Tag Archives: Martin Luther

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: The Name Rings a Bell

In his own words, Captain Henry Bell, who served in the court of King James of England, when he was soundly sleeping one night, saw a frightening vision of “an ancient man,” who grasped Captain Bell by his ear. That vision admonished him to translate a book that the captain had cryptically received from a German gentleman named Casparus Van Sparr, a friend of the captain whom he had met in Germany. Thousands of copies of that book, known as the Colloquia Mensalia (in German, Tischreden), had been burned throughout Germany to the delight of Ferdinand II but the chagrin of many German protestants, for it is, of course, the wittiest work of Martin Luther. One copy of that book, however, that captain recounts, had actually been mummified and preserved “deep into the ground, under … [a building’s] old foundation, … lying in a deep obscure hole, being wrapped in a strong linen cloth, which was waxed all over with bees-wax, within and without; whereby the book was preserved fair, without any blemish.”

The captain’s narrative, dated to 3 July 1650, reads as if it were a combination of a detective novel, a moment of poetic inspiration, and a remarkable account of supernatural intervention in a para-biblical narrative. Bell himself comes off at once as a character from ancient epic instructed by a divinity (e.g., Aeneas heeding Hector’s ghost in Aeneid 2 or Mercury’s charge in Aeneid 4); Joseph, jailed but remaining faithful in the midst of a long sentence only to be sprung from prison if not in return for, at least in light of, his faithful obedience; and Boethius, whose consolation was Philosophy (whereas for the captain it is Theology):

“… about six weeks after I had received the said book, it fell out, that I being in bed one night, between twelve and one of the clock, my wife being asleep, by myself yet awake, there appeared unto me an ancient man, standing at my bedside, arrayed all in white, having a long and broad white beard hanging down to his girdle steed, who taking me by my right ear, spake these words following unto me: ‘Sirrah! will not you take time to translate that book which is sent unto you out of Germany? I will shortly provide for you both time and place to do it’; and then he vanished away out of my sight.”

The captain soon goes on to explain the Boethius-like circumstances under which he would render the Tischreden.

“… sitting down to dinner with my wife, two messengers were sent from the whole council-board, with a warrant…. Upon which said warrant I was kept ten whole years close prisoner, where I spent five years thereof about the translating the said book; insomuch as I found the words very true which the old man, in the aforesaid vision, did say unto me –’I will shortly provide for you both place and time to translate it.’”

Eventually Captain Bell would be released from prison by an order of the House of Lords, and his Table Talk—for that is the English titled when translated from either the Latin or the German, cited above—or, rather, Martin Luther’s Table Talk, would become well known in the English speaking world, having been duly approved by the House of Commons in February of 1646. And thus, in his recounting of the entire affair, which was obviously quite an ordeal for the captain, he concludes:

“…now bringing them [the Tischreden] again to light, I have done the same according to the plain truth thereof, not doubting but they will prove a notable advantage of God’s glory, and the good and edification of the whole Church, and an unspeakable consolation of every particular member of the same.”

Martin Luther

Now at this moment you just might be wondering why I tell this story in this week’s blog? Well, I will tell you, for there are a couple of good reasons. First, the Captain, however kooky he might seem to you, was obviously a man of some noble character, for he embodies perseverance and grace under fire. Jailed unfairly, like Joseph of the book of Genesis, Captain Bell does not kvetch about it but rather accepts it as a part of his story, a part of the rich beauty of his purpose in life which involved, I think it seems fair to say, the preservation of Martin Luther’s dinnertime remarks. These include moments of amazing insight combined with moments of raucous humor, scathing curses (mostly directed at Erasmus or the pope), and moments of tender reflection on the value of liberal education. And they’re funny, and give us a real glimpse of the personality of Martin Luther and some of his cronies. Second, the good Captain shows, too, the value of knowing another language well, in his case German. And third, the story shows—and this is the amazing bit—how history can sometimes hang by a thread. We can lose a valuable chunk of it all too easily, in the twinkling of an eye. In this case though, we wouldn’t have lost the Table Talk, we would most certainly have lost Captain Bell’s understanding of it. How perilously close we came to that, so close. Yet because the good Captain saw purpose in his life, even in captivity, and because he believed his work was worth something, he persevered in the face of opposition from an at first unfriendly government to find a way for his book, i.e. Luther’s book, to come into the English language.

