Before the throne stood two men. One directly before the throne; the other off to its right-hand side.

I was frightened, disoriented, confused, dazed, overwhelmed by the whole scene. Desperate to understand my situation, I turned to the man standing behind me in line. “Where am I?” As I looked at him, I noticed the line of humanity stretching all the way to the horizon.

“You are at the last judgment,” he said. “We are in line to stand before our creator and be judged for the lives that we lived during our time on the earth.”

Just then, a tall, confident man came strolling along the line from his place much closer to the front. “Do you know what day today would be if we were still alive upon the earth?” he asked me, stopping and looking directly at me.

“The day of my funeral?” I asked tentatively.

“Easter,” he said loudly. “It is rather appropriate that we should come before God to be judged on Easter day, don’t you think?”

“Why is that?” I asked, terribly afraid that the very question might get me in some sort of trouble. I had heard of Easter, of course, but I didn’t really know much about it. My background had been as non-Christian as was possible in twentieth-century America. “Why is it appropriate that we should be judged on Easter?”

“Very simple,” he said. “Those of us who will be granted eternal life today will be granted it for one and only one reason—Easter!”

“So, what happened on Easter?” I asked sheepishly. I saw no need to hide the fact that I was a totally ignorant non-Christian.

“You don’t know?” the man asked. “I am Dr. Knoworthy, Dr. John Knoworthy. I studied the Bible for fifty-five years before I died. I can probably answer any questions you might have about what is going on here today. Feel free to ask away. I can see that you are a fellow American from the twenty-first century.” He reached out his hand to shake mine. “What is your name?”

“Jack,” I said.

He reached out his hand to the man just behind me in the line, “And what is your name?”

The man answered him, but I couldn’t make out what name he gave. He added, “I am afraid I am from a very different time and place in history from the two of you.”

Dr. Knoworthy turned back to me, “So, you want to know what happened on Easter and why that is so significant? Easter is the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.” He turned and pointed to the man standing just to the side of the throne up ahead. “That’s Jesus right up there.”

I had seen a couple of pictures of Jesus during my life. The man by the throne didn’t look anything like his pictures.

“Not a single person in this line deserves to be granted eternal life. The only way any one of us is going to get it is if Jesus intercedes for us. If Jesus wants us in his kingdom, then we will be there. If he doesn’t, we won’t. God is the one up there on the throne deciding our fate. But he has delegated the right to determine what our destiny will be to Jesus. So, if Jesus wants us to have life, we’ll be granted life. If he doesn’t want us to have life, we won’t be granted life. It’s as simple as that.”

Something was transpiring at the foot of the throne. I focused my attention on the proceeding. They were quite a distance away, but I could hear them like they were right in front of me.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” the unseen being spoke from the throne.

“Sir, I don’t see why you think you have the right to judge me. I think it is for me, for us, to judge you. You have caused so much suffering over the course of human history—it is you who should be held to account. If you condemn me, that is just one more act of cruelty. From my perspective, you are the evil one, not me. So I don’t care what you do with me. I don’t think you have the right to judge at all.”

The unseen judge addressed the man on his right, “Jesus, what do you have to say?”

“Father, I do not choose this man for the eternal kingdom.”

“So be it,” said the judge, addressing the man before him. “By your own words I judge you. Since you do not care what I do with you, I will give you the condemnation you deserve. Go to your condemnation.”

Two beings that I took to be angels led the man away toward a door on the left-hand of the throne.

“I am really in deep…” I stopped. I felt a very heavy sense of disappointment come over me. If only I had got my stuff together earlier. I had reached a turning point in my life just before I died. I had lived a messy and immoral life. Murder, violence, women, drugs. You name it, my life was filled with it. My life was full of crap. I saw that so clearly just before I was murdered. I was in the motel room that night, flopped out on the bed. In my desperation, I cried out to God, “God, I am a mess. I have completely wasted my life. I don’t know what to do. I just want to be different. Please, God, let me be different, make me good. Make me a different kind of man.” The very moment I had said that, the motel room door burst open and the intruder shot me dead. I don’t know which of my enemies got me, but God knows I deserved it. If only I had had more time. I groaned.

Dr. Knoworthy attempted to comfort me, “No, my friend. You are not beyond hope, as you seem to think. That is the good news of the Christian faith. No matter how evil a person is, he can be met with mercy if Jesus wants him to receive it. Jesus will request mercy from God for every one who belongs to him.”

“But I didn’t have enough time to belong to him,” I suggested.

“Nevertheless, Jesus can still speak for you. He can still ask God to grant mercy,” Dr. Knoworthy assured me.

“But what’s to say God will grant mercy just because Jesus asks for it?” I asked.

“Well, like I said, that is the good news part of the Good News. And that is why Easter is such a big deal. The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is proof positive that God is, as he himself put it, “well pleased” with his Son. The Bible goes on to explain that because God is “well-pleased” with the Son, God will grant mercy to any person whom the Son chooses to have in his kingdom. If Jesus has your back, you cannot lose! Precisely that is the good news for everyone who believes in and follows Jesus. And precisely that is the joy of Easter.”

Just, then, the next man in line approached the throne for judgment.

“I doubt if this next man is going to be granted Life,” Dr. Knoworthy confided. “I did, however, counsel him what he ought to say. I told him to simply acknowledge his unworthiness and look to Jesus for mercy. Who knows? Maybe it is not too late for him.”

I focused again on the proceedings before the throne.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” the unseen judge said from the throne.

“Sir, I agree with the last guy. I don’t see why you think you have the right to judge me. You have caused inexcusable suffering among us over the course of human history. It is you who should be judged, not I. I don’t think you have the right to judge me at all. So, I don’t care what you do with me. It is unfair in any case.”

A very strange look came over the man’s face. He looked like someone who had just made a very serious mistake and knew it. Dr. Knoworthy looked surprised as well. “Why didn’t he do as I told him?” he asked, mostly to himself.

But the man behind us answered his query, “God will not allow himself to be bullshitted. When you stand before God in judgment, only your sincere attitudes and beliefs can be expressed. You can resolve ahead of time that you will say what you think God wants to hear, but that isn’t what will come out of your mouth. What will come out is what you truly think and believe in your core.”

The judge invited Jesus to weigh in, “Jesus, what do you have to say?”

“Father, I do not choose this man for my kingdom.”

“So be it,” God said. “I give you the condemnation you deserve. Go to your condemnation.”

Once again, two angels led the man away toward the door on God’s left.

Yet another man was led before the throne.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” God said from the throne.

“Sir, I think I probably am not acceptable to you. I think you probably find me unworthy of everlasting life in your kingdom. I would like to say something in my own defense, though. I am caught off guard here a little. You see, I have never given a whole lot of thought to theology or religion or anything of that sort. I have just been more interested in other things. So, I come before you rather ill-prepared. I don’t really know what you want or expect. I mean, I tried to be good my whole life. I tried to help people and make their lives better. Now I did some bad things, mind you. I’m not saying I’m perfect or anything like that. But if you wanted more from me than I gave, I just don’t know what that would have been or how I would have done it. Really, I don’t actually care to think about the stuff that concerns you; it kinda bores me, really. I had many other things I was interested in during my life. So, I just kinda didn’t have a lot of time to get to know you and what you wanted from me.”

“Jesus, what do you have to say?” the judge asked.

“Father, you have taught me that the kingdom is for those who long to know and serve you. I cannot accept this man into the eternal kingdom.”

“So be it, since you have shown no interest in knowing and serving me, I deny you access to the kingdom where all will know me and serve me forever. I give you the condemnation you deserve. Go to your condemnation.”

Next a woman was led to the judge.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” God said from the throne.

“Your Majesty, I know that I deserve condemnation. I am a broken and flawed person. I am not worthy of life in your kingdom. And I can now see how important Jesus is to your decision with regard to me. I have not been a follower of Jesus, your Majesty, but I was always open to believing in him. The only reason I did not commit to following him is that there were so many problems, so many unanswered questions, so many reasons to be uncertain. I read books about how the accounts concerning Jesus were all fiction and legend. And since I didn’t see his life and death and resurrection for myself, I just didn’t know for sure. I was so afraid of making a mistake that it just seemed better to not make a rash commitment. I didn’t think it would be responsible to commit to something I was not sure was true. So, in my own defense, I was a very open-minded person my whole life. I never disrespected Jesus or those who followed him. I just think that a person should always remain open to different points of view.”

“Jesus, what is your pleasure?” the judge asked.

“Father, you taught me that the kingdom is for those who are so committed to being in your kingdom that they would give up all else to lay hold of it. This woman does not belong in your eternal kingdom. She does not want it with all her heart.”

“So be it. Since you lacked any desire for the kingdom that would compel you to search out the truth and commit to it, your declared openness to it is of no account. I deny you access to the eternal kingdom, where all will know me and serve me without reservation forever. I give you the condemnation you deserve. Go to your condemnation.”

I was shocked at the scene I had just witnessed. She seemed like such a nice lady. Condemnation? How was there any hope for me? I turned to my two newfound friends, “Why is she being blamed for not being able to sort out the truth from the lies? That seems harsh to me. If she honestly couldn’t be sure what was actually true, why was she expected to commit to it?”

The man from behind me answered, “There are two things that lead to uncertainty. One is not having enough of the right kind of information. God would never blame someone for not committing to what they could never know. The other thing is lack of real desire. Sometimes we lack the information we need because we aren’t interested enough to search it out. If the reason a person does not come to have enough of the right kind of information is because he never even attempted to acquire it, then that is damnable. That must be the case with that woman. She called it openness to what is true. But in actuality it must have been an unwillingness to seek for it and discover what is true. Open-mindedness can be the mask worn by a very foolish person. It can be the badge of one who, in reality, does not actually care enough to come to a conviction about what is true. Such a fool is damnable, however much he may be praised by all his friends.”

As the next person approached the judgment throne, Dr. Knoworthy leaned toward me and spoke softly, “We will see how well this next woman was listening to my teaching. She sat under my Bible teaching for decades.”

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” God said from the throne.

