Virgil, displays the renaissance of humanism under which the idea of a Renaissance man evolved with the belief that “people should be proficient at a wide variety of things” (Malone). Dante fabricated a never-before used verse called ‘terza rima’ “which rhymes in the Italian original according to the scheme aba cbc cdc and so on. The lines thus form groups of three interlocked by a repeated rhyme word- a verbal equivalent to the three-in-one of the Trinity” (Norton Anthology 1827).” This creativity exhibits the return to studia humanitatis under which “grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy” were emphasized (Malone).
Commonly mentioned in discussions about the Renaissance is the idea of the ‘modern man,’ yet many question, “Who was ‘the first modern man’? Was he the anonymous burgher who in his obsession with wealth disregarded the traditions and structures of the church, Dante of the Divine Comedy” (Estep 21)? Dante serves in many ways as a symbolic picture of this first modern man. Although some would argue that he falls under the less revolutionary category of the Middle Ages, throughout Inferno, Dante’s “concern with the secular problems of his day is not that of a medievalist. And in religion he held that virtue and inner peace are attained by ethical rather than by supernatural means” in contradiction to the vast majority of beliefs that prevailed in that day (22). According to The Magazine of Christian Literature,
Dante was and still is a prophet rebuking tyranny and injustice, avarice and pride, in high and low places of Church and State, without fear or favor, and pointing to the eternal issues of man’s actions. He stands on the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times…He proved that one may be a good Catholic and yet call for a thorough Reformation (96-97).
Several political figures of Dante’s day appear in his work Inferno, displaying the corrupt nature of both the government and many of its citizens leading towards the Renaissance. In the Seventh Circle of Hell reside Dionysius of Syracuse in Sicily and Alexander the Great, both of which were “the tyrants who plunged their hand in blood and plundering” (Dante 1871).
While the Renaissance meant the rebirth of the modern man along with all the political and social changes which that entailed, the Reformation acted as the religious counterpart to this movement. To many of the first Protestants, Reformation meant returning to the earliest forms of Christianity in an attempt to reverse the thorough morphing and corrupting of original Christianity that had taken place in the Church through the centuries since the death of Christ (Smith 20). Many of the clerical figures that appear in Dante’s Inferno are in hell because of their role in the corrupt and evil practices of the Church that sparked the Reformation. Dante “condemned the interference of the Church, and especially the pope, in political affairs” (Norton Anthology 1827). Furthermore, as the frontrunner of the Reformation, chiefly “he is concerned with restoring the conditions in which Christ first came” (Ibid).
Corruption took many roles in the Church leading up to the Reformation. For example, the selling of church offices as well as justice was a common misuse of clerical authority (Smith 20). In the Inferno, Dante met an individual who, out of cowardice, made the ‘great refusal,’ choosing not to do the good he had the opportunity to do, which served as another form of extortion of Christianity. Pope Celestine V, resided with others of his sort in the Ante-Inferno, naked and continually bitten by flies and stung by bees, shedding tears and dripping blood to his feet, which disgusting worms consumed (Dante 1843-1844). Another prevalent practice exercised among priests was charging exorbitant remunerations for their services, which Luther, among others in the Reformation, later decried as useless and erroneous assistance. Others followed heresies rather than standing on the doctrine if the Holy Scriptures, such as Pope Anastasius whose tomb Dante and Virgil visited in the Sixth Circle of Hell (1866-1867). He “was thought, wrongly, to have accepted a heresy promoted by the fifth-century theologian Photinus that Christ was not divine but only human,” a blasphemy that resulted in his entombment in Hell.
Basically, the Church in Dante’s time at the beginning of the Reformation amounted to a massive money-making venue. An advantageously common belief which greatly empowered the Church was the claim to possess the ability to free souls from Purgatory even after they were deceased. (Smith 23-24). According to Smith in his work The Age of Reformation,
One of the richest sources of ecclesiastical revenue was the sale of indulgences, or the remission by the pope of the temporal penalties of sin, both penance in this life and the pains of purgatory…In the 14th century the pardons were extended to all who contributed a sum of money to a pious purpose, whether they came to Rome or not, and, as the agents who were sent out to distribute these pardons were also given power to confess and absolve, the papal letters were naturally regarded as no less than tickets of admission to heaven (23).
