Thursday, August 19, 2021

The Gospel in Dorothy Sayers - Part 2

My admiration for Sayers prompted me to purchase a clever volume from Plough Publishing House: The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers: Selections from Her Novels, Plays, Letters, and Essays (Edited by Carole Vanderhoof. Walden, NY: Plough, 2018).  Vanderhoof collates passages (ranging from individual sentences to multiple pages in length) from diverse Sayers works under 20 editorial categories (e.g., Conscience, Belief, Despair and Hope, and Incarnation).

Today I continue my reflections on The Gospel in Dorothy Sayers, and I hope to inspire you to purchase the book yourself!



II. Nature, Sin, Judgment, and God

"The word 'punishment' for sin has become so corrupted that it ought never to be used.  But once we have established the true doctrine of man's [fallen sinful] nature, the true nature of judgment becomes startlingly clear and rational.  It is the inevitable consequence of man's attempt to regulate life and society on a system that runs counter to the facts of his own nature


"In the physical sphere, typhus and cholera are a judgment on dirty living; not because God shows an arbitrary favouritism to nice, clean people, but because of an essential element in the physical structure of the universe.  In the state, the brutal denial of freedom to the individual will issue in a judgment of blood, because man is so made that oppression is more intolerable to him than death.  The avaricious greed that prompts men to cut down forests for the speedy making of money brings down a judgment of flood and famine, because that sin of avarice in the spiritual sphere runs counter to the physical law of nature.



"We must not say that such behaviour is wrong because it does not pay; but rather that it does not pay because it is wrong.  As T. S. Eliot says: 'a wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God, and the consequence is an inevitable doom.'" (Sayers, "Creed or Chaos," cited in The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers, ed. by Carole Vanderhoof, pp. 46-47)


III. Moral Law, Nature, and the Nature of God

From The Mind of the Maker:

"At the back of the Christian moral code we find a number of pronouncements about the moral law, which are not regulations at all, but which purport to be statements of fact about man and the universe, and upon which the whole moral code depends for its authority and its validity in practice.  These statements do not rest on human consent; they are either true or false.  If they are true, man runs counter to them at his own peril.  He may, of course, defy them, as he may defy the law of gravitation by jumping off the Eiffel Tower, but he cannot abolish them by edict.  Nor yet can God abolish them, except by breaking up the structure of the universe, so that in this sense they are not arbitrary laws.  We may of course argue that the making of this kind of universe, or indeed of any kind of universe, is an arbitrary act; but given the universe as it stands, the rules that govern it are not freaks of momentary caprice.  There is a difference between saying: 'If you hold your finger in the fire you will get burned' and saying, 'If you whistle at your work I shall beat you, because the noise gets on my nerves.'



"The God of the Christians is too often looked upon as an old gentleman of irritable nerves who beats people for whistling.  This is the result of a confusion between arbitrary 'law' and the 'laws' which are statements of fact.  Breach of the first is 'punished' by edict; but breach of the second, by judgment."

Brilliant words about the nature of moral law in a Christian worldview.  Now, of course, the Christian worldview could be entirely false, such that morality is not built upon the nature and character of God and His universe at all.  In that case, morality might be in a world of trouble to begin with, though.  At any rate, Christianity understands morality to be a feature of the universe, and the natural moral law to be similar to natural physical laws, which govern reality as facts, not merely subjectively-embraced values.

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