The woman responded, “Sir, I know that I deserve condemnation. I am weak, flawed, disobedient, double-minded—you name it—I have failed in every way. I do not deserve life in your kingdom. But, your Majesty, I believe that I will have an advocate. Sir, I have been a follower of your Son, Jesus, for several decades now. I have hardly missed a week of Dr. Knoworthy’s teaching of the Bible. They tell me that Dr. Knoworthy understands the Bible and the gospel better than anyone around. I have eagerly listened to what he has to say for many years. I am sure that what he has taught is true. So, I believe I have done what one must do to receive mercy. I know that it is the faithful student of your revealed word who will receive mercy. I believe I am such a student.”

“Jesus, what do you have to say?” God inquired.

“Father, the fact is that I have not chosen this woman for my kingdom. She has, in truth, embraced the truth about me with her mind; but she has not lived the truth.”

The woman immediately broke in to object, “But, Jesus, I went to church regularly. I served you in every way I knew how to serve you. I have always presumed that I belonged to you, that I was your disciple. How can it be that you will not speak on my behalf?”

“I never chose you. You were never mine.”

“But how can that be? How have I not lived the truth?”

Jesus looked up and gazed into her eyes. It was a look of love, but it was a stern look at the same time. She became very quiet and a look of horror came over her.

God spoke, “Very well, I deny you access to the kingdom. Go to your condemnation.”

“What just happened there?” I asked.

Dr. Knoworthy responded, “It is always possible for a human being to grasp the theory of the gospel intellectually without making a personal, inward commitment to actually live his or her life in the light of its truth. One can articulate the gospel with the utmost precision and yet not really own it and embrace it with his whole being. The one who authentically embraces it will actually live his life as one who believes it and as one who has invested his existence in its truth. It is easy to deceive oneself and others into thinking he believes the truth of the gospel because he can so easily and readily talk about it and reason from it accurately. But, alas, that is not enough. One must live like one who believes the gospel, not merely philosophize like one who understands gospel theory.

The man behind me interjected politely, “Well said, Dr. Knoworthy.”

“God knows things about that woman that we would have no way of knowing,” added Dr. Knoworthy. “Like Jesus said, the woman did not actually live the truth. She seemed to realize this truth the minute she looked into Jesus’ eyes.”

It finally hit me. How could there be an ounce of hope for me if all of these people stood condemned? I sunk into a deep sense of hopelessness. Dr. Knoworthy excused himself and went back to take his place in line. I remained silent, sensing my doom was approaching. There followed a long string of individuals standing before God to be judged. Every one of them received condemnation; and, with each new sentence of condemnation, my hopelessness grew deeper and deeper. I groaned. The man behind me reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder, “You’ll be alright,” he said.

I became immediately aware that it was now Dr. Knoworthy’s turn before the throne.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” God said from the throne once again.

“O! Eternal Triune Majesty, I am the greatest of sinners. I am worthy of nothing but condemnation. Almighty God, I have no other hope than the advocacy of my lord, the eternal Son, Jesus, the Christ. I stand here presuming that Jesus will ask you to show me mercy. That is the truth upon which I rest.”

The minute the words came out of Dr. Knoworthy’s mouth, he knew that he had damned himself. “I stand here presuming?” he muttered under his breath. “How could you possibly say, ‘I stand here presuming’? You know better than that, you fool.”

God ignored his muttering and turned to Jesus, “Jesus, what do you have to say?”

“Father, I have not chosen this man for my kingdom. While his intellectual comprehension is exceedingly great, he does not really understand. You have taught me that it is the unassuming who will inherit the eternal kingdom. You intend to give it to those who presume that nothing is owed to them. This man is not unassuming. He presumes that the kingdom belongs to him. Such presumption is contrary to the spirit you want from those who belong to you.”

Dr. Knoworthy erupted, “How dare you deny me the kingdom? I have spent my whole life preparing for this day. Damn you, Jesus. I deserve better than this.”

God pronounced judgment, “Since you have never understood the depth of your own unworthiness and the profundity of the mercy that Jesus has offered you, you clearly do not belong to him. Go to your condemnation.”

“Whoa! What just went down there?” I asked the man behind me with urgency. “Did you see that coming?”

“Actually, I sort of did,” he responded sadly.

“Really. How?”

“Sooner or later, our words will betray our real beliefs and attitudes. Do you remember one of the first things he said to you? He said, ‘Those of us who will be granted eternal life today will be granted it for one and only one reason. Easter.’ I thought at the time that the way he phrased it was rather revealing. He was full of presumption. He was presuming from the get-go that God would grant him Life. His confidence seems to have been based on his years of Bible study. He thought he deserved mercy. If anyone was going to get mercy, it was going to be him. That kind of presumption is contrary to the spirit of the true heir of Life. I fear I suspected what was coming.”

Now I was more hopeless than ever. “Everyone is being condemned. No one is getting mercy,” I complained.

The man responded, “Jesus himself taught us that the way to destruction is wide. The way to eternal Life is exceedingly narrow; and very few pass that way. He told us. He said it out loud. But no one takes it very seriously. I know from personal experience. I was a teacher too. In my experience, it was easy enough to intrigue people with the truth. But very few of them stayed with it over the long haul.”

I silently awaited my fate for several agonizingly long minutes until it was finally my turn to be judged. The man behind me tried to comfort me, “I think you’ll be fine. What you say will reveal the true beliefs and desires of your heart.” Two angels led me before the throne.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” the unseen being said from the throne. I still could not see any form. But I felt keenly that he could see me; he could see right through me. I dared not look up. I just gazed at the ground in front of me.

“My creator,” I said, “I have nothing to say really. I know that you can grant me mercy if you choose. But I know that if you do not choose to do so, you will be right and good not to do so. I more than fully deserve any condemnation that you might give me. So, I fully accept whatever you decide. I know that your judgment will be wise and just.”

God turned to Jesus. My heart was beating hard and fast. “Jesus, what do you have to say?”

“Father, I want this man in my kingdom. I ask that you might grant him mercy. Please don’t give him destruction, though he deserves it. Please grant him everlasting life in my kingdom.”

“So be it, my friend,” God said to me. “Please enter into the eternal kingdom of my beloved Son.”

I was stunned. I was overjoyed. I was dizzy with delight.

As I was being escorted toward the door on the right-hand side of the throne, I heard the angel call to the man who had been behind me in line, “Saul of Tarsus, the one also known as Paul, please take your place before the judge.”

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” God said to Paul.

Paul answered, “Father, I have nothing to say in my defense. I would be delighted to receive your mercy. I long to know you, to serve you, and to serve your Son in the eternal kingdom. But your judgment is wise and just. I know that if you do not grant me mercy, I only get what I truly deserve. I fully accept whatever you decide. You are not answerable to me or to any man.”

“Jesus, what is your pleasure?” God asked.

“Father, I want this man in my kingdom. I ask that you grant him mercy.”

“So be it, my friend,” God said to Paul. “Please enter into the everlasting kingdom of my Son.”

I lagged behind, waiting for Paul to catch up with me. I turned to speak to him, but he read my mind. “I am here on the same basis as you, Jack. God could make a camel his apostle. Being an apostle is not something I did for God. Being an apostle is something God gave to me.”

“Wow,” I thought. “There was so much I didn’t know. So much I didn’t understand. But even though I knew nothing, God gave me everything. And with just a simple word from Jesus. No wonder we are supposed to think of Jesus as a heroic rescuer.”

Just then I smelt a cup of coffee under my nose. “Wake up, Jack! It’s Easter. We have to hide the jelly beans for the grandchildren.”

As an artist who uses abstraction in some of my work, I often find myself trying to explain my abstract forms and why I choose to work in this non-representational way. In this essay, I want to briefly discuss the nature of modern abstract art, including why it appeared so forcefully in the twentieth century. I want to explain, as best I can, some why’s and how’s of non-objective, or abstract, art. I will write mostly about painting, although other art forms—sculpture, music, architecture, etc.—also participate in the modernist abstraction movement. Before I begin, though, I will briefly address a few common questions about abstract art.

Preliminary Questions

First, what is meant by the term abstract? The dictionary generally defines it as “having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content.” To abstract an object is to indirectly retain its essential nature without directly copying the object or conveying its specific appearance. For example, Vincent Van Gogh’s famously volatile swirls of paint in Starry Night are a visual abstraction of the real night sky he observed. But we understand through his colorful, emotion-packed abstract brush strokes his intention to evoke a sense of cosmic, transcendent energy in creation.

Second, do artists make abstract art because they cannot draw correctly? While this question reflects a somewhat common belief and may contain a grain of truth in some cases, the great masters of twentieth-century modern abstraction, without exception, painted in abstract styles after having reached high competence in classical drawing skills; the majority were masters at traditional drawing.

Third, can abstract art be beautiful? Though I can answer this question with a resounding “yes,” I must be careful to admit the complexities involved in trying to answer the question, and I will not deal with them here. Perhaps I can make my point, however, by alluding to those experiences we all have of walking into a forest or garden of exceptional splendor, and, without adequate verbal means of communicating the array of reasons, we “feel” its beauty. Similarly, we see beauty while lying on our backs on a warm summer afternoon and watching brilliant white cloud formations float over us in wondrous abstract formations. This everyday abstractness is all around us, but we rarely notice it until it claims our attention in unexpected ways.

A Brief History of Abstract Art

Although we mostly associate abstract art with the twentieth century, it has a long history. Early Christian and Byzantine art forms were “abstractions” from what we today call representational realism. We also see it in decorative edges of traditional paintings and illuminated manuscripts. Representational realism, however, became the standard for great art after the Western tradition of painting and sculpture reached its great height in the unsurpassed accomplishments of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rafael, and other Renaissance artists who created a tradition of representational imagery. For several centuries, optically and proportionally correct representation of the human body and realistically depicted objects in both interior still lifes and landscapes of mountains, trees, and animals became the standard required for great and successful art. This figural and representational tradition with its apprenticeships, academies, and wealthy patronage ruled from the Renaissance through the mid-nineteenth century. Then, as intellectual and social history shows, the Western mind changed, and art changed with it. The changes in Western culture, intellectual life, and even technology led to and fostered the practice of non-representational visual art.

In the 1830s, the invention of photography altered how artists thought about and practiced painting. Photography could depict portraits, landscapes, and interiors more realistically than painting ever could. Many artists used photography to aid them in constructing “realist” paintings. But artists also began to think about new ways of portraying even the classical subjects of portraits, landscapes, and interior still lifes in their paintings.

