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Home > About Us > Collaborating Institutions > SCS > Luce Seminars > 2003Association of Lutheran College Faculties
October 3-4, 2003
Playing the Discarded Image Card
Rev. Dr. Paul Lehninger, Wisconsin Lutheran College
Omnis mundi creatura
Quasi liber et pictura
Nobis est, et speculum 1
I begin this discussion of the discarded image by a quotation from Alain of Lille, in Latin, for a number of reasons. First, Alain of Lille is a medieval theologian, and the great medieval synthesis, the harmonious worldview in which both scholastic and mystic could feel at home, is the image that was later discarded and which, I will argue, is worth not repristinating, but reappropriating in liberal arts colleges today. Second, that the quotation is in Latin is a reminder that the liberal arts education that contributed to the formation of the medieval synthesis did not appear out of thin air in the medieval world, but was inherited from Roman and Hellenic culture, and kept those cultures alive for those formed by that kind of education. And finally, the quotation was made by a theologian. The medieval model was saturated with the presence of God, not just conceptually as in the model that was inherited from classical culture, but incarnationally, God in Christ. The translation of the Latin quotation is, "Every creature in the world is, for us, like a book and a picture, and a mirror as well." Alain of Lille stated it in poetic, euphonious Latin, but before him, Hugh of St. Victor had said, "The entire sense-perceptible world is like a sort of book written by the finger of God," an idea he borrowed from Augustine, who of course was vividly aware from Scripture that Christ is the Word of God, by whom and for whom all things were made. 2
In order to appreciate the relevance of the discarded image for a twenty-first century liberal arts education, it will help to take a look at where we are, where we've been, and what that has to do with the image that was discarded; in other words, to give brief consideration to post-modernism, modernism, and the medieval model that preceded modernism. There is general agreement that we are living in an age that can be called postmodern. Unfortunately, there is little agreement on how to define postmodernism.
What is agreed on is that things are not the same as they were, in far-reaching, significant ways. Close reading of texts is out; bulleted lists of highly summarized information are in. Attentive listening to carefully prepared lectures while taking copious notes has given way to power-point presentations accompanied by fill-in-the-blanks handouts. Erudite conversation and considered opinions arrived at by logical thought based on a solid base of knowledge are no more valid than the sharing of impressions and feelings. Vague counts as much as specific. Randomness, multiplicity, and an eclectic approach-not making choices among a variety of options based on informed criteria, but choosing arbitrarily, based on "whatever"-have taken the place of unity, simplicity, and specificity. Physicality trumps mental abstraction. My group is more important than my city, state, or national government, while at the same time I buy shade-grown coffee to help third-world impoverished farmers and improve the world's environment, resulting in a sort of "global tribalism," an apparent contradiction by standards of modernism, but a delightful inconsistency that barely fazes gleeful postmoderns.
How did we get here? Although Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others brought postmodern thought on to the stage ready for performance, there is evidence that rehearsals for this production began with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. 3Nietzsche "called into question the entire enterprise of rationalistic human knowledge. He claims that what we view as 'knowledge' is purely a human creation, on the grounds that the process of fabricating reality is an arbitrary and individual matter." 4Nietzsche "was a nihilist. In the end he contends that we have no access to reality whatsoever. In fact, he claims that there is no 'true world.' Everything is a 'perspectival appearance,' the origin of which lies within us. We live in a constructed world that comes from our own perspective." 5As a result, things have value in our world only to the extent that we give them value. Value can no longer be grounded in appeals to a realm beyond the human mind, for example to God. This results in the "death of God." In addition, since truth is relative, language is simply a system of interpretation based on our own subjective values. No event has any inherent meaning; whatever has happened will happen an infinite number of times. This has obvious implications for the Christian doctrines of incarnation and redemption. Although Nietzsche, who developed his philosophy in the late nineteenth century, was writing well before full-blown postmodernism, he definitely set the stage for it by promoting relativism, subjectivism, and atheism.
