Faith Rising—Between the Lines: Intimations of Faith Embedded in Modern Fiction

By David B. Bowman

This writing intends to rouse would-be believers to faith--or enhance the faith of others--through the adventure of modern fiction. While taking note of the secularity of our era, the author insists the Spirit of God has not departed the scene.
The opening poem by Emily Dickinson, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," proposes the author's contention that the "indirect discourse" of fictional writers may welcome readers to faith's door in ways sermonic speech never did.
The modern authors chosen for this purpose are Izak Dinesen, Annie Dillard, Kent Haruf, Loren Eiseley, Gary Trudeau, Garrison Keillor, William Golding, Walker Percy, Frederick Buechner, and Gabriel Marcel.
Having explained one work each by these noted authors, the book closes by pointing to ways in which embedded faith may rise out of these pages to meet the reader where he or she lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: May 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666700329

David B. Bowman

The Rev. David B. Bowman, PhD, lives in semi-retirement in Saratoga, California. He is the author of a previous book, Saints Along the Way: Women and Men Who Have Influenced My Life. His parish ministry, following doctoral studies at Glasgow University (Scotland), has spanned the continent from New York to California, including Michigan, Washington State, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio. Such a journey led a friend to call him “a wanderer in the earth.”

Book preview

Preface

This volume grows out of an appreciation both for the modern novel and for theological discourse. Numerous publications have participated in the interplay between these two sources. This treatise does not boast of something unique in the field; rather the author simply desires to play some role in the conversation.

The following is an attempt to be an apologist for, the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints (Jude 1:3), but the effort avoids the propositional and explicit, Thus saith the Lord. Such avoidance falls not in the category of seeking to be coy; rather it relates to the common notion of the power of suggestion.

This author takes seriously the recognition that we live in an increasingly unbelieving era. The Enlightenment brought on the aspects of demythology and the critical reading of the sacred text. It continues to shed its influence. But now the predominant mood among the educated is not so much skepticism, as one of boredom with the whole scene of religious meaning.

There may, however, be new factors at play. Some now look at the bloodbath of the 20th century and say, with shock, What have we done? And now, in the face of the planet–wide COVID–19 pandemic, those 21st century minds, who assumed we humans were in charge and know how to cope with any situation, may have second thoughts about our ability to master the scene.

This writer views the world scene as conflictual in nature. That is to take as real the biblical notion of the demonic. Likewise, this piece of writing seeks to give witness to the reality of the Spirit of God present and active in the earth. But since these realities we allege play no significant role in the educated around us, how do we communicate across the chasm?

The thesis of this book revolves around the presence and power of modern fiction. We refer to literature that calls people into the sheer enjoyment at the aesthetic level, that renders a fascinating story and then more or less inadvertently raises questions of meaning, and ultimately of faith, in the reader’s mind.

In choosing ten writers for this assignment the author had no prior plan in mind. Most fiction around the landscape may be described as a more or less well–told story. But some leave the reader with unexpected questions. For example, in William Golding, How come children are so awful? Or in Kent Haruf, How come these small–town folks are so kind?

Probably all, or nearly all, of the ten authors chosen for analysis here will be known to the reader. Without exception their way with words and their relevance to modernity has achieved notice and award in the English–speaking world. The particular pieces chosen for analysis may or may not be the best known of the writer’s repertoire. The order of presentation is rather random.

There are three pieces here that require brief reference since they fall out of the category, short story or novel. One comes from Gabriel Marcel, in the form of drama. He is best known as a philosopher, but his primary passion, in fact, was drama for the theatre.

The other two variations come from Gary Trudeau and Loren Eiseley. Trudeau, the cartoonist of the passing political scene, adds eye content to the message he delivers with humor. Eiseley wrote scientific essays and poetry, but when he begins an essay in this fashion: Many years ago, I, with another youth of my own age whom I had persuaded to make the journey with me, walked throughout the day up a great mountain, the reader is about to enter a story akin to the best fiction.¹

What lies ahead here? First, an introduction about the nature of indirect discourse and some aspects of the meaning of the apologetic on behalf of the faith. Second, the body of the writing—an analysis of a particular literary offering from ten authors. Third, the concluding portion points out this author’s concepts as to how one might decipher the issues of faith that rise between the pages of these secular stories and how one might construe them for one’s own life.