Beginning with the great realist/impressionist painter Manet (1832–1883), artists increasingly emphasized being honest about the “truth” of painting—namely, that it is pigment on a flat surface rather than an illusionistic “window” through which one sees a constructed scene. And late nineteenth-century painters, following in the Renaissance tradition, were increasingly fascinated with the aesthetic power of the paint medium itself. They began to see that raw color, thickness, and brush strokes of pigment in themselves carried fresh emotional and image-bearing qualities.

In the 1870s, the French impressionists’ fascination with light and color on the retina of the eye produced the first move toward abstraction and away from realism. Though we now see as serenely beautiful their abdication of realism for abstract, colorist impressions, their work was initially greeted with the public’s and the critics’ negative, even horrified, reviews. A few years later, the post-impressionists—Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat and Cezanne—each in his own way created the new visual precedents for two different branches of what was to become modern abstract art: expressionist forms and analytic, reductive geometric forms.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), with his bold, primary color and emotion-powered brush stroke, initiated the “expressive” style that would by mid-twentieth century be abstract expressionism. This form of abstraction used emotional, subjectively created marks and strokes to convey the artist’s individual psychological response to his or her subject. Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night, Kandinsky’s pure, non-objective forms, and later Pollock’s “drip” paintings manifest this emotionally driven approach to abstraction.

On the other side of the abstraction ledger, the French artist Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) painted still lifes, portraits, and landscapes with the goal of penetrating behind the myriad of particulars in an outdoor scene to find simplified, mostly geometric forms that for him revealed a universal, harmonious structure to all of reality. His beautiful, reductive pictures analyzed and simplified natural landscapes, portraits, and room interiors in a visual search for a hidden, structured order. His approach to painting influenced Picasso’s cubism, Tatlin’s constructivism, Malevich’s suprematism, and Piet Mondrian’s de stijl (‘the style’ in Dutch) movement.

Cultural Context for Abstract Art

Fine or serious art has always been about our most vital ideas, beliefs, and world events—all of which reveal much about the human condition. In its own way, modern abstract art is about this as well. Great art of the twentieth century can be seen as a progressive, unfolding search for finding imagery and visual forms to express the tumultuous spirit of modernity—its visions, possibilities, and its tragic inhumanities.

Early modern art reflected artists’ minds and souls coming to terms with their intellectual and spiritual times as they continued exploring and portraying both the glorious and the tragic ideas, beliefs, and experiences of their day. Along with the invigorating possibilities of a new modern world, new kinds of oppressive, alienating, and inhumane forces revealed themselves; and so the depersonalizing effects of bureaucracy, industrialization, mechanization, and urbanization became the subject of modern art. The unimaginable cruelty loosed in modern warfare pressed hard on the psyche of many artists. The stylistic character of art movements such as expressionism, dada, and surrealism all directly responded to the social and personal insanities of modern life.

Of all the historical and cultural forces working to generate abstract art, however, none was more powerful than the quest for new ideological and spiritual foundations for modern man as Christendom’s intellectual and cultural influence disappeared. The quest for new transcendental universals to replace traditional belief in the God of the Bible energized the creation of abstract art. This quest to find and portray the hidden universal spirituality of all things drove the diverse art of modernist giants like Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, and others.

At its deepest level, great art is inevitably and ultimately an existential, reflective, visual statement of an artist’s view of the human condition. Modernist visions of life and society required new visual representations. Artists felt that new “aesthetic vocabularies” and “visual languages” were required to adequately express the intellectual, psychological, and social-political challenges they faced. Thus artists created new visual forms to convey both the intellectual horizon and spiritual malaise loosed by modernity.

Meaning in Abstract Art

Having all too briefly described the historical and cultural conditions that produced various forms of modern abstract art, I want now to explore the power of abstraction and the nature of its meanings.

The most fundamental impulses of early abstraction were generated by artists’ desire to depict their impassioned responses to the world around them. They believed that non-objective marks and strokes and the use of primary color (rather than traditional earth-toned color) could successfully and passionately convey “the truth” of intellectual and psychological moods fostered by the experience of the modern world. Psychological research has confirmed their belief. Studies have shown, for example, that troubled children embed their emotional state into their drawings by the marks they make and the colors they choose. There exists a decipherable, albeit allusive, connection between our inner emotional experiences and our drawings and doodlings and even our scribbling.

Visual marks—shape, color, tone—once laid down, can also evoke independent subjective responses in viewers. The art maker creates with subjective, intentional meanings in mind; the art viewer responds by trying to understand the artist’s subjective intentions but also by subjectively constructing an independent, personally significant reading of the art work. This allusive kind of communication is also at play for the composer and the listener of instrumental jazz or classical music. The harmonies, dissonances, and complex tonal variations of sound without lyrics communicate a distinct mental and emotional experience. There are identifiable and varying degrees of “objective meanings” in the purely instrumental works of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony #1 in G minor and John Coltraine’s Love Supreme. There are ways and means for communicating without words things like beauty, anger, ugliness, anxiety, and sadness. Both music and non-representational art own this power.

The abstract artist’s intentions often focus on conveying sensibilities and emotional states rather than objectively recognizable propositions. Let me give some examples to illustrate what I mean.

The surface of a sheet of highly polished steel has a very different “feel” from that of a surface covered in deep brown velvet cloth, even though the surfaces are the same shape and size. Even visually we “feel” the character of each surface. Similarly, a dark black charcoal line slashed in a barely controlled manner across a paper surface conveys a completely different message from that of a precise thin pencil line drawn with a straight edge. An eight-inch blob of crimson red paint on a white surface conveys a very different sensibility to us from that of a pure white square on a muted gray-paper surface. An anguished scream ”feels” totally different from a mother’s soft, non-verbal humming to her baby. My point here is this: marks, lines, patterns, colors, textures, and shapes convey energy, movement, mood, and an unending variety of feelings through their millions of possible combinations. These recognized principles of visual composition and communication are just as present in abstract art as they are in traditional representational art. Representational art just communicates more directly because it utilizes recognizable, real-world objects and scenes.

When viewing an abstraction, we notice and appreciate the surface beauty of its form, but we inevitably go on to ask if meaning exists behind its visual beauty. Let us take an example from nature. Do the striking patterns on a carefully and meditatively observed rock or leaf mean and convey something? Yes, but the meaning conveyed is interpretively open—that is, the meaning depends on what the viewer brings to the viewing and meditating. Furthermore, appreciating the rock’s or the leaf’s beauty exists at two levels. Someone believing in a Creator of nature will likely derive a very different meaning behind abstract and intricately beautiful natural forms from someone who does not hold that belief.

Viewing human-made abstract art is like viewing the natural abstraction: we first appreciate its aesthetic form, and then we try to understand its meaning as a humanly made work. Unavoidably, abstract, non-objective art forms require a more engaged response by viewers because although abstract art embodies the artists’ intentions, those intentions are indirect and allusive, imbedded into the art by the artists. But in varying degrees, all art communicates through what the artist puts into the art and how the viewer subjectively experiences and questions the art. The abstract artist’s aesthetic strategy to communicate something requires the viewer’s “work.”

Approaching and Understanding Abstract Art

Finally, then, here are some closing thoughts about how to gain an even better understanding and appreciation of this art form that so profoundly manifests the modern human quest for truth in a world that has largely rejected God and transcendence.

First, the internet offers a wealth of short and longer essays on the history of modern abstract art movements. Getting a general grasp of art history from the impressionists through the mid-twentieth century abstract expressionist movement can be immensely helpful. Even more help comes from reading about an artist and reading from the modern artists’ own writings.

Second, when viewing abstract art, give attention to your sense of the moods and feelings conveyed to you by the marks, colors, shapes, and forms you are seeing. Let go of trying to see specific objective content like that offered in representational art forms. You can learn to “read” the sensibilities communicating through the variations of color, shape, texture, and form, just as you can learn to “read” an instrumental symphony or jazz performance. And, if you like what you see on the aesthetic level but cannot decipher the artist’s intentions or meaning, then doing a little homework on the artist will reveal much. Understanding serious fine art requires a similar effort to understanding any serious human discipline—be it philosophy or convoluted historical narratives.

Third, ask yourself what motive, circumstance, idea, or reflective ponderings in the artist drove his or her work into existence? Admittedly, this can be a difficult question to answer, but I think it is perhaps the most essential and revealing question that can be asked of any artwork.

Great modernist abstract art manifests the deepest philosophical and spiritual concerns of twentieth-century man. In many ways, understanding it pays the rich reward of experiencing the exultation and tragedy of the failed modernist vision of life. And the continued intelligent use of its peculiar visual language holds unending possibilities for aesthetically exploring and communicating the inner and outer worlds with which we all live.

I think we’re at a moment in history where we’ve already begun a kind of apocalypse of thought, where all the models we’ve been led to believe in are crumbling. (Artist/filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, “Breaking the Codes,” Artforum Magazine, May 2009.)

The other night I had a wonderful dinner with some new acquaintances. Our conversation turned more and more philosophical. At a certain point one person said, quite rightly, “This is too heavy for dinner conversation.” We changed the subject to lighter matters. What got so “heavy” was the subject of “meaning”—whether anything today could have personal, let alone universal, meaning.

The problems of truth and meaning for one young dinner companion were directly connected to conclusions he had derived from having been immersed in the thought of Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and other postmodernist thinkers. These continental philosophers have had an immeasurable impact on the intellectual climate young thinkers today must live in, particularly in the areas of the humanities, literature, and the arts. As recent conversations with students have revealed to me, the question of meaning is disturbingly common in the current generation. As a Christian artist and educator who has interacted with young minds my whole adult life, I have never faced a more formidable challenge than trying to argue for the existence of authentic, true meaning today.

Over the past fifty or so years, the influence of nihilism—the belief that life has no objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value—has permeated our culture’s intellectual climate, enveloping like fog those having grown to adulthood in it. In today’s intellectual climate, most thinking students (including many who show up at the door of Gutenberg College) find the task of understanding themselves in a complex world daunting if not impossible.