The modern era, which preceded and in fact produced Nietzsche, stands in sharp contrast to postmodernism. Although Catherine Pickstock, in After Writing: the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy places credit-or blame-for the modern era in the philosophy of John Duns Scotus in the late thirteenth century, there is more general agreement that the impulses present in the Renaissance resulted in the rise of modernism during the age of the so-called Enlightenment. 6Renee Descartes (1596-1650), who attempted to introduce the rigor of mathematical demonstration into all fields of knowledge, defined the human being as thinking substance and the human person as an autonomous rational subject. 7Since he saw God as the source of all truth, his emphasis on objectively verifiable, universally applicable truth would serve, in his opinion, to glorify God. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) saw the universe as a grand, orderly machine, whose movements followed observable laws. He believed that by charting the regularities of the universe, science enhanced our sense of the greatness of God. Although both Descartes and Newton sought to use the power of reason to enhance a theological agenda, the Enlightenment in fact opened the door to a mechanistic universe populated by autonomous, rational substances. 8The power behind the laws of nature could be just that, a power, a god-in-general as the deists asserted, or even the abstraction "nature" itself. This left the purposeful creation of a personal God and the later restoration of that creation by incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection open to doubt. Autonomous, rational, free agents start out in life neutral and by the use of reason conform themselves to the natural order, as John Locke affirmed. There is no place here for sin and grace. To help answer the question of what post modernism was, or is, reacting against, it will help to ask some further questions: is modernism satisfyingly objective, or chillingly cold? Is it optimistic, or over-confident? Do its rationalism and logic provide stability and sure footing, or eviscerate that part of the human person that longs for the mystical and transcendent?
It is my contention that the pre-modern worldview had arrived at a satisfying and coherent balance of those issues alternately emphasized and deemphasized by modernism and postmodernism. But first it will be helpful to trace the origins of the medieval model. Just as modernism and postmodernism have depended on philosophical models, one element in the equation of the medieval synthesis is Greek philosophy. Who is the ideal citizen in Plato's Republic? One who has been schooled in the liberal arts, the trivium or threefold way of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. These liberal arts, as distinguished from the servile arts (and, in the middle ages, mechanical arts), were liberal because they freed the citizen from captivity to his own inner perspective to join in the exchange of ideas in the larger culture. In this sense, they were true education: a leading out of the mind from the darkness of subjective ignorance to the light of truth.
Grammar certainly necessitated the drudgery of the study of syntax, agreement, and the properly structured paragraph, but also included the study of all sorts of literature. Rhetoric enabled the student to speak clearly and convincingly about what he had studied. And logic taught the student to formulate and defend argumentation regarding the deeper principles underlying the subject matter he had studied.
To us moderns-or postmoderns-music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy may not seem to have much in common, until we realize that all four have to do with harmony. A well-ordered life is rhythmic and harmonic. The relationship between pitches, and the percussive periodicity of music; the ratios of integers; the congruence of angles; and the steady and predictable risings and settings of the lights in the heavens all led the citizen of the ideal republic to contemplation of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The ultimate goal is contemplation of the unmoved Mover; therefore, there is a relationship between study of the liberal arts and religion.
The Christian Church inherited this model from Greek and Latin antiquity. Not all in the church were uncritical of it; some recommended jettisoning it entirely. The unmoved Mover of Plato was not the personal, triune God who had become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. The actual course of study in the trivium and quadrivium was saturated with references to the Greek pantheon. Moral standards were reasonable, not revealed. Nevertheless, the value of the liberal arts program was recognized. In effect, it was "baptized" by the Christian Church. Leaders of the church needed to be able to read the Scriptures, and, later, the mass books and sacramentaries. They regularly spoke in public, not only to impart information but to move their hearers. The apologists answered the critics of Christianity with logical argumentation; the fathers of the ecumenical councils applied the teachings of Scripture and of the apostles to doctrinal controversies in ways that made sense.
Moreover, Christianity had an important addition to make to liberal studies, in fact, a revolutionary addition, one that finally gave the whole system integrity and truth: at the head of the system was not a distant, dispassionate, unmoved Mover, but the triune God, moved by love to send his Son to restore his fallen creation; to restore its relationship to him and, in so doing, to restore the meaning of things. Nevertheless, this appropriation of the classical curriculum was largely limited to the regular clergy and many of those in monastic life.
Although there was a "Carolingian Renaissance" of sorts-a reawakening of interest in classical learning-during the reign of Charlemagne, it was no at all as far-reaching as the Renaissance of the twelfth century. The twelfth century inaugurated a whirlwind of academic activity, as evidenced by the founding of numerous universities throughout Europe . These universities offered a curriculum: orderly progress in the study of the arts. Plato set the pace in philosophy, but always under the rubric of Anselm of Canterbury, "I believe, in order that I might understand." Faith came first, and only then did it entertain the idea of seeking reasonable arguments to support the teachings of the faith.
The ferment of the twelfth century was followed by a boiling-over of scholarship-in the schools, led by the scholastics-of the thirteenth century. Aristotle had been lost to the West for the most part, but now his works became available, and the church, which had sorted out the relationship between Plato and the Christian faith, now faced the challenge of fitting Aristotle into the picture. After some false starts, the task was most expertly accomplished by St. Thomas Aquinas, the supreme architect of the high middle ages, reflecting in the majestic structure of his theology and philosophy the grandeur of the great cathedrals constructed at this time.
