Per Caritatem

Baylor University is hosting a Radical Orthodoxy Colloquium on November 13-15.  All lectures begin at 2:30 (Tues-Thurs) and include the following speakers:    Conor Cunningham (Univ. of Nottingham), Aaron Patrick Riches (Univ. of Nottingham), John F. Montag SJ (St. Louis Univ.).  For more information, contact traditio@baylor.edu.

By Michael Vendsel

But even if this is a correct reading of Calvin, surely it only goes to show that Calvin’s treatment of Scripture’s authority is hopelessly superficial. There is nothing over which people divide more stubbornly than whether something is truly beautiful or not, and as recent books such as Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great demonstrate, Scripture is no exception.         

That objection, however, assumes something like Thomas Hobbes’ view of beauty. In chapter six of part I of Leviathan, Hobbes writes:

..Good [and] Evil are ever used with relation to the person that uses them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and Evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.

Hobbes makes it quite clear that this statement would equally apply to judgments of beauty. In the very next paragraph, he says that “the Latin tongue has two words whose signification approach to those of Good and Evil.” The word for Good is pulchrum, and he offers several English terms which approach its sense, including the term “beautiful.” It is safe to assume, then, that Hobbes would say of the aesthetic that “nothing is simply or absolutely so.” And on this view of aesthetics, Calvin’s argument would be genuinely weak – perceptions of beauty would be indications about the disposition of the observer, and would have nothing to say about the text itself. 

It is quite unlikely, however, that Calvin had anything like the above notion of beauty, and far more likely that he would be somewhere in Plato’s vicinity. Plato saw an enormously tight connection between beauty and truth and between beholding beauty and gaining knowledge. In the Republic VI, for example, Socrates attributes truth and knowledge of the truth to the idea of the good, which is something distinct from and superior to them: 

…what provides the truth to the things known and gives the power to the one who knows, is the idea of the good…. But, as fair as these two are – knowledge and truth – if you believe that…[the idea of the good] is something different from them and still fairer than they, your belief will be right.

In Glaucon’s response to this, the idea of the good, as well as knowledge and truth themselves, are all linked with beauty. “You speak of an overwhelming beauty…” he says, “if it provides knowledge and truth but is itself beyond them in beauty.” To confirm this, while this section of the Republic describes movement along the Divided Line as an ascent of the intellect from opinion to knowledge, in the Symposium the same movement is described as the ascent of a lover from things less beautiful to things increasingly beautiful. The same ascent, then, is simultaneously a movement from ignorance to knowledge and from lesser beauty to greater beauty.

Platonism was a significant part of the Renaissance humanism into which Calvin was educated, and more importantly it was influential on the patristic and early medieval sources which Calvin valued.  I am not trying to suggest a direct reliance of Calvin on Plato or an explicit endorsement on his part of Plato’s philosophical aesthetics. I am suggesting, however, that given his context he would come closer to Plato than to Hobbes on aesthetics, and that in the context of Platonic aesthetics the claim that Scripture is self-attesting because of its enormous glory or majesty is not a facile claim.

Even if this were granted, however, one might object that Calvin is still facile about the possibility of working through disagreements over the beautiful. But the above considerations may already deflate some of this criticism. Lack of consensus is only a problem where all parties are equally competent judges, and Plato, it will be remembered, did not share Aristotle’s optimistic view of common opinion. For Plato, disagreement about the nature of the beautiful was due to the disordered souls of the non-philosophers and was therefore inconsequential. Calvin has his own version of this claim. As discussed earlier, Calvin believes that sin causes the human heart to hate and resist the revelation of divine glory, resulting in a sort of spiritual blindness. Those in that condition will obviously not perceive Scripture as beautiful and may even view it as repugnant. Resulting from spiritual disorder, however, those perceptions do not negate the perspicuity of Scripture’s beauty. As Calvin puts it,

God having been pleased to reserve the treasure of intelligence for his children, no wonder that so much ignorance and stupidity is seen in the generality of mankind…. If at any time, then we are troubled at the small number of those who believe, let us…call to mind, that none comprehend the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.

