Dorothy Sayers has long been one of my favorite intellectual heroes. I have loved her mysteries (particularly the Lord Peter Wimsey series) since my youth, and upon my introduction to Dante's Divine Comedy in freshman year of college, have admired her as a brilliant translator/poet. Further in my academic career I encountered her essays and monographs on theology and ethics (my favorites being The Mind of the Maker and The Man Born to Be King). All told, Sayers is a tremendous wit, an acute scholar, and a sharp student of humanity and culture.
Carole Vanderhoof has brought together poignant thoughts and penetrating insights from Sayers' diverse literary corpus in Plough Press's The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers.
In today's blog post, as I continue working through this brilliant compilation, listen to Sayers's indictment of the religious ignorance of her (and our) post-Christian society.
IV. Christian Doctrine, Misunderstanding, and Religious Ignorance
"'Any stigma,' said a witty tongue, 'will do to beat a dogma'; and the flails of ridicule have been brandished with such energy of late on the threshing-floor of controversy that the true seed of the Word has become well-nigh lost amid the whirling of chaff. ...
"It would not perhaps be altogether surprising if, in this nominally Christian country, where the Creeds are daily recited, there were a number of people who knew all about Christian doctrine and disliked it. It is more startling to discover how many people there are who heartily dislike and despise Christianity without having the faintest notion what it is. If you tell them, they cannot believe you. I do not mean that they cannot believe the doctrine: that would be understandable enough, since it takes some believing. I mean that they simply cannot believe that anything so interesting, so exciting and so dramatic can be the orthodox Creed of the Church."
Sayers goes on to share questions that she is asked in various forums, and clear misrepresentations and misunderstandings of Christianity that emerge in those conversations. She then presents a kind of 'contemporary catechetic conversation,' in which the average ignorant post-Christian shares their understanding of the contents of the Christian faith. If she were not so darned accurate, it would be hilarious ... what follows is her imaginative Q&A with the interviewee ...
Q: What does the Church think of God the Father?
A: He is omnipotent and holy. He created the world and imposed on man conditions impossible of fulfilment; He is very angry if these are not carried out. He sometimes interferes by means of arbitrary judgments and miracles, distributed with a good deal of favouritism. He likes to be truckled to and is always ready to pounce on anybody who trips up over a difficulty in the Law, or is having a bit of fun. He is rather like a Dictator, only larger and more arbitrary.
Q: What does the Church think of God the Son?
A: He is in some way to be identified with Jesus of Nazareth. It was not His fault that the world was made like this, and, unlike God the Father, He is friendly to man and did His best to reconcile man to God (see Atonement). He has a good deal of influence with God, and if you want anything done, it is best to apply to Him.
Q: What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost?
A: I don't know exactly. He was never seen or heard of till Whit-Sunday. There is a sin against Him which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.
Q: What is the doctrine of the Trinity?
A: 'The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing incomprehensible.' Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult - nothing to do with daily life or ethics.
Q: What was Jesus Christ like in real life?
A: He was a good man - so good as to be called the Son of God. ... He was meek and mild and preached a simple religion of love and pacifism. He had no sense of humour. Anything in the Bible that suggests another side to His character must be an interpolation, or a paradox invented by G. K. Chesterton. If we try to live like Him, God the Father will let us off being damned hereafter and only have us tortured in this life instead.
Q: What is meant by the Atonement?
A: God wanted to damn everybody, but His vindictive sadism was sated by the crucifixion of His own Son, who was quite innocent, and therefore a particularly attractive victim. He now only damns people who don't follow Christ or who never heard of Him.
Q: What does the Church think of sex?
A: God made it necessary to the machinery of the world, and tolerates it, provided the parties (a) are married, and (b) get no pleasure out of it.
Q: What does the Church call Sin?
A: Sex (otherwise than as excepted above); getting drunk; saying 'damn'; murder, and cruelty to dumb animals; not going to church; most kinds of amusement. 'Original sin' means that anything we enjoy doing is wrong.
Q: What is faith?
A: Resolutely shutting your eyes to scientific fact.
Q: What is the human intellect?
A: A barrier to faith.
Q: What are the seven Christian virtues?
A: Respectability; childishness; mental timidity; dulness; sentimentality; censoriousness; and depression of spirits.
"I cannot help feeling that as a statement of Christian orthodoxy, these replies are inadequate, if not misleading. But I also cannot help feeling that they do fairly accurately represent what many people take Christian orthodoxy to be, and for this state of affairs I am inclined to blame the orthodox. ... I am afraid that this is the impression made by the average Christian upon the world at large." (Sayers, "The Dogma is in the Drama", in The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers, pp. 54-59)
As Sayers notes, there is a woeful inadequacy to the doctrinal understanding and Christlike living on the part of the average confessing Christian in contemporary society, and that inadequacy leads to gross misunderstanding of the faith on the part of non-Christians.
The solution?
Talk the Talk: Know Christ and the tenets of the faith.
And Walk the Walk: Seek to be ever-more sanctified in your daily living.
It's not rocket science. Nor is it easy to accomplish. God help us.
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