Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

Art attempts to ‘represent the unimaginable’ in images which speak to us and move us. But in the making of images there is the danger of fomenting idolatry, and inviting the confusion of the reality with the image, when the original is, like God, unimaginable. Richard Viladesau tries to break away from this philosophical impasse by proposing a fundamental theology of the human imagination based on the Logos, the Son of God as Creator. This draws on the teaching that man is by nature ‘capax Dei’, and that the Creator never ceases to draw us to Himself. The ability to know Him, the unimaginable and uncreated One, therefore, even through the medium of created images, is inbuilt and cannot be satisfied except by coming to know Him. Therefore we should expect that this desire for God is made to be fulfilled in Him alone. Human cognition is capable of reaching the truth, even through images of various kinds, which can therefore lead us towards an authentic theology of art and aesthetics, enabling us truly, albeit partially, to ‘image’ the godhead.

 

Not by the intellect alone

 

Viladesau therefore asks how beauty can indeed be understood as a way to know God. Undoubtedly, one of the major problems that has beset theological aesthetics is, on the one hand, the modern and post-modern loss of faith in the image and likeness of God in created human nature; and on the other, the loss of conviction that truth is objectively real and attainable by the human person, intellectually and by feeling (aesthesis). Of course, where knowledge of God is concerned, the nature of what we can claim to know of Him has always been difficult to encompass in human language. But that is precisely where the intellectual conception of God alone, unaided or unbalanced by aesthesis, shows its limits. Pascal famously commented that ‘the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of’, suggesting that feelings are an indispensable part of the human heuristic process. The ‘heart’ stands for the apprehension of that which is instinctively and powerfully perceived as desirable. This is characteristic of beauty as it is experienced by the human heart, not as a force opposed to that of reason, but as admitting more than the intellect alone can grasp.

 

As the anonymous mediaeval English author of The Cloud of Unknowing expressed this truth so neatly: ‘by love may [God] be gotten and holden, but by thought never.’ Viladesau adapts to aesthetics an argument from Kant and concludes that ‘God is … self-subsistent joy in God’s own being and in all that participates in it, and the supreme goal and mover of human desire.’

 

The foundation of art and beauty

 

This ‘categorical’ revelation of God in the joyful apprehension of Himself is what Viladesau seeks to establish as constituting the foundation of art and beauty. The experience of beauty is a delight, a joy in the experience of ‘form’, the organising principle that gives ‘shape’ to things and to our knowledge of them. The recognition of form is itself a sign of intelligibility and is accompanied by a sense of joy and satisfaction in the discovery of meaning and purpose. Yet how is it that we often experience beauty as something sad or tragic? Or that we can even sometimes experience what is tragic as beautiful, as desirable, especially when we encounter it in art and music? Viladesau accounts for this puzzling fact by placing God himself at the ‘horizon’ of every experience of beauty. Finite beauty powerfully points towards the infinite but unreachable beauty of God, arousing in us who experience it both joy in possession, and pain in the perceived absence, of the one to whom we may be drawn and directed by a particular aesthetic event. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant attitudes

 

Viladesau does not shirk the important differences between various schools of Christian theology in understanding of the place and function of art and beauty in relation to God. The sacramental principle, in which created matter and form can be apprehended in some authentic way as images of God, and as ways towards union with Him, is fundamental to the Catholic and Orthodox attitude to art, whereas the Protestant theological system relies on the priority of the word over the image as the medium through which God communicates Himself to us, and by means of which we apprehend Him. It is significant, for instance, that the Protestant theologian Bonhoeffer described ‘art, culture and religion’ as ‘the three great powers by which humanity contradicts the grace of God.’ Nevertheless, it would be wrong, as Viladesau recognizes, to make this dichotomy too absolute. After all, on the Catholic side, St Bernard strongly disputed the place of sensible (especially visual) beauty. On the Protestant side, Luther himself had a profound appreciation of the power of music especially to convey God’s truth and presence, as is particularly exemplified in the religious works of his great follower, Bach. Viladesau quotes Karl Rahner’s pertinent observation that ‘when listening to a Bach Oratorio ... we have the impression that, not only through its text, but also through its music, we are in a special way brought into a relationship with divine revelation about humanity.’

 

The cross – divine love made incarnate

 

The hermeneutical key to the proper understanding of beauty in art, Viladesau states, is the cross of Christ. From an aesthetic point of view, the cross is not itself a beautiful thing, but it is the symbol of a beautiful act, that of the self-giving of the Son of God incarnate out of love for the Father and for fallen creation, in order to restore the beauty of what He had made but sin had marred. So ‘if the image and presence of God are found in the poverty, ugliness and suffering of the world, it is precisely as the hope and promise of transcending these conditions.’

