A favorite passage from one of my favorite books is the quote below from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, two young Englishmen, meet at Oxford in the period between the two world wars. Charles is not a believer, and Sebastian is from an aristocratic Roman Catholic family. After they've been friends for a while, Sebastian brings up the subject of his faith and Catholicism. What follows is the dialogue between the two:
(Sebastian) “Oh dear, it’s very difficult being a Catholic!”I love the passage, because Sebastian describes how I believe, too. It's very much the stories, the myths (not myths in the sense of something that's not true - myths in the sense of universal truths) that draw me into Christianity.
(Charles) “Does it make much difference to you?”
(Sebastian:) “Of course. All the time.”
(Charles) “Well, I can’t say I’ve noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don’t seem much more virtuous than me.”
(Sebastian) “I’m very, very much wickeder,” said Sebastian indignantly.
(Charles) “… I suppose they try to make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”
(Sebastian) “Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”
(Charles) “But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”
(Sebastian) “Can’t I?”
(Charles) “I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”
(Sebastian) “Oh yes. I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”
(Charles) “But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”
(Sebastian) “But I do. That’s how I believe.”
(Edited and reposted from 2007.)
(Charles) “But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”
ReplyDelete(Sebastian) “Can’t I?”
(Charles) “I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”
Were you an RC when you first read/saw this, Mimi?
I, of course, was my cradle Pisky self when I saw it (have never read the book). I remember how indignant I was about the above scene. "Good googly-moogly," I thought *, "why isn't Charles asking about Papal Infallibility? Re 'Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass', the CofE believes EXACTLY the same!"
* I may have exclaimed this aloud to my viewing group. Watched the miniseries over Thanksgiving break @ seminary (c. 1990-91).
Waugh may be an excellent writer, but his RC convert's zeal to dismiss his Anglican background is insulting (as many converts---to anything---can so often be. You, dear Mimi, OF COURSE excepted! ;-) )
Just noted this is a repost. In my on-coming senility, for all I know I may have made the same rant in 2007! ;-X
DeleteJCF, I read the book the first time when I was still a Roman Catholic, and there's no question that Waugh was a zealot for the RCC after his conversion, though he remained an irascible old fart. There's a dismissive mindset in certain Roman Catholics about other Christian denominations, in that they believe the RCC is the one true faith, and the others are pale copies, and I understand that it can be infuriating.
DeleteI've wondered if the doctrine of papal infallibility was God's joke on John Henry Newman after he converted to the RCC.
I *get* the fact that Waugh himself didn't "believe any of it", when *he* was a nominal Anglican---he didn't believe until he was converted to the RCC.
DeleteBut he's projecting BOTH his nominalism onto ALL Anglicans, AND his zeal onto ALL RCs!
It's a very Black&White view of Reality (and hence, very *immature* IMO).
And yet, and yet, I've read the book four times and watched the series at least that many times.
DeleteVery Roman Catholic, JCF, and remember: there's no zealot like a convert.
It's important to realize that Charles himself was no believer during this conversation, certainly not an Anglican in anything but upbringing. As he says of himself (in a passage plainly more than a little autobiographical):
Delete"I had no religion. I was taken to church weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, as though in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I was excused church in the holidays. The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it: religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the providence of ‘complexes’ and ‘inhibitions’ - catch words of the decade - and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigent historical claims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested."
Rick, it is important to know that Charles is not a believer, which is why I included the information in my post before I quoted the passage from the book.
Delete"...you can't seriously believe it all." I get this all the time from one group of friends who range from spiritual but not religious to "sixteen years of Catholic education, and I'm done with all that because science," to agnostic-verging-on-atheist. I think it's fascinating that the subject comes up almost every time we get together, although I'm not the one mentions it first. People are searching and to most of them the church is the last place they'd look. Churches need to figure out a better way to reach people, even it means they'll have to change radically.
ReplyDeleteBex, I agree about finding a better way to reach people, and I think the church, as we know it, will be forced to change into something very different to what we see today. I don't have the answers to what the changes will be, but I believe we'll have to get out of our buildings more and go out to people where they are.
DeleteAs far as believing in the virgin birth and the manger and the ox and the ass as a lovely and powerful story of the truth of the Incarnation, that God came down to be one of us, I find it no more difficult than to believe in God. Faith in God is the big leap for me, and then that God chose to became human is simply amazing.
I have been reading Diana Butler Bass' book "Christianity After Religion." She's wrestling with how the church must change and there is a discussion of the word "believe," which comes from the word "belove," that implies commitment or a heart thing, not merely a head thing. Since we've become rationalists, institutional thinking tells us we have to "believe X number of impossible things before breakfast" to be Christians and many people just reject that. Karen Armstrong has said much the same about our present fixation on this way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteI read Butler Bass' book a few months ago, and I like her "belove". Surely the reasoning process is part of coming to faith, but, in the end, it seems to me that it's a matter of the heart, and the heart of the matter is not believing everything in the Bible exactly as it is written, nor does faith mean having all the doctrine ducks lined up in a perfect row.
DeleteIf someone would prove to me without a doubt that Jesus never existed and that he surely was not God, I think I would still want to live my life according to the Gospels, especially what I view as the essentials - the Two Great commandments and the Golden Rule.
institutional thinking tells us we have to "believe X number of impossible things before breakfast" to be Christians and many people just reject that
DeleteI happen to love the "X number of impossible things before breakfast": that's precisely WHY I believe it.
But it's the "you HAVE to" part I reject. I'd reject it from my church, in the same way I reject it when it's coming from anti-theist materialists. No, I DON'T "have to believe" it, thankyouveryeffingmuch.
Frederick Buechner wrote a sermon called "Message in the Stars" about what would happen if God decided to proclaim his existence by writing a message "light years tall" in the sky saying "I REALLY EXIST or GOD IS." For Buechner, that's not the answer we really want. If you haven't read the sermon, it's in a collection called "Secrets in the Dark."
ReplyDeleteBex, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look for the sermon.
DeleteI quite like Waugh's irascible old fartness. Just thought I'd say.
ReplyDeleteCathy, I've read the old fart's BR about four times and a good many of his other books at least once. I read "A Handful of Dust" twice, though it is quite depressing.
DeleteI really dislike the ending of A Handful of Dust and want to give Brenda a good shake for being such a selfish, shallow creature and wreaking so much damage.
DeleteAnd all because she was bored. What could she ever have seen in Beaver? Poor Tony.
DeleteYes, poor Tony :(
ReplyDelete