Reading. Thinking. Confessing. Part 3.

Thinking

Following the prologue, the tale of Faust begins with Heinrich Faust in his office seated restlessly in his armchair at the end of a long day of study. He opines:

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“I’ve studied, alas, philosophy, / Law and medicine, recto and verso, / And how I regret it, theology also, / Oh God, how hard I’ve slaved away, / With what result? Poor foolish old man, / I’m no whit wiser than when I began! / I’ve got a Master of Arts degree, / On top of that a Ph.D., / For ten long years, around and about, / Upstairs, downstairs, in and out, / I’ve led my students by the nose. / With what result? That nobody knows, / Or ever shall know, the tiniest crumb! / Which is why I feel completely undone.”¹

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We are meant to feel and see an academic at the end of his wits. At the end of his toil, in the study, straining in the classroom, and writing of his pen he has little to show for it. He has lost all joy in his study and even curses thinking.² All of his reading has not nourished his soul, nor facilitated his knowledge and worship of God. As he later states, “I feel it now, how pointless my long grind / To make mine all the treasures of man’s mind.”³

Mephistopheles then enters the scene as a dog before revealing himself as the Devil. He later returns to Faust and cajoles him into signing away his soul on a scrap of paper in blood.⁴  He admits to the Devil that he is done with thinking: “Thinking’s done with for me, I’m through / Learning I’ve loathed since long ago.”⁵ And indeed, thinking is precisely what Mephistopheles wants to prevent Faust from doing. As he puts it to Faust:

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Sir, come on, quit all that thinking, / Into the world, the pair of us! / The man who lives in his head only’s / Like a donkey in the rough / Led round and round by the bad fairies / While green grass grows a stone’s throw off.⁶

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This is not altogether foreign to our own time.  Living not thinking is what is valued and living is what we see Faust do in the remainder of the book. In Part I, After Faust’s blood oath with the devil we never return again to Faust’s study.

Alongside Mephistopheles he galavants through earth (Part I) and the classical world (Part II). In Part I, the living of Faust ends quite badly. Faust, with the ‘help’ of Mephistopheles, falls in love with a young maiden, Margarete and subsequently is involved in the death of all those close to her.⁷ Her mother— by way of a sleeping potion⁸, her brother— by way of a duel⁹, their illegitimate child— at the hands of Margarete.¹⁰ The death of the child results in Margarete’s imprisonment and execution. Faust and Mephistopheles attempt to free Margarete from the dungeon, but she ultimately refuses to leave. And the book ends with the competing voices of the heavens and Mephistopheles over her soul.

Out of this terror, Part II unexpectedly opens not on earth or hell, but amid the classical world.  After his myriad of misdeeds in Part I, Faust’s misdeeds in Part II continue on a grander scale. With the aid of Mephistopheles’ magic he helps the Emperor to crush an opponent with David’s Mighty Men.¹¹ As a result he is given a piece of land along the coast. From here, he sets out on the very Dutch enterprise (Goethe was German, but admired the Dutch), of reclaiming more land from the sea through large scale engineering.¹² Once more, in this task of land-reclamation he calls upon Mephistopheles’ magic and there is no shortage of lives lost.¹³ By the slip of his tongue Faust has Philemon, Baucis, and their visitor burned alive because he desires their estate.¹⁴ There is a reason that restless and indomitable striving has often been associated with the adjective ‘Faustian.’