Along with minimizing the significance of disagreements, however, the above considerations may also point toward a way of working to heal them. If someone were challenging the aesthetic value of the Sistene Chapel or the Mona Lisa, there would be a strong counterargument from the fact that both works have been recognized as masterpieces for centuries by nearly all informed observers. Something similar could be done in the case of Scripture by pointing to the tradition of the universal Church. One might not expect Calvin to be favorable to this given his criticisms of Roman Catholicism, but surprisingly he seems to argue just this way. For example, at the beginning of chapter 8, he says that

in vain were the authority of Scripture fortified by argument, or supported by the consent of the Church, or confirmed by any other helps, if unaccompanied by an assurance higher and stronger than human Judgment….

As quoted earlier, however, with the internal testimony in place, “those proofs which were not so strong as to produce and rivet a full conviction in our minds, become most appropriate helps.” The context would seem to indicate that among those “most appropriate helps” is “the consent of the Church.” This comes out quite clearly in the way Calvin handles the famous statement by Augustine that he would never have believed the Scriptures if not for the Church. He claims that Augustine

had no intention to suspend our faith in Scripture on the nod or decision of the Church, but only to intimate (what we too admit to be true) that those who are not yet enlightened by the Spirit of God, become teachable by reverence for the Church, and thus submit to learn the faith of Christ from the gospel. In this way, though the authority of the Church leads us on, and prepares us to believe in the gospel, it is plain that Augustine would have the certainty of the godly to rest on a very different foundation.

Just as a long tradition of reverence for a piece of art, then, can cause those who would otherwise scorn it to look more closely, the tradition of the church can be a significant indication of the self-evidencing character of the Scriptures for those not yet convinced. For Calvin, however, it is only when the Spirit of God has enlightened the doubting heart so that Scripture’s self-evidencing character can be seen for itself that true, unshakeable assurance develops.

To close then, I have tried to argue that Calvin’s doctrine of the internal testimony avoids both rationalism and blind faith by attributing evidential power to aesthetic categories like glory and majesty through which the Spirit works in assuring Christians of the truth of the Scriptures. I have tried to suggest that something akin to a Platonic aesthetic is behind what Calvin is doing here, and that in the context of an aesthetic of that sort some of the criticisms mentioned at the beginning may begin to lose their force. In all this, however, nothing has been said about whether this type of aesthetic is actually true. If the above reading is correct, however, then that may be the real question that needs to be addressed in order to weigh the ultimate merits of Calvin’s approach. The viability of the internal testimony of the Spirit may ultimately depend on how one views the relationship between the perception of beauty and the knowledge of the truth. 

By Michael Vendsel

At this point, however, we need to clarify the precise character of this “divine majesty”, especially since there are places where Calvin clearly distinguishes the assurance brought about by the internal testimony from considerations of Scripture’s gracefulness. For example, in the beginning of chapter 8, as he is describing the secondary helps just mentioned, he writes:

it is wonderful how much we are confirmed in our belief, when we more attentively consider how admirably the system of divine wisdom contained in it is arranged-how perfectly free the doctrine is from every thing that savours of earth-how beautifully it harmonises in all its parts-and how rich it is in all the other qualities which give an air of majesty to composition. Our hearts are still more firmly assured when we reflect that our admiration is elicited more by the dignity of the matter than by the graces of style.

How is this passage, which seems to treat the aesthetic qualities of Scripture as a confirmation of belief, to be reconciled with the earlier passages, which seem to speak of it as a foundation of belief?

It will be useful in this connection to distinguish what we might call literary and moral beauty from the sort of beauty described earlier. The beauty Calvin seems to have in view in the passage just quoted comes from things like logical coherence and rhetorical or poetic elegance, as well as from the moral elegance of the Christian story. The sort of majesty that performs the strong evidential function described earlier, however, is something different. Perhaps it can best be characterized by connecting it with what Calvin says about the knowledge of God earlier in book I.

When he discusses the revelation of God in creation during the first six chapters of book I, he introduces his doctrine of the sensus divinitatis. According to this doctrine, God instills knowledge of Himself within humanity, and that knowledge is both presupposed and augmented by the revelation of God in the rest of creation. It is presupposed in the sense that this internal revelation of God enables the recognition of God’s glory in the rest of creation, and it is augmented in the sense that creation confirms or seals what is known internally. As a result of sin, however, human response to this revelation is resistance. Sometimes this takes the form of atheism and overt rebellion, but more often it takes the form of idolatry. In either case, the result is a sort of blindness. It should be emphasized that this blindness is not total and complete; Calvin’s whole point in the first six chapters is that enough knowledge of God remains so as to remove ignorance as an excuse for sin. In a state of sin, however, that spark of divine knowledge is constantly being resisted in a way that ultimately creates deep tensions within the human being.

