Fictional Religion: Keeping the New Testament New.
Champagne, Claudia M.
Fictional Religion: Keeping the New Testament New. By Jamie
Spencer. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2011. ISBN 9781598150322. Pp. viii
+ 154. $18.00.
Jamie Spencer has written a slim volume of reflections on the
intersections between Christian teachings in the New Testament and
literature and among the eclectic mix of poems, stories, and novels that
are the focus of his eleven chapters (Introduction plus nine chapters
and an "Interlude"). Spencer sometimes leaves the reader
wanting a fuller reading of the texts chosen, and his textual pairings
are bewildering at first (e.g., Macbeth and Faulkner's short story
"Barn Burning"? Paradise Lost and Goldings novel The
Inheritors?). But Spencer's argument that literature continually
reinterprets and expands the New Testament is certainly well supported
by the texts he has chosen and might lead readers to test it further
with their own examples.
In his Introduction, Spencer establishes three basic premises. The
first, he says, is widely agreed upon: "the books of the New
Testament are not the infallible Word of God," unlike the
written-in-stone (as it were) books of the Old Testament (1). Rather,
they are "the inspired words of devout and humble writers,"
and as such the "texts were in a state of flux during the
faith's early centuries" (1). This leads Spencer to his
central proposition: the New Testament is still being created and
recreated as part of a "flexible tradition" that has been
continued "throughout the Christian era [by] a vibrant legion of
playwrights, poets, and story writers" (1). The evolution of
Christian doctrine is not the sole provenance of theologians.
"Creative literary artists" reinterpret the narratives of the
New Testament for each successive culture and era (2). Thus, Spencer
elevates writers--even those not consciously focusing on
"religious" themes--to the level of Church fathers. In his
initial testing of his hypothesis, Spencer reads Dickens' A
Christmas Carol as a narrative parallel to Christ's parable of the
Prodigal Son, as told in the Gospel of Luke, likening the elder
son's grateful return to his father's house to Scrooge's
revelations on Christmas morning. Both stories culminate in the rebirth
of the sinners and "a festive celebration" (3). Citing
biblical scholars Robert Alter (7he Art of Biblical Narrative, 1981) and
Arthur Dewey (Professor of Religion at Xavier University), Spencer
launches a chronological survey of great writers as they "reach
for, discover, and transmit profound insights into the human condition,
insights as poignant and definitive as those created with an explicit
theological and missionary agenda" (5).
Spencer begins with Geoffrey Chaucer, a representative of
"late medieval orthodoxy," although his "spirit is
extraordinarily humane" (7). This fundamental paradox is reflected
in the pilgrims of The Canterbury Tales, since some are motivated to
take their Lenten journey by "honest faith," while others have
more profane desires (9). Spencer's focus is the Wife of Bath,
"who is clearly a creature more of flesh than faith" (9). Her
Prologue shows that she has been exposed to Christian Scriptures,
especially Pauline doctrine on virginity and marriage, but she
misinterprets them to suit her own purposes--her desire for sexual
satisfaction. The moral of her Tale is given by the old hag in her
bedroom lecture, "the voice of Christ," who preaches the value
of humility (16). But the Wife fails to hear that message and instead
uses the hag's transformation to justify her assertion of power or
mastery in marriage. Spencers reading, though certainly astute, seems to
forget that Chaucer is completely enamored with his very human Wife,
perhaps the first female character in literature who is frankly sexual
but not condemned for it.
Next, Spencer moves forward two centuries to Shakespeare. He argues
that Macbeth illustrates the political message of Christ that the
Kingdom of God must be founded on "a determined commitment to a
godly life of mercy and justice" (17) and to "love of God and
love of neighbor" (18). The message of the "Scottish
Play" to the newly crowned King James I is that his earthly kingdom
must be modeled on these Christian values. Macbeth's spiritual,
moral, and even physical disintegration results from his murder of the
king who embodies these values. Ultimately, "the usurper's
kingdom is past cure, both spiritual and bodily," but
Macbeth's final defeat establishes "a regenerative moral
order," whereby the Christian realm may be healed (29).
Chapters three and four are devoted to three seventeenth-century
lyric poets: John Donne is compared first with George Herbert and then
with Andrew Marvell. Spencer calls Donne and Herbert "the
ecclesiastical descendents" of the Evangelists, though they focus
less on dogma and more on "the inner spiritual life and psychology
of a sinful man" (31-32). He associates the conclusion of Herberts
"The Collar," when the voice of God the Father calls his
straying child back to his priestly vocation, with the father's
welcome of the Prodigal Son in Luke's narrative of the parable. In
his brief discussion of Donne's "Holy Sonnet #14"
("Batter my heart, three-personed God"), Spencer focuses on
the poet's startling paradoxes that express "quite orthodox
dogma" about purification of sin. This is one point in his book
where Spencer's explication of an important and rich poem is much
too abbreviated. He revisits Donne's poetry in the next chapter, in
an equally short reading of "A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning." The main point is the poet's definition of his and
his lover's love as separated from the physical, almost entirely
spiritual, "priestly, divine, perhaps even celibate" (42). But
since Donne's audience is his wife, the "celibate" part
of Spencer's definition is stretching the facts, as the number of
children born to their union--twelve--testifies. Marvell's "A
Dialogue Between Soul and Body" receives slightly more extensive
treatment. Marvell maintains the orthodox dichotomy between the two
entities but subverts the usual dynamic between them when the body
accuses the soul of causing harm and the speaker gives the body the last
word in the debate, perhaps reflecting the increasing humanism of
Marvell's time. The poet once again revises Christian doctrine.