Ironically, many of these emissaries for the pope found their way into the corridors of Hell rather than the paradise that they promised so many. One Reformation writer Hutten “mocked at Pope Julius II for selling to others the heaven he could not win himself” (24).
Another corrupt and unethical practice in the church that Reformation theologians attempted to terminate was the selling of church offices for extortionate prices. “Though the normal method of appointment to civil office was sale, it was felt as a special abuse in the church [when such methods were carried out] and was branded by the name of simony” (Smith 22). Simony won its name from Simon Magnus, who attempted to purchase the spiritual power of the Apostles for his own temporal gain (Dante 1891). In Canto XIX of Dante’s Inferno, Virgil carries Dante into the Third Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell. In this division of Hell, the Simonists are held, their heads embedded in the orifices of rocks with their feet sticking out, constantly writhing from the pain caused by fire burning their soles “as a flame on oily things will only stir along the outer surface” (1891). Dante commends this punishment as fit justice for their sin as, just as they were most attentive in life to the contents of their purses, now in the afterlife the Simonists are rewarded by having their heads stuck into a sort of purse, the thing which they loved most in the world (Ibid). Dante is able to talk to one of these sinners: Pope Nicholas III, who mistakes him for his successor, Pope Boniface VIII (1892). He also sees other famous Simonists, such as Pope Clement V who arranged with the king of France to have the papacy moved, and Jason of the Jews who bribed the king in Maccabees to appoint him high priest (1893).
Although Dante’s work spoke to effect a change in the Church doctrine and practice, many tenets of the Catholic faith of the day are visibly evident in the Inferno. Catholicism held that “grace is imparted to the believer [only] by means of certain holy rites: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders and matrimony” (Smith 27). In Canto IV of the Inferno, Virgil leads Dante through the First Circle of Hell, which is also called Limbo, and is “inhabited by those who were worthy but lived before Christianity and/or without baptism” (Dante 1845). Among others, there were many infants in this circle of Hell as well as the righteous that never received salvation, in accordance with Catholic doctrine. Virgil explains that this is because “they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace. And if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways” (1846). Sadly, this shows the way in which the leaders in the Catholic church “were made the arbiters of each man’s eternal destiny, and their moral character had no more to do with their binding and loosing sentence than does the moral character of a secular officer affect his official acts” (Smith 27-28).
In conclusion, Dante performed an important role in the advancement of European culture and religion, acting as the first modern man to stand in the gap between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages through his political involvements and religious dissensions. Lifting his pen to write a beautiful work and craft an ingenious new style of verse, Dante renewed an emphasis on reason and the humanities. His efforts finally culminated to spark the flame that led to the Renaissance and Reformation, influencing many of the key leaders of the time through his writings.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. Dante Alighieri. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. B 100-1500 with Inserts, 2nd Edition. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall and Maynard Mack. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 1826-942.
Clarke, A. K. "The Scope of Virgil's Influence." Greece & Rome 16 (1947): 8-16.
Estep, Willieam R. Renaissance and Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Company, 1986.
Friedrich, W. P. "Dante Through The Centuries." Comparative Literature 1 (1949): 44-54.
"Renaissance." Interview with David Malone. Renaissance Notes. ENG-201 World Literature Class. Jackson, TN. 27 Apr. 2009.
Schaff, Philip. "The Renaissance and the Reformation." Magazine of Christian Literature Apr. 1891: 96-97.
Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1920.
The Renaissance, meaning rebirth, was a time of intense social, political and moral change (Estep 22). Generally, the era is defined between the dates of 1300 and 1517, with Dante and Luther acting as bookends on each side (20). According to “The Magazine of Christian Literature”, Dante inaugurated the Renaissance in his hometown, Florence, Italy (96). Known as “the antipapal polemicist” the Catholic church disliked Dante’s works because they seemed to favor Protestantism as a lead into Luther, even greater evidence that he influenced this period of prodigious reform (Friedrich 44, 48). One renowned Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmine argued that the Inferno was very similar to the works of Luther, escorting literature in to the Reformation and Renaissance that Luther so greatly expanded (49).
