Speaking Up Over Endo's Silence

Silence by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me a long time to work through my thoughts and feelings about this historical novel. Silence is very well written and Endo's style is enjoyable. I admired the two Portuguese priests Rodrigues and Garrpe for going to Japan to find their reportedly fallen mentor Ferreira and support the Japanese Christians in their struggle against persecution from their government. The events surrounding the suffering and martyrdom of the Japanese church during the seventeenth century were deeply moving and heroically inspiring. The book is worth reading for this testimony alone. I certainly felt compassion for the weak faith of Kichijiro and longed for him to find strength. But then came the ambiguous final chapters. The rest of my review contains spoilers.
After the Japanese authorities capture Rodrigues, they explain that they have outlawed Christianity because, while it may be true for Portugal, it is not true for Japan. I cheered when Rodrigues responded, "It is precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth. If a true doctrine were not true alike in Portugal and Japan we could not call it 'true'." Then the "fumie" began.
The Japanese leaders had realized that getting Christians to apostatize was much more effective for defeating the faith than merely martyring its followers. The "fumie" was an image of Christ and Christians were told to step on it or face the agonizing torture of being hung upside down over a pit of filth, while blood slowly dripped out of a cut inflicted by the persecutors on the victim's forehead. Death took days. The persecutors force Rodrigues to listen to the moans of the Christians in this condition.
By striking the sheep they try to get the shepherds to apostatize. Fallen shepherds mean dispirited sheep and dispirited sheep were more likely to roll over for their persecutors. When Ferreira appears in the story as just such a fallen shepherd, he implores Rodrigues to apostatize. If he does so, the authorities have agreed to release the suffering Christians. Ferreira says that God won't do anything to help them, but if Christ were here he would apostatize for the Christians. Rodrigues had been struggling with the silence of God and other doubts throughout the novel and now it comes to a head. Under that twisted pressure Rodrigues looks at the "fumie" and hears what may or may not be the voice of Christ say that it was to be tread upon by men that he came into the world, so go ahead and trample. But as soon as Rodrigues does so a cock crows in the distance. What should the reader think?
The ambiguous book ends with Rodrigues and Ferreira taking Japanese names and wives and working with the government to identify Christian symbols and thus oppress those who bear them. Rodrigues comes to the conclusion that though Christ seemed to be silent during his trials he was always speaking through him. But the reader is left wondering what the message was. Rodrigues dies ministering forgiveness to the returning Kichijiro, and so he still seems to have faith though living in contradiction to it.
While I sympathize with weakness, I am also reminded that the current powers that be in the world at large want Christians to do exactly what the two priests do in the story: apostatize a public faith without giving up a private faith. The interpreter says, "It is only a formality. What do formalities matter. ... Only go through with the exterior form of trampling." "Go ahead and keep your faith to yourself," secularism pleas with us, "just don't bring it up anymore." Endo's book, which is now a movie directed by Martin Scorsese, seems either to serve up what the world has ordered or lament apostasy.
Endo was a Catholic Christian so it must be a lament over apostasy, but I couldn't help being disappointed. Throughout the novel, I kept wishing that Rodrigues would see that God was not silent but speaking to the Japanese Christians through his ministry and would also speak through his firmness in the face of fear. But Endo's priest doesn't realize this until after he has betrayed and then it seems the priest is on the wrong side.


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The Western Classics Are Still Doing Their Job

I recently watched an interview with David Denby, author of The Great Books. Denby is a journalist and film critic and not conservative or religious. He talks about the multiculturalist and feminist attack on the Western classics as "a white oppressive Euro-centric tradition." He said that when you got to the reasons behind their attack, it all has to do with failure to do failures to do justice as with racism and slavery.

Thus it was a failure of equal rights. Denby points out however, that these notions of equal rights come from the West. They are grounded in the belief that each of us has a soul worth developing and saving and representational government for all. He says, "They criticized the courses [in classical literature] in terms they got from the courses or from the culture itself." He adds, ironically, that this shows the books have done their job.

Londonium

Before I speak of Scotland, there was a few more things to do in London. But before I speak of that Julius Caesar deserves an honorable mention.

