The Other Side of Hope

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S.Eliot


Over the course of the past year, I have witnessed more tears and felt the heaviness of grief more often than ever before in my life. As a chaplain in a hospital, I have sat with patients and patients’ family members in the midst of crushing news time and time again. It is never easy no matter how much time we have to prepare ourselves for it. When it finally happens, when we finally receive the crushing news, it is always crushing whether we have an hour, a day, a week, or years to prepare for it.

Words like hope and hopelessness, vitality and despair, heaven and hell can easily remain little more than words among other words. They can easily remain metaphorical concepts that we move and manipulate in the course a sentence in order to formulate our grand theologies of hope and love. However, when such words remain nothing more than concepts, they are empty of any sort of concrete significance, and when they remain empty of concrete significance, they leave the speaker of such words as nothing more than a parrot repeating useless mantras while watching the rush of lava approach steadily after a volcanic eruption.

If our theological language never touches the ground, if our words never bespeak experience, then they will be as cute as children in the schoolyard discoursing about determination and courage. Those children are not necessarily speaking lies by any means, but when they speak of determination and courage, it is not the same in the least as when a sixty-seven year old migrant worker reflects on his life or when a fifty-four year old Chinese lady tells the story about when she moved to America when she was twenty-eight without knowing how she would begin her new life. When the migrant worker and the Chinese lady speak of determination and courage, their words are colored with their experience. They have a knowing look in their eyes. Determination and courage are not mere words to them. Determination is when that migrant worker would eat only one meal a day in order to save enough money to buy his children shoes so they could go to school and learn English. Courage is when that young Chinese girl got on the plane and did not turn back to her parents waving goodbye. Their words have real concrete significance.

These past months as a chaplain in a hospital I have felt, experienced the theological words so often used throughout my time in seminary. And I must admit that theological concepts such as resurrection have felt distant; victory has been far out of reach. In such moments – and they are many – what is the function of theology? I have asked myself this again and again. In a clinical context and more broadly in a medicated society, what is the role of theology? I have not yet arrived upon a fully satisfying answer. However, I do think that in order for there to be a satisfying answer, it must come in the form of language and narratives that are full of experience, full of concrete significance. It is only when such language and narratives are rich with experience and concrete significance that they will have the capacity to frame our hopeless situations with genuine hope-filled perspective. Imaginary lines do nothing for a bleeding portrait. 

“Down to Earth”: an Anthropology

When I told my mom some of the classes I would be taking in my last few quarters at Fuller Seminary, she expressed her delight and then said, “And how are you going to stay down to earth?” I chuckled and jokingly said, “I cannot help but stay down to earth. Both my feet tread the earth every day.” In retrospect I think I should’ve added, “When we soar too close to the sun, our wings melt, so I will be sure to stay nearer to the ground.”

I have fond memories of growing up in rural South Carolina and being able to smell the soil as the dew evaporated in the morning. I miss that smell.

While we live, we may develop the desire to soar to the heights of human achievement, but as soon as we are born, gravity begins pulling us into the grave. This is not my attempt at seeming cynical, but I would like to remain well grounded in recognizing my own finitude, something of which teenagers are prone to be ignorant.

Quite a few folks point out similarities between humans and animals, and I think rightly so. It doesn’t take much imagination to note similarities between humans and animals. Other folks point out the vast differences between humans and animals, and again I think rightly so. Genesis may be considered to be too archaic for providing insights into anthropology, but I think Genesis paints a rather illuminating picture. It plants us firmly on the ground like many of the other animals, and it notes that humans are spirited: we are spirited dirt people. Now what this signifies precisely is the beginning of debate. Perhaps, along with Hamlet we will declare that humans are “the paragon of animals…and yet what is this quintessence of dust?” (2.2).

We Christians, especially in America, don’t know what the heck to do with apocalyptic literature most notably in the canonical witness. Our rather frightful incapacity for reading apocalyptic literature leaves us thinking that we are extraterrestrial creatures visiting the earth only for a short while. This couldn’t be farther from the canonical witness’ portrait of what it means to be human.

Our modern forefathers had a thing or two to say about what it means to be human. That great wizard Pascal spoke wisdom that will continue to echo in our ears for generations to come: “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, a man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality” (347).