 

Viladesau therefore asks whether Christian spirituality has been too exclusively preoccupied with renunciation and has taken too little account of ‘the fact that Jesus, in contrast to the ascetical John the Baptist, came in a spirit of celebrating the arrival of God’s kingdom.’ Theological aesthetics must eschew any hint of dualism, and fully accept that ‘body and soul were both equally created by God, equally attacked by corruption, and equally saved by Christ.’ Hence we may therefore speak of an ‘aesthetic conversion’ that takes place when we recognise beauty not merely as that which produces feelings of pleasure, but as ‘form’, understood as ‘perceivable order, intelligibility and value’. Yet this conversion must take place in the light of the cross, understood specifically as the historical sign and fulfilment of divine love made incarnate.

 

The problem of idolatry

 

The resolution of the problem of idolatry, in both its intellectual and its asceticaldimensions, is to be found in intellectual, moral, aesthetic and religious conversion,  rather than in the renunciation of any intrinsic dimension of human being. Viladesau

warns us that ‘a lack of experience of the beauty of what is truly good, a lack of taste for the holy – turns people ... towards the pursuit of material pleasure.’ The human thirst for aesthetic fulfilment is insatiable. The question is whether what fulfils that

thirst is good and true, and convincing. The conclusion of this book is that the only authentic beauty capable of bringing us to the end for which we have been created and redeemed is the splendour of truth and goodness in the everlasting glorious vision of God, mediated to us by the Crucified incarnate Logos.

 

 

 

 

This is a lively and thought-provoking book on the topic of cooperation and complicity in others’ wrongdoing. The ‘Servant’ of the title is an imaginary character attracting centuries of debate and even a papal condemnation: the employee of a would-be rapist who is asked to hold a ladder while his master climbs in a window. May he hold the ladder, many have asked, and if so, in what circumstances?

 

Those who regard the Servant example as perhaps a little strained and antiquarian may prefer to think about other cases mentioned in the book: the shipping clerk who dispatches land mines, or the nurse who hands instruments to a doctor who plans to use them for an abortion. How should we make sense of these cases, and what if the Servant, the nurse or the clerk were ‘going through the motions’ at the point of a gun, rather than merely (as in the condemned Servant view) in fear of their jobs or an ‘angry look’?

 

Formal and material cooperation

 

Twenty-first century readers benefit from the distinction now drawn between ‘formal’ and ‘material’ cooperation – where material cooperation in others’ wrongful choices is unintentional, while formal cooperation is intentional. Formal cooperation with the main wrongdoer’s act, however reluctant and however disapproving, is always itself morally wrong. Material cooperation, in contrast, may or may not be morally wrong – and despite clarificatory remarks in Veritatis Splendor – the identification of formal and material, and permissible and impermissible material cooperation, is still a matter of much dispute.

 

Cummings leads us through the history of discussion of this and allied areas, taking in some entertaining if horrifying views requiring censure: proof, if proof were needed, that laxism did not begin with our current age. He also sets out his own views on cooperation, which are not only quite restrictive but not entirely convincing to this reviewer in the particular shape they take. While rightly willing to assert the duty to refuse illicit choices ‘even if it hurts’, Cummings is perhaps too quick to identify some choices as ‘formal’ that might be better seen as ‘material’ cooperation, however unjustified these choices may remain.

 

The role of intention

 

Cummings not unnaturally fears that “if negative consequences are held to be in no way intended, they will be permitted for a sufficient reason; if there is some intentionality, they may fall under absolute norms and be forbidden in all cases” (p.94). So willing is Cummings, at least sometimes, to impute intention from foreknowledge that he even says at one point (p.244) that someone who draws the curtains to keep out the sun intends that they fade! However, intention, as we normally use the term, is about our actual goals – our choice of ends and means – rather than about states of the external world, however important these are in providing choiceworthy options.

 

Rather than sometimes stretch the definition of intention to breaking point, it might be better simply to admit that intention should not be ‘made to do all the work’ when identifying what is absolutely morally excluded. For example, to condemn lethal organ harvesting, or pre-viability removal of an unborn child from its mother, it is not necessary to claim that the surgeon ‘must’ have intended the foreseen death for the unborn child or the organ donor – as a result of what he did intend for the object of his assault.

 

As I see it, Cummings, like many others who support morally restrictive conclusions on these issues, overstates the role of intention as required to reach such conclusions. That said, there are also welcome signs in the book that Cumming recognises that certain wrong intentions cannot be so readily imputed in some cases where the moral verdict is, however, clear. For example, as Cummings rightly notes (pp.134- 5) you do not have to intend to give scandal to give it, and Cummings refers at one point (p.336) to “an exaggeration of the role of the intention of the acting subject in determining the moral value of the act”.

