Subversive - A Review
Faithful Christianity must always wage a war on two fronts. On one front are those who see the trends in culture and wish to conform Christianity to whatever the current fad in ethics or philosophy offers. On the other front are those who remember a particular cultural expression of Christianity and see that as normative, not the central aspects of Christian doctrine. Dorothy L. Sayers is helpful in subverting those who disagree on both fronts.
Crystal Downing’s book, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers, is an engaging book about one of the most interesting Christian humanists of the early twentieth century. In some circles Sayers is remembered for her friendship with C. S. Lewis, which was a wonderful example of two minds meeting and cultivating a meaningful friendship despite—or perhaps because of—their disagreements. Others remember Sayers primarily for her detective fiction, particularly because of her famous sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, but perhaps more significantly for the love story Wimsey had with the semi-autobiographical character, Harriet Vane. These are good reasons to remember Sayers. But a better reason to read Sayers is her engaging thought about Christianity and culture, which is the main focus of Downing’s book.
The thesis of this book is that Sayers held and put on display a Christianity that undermined the cultural Christianities of her day. Downing is also arguing that Sayers is valuable for our time precisely because of her ability to point beyond enculturated Christianity to a full-throated Christian orthodoxy. This comes through as Downing sees Sayers arguing for a Christianity that would better resist the market-based attitude of church shopping, the inroads of the prosperity gospel in congregations, and the conflation of politics. These are all errors that Downing sees in evangelicalism, which she finds Sayers helpful in eradicating.
When Downing stays on point, focusing on Sayers and her legacy, she is very helpful. The research is well done, touching on a wide range of Sayers’ work. If there is a strong emphasis on interpreting the themes of Sayers’ plays, that is little surprising since Downing’s background is in theatre as well as literature. This is a useful corrective to the theologians and literary critics who invest their research nearly exclusively in Sayers’ non-fiction and prose works.
In Sayers’ day, she was critiqued by those both to her right and left. Progressives critiqued (or dismissed) her for her stolid adherence to traditional Christian orthodoxy. Fundamentalists railed against Sayers for using slang language in her plays and embellishing the details around Christ’s life and death in her passion play, The Man Born to be King. In that sense, Sayers was certainly subversive of the various cultural Christianities of her day, pointing back toward the ancient, orthodox faith.
Inasmuch as Subversive explores how Sayers did her work in her day, it is revealing and explanatory. When Downing tries to bring Sayers forward into our own day to combat the theological and cultural dangers surrounding us, she betrays a good deal more bias that Sayers would have allowed and sometimes does not appropriately differentiate between her own opinions and those of Sayers.
One of Downing’s repeated concerns is that Christians avoid “certitude.” To Downing, this seems to refer to those with an attitude like Judas who, “like many Christians today [was] certain that his interpretation of the truth was absolute.” (97) It is this sort of self-assurance that Sayers sought to subvert, but Sayers was also quick to subvert the ideas of those who were certain that the interpretations of the community of faith not correct.
According to Downing, the “exact opposite” of “certitude” is faith. (98) It isn’t clear from the text in what sense these two concepts are opposed, but Downing is confident that being confident in one’s reading of Scripture is a great evil. She argues, “Anyone who claims to know the correct interpretation of Scripture––as did Arius––ultimately proclaims to know the mind of God, which is both arrogant and blasphemous.” (37) In truth, Arius’ great error was not that he relied upon the Bible (which association Downing makes frequently) or that he was overconfident, but that the position he (or his followers) held was blasphemously wrong and sought to promote his misconception. Downing’s opposition of faith and “certitude” seems to paint faith as something other than what Scripture supports (e.g., Heb 10:19–39). Rather than a humble but confident faith, Downing seems to point to ambiguity as an essential attribute of the Christian life, though the lack of definitions sometimes make it unclear what Downing is striving for. More significantly for this book, Downing’s opposition of “certitude” and faith does not seem to arise from Sayers.
The authority of Scripture is another a particular sticking point for Downing. At one point she argues that the authority of the four ecumenical creeds exceeds that of the canon of Scripture because these “’footings’ of the foundation [of the church] as they are known, were poured by earnest followers of Christ in the early centuries of the faith before the biblical canon was even finalized.” (35) This is basically a paraphrase of a letter Sayers wrote to a critic. However, Downing introduces some terminological confusion. In some places Downing sets reliance on the prime authority of the creeds against “bibliolatry,” which in context sounds like the classical Protestant understanding of the supremacy of Scripture. In other places, Downing uses “bibliolatry” to refer to an unhealthy reverence for the King James Version (a problem Sayers faced), which is another problem altogether. There is imprecision here that Sayers would not have tolerated.
Downing’s actual beef appears to be with modernist hermeneutics, which often result in excessive confidence in readings of Scripture due to their presumed objectivity. One need not hold to supremacy of the creeds to argue against such hubris; orthodox Christians are justified in believing the creeds are authoritative inasmuch as they are faithful distillations of Scripture. Here Downing seems to have a related, but substantially different opinion than Sayers, who uses the ecumenical creeds as the starting line for “official” Christianity. But, as Sayers affirmatively declares, the men arguing at Nicaea “were fifty time greater sticklers for Biblical authority than any one living today.” (Letters, III:367) For Sayers, the issue is not the source of authority, but the way the argument is put together and the manner in which the conclusion is held. It is not that Sayers holds my position on the authority of Scripture (I am quite certain she did not), but rather than she does not hold Downing’s either, and that is difficult to tell from the text of Subversive.
At times, Downing does not differentiate her own opinions (which may be true of false on their own merits) from those of the subject of the book. Readers may well find themselves disagreeing with Downing and believe they are disagreeing with Sayers. This will not always be correct, based on my reading of Sayers. This ambiguity may push away some of the very readers who most need Sayers’ corrective to have a properly confident faith, that is held with humility.
Sayers’ work is incredibly valuable for our day largely because she built a positive case for a robust Christianity in her public work. She spent more time making much of Christ than subverting incorrect views. Sayers’ subversion was of cultural Christianity by presenting a true Christianity faithfully. Rather than to seek to undermine the legitimate faith of others, by way of critique she presented a more compelling vision that she hoped would outshine the lesser gods of the day. Her harshest published criticisms were delivered with a such a wit that it would draw a chuckle rather than a groan. Her subversively constructive approach is what makes Sayers such a valuable conversation partner in our age. In the end, there is enough of Sayers and enough good research in this volume to make it a worthwhile volume, especially for those engaged in the study of the life and work of Dorothy L. Sayers.
NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.