Recalling the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, Voltaire would probably not have been too far off from echoing Pascal’s conclusion that we are but feeble things, and in light of several recent major disasters, Pascal’s remarks about our frailty have been accentuated further.

Descartes is famous or infamous for declaring, “I think therefore I am.” However, some folks have facetiously pointed out that according to Descartes’ own rationale he cannot even say, “I think therefore I am,” only “thoughts are being thunk.” In any case, I sure hope I am more than merely a thinking thing. Descartes’ reflections, and for that matter Pascal’s, may have been of some worth; however, we would likely do ourselves a disservice by not moving beyond Descartes’ rather limited and dubious conclusions. His conclusions were not quite conversant with Genesis’ anthropological portrait nor were they trying to be.

Wittgenstein has greatly influenced contemporary theological conversations and rightly so. You might say that he has dusted away the cute homunculus from the alleged seat in our skull, and this spring-cleaning has not been to our detriment. In moral discourse, MacIntyre has made an assertion or two, and fortunately for us morality apparently has a body.

Unlike our animal friends, we humans are monomaniacs when it comes to telling stories about ourselves. It might be said that we are walking narratives more concrete, hilarious, grotesque, and subtle than any of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories.  

Whatever fancy descriptions we use for anthropology especially a theological anthropology, we should likely remember to keep things down to earth. After all, we are dirt people. 

“What is Truth?”

We are born, we live, and we die. And somewhere in between we want to know and feel something real, something true. Whether or not we are able to come upon a grand theory of the universe, we want to experience something real. Pilate’s question, “what is truth” is our question, and it the question that has rung in our ears through the centuries.

Henry Thoreau said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Walden). This is the visceral horror.

Part of the trouble is that we don’t know precisely what we are looking for, but we hope that when we come across it that it will be apparent: we will know that is it.  However, everywhere we look somebody has claimed truth, but when we look a little closer we think, “No, that’s not it.”

Naming shapes our perception of others, the world, and ourselves: take the word “immigrant” as an example. We name this and that; we label “those” people and ourselves, and in the process we poison the waters and pretend that we haven’t done so. Our troubled perception bespeaks our propensity and incapacity to name things. 

We are in the hunt for something real, but in the process our proclivity for misnaming things sends us south when we should probably go north. And so our troubled perception continues; we continue to shake our heads when we see people claiming to “possess” truth. We all seem to want it, but then maybe it’s not an it that we seek. Have we misnamed it as an object? However, objects are easier to handle, to possess, to manipulate and wield as weapons. We then prefer lies to the truth as long as the lies help us augment our own security. We long for truth. But we opt for cheap imitations, and we name those cheap imitations as “true.”   

We want to cut to “the truth,” and so we use words as swords when they could be used as plowshares. With guns and tanks it would seem easier to take captive truth than to do the precarious thing of letting truth captivate us. I would add, however, that usually we do not have much of a choice; it sneaks upon us without us knowing and so we take up arms fearing that our cheap imitations will be uncovered for what they are. 

For various reasons, Christians are often misled into thinking that Christians possess the truth, albeit “the truth” of which they speak frequently slips into generic affirmations that are safe and superfluous. I would suggest that Christians do not have possession of much at all, but they are to bear witness to truth. And it is with words that Christians bear witness to an incarnated truth they cannot control.

“What is truth?” This question may seem to be an easy question to ask if it is held at a distance as if it does not have dire implications for the one holding it at a distance. How truth is named is of special importance because what we perceive as “true” will be according to our naming of it. To our horror, we may awake to learn that not only have we not lived, but also we have intentionally misnamed life in order to name death as “life,” which is perhaps the life we would rather live as “good” and “true.”  

Death and Love

I have not felt the urge to write a blog for quite some time, so I have decided simply to mention a few of the books I have been reading recently each accompanied with a brief quotation.

The Aeneid by Virgil. "Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?” (110, Penguin Classics).

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. "Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death” (487, Vintage).

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats.

"Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam

And Usna’s children died”

(“The Rose of the World”, Scribner)

The Complete Poems and Plays, T.S. Eliot.

"Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many.

I had not thought death had undone so many.”

(“The Waste Land,” I. The Burial of the Dead; faber and faber)

The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. "Religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness” (64, Harcourt).

