Theology Noir
As a microcosmos, every man has a history: an Alpha and an Omega, an origin and a destiny. But men dwell in space as well as time. Every man thus also bears within himself a bright heaven and a fathomless abyss. These compass points are hidden from view, but at their crux stands each “universal self” in the here and now as an incarnate question.
The naked bulb in the stairwell flickered and buzzed as I knocked on Simeon’s door. Why would someone with pockets that deep choose to live in such a hovel?
A bundle of contradictions, he was also possessed of a few sharp corners, a number of odd habits, and many apparent secrets. He admired and understood the Bible but said he didn’t believe a word of it. However, for both of us, disputatio was an irresistible cup. Opposites attract when one is looking for a compatible sparring partner.
The metal door opened a couple of inches and one of Simeon’s eyes appeared. In a blink, its expression swapped vigilant for wry.
“Hello darkness, my old friend.”
Devil’s Advocate
“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Shakespeare and a bottle of port are my ideal one night stand,” Simeon jested. “Besides, it’s helpful to minimize the inhibitions when one is playing all the parts.”
He took a seat in his reading chair. It was antique and well-worn like everything else in the Stygian half-light.
“Help yourself to what’s left in the bottle. Now, did you complete your momentous final chapter?”
“I have it here. If you remember, I wrote it initially as a fiction, a farce, but now I’m of two minds.”
“Well, you are a Gemini. As we discussed, a fiction might come across as a tad self-indulgent. Keep a copy of it, nevertheless. It would make a diverting inclusion in any posthumous publication. Speaking of which…”
“My cardiologist says the prognosis isn’t good.”
“His exact words?”
“‘Your heart is a dud.’ That was quite a stab to the chest. The same condition took my mother. Somehow, the way he phrased it felt like an insult to her.”
“I’m going now, Mr. Bright.”
A well-dressed redhead had entered the room.
“Ah, Celia. Have you met Mr. Bull? Celia’s been doing some editing for me. She doesn’t miss a thing. And she ensures I don’t publish anything that would get me into too much trouble.”
She smiled as she donned a winter cloak.
“It’s always good to run things by another pair of eyes,” I said. “Can we call you a cab?”
“No, thanks. Home isn’t far, and I enjoy the dusk.”
From the window I watched her light a cigarette and turn up her collar before she crossed the wet street below. Black cape. Red heels.
“A bit of a character?” I asked.
“Definitely more going on in there than meets the eye.”
“Not your type?”
“Not even my kind,” Simeon replied opaquely.
“That explains why she’s still using your pen name. How long is it since your wife left? It must be ten years.”
“Nine years, one hundred and fifty three days.”
“Counting things obsessively like that might be one of the reasons she left.”
“I gave her plenty of others. I think about her every day. Did I tell you I went for some counseling?”
“You’re supposed to do that before your wife leaves.”
“The meds weren’t working. Counselor was ex-military. Strategy and precision of a surgeon. It only took him three sessions to get to the heart of things.”
“What happened? … If you don’t mind me asking.”
“He asked me if I still loved her. I burst into tears.”
“That’s not like you at all.”
“No. And it was like watching myself burst into tears. I seem to be a stranger even to my own emotions.”
“Warhol once said that his experience of life was like watching TV.”
“The neon god. Well, we two really are sex and death, aren’t we? I enjoyed your analysis of Donnie Darko, but I do think that what’s actually in a movie and what one can do with it are two different things.”
“Isn’t that what texts are for? Interpretation and application?”
“But is it the movie or the Bible being applied?”
“Both, I suppose. Each speaks to the other. It’s a to-and-fro, a conversation between Word and image. Can we get into the final scene? I haven’t much time.”
“You said it wasn’t a fiction.”
“It’s everybody’s story.”
“Oh, fantastic. Let me grab another bottle.”