How did this nihilistic intellectual culture develop, and what are its origins? Young people today feel the weight of cultural and historical failures that both directly and indirectly undercut their confidence that they can know about life—or even that objective truth exists to be known. The Enlightenment vision—that human knowledge would inevitably lead to a better world—failed catastrophically. Young minds today find the exuberant, humanist vision that gave birth to the modern world to have resulted in a series of tragic failures:

• In the twentieth century, two world wars released unimaginable terror and human darkness into the world. The current generation, having grown up in a culture dominated by image (everything from TV and movies to YouTube), has digested images of catastrophic human destruction. They have seen what humankind is capable of and that we are willing to release cruel inhumanities upon ourselves. Young adults ask, “How has our knowledge allowed this?”
• Vastly improved access to education in the modern world has not liberated us from powers of darkness and oppression. Highly educated connoisseurs of Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Bach, and Mozart cultivated their aesthetic sensibilities while administering the Nazi death camps.
• Modern, rationalistic, industrial power and the promise of human progress has failed. Scientific and technological competence produces the thrill of apparent control and technical progress, but ugly, unanticipated consequences accompany those inhuman powers. And our human “advances” increasingly ignore needs located deep within the human soul. Nuclear energy, for example, promised an unlimited source of power, but the serious problem of nuclear waste was trivialized, unanticipated, and awaits true, effective solution. And we have only recently realized that preoccupation with the speed and allure of digital and virtual reality games tends to trivialize healthful human relationships, especially in the young.
• Our materialistic culture has commodified everything. We live with a massive disconnect between the energies and opportunities of free market consumerism and genuine moral and ethical social concern. If only material things are real and give human fulfillment, then exploitation of child labor in South America and China to increase profit margins makes sense.

These historical and cultural failures have subverted substantive ethical reality and fostered skepticism—a distrust of knowledge—and with it a distrust of language. Humans use language to voice cultural and ideological promises, but twentieth century promises—like the 1960s political promises of a “great society”—have proven themselves vacant. For the current generation, language is merely someone’s propaganda tool, one used to create and maintain social and political power. The generation does not trust people’s words to be grounded in anything larger than their creators’ purpose to manipulate; the generation no longer trusts language to move humankind toward what is universally true because, as the current generation sees it, what former generations believed to be true was not.

A person arrives at meaning when he believes something is true and therefore gives it high personal value. The soulish act of giving purpose or importance to some idea or object—whether one believes that the idea or object possesses importance universally or only for himself—is “meaning.” When a person struggles with whether or not truth exists upon which to found any belief, meaning fades and appears unreachable. He loses the motivation to maintain human and humane intellectual, personal, social, and political work. Pursuing knowledge seems a trivial game, and this distrust of knowledge severs the necessary links between meaningful thought, hope, and productive human endeavor. When a person no longer believes in the possibility of finding truth and thus meaning, then the energy to pursue meaning fails as well.

What responses can we give to such darkened perspectives? What antidotes can we provide for such prevalent skepticism regarding truth and meaning and hope? I cannot provide undeniable evidence or proof that we are creatures of meaning created for eternal existence, but I can describe what we might call “signals” or “pointers” to real and transcendent meaning, both in us and available to us.

First, it is a curious fact that we are beings whose life and existence seem to demand meaning. We constantly ask questions whose answers are ultimately only grounded in transcendent or universal terms. Despite the claims of our postmodern climate, our most vital and important experiences—the birth and death of those we love, our cries for justice, our desire for freedom to choose, our innate belief that truth must be found, the safety and deep comfort found in loving each other—seem to revolve around a universal human nature and condition.

The universal impulse that drives us to seek answers should tell us that we are creatures whose lives were made for meaning. Recognizing this, it would be a strange and dark fact, indeed, if such meaning were not available to us when we pursue it. Yet a haunting implication continues to saturate the postmodern cultural climate we now live in—namely, that meaning is a frail, human fabrication without reference to a universal, real reality, and therefore searching for transcendent meaning is a waste of human effort.

Second, human and humane boundaries are required within which we can live with reasonable safety and outside of which normal lives of safety and sanity are threatened. Why is this? As theologian Walter Brueggemann put it, there are “…orders, limits, and boundaries within which humanness is possible and beyond these there can only be trouble” (quoted in Truth is Stranger Than It Used to Be, Middleton and Walsh, 162). He added: “Life has a certain evocative quality, a certain connectedness about it, a dynamic, an intention, a direction, a presence, a meaning. And we are creatures who are an integral part of that life, and we respond instinctively to it even if we rebel at its qualities” (169). Put differently, we live and move and have our being in a reality that undeniably possesses concreteness. When we deny this concreteness, we endanger ourselves.

We must also consider that if God is not in the picture, then no final and ultimately satisfying answer to meaninglessness exists; the cosmos is just empty of spirit and meaning, and we and nature are products of a chance configuration of physical matter and unknown, impersonal originating energies. The biblical God in the picture changes everything. Meaning is not only a possibility; it is bound to the promised mercy of God for those who embrace it. Human creatures are meaningful simply because God made us that way.

Nonetheless, even Christians can suffer from feeling the weight of meaninglessness in today’s culture. The young Christians with whom I interact struggle from being caught between an “emerging” faith and the cultural, ideological, and philosophical powers of the surrounding postmodern world, whose acids dissolve confidence in all knowledge, including the Bible’s.

Questions and observations about truth and the meaning of life reside perpetually on our lips, and we are in denial when we refuse to face them. If we truly desire to escape the nihilistic darkness surrounding us, then we must accept the often agonizing work of finding out what is true; and this work must become our greatest desire—greater than our desire for materialistic or philosophical comforts. We must come to terms with the fact that finding truth and meaning is a difficult ethical and spiritual quest.

Only by facing our questions, then, can we move toward meaning, and the path toward meaning and away from meaninglessness begins with understanding that the foundation of meaning is grounded in believing with reasonable confidence that something is true. Our knowledge may not have mathematical certainty, but then none of the knowledge upon which we act daily has such certainty; every day we choose and act on knowledge that is partial and yet reliable enough. And when we choose and act on an idea we believe to be true, we generate meaning. Thus meaning is ultimately “located” in the inner conscious thought of an individual.

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard has perceptively pointed out that though objective truth exists, it only “becomes truth” for a person when that individual appropriates it with genuine personal conviction. Truth that is knowable by an individual can be eternal and universal, but it is “known finitely” within the boundaries and limits of human finitude. Truth, then, in its humanly received and contained form, is inevitably “unfinished, partial, and finite” because it has been discovered and appropriated by temporal, finite human creatures.

The beliefs we hold with sufficient conviction to warrant our personal commitment, however, are our “anchor points” for life. These commitments create a path for our lives. And, as a tent is only stable when secured to the ground by several tie-downs, so humans find meaningful lives through multiple anchor points that collectively produce a larger (even universal) meaning for living.

We do not exist, with even moderate happiness, without these subjectively meaningful anchor points. We humans require and thrive on meaning like our bodies require and thrive on food. We starve physically from lack of food. We starve soulishly from lack of meaning.

We find our anchor points through existential, personal struggle. We must engage in a strenuous, inner conversation that strives to understand ourselves and the world as they really are, and then we must choose to commit ourselves to the truths we find. This inner struggle and commitment forms the experiential crucible for discovering and establishing authentic personal meaning.

At the beginning of our conscious lives, our anchor points are beliefs we absorb from our parents, family, and significant others. Though these early beliefs are native to us from our immediate surroundings, we still make them our own by personal choice, by naively choosing to believe them. As we grow into adults, we naturally grow out of our original anchor points. We either authenticate our original beliefs for ourselves by reflectively and consciously re-choosing what we absorbed from earlier life or we replace them with new beliefs, new anchor points.

To illustrate what I mean by anchor points, let me describe four of my own. My first anchor point is my own need for meaning. I am struck by the raw fact that I find myself to be a creature who needs meaning at so many levels of my life. Why am I not just another animal whose needs exclude that of meaning for myself and my world? The modern tale that we are the product of a chance configuration of matter plus time does not fit my experience of my essential nature and need for meaning.

My second anchor point is the belief that human life at the level of relationships and society does not work without a commitment to ethical goodness. (The goodness I reference here I would argue is described definitively in the Bible.) Without the pursuit of and practice of goodness among us, there is no meaning. A life focused on and lived for selfishness and personal pleasure is what Kierkegaard calls the “aesthetic life.” The pleasures of such a life are by definition unhinged from ethical demand. No true meaning is available to such a life.

My third anchor point is my belief in “signals of transcendence”—those human experiences that point toward but do not prove God’s authorship of this existing cosmos. They are the universal human cries for order, justice, joy, and love. These values and virtues all seem to point toward a cosmic requirement for bigger, lasting versions of themselves to exist beyond this present world. They seem to point to another, truer reality that transcends and outshines this present one—an eternal existence in which order, meaning, justice, joy, and love rule over all else.

Finally, my fourth anchor point is the explanatory power of the person and teachings of Jesus. Christ’s teachings are utterly unique and unparalleled in their penetrating insight regarding God and the true condition of man. For me, the “explanatory power” of Christ’s teaching is this: He explains uniquely what I am—not only my earthly physical creatureliness but also my eternal value and nature. He explains who I am personally—the hairs of my head are counted! He gives piercing insight regarding what is eternally true and valuable. And he offers profound hope for this life and the promise of one to come on the basis of unbounded mercy.

To be a human being is both amazing and frightening. The “heaviness” of the conversation avoided at dinner pointed briefly to this fact. We feel the weight of our freedom to ponder and choose what kind of human beings we will be. The good news is that the despairing struggle that often accompanies our search is the very means God lovingly determines to use to bring us to genuine meaning.

***

What a blast it was to sit in on the Western Civilization class at Gutenberg College on Wednesdays and Fridays last fall. Gutenberg was so kind in helping me complete an internship required by George Fox Seminary in Portland, where I am currently working on a master’s degree in theology. One of my assigned projects was to read the required readings and the optional background readings for the Western Civilization class and then observe how Gutenberg teaches the material in class. I observed a radically different learning environment from what I have experienced in traditional education.