The Rise of Christianity by W.H.C. Frend. "Christianity arose from the life, preaching, and death of Jesus of Nazareth” (12, Fortress). This opening statement of the first chapter illustrates this book’s rather peculiar underplaying of the importance of Jesus’ resurrection. Accordingly, I suggest this book be read in conjunction with The Resurrection of the Son of God, which expounds upon the significance that Jesus’ resurrection had for the early Christians.

I did not realize until after I compiled these brief quotations that they all involve death. I had not planned that; I did not plan to be so gloomy. However, I think it is important not to ignore death. I think it is important to realize that death is the fate of us all and that with Christ death loses its sting.

A Few Variegated and Disjointed Words Concerning a Path of Least Resistance

Some of us have trekked down the cloudy road of doubt, while others have continued on sunnier roads. For those who have walked along the dreary path perhaps a brief reflection will serve as a flashlight, however infinitesimal it may be (even such a small flashlight is better than none at all).

Doubt is analogous to a lens and when looking through it everything seems most dubitable. It is similar to a grey lens through which the entire world seems bleak and pointless. And then having grown accustom to the company of doubt’s seemingly honest company, the easiest thing in the world to do is to doubt, to doubt even oneself – that French mental magician, whose name I shall not mention, set an unfortunate precedent. In a way doubt becomes a self-perpetuating vacuum sucking inward. Even oneself is sucked into doubt, obliterating oneself.

Doubt is synergetic. It may be similar to a quagmire. If a person sinks into a deep muck and tries to wiggle free, the person will only sink further. It has been said that doubt begets doubt. This may not be too far off the mark, though a dose of doubt about some things may be good medicine to avoid gullibility, but I think at that point it’s not doubt anymore. It’s merely discernment. So doubt, in a sense, breeds itself, and once it begins it spreads growing stickier and stickier.

For some of us, doubt may be considered a path of least resistance. For some of us, it is a propensity. This is dangerous, for, though a measure of doubt may be good medicine as previously mentioned, doubt seems to be “engineered” in such a way that it can hijack human resources (such as reason, emotion, psyche, etc.) for their own self-destruction. In this way, doubt is analogous to the viciousness of cancer.

An ethics professor said during a lecture last fall, “Without community, we wither.” This is wisdom. Of course, “community” does not refer to arbitrary or affected groupings of individuals but of an authentically interrelated composite (though composed of individuals, the whole is distinct from the individuals individually) – let community be defined and judged not according to quantity of relationships but of quality. This composite can be synergetic, and this synergetic communion is, at least in part, an answer to the withering reality of doubt. A person must reach out for help from others in order to get out of the deep muck – this may not be the only way, but it is a way. Open dialogue within the context of authentic (unaffected) community is a healthy alternative and anodyne for the easy though treacherous path of doubt.

Kierkegaard’s technical use of the term “despair” and my generic use of the term “doubt” are not synonymous. However, as a tangential conclusion, I will parallel them here. When the despairer (I will not explain which sort of despairer, but you may read The Sickness Unto Death for further understanding on the issue) confides his despair to another, he despairs further. His despair intensifies. But let this not be a deterrence from confiding, for acknowledging despair and then confiding is of infinite value; it is the first step. The same goes for doubt. If it catches a person in isolation, it systematically appropriates and consequently disintegrates everything in its viselike clutches. However, if doubt is pinpointed and acknowledged, the low-hanging clouds may part, perhaps only for a moment, allowing a ray of sun to illumine the path.

Many Books on Doubt and Ambiguity

Needless to say much ink has been spilt for thousands of years regarding the issues of doubt and ambiguity. Job curses the day of his birth. The psalmist says his bones are in agony. Hamlet’s many soliloquies bespeak the gnawing inside of him. Raskolnikov grows physically sick toiling over matters of murder and meaning. As Prince Andrei lies mortally wounded on the battlefield, he stares up at the sky and contemplates existence and thoughts of home flood his consciousness. Roquentin is surrounded by people yet he feels sick with loneliness among other things. There are numerous other fictional people to add to the list, but what do all these fictional people indicate about the nonfictional world of people? Of course, a glance at historical contexts and myriads of reasons and causes will surface. It might be said that books grieving over existential doubt and ambiguity are induced by a trifling interest. It might be said that many people continue reading such books out of curiosity. However, generally speaking, I think there are other reasons.

