Apostate ~ Part 3 of 5: Literature

“Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels—both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.”

– Saint Augustine (Swanson, p.192)

While the philosophers wrote primarily for academics, America’s literary giants served their deadly philosophies to the common man.  In Kevin Swanson’s own words, “Apostasy was a slow and arduous process.  It was no easy task to throw off 40 generations of Christian heritage.  The apostasy had to slowly take root through the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, and steadily turn men towards a man-centered ethic, metaphysic, and epistemology.  Finally, in the 19^th century, authors could express their humanist faith in blatant and stunning clarity for mass consumption.” (Swanson, p. 190)  I do not contend that we are too far gone to return, or that all literature has that kind of negative impact on our culture; however, I agree with Swanson that Christians must be vigorously engaged in the war of the worldviews, because the greatest battles are fought in the realm of ideas.

There are certainly those literary “greats” whose works may indeed be classified as good – Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, just to name a few – but the idea that all “great” literature is good literature is a dangerous myth.  We must discern carefully between the good, the bad, and the ugly; that is what Kevin Swanson seeks to do in the next section of his book.

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

Did Shakespeare really represent a robust Christian orthodoxy?  Not so much.  Contrary to popular argumentation, his work was not fundamentally Christian.  Yes, his plays contain some 2,000 Bible references, but that is to be expected from any 16^th-century author.  God was not his source of reality, ethics, and truth.  Writing during the Puritan Reformation, he cloaked his profanity and obscenity, but his work cracked open the door for sexual revolution in future generations.  While Shakespeare properly condemns homosexuality once in Troilus and Cressida, it is strange and perverse that his love sonnets were written to a man (a “Mr. W.H.). 

Shakespeare’s view of reality, God, life after death, sin, and atonement is hard to pin down from his writings.  Some of his characters speak of purgatory, and many affirm the existence of heaven and hell; occasionally, his characters toy with materialism and annihilationism.  There seems to be a synthesis of Christian and pagan perspectives within Shakespeare’s writings, and the pagan often triumphs.  Shakespeare wavers; sometimes man controls his own destiny, and sometimes (like in Macbeth) the “fates” control man’s destiny.  Christian themes pepper his plays, but only because he had to reckon with a millennium and a half of Christianity in English thought and life.  It is very clear that William Shakespeare could not commit to the idea of a sovereign God.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864 ~ The Scarlet Letter

According to Swanson, Hawthorne championed the redirection of our nation’s cultural and moral convictions.  The Scarlet Letter showcases all the dangerous tenets of his worldview.  The most obvious problem with the novel is that the heroine is an adulteress – hence the scarlet letter A.  Throughout the book, Hawthorne toyed with the idea of repentance, then opts for flight, and ultimately enshrines the sin of adultery as the adulteress becomes a mentor for wayward young women.  The Scarlet Letter is a frontal attack on the Seventh Commandment; Hawthorne would be delighted that divorce is so commonplace in Western societies today.  Also problematic is the glorification of witchcraft throughout the story – Hawthorne refused to acknowledge witchcraft as a sin. 

The Puritans represent one of the strongest expressions of Christian orthodoxy in the 17^th century; they were everything the apostates hated, and Hawthorne expressed a poignant disdain for them and painted them as stiff-necked, evil hypocrites.  He played with fire: he was quick to point out hypocrisy in the lives of Christians, while excusing and even endorsing the more egregious sins of adultery and witchcraft.  There are several other deeply spiritual problems with and assumptions behind Hawthorne’s novel, but these are the most evident.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a genius, and The Scarlet Letter was his magnum opus.  I read it last year for school, before I read Apostate, and, while I detected the danger of glorifying witchcraft and the evil of ultimately enthroning adultery, Mr. Swanson's book brought even more to light.  Swanson contends that no other publication of any genre has been so influential on a spiritual level – so effective at severing a nation from its Christian heritage.  Hawthorne himself called it “a hell-fired tale.” 