Shockingly at the end of Part II, after all his striving, and after his death, Faust too is saved. This rightly ought to surprise the reader. Did Faust not, with his own blood, make a pact with the devil? Does this not certainly condemn him to the abyss? I thought the Prelude asserted that Faust would traverse through this world and heaven “down to hell”?¹⁵ Readers may look in several places for a clue as to what has happened.¹⁶

Theologically, we might be reminded of the words of Karl Barth, “Dogmatics does not presuppose that it is our final destiny to believe as Christians, but rather that our destiny not to do so is not final, and therefore that we shall not be disobedient to the heavenly voice (Acts 26:19).”¹⁷ In other words, the final author of Faust’s life was not Faust himself, but God in Jesus Christ. This strained Christian reading may also be easier settled by admitting that Faust’s worldview is not Christian at all, but that of the Enlightenment. As George Santayana in his work Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe makes clear, that Goethe’s “philosophy of life was indicated [in the final scene]; namely, that he who strives strays, yet in that straying finds his salvation.”¹⁸ Above all, Faust is one who strives and therefore he finds salvation within Goethe’s work. Faust’s god even calls him his “good servant.”¹⁹ As he states at the start of Part II: “Firing me with a purpose I’ll never forswear:/To strive after highest existence always, forever.”²⁰

Faust’ striving is to be juxtaposed against the activity of thinking. I hope I am not misunderstood here. I do not intend to be understood as suggesting that the theologian/Christian should not be social, have friends, celebrate the accomplishments of others, enjoy their family, work hard, etc. Calvin certainly thought that the Christian should be active in the world before the face of God, exalting God. In all of Faust’s activity in the world he abandons this theological element. His greatest end is the self and the overcoming of his own limitations at the expense of others.

Following on from the practice of reading, the task of ‘thinking’ is what preoccupies us in this essay. Thinking is the slow work that follows reading: the activity by which what we have read is remembered, ordered, tested, and allowed to address us before God. The renewal of the mind of which Scripture speaks is inseparable from the reordering of our loves; thinking is a part of sanctification. To think theologically is to be recalled again and again to God’s self-disclosure, in the company of the saints.²¹ Barth in conversation with Anselm defines thinking as reading more deeply. He appeals to the Latin root of understanding (intelligere). In Latin, to read is legere while to think, or contemplate is most literally ‘to read inwardly’ (intus legere).²² Thinking is reflective, meditative reading—especially reflection on what is confessed by Christians. If attentive reading opens the world to us, thinking is the work of honest reflection before God, about God, and all things in relation to God. In this manner of speaking, we do not flee from thinking like Faust in league with Mephistopheles, but in faith take up seeking understanding.²³ Thinking then is not primarily for ourselves, but for God and for others.

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On Thinking

Broadly, “thinking” is an inescapable element of being conscious. One can be lost in their thoughts, day-dream or passively engage with anything that is set before them or in their hands. We are those creatures, who along with angels, think; a gift and capacity given to us by the Lord.  Thinking is both a personal activity, as Wittgenstein asserted, “No can think a thought for me in the way no one can don my hat for me.”²⁴ But also, thinking can be carried out in community. Everyone is aware of the concept of “group-thought.” In the same way, Marilynne Robinson in her book The Death of Adam acknowledges that as modern people we often participate in a “collective fiction” which although thin and fraudulent, in fact often dated and thoughtless, acts as the “gatekeeper” of our dearest interests.²⁵ Just as we can be thoughtless as an individual we can be thoughtless as a group.²⁶

Preceding Wittgenstein’s discussion on reading in the Philosophical Investigations is a section on thinking and understanding.²⁷  One scholar astutely observes that despite this, Wittgenstein “is simply not in the business of providing an answer to the question ‘What is thinking?’.”²⁸  What is more important to Wittgenstein is what counts as thinking.²⁹ As I have described it so far, thinking is a broad activity that accompanies consciousness. But I want to move us toward a more narrow definition, that permits us to think about the activity of thinking as it relates to theological reasoning, stepping further into faith seeking understanding.