These fictional people were squeezed out of their authors as if squeezed out of grapes in a wine press. The grapes endured great suffering but for great result. Stanley Hauerwas said that we would lose something if Dostoevsky had lived today and we made him a psychologically “well adjusted person.” So perhaps doubt and ambiguity are not thoroughly evil.

A rudimentary observation will likely note that doubt and ambiguity are described with rather vague metaphors. This seems true and with good reason. Metaphors seem to capture what plain language cannot. Dark-grey clouds hang low overhead, and they suggest an imminent storm. The air grows thick and bursts of light flash through the sky. With a smile and a nod, the trapdoor falls and the rope grows taunt. Choking and kicking of feet. Then calm. The feeling of existential doubt may be vague, but it is certain. This is a reason for the use of metaphor. The metaphor may be slippery and difficult to pinpoint, but it is apt.

Again, why the fascination with such existential wallowing as doubt and ambiguity? As of yet, I have only mentioned these issues as expounded by the ink on innumerable pages. It may be that many have tasted the bitterness and then read Dostoevsky, and said, “Is it true? I am not the only one who has tasted this fruit?” I will wager a guess that so much ink has been spilt on the same issues because these issues are not merely interesting but they are unshakable and intrinsic. For these reasons, at least in part, much ink has been spilt and will continue to be spilt. As long as we humans continue to live outside the garden, we will continue to spill ink and to wallow and to groan and to read the ink that has been spilt.

Ontological Quibbles: Postscript

The last entry was quite fragmented, as my entries are usually. As of late, I have felt unable to think to the contrary. However, I thought it would be appropriate to give the previous entry a postscript aimed at the issue of ontological distinction and development. But this will be no more thorough than any other entry, in fact less so.

Picking up where I left off…

If relationship has ontological significance and epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, then the ontological difference between the pastor and the Hindu is with whom they each have relationship. The pastor allegedly has relationship with God. This relationship has profound ontological significance, and this may or may not be physically indicated by the community in which the pastor participates. Something analogous may be said of the Hindu, though I imagine it would look and sound much different. And in the pastor’s terms, the Hindu’s ontology would be without relationship with God, thus ontologically in the negative, which then ontologically distinguishes the pastor from the Hindu.

As a side note, which cannot and should not be omitted, praxis is a consequence of ontology. A nonreligious person may have certain practices, which seem rather similar to those of someone with a particular religious ontology. However, this nonreligious person, though he or she has certain practices, lacks the particular religious relationship which alters ontology (a horse may walk on its two back legs, but it is no more a human than when it walks on all four legs (a flippant example)). On the other hand, the person, whose ontology has been altered in accord with a relationship with God, shall begin a certain practice as evidence and as a consequence of the new relationship. Henceforth, this person’s ontology and praxis shall mutually inform each other as the person grows more fluent in relationship and proper praxis.

It may be said, for example, that the church is full of terrible people. This is a sound observation. Then it may be said, “how can it be that such a people have been ontologically altered due to their alleged relationship with God and consequent new praxis? If this is so, then God is a terrible one.” The last inference goes astray, for though the people may be a ragged group of deceitful egoists this is not evidence of God’s not existing or of God’s being a rather nasty brat. The last inference should be inverted. Instead of concluding that God must not exist or that God is nasty because God’s people are so. It may be concluded that God is one of mercy and grace that God should bestow such gifts upon even these such sordid people. Perhaps, God does so with the hope that the ontological alteration due to relationship will not be stagnant but will continue along with praxis to mold the people into something less ragged and nasty. Thus, ontological alteration due to relationship with God may be a reality, though socially it may seem as if nothing much has happened.

Fragments: Ontological Quibbles in Theology and Literature

What does theology have to say about ontology? What does literature have to say about ontology? Can they be mutually informative regarding this issue?

Over the course of a few years, I asked, “what is the essential ontological difference between the Hindu and the Methodist pastor?” (this inquiry could be ventured in a variety of ways, and there are many answers in theology, though I felt generally dissatisfied). They are after all right across the street from each other, not even two hundred feet. I erroneously began this inquiry with belief asking, “what is the ontological significance of belief?” I was gravely disappointed (belief has epistemological implications though not direct ontological implications).

Since then I have directed my inquiry in a different direction, and I have concluded that, though epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, relationship not belief has (direct) ontological significance.