The characteristic of Gutenberg’s teaching technique that surprised me most is its emphasis on a classroom atmosphere in which students are encouraged to think and ask questions freely. This environment of freedom is significant to me because I have experienced its antithesis, absorbing my undergraduate and graduate educations largely through the firm hand of lecture. Most of the information given to me has come through the biases and value systems of other people. Professors judge what is important for me to know and to think. The cradle of my traditional schooling, the classroom itself, also restricts my freedom in that I must interact with the professor and others through political correctness and the mores of popular culture. In times past, I have also experienced having my ideas discredited by professors in front of the class. To observe the kind of intellectual nurturing that Gutenberg provides is greatly satisfying, and I must confess that I suffer a hint of sadness that my own education has not been so rich.

I saw an aspect of Gutenberg’s intellectual nurture demonstrated in its inviting students to contemplate in the classroom. The professors (called “tutors” at Gutenberg) do not fear or resist silence, thus indicating to the students that more than superficial thinking is welcome. There is plenty of room for questions that don’t seem important enough to ask at the beginning of class. More than once I observed a period of silence finally broken by a timid question that vigorously renewed the discussion. Before Gutenberg, I had never encountered contemplation within the classroom, unless I was stealing it from a lecture to which I was supposed to be paying attention. In my own experience with traditional education, contemplating is done on one’s own time so as not to interrupt the stream of valuable information flowing from the mouths of experts into the ears of non-experts.

In the course of reading for the Western Civilization class, I also discovered how complimentary the optional background readings are to the required primary sources. Reading a primary source such as Plato’s Apology along with the background materials that describe the complexities of the Greek sophists, Socrates, and Plato creates a full picture of why Greek society thought what it thought, why Plato wrote what he wrote, and why Socrates did what he did. It is, then, not a giant step for students to reflect on why our society does what it does and why students themselves do what they do. The readings, both required and optional, are a prime starting point for much learning. I am awed by the amount of time and consideration it took to collect such a nice variety of thought provoking readings as those in Gutenberg’s background collection.

I ended the term with a sense that Gutenberg, more than traditional learning institutions, makes students active participants in their own education. The group discussion technique of the Great Books program, one driven by the students’ own questions, generates a different kind of learning than what transpires through listening and note-taking. In effect, Gutenberg’s classroom learning becomes tailored to match the unique curiosities of the students. Their natural interests guide their questions, and the questions guide the discussions. The students experience themselves not only as consumers of knowledge but also as knowledge-seekers who bear responsibility for their own knowing. The question/discussion technique extends a lesson beyond academics—namely, that students are capable thinkers, capable of posing intelligible and valuable questions, capable of gathering knowledge and interpreting it. Where traditional education hopes that students learn to think, Gutenberg students do learn to think, becoming, in some respects, their own teachers. To watch Gutenberg in action was a true pleasure. I came away from the term with a fresh understanding of what education can be.

***

For many of us, the story of Jesus’ resurrection is an all too familiar story. Not only do we know the main outline and many details of the story itself, but we have rehearsed its implications over the course of many Easters. Today, I want to review briefly yet one more time four of the more important implications of Jesus’ resurrection.

The First Implication

Because God raised Jesus from the dead, I can know that Jesus has become qualified to fulfill his destiny as King over all God’s creation in the eternal age to come.

From before creation itself, God had set as His purpose to become a human being and rule over His whole creation in and through that man who embodied His person and rule. Jesus was that man. He was the “Son” of God—destined to be the human image of God Himself, the human embodiment of God’s sovereign rule. But the Jesus of history never realized his destiny. He came, he taught, he was crucified. There was no evidence of his sovereign rule over creation. The corrupt and arrogant power of Rome seemed to prevail over him.

That is one of the reasons why the resurrection of Jesus is significant. It is no slight thing that God, the one who can speak things into existence, called the dead Jesus forth from the tomb and brought him into an entirely new order of existence—an existence completely beyond death itself.

God has always been capable of raising human beings from the dead. But Jesus was a first. To this day Jesus is absolutely unique. No human being throughout the whole of human history—save one—has ever been raised to this other order of existence. Why Jesus? Why then? Quite simply because Jesus, having submitted to the purposes of the Father by willingly going to his death for the sins of mankind, had proved himself worthy to inherit the destiny that had been set for him. He did and could serve as the human image of God because the love he manifested for us in his death was an act of God-like love. It pleased the Father greatly. Therefore, God granted him the right to rule as His proxy. He granted Jesus the right to fulfill the role of Son of God. This was his destiny from before creation, of course. But his resurrection marks that point in history when Jesus first enters into his authority to rule over all creation. The apostles describe it as Jesus being seated at the right hand of the God on high.

Accordingly, because of the resurrection, we are fools if we refuse to bow our knee to Jesus. He is our Lord, our Master, our King. He will be so for all eternity.

The Second Implication

Because God raised Jesus from the dead, I can know that the eternal Kingdom of God is near; little else remains before God brings this age to an end and inaugurates His final Kingdom.

If Jesus has been raised to the right hand of God, God’s purposes for cosmic history are almost complete. Only two significant things remain. God must fulfill His unique promises to Israel, His unique people. And God must put all of His enemies “as a footstool” under Jesus’ feet. In terms of the plotline of history, the resurrection brings us very near the end of the present age, no matter how long it might take.

Accordingly, because of the resurrection, we are fools if we invest too deeply in our lives here and now. This whole order is passing away. All the trivial pursuits of our present existence are about to become totally and utterly irrelevant. We must strive to stay focused on that which is forever, on that which is permanent, and to hold loosely any and all that this present age has to offer me.

The Third Implication

Because God raised Jesus from the dead, I know that Jesus’ appeal to God for mercy on my behalf will be an effective appeal, heard and accepted by God.

Jesus and his apostles claim that I am a creature worthy of destruction. My end will be condemnation unless God mercifully grants me a blessing I do not deserve. Jesus, serving as my high priest, offered his own body as a propitiatory offering, appealing to God to be merciful to sinners like me. How can I know that Jesus’ intercession was anything other than a futile gesture? I can know it because of the resurrection. God would never have performed the unique act of raising Jesus to newness of Life if He had not been pleased with Jesus. God would not have made him the trailblazer into another order of existence if Jesus did not have the authority to intercede for us and be heard by God.

Accordingly, because of the resurrection, we can be confident and secure that we have an able advocate who, at the final judgment, will secure for us mercy, forgiveness, and Life.

The Fourth Implication

Because God raised Jesus from the dead, I know that death cannot prevent God from blessing me with the blessing He promised.

Thousands of years ago, God promised a man, Abraham, that those who belonged to his people—a people that would include individuals from every people group throughout history—would be blessed. They would not be condemned to the curse of death that Adam proved mankind deserved. Rather, they would be granted the Life that they did not deserve. Was that promise a sham? A deceit? A fantastical myth? Abraham succumbed to death and was laid in a tomb. Isaac died and was buried. Israel died. Moses died. All those who believed God’s promise succumbed to death. Were they all fools? Is human mortality the fatal defect that brings to nothing all of the promises of God? The resurrection of Jesus says “no.”

Because Jesus was successfully and triumphantly called out of the tomb, Abraham will be blessed with the blessing of Life just as God promised. Because Jesus was raised, Isaac, Israel, Moses, and we will be raised. If Jesus’ tomb could not thwart God and His purposes, then there is nothing in the whole created order that can thwart God and His purposes. If God has called us to receive what is good, then nothing in all of reality will prevent Him from giving us that good. The resurrection of Jesus proclaims that most emphatically.

Conclusion

There are no doubt other important implications of Jesus’ resurrection. These are four of the more important ones. We would do well to learn these, to understand them more clearly, to believe them more confidently, and to live them more consistently. We would do well to study the story of Jesus, especially the story of his death and resurrection, until we understand as well as can be understood the full meaning and significance of that story.

I am afraid we live in a time and place where it seems more interesting to those who purport to be Christians to know the history of Middle Earth and to study and memorize the Silmarillian than to know and understand their Bibles. We would rather read the latest adventures of Harry Potter than read the teaching and wisdom of Jesus, the Messiah.

This is understandable enough. Many of us are all too familiar with the stories of Jesus and of the Jews of ancient times. In our case, familiarity with these stories breeds a certain sort of contempt. We have had enough of messiahs, prophets, and apostles. Let us hear of wizards, hobbits, dragons, vampires, werewolves, and magic. These are far more interesting and intriguing.

But we must not lose sight of what it is that we have in the Bible. The Bible is not fiction. It is reality. It is not there to entertain us. It is there to enlighten us. We seek to know and master what it says not because it is unsurpassed in its ability to fascinate us. We want to know the Bible because it is unsurpassed in the depth of the truth it will tell me about God, human existence, and the final outcome of my being.

We have all become entertainment junkies. Accordingly, we believe we have outgrown the Bible. It can no longer excite. It no longer entertains. But this is a huge mistake. To lack interest in what the Bible tells us is to lack interest in my own existence. To lack interest in the story of the Bible is to lack interest in the outcome of my own life. The story of the Bible is the story of my salvation. If that story is not interesting to me, it can only be because my own salvation is not particularly interesting to me. And that would be grievous indeed.

So today, Easter, let us not hold in contempt the well-rutted story of Jesus’ empty tomb because it has stopped intriguing us as a story; because it no longer excites our interest and fascination with its details. Rather, let us remember that it is not as a story that I must value it. I must value it as fact. Easter is important because it really happened. And because it really happened, the whole course of my existence has been explained. Because of Easter, I have a real and actual hope. Easter is not fantasy. Easter is the reality of our existence.

Fearing a war might erupt, I have long kept my novels and philosophy on separate bookshelves. Still, I imagine, they cast jeers across my room. The philosophy books insult the novels for flighty resistance from hard truths. The literature mocks the philosophy for being distant from real life.

I am not the first to discern this war between the bookshelves. “There is an old quarrel,” wrote Plato in 380 B.C., “between philosophy and poetry.” Plato believed the two were simply incompatible. Philosophy is written for the few, he said, literature for the many; philosophy is abstract, literature is particular; philosophy aims to dispel illusion, literature creates it.

Even Iris Murdoch, an Oxford philosopher who wrote philosophical novels, suspected the two were incompatible. She included philosophy in her novels only because she knew philosophy. “If I knew anything about sailing ships,” she said, “I would put in sailing ships.”

A few philosophers believed literature and philosophy could make peace. Philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) believed poetry was a model of what philosophy could be. His philosophy is laced with obscure sayings about the power of poetry: “Poetically, man dwells” and “Language is the house of the truth of Being.” I am not quite sure what he meant. And his poems do not help; in fact, his endorsement of poetry was undermined by his poor attempts at writing it. (His poems are—to put it briefly—bad.)