This book lies in secondary place to the writers examined. It is hoped that the reader will feel incitement to find and explore some of the literature—and the excitement—represented here.

Our lives each day may well be regarded as the scene of an immense conflict between the demonic and the holy. If that be so, then we need all the help we are able to receive. Perhaps you hold in your hand a cudgel with which to fight the good fight.

Shalom,

David B. Bowman

Saratoga, California

4 April 2020

1 . Eiseley, Star Thrower,

207

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Abbreviations

Scripture

1 Chron 1 Chronicles

1 Cor 1 Corinthians

Eph Ephesians

Gen Genesis

Heb Hebrews

Jer Jeremiah

Mic Micah

1–2 Pet 1–2 Peter

Phil Philippians

Rev Revelation

Rom Romans

2 Sam 2 Samuel

Apocryphal

Tob Tobit

NOTE: The Scripture quotations contained herein, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible

Periodicals

AM Atlantic Monthly

FWNE Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia

NG National Geographic

MQ Mississippi Quarterly

PS Prairie Schooner

TCC The Christian Century

WNUUD Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary

Introduction

Communicating by Indirect Discourse

This writer grew up in a religious atmosphere far from indirect discourse. More commonly it would be described as pronouncement and threat. That is, if you do not receive the presentation of the good news in the form and manner proclaimed your likely predicament is eternal perdition far from the grace of God.

By stark contrast, D. Anthony Storm accurately calls the method of indirect discourse, the least authoritarian writing imaginable.²

The indirect method may first have seen the light of day in Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 BC). In his Symposium a number of views on the nature of love arise, all without Plato speaking in favorable fashion toward one or the other. In so doing Plato spins the crystal ball of truth in order to shine the light from various angles. Or to use a different metaphor, the so–called maieutic method is employed. In the Greek maieutikas means giving birth. Thus, the voices express various points of view in order to further elucidate the subject at hand. No strawman need be knocked down; each viewpoint enhances the subject at hand.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) utilized the indirect method to its fullest extent. He accomplished this in several respects. First, many of his published writings appear under one pseudonym or another, thus indirect in the sense that they express another’s perspective. Second, he outlines markedly differing life postures within one writing. In Stages on Life’s Way (1845) Kierkegaard presents three distinguishable platforms for living—aesthetic, ethical, and religious. He refuses to regard these levels on an equal plane, contrary to Plato’s high regard for the voices in his Symposium. Disclaiming that the aesthetic or ethical positions represent his own belief (he discloses that in the second edition of Either/Or) (1843), he included a qualification: It was a necessary deception in order, if possible, to deceive men into the religious, which has continually been my task all along.³

We also know that Kierkegaard had other reasons for his pseudonymity, including the intent to ridicule Hegel’s rational hierarchy of being. So he wrote unsystematically in stark contrast to such schemes.

Simultaneous to his indirect writings, during the 1843–1849 period, he wrote directly in his own name. One irony in his authorship lies in the fact that Kierkegaard’s direct writings have achieved far less readership than his pseudonymous pieces. It’s equally ironic that this maieutic literature has proven far more persuasive in its invitation to the life of faith.

One living witness to the maieutic power of Kierkegaard’s indirect discourse writes,

I read the book in my fourth year of graduate school at a time when I was becoming frustrated and discouraged by my years’ long struggle to live as an atheist. I stumbled upon a copy of Concluding Unscientific Postscript in a bookstore, took it home and started reading it. I couldn’t put the book down. For the first time since vigorously rejecting and abandoning [a conservative denomination] I began to glimpse at least the possibility of a ‘way out’ of my intellectual and spiritual paralysis and depression.⁴

In fiction the abstract descriptions of indirection take on flesh and blood reality. An interpreter of the novelist, Walker Percy, (whose fiction is featured later in this volume), takes extensive notice of Percy’s fascination with Kierkegaard’s indirect discourse. Percy refers often to the Danish philosopher in his nonfiction articles. In an interview Percy named Binx Bolling, the protagonist in his breakthrough novel, The Moviegoer, as an occupant of the hedonist, the aesthetic level, and Will Barrett as an example on the religious mode where a person begins to know waywardness under the scrutiny of God.⁵

Percy offers fictional characters who know the satisfaction of everydayness, a good drink and a kiss, as long as life proceeds on an even keel. But when they are thrust headlong into the pain of loss, where lies the place to hide? In Percy’s, The Second Coming, the option for Will Barrett is suicide, except in the process of seeking help for a raging toothache he happens to fall into grace, the graceful arms of a woman becoming quite self–sufficient but who is herself full of need. The unlikely humor of this circumstance constitutes another form of indirection—the sheer happenings in life which, when recognized as undeserved favor, enables a man or women to come to themselves. Some enchanted evening . . .