Interestingly enough, while Dante may have influenced Martin Luther in the writings of his Reformation theologies, in turn, Virgil “is above all Dante’s master in style” (Clarke 13). Despite Dante’s role in the Renaissance and Reformation, he was influenced tremendously by the classics of the Middle Ages, yet he raised their art to a new level. However, this preoccupation with classical writers, such as Virgil, displays the renaissance of humanism under which the idea of a Renaissance man evolved with the belief that “people should be proficient at a wide variety of things” (Malone). Dante fabricated a never-before used verse called ‘terza rima’ “which rhymes in the Italian original according to the scheme aba cbc cdc and so on. The lines thus form groups of three interlocked by a repeated rhyme word- a verbal equivalent to the three-in-one of the Trinity” (Norton Anthology 1827).” This creativity exhibits the return to studia humanitatis under which “grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy” were emphasized (Malone).
Commonly mentioned in discussions about the Renaissance is the idea of the ‘modern man,’ yet many question, “Who was ‘the first modern man’? Was he the anonymous burgher who in his obsession with wealth disregarded the traditions and structures of the church, Dante of the Divine Comedy” (Estep 21)? Dante serves in many ways as a symbolic picture of this first modern man. Although some would argue that he falls under the less revolutionary category of the Middle Ages, throughout Inferno, Dante’s “concern with the secular problems of his day is not that of a medievalist. And in religion he held that virtue and inner peace are attained by ethical rather than by supernatural means” in contradiction to the vast majority of beliefs that prevailed in that day (22). According to The Magazine of Christian Literature,
Dante was and still is a prophet rebuking tyranny and injustice, avarice and pride, in high and low places of Church and State, without fear or favor, and pointing to the eternal issues of man’s actions. He stands on the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times…He proved that one may be a good Catholic and yet call for a thorough Reformation (96-97).
Several political figures of Dante’s day appear in his work Inferno, displaying the corrupt nature of both the government and many of its citizens leading towards the Renaissance. In the Seventh Circle of Hell reside Dionysius of Syracuse in Sicily and Alexander the Great, both of which were “the tyrants who plunged their hand in blood and plundering” (Dante 1871).
While the Renaissance meant the rebirth of the modern man along with all the political and social changes which that entailed, the Reformation acted as the religious counterpart to this movement. To many of the first Protestants, Reformation meant returning to the earliest forms of Christianity in an attempt to reverse the thorough morphing and corrupting of original Christianity that had taken place in the Church through the centuries since the death of Christ (Smith 20). Many of the clerical figures that appear in Dante’s Inferno are in hell because of their role in the corrupt and evil practices of the Church that sparked the Reformation. Dante “condemned the interference of the Church, and especially the pope, in political affairs” (Norton Anthology 1827). Furthermore, as the frontrunner of the Reformation, chiefly “he is concerned with restoring the conditions in which Christ first came” (Ibid).
Corruption took many roles in the Church leading up to the Reformation. For example, the selling of church offices as well as justice was a common misuse of clerical authority (Smith 20). In the Inferno, Dante met an individual who, out of cowardice, made the ‘great refusal,’ choosing not to do the good he had the opportunity to do, which served as another form of extortion of Christianity. Pope Celestine V, resided with others of his sort in the Ante-Inferno, naked and continually bitten by flies and stung by bees, shedding tears and dripping blood to his feet, which disgusting worms consumed (Dante 1843-1844). Another prevalent practice exercised among priests was charging exorbitant remunerations for their services, which Luther, among others in the Reformation, later decried as useless and erroneous assistance. Others followed heresies rather than standing on the doctrine if the Holy Scriptures, such as Pope Anastasius whose tomb Dante and Virgil visited in the Sixth Circle of Hell (1866-1867). He “was thought, wrongly, to have accepted a heresy promoted by the fifth-century theologian Photinus that Christ was not divine but only human,” a blasphemy that resulted in his entombment in Hell.
Basically, the Church in Dante’s time at the beginning of the Reformation amounted to a massive money-making venue. An advantageously common belief which greatly empowered the Church was the claim to possess the ability to free souls from Purgatory even after they were deceased. (Smith 23-24). According to Smith in his work The Age of Reformation,
One of the richest sources of ecclesiastical revenue was the sale of indulgences, or the remission by the pope of the temporal penalties of sin, both penance in this life and the pains of purgatory…In the 14th century the pardons were extended to all who contributed a sum of money to a pious purpose, whether they came to Rome or not, and, as the agents who were sent out to distribute these pardons were also given power to confess and absolve, the papal letters were naturally regarded as no less than tickets of admission to heaven (23).