The importance of community for the sake of identity among other things is currently emphasized by many. (This correlates to the much discussed apparent contradiction that though we seem to be “knowers” we do not know ourselves but must rely on others knowing us to know ourselves - we see ourselves and have certain notions of ourselves, but are these notions accurate or fabricated or at least partial truths? We need other people to identify us, and we need other people inform who we are.) However, I think more often than not this hackneyed emphasis lacks clarity in so far as it inadequately shows the concrete reality of identity (it is limited by its expressiveness and lack of referent).

Often community is offered as a way of ratifying identity but these attempts seem to fall short in showing concretely what this means or what this terminology (“community”) is doing to indicate resolution regarding the issue of ontology. I suggest that, with the imaginative powers of literary theory and narrative, we may begin to grasp the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (to validate ontology, a person must be capable of identifying what it is one is validating; thus, identity is crucial for ontology).

Do modern novels have the potential to help us begin grasping the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community? Maybe. Some can answer this only in the negative, for their writers had a much different agenda - showing the protagonists in isolation to reveal the true “nature” of the person (but in seeking to truly reveal the identity of the person the person was lost in phenomenological wallowings (isolation is an ontological vacuum-like relational inversion; the ontology is evanescent in this circumstance)). However, novels such as The Brothers Karamazov, a novel way ahead of its time, may be helpful in this area, for much of the identity and thus the ontology of the brothers (as even the title suggests) relies heavily on relationships. The immediate and also the extended communities of the brothers give tacit remarks and validations regarding identity and thereby ontology. We “know” Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, according to their mutually informative communities. I began to realize the potential of The Brothers Karamazov regarding ontology, when Esther exclaimed after reading a disturbing passage seemingly focused on Dmitri, “where is Alyosha in all of this!” Then I realized, “yes, Alyosha is there! Dmitri is the brother Alyosha wishes with all his heart to save!” It in this unsettling passage that we see a snippet of Alyosha’s enduring mercy. He would wish to save even this mongrel (this could and should be explained further, but this is at least a start).

Should theology and literature be divided? With the example of the bible, we see that it is best not. In terms of identity and consequently ontology, the bible is easily (apart from its canonization) the highest quality theological treatise, if for no other reason than it captures the imaginative powers of literature and thereby shows concretely the reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (think of Genesis and 2 Samuel as examples). To this end, theology should rightly appropriate the powers of good literature and find its home in narrative.

Literary theory, on the other hand, may do well to learn from theology in learning how identity and consequently ontology is validated (in community) and thus develop new means of crafting the identity and ontology of a given protagonist(s).

synthetic philosophy

My earliest childhood memories are of my parents reading me fiction. Since then I have explored fiction relentlessly, only to find that yes indeed, “the reading of books is endless.” What began with The Hobbit continues with Dickens and Dostoevsky and Percy. Somewhere along the way self-awareness struck, and I had to ask myself the questions, “what is this I am reading and why do I like it so much?” These are two questions with which I continue to wrestle.

For the first question, I haven’t the knowledge to give an accurate history of the novel, but I am willing to wager a guess that many modern novelists seem to have a desire, an urge, to capture that which C.S. Lewis indicates cannot be captured, the enjoyed, life as life is actually lived. What else is raw realism of subjectivity but an endeavor to do just this, capture life as it is? Portions of The Sound and the Fury show what I mean. Perhaps, Faulkner pined to capture it, life, but alas he captured what C.S. Lewis called not the enjoyed but the contemplated. Faulkner strove, perhaps subconsciously, in vain to display the enjoyed, but as soon as he began to write the enjoyed was but an imprint, the contemplated version of the enjoyed. But this does not reduce the novel to triviality.

The novel’s capacity to literally multitask astounds me (naturally, for this discussion I will assume the novel to be written by a good novelist opposed to a poor one. Other more derogatory discussions may be saved for the cheap novelists and their fast-food-fiction). An anthropology, theology, psychology, etc., may be discoursed with no more than a wink, nod, and a scream. For this reason, the novel is synthetic philosophy, capturing in a single dialogue or description or gesture a treatise of life. But a novel is more than a single dialogue or gesture; it is an ocean of dialogues and gestures. Thus, the novel, in a mere hundred well used pages, is ten volumes of anthropology, theology, and psychology. A novel may be a contemplated version of the enjoyed, but with a mere sentence a mirror is set in front of nature to divulge her virtue. A page-long dialogue in a novel has the capacity to possess more meaning than a classroom full of textbooks.