He was brought back to life by the Royal Shakespeare Co. in Stratford with Hollywood special affects and sound (probably not what Shakespeare had in mind but give it a chance). The play was good but Mark Anthony was overplayed. The actor had recently done Alien vs. Predator and it seems he was still in that mode. There was no character development, as he played at the same level of emotional intensity for the whole play. This is one of my favs, and I saw the Skakespeare Co. of St.L performance a couple of years ago, where Anthony was more subtle and complex.

We also saw Romeo and Juliet at the Globe which, which by comparison, was stripped down and authentic. No elaborate stage, no mics, just say it and play it. One of my students noted that Romeo was a genetic miracle, as he was black with white parents. Then she commented that maybe he was adopted. Multicultural diversity (which is good) at the expense of realism (which is bad). What's a playgoer to do? Overall, the play was a much better performance than JC and, apart from some unnecessary bawdiness added by crass minds, was excellent.

I also forgot to mention that we toured Tolkein sites through Birmingham with a published Tolkein expert. We saw the inspiration for the two towers which was a massive clock tower whose face glows like an evil eye in the dark and a huge industrial smoke-stake further down. We had lunch with our author who wanted to know if we were creationists after he noticed us looking at the image of Darwin on a pound note. When I told him we believed in Intelligent Design he suggested we better not go there. Good, I really just wanted to hear what he had to say about Tolkien.

He was great on the influence of local geography, Oxford, and Tolkien's bio but clueless about his Christianity. All he could say was that the Lord of the Rings was pagan and that Tolkien was a complex fellow. Many intelligent pagans don't understand that there is not one inch of this world that we Christians don't reclaim for our Lord. Redeem the mythology that points to Christ and some people will still look the other way!

Later we went to St. Paul's Cathedral which is baroque. It has the second largest dome next to St. Peter's in Vatican City and we got to go up this time! The view inside and out was breathtaking. We also saw the tombs of Admiral Lord Nelson who died defeating Napoleon at Trafalgar and the Duke of Wellington who ended Napoleon's career at Waterloo. We also visited Covent Gardens, Cheapside, and went up in the London Eye and looked Big Ben in the eye!

When Science Plays God

There are some who think science can explain everything, fix everything, and will lead us to the perfection of man. It seems that we were warned about this in 1818 when the Enlightenment confidence in science was still peaking. Consider this quote from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

Partly from curiosity, and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly afterward…. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence … and his voice was the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science, and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: -

‘The ancient teacher of this science,’ said he, ‘promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the most unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.’

Such were the professor’s words – or rather let me say such the words of the fate – enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein, - more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

Blinded by the Enlightenment

I recently read Bram Stoker's Dracula and found it not only "spookical," to use a Lewisian term, but also an interesting critique of the Enlightenment worldview. Count Dracula expands his hunting grounds by moving to London, which is the center of the industrial revolution and steeped in the age of reason. When solicitor, Jonathan Harker, traveled to Transylvania to help convey the Count to London, the rational young man found the Count's native land still submerged in old world superstitions. When the locals he meets along the way find out that he is traveling to Dracula's castle they seem dumbstruck. After recovering themselves they forcefully try to deter him, and when they cannot prevail, they insist that he accept their religious relics for protection. One night he sees the count descending the castle wall headfirst, and assures himself that he must be seeing things in the moonlight.

When the count arrives in London and begins his nightly reign of supernatural terror, no one knows how to explain what they see. A young women in the flower of youth drained of blood in single night without a drop in sight the next morning, puncture marks on her neck, bat noises outside the window, a wolf attack, and other strange animal behavior are all scientifically recorded in journals without an inkling of what's going on. The empirical evidence is there, but the worldview is found wanting. That is, until a real scientist shows up in the person of Abraham Van Helsing. Professor Van Helsing recognizes the signs but doesn't reveal anything until he can deliver the proof to his blinded young friends.