Spencer breaks the chronological progression of his chapters with
"A Geological Interlude: Tennyson's In Memoriam & the Rise
of Science." This brief interlude actually serves as a prelude to
the following chapter on Milton and Golding. Spencer reflects on the
monumental shift in perspective caused by the geological discoveries of
the nineteenth century. He quotes the beginning of Poem CXXII from In
Memoriam, "O earth, what changes hast thou seen!" (1. 2) to
prove Tennyson's awareness of the scientific revision of the
Genesis narrative of creation. This revolution accounts for the
difference in the narratives of the Fall in Miltons
mid-seventeenth-century epic Paradise Lost and Golding's
mid-twentieth-century novel The Inheritors.
Chapter five, "William Golding & John Milton: Twin
Falls," is the central and longest chapter of Spencer's book.
The juxtaposition of Paradise Lost with The Inheritors is startling at
first. But the connections do become clear. Golding's novel focuses
on an important evolutionary transition point, as the last "static
and very unimaginative" Neanderthals die out and are replaced by
the more progressive but also violent Cro-Magnons (59). It is a
parabolic narrative of Darwinian "survival of the fittest," in
which (ironically) Golding "has adapted Judeo-Christian motifs from
the Garden of Eden story, over and above 'the fall"'
(60). Spencer links Golding's novel to Tennyson's vision of
evolution and then to Milton's portrait of Eden: "Both writers
are exploring the nature of humankind, its character and behavior,
before the fall" (65). He focuses on Milton's "convincing
psychological insights" (65) to the characters of Adam and Eve,
particularly in what Milton scholars call "the Separation
Scene" on the morning of the Fall. Spencer describes Milton's
portrayal of Satan as "a personal and poetic re-telling and
original creation of ideas barely whispered in Holy Writ" (69). And
of Eve's fall, he says, "Milton takes that brief moment from
Genesis and loads it with his knowledge of New Testament writings and
thoughts" (75). My own longtime reading of the epic leads me to
disagree with Spencer when he concludes that it ends, like
Golding's novel, in darkness and hopelessness. Rather, Paradise
Lost ends in great hope for the future, with Adam and Eve looking
forward to the promise of redemption and the world before them full of
possibilities.
Chapter six is a brief discussion of George Bernard Shaw's
play Major Barbara that begins with a digression exploring Roman
imperialism in the time of Jesus, which foreshadowed the social activism
advocated by Shaw in the protagonists of his plays St. Joan and Major
Barbara. In this chapter, Spencer spends so much time leading up to his
main subject that the play in question is barely mentioned at the end.
More successful is chapter seven on "William Faulkner's
'Barn Burning': A Modern, Secular Vision of Community."
Spencer argues that the story is about more than one young boy's
coming of age and rejection of his father's blood lust for revenge
because it shows "the evolution of society overall from tribe to
social compact" (101). He relates the boy Sarty's standing up
for justice and law as "the same kind of nourishing, ethical civil
order proposed in Macbeth" (102). But Sarty's decision to warn
Major De Spain and betray his father "reverses Macbeth's
trajectory," as Sarty moves toward integration with society and
away from the tragic hero's isolation (103).
The final two chapters of Fictional Religion are devoted to the
poetry of Philip Larkin and the science fiction of C. S. Lewis. After
comparing Larkin's modern, twentieth-century perspective to those
of Yeats in "The Second Coming" and Eliot in "Journey of
the Magi," Spencer gives brief explications of several of Larkins
lyric poems, culminating in the dark vision of "Faith
Healing." He concludes, "Larkin is an un-churched modern man
for whom religious talk and ritual [are], while endlessly tempting,
pointless and deceiving" (119). However, Spencer ends his book on a
much more positive note with his final chapter on C. S. Lewis'
series of children's fantasies The Chronicles of Narnia. Whereas
the reader might expect him to focus on Lewis' nonfiction works
that specifically address Christian issues, Spencer chooses instead to
liken the magical world of Narnia to the Gospel narratives of
Christ's miracles (121-22), and in particular the character Aslan
becomes a Christ-figure who is sent to redeem and rescue the boy
adventurer Eustace (124, 133).
To conclude, Spencer's book is often provocative,
intentionally to be sure. It is clearly not meant to be a thoroughgoing
or dense work of literary criticism. Literary critics are not his
audience, as he often defines the most basic literary terms like image
and conceit. Rather, it is categorized as a text on
"Religion," and if his goal is to introduce literature to
those interested in "Religious Studies," he certainly
succeeds. But for literary critics, his readings are often thoughtful
but rudimentary. The book suffers from a lack of careful editing, with
some grammar and usage errors. And more than once, Spencer misquotes the
end of the third line of Paradise Lost as "and all that woe"
instead of "and all our woe." But his book is ultimately
valuable because of his fascinating premise that creative writers
continue the inspired work of the first evangelists by, as his subtitle
suggests, Keeping the New Testament New.
Claudia M. Champagne
Our Lady of Holy Cross College