Once more, I’d like to point to Webster’s article “Reading Theology.”  Thinking, no less than reading, is never solitary. “We do not begin de novo.” Thinking is a craft learned among others. It is a participation in an existing field of spiritual and intellectual practices. “In short,” Webster posits, “thinking is embedded in tradition.”³⁰ To think theologically, then, is not merely to process ideas, but to share in a community’s ongoing work of discerning the truth of God and his works. Thinking not only begins with others, but ought to continue amid others (and here I do not have in mind primarily the company of books). As Charles Taylor asserts, our impression of what is truly important often depends on our conversations with others.³¹

We might also recall the intimate etymological connection between thinking and thanking made by Martin Heidegger.³²

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“When we listen to the word thanc in its basic meaning, we hear at once the essence of the two words : thinking and memory, thinking and thanks, which readily suggest themselves in the verb "to think."³³

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Gratitude is, therefore, proper or intrinsic to thinking. The inverse is also true, churlishness is improper to thinking. Heidegger burrowing down into his own thought, asserts:

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“The supreme thanks, then, would be thinking? And the profoundest thanklessness, thoughtlessness? Real thanks, then, never consists in that we ourselves come bearing gifts, and merely repay gift with gift. Pure thanks is rather that we simply think—think what is really and solely given, what is there to be thought.”³⁴

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Building from Heidegger, we may also return to Anselm. Envisioning thinking, as the task of faith seeking understanding shapes the posture of thinking. Humility must govern thinking. As Barth states, reflecting on Anselm’s Prosologion, “Humbly, as much as I can” (Humilitier quantum potest), the theologian will “seek the reason how it is” (quaerere rationem quomodo sit).³⁵ In other words, believing and confessing God ‘as he is’ opens up the task of thinking—faith seeking understanding—as one governed by attempting “to understand the truth as the truth.”³⁶ Similarly, in line with this, for Bavinck, thinking is not mere analysis but a movement toward the inner depth of things; a penetration into their essence in order to perceive them as they truly are before God.³⁷  The practice of thinking then ought to bring us to reflection upon and closer to the truth in gratitude.

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The headline of Herman Bavinck’s university diary reads: “Ex animo et corpore” (From soul and body)¹ followed by “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis” (Everything transitory/ is symbolic only).² The latter, German phrase is one of the last lines from Goethe’s play Faust. Presumably, although we cannot enter the brain of Bavinck himself, he writes this at the top of his diary to remind him of the vulnerability that lay before him in his study.  At the center of Goethe’s tale is a man of science (Wissenschaft) who, in exchange for all human possibility, sells his soul to the devil, Mephistopheles.³ These events transpire on Holy Saturday, the eve of the celebration of the resurrection.⁴ We should not be surprised that theological themes pervade the narrative. We may even permit ourselves to perceive Faust to be a theologian, albeit not an orthodox one, or rather a “confused, disordered” one.⁵

In the study or the leather arm chair, the earnest academic in their pursuit of knowledge is often required to turn to the task of reading. In attending to reading here, I do not mean to isolate it from participation in the Body of Christ, in the means of grace, and those activities that shape the Christian life in community (Mic. 6:8; James 1:27; Heb. 10:24-25; 1 Cor. 13). Reading, by virtue of Word and sacrament, is essential to the life of the church. All serious academic inquiry requires reading; theology is no different (Ps. 1:2; Josh. 1:8).  In the space that follows, I seek to reflect on what ‘reading’ is for the theologian, how God may use it in the formation of the intellect and the heart, and how it must be pursued with humility, dependence, and spiritual attentiveness.

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On Reading

Broadly, ‘reading’ is an attentive mode of inhabiting the world. It is in this sense that Augustine in his Confessions can write of “Heaven and earth and everything in them on all sides tells me to love you. Nor do they cease to tell everyone that ‘they are without excuse’ (Rom. 1:20).”⁶ Likewise, John Calvin, can write of the universe as compelling us to see God with “unmistakable marks of his glory” and even Karl Barth, says “God makes himself known to us in the world.”⁷ To consider the world as ‘readable’ is to acknowledge that God both reveals himself in the world, and has gifted humanity the capacity and faculties to know him in this world. This kind of reading is similar to seeing, but moves behind the eyes to the mental processes of the brain. It is to acknowledge that we have been given eyes so that we may turn from darkness to light (Prov. 20:12; Ps. 119:18; Acts 26:18; Eph. 1:17-18). As Bavinck put it, “The whole [of] nature is a book, written by God’s hand, and the great and small creatures are letters and syllables and words and sentences.”⁸ All of creation is accordingly a theatre which portrays to us the drama, or a book that puts before us the typeface of the knowledge of God. 