The second question (“why do I like it so much?” ) baffles me because in part it is a complex question, a question involving more than one question. The “I” must be considered, and the “it” must be considered. What is it about me that draws me toward the novel? How does “it” relate to that aspect of me that so desires it?

With the aforementioned considerations regarding novels, it comes as little surprise that throughout history traditions have been preserved with stories. Furthermore, it seems to make rather good sense that the Scriptures involve myriads of stories. It must be true then that I am drawn to stories and more particularly to novels for a multiplicity of reasons. For one, stories are integral to my faith, and second I have a certain fondness for stories due to a host of childhood memories. Furthermore, stories do what nothing else can do, recount life. And life is something worth recounting; we humans live and die for our memories.

Stories aim at uncategorized life, nearly the enjoyed; if nothing more, stories are a way of preserving a version of especially important enjoyed moments. It’s the critics who vivisect stories and make them what they’re not, themes and caricatures. If my parents had read only critics’ reviews of stories to me when I was I child, I suspect I would never have mustered the motivation to read a story. Fortunately, they introduced me to sprawling adventures wrapped in paper and ink. I am in their debt.

Who Am I?

Identity is curious and elusive. I do not claim to have a handle on it. We all want to say we have identity and know who we ourselves are, but how many of us can indicate our own identity and how might we go about doing so? Last night I went to a lecture by Stanley Hauerwas. He explained more eloquently than I shall attempt here: we get to know him through other people’s narratives about him; we learn who he is by discovering other people’s relationships with him. Conversely, we likely learn less about who he really is by hearing himself talk about himself. This may be an analog to the issue of identity. A person’s identity may be located by discovering a person’s relationships. Nietzsche furthers this point: “we are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves…of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto ‘each is the farthest away from himself,’ as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers.”

This may become clearer (or muddled further) with an example. Who is Raskolnikov? This question may be answered by saying, “he’s a muderer in one of Dostoevsky’s novels.” But who is it who is the muderer? And who was he before he murdered? And was he who was previous to murdering altered by murdering? (These questions may be answered in part by his dream in the first tenth of the story) Setting aside these such questions, we may then ask, as many people have done, “why did he murder?” This question strikes me as hilarious because so much ink has been spilled on that question, when actually it cannot be answered even by Dostoevsky. He explained definitively in a letter to his publisher why the student killed the old lady, and in a letter to a friend he said he is not sure why Raskolnikov killed the old “louse.” I assume Dostoevsky’s letter to his friend was a bit more honest. What does this have to do with identity? In relation to the aforementioned process of discerning identity in Hauerwas’ lecture, it has quite a lot to do with identity. Perhaps, one reason even Dostoevsky did not know why precisely Raskolnikov killed the old lady is because we meet Raskolnikov not long before he commits the crime and thereby have little resources for discerning who Raskolnikov is via relationships with other people. All we have is a rather isolated person who mumbles to himself and remains distant from other people even in conversations. This of course is indicative, but it is not what we need to acquire who he is exactly other than an isolated maunderer who is tortured by his economic situation among other things - Raskolnikov’s solitary entry may be modernity’s influence on Dostoevsky.

We have the Narrator’s narrative in relationship to Raskolnikov, which I originally thought might be needed in this conversation due to Raskolnikov’s origin being in the Narrator, which I thought might be analogous to God’s relationship to Augustine as indicated in Augustine’s Confessions. However, the Narrator does not posses an ultimate perspective on Raskolnikov as does God in relation to Augustine, for the Narrator (or creator of the Narrator, Dostoevsky) confesses ignorance as indicated in his letter to a friend. So as Hauerwas indicated last night, we are ultimately understood according to and within God’s narrative about us, but this is not analogous to the Narrator in relationship to Raskolnikov. Therefore, though the Narrator may be included in the many relationships with Raskolnikov, it is not required, so the Narrator need not be included in this discussion.

