"THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE": WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

Author(s): Olivier-Thomas Venard

Source: Religion & Literature , summer 2009, Vol. 41, No. 2 (summer 2009), pp. 87-95
Published by: The University of Notre Dame

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25676891

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 "THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE": WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP

Trained as a literary scholar in the French tradition of the Ecoles Normales

Superieures, and formed into a theologian in the Thomist tradition of the
Toulouse-Fribourg school of theology, I have been struck by the uneasiness
of scholars in dealing with "Literature and Theology" In this essay (mostly
based on French sources) I would like to overcome the dualist understanding
of the relations of these disciplines, to discern their common ground, and
to elaborate what could be the "formal object" of a single field of interdis
ciplinary research called "Theology and Literature."

1. The traditional dualist approach to literature and theology

Ever since theology construed itself as a "science,"1 literary authors and

theologians have been engaging in the ancient quarrel started by Plato be
tween the thinker/philosopher and the poet. Theology on the one hand,
and poetics, rhetoric, and linguistic or literary theories on the other, have
never ceased to grapple with one another.
Theologians are serious?they deal with the one source of all real beings

R&LAX.2 (Summer 2009)

87

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 88 Religion & Literature

and with real beings insofar as they derive from the one source?whereas
literature (poesis) is fictitious and deals with its own fantasized "creatures."
While reason and faith as more-than-reason characterize theological
thought, imagination and credulity propel the literary world. (Following
Plato and Aristotle, this was the position of the scholastics.) The theologian
pays homage to God the only creator, while the poet competes with him.
(Goethe and after him many romantic authors were very sensitive to the
"demonic" side of poetry.) Undeniably, much modern and contemporary
literature revolts against God. In sum, theology is essentially doxology while
literature tends to idolatry.
Conversely, poets and literary thinkers denounce theology's abstraction
and dryness as compared to the liveliness of literature. Even worse, once
theology has been turned into a science and has become a sacred mathesis,
it is far removed from real human life, whereas literature, by returning to
imagination and the senses and by using many symbols, is more attuned to
the religion of the incarnation. Even more radically, literature is God's choice
to reveal himself?what is scripture but a wonderful literary library? Indeed
many disputes between literature and theology occurred in the process of
interpreting Scripture.
The discord between the two domains throughout Western history is well
known. Suffice it here to list a few important clashes and to mention some
prominent authors who fought or studied them:
Augustine, interpreting the Scriptures as the epitome of literature,
looted ancient rhetoric to build theology, reenacting in his way
"the plundering of the Egyptians."2
Poetry slowly appropriated the tools of sacred exegesis after
Mussato and Dante, producing texts calling for a hermeneutic of
multi-layered meanings.3
During the French "Enlightenment" literature became a counter
power when the Church regulated culture.4
Literature set herself up as a religion, the poets considering them
selves magi, sorcerers, or prophets in a progressive religious trans
formation of the arts which started in the nineteenth century5
Literature and theology came to exchange their tools during the
early twentieth century, as literary criticism tended to sacralize
literary productions, while biblical criticism de facto secularized
sacred texts by analyzing them "scientifically" like other ancient
texts.6
Since the scientific dimension of history has been questioned, bib
lical exegesis has tried to retrieve the sophisticated tools devised by
secular literary criticism to study the secular sacralized literature.7

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 OLIVIER-THOMAS VENARD, OP 89

"Arguably biblical scholars are still lagging behind their literary

colleagues" (Barton 204).
Conversely, some attempts have been made to recover the theoret
ical (philosophical/conceptual) dimension of inspired literature.8
Hans Urs von Balthasar's monumental work treating literary authors as
seriously as theologians and Paul ClaudePs rooting of his prodigious literary
creativity deeply within Bonaventure and/or Aquinas seem like exceptions.9
Indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century many scholars agree that
both domains must interact rather than try to swallow one another, yet many
theologians still conceive of literature as a "decorative art" which provides
fancy examples or toppings for dogmatic, moral, or pastoral analyses and
nonliterary teachings. Conversely, literary authors and scholars often reject
conceptuality as if the best means to convey God's revelation in human
experience is narration and poetry10 or they use theological categories to
refine their aesthetics in a way that apparently discards its truth claims.11
It is fair to conclude that the relations between theology and literature
have been mostly antagonistic.12 Such a lasting feud between them must have
a very profound basis. Indeed, the place theology and literature dispute has
to be their common ground, which will be our next topic of discussion.