Theology itself, has not always been a discipline that relies on physical texts, but is put forth before our eyes in art and liturgy, architecture and sacraments, music and people. Broadly, then the Christian ‘reads’ or ‘sees’ the whole as they intentionally inhabit the world aware that God reveals himself through his creation. Such broad reading trains the Christian not simply to gather information, but to perceive the world with reverence, gratitude, and attentiveness, learning to receive creation as a gift and summons.

Narrowly, ‘reading’ involves deciphering words, numbers, or musical notes.⁹ This definition is initially put forth by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations.¹⁰ There he spends about 20 paragraphs dissecting and scrutinizing what reading is, that it is not a distinctive inner experience, mental process, or felt causal connection between signs and sounds.¹¹ Wittgenstein never proffers a positive definition of what it is, at least not concretely. However, it fits within his larger scheme of developing a “language game” that is, it is something we learn in community, through instruction, and forms of life, and that we readily see and know what ‘reading’ is according to its use in language. ¹²

Reading necessarily then participates in something that is larger than the individual reader.  In other words, in reading we do not begin ex nihilio, but rather we enter into a broader intellectual community. This is true of reading in general, but also of course of reading theology. This was the contention of John Webster in his essay “Reading Theology”, that “we do not begin de novo, because in one real sense we do not begin. We appropriate and transform, we preserve and enrich by entering upon the use of ‘an existing spiritual world.’”¹³ Reading then is an act of receptivity and reading theology is a participation in the communion of saints, in which we are instructed and corrected by those who have gone before us. Reading binds us to the past so that we might attend to the present with wisdom.

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Augustine and Reading

We must also consider how God may use reading; Augustine is a suitable guide for this. In his Confessions he informs readers about the books he has read and their respective impact on his soul. First, we encounter this in Book I, in which he was sent to school in particular “to learn to read and write.”¹⁴ He acknowledges at this time he hated reading and studying.¹⁵ In time, this acquired skillset became of great value to him, although these early books that he read did not lead him to God. He wept for Dido, but not for his misery and alienation from God.¹⁶

In Carthage, Augustine was assigned Cicero’s Hortensius. A transformation occurred in Augustine on account of his reading. As he put it: “The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards you yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly… I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart.”¹⁷ While the book cultivated in Augustine a love for wisdom, it lacked the integral and centerpiece of wisdom, Christ. His reading was beginning to prepare him for a life in pursuit of wisdom.

In Book IV, around the age of 20, Augustine is introduced to Aristotle’s Ten Categories. He writes of the prideful experience of reading and understanding more than other students.¹⁸ Throughout the Confessions there are really two obstacles that keep Augustine from God: pride and error. His reading of Aristotle cultivated pride in his heart.

A decade on from his experience with Aristotle the error that Augustine had succumbed to was that of Manicheanism.¹⁹  It was his wide reading among the philosophers that led him to see through the errors of the Manicheans and it was the lack of reading by the Manichean expert (Faustus) that cast doubt into Augustine’s mind of his prowess.²⁰ Throughout his reading nothing was able to convince Augustine that God did not exist.²¹ But he was not yet a Christian. His philosophical reading was helping him to overcome the errors in his thinking, but not the pride in his heart.