He soon takes them on a night errand to encounter the now undead Lucy Westenra, who three of the group had proposed to a short time before. The encounter with supernatural evil shatters the Enlightenment worldview of the young men who immediately transfer their loyalties to Van Helsing's Catholic Christian worldview and become vampire hunters. As soon as the truth dispels the Enlightenment perspective, Count Dracula is on the run. He has numerous hiding places but he knows it is only a matter of time before the team finds where he's entombed away from the daylight. 

It seems the vampire's success depended on the Enlightenment denial of the possibility of his existence. Now that Christendom is back at the helm, Dracula must flee back to his remote castle hideaway in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania before his spiritually awakened foes can intercept him. Jonathan Harker's wife Mina is almost completely under the vampire's sway however, as she had been his target prior to being put to flight. Dracula had mingled his blood and hers in an effort to control her. She begins to show aversion to holy objects such as the sanctified host (believed to be the transubstantiated body of Christ) that Van Helsing had acquired by a special dispensation of the Roman church. Despite what some critics say, it is the cross and supernatural good that poses a threat to the vampire, not modern technology. The real threat to Dracula is inexplicable by science and requires a return to the faith of Christendom in order to win the fight! 

Do You Believe in a God Who Can Save a Hellboy?

I've always loved monsters, superheroes, and stories of redemption. To the surprise of many, I have recently become a fan of the Hellboy movies and graphic novels. I find them to be a playground for a Christian imagination and great fun.

I view the first movie as a metaphor of Christian conversion, regardless of whether the writers intended it that way or not. Since God made the world in order that he might redeem it, much of life resonates with redemptive themes if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. These redemptive themes permeate human art, even the art of atheists like Jean Paul Sarte (read his play "No Exit"). The gospel is inescapable in a world destined for redemption.

The first Hellboy movie begins with the question: "What makes a man? Is it something in his origins or is it in the choices he makes?" This question is especially poignant for Hellboy because his origin is Hell. Mike Mignola, the creator of the Hellboy mythology, and Guillermo Del Toro, his collaborator on the movies, explicitly raise the question: "Can a demon become a good man?"

Since God makes everything good, everything can be redeemed, if he wills it. The problem with demon-redemption is that Scripture does not tell us that God wills it. But this is not a problem, once you take the universe of Hellboy for what it is--a parallel world. It's like Narnia. Bacchus is a good-guy there and spiritism and spells aren't necessarily evil. This is because Aslan and the Emperor beyond the Sea use them as a means of revelation. You could probably say the same thing about the fairy tale magic of Harry Potter, except that world is Christian only in the moral sense of a real anti-thesis between good and evil and not so much in the redemptive sense of God incarnate laying down his life.

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien put forth the idea of sub-creation. Since we are made in the image of God we long to create as he does. Since he likes to make worlds, we do to. No world is exactly alike so it shouldn't surprise us if God might redeem a demon in one world but not another or choose to use "magic" in one world and "miracles" in another. The medieval theologian William of Ockham seems to shed some light here, when he says that God doesn't will things because they are good, they are good simply because God wills them or wills to use them positively.

The reason why I find Hellboy to be a beautiful metaphor for Christian conversion is because the Bible refers to us in our fallen condition in almost the same way. Jesus says to the Pharisees: "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires" (John 8:44). Paul says that we "were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind" (Eph 2:3). In a sense, we were all children of hell, and I was a hellboy. We all start out that way--condemned and sinful--and if Christ doesn't intervene we remain that way.

Hellboy makes a statement because he files his horns down. At the beginning of the movie someone says it's because he wants to fit in, but watch to the end and you'll see that it's more than that. Hellboy has been taught a "sense of right" by his adoptive father, pits himself against evil, isn't scared of the worst hell can dish out, is continually tempted to return to the side of his original father, and is humble enough to admit he's not unbeatable or very attractive to the humans he tries to save. The supernatural is tangibly real in this world though most humans are oblivious to it. There is also a clear anti-thesis between the good and evil sides of the supernatural, as they fight for control over the natural world. Catholic Christian symbolism and theology are overt at times (especially in the first movie and the "Hellboy: Blood and Iron" animated movie).

Do you believe in a God who can redeem a hellboy? God has a big imagination. Shouldn't we?