Despite Murdoch’s skepticism and Heidegger’s obscurity, a hope remained that philosophy and literature might marry. What a marriage it might be! Such a marriage might give birth to an exceedingly rare experience—feeling ideas: not just to scrutinize them, but to experience them with the nerves and heart and lungs.

A few have achieved it. Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and George Santayana wedded philosophy and literature by blending poetry with pointed inquiry. Kierkegaard did so by blending parables, wit, and humor with inspired theology. Nietzsche wrote short bursts of poetic philosophy. Santayana wrote novels abounding in lucid wisdom. (“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is his.) Even Plato, despite spurning the poets, was a master of literary philosophy.

My two favorites are William Shakespeare and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Their methods and their mediums differed (Dostoevsky wrote novels; Shakespeare, plays), but they succeed for a common reason: they married philosophy and literature without letting the strengths of one corrupt the other. In other words, they wove together philosophical plots and characters without forcing their characters to become mouthpieces for their philosophies. And the results of their inquiries manifest themselves, not in wordy monologues, but in fulfilling narratives.

Many of Shakespeare’s characters are either philosophers or trained in philosophical debate. Hamlet and Horatio both attended Wittenberg where they would have studied logic and ethics. Hamlet and his fellow characters thrust and parry using the weapons of logic. Some scenes consist of two characters battling over a syllogism (an argument with a conclusion drawn from a major and minor premise). When one character proffers a syllogism, the other rejects it, amends it, or recasts it. For example, when Prince Henry calls Falstaff “a natural coward” in Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff counters, “I deny your major!”

Often Shakespeare uses syllogisms to humorous effect. In Twelfth Night, Feste challenges Olivia to a contest of wit, promising that he will prove she is a fool:

Feste: Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.

Olivia: Can you do it?

Feste: Dexteriously, good madonna.

Olivia: Make your proof…

Feste: Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?

Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death.

Feste: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

Feste: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven!

Shakespeare’s philosophers do battle onstage; Dostoevsky’s philosophers do battle in their own minds. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov pits his philosophical convictions against his own conscience. Guilt, Raskolnikov asserts, is not evidence that human beings are moral creatures. No, guilt is simply a “prejudice” that society presses on individuals. Likewise, law. Like guilt, law is an “artificial terror.” Since guilt and law are artificial terrors, thinks Raskolnikov, “there are no barriers.” Some men, supermen, rise above guilt and law and do what they please.

Raskolnikov plans to confirm his philosophy by committing a murder. The murder is a consequence of his philosophical belief (“No superman is subject to guilt!”) and an attempt to prove himself a superman. He will murder a decrepit lender-woman (“noxious louse! worthless human being!”) and get away with it. Only the weak would crack under the strain of guilt. But not Raskolnikov; he will not crack. Yet even before committing the murder, he fears:

Can it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open… that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, blood… with the axe… Good God, can it be?

For Dostoevsky (and Shakespeare), the stakes are high. Raskolnikov’s philosophical convictions will push him toward life or death. Likewise, Macbeth’s philosophical convictions push him toward life or death. The whole of Macbeth can be viewed as a debate over the nature of manhood: What is a man? How should a man act? Should sympathy curb a man’s ambition?

Early in the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth argue about assassinating King Duncan. But a deeper question lurks below: What is a man? Earlier in the play, Macbeth was ambitious to kill the king; when he has second thoughts, Lady Macbeth challenges him as failing in his manhood:

When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And [if you did it] you would
Be so much more the man.

Macbeth defends himself, saying that being a man means knowing how to curb one’s evil ambitions:

I dare do all that becomes a man!
Who dares do more is none.

But Lady Macbeth jabs back in frustration. She implies that she is more of a man that her husband. And she wraps her argument with some of the most chilling lines Shakespeare ever wrote:

I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Macbeth is perversely touched and concedes to Lady Macbeth’s vicious definition of manhood. He praises her, saying she should give birth only to males:

Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.

The debate over the definition of manhood continues after the assassination of King Duncan. Macbeth challenges two soldiers to prove their manhood through murder. When one of soldier replies, “We are men, my liege,” Macbeth counters sarcastically, “Aye, in the catalogue you go for men.”

The good Macduff offers the counterpoint to Macbeth’s savage manhood. Macduff is no less courageous than Macbeth, but he embraces sympathy and gentleness. Macduff breaks into tears upon learning of his wife’s murder. When a fellow soldier challenges him to “Dispute it like a man!”, Macduff replies, “I shall do so; but I must also feel it like a man!” Macduff retains a tenderness that Macbeth has lost. And in the end, Macbeth’s hardness will destroy him.

Both Shakespeare and Dostoevsky shove their philosophers’ positions to their maximum conclusions. Macbeth becomes the man that Lady Macbeth wanted: cold-blooded, ambitious, and unrelenting. The consequences are a destroyed marriage, a lost kingdom, and a loss of life. Macbeth’s audience feels the consequences of his ideas as his marriage dissolves, his kingdom crumbles, and his life falters.

At the end of the play, Macbeth is a monster. Yet we can still feel sympathy at his lament that life has become a meaningless cycle of days:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time…
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov carries his philosophy to its maximum conclusion. He murders the money-lender and her sister, then crabs into his psyche where guilt pursues him like a hunting hound. For a few days he hides beneath his stony philosophy. Then he splits in half: half yearns for mercy; the other half rejects it as weakness. Upon receiving a gentle letter from his mother, Raskolnikov begins to cry:

Raskolnikov’s face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was pale and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile was on his lips.

One minute, sympathy. The next minute, lethal pride. Dostoevsky’s readers feel Raskolnikov’s philosophy yanking him back and forth.

Dostoevsky and Shakespeare’s achievement comes, in part, from never forcing their characters to be philosophical mouthpieces. Macbeth and Raskolnikov both become monsters, but they do not cease to be human. In the hands of lesser writers, they might become creeds. Take Ayn Rand for example.

As a novelist, Ayn Rand is an excellent propagandist. Her heroes are well-dressed, articulate titans; their enemies are sniveling, yellow parasites. The former have no weaknesses; the latter have no virtues. Her methods stand in stark negative relief to Hamlet, Macbeth, and Raskolnikov. These characters resist simplistic philosophizing because, no matter their beliefs, they remain a baffling salad of impulses. One minute they nurse the weak; the next minute they prey on them. They are, in short, us.

Neither Shakespeare’s nor Dostoevsky’s characters are tidy. Neither are their conclusions. They wrote narratives, after all, not philosophies. Real characters are never so tidy as treatises. In fact, both authors warn against the excesses of philosophy. Hamlet chides his best friend, saying, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”; Dostoevsky decries Western rationality as being demonic and destructive. Yet both litterateurs endorse philosophy as a lamplight to understanding. Their marriage of literature and philosophy helped make them masters of both. Their works, like any healthy marriage, use the strengths of each to bolster the weaknesses of the other.

American history is not my field. I have no familiarity with the primary source materials pertinent to Puritan/Native American relations, but I am not entirely uninformed on the topic. I have long had an interest in the history of Native Americans. When I was in grade school, I read every book in the school and city library about Native Americans. I remember being shocked and ashamed when reading about the numerable injustices that whites inflicted on the Native Americans. I was particularly outraged by the treatment of the Nez Pierce at the hands of the white settlers. I was also struck by the nobility of Chief Joseph in the face of a whole series of wrongs done by white settlers and government officials.

My interest in Native Americans continued into my college years. As a freshman I took a course about Puritan society in New England. When I read the mother’s email, I consulted the only course book I had saved from my freshman year in college—New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675 by Alden T. Vaughan.

I read the information that the teacher had consulted and compared the websites’ perspectives with those expressed in my book. The websites contained information by multiple authors, but the views of the Puritans’ relations with the Native Americans ranged from extremely critical to moderately critical. My course book, while making clear that the record was not pristine, generally approved the Puritans’ dealings with the Native Americans. How can historical assessments differ so dramatically?

Historians often disagree with one another in the reconstruction and evaluation of past events. This should not surprise us. Human affairs are complex. They are so complex that different people will inevitably assess them differently. We have probably all seen this same phenomenon in our everyday life. Take, for example, a marriage that degenerates into a divorce. Predictably, observers will locate blame for the dissolution of the marriage differently. Some might place the blame primarily on the husband; others might place the blame primarily on the wife. Even in those rare instances where all observers agree that one person is primarily to blame, observers will differ in the amount of blame they assign. It should not surprise us, then, if historians would disagree as to who was responsible for the tensions between the Puritans and the Native Americans.

To assess an event that takes place right before our eyes is difficult; to assess historical events is even more difficult. Continuing with the example of a divorce that occurs in our circle of acquaintances, we can be in a position to know both the husband and the wife personally. We may know a lot about their traits and characteristics. But still there will be facts of the situation about which we are not certain. In all likelihood, there will even be facts relevant to the dissolution of the relationship about which the husband and wife themselves are not certain. If this is true of events that are happening in and around us, think about the difficulty of gathering facts about events in the past. And the more distant the event, the harder it is to establish the facts.

Once we have all the relevant facts, the task does not become easier. Facts alone are not very interesting. As human beings we want to make sense of the world in which we live. This leads us to want to make generalizations and identify causes because if we can learn from history patterns of behavior or causes of certain effects, then we have the possibility of learning something that can help us navigate the challenges of the present. But, returning to the divorce analogy, even observers who have all relevant facts are bound to disagree as to the exact causes of the dissolution of the relationship. Accurately identifying causes is an art.

Establishing causes with respect to history is just one kind of abstraction that makes the study of history rewarding. Accurate abstractions are hard to make, however. Let me use another example. Let us say we want to determine whether the city where I live, Eugene, is a racist city. For the sake of our example, let us assume we can identify racism when we see it. (Please note that this is no small assumption.) We could interview hundreds, even thousands of people. We would get all kinds of responses to our questions. But how would we assess those responses, and how representative would those responses be? And surely we would want to examine more than people’s responses to our questions. We would want to get some kind of sampling of their behavior. How would we interpret that behavior, and how would we determine how representative it is? Clearly this is a difficult task, even when dealing with an issue right in our midst about which we have abundant information. The task is even more difficult when the issue is in the distant past.