He then encounters Ambrose. In contrast with Faustus, Ambrose was not only available to his followers but he was also a reader: “When he was not with them, which was a very brief period of time, he restored either his body with necessary food or his mind by reading.”²² Scripture and the reading of Scripture begins to take on a new hue for Augustine after his engagement with Ambrose.²³  As he states:

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“In plain words and very humble modes of speech it offered itself to everyone, yet stretched the understanding of those who were not small-minded. It welcomed all comers to its hospitable embrace, yet through narrow openings attracted a few to you—a few, perhaps, but far more than it would have done had it not spoken with such noble authority and drawn the crowds to its embrace by its holy humility.”²⁴

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It is a book that is revered for its depth, but also is accessible to all. The humble and profound Scriptures set Augustine on a new trajectory. This is soon amplified by his reading of the platonists. In engaging with platonism he overcomes the plethora of errors of Manichaeism and moves philosophically toward Christianity, but the truth of the humble and incarnate logos has not yet become significant.²⁵ Pride remained in the way. “I began to want to give myself airs as a wise person… Worse still, I was puffed with knowledge.”²⁶ All of Augustine’s reading was festering in him a sense of self-exaltation.

Once again, Augustine engages with Scripture and is struck by its humility. The truths of platonism that he found so appealing he finds in Scripture, but those concepts he found lacking in platonism he also finds in Scripture, namely the beauty of grace and the humility of the work of God in Christ.²⁷ This reading of Scripture prepares Augustine for his encounter with Christ under the tree in Book VIII.

Book VIII is full of books.  Early in the chapter a friend Simplicianus tells the story of the conversion of Victorinus (one who also read widely!).²⁸ This account was precipitated by Augustine’s admission to reading books translated into Latin by Victorinus. After this, Augustine and his friend Alypius are visited by Ponticianus who tells the story of a friend converted through reading an account of the life of St. Antony a desert monk.²⁹ It is the story of St. Antony that sends Augustine both inward (to assess the conflict of his own soul) and out of the house looking for a tree that he might sit under in the garden. As he confesses, “The tumult in my breast had swept me away to this place, where no one would interfere with the blazing dispute I had engage in with myself…So I went out into the garden.”³⁰

Once in the garden, Augustine battles with his own pride and spiritual dithering. He weeps not for Dido, but for his own sin.³¹ Amid his crying he hears a voice from a child playing nearby: “Pick up and read, pick up and read.”³² Taking it as a divine command, and recalling how St. Antony was instructed by the reading of Scripture, he picks up the epistle of Romans and reads 13:13-14, and he confesses, “No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.”³³ The reading of Scripture, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, transformed his heart.

We might gather four things from Augustine to illuminate how God may use reading. First, reading may be transformative for the intellect and will.  Each book that we are introduced to in Augustine’s narrative plods him along toward Christ. This, of course, is a possibility for those whom God is drawing to himself. Yet this transformation does not arise from the book as such, but from God’s gracious use of it; the act of reading becomes fruitful only as it is gathered up into His providential work upon the soul.

Throughout Augustine’s narrative the lifelong habit of reading brings him closer and closer to the truth. Reading then can be corrective to error, second. He reads widely (Prov. 11:14; 18:17; Dan. 1:17). The various books that he engages with allow the errors of various teachings to percolate to the surface and be sifted from his mind. The lack of reading of Faustus does not permit him to see his errors; he relies instead on his personality.

Third, in all of his reading, Augustine was always surrounded by other communities of readers. A vulnerability of highlighting reading is that of isolating the activity of the theologian over against the community. We must not forget as we read we participate in a broader culture and when reading theology, a communion of saints. And through our reading we must strive to participate in this same community, with our whole selves, in the present. This includes the corporate activity of hearing the reading of Scripture, participating in the Body of Christ, seeing and tasting the sacraments.

Fourth, there is one particular book that God uses to transform the head and heart of his people, Scripture. Scripture itself teaches us that the reading and ingesting the Word of God is particularly sweet (Ezek. 3:3). In approaching the theological task through Scripture and in dependence upon the Spirit we cleave to Him. What ultimately crushed Augustine’s pride was the humility of Scripture, which placed before his eyes the humility of Christ. The humble, yet exalted Christ becomes a balm for his soul. The path to God for Augustine is one of humility and this is cultivated through the reading of Scripture. 

