Reading the story of Nature

So, in a previous post I talked about how Nature doesn’t have a voice, and that this makes it difficult to ask it questions. Today I want to talk about an alternative way of interpreting nature.

Francis Bacon talked about reading “both books” in order to gain insight about God. By this he meant that God is revealed in scripture, because the Bible is God’s Word to us, and God is also revealed in nature, because he is the Creator of the universe. It seems to me that asking questions of nature can be very similar to asking questions of Scripture, which in turn is very similar to asking questions of a novel. Let me explain:

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Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
© Penguin Publishing (2012)

Victor Hugo had a lot of big ideas about life, death, love, honour, justice, duty, sin and redemption, and social inequality. Now, he could have written a series of essays on each one of those, but instead he wrote a book called Les Misérables, which deals with all those topics (and more). It also provides a host of unforgettable characters, some beautiful prose, and an epic story spanning several decades (as well as a few fascinating diversions into the Battle of Waterloo and the history of the Parisian sewer system).

A series of essays might have clocked in at about 50-100 pages, in total. The book is anywhere from 1500-2000 pages, depending on the imprint and/or translation that you read. So why did he make life so difficult for himself?

The simple answer is that people are much happier to read 1000 pages of novel than 100 pages of essay. The far more important answer is that you can say things that are far more nuanced, insightful, and challenging within a story than you can in an essay. This is because the story does not speak directly, and thus it requires active involvement from the reader to understand what the message is.

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Now consider scripture. If you read through the Old Testament, you’ll find that a great deal of it can be classified as narrative. That is, it tells the story of stuff that happened to God’s people. It’s not always a happy story: there is death and betrayal and revenge killing and adultery and idolatry and lots more besides. In some places, that sort of wickedness is explicitly condemned (such as in 2 Samuel 11:1 – 12:12), but in other places the Bible itself makes no obvious judgement on things that seem wicked. However, it is naive to say that if something is in the Bible and isn’t explicitly condemned, it is therefore condoned. These sorts of passages are a challenge to the reader: what does the history of the nation of Israel tell us about God, about human nature, about the world in which we live, about the short- and long-term consequences of our decisions and our actions?

These are not simple issues, and a simple set of bullet points cannot capture the scope of human experience. There is a great rule of cinema: “Show, don’t tell.” This concept is equally true in novels, although it is less pithy to phrase it for a writer: “Tell implicitly through the narrative, not explicitly through commentary”. This is not just an issue of artistic expression: we understand things far more deeply when they are told through a story.

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So what about Nature?

The messages of nature, understood as God’s creation, are also less direct than a set of bullet points. We see the majestic beauty of the stars, and also the beauty of a tiny flower. We feel insignificant against the unimaginable scale of the universe, and yet we know that Jesus loves us so much, and sees us as so precious, that he was willing to suffer and die for us. We know that God made the world, and that He is immeasurably loving and good, and yet we see the relentless and brutal struggle for survival that seems to define all living things.

Many of these issues are challenging and thought-provoking. There are few simple answers. But they are all chapters in the greatest story ever told.

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Related posts:

Questions to Nature

On reading both books

The power of narrative

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The power of narrative

I’ve been reading Richard Swinburne’s Revelation, and it is a remarkable book. The first couple of chapters deal in great depth with analysing what the “meaning” of a sentence actually is, how (and if) it can be falsifiable, and how to discern exactly when such devices as metaphor, analogy and so on are being employed. (And yes, this really does need multiple chapters. Fortunately, Swinburne is an eminently readable philosopher and communicates so well that even this dry subject matter becomes fascinating in his hands).

Reading the book has gotten me thinking a lot about different literary genres: not just the reality of their existence, but rather the reasons that an author might choose to employ them.

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I think it is worth observing that certain messages are better suited to certain styles of communication. Let us consider the novel as an example. We are familiar with novels that simply tell an entertaining story: Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Tolkein’s The Hobbit are books that I would suggest are overwhelmingly story-driven. On the other extreme, we have books that are making deliberate and specific commentary by means of a story: Orwell’s Animal Farm, Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress are all obvious examples. And in between we have a broad range of novels which tell a story and also make philosophical/political/social commentary on the side: Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hugo’s Les Miserables and Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls all make important and incisive statements as well as telling great stories.