With this in place, perhaps we can form an idea of the majesty of God in Scripture. It is clear from the first six chapters of book I that Calvin sees creation as saturated with the glory of God, and that this glory constantly calls out to the inner sense of divinity which is fundamental to all human beings. It should be noted, however, that for Calvin Scripture is formed by divine speech for the purpose of revealing God every bit as much as is creation. It stands to reason, then, that just as the glory of creation calls out to the human sense of divinity, so does the glory of Scripture. There is an inescapable heavenliness or divinity to Scripture that harmonizes with an equally inescapable sense of divinity deep within the human. As noted above, of course, humans resist the revelation within themselves and creation, and to the extent that they succeed blindness takes over. The same will be true for Scripture. But perhaps that is precisely where the doctrine of the internal testimony comes in. The Spirit softens human resistance to the sensus divinitatis, and this allows for the deep majesty and glory of Scripture to be recognized and appreciated. And when that happens, it produces the sort of overwhelmingly deep confidence described earlier, a confidence which can be augmented by the literary, rhetorical, and moral beauty of the text or by philosophical and scientific arguments, but which can never be successfully paralleled by them.

By Michael Vendsel

Explaining just what Calvin means when he talks about this internal or secret testimony of the Spirit, however, proves to be challenging.  Is Calvin talking about an ineffably mystical experience in which the mind is bypassed or transcended? B.B. Warfield states this question nicely in his Calvin and Calvinism:

It still remains…to inquire precisely how Calvin conceived the Spirit to operate in bringing the soul to a hearty faith in the Word…. Are we to understand him as teaching that the Holy Spirit…creates…an entirely ungrounded faith in the divinity of the Scriptures…so that the soul embraces them… with firm confidence…wholly apart from and in the absence of all indicia of their divinity…?[1]

The interpretation Warfield describes seems to have been the one Edward A. Dowey favored decades later in his The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology:

The mind itself is caught up in a higher, transcendent kind of knowing. It is rationally convinced, yet the conviction rises far above what can be rationally grasped…. The believer’s certainty… is the certainty of a mind that concurs understandingly in that of which it is convinced and at the same time rises beyond what it can explicitly comprehend to participate in the mystery of revelation.[2]

Warfield, however, takes exception to this interpretation. “When a soul is renewed by the Holy Spirit to a sense for the divinity of Scripture,” he writes, “it is through the indicia of that divinity that it is brought into its proper confidence in the divinity of Scripture.”[3] He admits that Calvin does not say this in so many words, but he goes through a number of arguments in support of this claim. In his mind, the surest of these arguments is that Calvin is quite insistent that Scripture’s authority cannot be augmented by anything outside itself. That principle would be compromised by the internal testimony if the Spirit gave fresh information about the divine source and consequent truthfulness of Scripture, information that was not inherent in Scripture itself. The Spirit enables us to see the authority of Scripture as it already presents itself in Scripture. He seals those presentations to our hearts, as Calvin puts it, or, as Warfield puts it, He gives us a sense for divinity, an ability to pick up on the exhibition of divinity when it occurs.   So whose reading is to be preferred – Dowey’s or Warfield’s?

I would argue that a close reading of Calvin reveals two tendencies related to this question. First, Calvin does seem to consistently distinguish the internal testimony from ordinary sorts of evidence. At that point, Dowey seems to be correct. But at the same time, Calvin clearly talks about the ground or basis off of which the internal testimony operates – what we might call evidence, or what Warfield calls indicia. Perhaps the clearest example of these two tendencies is in section 5 of chapter 7, where Calvin writes “Scripture, carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments….” In one breath he claims that there is an evidence of divinity inherent in Scripture, but in the very next he denies that Scripture can be submitted to proofs or arguments.