Ironically, there are many relationships throughout the story, though Raskolnikov is radically isolated. Two crucial relationships in the story, which may give insight into the identity of Raskolnikov, are Raskolnikov’s relationships with Razumikhin and Sonya. Razumikhin’s relationship with Raskolnikov is primary in the first portion of the story. Razumikhin is a voice of reason and mostly a good influence on Raskolnikov. Razumikhin is a faithful friend but to a narcissistic axe murderer. Did Razumikhin go wrong? Probably not because Razumikhin does not come into relationship with Raskolnikov in any prominent way until after the murder, and even when Razumikhin is prominent Raskolnikov remains rather distant from Razumikhin, especially considering Razumikhin is one of Raskolnikov’s only real friends at the time. This relationship may not be as helpful in identifying Raskolnikov, for Raskolnikov insulates himself in this relationship - though that’s a start.

It’s difficult to determine when precisely (good job Dostoevsky) Razumikhin drifts from primary to secondary friend, and somewhere along the way Sonya drifts into being a primary friend to Raskolnikov. This is crucial, for though Razumikhin is a portrayed as a mostly good person Sonya does something more. She is a prostitute that her family might not starve to death after her father died and left her mother with several children to feed. Thus, Sonya is at the bottom of the social latter, but she is somehow simultaneously a selfless saint who serves her family relentlessly. When she drifts into becoming a primary friend and confidant to Raskolnikov, we find her to be a penetrating voice of mercy and truth. She immediately empathizes with Raskolnikov’s burden when he confesses his crime to her, but she requires that he confess to the publicly. He refuses at first. Thus, we see need for confession, and his denial of that fact. Raskolnikov is thoroughly insulated, but then he melts and falls to Sonya’s feet. A murderer forgiven by a prostitute. A prostitute who urges confession and repentance. A dead man resurrected through confession and repentance. These snippets are merely snippets, but they may at least suggest the potential for discovering the identity of Raskolnikov by way of relationships with other people.

Unfortunately for us, we may never really see a clear picture of Raskolnikov because the narrator of Raskolnikov focused so exclusively on Raskolnikov - a rather individualistic, modern, way of seeking to thoroughly show who he is, which ironically does the opposite. But the isolation seems to be a correct diagnostic; the isolation should be expected to intensify after Raskolnikov murders. We know lots of what Raskolnikov thinks and does, but we know little of who is the one who is thinking and doing. When he confesses at the end, we get a glimmer of hope that maybe he will one day enter into vital relationships, vital relationships which may then reveal who this Raskolnikov fellow is. But the epilogue only suggests such a thing.

It seems then that, when we social creatures drift away from relationships, we may in fact lose ourselves. We may drift into evanescence, practically invisible to others and thereby to ourselves. “Who is Raskolnikov?” may be answered in the negative. We do not precisely know who he is. He thinks and does things, but we do not know who is doing the thinking and the doing. But this negative answer may provide at least some indication in favor of the converse. Relationships, other people’s narratives about “me,” may in fact provide a glimpse of “who” I am.

From Death to Life

If I were a cat and had nine lives, I would spend one of those lives studying Dostoevsky’s corpus. In the past few years I have merely begun reading his monstrous corpus. The more I read the more I realize just how much there is to read - though I must confess in advance that I have never read his first novel, Poor Folk (I’ve tried three times but alas the few pages I’ve read were ghastly). And then at the end of the day when the reading is done, I realize my understanding has barely touched the surface. Touché, Dostoevsky. From House of the Dead and Notes From Underground to Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky touches on some of the most vital and sensitive areas of life. In fact, I actually know Raskolnikov, though mostly as just an acquaintance. What makes all these novels so good? To answer in Flannery O’Connor’s manner, I might say that Dostoevsky introduces us to people, and it’s a mystery what will happen next. Before we know it we’ve been swept away into disaster, comedy, and pining. From what I can tell, it’s rather impossible to indicate by bullet points or litany reasons why Dostoevsky is so good - in fact Kierkegaard asserted that if “you can list reasons why you love her, you do not love her; you only love those aspects about her.” So maybe it’s better not to list reasons why Dostoevsky is worth reading and perhaps studying extensively.