A historical example of indirect discourse occurs on Kazue Ishiguro’s Booker Prize novel, The Remains of the Day. Mr. Stevens is chief of staff in a stately English home. He hears hints that Miss Kenton, a housekeeper who left twenty years earlier, now finds her marriage falling apart. Stevens then considers taking a motor trip to visit Miss Kenton (now Mrs. Benn), ostensibly to invite her to rejoin his staff. A reviewer expresses it well: The story reaches its low–key climax in the quiet surroundings of a Cornish tearoom . . . here as elsewhere, what is not said makes all the difference.⁶ Stevens finds it impossible to drop his professional standing and dignity in order to express his feelings for her. She too is unable to mount the barrier. They part. The story ends. But here’s the point: The indirection of silence screams the point louder than if ever said aloud. An unrequited love has seldom been shouted louder from a housetop.

The fiction analyzed in this volume offers indirect discourse of one sort or another. The fictional format lends itself to an oblique presentation of faith related issues. If the author mounts the pulpit and begins to proclaim, he or she betrays the genre. To this temptation Flannery O’Conner (1925–1964) succumbs, saved only by the pronouncements coming from unusual sources in bizarre circumstances.⁷

The most significant value of indirect communication is the way it slips up on the reader as with a morning sunrise. The Gospel according to St. Mark may be the supreme example. Even though the opening line is, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the Markan presentation we encounter few propositions such as, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). The paradox may be true: Those who doubt are more susceptible to revelation than believers prone to accept thus and so pronouncements. Just so, a well written novel may deliver a message which the author never announces.

Believers nearly always give searchers copies of the Gospel according to St. John. The argument here presented prefers the indirection from St. Mark, where the meaning more likely lies between the lines. "The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

Offering an Apology

Some of the pieces examined here come across as an apology for faith. Gabriel Marcel and Frederick Buechner exemplify that posture. Other authors, such as Isak Dinesen and Loren Eiseley, might well be shocked if their writings were associated with apologists for faith. In other words, fictional material may give both purposeful and accidental foundation to some facet of the faith once delivered to saints.

The notion of apology, at first blush in our common vernacular, seems apologetic, a request for forgiveness. Rather than offering a confident defense, it seems regretful, anxious and defensive. Such is the way word meanings change, leading to the need to abandon the term or offer it new life. In this case, I prefer the latter course.

Formally defined, apologetics refers to, The discipline which deals with a defense of a position or body of doctrine. The Greek origin of the term, "apologia, meaning a verbal defense," suggests a personal readiness in the effort and a position or doctrine that contains its own stability.

The apologia involves a witness or witnesses giving evidence. This reminds of Jesus’ disciples, John and Peter, witnessing before the Council in Jerusalem. When requested to desist and cease this talk about Jesus, they replied, For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:20). The implication lies before us: When and if we come upon events of importance, we become accomplices in evil should we refuse to bear witness.

An illustration of the apologia comes from the field of sports. When the baseball pitcher stands on the mound sixty feet, six inches from home plate, he usually has a purpose in mind—to throw the baseball over the plate between knee and letters. To do this he may throw a fast ball straight at the target. Or the pitcher may throw something that deviates on the way to the plate—a curve, a slider, a knuckleball, etc. By taking a diversionary way to home plate the ball may cause the batter to swing early, swing late or in some other way be fooled. But fooled only for a moment. When the umpire calls strike the batter gets the point. Two more of those and he’s out of there. However much diverted in the process, he gets the point.

Critical to an appropriate apologia stands the act of listening to understand.. So the apologist defers formulation of the reply until he or she hears the voice of the other. This requires attentive listening in order to understand. Condescension toward the other’s voice hinders the formulation of an adequate reply. Attentive listening