2. The reason for the ongoing feud between literature and theology

My contention is that both disciplines dispute sovereignty over the inner

kingdom of mankind?namely "conscience" (both moral conscience and
self-awareness)?as the scene on which meaning appears in human life and,
at its heart, the very faculty of meaning (the interpretatio of the medieval
speculative grammarians). It is characteristic of modern and contemporary
times to have located this battlefield clearly.13
For centuries, since the early Christianization of the antique gnoti seauton
and the reciprocal foundations of human psychology and Trinitarian the
ology (from Augustine to Aquinas14), theologians have been experiencing
"the impossibility for thought to found itself independently of the God
that must be thought" (Jungel 244). Moreover, the celebration of the sacred
signs (sacraments) throughout personal and communal life have provided a
practical foundation for the origin and existence of meaning. God himself,
who discloses his silent word in the cosmos, spoke human words throughout
historical revelation, to the point of assuming the human organs of speech
in Jesus and speaking in and through them. In this liturgical frame, theolo
gians could build their doctrine on the authority of revelation and reason
to illuminate human minds, without questioning the linguistic and literary

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 90 Religion & Literature

conditioning?and hence the inevitable relativity?of their teaching. In illo

tempore, eternal truths were guaranteed by revelation, developed by reason,
and enacted in liturgical performances.15
In modern times, biblical exegesis has begun to relate many dogmatic
truths to the literary myths from which they derive. The literary "produc
tive reception" of the Bible has been challenging theology's sovereignty in
interpretation with many "impertinent questions" (Jacob 118-19). Little
by little, literature and literary criticism have replaced the tranquil posses
sion of the truth with the relentless interrogation of thought-experiences
conducted by means of fiction. One has become increasingly aware both
of the frailty and the inescapability of language and hence of the relativity
of the human grasp on truth. Moreover, philosophers and literary scholars
have discovered that metaphor is more than a literary device: it is the matrix
of any signification. Proper and figurative meanings differ in degree, not
in nature. Therefore, the duality of language and reality, or of language
and thought, has to be played down. Indeed, language is not a version of
reality of lesser ontological value than being. Considering language to be
only an instrument of thought is wrong since any assertion depends on a
given linguistic, traditional, and cultural system.
In brief, theology and literature share a common interest in the advent
of meaning in human conscience/consciousness. Whereas the former receives
it gratefully as revealed from above, the latter deems mankind worthy to
devise meaning by herself in the "age of suspicion."16

3. A triumph of literature?

As a result of the new stress laid on language, much of Western thought

has undergone a "linguistic turn" and has begun to believe that really think
ing of reality involves being constantly aware of acting within language.
Postmodern thought may be characterized as a thinking process which cares
ceaselessly about language (what Claude Esteban calls the "souci poetique"
[48-62]).
Apparently, this new evaluation of language establishes the supremacy
of literature over theology with worrisome consequences for theology. It
induces a radical skepticism: if one has to be able to word one's thought in
order to be able to think one's word (as Louis de Bonald put it as early as the
1810s), any claim to know the origin of meaning seems self-delusive. In that
respect, many thinkers of our time would only admit a Derridean supplement
originaire (441-2). For them, ontological truth is a mirage; we shall never go
beyond human creativity Paradoxically, postmodern thinkers, while claiming