Mark Twain, 1835-1910 ~ Huckleberry Finn

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”) popularized the American independent spirit – and out of this new breed of independent Americans there came a great deal of family-disintegrating feminism, teen rebellion, murderous violence, divorce, strange cults, and weak Christian churches.  Mark Twain both played off of this social setting and contributed to it. Twain’s mother was Presbyterian, but his father was a deist.  For most of his life, Twain cloaked his atheism in humor and mockery, but it became increasingly foreboding: he called the Bible “the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere,” and referred to God as “repulsive” and “malignant.”  Like Hawthorne, Twain created “straw man” Christians, took advantage of a weakened American faith, blatantly mocked the ideas of God’s judgment and hell, and presented his “better ethical system.” 

In Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character is presented as a likable, footloose and free, practical-minded American who is confused and turned off by the “Christian” characters he meets.  Virtually all of the characters in the story are half buried in 1,500 years of Christianity, but all of the Christians are presented in varying shades of hypocrisy and ignorance, creating a thoroughly negative impression of the Christian faith.  Whereas Hawthorne mocked a certain form of Christianity (Puritanism), Twain unashamedly bashes every aspect of the faith.  While Hawthorne’s characters made futile attempts to self-atone, Twain’s protagonist sees no need to atone for his guilt.  Twain took advantage of the uncritical mind and the biblically illiterate Christian: he knew how to construct complicated ethical scenarios that leave the unwary Christian reader tied up in knots.  

Mark Twain was the quintessential American author – arguably the most popular writer this country has ever produced – and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American classic.  Ernest Hemingway went so far as to say that “all modern American literature stems from this one book.”  While I personally haven't read the book, Mr. Swanson rightly points out that this novel has won the hearts of millions of Americans… towards Twain’s strident agnosticism.  The book was written for adults and children alike, many of whom morphed into Mark Twain’s worldview without realizing it.  Kevin Swanson warns, “If Christians do not recognize the work of Satan in men like Mark Twain, they will most likely be deceived by men… like Mark Twain.” (Swanson, p. 235)

Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961 ~ The Old Man and the Sea

All of the apostates featured up to this point belonged to denominations of Christianity with deep roots in Western Europe.  By the turn of the 20^th century, however, America had developed a new form of Christianity that was highly individualized and aggressively evangelistic.  The generational roots never ran very deep in this sect of the Christian faith; those who were converted in the revival services of Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody typically remained strong in the faith, but apostasy came easily for their children.  Ernest Hemingway was born into one of these evangelical Christian families, and had a typical rearing in evangelicalism.  On his 16^th birthday, his father wrote, “I want you to represent all that is good and noble and brave and courteous in Manhood, and fear God and respect women.”  His father’s vision was not to be.

While still in his teens, Hemingway produced several shockingly pornographic stories, pouring out a torrent of foul language previously unheard of in American literature.  He was a pioneer in teen rebellion and sexual decadence from the very beginning of his writing career.  His rebellion manifests itself in radical, pathological, and even dangerous or sinister ways, and he seemed to favor abusing the name of Jesus Christ.  Most of the agnostics and atheists of the 19^th century were never so bold as to employ the kind of blasphemous language that Hemingway introduced in the 20^th century.

The Old Man and the Sea, which won Hemingway the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and the 1954 Nobel Prize, is the story of an old fisherman who wants to make a name for himself, so after a long, unsuccessful fishing career he launches out into deep water and hooks the biggest marlin of his life.  He wrestles the marlin for five long days.  Hemingway’s humanist ideology is clear when the fisherman says, “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”  According to Hemingway, man lives his life to the fullest when he fights to the bloody end; the purpose of life is to strive for mastery over the environmental forces that surround man, even though his efforts are always futile.  Man always dies in the end.  Hemingway doesn’t bother to mock God as Mark Twain did, or focus on guilt as Hawthorne world.  He makes no provision for God’s providence or judgment, human guilt, or the eternality of the soul.  Atheism is a given.  God is dead.