And there you have it—a story you may not have known and a person of whom I don’t think we even have a single portrait but we do have this story about a brave and patient captain whose knowledge, obedience, and perseverance seem worth noting nearly four centuries now after the fact. We don’t know his face, but maybe now his name at least rings a bell.

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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: A Taxi in Italy

Oddly, I was in Italy again this week. I say oddly because, as chance would have it, I tagged along, once again, with my friend who attends those philological congresses. As a novelist and blogger, I am there just to listen and learn. I won’t bore you with the pedantic-sounding details of this particular congress, rich as it was in variant readings and passages in manuscripts that have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and often misinterpreted from antiquity to the present. “Does this Latin word end in –es or that word in –is or the same word in –os?” These are, quite literally, the kinds of things that are debated at such congresses, and add to this that there is much consternation over the new interpretation.

To make an example of what I just wrote: imagine that sentence was fragmentary and all that was left in a manuscript was something that vaguely looked like, “… over the new interpretation.” Now imagine that it was (of course) handwritten, and imagine, too, that I have, as I do, very illegible handwriting and, two thousand years from now, or even less, say a year from now, two people stumbled upon this fragmentary, seemingly hastily scribbled, sentence. One interpreter of it might say, well, “I think that it says, ‘aver the new interpretation.’ That sounds like something H.R. Jakes would write” (assuming it was even agreed upon that I had written it). Then that person might add, “He likes archaic-sounding language, and his use of ‘aver’ on this occasion fits the bill.”

Someone else might say, “No, no, this is obviously but a fragment of a much longer sentence. He probably wrote something like ‘there is much debate over the new interpretation.’”

Yet the first person might retort, “But he is a decisive writer, and I think he wrote, ‘I aver the new interpretation.’ That means he agrees with this interpretation.” And so the debate would rage, perhaps you are thinking “Yes, and quite pedantically,” yet someone else, a philologist perhaps, might find such deliberation stirring.

Yes, it was this very type of congress that I attended, and then I needed, of course, a ride to the airport, for flying out of southern Italy, particularly its mountainous regions, is not easy. The airports are near the sea, and thus if one is at all inland, as we were, one must get a ride to the coast—in my case, to the lovely zone (and airport) known as Lamzia Terme.

I had enjoyed dinner the night before with my friend and his primary contact at the university, a lovely and wise professoressa who enjoys the fortunate circumstance of studying poetry and rhetoric for a living. My friend had known of her for some time, as he had many years before reviewed one of her books and then connected with her at a conference, in France I think; I’m not sure, as he attends many of these international congresses. And so it went over dinner and drinks—a lovely conversation about the environment, philosophy, literature and, finally, even the quite serious topic of immigration and human displacement that is so sadly not just affecting the world in general but, especially, disquieting the lives of those displaced, disheartened, and often quite desperate individuals who have lost all—more often than not fleeing at the peril of their very lives. Each of us agreed as to the severity of the situation, the sadness of the lives of those involved, and the need for a fair and equitable solution.

The conversation turned from these serious, quite human but comparatively mundane topics to those of the spiritual realm. How strange, I thought, for among intellectuals the concept of a spiritual realm, let alone God, is but rarely discussed. If it is, it remains just that, a concept and an “it.” But this was an interesting conversation because the name Jesus Christ was mentioned more than in passing and not merely, as it usually is, as an expletive. Rather, the passage from the Bible that was discussed was that of Mary and Martha, and Jesus’ elicitation of Martha to be calm and listen, “To ‘be still and know that I am God,’” my philologist friend said, obviously quoting a Psalm.[1] The conversation then shifted to grace, a concept stressed, I think I might have pointed out, 500 years ago by Martin Luther, who reaffirmed the words of St. Paul, “For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.”[2] And thus went the conversation until I, undoubtedly clumsily and characteristically off-cue, brought up the comparatively entirely mundane subject of getting to the airport the next morning.

“Oh, don’t worry, there is a taxi,” said the professoressa. “It is all arranged. You can both ride together.” (Indeed, we were on the same flight at least as far as Rome.)

“Do we pay cash to the driver—I think I’m running low on Euros?” inquireth I, in an equally tactless manner.

“No, no, no …” she said. “It is all paid for already. Just get in and enjoy the ride.”