The medieval synthesis, then, consisted in the harmonization of Plato and Aristotle with Scripture; of church with state; of scholar with mystic; of the active and contemplative life; of nature with grace; and the list could continue. It was all-embracing by mediating its unity through a great, and finely-ordered, multiplicity. 9In short, it was a firm conviction that, however much or little we may understand the intricacies of the world in which we live, it is a world that makes sense. We may at times see what appears to be a tangled hodgepodge of multicolored threads, but the reverse is a finely-woven tapestry. Humans, formed from humus as Adam was from dust, are star players in a grand story; therefore human studies, the humanities, are worth studying. Things come together; the center holds. The pieces fit.
The medieval model-the image discarded by modernity and, so far, by post-modernity-is worth considering in somewhat greater detail, to illustrate the implications of this model. The medievals loved lists. They they reveled in establishing the relationships between the manifold parts of the whole creation, and all of this was regarded as conforming to basic principles. To their way of thinking, everything in the universe has its proper place, a region that suits it, and to which it naturally returns. C.S. Lewis cites Chaucer's reference to the "kindly enclyning" of bodies to their "kindly stede" as reflecting this perspective. 10For example, there are four grades of reality on earth: mere existence (as in stones), existence with growth (as in plants), existence and growth with sensation (as in animals), and existence, growth, and sensation with reason (as in man). The kindly enclyning of these to their kindly stede was seen by the medievals not from a scientific view as the following of some sort of abstract laws, but from a more holistic perspective. Their own strivings and desires were seen as reflections of the elements of the created order tending toward the good and proper place intended for them by their Creator. This can be illustrated by the four elements, earth (cold and dry), water (cold and moist), air (hot and moist), and fire (hot and dry): the earth is lowermost, covered by water, which in turn is covered by air, and fire escapes the air to travel higher still. In addition, there is a fifth element, the quintessence. This lies beyond the moon and therefore we don't interact with it; but notice, since something does indeed lie beyond the moon, there must be an element proper to it, which illustrates the medieval passion for order and appropriateness.
Combinations of cold, hot, moist, and dry elements further constitute the sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic humors in the human person, psychology inherited from the Greeks which is still reflected in some contemporary personality inventories. 11These humors, part of the physical body, obviously interact with the soul, but they do so by means of the natural, animal, and vital spirits. This reflects the medieval understanding that there must always be a mediation, a tertium quid, between dissimilar subjects.
Symbols also function this way, and the symbolist mentality is a striking feature of medieval thought. 12The term symbol as used here implies a much broader scope than our use of the term today. For people of the middle ages, all natural or historical reality possessed a signification that transcended its crude reality; the symbolic dimension of that reality would reveal the significance to their minds. Animals and stones could be described literally-we would say scientifically-but they also reflected important natural and spiritual truths, which resulted in the production of lapidaries and bestiaries to assist one in understanding the symbolism. Even the Bible and the Sacraments could properly be understood as symbolic in this framework: the bare words of the page reflected spiritual truths, and the elements of the sacraments were "not simple water, but a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit." 13Meaning was everywhere; mystery was waiting to be uncovered, and discovered, around every corner. After all, "omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et picture nobis est, et speculum."
This vision continued as one looked out to the heavens. What we call the orbits of the heavenly bodies the ancients and medievals viewed as concentric spheres surrounding a central, spherical earth. First there is a set of seven-the number is both significant and symbolic, of course-each of which is inhabited by one luminous body; in order: the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun (this is a geocentric perspective), Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond these is the stellatum, the abode of the fixed stars. Beyond that is the primum mobile, a sphere that was postulated as being necessary to give motion to the lower spheres. 14And beyond the primum mobile was-what? For Plato, it was the unmoved Mover. Since "unmoved" is part of his/her/its name, by definition this mover moves the rest not by reaching out and setting them in motion, but by their movement of attraction toward the ultimate goodness, truth, and beauty. For this scheme, the Christian middle ages substituted a moving Mover, God the Creator and Preserver of his creation, immanently, yet not locally or distributively, active in every corner of the universe. As the spheres move in relation to one another, they move harmoniously. As we gaze at their motions in the night sky, we see a beautifully orchestrated procession directed by God, and perhaps imagine that we can indeed hear the harmony of the spheres.
But the sun does not move around the earth. Pessimistic, brooding people do not necessarily have an abundance of black bile. Ostriches don't hide their heads in the sand, they're dangerous and feisty; and griffins, centaurs, and unicorns don't even exist. There were problems with the image, problems compounded by the Black Death, nominalist philosophy, and corruption in the church. So why is it important in Christian colleges for contemporary liberal arts students, products of postmodernity, to be familiar with it today?