Christ and the Definition of Chalcedon

In this light, Chalcedon is very important for our celebration of Christmas today. The Chalcedonian Definition was a clarification of the Christian confession that was written at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Before Chalcedon, other councils had decided important doctrinal issues. Once the church was clear in its articulation that Jesus is truly God in the same way that the Father is God (Council of Nicaea, 325 AD), more difficulties arose around how we should understand the humanity of Christ. The beauty of Chalcedon is that it puts in clear succinct language how it is that Jesus's humanity and divinity are united in the one person. Here is the Definition:

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Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all unite in teaching that we should confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This same one is perfect in deity, and the same one is perfect in humanity; the same one is true God and true man, comprising a rational soul and a body. He is of the same essence as the Father according to his deity, and the same one is of the same essence with us according to his humanity, like us in all things except sin. He was begotten before the ages from the Father according to his deity, but in the last days for us and our salvation, the same one was born of the Virgin Mary, the bearer of God, according to his humanity. He is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, and Only Begotten, who is made known in two natures united unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. The distinction between the natures is not at all destroyed because of the union, but rather the property of each nature is preserved and concurs together into one person and subsistence. He is not separated or divided into two persons, but he is one and the same Son, the Only Begotten, God the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way the prophets spoke of him from the beginning, and Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and the Council of the fathers has handed the faith down to us.

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Let's highlight several key features from the Definition that are particularly relevant for our faith, especially in the season of Christmas:

Jesus is both truly God and truly man at the same time. "This same one is perfect in deity, and the same one is perfect in humanity; the same one is true God and true man." The whole purpose of the Definition is to expound exactly what we mean by this, in accordance with Scriptures. How can a person (Jesus Christ) be both God and man at the same time? Scripture tells us this is true but there are many unbiblical ways to understand this. Church history is rife with error and misunderstanding.

Jesus in his humanity is fully human and like us in every aspect of humanity: "and true man, comprising a rational soul and a body." This is clear from numerous Biblical texts, for example:

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Heb. 2:14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

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Jesus is not just a divine person or being covered over in human flesh so that he merely looks human. He is truly and fully human. Just as we have body and souls, so in his humanity Christ took to himself a human body and a human soul in the very same way that we have a body and soul. His divinity is not the super powered battery animated in human flesh. The eternal person of the Son also took on a human soul.

"He is of the same essence as the Father according to his deity, and the same one is of the same essence with us according to his humanity, like us in all things except sin." Here the Definition uses the word "homoousia" or "same essence," which was a hard-fought phrase central to the Nicene creed to describe the equality of the Son with God the Father and applies the same word to describe his identity with us in our humanity. According to his divine nature, the Son is God in the same way that the Father is God, and in his humanity he is human in the same way that we are human.

In their union, which happens in the one person of Christ, the divine and human natures don't lose their unique attributes. They become connected but they don't mix or change. They unite but it is not a union where each aspect changes or morphs:

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who is made known in two natures united unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. The distinction between the natures is not at all destroyed because of the union, but rather the property of each nature is preserved and concurs together into one person and subsistence.

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At first glance, this may sound technical and esoteric. But there is a simple Biblical logic to it. When the Son becomes man, if something in his divinity changed then he wouldn't still be God the way the Father is God. And if the humanity he takes on changes to become something like a superhuman or a divinized human, then he wouldn't be able to represent us as one of us. Both the humanity and the divinity are united and neither undergo a change because of this union.

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Chalcedon and Our Christmas Confession

Christmas is a time to celebrate and remember who Jesus is and what he did! At Christmas, as much as any time of year, we confess that the Son of God who has existed for all eternity as truly God, took upon himself our humanity in the incarnation. In the Virgin's womb, he takes on all the attributes of humanity without ceasing to be God or losing any aspects of his divinity. These two "natures" come together and are united without either experiencing a change in the essential "godness" of the divine and "humanness" of the humanity. The Definition of Chalcedon is nothing but a faithful representation of Biblical language. He is God. He is God with us. He is God with us in the flesh.

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Matt. 1:23 "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).

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