“Coincidentally,” my friend said, “That is precisely how grace works. No need to pay the bill—that’s already been paid at Calvary. One needs simply to,” and then he paused, as I could tell he was going to quote something, and I thought he was going to say, “be still and know that I am God,” for that would have made perfect sense at this climactic moment. But instead he said, “… glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

Of course I recognized the quote, as it is from the shorter Presbyterian catechism, a beautifully concise piece of sublime theology. We all had a good laugh, thinking of how a taxi ride could be a metaphor for grace. And, by the way, I did enjoy the ride to the airport, for Calabria is stunningly beautiful, and I am enjoying that other, more sublime ride, as not only in Italy, but perhaps here somehow more poignantly than anywhere else, la vita e’ bella. Enjoy the ride; it’s paid for.

[1] Psalm 46:10.

[2] Ephesians 2:8f.

 

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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Shadows of Suffering

No blog can begin to address in just a few words the problem of suffering. But perhaps it can shed light on it, that the shadows effected by that light might tell a story.

national-lotteryThe content of this story is not entirely unknown. Indeed, certain aspects of it have been in the news lately. Let’s start with the recent account of a woman by the name of Jane Park in England’s green and pleasant land. While one news outlet salaciously focused on Jane’s corporal curves, the real story lies in her revolting rebuke of Britain’s national lottery. Now, for the record, I am not defending the lottery system, an institution that raises false hopes and essentially institutionalizes, with the state’s smiling approval, gambling. It is an obvious fact that the poor play the lottery, not the rich, so it is a clever tax on the poorest of the poor, engendering false hopes of false happiness, the proof of which is evident in the cantankerous claim of this tetchy (if buxom) protestor. Her complaint? “… it feels like winning the lottery has ruined my life. I thought it would make it ten times better, but it’s made it ten times worse,” she told a reporter. “I wish I had no money most days. I say to myself, ‘My life would be so much easier if I hadn’t won.’” According to that same news source, she is “… seeking legal assistance …” to file … “a lawsuit against UK’s National Lottery.”[1]

Let us contrast this kind of human suffering with another piece that has recently been in the news. A ten-year-old lad named Benjamin responded to a school assignment that required him to complete lines in a poem. The teacher had eighteen partial verses, beginning with simple phrases such as “I see,” “I feel,” and “I am.” Benjamin’s mother made the completed poem available to the National Autism Association which posted it on Facebook.[2] His exquisite lyrics tell the story of human suffering from the inside out, as true a first person narrative as one will ever read.benjamin-poem

How do these two instances of human suffering explain the problem of pain? They obviously do not. But they do suggest what you can do with pain. You can look at it and feel sorry for yourself, or you can stare it down and be bold and courageous. Martin Luther believed that our will is so bound by sin that we cannot do that in our natural state. Perhaps, and maybe more than just perhaps, he is right; we do need help. That’s the idea behind treatment programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other “unashamedly Christian”[3] recovery programs. That said, we can certainly see in any of our fellow human beings behaviors that are admirable and those that are not. I leave it for you to decide which of the two of these folks who suffer, Jane or Benjamin, have dealt with it in a more admirable way. One need not look very far or try very hard to find the answer.

de_servo_arbitrio
Frontispiece of the first translation (1823 by Henry Cole) of Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will (1525)

[1] http://www.maxim.com/women/woman-suing-lottery-after-winning-2017-2

[2] https://www.popsugar.com/moms/Little-Boy-Autism-I-Am-New-Poem-40918118

[3] http://missionwaco.org/manna-house/

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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Suggestive Weirdness

C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis

In the second chapter of what is perhaps his most renowned piece of apologetic narrative, C. S. Lewis writes, “Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed.” How sadly true this rings these days in light of the tragic events in France and Turkey.
        Yet Lewis is not speaking about current events, not really, for he immediately goes on to say, “That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel that we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing that anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.”
         Lewis continues, in Aristotelian fashion (as he often does in Mere Christianity) to parse out the question of God, dividing opinions about the divine into Epicurean/Nietzschean/Hegelian terms (i.e., non-existent or at least non-interventionist, detached, beyond good or evil) on the one side, to conceptions of God connected with justice, righteousness, etc., on the other. In this latter group he places Islamic, Jewish and Christian thought.
        Bdonkeyefore I left for Europe, as I walked my dog one last time I was thinking of another idea, not so much about God as about strangeness, which dovetails with the “twist” that Lewis mentions in the above citation. In the story of Balaam and Balak from the perhaps not-too-often-read book of Numbers in the Old Testament, more often known as the “story of Balaam and his ass,” Balaam is summoned by Balak, the king of Moab. Though he is warned explicitly by his talking donkey about going to Balak’s court, Balaam nevertheless complies with the regal summons. After Balaam’s arrival in Moab, Balak requests, presses, even tries to trap Balaam into pronouncing a curse on the Israelites (Numbers 22:6-17).
       To grasp fully the implications of Balak’s insistence that Balaam make that curse, one has to recall that in the ancient world curses were really a big deal. Although nowadays I but rarely hear of anyone pronouncing a curse on another person—though it still does happen and is not hard to find on the Internet. In antiquity these were staunchly