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 OLIVIER-THOMAS VENARD, OP 91

to really account for language, end up denouncing it as an instantiation of

illusion. Reality seems to be just what escapes our intellectual-linguistic grasp.
So much for the universal truth-claims of any dogmatic theology!
As a matter of fact, the modern magisterium of literature (and the arts) was
built over against that of theology and religion. Embedded in the work of
many literary authors or thinkers, there is a tendency to exchange religion
for art or scripture for literature; to substitute the composite echoes of
many created voices sounding the world for the stream of consciousness
traditionally construed as the inner word conveying in the soul the voice of
God; and most profoundly, to substitute language for logos.17 For Christian
thought, such linguistic-literary supersessionism replacing the creator with
a creature is unacceptable, as authors like T.S. Eliot already felt it to be.18
The task of "theology and literature" is to challenge this substitution,
which turns out to be an idolatry of language. Yet, reimposing "superior,"
"ethical," or "theological" standards beyond literature would be otiose: what
must be shown is that, as Balthasar said of Hopkins, "what is unheard of in a
poet's language is a theological phenomenon" (268-9). This will be achieved
only by combining the literary care for language and the theological search
for truth.

4. How to combine literary and theological insights

To do so, one must distinguish the benign relativism conveyed by the

linguistic turn from the nihilistic opinions regarding truth often held by
postmodern thinkers.
By taking into account the linguistic/literary dimension of theology, theo
logians can rediscover its common ground with literature. Yes, language is
inescapable, and any reflection on thinking, or being, or the functioning of
language, will have a tautological turn since it will always already mobilize
what it tries to explain. But no, it does not mean that the inescapability of
language is a fatality. Another option is possible, which considers it simply as
fact?not fate. Yes, propositions about the origin, the essence or the function
ing of language may only be manifested and explained?not demonstrated.
But no, this does not mean that truth is inaccessible. It just means that truth
is mediated (revealed and given) in language within a given culture in which
codes and performances will prove essential to accessing truth.19
Christian revelation is attuned to this way of thinking. Theologians do
know that theology depends on a revelation largely made up of words,
which, from a rationalist viewpoint, deprive it of any foundational claim.
But precisely, Christian revelation is all about the incarnation of the abso

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 92 Religion & Literature

lute word in relative words, the gift of the universal in the particular, or the
truth about mankind in a very singular (Hellenistic Jewish) culture. Although
the proper object of theology is the only one that can create language and
through theology dare to speak about him, it is not overconfident. Well aware
of the cultural and historical relativity of the Jewish-Christian revelation,
theologians dare to say something about the disclosure of meaning in words
and in the world, and they claim that what tradition, imagination, desire,
rhetoric and poetics (along with reason) enable them to say after the incar
nation of the divine word is simply true.
Now it is a non-demonstrable, yet prob/vable truth. The rationality
of the reflection resulting from this new literary awareness in the making
of theology will follow what medieval thinkers called a logic de convenientia
[fittingness] ,20?that is, rationally, rhetorically, and poetically trying out the
spiritual light shed on all phenomena by the divine word received in the
human words of the Christie economy and letting oneself be lured and
persuaded by them.

Conclusion: Towards a Christian theological-literary revival?21

Hence, far from necessarily increasing disenchantment or blasphemy, the

importance of the signifier in postmodern culture could be the first step
in a renewed reception of grace. It could bring back the overwhelmingly
discrete presence which was deemed "impossible" by Arthur Rimbaud in
1873 at the time of triumphant positivism (qtd. in Borer and Montegre
39-42). Thanks to the "linguistic turn," theologians can come to share
again in the literary wonderment of the origin of meaning, in the poetic
surprise of the existence and the disclosure of meaning. But they have to
replace the suspicion such wonderment caused in (postmodern times with
the gratefulness of a new Christian era.
Theologians have to propose afresh that the creation of everything
by the word of God and his incarnation, death, and resurrection are the
ultimate keys to fathoming human life in the world in/with/by language.
They have to bring into light the convenientia (appropriateness) of the divine
logos to achieve a phenomenology of the life of the mind and to think the
appearance of meaning in the world (kosmos) within the word (logos). This
task will only be possible thanks to "literary thought"?a way of meditating
that never forgets that thinking is wording. Theology has to recover its poetic
dimension.
Literary authors and theorists may persist in materialist opinions about
the origin of language, sophisticated "difference," or ludic aesthetic reflex