I wish I could say that my first encounter with Dostoevsky was sublime, but alas it’s not. On one of the many book shelves in my parents’ house sat a row of comic books. I was young then, perhaps six or seven years old. I liked pictures as much as stories, so naturally I frequented this shelf stocked with comic books. The comic books had neat pictures, but they were black and white - now those books are antiques, and my brother Philip would very much like to pinch them from me (I snuck them out of my parents’ house when I moved to California). I scanned the pictures not certain about the details of the stories but at least learning the generalities of the stories beginnings, middles, and endings. There was one particular book; it had a whale on the front, so I knew it was Moby Dick, a rather boring story about a guy who gets on a boat to stab whales with spears. I returned to this book often mostly because I thought the funny looking Indian, Queequeg, who smoked a funny looking pipe was interesting. There was also another book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I really liked this one, and in fact I read the actual full length story not long after because I like the pictures so much. Roving in caves and digging for buried treasure sounded like a lot of fun. There were numerous other such black and white comic books, too many to count at the time. It seemed like hundreds. Now I know it was more like twenty. The Invisible Man was another one of my favorites; I’m not certain why. And then there was another book I remember vividly, though I didn’t like it much. But it was so boring and irksome that I returned to it more than twice. It started with a guy walking and talking to himself. Then all of a sudden he pulled out an axe and killed an old lady for no apparent reason! Why would he do something like that? And then all he did was walk around and talk to people. For a six or seven year old boy, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, even as a comic book, was rather boring, but I remember it; something about it struck me even as a young boy who thought it was boring.
In college I rediscovered Dostoevsky. I heard someone mention “The Brothers Karamazov written by Dostoevsky,” and then in an instant childhood memories of that really boring comic book, Crime and Punishment, flooded my mind. Almost simultaneously I had the insatiable desire to read the Brothers Karamazov, and I did. Much to my surprise, it was not as boring as I remembered Crime and Punishment to be. The Karamazov brothers are a lot of things, but they are certainly not boring. The oldest brother Dmitri is in love with the same woman as his father. Ivan writes theological treatises to be ironic, for he is an atheist. And poor Alyosha, the youngest brother, is a monk in training; he is a beacon of purity. In the shadowy corners and cobwebs lurks Smerdyakov, the schemer, the illegitimate son. While reflecting on the Brothers Karamazov, it is sometimes difficult to think of these brothers, their relationships with each other and with others as something fictional. It’s all so vivid and vital.


Dostoevsky’s other novels, though not quite as masterful as The Brothers Karamazov, are nonetheless memorable. The twenty-six year old Prince Myshkin’s, Dostoevsky’s Christ figure (the idiot), relationship with the debauched world is startling and tragic. I am absent minded, and I forget a lot of things. But I will never forget Kirillov’s final scene with Stepanovich in Demons - I am reminded of O’Connor’s wisdom for fiction, “violence is not an end in itself but is an extreme situation that reveals what we are essentially.” There are many memorable people and events in Dostoevsky’s novels. Things happen that won’t soon be forgotten.

My junior year in college I hadn’t a clue what lay on a book shelf somewhere waiting to ambush me. Rediscovering Crime and Punishment in college was something analogous to meeting an old disliked acquaintance who turns out to be a rather formidable foe and indispensable friend. It didn’t take long for me to learn that the first page in the comic book and the first page in Volokhonsky’s translation are two different things. There is discontinuity between the pictures and the words. Perhaps, the pictures weren’t very good, but I think it’s because the world of the words can’t be copied with something other than words without adding and subtracting and thereby creating something different. Raskolnikov, Sonya, Svidrigailov, Porfiry, Razumikhin, and Marmeladov’s story can be told only, it seems, with words.

Unfortunately, I have never read any of Dostoevsky’s novels in Russian, perhaps one day. But even through translations, I think I know Dostoevsky had a way with words, introducing people, recounting tragedies as if they had happened, and drawing truth in crayon for anyone to see, even a young boy who only had the pictures.

Thus far, Dostoevsky has given me much. These are a few such reflections: a person strives to live in a coffin, in the chambers of death, in a prison, in addiction, underground, in rebellion. Trapped by self-imposed death the man underground can’t do anything; addicted to the “next time,” the gambler can’t let go and live; the rebel deceives himself into thinking death is better than life. And yet a person can truly live, only if he dies to death and rebellion. The murderer makes for himself a coffin and convinces himself that it's better to be in the coffin than outside of it. But a person must die to living in death. A person must relinquish death through confession in order to live, to resurrect into new life. The life after death to death is fraught with struggle, but it is truly life. Here is an ironic truth. We feeble humans strive to live according to our own deathly wishes, and yet life awaits to vitalize us if only we would die to death first.