idrusus001p1
Germanicus

believed to bring ruin and disaster on the accursed. The third heir to the Roman principate, Nero Claudius Drusus, who was known with the agnomen by the adopted name Germanicus Iulius Caesar, or simply Germanicus for short, died under a curse before he could ever take the imperial reins (described vividly by Tacitus in his Annales 2.69). Some Greek inscriptions—a famous one, for example, from the island of Thasos[1]—even offer instructions about how to get out from under a self-pronounced curse. We have thousands of curse tablets, too—i.e., shards of broken pottery with nasty little curses written on them. Socrates was the victim not only of a death sentence pronounced on him unjustly by the Athenian court but was the subject of many such curses written on potsherds and cast into wells in Athens.[potsherds2] Even in the period of the Renaissance/Reformation, Martin Luther (probably impishly, inasmuch as it comes from his Table Talk [671]) put a quite nasty sounding curse on whoever happens to love the work of Erasmus—and he did so in Latin, no less—followed shortly by a further playful quip, “Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse upon Erasmus” (Table Talk, 672).
       But what I am calling “weirdness” and what brings us back from the rare dinner party conversation about ancient curse tablets or the rivalry between Luther and Erasmus to the more likely breakfast-time (and at any rate more edifying) conversation about C.S. Lewis is theastonishing behavior of Balaam. I do not mean the fact that in this story the ass can speak or even what it says, but rather what Balaam himself says, which I shall cite at this blog’s end. When urged, compelled, downright bullied by Balak into cursing, Balaam nevertheless blesses. And that, it occurred to me as I walked my dog, is what is really strange about this story and what is weird about God, for that matter, as I understand him from Holy Writ. Such weirdness, simply put, is that blessing, an unusual thing to do, is a recurrent theme. To wit, St. Paul expands upon this unusual point of view in his epistle to the Romans (12:14-17), “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep… . Recompense to no man evil for evil.”
       When I say unusual, I mean it is simply because I do not feel like blessing when I am wronged. I do not feel like blessing when I am bullied. In fact, I rarely feel like blessing anyone at all. And this to me seems to be the “you could not have guessed” factor that C.S. Lewis is speaking about. It has nothing to do with a debate about Jesus’ miracles or political hot-button issues or even the hot-button issue of whom one should vote for in any election, let alone one as confusing as the next American election. Rather, this teaching, which in a sense goes back to a man known better for his ass than his counterintuitive stubbornness, is central to the New Testament narrative. It must have astounded his disciples when he said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor,’ and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). The same theme is even more riveting when it turns up among the words of Christ on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
       These are all, it seems to me, very weird teachings, what Lewis calls “that queer twist.” Yet someone might object: “They do not sound that weird to me! After all, the Bible is a religious book. Why should you be surprised to find pietistic teachings in it?” Yet the notion of “religious” alone does not necessarily evoke such profoundly counterintuitive teaching. In fact, the Bible itself is often indicted for its violence, as accounts of rape and incest are recorded there, as are many a war, many a battle—wars often advanced to claim a land for the Jews at the expense of Canaanites or others already inhabiting those regions. Add to this that one of the more memorable verses recorded by Moses is, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23). And other spiritual books outside of the Bible speak of just retribution, using violence to achieve justice and to right human wrongs on behalf of God. Yet Christianity turns this formula on its head: “Pray for your enemies.” “Bless, and do not curse.”
       In closing, I present neither proof of God nor of Christianity. Rather, I offer here merely an observation indebted to C.S. Lewis’ comment; my own is based not on Balaam’s talking animal but on Balaam’s own speech: “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? Behold, I have received a commandment to bless: and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it” (Numbers 23:19f.). In these turbulent, violent and inhuman times, may Balaam’s ancient but quite excellent summation offer us a path to sanity and healing in a world gone mad.