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 OLIVIER-THOMAS VENARD, OP 93

iveness. But their very language (full of biblical or theological quotations)

recognizes that the deepest reflection about the epiphany of meaning in
human existence in this world is indebted to the Jewish-Christian tradition?
the Gospels being both an epitome of literature and the ultimate revelation
of the word. Rather than playing "sublimely" with sacred language, literary
theorists could again start exposing themselves to its scandalous radiations
and let them work and perform truth in their lives. In literary criticism,
the renewal of what George Steiner calls "responsible reading" may again
open the
22
path that goes from the disclosure of meaning to the reception of
grace.
Working to answer the subtle sophisms of postmodernity will not be
simply the task of theologians replundering the (literary) "Egyptians."
Rather, it will produce new theological-literary genres. There are already
promising first fruits. In metaphysics, Maritain's use of mystical rhetoric to
word his famous "intuition of being" was a prophetic attempt to bridge the
gap between wonderment and faith.23 In theology, the eucharist is being
recovered as the unveiling of the origin of language and the unique place
of its remuneration, to speak like Mallarme.24 And literature is not doomed to
gnosticism (Yves Bonnefoy) or aestheticism (Philippe Jaccottet): the works
of Jean-Pierre Lemaire in France and Eugenio Corti in Italy enable us to
dream of a new flourishing of literary masterpieces derived from God's
poetics.. .Fiat! Fiat!

Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem

NOTES

1. See Chenu, "La Theologie."

2. Ever since De Doctrina Christiana 3.29, 4.6-9 or 7.21, applying Exodus 11.2-3 and
12.35-36 to antique culture has been a topos to think of the relations between theology and
the artes. See Curtius, esp. vol. 1, 89.
3. See Bori.
4. See Benichou.
5. See the many references to literary works in my "Le langage qui voulait se faire aussi
fort que le Verbe," and "A la recherche du Verbe perdu," ch. 9 and 10 of Litterature et theologie:
Une saison en enfer, 289-344.
6. See the clashes between Paul Claudel and exegetes of his time, e.g. as told by Millet
Gerard, "Le sens litteral," 263-91.

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 94 Religion & Literature

7. A symbolical date was the invitation of Algridas Greimas and Roland Barthes by
the French speaking biblical scholars of the ACFEB in 1968 and 1969. It launched the
new trends of rhetorical, narratological, structural, and semiotic analysis. See Barthes, and
Venard, "Esquisse."
8. Here one might adduce the names of Etienne Gilson, Emmanuel Levinas, Paul
Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chretien, or in the young generation Matthew
Levering.
9. See Millet-Gerard, "Claudel."
10. See Jossua about "la langue de l'Absolu," 80.
11. See the uses of transubstantiation or incarnation in the work of George Steiner as depicted
in the fine study of Marc Ruggeri.
12. See Chenu, "La litterature."
13.1 tell this story in La langue de I'ineffable..., esp. ch. 10, "L'existence du langage comme
question theologique," 407-60.
14. See the historical and hermeneutical account of the making of this theology in detail
in my La langue de Pineffable..., ch. 9, 344-406.
15. For example, I describe the (largely implicit) divine semiosis in which Aquinas worked
in my La langue de ttneffable..., ch. 7, "Petite semiologie thomasienne," 251-98.
16. See Sarraute.
17. See the investigations in the works of Arthur Rimbaud, Francis Ponge, Yves Bonnefoy
in my Litterature et theologie: Une saison en enfer.
18. See Eliot's "Religion and Literature": "The whole of modern literature is corrupted
by what I call Secularism, that is simply unaware of, simply cannot understand the meaning
of, the primacy of the supernatural over the natural life" (398).
19. This paragraph owes much to Milbank, ch. 3, "Pleonasm, Speech and Writing,"
55-83.
20. See Narcisse.
21. For more details on this proposition, see my "Litterature et theologie au XXe sie
cle."
22. See Steiner.
23. See the literary account of his quarrel with Etienne Gilson in my La langue de Pineffa
ble..., Part 1, esp. 60-116.
24. See Pickstock, and my own endeavor in Pagina sacra..., ch. 12 "L'Eucharistie re
fondation du langage" (669-739) and 13 "L'Eucharistie accomplissement de la poetique"
(741-87).

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