The Mantle of the Seer
By merely existing, every human being must confront three inescapable questions, or perhaps a single, three-tiered question:
Is there a God? (the physical)
If there is a God, is He good? (the social)
If He is good, what must I do? (the ethical)
Corresponding to the themes of the first three chapters of Genesis, this profound enquiry deals with being, knowing, and doing. As an expression of the Father, Son, and Spirit, these also form the basis of the three-tiered biblical theoscape: Garden, Land, and World.
“You like that contrived word theoscape, don’t you? Sounds a bit pretentious, if you ask me.”
“I’m trying to appeal to academics. Anyhow, there wasn’t a word for the concept before, and now there is.”
“As an atheist,” said Simeon, raising an eyebrow, “I’m human — as far as I can tell, anyway — but I wouldn’t say that I’m at all confronted by those questions.”
“Of course you are. Atheism is nothing but a negative answer to those questions. Can you honestly say that your negative response frees you from all existential angst?”
Simeon reached for the port. “Well, it does leave me stuck with human beings who claim to be gods.”
These three questions in turn correspond to the first three steps of the fivefold biblical covenant pattern: Transcendence, Hierarchy, and Ethics. Thus, to be in covenant with God (as every man is) is to be in a place, a sphere of accountability and influence. “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
“Where are you going with this?”
“You’ll see. I rip into Christians again. You like that.”
Only a return to the holistic vision presented in the Bible — a worldview that is not only covenantal, but also historical, typological, and architectural — can rescue modern theology from its current malaise. Without all four elements, Christianity is an ideology divorced from the physical world, and the academy is a gnostic temple.
“‘Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof!’”
“Edomite.”
In the Scriptures, we possess all of the building blocks we require to restore the academy, yet we continue to serve the thinnest of gruels as if it were Babette’s feast. Christians agree that a faith in God that is not founded upon a deep understanding of His past works and His future promises is far less likely to sustain believers through personal, familial, social, or even cultural trials. What is overlooked is the fact that sacred architecture is a form of promise: the Gospel itself is a house which incorporates the ethical, the social, and the physical. Each believer, and each congregation, can then not only discern what God is actually doing in history, but also better discern their own place in the big story.
“But history is a mess. And the Church is a mess.”
“Jesus is a craftsman. History is the workshop floor.”
Training in a truncated “biblical worldview” that has been extracted and thus abstracted from the Bible by those with a legislative bent is no solution either. It is art that courts, charms, and trains the soul of a culture. Theological lawyers possess no balm that can soothe the soul in its dark night. The saint questions not only the existence of God but also the beauty of His character. The fire of Testing only “indwells” us as part of a sacrificial story, one that ends, like the book of Revelation, with the beauty of holiness. Jesus Himself endured the cross “for the joy that was set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2). Like the Law, His voluntary death was only a means to an end. The cross is an empty cross. The tomb is an empty tomb. These “non-images” of resurrection were the source of the courage of the apostolic martyrs.
In our suffering and our doubting, the Bible does not serve up theological propositions. It provides an understanding of every trial as a crucial part of a sequence, one which begins with Creation, ends with Glorification, and holds the precious believer at the center in the crucible of Testing. By the Spirit, the trials with which all saints must contend — whether the voluntary flames of martyrdom, or the pangs of heartache, betrayal, poverty, bereavement, or disease — become refining rather than consuming fires. With His face veiled and His voice disguised in our circumstances, Jesus repeats the triune question: Is there a God? Is He good? What must I do?
Faith that is not tested is not faith. Obedient faith incarnates the Word of God as a visible expression of the character of God. Under Moses, the Law was written on tablets that it might be written on flesh. Under Christ, the opposite is true. Theonomy is within you.
“The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:20-21)
God not only is, but He is also good, and a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).
“I can see why you draw comfort from that,” Simeon interjected. “It sure beats my philosophy of suffering.”
“What’s that?”