 

[1] Russell Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford Clarendon, 1969), entry no. 83; on the notion of being foresworn, cf. A.J. Graham, “An Ellipse in the Thasian Decree about Delation (ML 83)?” American Journal of Philology 110 (1989): 405–12.

[2] Inscriptiones Graecae 3.3 Appendix, Defixionum Tabellae [=DTA], 7, 10, 97, et al.

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Suicide

In a recent article about the terribly difficult subject of suicide, Gretchen Winter and Gillian Mohney write, “the suicide rate went up 24 percent between 1999 and 2014 … according to the CDC.” [1] The article notes that one particular group, middle-aged women, saw a huge uptick in suicides: 63%. Among males, the middle-aged also saw a large increase, some 43%. The authors go on to quote Jane Pearson, chair of the Suicide Research Consortium at the National Institute of Mental Health: “We don’t know why. We would like to know why. Knowing it’s going up, we are concerned, but we are not surprised because we have seen this trend happening.” Pearson, who in the article suggests stress is a root cause, added that more research is needed, especially because suicide is currently the tenth leading reason for death in the United States.

Another person consulted in the article, Dr. Russell Rothman, who serves as Assistant Vice Chancellor for health research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, noted that this particular increase comes even after numerous public health initiatives targeting suicide in particular. He, too, is quoted: “The fact that we’re seeing increasing rates particularly among women—it’s probably multifactorially related to economic pressure, social pressure, our culture around acceptance of suicide.”

I can brook the facile and probably only partially accurate assumptions about economic pressures and social pressures (whatever those might be), I can even pass over Jane Pearson’s surprising lack of surprise at the rise in rates, but this last bit, the “acceptance of suicide” is what jumped out at me. It must have jumped out, too, at the authors of the article, for they took the liberty of adding in square brackets [and stigma] before “of suicide.” Yet that is apparently not what Assistant Vice Chancellor Rothman said.

Chesterton_at_work
G. K. Chesterton

It struck me precisely because I found myself wondering how it is that suicide has become acceptable. It hasn’t always been so. For the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton, suicide is “the sin … the ultimate and absolute evil.”[2] He expands on this somewhat unsympathetically, viewing it as “the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men.”[3]

By citing Chesterton’s indictment of the overarching notion of suicide, I do not wish to suggest that we, who in terms of greater knowledge of mental health issues have the advantage of living several generations after Chesterton, should fail to acknowledge the complexity of the issue or in any way lack sympathy for someone who struggles with depression or other manifestations of mental illness that sadly can lead to suicide. What, a la seventeenth-century scholar Robert Burton,[4] might have been deemed by Chesterton merely a bout of melancholy is now correctly recognized as depression, bipolar disorder, or some other serious struggle with mental illness or even a physical illness that may cause mental problems. As a tragic and famous example of the latter, one may take the case of Robin Williams, whose death was the result of his struggle with Lewy-Body Syndrome. It is very likely the case not merely that he was depressed because of his illness and thus decided to end it all but rather that a manifestation of one of the frightening hallucinations associated with the disease compelled him to take his own life.[5] This example and others like it reveal that what we call suicide is not a monolithic black-and-white issue but, like many things, once studied closely proves to be highly complicated.

Martin Luther
Statue of Martin Luther, Cathedral of Gotha

Martin Luther understood as much. Luther’s view, recorded in 1532 in his Tischreden, was no doubt regarded at that time by the Church and the non-church alike as one more heterodox link in a long chain of heresies: “I am not of the opinion that those who kill themselves must be in our minds considered ‘damned.’ My reasoning is based on the idea that they do not kill themselves of their own volition but are simply overcome by the power of the Devil.”[6] Luther’s view perhaps summarizes best in theological terms what I am trying to convey here in human terms. Indeed, as portrayed in perhaps the most poignant moment in the film Luther, Luther’s assessment, put into practice, is decidedly humane. If you haven’t seen the movie and this topic is one close to your heart, I would urge you to click on this link.