Though I haven't read The Old Man and the Sea, I have read several of Hemingway's short stories, and I notice a common thread.  Hemingway’s stories are hopeless.  His metaphysic disallows all meaning and purpose to life or death.  Swanson writes, “The modern hero is a vagabond, alone in the cold empty world of postmodern existentialism.  The modern hero is lonely because he kills human relationships as Cain killed his brother.” (Swanson, p. 256)  Hemingway crossed the “line of despair”: in the age of Descartes and Locke, man was optimistic in his attempts to define reality, truth, and ethics on his own terms, but by the 20^th century, literary figures like Hemingway and Steinbeck had succumbed to pessimism and suicidal nihilism.  Hemingway lived and died consistent with his worldview: he lived a licentious existence, and then took his own life at the end.

John Steinbeck, 1902-1968 ~ Of Mice and Men

Steinbeck’s life bore striking similarities to Hemingway’s in many respects.  He was born into a family with a strong Christian heritage; by age eighteen, his hatred for the Christian faith was evident to all who knew him.  Steinbeck did not end his own life, as did Hemingway, but he bears the distinction of being the first great apostate to abort his own child, 33 years before the American Supreme Court approved convenience abortion.  Teen rebellion was the defining spirit of the 20^th century, and both Steinbeck and Hemingway were out in front of the crowd.  He was married twice; both marriages were marred with multiple affairs, and both ended in divorce.  Swanson writes, “John Steinbeck took his apostasy seriously.  It was his task to lead the Western world into adultery, divorce, and abortion.”  (Swanson, p. 261)   John Steinbeck understood the historical and present reality of the ruling power of Jesus Christ, and deliberately set himself against Him.  In the words of Kevin Swanson, “The brave existentialist is hopelessly self-oriented in his choices, and he sentences himself to a life of loneliness and the death of a culture.”  (Swanson, p. 266)

Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was a toxic little book with significant cultural impact, winning the author the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.  I began reading it a few months ago, and found myself unable to finish it.  I simply couldn't bear it.  The story is a horrible downward spiral that begins with two friends whose relationship is strained by the foul, abusive attitude of one and the mental retardation and strange habits of the other.  It deteriorates with the killing of an old dog – only friend to a poor old man.  One killing or sexual advance leads to another, and the story ends in a series of “senseless” murders – senseless because everything in Steinbeck’s world is senseless.  To the Christian, the most shocking aspect of this book is the unrelenting abuse of God’s name, found in almost every sentence of the story.  The foul language illustrates the rebellion against God that was so popular in the 20^th century.  Genesis 4:14-16 summarizes Steinbeck’s writings: after Adam sinned against God and cut off his relationship with Him, Cain killed his brother and John Steinbeck killed his child, and they became vagabonds of the earth.  This is the plight of postmodern man: he terminates his relationships with God, family, church, and community and wanders from city to city.  What little friendship remains in the world is destroyed when someone shoots the old man’s dog. 

William Shakespeare became famous for casting doubt on the ultimate reality of God’s judgment.  Nathaniel Hawthorne received acclaim for glorifying the hideous sins of adultery and witchcraft and making all that is good appear evil.  Mark Twain became a champion of children’s literature when he enthroned deceit and questionable ethics.  Hemingway won prizes for his despairing, endless circle where suffering, life and death are meaningless.  John Steinbeck was awarded a Nobel Prize when he described the barrenness, emptiness, loneliness, and death of the modern world, where there are many people and any meaningful relationships are senselessly sacrificed.  This is the literary world into which my generation is coming; and this literary world is creating a real world where relationships are superficial, sexual sin is practically ubiquitous, God is irrelevant, and everything is meaningless.  The time for battle is now.  We must take up our pens and our keyboards and engage in the war of the worldviews.