But what sort of evidence or indicia is this, which simultaneously grounds belief without making belief a matter of proof or argument? My argument is that as one moves on in section 5 of chapter 7, Calvin speaks of this evidence in terms that one could call aesthetic. He speaks, specifically, in terms of the majesty or glory of God, and he seems to regard this as the most powerful sort of truth-indicator.  A few sample texts will bring this out. For example, at the beginning of the section Calvin writes:

above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God Himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork! [4]

Here he says that Scripture is assured to us in a way that is above human judgment, and he compares being assured that way to looking on the majesty of God Himself. He immediately goes on to distinguish the sort of confidence he is describing from blind superstition, and the two tendencies come out even more prominently:

Nor do we do this as those miserable men who habitually bind over their minds to the thralldom of superstition, but we feel that the undoubted power of his divine majesty lives and breathes there. By this power we are drawn and inflamed, knowingly and willingly, to obey him, yet also more vitally and more effectively than by mere human willing or knowing![5]

The divine majesty present in Scripture is said here to ground our belief in such a way that we are not being superstitious, but also in such a way that our confidence cannot be classified as an instance of mere human knowing. There is evidence within the Scriptures, but not of an ordinary kind. The next statement is equally illustrative:

Such, then, is a conviction which asks not for reasons; such, a knowledge which accords with the highest reason, namely knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons.

The divine majesty described earlier is said here to bring about a conviction which does not ask for reasons, but which simultaneously accords with the highest reason. It brings about a knowledge which rests in something, and yet what it rests in is distinguished from reasons.

It should be emphasized at this point that Calvin is not claiming that there are no arguments of a more commonplace variety to be had. At the very beginning of chapter 8, he writes:

when, recognizing its exemption from the common rule, we receive it reverently, and according to its dignity, those proofs which were not so strong as to produce and rivet a full conviction in our minds, become most appropriate helps.

In places, he even suggests that these arguments are abundant. His concern, however, seems to be that these arguments not be made the foundation of Christian belief, since they never rise to the level of indubitability and cannot permanently dispel doubt.

Notes

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[1] B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 84[2] Edward A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 110-11.[3] Warfield, 87 [4] Idem

[5] Idem

What follows is a five-part series by my good friend Mike Vendsel based on a paper that he presented this past weekend at the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference in Philadelphia.   Mike holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the Univ. of Dallas and a Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster.  Currently, Mike is an adjunct professor of philosophy at La Salle Univ. and is applying to a number of doctoral programs in philosophy and theology. 

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By Michael Vendsel

When mention is made of John Calvin’s theology, people may think of arid theological systems emphasizing predestination and determinism. That image is hard to maintain, however, when one reads Calvin’s treatment of the authority of Scripture, where he eschews rational arguments in favor of what he calls “the internal testimony of the Spirit”, some sort of inner operation of the Holy Spirit by which Christians are assured that the Scriptures are from God. But while this claim may excuse Calvin from charges of arid rationalism, it seems to suspend the authority of Scripture on nothing more than subjective feelings, and it also seems to overlook the fact that one could appeal to a deep internal sense of assurance in support of almost anything.

In what follows, I hope to address some of these concerns by placing Calvin’s doctrine of the internal testimony in context, both the context of his own thought and of the broader Western intellectual tradition. I will argue that he connects the assurances that come from the internal testimony of the Spirit with certain aesthetic features of Scripture, and that he sees those aesthetic features as having significant evidential value. I will go on to argue that in doing so he navigates a path between both rationalism and blind faith, and that he participates in a significant pre-modern tradition concerning the relationship between beauty and truth. 

The locus classicus for the doctrine of the internal testimony is Book I, chapter 7 of the Institutes. Book I deals with the knowledge of God the Creator, and chapters 1 through 5 describe the way that knowledge is revealed in creation. In chapter 6, however, we are told that the revelation in creation goes unrecognized because of sin, and that therefore Scripture is necessary. This naturally leads to the questions about the nature and character of Scripture which occupy chapter 7.

As chapter 7 begins, Calvin is eager to point out that Scripture’s authority lies entirely in the fact that it comes from God. Since God is Holiness and Truth Itself, it is impossible for Him to lie or be mistaken, and so Scripture, if it is God’s word, will be utterly incapable of being false. As such, it does not stand in need of verification or accreditation from anything external to itself. As he puts it, “When that which is set forth is acknowledged to be the Word of God, there is no one so deplorably insolent – unless devoid also both of common sense and of humanity itself – as to dare impugn the credibility of Him who speaks.”[1] Elsewhere Calvin speaks of this as the self-attestation or self-authentication of Scripture. 