Yet even though Luther’s interpretation of suicide is gentle and reveals how complicated the issue is, that does not mean the concept or idea of suicide—Plato’s word for “form” is idea—can be viewed merely as an alternative or a choice. And thus, what Dr. Rothman seems to regard as modern society’s de-stigmatization of suicide, might be an aspect or result of the way that suicide has been promoted as an alternative to pain. One thinks of the late Dr. Jack Kervorkian who even though he helped end human life—or rather precisely because he did so—is held as a hero by so many. Laws in many states now allow physician-assisted suicide. Such a way to escape pain has of late been touted as a reasonable alternative to living a life deemed less than worth living.

While there is certainly no single source for the shift in modern posture toward suicide, some discussions of it undoubtedly have been more influential than others. A few years before Kervorkian, in the late 1970s, Peter Singer, then a professor of Ethics at Monash University and now the Ira. W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, took on the issue of the taking of human life. By virtue of his exalted status consisting of an endowed professorship at an Ivy League university, it might not be an overreach to say that Dr. Singer could be viewed as “America’s ethicist.” In the academic world, his ideas, perhaps more than any other individual scholar, have shaped the current American ethos, the American moral climate. (I have corresponded with him a time or two by e-mail.)

Peter Singer
Peter Singer

On the topic of suicide, Dr. Singer is in favor not just of suicide, but even the taking of one human life by another to alleviate pain. I haven’t time to rehears all of Dr. Singer’s arguments here; they are easily found online. At bottom, Singer’s views come down to a kind of practical hedonism.[7] Why are Dr. Singer’s views so widely held today? Why has America (and much of the West) shifted away from the notion of life being sacred to pleasure being sacred? In part, it has to do with mere pragmatism. Most of it, though, has to do with this: we have allowed ourselves to become removed from any sense of story, any sense that we are part of a larger narrative, a saga that has meaning the way a joke has a punch-line or story has a moral. When we remove ourselves from that way of viewing life, there can be no morality that isn’t merely practical: hence, the title of Dr. Singer’s most famous book, Practical Ethics. Such ethics are situation driven, based on practical outcomes. Singer’s position is that of moral pragmatism in the extreme. If pain can be eliminated by one’s taking one’s own life, then suicide is acceptable.

Let’s look at a bit more of Chesterton’s rant against suicide for just one moment: “The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell.” And thus Dante’s seventh circle. Yet perhaps Chesterton might better have said that there is simply meaning in suffering and that avoiding it at all cost is to deny that meaning.

Martin Luther’s gentle response is surely more humane than Chesterton’s harsh condemnation. Chesterton’s observation, if unlikely to help the person struggling with mental illness, nevertheless may usefully address those who prefer to sit back and theorize, who find acceptable the current acceptance of suicide that Singer’s 1979 book precipitated or at least anticipated. Can’t we find a better way than death, even if that better way should prove to be less “practical”? If we wish to do so, we shall, at some point, have to acknowledge that there is meaning in suffering; that suffering itself is not simply to be avoided at all cost; and finally, that we most certainly are a part of a grander narrative that gives meaning to our individual stories. Here’s to a proper ending to a wonderful story, the wonderful story that tells a tale of and for each and every one of us!champagne glasses

[1] https://gma.yahoo.com/us-suicide-rate-increases-24-percent-over-15-045829366–abc-news-topstories.html

[2] Orthodoxy, ch. 5; my italics.

[3] Orthodoxy, ch. 5; my italics.

[4] Robert Burton’s famous work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, enjoyed wide-ranging influence.

[5] http://www.livescience.com/52682-what-is-lewy-body-dementia.html. I know this from firsthand experience, as Elaine Jakes died from this disease. Her hallucinations varied from the frightening—so frightening that already in her mid-50s she was being awoken by them from her deep sleep—to the benign. As an example of the latter, in the months before she moved in with us, she frequently thought she saw “the admiral” wandering about her house, which was then just across the street from our own; the admiral came with her and made frequent visits to our home, where she died roughly five years later.

[6] Ego non sum in ea sententia, ut penitus damnandos eos censeam, qui se ipsos occidunt; ratio est quia sie thun es nit gern, sed superantur Diaboli potentia …” [my translation of lemma 222, 7 April 1532].

[7] In all fairness, Professor Singer and/or his followers might dispute what I regard as a hedonistic impulse implicit in his work. It might be fairer to qualify that impulse as one particular manifestation of hedonism (nowadays associated with a refined palate), namely Epicureanism. While the modern idea of being an “epicure” is not an aspect of Practical Ethics, the notion central to Epicureanism’s historical teaching, specifically the avoidance of pain, is very much an aspect of Singer’s work.