Which brings us to the question: if Hemmingway decided he had something important to say about death, suicide, Fascism and the nature of duty, why did he write For Whom the Bell Tolls instead of just expressing himself more clearly in an essay? Why resort to imagery and a great big framing narrative to communicate what you want to say?

An obvious reason is multitasking. Hemmingway wasn’t just trying to make socio-political commentary, he was also describing some of the history of the Spanish Civil War and trying to entertain his readers with interesting characters and a good story. Doing all of these things independently would be fragmented and weak. Perhaps more importantly, if he had just written a dry academic paper on Fascism, how many people would ever read it? Or having read it, remember it? Or having remembered it, care about it?

This is a vital function of the narrative-as-framing-device: it connects with us on a human level and gives the message much more impact. An abstract description of psychological tendencies which can manifest in people contemplating their own probably-impending death would lack any emotional impact and be difficult to absorb. Describing Robert Jordan’s last few days in the Spainish mountains is vivid and accessible, and at the same time it gives a much greater and more nuanced expression of the same subject.

In short, the narrative carries us along and holds our interest as we absorb the grand themes that the author is trying to express. A well-written novel also resonates with the reader: we recognise the characters and events as credible, and thus the message has greater authority.

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Biblical narrative

The Bible is not fiction, and does not contain anything which really corresponds to a conventional novel (understandably, since the novel as a literary style only dates from the 17th century). However, I believe that it is important to use what we have learnt from reading prose fiction in reading and interpreting the Bible.

It is hardly revolutionary to note that the Bible is neither an instruction manual nor a straightforward theological treatise. It is not, as Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart note, simply a collection of “Sayings from Chairman God”. Not only does its subject matter cover the full breadth of human experience, it does so in a confusing blend of genres and writing styles. Why make things so complicated? I won’t try to give a comprehensive answer here, but I will at least look at the use of narrative history in the Old Testament.

The “novel with a message” approach works because people respond more readily to messages framed in stories. Consider King David, whose story of “humble shepherd to mighty king of Israel” is recounted in 1 Samuel 16 – 1 Kings 2.  When we read the history of David’s reign, we see a tangible and powerful picture of a flawed human living with overwhelming dedication to God. Many of the key teachings of the story could be summarised in point form:

• People are flawed. Even the greatest of us will fail to live up to our own standards, and will certainly never meet God’s.
• The first step in dealing with our mistakes is to honestly admit them.
• God loves us. He is faithful and ready to forgive our wrongdoing.
• Our sin carries consequences in this life. Forgiveness does not remove these consequences.

…and that’s nice and neat. But which resonates more powerfully: the single line “People are all flawed and prone to sin”, or the story of David lusting after the married Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband killed (2 Samuel 11)? Which is more memorable? And is there not much greater authority and impact in the message when it comes in the context of an historical narrative?

There are dangers of framing a message in the context of a narrative, of course: it can be misinterpreted more easily than a set of bullet points. But there are strong safeguards against this in the Bible, as long as we actually read it in context. Let’s consider the same story: could we not say, “David was God’s chosen king and a really great guy, and he committed adultery, so it’s clearly ok!” But if we read the passage in context it is easy to see that David’s action was offensive to God. In the very next chapter, the prophet Nathan provides God’s perspective on the story and rebukes David for his actions. The Old Testament prophets often provide  a sort of commentary from God on the events which are taking place.

There are many other advantages to the use of historical narrative in the Old Testament, such as the multi-tasking mentioned earlier: recounting the history of the people of Israel is important in its own right. But this post is probably long enough already and I’m still working through a lot of these ideas, so I’ll unpack more thoughts on genre and hermeneutics in another post. To close, consider that some genres allow a writer to express things which are impossible (or at least difficult) to adequately convey in simple declarative statements. We have seen that the narrative form allows us to convey an over-arching message in a more compelling and accessible way; likewise, the poetic form allows an author much greater use of metaphorical imagery to convey emotions and ideas not easily captured in prose.

“Genre is not a restriction on an author. Rather, it provides him with a set of conventions, all ready to use, to express his message.” (Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From metaphor to analogy)

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Related posts:

Matters of interpretation

On reading both books

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