We must also keep in mind that when it comes to generalizations, a piece of counter-evidence is not necessarily significant. If, on the basis of our research, we decide that Eugene is not racist, someone could parade two dozen card-carrying Eugenean racists in front of us without shaking our conclusion one bit because the evidence on which we originally based our conclusion was so compelling that two dozen counterexamples are not enough to alter our generalization. The one who brought us the counterexamples may very well be exasperated at our intransigence and accuse us of not basing our conclusion on the evidence, but such a charge is not necessarily warranted. It is simply the nature of generalizations about human affairs that there will be aberrations.

The generalizations we reach as we look at the world around us, including historical data, are largely based on what we think likely. And what we think likely depends largely on our worldview. For example, any historian will embark on a study of the Puritans with some preconceived notion of what the Puritans are like and what kinds of things they are likely to do and why they are likely to do them. A lot goes into creating that picture: an understanding of Puritans as people, an understanding of the time period in which the Puritans lived, an understanding of Puritan theology, an understanding of human beings in general, and so forth. The more accurate one’s understanding of these things, the better one’s sense of what is likely.

This creates an obvious problem. Any historian has a sense of what is likely before he examines his first piece of evidence. And given that much of the work of a historian is the formation of generalizations, any piece of evidence contrary to the historian’s preconceived sense of the likely can be dismissed as exception. It would seem that any preconceived sense of the likely would be impervious to change no matter how much contrary evidence comes to light. This is a danger. It can happen, but it need not.

As the historian unearths more information, the historian will interpret that information in accord with his preconception. Nothing is wrong with this. The historian should try to make sense of the information in light of his preconception. As the historian uncovers information that challenges his preconceptions, he will probably hold to his preconceptions and dismiss the challenging data as aberrational. This, too, is as it should be. But as counter-information mounts, the historian needs to be willing to abandon his preconceptions and make the necessary adjustments in his thinking. If he has an emotional or psychological attachment to his preconceptions, he will hold on to them longer than is warranted. A willingness to give up even our treasured preconceptions, if the data warrants it, is the hallmark of integrity. In order to have integrity, one must have humility (a willingness to change perspectives when called for) and one must know oneself, including one’s inner drives. If a historian has this kind of humility and integrity, the historian’s preconceptions will not be impervious to change. His views will slowly change as the evidence dictates.

A historian needs special skills and special knowledge to do his craft, but the way a historian comes to know the past is fundamentally the same as the way we come to know anything. And the same qualities of integrity and humility are necessary for any person to come to know reality accurately. It is important to recognize, however, that coming to know what is true—whether in the realm of history, science, or any other field of knowledge—is not a matter of mechanical computation; rather, it is a matter of making sound judgments. The process of coming to know what is true is an art, not a method.

Some historians have played fast and loose with the facts. But in general, historians make a genuine attempt to base their accounts on facts. I rarely find grounds for questioning the facts that a historian presents. I am much more likely to question the picture of the past that a historian paints with those facts. Using only facts, it is possible to depict past events in a way that does a gross injustice to reality. I liken this to the difference between a painting of a person that has all of the appropriate features in correct proportion and a painting that has the appropriate features, but they are out of proportion. We call the first a portrait. We call the latter a caricature. Historical accounts can be caricatures of the past. And caricatures are most misleading when they are passed off as portraits.

In our time, it is not uncommon to find historical accounts written in advocacy of an agenda. These are instances where the historian is so intent on furthering his agenda that he ceases to be evenhanded in his assessment of the historical data. The critical accounts of the Puritans’ relationship with the Native Americans that I read on the websites had all the earmarks of being agenda-driven. Certainly, the Puritans were not faultless in their dealings with Native Americans, but my reading has lead me to conclude that in comparison with the way the whites related to Native Americans in other places and in other times, the Puritans were remarkably humane.

Was Christianity any more reasonable than, say, Buddhism? Was my belief in the “law of love” any more logical than the Buddhist practice of meditation? Was it any more logical than placing my faith in the Koran?

These questions grew louder and louder. In the years after Speakers Corner, I plunged headlong into a search for answers. I attended lectures, devoured books, and asked questions. But the answers seemed unsatisfactory. For example: One Christian apologist told me that the law of non-contradiction (X cannot be both X and Y at the same time in the same sense) was all a person needed to know about the nature of God. He was an intelligent man, and he meant well, but I knew my Bible too well to believe him. The God of the Bible was far too peculiar to be discovered merely by following the law of non-contradiction.

So was logic of any help? If logic alone was insufficient even to explain Christianity, could it help me discover the truth among a buffet of rival worldviews? Yes, of course. Logic was necessary to think and speak about anything rationally, but it alone seemed insufficient for my search.

I kept reading and listening and asking, but after a couple of years, I still felt lost. As I saw it, I had two options:

1. Fundamentalism: I could retreat back into Christianity, batten down the hatches, and “just believe.” I knew many Southerners like this. Christianity was, for them, a suit of armor that protected their inner doubts as they attacked anyone who threatened to pierce the armor. No, I could not be a Fundamentalist.
2. Pragmatism: Since ultimate truth seemed beyond my reach, I could shrug and live pragmatically: I could adopt a position that “truth” was what worked. But, if I adopted this view, the best I could hope for was a healthy salary, some decent wine, and good friends. But I could not choose this option. No, I simply could not convince myself not to care.

Since neither of those options satisfied, I kept reading and wondering.

A few years after Speakers Corner, someone gave me a book by Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, and the lights turned on. MacIntyre, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, did not give me an answer, but he did give me a better way to think about my problem. He confirmed my hunch that logic alone was insufficient to pursue the “big question.” The trouble was that I had been born into an intellectual culture that rejected everything but reason.

How did our culture arrive at such a place? MacIntyre begins his story in the medieval world where tradition reigned as king. If someone asked, “Is the earth at the center of the universe?” a scholar would point to traditional sources (like Aristotle and Augustine) for an answer. But during the Enlightenment (roughly 1641 to 1914) tradition was rejected. All claims to truth had to be justified through reason and observation.

Looking back at European history, the Enlightenment seems to me a great improvement over the medieval mindset. MacIntyre points out, however, that something vital was lost when the Enlightenment rejected everything from the medieval mindset, especially the idea that humans have a telos (Greek for ‘purpose’).

Both the medievals and the ancients believed that human beings had a telos and that this telos shaped the way they reasoned. For them, reason did not operate by itself. It operated within a broader framework about the purpose of human life.

How did reason operate for an ancient? MacIntyre gives an example from an episode in Homer’s Iliad. How would an Athenian soldier decide whether to fight or flee when facing a daunting army on the battlefield? The soldier would not think like a modern American or European. He would not ask, “What is practical to do?” or “What would a reasonable person do?” No, first the soldier remembered his telos, his purpose—namely, to ensure the flourishing of Athens, the just and ordered society. Thus, thought the soldier, “I must stand and fight.”

The ancient soldier reasoned within his understanding of the purpose of life. So did the medievals. Imagine a medieval cobbler who had a bad night’s sleep and did not want to cobble shoes. The cobbler would likely remember his telos, which had two branches, one heavenly and one earthly. His heavenly telos was to be united with God; his earthly telos was to perfect his will and his appetites. Thus, even though he was tired, he would think, “My purpose is to perfect my will. So I will work hard even though I am tired.”

But, says MacIntyre, the Enlightenment rejected beliefs about human purpose. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the archetypal Enlightenment philosopher, said morality is built on a foundation of logic. To act rightly is to act logically.

Before reading MacIntyre, I tried to think like Kant. I tried to build a foundation of logic beneath me that I could eventually stand atop and then adjudicate between rival worldviews. But MacIntyre says this simply cannot be done because logic functions within a narrative, or paradigm, about the purpose of human life. The rules of logic (for example, the law of non-contradiction) are like the rules of a courtroom. Alone, the rules of a courtroom do not lead to justice in a disputed case. The rules are needed to keep the trial on track, but they are insufficient to arrive at justice in a disputed case. Something more is needed: A comprehensive narrative about the events and facts of the case. The party with the most comprehensive and reasonable narrative of the events and facts should win the case.

Like the comprehensive narrative necessary for justice in a court case, a worldview is a comprehensive interpretation of the disparate events, emotions, facts, and experiences that are part of human life.

Let me pause a moment. I have been using the words ‘narrative’ and ‘worldview’ and ‘paradigm’ interchangeably. It is worth noting that MacIntyre prefers the word ‘narrative’ to ‘paradigm’ or ‘worldview’ because, he says, narratives are the way human beings navigate their world. Yes, we also use diagrams, algebra, and maps. But our experience of the world is in time. We often craft our experience into a narrative (story) with a beginning, middle, and end.

Not only do we relate experience through narratives (“Honey, guess what happened to me today?”), but we also navigate the unknown through narratives. Imagine meeting a stranger at a bus stop (this is MacIntyre’s example) who walks up to you and says, “The name of the common wild duck is Histrionicus histrionicus histrionicus.” What is this person talking about? To make sense of it, you would construct a series of possible narratives to interpret the situation: Perhaps the man recently escaped from an asylum. Perhaps he mistook you for his friend, and he is continuing a previous discussion about the common duck. Perhaps he just came from an appointment with a psychotherapist who urged him to break down his shyness by talking to strangers. Thus MacIntyre prefers ‘narrative’ over worldview or paradigm (though any of these words are probably adequate to understand his philosophy).

Let’s return to my experience at Speakers Corner. Even if I accept MacIntyre’s view that logic operates within a broader narrative, have I made any progress? Could one narrative show itself more reasonable than another?

MacIntyre says yes. But he does not do it by defending a particular narrative. He does not offer a defense of Christianity (though he did convert to Catholicism after writing his 1979 book Marxism and Christianity). No, his answer is different from that of an apologist like Josh MacDowell or Ravi Zacharias. MacIntyre’s answer is to posit a methodology (narrative-bound rationality) that will allow rivals to debate rationally. He believes that rival narratives (say, Buddhism and Christianity) cannot only argue reasonably, but one narrative can emerge as superior. But how?

