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avevale_intelligencerI've been reading Dorothy L. Sayers, who was (I'm sure you all know) more than simply a "Writer of Detective Stories," as her blue plaque, perhaps rather sniffily, describes her. She was also a profound and clear thinker about Christian theology, and, according to at least one of her biographers, seems to have taken agnosticism to its highest level by never being quite sure whether she was a Christian or not. She did, however, do it the courtesy of thinking about Christianity as though it were a serious subject, and thus once again gives the lie to all those who maintain, in the teeth of the evidence, that religion only works if you don't think at all.
Specifically, I'm reading her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (completed after her death by Barbara Reynolds, but I haven't got to that bit yet), and in particular her lengthy introductions to each book, in which occasional glimpses of the characteristic Sayers humour enlighten what might, in someone else's hands, have been a somewhat turgid exegesis of mediaeval theology; and she's reminded me of something I think I always knew about hell, though who told me I can not now recall.
At no point, except in the minds of shallow, lazy thinkers of all faiths or none, has hell ever been about God punishing people for upsetting God.
The thinking, as I understand it, runs thus: "You have gone through your entire life committing this particular kind of sin, harming others or harming yourself. You have always, right up to the moment of your death, valued your ability to commit this sin more highly than the possibility of not doing it, of putting things right with others or with yourself, and therefore with God. You have consistently chosen this sin. Very well. For the rest of your post-mortem existence, which incidentally will be eternal, you can have what you have chosen; your sin, fully realised, and its consequences to yourself. You were given all your life to change your mind, and you did not, so clearly this is what you want. Enjoy it."
And if that seems still a little callous, a little absolutist, let us touch for an instant on the happy conceit of the Darwin Awards, so much enjoyed by rationalists everywhere, in which people who have committed errors fatal to themselves are sniggeringly applauded for improving the human gene pool by removing themselves from it. They have, to the materialist mind, chosen eternal oblivion, and nobody ever suggests that for perhaps a single moment of stupidity or absent-mindedness on the part of an otherwise decent and harmless person this is a somewhat harsh punishment. Yet we are to recoil in horror at the idea that a life lived in grievous sin might result in an eternity of reliving that same sin.
And of course it isn't that absolute. The concept of deathbed repentance is another frequent target for mockery, to people who think that all it amounts to is saying "sorry" and "hail Mary" with one's last breath, and then hip-ho and away you go to heaven whether you meant it or not. This is of course a deliberate and vicious distortion of the doctrine of Purgatory, as expounded in the second part of the Comedy. I'm only a little way into that at the moment, but it's already very clear that the mediaeval theologians whose thought Dante was clothing in poetic imagery had a much better idea about the nature of sin and its consequences, and what you had to do to get through it (not around it) and recover grace, than they are commonly credited with, and possibly a better idea than we do. One thing is clear; they knew that this life, here on earth, was the important bit. Only in this life, here on earth, do we have the capacity to make the choices which will dictate how we spend the rest of eternity. In this life, here on earth, we are given free will, and what we do with it matters.
There are flaws in the idea, of course. Very few people get through life committing only one major sin; for most of us some sort of timeshare arrangement would have to be negotiated, with charabancs, or possibly a light funicular railway, running between the various circles of hell, so that we got a chance to experience all the consequences of our envy, sloth, gluttony, pride and so on. Whether the sense of variety thus introduced would mitigate the extremity of the suffering is a moot point. Dante avoids this by picking for his examples famous people of his day and before who were chiefly known for one particular heinous act.
At any rate, it's a fascinating read, and I have got to try terza rima at some point, if I can find a suitable subject that appeals to me.
Specifically, I'm reading her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (completed after her death by Barbara Reynolds, but I haven't got to that bit yet), and in particular her lengthy introductions to each book, in which occasional glimpses of the characteristic Sayers humour enlighten what might, in someone else's hands, have been a somewhat turgid exegesis of mediaeval theology; and she's reminded me of something I think I always knew about hell, though who told me I can not now recall.
At no point, except in the minds of shallow, lazy thinkers of all faiths or none, has hell ever been about God punishing people for upsetting God.
The thinking, as I understand it, runs thus: "You have gone through your entire life committing this particular kind of sin, harming others or harming yourself. You have always, right up to the moment of your death, valued your ability to commit this sin more highly than the possibility of not doing it, of putting things right with others or with yourself, and therefore with God. You have consistently chosen this sin. Very well. For the rest of your post-mortem existence, which incidentally will be eternal, you can have what you have chosen; your sin, fully realised, and its consequences to yourself. You were given all your life to change your mind, and you did not, so clearly this is what you want. Enjoy it."
And if that seems still a little callous, a little absolutist, let us touch for an instant on the happy conceit of the Darwin Awards, so much enjoyed by rationalists everywhere, in which people who have committed errors fatal to themselves are sniggeringly applauded for improving the human gene pool by removing themselves from it. They have, to the materialist mind, chosen eternal oblivion, and nobody ever suggests that for perhaps a single moment of stupidity or absent-mindedness on the part of an otherwise decent and harmless person this is a somewhat harsh punishment. Yet we are to recoil in horror at the idea that a life lived in grievous sin might result in an eternity of reliving that same sin.
And of course it isn't that absolute. The concept of deathbed repentance is another frequent target for mockery, to people who think that all it amounts to is saying "sorry" and "hail Mary" with one's last breath, and then hip-ho and away you go to heaven whether you meant it or not. This is of course a deliberate and vicious distortion of the doctrine of Purgatory, as expounded in the second part of the Comedy. I'm only a little way into that at the moment, but it's already very clear that the mediaeval theologians whose thought Dante was clothing in poetic imagery had a much better idea about the nature of sin and its consequences, and what you had to do to get through it (not around it) and recover grace, than they are commonly credited with, and possibly a better idea than we do. One thing is clear; they knew that this life, here on earth, was the important bit. Only in this life, here on earth, do we have the capacity to make the choices which will dictate how we spend the rest of eternity. In this life, here on earth, we are given free will, and what we do with it matters.
There are flaws in the idea, of course. Very few people get through life committing only one major sin; for most of us some sort of timeshare arrangement would have to be negotiated, with charabancs, or possibly a light funicular railway, running between the various circles of hell, so that we got a chance to experience all the consequences of our envy, sloth, gluttony, pride and so on. Whether the sense of variety thus introduced would mitigate the extremity of the suffering is a moot point. Dante avoids this by picking for his examples famous people of his day and before who were chiefly known for one particular heinous act.
At any rate, it's a fascinating read, and I have got to try terza rima at some point, if I can find a suitable subject that appeals to me.
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Date: 2015-08-23 02:19 pm (UTC)And once again, I am reminded of Calvin, who states directly in his Institutes that "religion without reason is mere superstition". I think, for all my atheism, that it IS possible to be religious and not a raving lunatic or semi-braindead.
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Date: 2015-08-25 01:24 am (UTC)I need to read more of what she wrote on religion, clearly.