Ironically, many of these emissaries for the pope found their way into the corridors of Hell rather than the paradise that they promised so many. One Reformation writer Hutten “mocked at Pope Julius II for selling to others the heaven he could not win himself” (24).
Another corrupt and unethical practice in the church that Reformation theologians attempted to terminate was the selling of church offices for extortionate prices. “Though the normal method of appointment to civil office was sale, it was felt as a special abuse in the church [when such methods were carried out] and was branded by the name of simony” (Smith 22). Simony won its name from Simon Magnus, who attempted to purchase the spiritual power of the Apostles for his own temporal gain (Dante 1891). In Canto XIX of Dante’s Inferno, Virgil carries Dante into the Third Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell. In this division of Hell, the Simonists are held, their heads embedded in the orifices of rocks with their feet sticking out, constantly writhing from the pain caused by fire burning their soles “as a flame on oily things will only stir along the outer surface” (1891). Dante commends this punishment as fit justice for their sin as, just as they were most attentive in life to the contents of their purses, now in the afterlife the Simonists are rewarded by having their heads stuck into a sort of purse, the thing which they loved most in the world (Ibid). Dante is able to talk to one of these sinners: Pope Nicholas III, who mistakes him for his successor, Pope Boniface VIII (1892). He also sees other famous Simonists, such as Pope Clement V who arranged with the king of France to have the papacy moved, and Jason of the Jews who bribed the king in Maccabees to appoint him high priest (1893).
Although Dante’s work spoke to effect a change in the Church doctrine and practice, many tenets of the Catholic faith of the day are visibly evident in the Inferno. Catholicism held that “grace is imparted to the believer [only] by means of certain holy rites: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders and matrimony” (Smith 27). In Canto IV of the Inferno, Virgil leads Dante through the First Circle of Hell, which is also called Limbo, and is “inhabited by those who were worthy but lived before Christianity and/or without baptism” (Dante 1845). Among others, there were many infants in this circle of Hell as well as the righteous that never received salvation, in accordance with Catholic doctrine. Virgil explains that this is because “they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace. And if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways” (1846). Sadly, this shows the way in which the leaders in the Catholic church “were made the arbiters of each man’s eternal destiny, and their moral character had no more to do with their binding and loosing sentence than does the moral character of a secular officer affect his official acts” (Smith 27-28).
In conclusion, Dante performed an important role in the advancement of European culture and religion, acting as the first modern man to stand in the gap between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages through his political involvements and religious dissensions. Lifting his pen to write a beautiful work and craft an ingenious new style of verse, Dante renewed an emphasis on reason and the humanities. His efforts finally culminated to spark the flame that led to the Renaissance and Reformation, influencing many of the key leaders of the time through his writings.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. Dante Alighieri. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. B 100-1500 with Inserts, 2nd Edition. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall and Maynard Mack. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 1826-942.
Clarke, A. K. "The Scope of Virgil's Influence." Greece & Rome 16 (1947): 8-16.
Estep, Willieam R. Renaissance and Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Company, 1986.
Friedrich, W. P. "Dante Through The Centuries." Comparative Literature 1 (1949): 44-54.
"Renaissance." Interview with David Malone. Renaissance Notes. ENG-201 World Literature Class. Jackson, TN. 27 Apr. 2009.
Schaff, Philip. "The Renaissance and the Reformation." Magazine of Christian Literature Apr. 1891: 96-97.
Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1920.
"The Mind of the Maker"~ Dorothy Sayers
Everyone needs to read this excerpted chapter entitled "The Image of God" from Dorothy Sayers book The Mind of the Maker! This is great stuff!
For background information on Dorothy Sayers: Among Sayers' peers were C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. She had a child out of wed-lock, but later adopted the child after marrying another man, giving her credence in the world of sinners. This is just so incredible to read- please take the time!
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/dlsayers/mindofmaker/mind.02.htm
For background information on Dorothy Sayers: Among Sayers' peers were C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. She had a child out of wed-lock, but later adopted the child after marrying another man, giving her credence in the world of sinners. This is just so incredible to read- please take the time!
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/dlsayers/mindofmaker/mind.02.htm
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