 

Much-needed distinctions

 

In his entirely reasonable desire to argue that certain cases of collaboration are justified material cooperation, Cummings can be unconvincing: for example, he presents as a mere omission to remove from his mailbag the delivery of morally offensive mail by a postman – which merely raises further questions about mail for that address consisting solely of offensive material, not to mention the blameless actions of colleagues in filling the mailbag in the first place. Again, though rightly showing some desire at least to exculpate the bank clerk who in effect helps the bank robbers steal, and certainly intentionally helps them move the money, Cummings is on shaky ground given the general points he makes. The clerk’s collaboration is necessary to the theft, something much stressed by Cummings, and is not something the clerk was ‘doing anyway’ or necessarily part of his duties (or recognised duties) as a bank clerk – two other factors stressed by Cummings.

 

Elsewhere, however, Cummings makes some much-needed distinctions – for example, correctly pointing out in a discussion of an example of Germain Grisez that a temporary contractor who wrongly cooperates in arranging escort services as required by another firm may not be intending that any such services actually take place once the contract has been signed (p.237). It would have been good here to focus more on the co-operator’s illicit intending of the business partner’s plans to offer such services to clients, as such plans are of course morally wrong at every stage. The business partner is intending at least that his clients be attracted to the business by the availability of such services, and the co-operator is intending at least the immediate pursuit on the business partner’s part of that immoral intention, as a condition of the contract being signed.

 

Concentration on deliberately assisting wrongful plans can help us negotiate many complicity problems: for example, whether or not a morally conflicted nurse intends that a doctor succeed in performing an abortion, she may be wrongly intending that he try when she passes him an instrument, on his orders, that will help him do so. (Of course, it goes without saying that she should not be passing the instrument anyway, even without this formal intention, especially if no-one is training a gun on her, even if her job is on the line.)

 

Heroism and self-sacrifice

 

While good at showing us problems, The Servant and the Ladder is perhaps less good at finding solutions; it remains, however, a valuable exploration of a very perplexing area of ethics. It is engagingly written, attractively produced (barring mysterious asterisks at some points where page numbers should be) and generally well worth exploring. There is much to inform and indeed inspire in the book, not least the spirit in which it is written. One can only admire the author’s willingness to accept the sometimes radical demands of conscience: to acknowledge these demands is ever more important in a world where pressures on people of conscience multiply by the day. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists, soldiers and business people, are all too often asked to do what either they should never do (in the case of some choices) or only under unjust pressure (in the case of other choices).

 

Looking back to the last century, the author quotes the words of Franz Jägerstätter, martyred for his refusal to serve in the Nazi army, on its being too late to save the world, but never too late to save your own soul, and bring some other souls to Christ

4 as well. We may not all be called to be Jägerstätters and it can feel uncomfortable making moral judgements on such cases from the safety of our armchairs. We must distinguish between genuine duties, however demanding, on the one hand, and on the other, ‘supererogation’ i.e. ‘going above and beyond the call of duty’. That said, as Cummings notes (p.386), in words that should resonate with all of us, “There are many degrees of heroism and self-sacrifice, and many if not most Christians are called to some degree of it.”

 

Advent Joy – Journeying Towards the Nativity is a book designed to help the reader to contemplate the Stations of the Cross. It has 24 stations beginning on the 1st December rather than the first Sunday of Advent, which varies. The stations themselves cover salvation history from creation to the adoration of the Magi. They each begin with a quote from Scripture which sets the theme of the station, the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, a contemplation, a short prayer taken, for example, from the Divine Office or a sequence from the Mass, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be.

 

 

Each contemplation is only about a page long, allowing the length of each station to be very comfortable. The language used is easy-going which makes it suitable for use with young children. There are, however, a few points that should be noted. Each contemplation has been inserted into the middle of the Our Father, which is a bit clunky, to give an example... “Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. When you told that group of questioners...”; and similarly at the end the contemplation concludes, for example, “Help me heavenly Father to do my part. Give us this day our daily bread...”. Because the contemplation is a completely different writing style the sudden entry back into the formal prayer does break the flow of the meditation.

There seems to be little to gain by speculating what Joseph thought about why he had to travel to Bethlehem for the census or if the Magi picked up their gifts in the market on the way over to the stable, in comparison to the great mystery of the Creator of the cosmos taking on human form in order to save us from the fires of Hell and restore us to how we were created to be, let alone “considering afresh the Holy Incarnation”. In short, it does not leave you feeling like you have done a mini-retreat.

To conclude I would say that the book is not terrible, but I am not sure it would appeal to the readers of this magazine. The idea and layout are great, but sadly the spiritual and meditative content leave something to be desired.