First, it reminds them that a liberal arts education has been valued highly by most people throughout most of history beginning with the classical period. Moreover, this kind of education attained its peak in the Christian West during the middle ages. The purpose of a liberal arts education at that time was to prepare one to study the Scriptures; reading, understanding, and properly interpreting the Bible was its goal. 15The objective worldview of modernism resulted in the criticism and rejection of Scripture on the one hand, and the support of it by rational claims on the other. 16The subjective, relativising worldview of postmodernism results in Scripture having meanings, but no meaning. 17The discarded image, however, values the use of the tools of language and all other areas of human study to arrive at appropriate and sensible interpretations of Scripture.
Second, where modernism viewed the world as a well-oiled machine blissfully chugging ahead according to built-in laws, with or without someone building and running the machine, and where postmodernism views the world as a place of random experience and vague mystery, people of the middle ages saw the world suffused with the presence of God. The "stuff" of the world was useful and fruitful, and good because it was the gift of a good Creator. But primarily the created order was filled with symbols that reflected divine truths. Vestigia Dei, reminders of God, lay all about, if only one opened one's eyes to recognize them. In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins,
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
- - - - -
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. 18
Can anything in such a world not be worth investigating? Under these terms, launching a college career begins a voyage of discovery not only of academic learning, but of deeper insight into the revelation of God in his world, as interpreted by his Word.
Third, the medieval model points out the liabilities and the assets of both modernism and postmodernism. The rational, orderly universe of modernism is not just worth holding on to, but must of necessity be held on to if life is to have any meaning at all. Scientific method has enabled humankind to learn much that is true about our universe. Postmodern emphasis on the physical reminds us that we are not disembodied, dispassionate spirits, but whole human persons, created in God's image and redeemed by the incarnate Christ. The postmodern global perspective resonates with the medieval model of interconnected and interdependent relationships. Postmodern openness to mystery would have been taken for granted by people of the Middle Ages. And medievals would have shared the postmodern delight in technology, though perhaps for different reasons; it would have enabled them more thoroughly and consistently to have organized, systematized, and categorized their world.
Finally, the best and most fruitful developments build on the past. A wholesale reestablishment of the medieval model is impossible, and undesirable. Wholesale rejection of it is shortsighted and foolish. But just as the medieval synthesis took the best building blocks of classical culture and reassembled them, following a scriptural blueprint, to construct a harmonious whole, insightful Christian scholars today are confronted by the challenge, and offered the opportunity, to select the best of modernism and postmodernism, fit these pieces into the inheritance of classical and medieval culture, and under God's guidance fashion a new, exciting, satisfying, coherent, and worthy worldview. It is possible. Christian scholars are convinced that the diversity of ideas and of natural phenomena ultimately find their unity in God, and that undertaking such a project will result immediately in the good of their students, and ultimately in the praise of God. Again, to borrow the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced-fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him. 19
O infinite Creator, out of the treasure of your wisdom you established the angels in wondrous order in the heavens and most ingeniously apportioned the elements of the earth. You are the fountain of light and wisdom, giving order to chaos. Shed upon the darkness of my understanding the rays of your infinite brightness, and remove from me the darkness of my sin and ignorance. As you give speech to the tongues of little children, instruct my tongue and pour into my lips the grace of your blessing. Give me keenness of apprehension, capacity for remembering, method and ease in learning, insight in interpretation, and copious eloquence in speech. Instruct my beginning, direct my progress, and set your seal upon the finished work, in the name of Jesus, the power of God and the wisdom of God, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
1 Alain of Lille, De planctu naturae, in Th. Wright, The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammists of the Twefth Century (London, 1872), n.p.
2 Marie-Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Toronto: Medieval Academy of America, 1997), 117.
3 For a discussion of postmodernism, as well as selections from postmodern writers and critical analysis of their work, see Graham Ward, ed., The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
4 Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 90.
5 Grenz, 91.
6 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 121-24.
7 Grenz, 64.
8 Grenz, 67.
9 C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambrindge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 11.
10 Lewis, 92.
11 Lewis, 170.
12 For a discussion of the symbolist mentality see Chenu, 99-145.
13 Martin Luther, Small Catechism.
14 Lewis, 96.
15 "The fundamental fact that stands out in this domain is that one of the principal occupations of the monk is the lectio divina, which includes meditation: meditari aut legere. Consequently one must, in the monastery, possess books, know how to write them and read them, and, therefore, if it be necessary, learn how to read." Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham, 1961), 13.
16 Kenneth Hagen, "The History of Scripture in the Church," in Kenneth Hagen, ed., The Bible in the Churches (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, n.d.), 27-28.
17 See Kevin Hart, "Jacques Derrida (b. 1930): Introduction" in Ward, 161.
18 W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie, eds., The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 66.
19 Gardner and MacKenzie, eds., 69-70.