MacIntyre offers a few strategies. First strategy: By exposing itself to debate, one narrative might fail “by its own standards.” MacIntyre cites the failure of Paul de Man’s worldview as an example of this. Paul de Man (1919-1983) was a deconstructionist who taught at Yale. De Man believed that, because experience is inherently fragmented, personal identity is inherently fragmented; no one is a unified self; we simply wear different masks—one with our family, another at work, another with our wife, and another with our friends. Each mask denotes a different “self” that conforms to a different set of moral expectations. Absent a unified self, there can be no such thing as personal integrity.

De Man’s own integrity was at stake in 1987 when a Belgium student discovered that de Man had made pro-Nazi statements earlier in his career. De Man’s supporters rushed to his defense, arguing that de Man’s later writings repudiated his earlier pro-Nazi remarks. De Man had matured, they argued, and his later writings had shown intellectual honesty.

But something’s crooked here, says MacIntyre. If a person shows maturity, that means his earlier self and his later self are unified (a concept de Man rejected). Honesty is only meaningful if moral integrity (another rejected concept) is meaningful. Since these two concepts, the unity of the self and moral integrity, were disavowed by de Man, his view should be considered a failure because it does not abide by its own standards.

This strategy is helpful, I thought. But wait. Does that mean internal consistency is the test for truth? De Man’s view was internally inconsistent. But other views are internally consistent. For example, the medieval view of the cosmos (with the earth at the center) was internally consistent. But that did not make it true, right?

So, if internal consistency cannot be the sole criteria for truth, how might one critique a worldview that is internally consistent? To this MacIntyre suggests a second strategy: A narrative that synthesizes competing views (and corrects their weaknesses in the process) should be considered superior.

MacIntyre gives an example. During the Middle Ages, both Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Augustine (354-430 AD) were recognized as authorities. If anyone had a question about whether or not the world was eternal, or how the universe was arranged, he would consult these two titans. Trouble came in 1272 when scholars found more books by Aristotle. Previously, the medieval world had only scraps of Aristotle, and these scraps could be reconciled with Augustine. The full works of Aristotle revealed that Aristotle and Augustine disagreed about all sorts of questions. Was the world eternal? (Augustine said no. Aristotle said yes.) What causes error? (Augustine said moral defect. Aristotle said improper exercise of our minds.) Because these two titans disagreed, the medieval world erupted into chaos. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275) solved the crisis by synthesizing Augustine and Aristotle. As a citizen of both their conceptual worlds, Aquinas took these incompatible views and synthesized them into a single view using the strengths of each to resolve the weaknesses in the other. Thus, says MacIntyre, did Aquinas’s view show itself superior to its rivals. (This was obviously a complex process and well beyond the reach of this essay.)

But what if two narratives cannot be synthesized? What if the two narratives are so radically different that they cannot be joined? MacIntyre offers a third strategy: Narrative A can show itself superior to Narrative B if it better explains B’s weaknesses through its own narrative.

Let me give an example. A young economist I knew (let’s call him ‘John’) believed both capitalism and Marxism were dead; both economic theories had failed. So John secluded himself in a cabin to write the Western world’s next great economic theory. On the left side of his cabin desk, he stacked his economic texts; on the right, the Bible. He had never read the Bible, but he knew that it was formative for the Western world. When he began, he read the Bible through his economic narrative. When he read about Adam and Eve he thought, “Ah, a two-person economy.” But, after several weeks in the cabin, the Bible, which began for John as a sub-story of economics, began to overwhelm his economic view, his economic narrative. The Bible explained more, matched reality better, was more comprehensive. John became convinced that the Bible’s explanation of life was better than his economic narrative. This, MacIntyre would say, is an example of one narrative subsuming another and showing itself to be more reasonable.

In the end, this third strategy is what also helped me answer the questions that troubled me at Speakers Corner. I found that the gospel story made more sense than its chief rival (which, for me, was a Westernized form of Buddhism). Christianity was more comprehensive; it better explained what happened inside me and outside me.

Of course, this is not the complete explanation for why I became a Christian. Any merely rational account of Christianity cannot explain the mysterious workings of God. But the mysterious workings of God are beyond the scope of this essay (and perhaps any essay).

I do know that my class is a group of intelligent, beautiful, talented people. I am sure that no matter what we decide to do with the rest of our lives our experience at Gutenberg will continue to affect us—whether we become mothers, fathers, lawyers, go on to grad school, start a coffee shop, or stay barristas for the rest of our lives.

We have many options before us. With all that we have studied these last four years, we could become many different things. We could be scientists, mathematicians, historians, philosophers, even artists.

Wouldn’t any science department love to have a student who does not believe in the scientific method, thinks Ptolemy had legitimate arguments, and who believes that any amount of statistics cannot achieve truth? A student who thinks that theories are merely made by men who rig the “facts” that they have collected in manufactured experiments? Hmm. So maybe science is out of the question.

Math, however… Who wouldn’t want a math student who believes that numbers are essentially a constructed phenomena that have no real bearing on reality and who believes that numbers cannot be used to reach any real knowledge? OK, maybe not math.

What about philosophy? We can think clearly, articulate well, write down well-thought-out arguments—all of which skills are not valued today in philosophy departments around the world.

Hmm. Maybe we’ll find our calling in art. I guess first we’d need to know what art is. Maybe we’ll have to dust off those papers from freshman year when we defined art. I don’t remember what I said.

But, in all seriousness, rather than narrowing our interests, which were quite varied before we started school, Gutenberg has broadened them. I didn’t know before I came to Gutenberg how much nicer it is to not know that you don’t know what you don’t know.

For our immediate plans: I know that all of us are looking forward to a chance to breath. I know all of us are going to take time to figure out what we want to do with our lives. We will be conscientious with these choices. We will take our time and hopefully use the wisdom we have gleaned through four years of intense study and personal growth.

I know every member of my class would agree with me when I say that I have never been more irritated, frustrated, and bothered by any group of people more than I have by my classmates. I also know that I have never been more honored and grateful for a group of people. I have learned so much from my classmates, have received so much grace, and have grown so much through my time with them. I am proud to call myself a part of the Gutenberg College class of 2010. I am proud to call Molly, Jessinah, Jeannie, Tommy, Karl, Brian, Noah, Erin, and Chelsea my classmates.

I know that whatever we decide to do, these four years will be looked back on as a very influential time in our lives. I am confident that our appreciation for each other and the school will only continue to grow.

I am glad to be done; I am glad to be graduating; but the feelings are mixed. My own experience with Gutenberg has been complicated. It has not been a perfect relationship, and while I am grateful for the good times, the hard times have cast a shadow on my experience here. I know I still have a lot to work through, but I also feel confident that I will continue to grow as I process the past and that my time here has been well worth staying for.

The future is an unknown for all of us. But whatever we decide to do with our lives, our time at Gutenberg will have been worth it. Every paper, every all-night study session, every procrastination, every late synopsis, every time we’ve been late to class, every regret, every relationship, every discussion when we’ve been irritated, every class meeting, every apology, and every step of growth will have been well worth the time spent and the lessons learned. May God keep us and bless all of us as we take this next step.

As it is said in our age one has ‘the positive’ more or less in the way a polytheist would make light of monotheism’s negativity, because polytheism, of course, has many gods, the monotheist but one. The philosophers have many ideas—all valid up to a point. Socrates has but one, which is absolute.
—Søren Kierkegaard

My class has asked me to speak about the past—the past, of course, as distinguished from the present, as that which has come into existence. This topic is, I am sure, inexhaustible, and so for your sake as well as mine, I will not try to exhaust it. Rather, to reflect the character of our time here at Gutenberg, I will attempt to speak with both brevity and profundity—as well as a good deal of confusion.

“Can virtue be taught?” This was the question which occupied the Greeks, the question which Socrates found fit to devote his life to—not hurrying to arrive prematurely at an end, but keeping the question alive and resurrecting her to a life anew in everyone with whom he dialogued.

To the present age she is a ghost who haunts our hallways. A memory. A faded vestige of an age, long past. For the better part of the day, she sits quietly in the attic and watches from her window there the constant, busy flurry of the system builders—the ongoing expansion and remodeling of the critical-scholarly-scientific fortress of the modern times.

Yet in the evening, as we lay in bed and allow our thoughts to wander from our work, we sometimes see her standing in the corners of our rooms. And if we do not hide our face in fear but look, we see in her the vivid pallor of one not dead but just ignored.

“Can virtue be taught?” It is a question, I believe, which must haunt every scientific age, every age which bows its knee before the idols of fact and scholarship. For Socrates was right to say that virtue is, indeed, a knowledge—but a knowledge nonetheless which cannot be given in a textbook. Virtue is a knowledge which NO human teacher can give; it must arise from the learner himself—that is, from the learner’s own existence. Socrates understood this, and so he also understood his own role properly as a midwife. He spent his life in service of the god to aid people in their own personal task of becoming the truth. This task is the task of every individual, and this has been our task at Gutenberg.

In the last four years, we have accomplished something extraordinary—we have learned to live, to bare our faces before God with honesty and humility. Yes, we have learned to relate to each other, to relate to our tutors, to relate to the authors whose works we read. But in a purer sense, we have learned to relate ourselves as existing individuals to a world—and to God.

In this way, our past is distinct from the past of our contemporaries. Our four years at Gutenberg has meant an education toto genera different from an education as is now most commonly understood. We have, each and every one of us, learned a truth, one not given us but borne out of ourselves—forged within ourselves—a truth which is our own. Our history at Gutenberg has signified the coming-into-existence in all of us of the eternal, which, as the eternal, is not properly historical but transcends the historical and rises above it, for it is the Absolute. Our education at Gutenberg was and remains a constant upward striving toward the responsibility of our existence as individuals before God. And Gutenberg was not so poor a midwife along this path.

To a certain extent, each of us has had to walk alone. I have seen, over the past four years, each and every one of my classmates encounter trials and hardships unique to them, out of which I have seen them grow into mature human beings. But though we have, in a certain sense, each walked our own paths, in a much more profound sense, we were and remain deeply united in a common project—in a common destination. And I stand here now to express my gratitude to you all, to my class as well as to the tutors who have aided us and guided us and walked beside us. I am honored and privileged to have shared this project with such a group of honest, sincere, and diligent students of life. My admiration and respect for you cannot be measured.