But how do we know that Scripture has indeed sprung from heaven so as to be self-authenticating? The Catholic answer, of course, was and continues to be the authority of the church. But if this were the case, Calvin says, it would mean that there was a point at which human confidence in the Word of God would have been suspended on the contingent outcome of a human decision. In his words, “As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!”[2] Additionally, he cites Ephesians 2:20, which says that the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles. He argues that if prophetic and apostolic testimonies are foundational to the church, then they must antedate its authority.

If these criticisms were persuasive, one might try instead to construct rational, philosophical, or scientific arguments, but Calvin says that arguments of this sort can never produce the sort of assurance Scripture is meant to have. That is not to say that there are not arguments for Scripture – “if we wished to proceed by arguments,” he writes, “we might advance many things that would easily prove.”[3] Whatever was advanced, however, would come short of providing certainty – the possibility of having overlooking something or having made a mistaken inference would always be real. Fallible human reason cannot generate infallible arguments.

The only thing that is infallible is God’s Word, and so the only way we can have infallible assurance is if God’s Word itself identifies God’s Word. To put this another, less circular way, infallible confidence in God’s Word can only be achieved by the assurances of God Himself. This is the foundation of Calvin’s doctrine of the internal testimony of the Spirit.  “If we desire to provide in the best way for our consciences,” he writes, “that they may not be perpetually beset by the instability of doubt or vacillation…we ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.”[4]

Notes

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[1] Ibid, 74[2] Ibid, 75[3] Idem

[4] Ibid, 78

If any of you are planning to attend the Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Conference this Fri-Sun in Philadelphia, please drop by and say hello.  I will be presenting my paper on Augustine and Gadamer on Friday afternoon.  The featured speakers are Denys Turner (Yale University) and David Burrell (University of Notre Dame).

“Karl Barth turned to the book of Romans in the hope of hearing the Word of God and in the hope of finding a new starting-point, and principle, for theology. Instead of interpreting the Bible as an expression of human religious experience, as was typical of theological liberalism, Barth turned to scripture not so much to discover God but to be discovered by God. Whereas ‘religion’ concerns humanity’s search for God, the message of Christianity was, for Barth, that God ‘found the way to us’. God is not an ‘object’ of human reflection but an active subject. Theology’s task therefore is not to formulate human thoughts about God but to explicate God’s thoughts about us. The challenge for Barth was to affirm the reality and activity of God while at the same time forestalling its becoming an object of human historical or rational investigation. If God is God, he must remain free to make himself known. [...] Historical critics, he says, are not critical enough; they do not penetrate as far as the text’s distinctive and unique subject-matter. They do not perceive ‘what there is’ or ‘what stands’ in the Bible. The meaning of the words in the biblical text can only be determined in relation to the Sache of which they speak. To read for the human author’s intention fails to do justice to the freedom of God’s Word speaking in scripture. Schleiermacher, in suggesting that the Bible was an expression of human experience, got the subject-matter exactly the wrong way round. Barth’s aim, in his own words, was to bring the reader ‘face to face with the subject-matter of the Scriptures.’[1]The subject-matter of scripture is not merely history, a system of morality, or religious piety but the God of the gospel: the message of what God was and is doing in Jesus Christ for the sake of a fallen world. This is a crucial point, for it is the driving assumption and material insight behind Barth’s biblical hermeneutics. The subject-matter of theology is not merely historical but eschatological: the ‘world of the text’ (Ricoeur) is the ‘world of God’. The Bible is about the breaking-in of God’s world (the ‘kingdom of God’; ‘real history’) into the world order (‘so-called history’) in order to judge the world and renew it. However, though God enters the world he continues to remain God; he is in the world but not of it. By the very nature of the case, then, this subject-matter is not under human control. God’s self revelation is not a matter of ‘clear and distinct ideas’, but of God-in-communicative action.  ‘Real history’ – the time and space of God’s making himself known – is beyond the reach of the historian. The Sache of the Bible is not an object at our disposal. Interpreters are not merely ‘spectators’ of God’s Word but, in God’s grace, participants that may be caught up into the subject-matter (viz., the fellowship creating triune economy).”

(Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Discourse on Matter: Hermeneutics and the ‘Miracle’ of Understanding,” pp. 11-13).

Notes

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[1] Barth, The Epistle to the Romans trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933; repr. Oxford, 1968), p. x.

 

As we continue to journey with Dante, we read in Purgatorio, Canto IX of Dante’s dream in which an eagle descends, picks Dante up, and then the two mysteriously become one in an image involving fire.  As we read further, Virgil informs us that Dante’s dream actually reflects allegorically what happened while Dante was asleep. That is, St. Lucia, who appeared to Dante in the opening scenes of the Inferno, came to Dante’s aid so that he might continue his journey successfully.  Here St. Lucia appears to point to the sinner’s need for grace and to the fact that God in his mercy provides such grace to those who desire to follow his path.  Again we are faced with seemingly insoluble mysteries, viz., how can one repent or even prepare oneself for God’s grace when via natural reason alone one cannot reach the knowledge of the Christian God?  As St. Augustine phrases this (a version of this) dilemma, how can one love what one does not already know?  On the one hand, even the preparation for God’s grace seems to necessitate God’s prior acting on the soul; yet, on the other hand, Scripture is replete with examples and exhortations that suggest that individuals must freely choose God and live virtuously-all of which highlights the importance of human responsibility.[1]  In other words, Scripture presents God’s sovereignty and election side by side with human freedom and responsibility and does not attempt to resolve this dissonance (cf. Acts 2:22-23).  Perhaps Dante in allowing these tensions to stand is simply echoing Scripture and in an indirect way acknowledging that God’s way of doing things infinitely exceeds our ability to fully comprehend.  Thus, faith requires worship rather than a demand that God’s will bow down to the law of non-contradiction (see Romans 11:33-36).

In the passages and examples that we have examined thus far, the complexity of the relationship between faith and reason, as well as the perplexing role of Virgil as Dante’s spiritual guide is evident.  In closing, I want to mention one final confusing issue related to the character of Virgil that leaves me with more questions than answers.  As Dante the author presents Virgil in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, he is one without hope whose destiny is forever one of exile in Limbo.  Yet, throughout the Inferno and Purgatorio, Virgil continuously serves as a source of hope and strength for Dante the character.  Moreover, if we accept the idea that Virgil’s fate is sealed and that his eternal home is Limbo, then we have no reason to think that Virgil gains any spiritual reward for his actions in helping Dante.  In other words, Virgil seems to be acting simply for the sake of the bonum in se, not for the bonum sibi (the good for his own advantage).  This leaves the Christian with a great difficulty, viz., how is it that a pagan is able to act in a completely unselfish way apart from God’s grace?  As Allan puts it,

To expect to enjoy as directly as, and added to, one’s own-and therefore to hope or pray or work or suffer for-the supreme happiness of another:  this is the essential Christian act as presented in the Comedy.  Virgil’s suffering for the salvation of Dante is, if you wish, higher in one respect-in being disinterested-than any other such human act in the poem.[2]

I tend to believe that Christian theology has a satisfactory answer to this question; however, I am not at this time convinced that Dante’s Divine Comedy (i.e., what I have read of the Divine Comedy up to this point) presents adequately such an answer. 

Notes

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[1] Charles Williams engages this conversation from a slightly different angle, yet his point is well-taken and brings the tension of our postlapsarian condition to the fore-particularly the tension of our own ability to properly think about our postlapsarian condition.  “[T]here is in us, since the Fall, a kind of necessity of sin, and repentance is by no means so necessary.  The unfairness of existence is precisely in this-unless indeed we shared in the Fall and were ourselves personally responsible for the first sin.  Even Christ’s own mysterious submission to injustice on our behalf does not seem quite to do away with the injustice; we did not ask to be tempted; we do not want, in that sense, to sin.  He wishes us to be tempted?  very well, but then do not let him blame us.  Any yet in the first vision of the glory we were, perhaps, reconciled, and not as guiltless but as guilty; then indeed, for a moment, we lived from another root.  Romantic Love at once sensitively exposes our guilt, and makes it both tolerable and intolerable.  The passage of Purgatory is a passage to justice; in sin the universe is always unfair” (The Figure of Beatrice, pp. 147-148).[2] Allan, “Does Dante Hope for Virgil’s Salvation?,” p. 196. 