“Shit happens. But peddling hope in a MacGuffin-God is a cruelty wrapped in kindness, a contrived motivation, and a false comfort. Deus absconditus is an argument from silence, one which naturalism rejects with an untold fury.”
“Certainly, but our unseen God can be heard. There is real comfort in His promises. Naturalism doesn’t reject a hidden God so much as it invents a silent one.”
“So you say. But the Word isn’t exactly clear, is it? You Christians seem to spend a great deal of time arguing amongst yourselves over those ‘inspired’ texts.”
“That was my next point. A quote shared by my friend Remy might help with that. It’s from the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Boccaccio.”
Surely no one can believe that poets invidiously veil the truth with fiction, either to deprive the reader of the hidden sense, or to appear the more clever; but rather to make truths which would otherwise cheapen by exposure the object of strong intellectual effort and various interpretation, that in the ultimate discovery they shall be the more precious.
“Once found, the lost coin is treasured all the more.”
“Not just treasured but also multiplied. Paradise found makes Eden look like a potted shrub.”
“Or a seed. I know the Bible.”
“Hitchens would be proud of you. That’s why you’re another pair of eyes.”
“Dawkins would tell you that your God is ‘…the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’”
“Did you actually memorize that?”
“Yes, but even I’m weary of it. I wonder whether he ever read the Bible since childhood except in order to devil-quote it. It is a gross and inaccurate overstatement. Yet the question remains: Is the God of the Old Testament good?”
All true light is gift-wrapped in darkness. The Bible is not a simple book. Visions are received in the deepest of sleeps. The life of the world hinged upon the judgment of the nations. Then, of course, God incarnate was born in a stable. Jesus’ power over demons was borne of temptation. The better Adam rose from a tomb. The purified Bride of Christ emerged from tribulation under the Herods. Evening and morning bring a new day.
But the dark nights are not something we ourselves control. As Nietzsche said:
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.1Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146.
Jesus called us to judge ourselves that we might not be judged. The practice of self-examination is part of becoming a truly civilized human being. But even this can lead to pride, and that is why it is not enough.
Unlike the Herods — those cowards who took up Satan’s offer of all the kingdoms of the world if they would only bow the knee to him — Jesus spoiled and shamed the principalities and powers not by staring into the abyss but by willingly offering Himself upon its altar.2See Altar of the Abyss. Our weakness is strength because priestly submission to God naturally generates an irresistible kingly majesty.
Thus, the deepest shadow work must be done in the wilderness by God Himself. Only He truly knows the human heart. The fiery serpents on earth are as much His angels as the seraphim in heaven. The words, tools, and weapons that cut into Adam, Abram, Israel, and Jesus, did so by heaven’s command.
“How does that not make your God a sadistic tyrant?”
“Besides the fact that the promised glory will make any affliction seem like a trifle, our suffering is never gratuitous. Abraham came to know God as a loving Father and a competent surgeon. As a young man, my friend David once met Richard Wurmbrand, the Romanian pastor who was incarcerated and tortured by Russian Communists. David suggested to him that persecution might do the Western Church some good. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wurmbrand responded that persecution is not something to be wished for. So Testing comes at the discretion of Christ, who knows all things and tries all hearts.”
Only suffering at the hand of God enables us to fight monsters without becoming monsters. The only way to expose the darkness of the abyss is to enter into it by the light of the Word. The monster from the deep that swallows you at God’s behest is the very monster that will be swallowed up in victory. No guts, no glory.
As it is for butterflies, true self-discovery entails a “death.” God calls us to die, daily, and in myriad ways. As with a quantum particle, knowledge of the ego changes the ego. But true individuation occurs only in congregation, that is, through sacrificial service. In the testimony of suffering, the humble heart expresses that God is as good in His justice as He is in His mercy. Yet even a pure heart only sees through a glass darkly.
“Illuminating. Time for a cigar.”
Read Part 2
References
| ↑1 | Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146. |
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| ↑2 | See Altar of the Abyss. |
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