{"id":5597,"date":"2017-04-21T14:40:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T14:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/04\/21\/john-updikes-christianity-2\/"},"modified":"2017-04-21T14:40:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T14:40:53","slug":"john-updikes-christianity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/04\/21\/john-updikes-christianity-2\/","title":{"rendered":"John Updike’s Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gerald R. McDermott<\/a> (emphases added):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In Updike\u2019s religion, then, there are no commandments we are meant to keep except the obligation to accept what is: \u201cReligion includes, as its enemies say, fatalism, an acceptance and consecration of what is.\u201d Our only responsibility is to \u201cappreciate\u201d the great gift that life represents. He learned from Barth that the next life is simply this life in review, and from his Lutheranism, he wrote, \u201ca rather antinomian Christianity\u201d\u2014the idea that there are no laws we should fear or live by\u2014which he was \u201ctoo timid to discard.\u201d There is no hint of final judgment. Nor is there any imperative to repent or improve ourselves: in Begley\u2019s words, \u201cOriginal sin may be inescapable, but any concerted effort to improve one\u2019s game resembles a righteous struggle for salvation.\u201d And if there was anything he learned from Barth, it was that all human efforts to save ourselves are wrongheaded and futile. As one critic summed it up, Updike \u201cradically divorced\u201d Christian theology from Christian ethics.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The upshot was a self-indulgent religion that basked in self-affirmation while running from voices that would challenge the self to change, particularly in ways that were not pleasant. It is telling that Updike\u2019s last poem ends with words of self-assurance from Psalm 23: \u201cgoodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, forever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One cannot help thinking that Updike\u2019s religion helped build the theological scaffolding for mainline Protestantism\u2019s baptism of gay marriage.<\/strong> Updike wrote of mainline Protestants and their efforts to justify the sexual revolution. Although Updike himself regarded heterosexual sex as normative, his elevation of sex as a way to transcendence would prevent heterosexual Protestants from barring the door to other kinds of sex. Updike told the CBS reporter, \u201cSex is one of the means\u2014maybe the foremost <\/em>means\u2014whereby the [moral and religious] search is conducted.\u201d<\/strong> Once mainline America became persuaded\u2014even in the absence of empirical evidence\u2014that gays are born that way, how could they deny that their <\/em>sex might be their<\/em> way to the divine? Updike would surely have agreed. And millions of Updike readers could thank the novelist for helping them see that marriages defined by desire were not only a right but also a sacrament.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

'See' is standardly employed as a verb of success. I wonder: does the author in his last sentence so intend it?  'Believe' would work better, no?<\/span><\/p>\n

More importantly, it is just self-serving nonsense to view sex as the foremost means for conducting the moral and religious search. That sounds like a joke. I am put in mind of Chogyam Trungpa. According to one report<\/a>, ". . . Trungpa slept with a different woman every night in order to transmit the teaching to them. L. intimated that it was really a hardship for Trungpa to do this, but it was his duty in order to spread the dharma."<\/span><\/p>\n

We are concupiscent from the ground up. So it is no surprise that even Christianity can be so twisted as to serve the sex monkey by one who apparently was its slave.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if truth be told, I just now ordered Couples<\/em> to see how the brilliant Updike makes his case.  Updike is a master of social phenomenology as I discovered when I read Rabbit is Rich<\/em> in the early '90s.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the radical divorce of theology and ethics, there cannot be anything salutary about splitting them asunder. But if split them you must, it would be better to jettison the theology and keep the ethics for the sake of our happiness in this world, which we know, as opposed to the next which we merely believe in.  It is an empirical question, but on balance the sexual revolution has not improved human eudaimonia<\/em>. Our predicament post-pill is hardly a paradise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Updike looks to be a poster boy for the false dichotomy of spirituality versus religion.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Related: A Death Poem at Year's End<\/a>.  I reproduce and comment on a fabulous Updike poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/a>A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gerald R. McDermott (emphases added): In Updike\u2019s religion, then, there are no commandments we are meant to keep except the obligation to accept what is: \u201cReligion includes, as its enemies say, fatalism, an acceptance and consecration of what is.\u201d Our only responsibility is to \u201cappreciate\u201d the great gift that life represents. He learned from Barth … Continue reading “John Updike’s Christianity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}