 

Next we come to an interesting scene in Purgatorio, Canto V.  Here a group of late-repentant shades approach Dante and are amazed by his ability to cast a shadow.  As is the case with most of the shades in Purgatory, this particular group pleads with Dante to send word to their friends and relatives in the world above with the hope that those living loved ones will pray for them.  As these last minute repentants tell their story, they explain that they all died violent deaths and sinned until the final hour.  However, they go on to say, “then light from Heaven granted understanding, so that, repenting and forgiving, we came forth from life at peace with God, and He instilled in us the longing to see Him” (Canto V.53-57; emphases added).  In this account, it seems that the limitation of natural reason is being accented, as the ability to repent, which is described as an act of the understanding, is impossible apart from divine illumination.  Likewise, the very longing to see the Christian God (the beatific vision) is itself a gift of God that must be instilled by God into the person.  Though it is the case that ancient philosophers spoke of a desire to “see” the divine and be in union with the divine, the fact that Virgil ends up in Limbo seems to suggest that such philosophers were not longing for nor did their arguments properly lead to the Christian God. 

In Canto VI of Purgatorio, we have another interesting exchange between Dante the character and Virgil.  Here Dante asks whether the prayers of the people in Purgatory are without hope. That is, given that Virgil himself wrote that prayers are ineffective once divine justice has so to speak settled the issue, Dante wonders as to the efficacy of the prayers of these souls in Purgatory-are they simply engaging in a futile activity?  Virgil’s answer is rather perplexing.  He claims that when he had formerly written on the ineffectiveness of prayer, he was speaking of those who prayed “without a passageway to God” (VI.24).  Virgil, a few lines earlier, had stated that “the peak of justice is not lowered when the fire of love accomplished in one instant the expiation owed by all who dwell here” (VI.37-40).  I understand Virgil to be speaking of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice on the Cross on behalf of those who are in fact guilty-as 1 Peter 3:18 says, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”  In other words, Virgil seems to be claiming that what he meant at the time of his original writing applies only to those who attempted to reach God via their prayers apart from Christ!  Here one would want to ask (1) how Virgil, who lived prior to the Christian era, would have had such knowledge and (2) if he did in fact come to this knowledge, why he himself didn’t act on such knowledge?  One should also note that after giving his explanation to Dante, Virgil quickly defers to Beatrice and urges Dante not to be content with Virgil as the final word with regard to a “quandary so deep” but to “wait for the word that she [Beatrice], the light between your mind and truth, will speak” (VI.43-46).  Here Beatrice seems to serve as an image of divine revelation, yet one wonders why divine revelation would be between Dante’s mind and the truth instead of being described as the Truth itself which is “above” or surpasses Dante’s mind?  When one couples Virgil’s mysterious answer above with what seems to be a purposed attempt on Dante the author’s part to evoke pity in the reader for Virgil given that he is barred from Heaven “for no other fault than [his] lack of faith” (VII.7-8), one cannot help but wonder what Dante the author is up to?[1]  After all in the Inferno, part of what Dante the character had to learn from Virgil himself was that sin is not to be pitied.  Unbelief (with reference to Christ) is of course in the Christian tradition considered sin, so why does Dante the author continue to wrestle with Virgil’s condemnation?  Perhaps one might suggest that though Scripture clearly condemns unbelief as a sin, the examples that are typically given in Scripture itself are of those who were confronted with Christ or the proclamation of the Gospel and yet refused to believe.  In the case of Virgil, however, he was simply by God’s providence born at the wrong time and had no opportunity to hear the Gospel.  Here one might postulate that Dante’s theology is being pressed to its limits and that he himself has not found a satisfying way to explain the justness of condemning such a virtuous pagan given that Virgil had no choice as to when he would be born (viz., in a pre-Christian age). 

Notes

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[1] For an interesting alternative view that argues against the commonly held position on Virgil’s damnation, see Mowbray Allan’s article, “Does Dante Hope for Virgil’s Salvation?,” MLN Vol. 104, No. 1, Italian Issue (Jan. 1989):  pp. 193-205.