52.1 ...in the midst of a discussion about...'if God is good why is there pain?' Lunn, in part,
..in a very small way I verified for myself the fact that happiness is not the same thing as pleasure. few people dislike pain more intensely than I do. I cannot conceive myself enduring torture for more than one moment, but even so I do not entirely share your view about the identity of pain and evil. many years ago I smashed myself up mountaineering and had every reason to suppose that I should never e able to climb again. when at last I managed to drag myself up a big peak I was violently sick with pain on reaching the summit, but those few moments when I lay prostrate on the crest of the Dent Blanche were moments of intense exalted happiness.
and perhaps the analogy of mountaineering helps to suggest if not a solution, at least a clue to this problem of evil. the days on which a mountaineer looks back with keenest pleasure are not the days when the sun shone on warm, dry rocks, days of effortless victory, but the long hours of struggle with storm and with ice-glazed slabs. hunger and weariness, cold and pain, are an integral part of mountaineering without which this great sport would lose its savour. surely the same with struggle and even failure which alone gives its savour to life and that an effortless victory is a barren victory, you have gone a long way towards the question of why God permits evil. it may be difficult to reconcile the existence of
53 evil with the existence of an omnipotent deity, but it is impossible to conceive of an infinitely perfect universe for the good reason that an infinitely perfect universe would be infinitely tedious. you will not deny that it would be even more difficult for a theologian to reconcile the contradictory attributes of infinite tedium and infinite perfection than to explain the existence of evil in a universe governed by an omnipotent God.
there is one point which I must make in conclusion in order to save you wasting both time and paper on a false scent. you have, I think, missed the radical distinction between Christianity and any system of philosophy, such as Plato's. every philosopher attempts to provide a satisfying explanation of the universe. Christianity, on the other hand, is only a partial revelation of god, a revelation which does not pretend to do more than define a few great facts about God, in particular His intentions with regard to man and of man's duty of God. you write as it Christianity was mainly an attempt to answer the riddle of the universe, and as if Christianity has failed because it cannot solve a series of conundrums about the nature of God. but the object of the Christian revelation is not so much to satisfy intellectual curiosity as to guide men to heaven.once you have grasped this fact you will no longer be scandalised by the economy of revelation which has left unsolved many theological problems.
61 ..I am frankly puzzled to understand your difficulty in seeing the very obvious point about the relation of reason to authority. many years ago I wrote a book called Roman Converts, which was vulnerable to attack and which was vigorously attacked by Roman Catholics, but I was not accused of travestying their doctrines or of misunderstanding their teaching on the subject of authority....
..and now for revelation. you have firmly fixed in your mind a conception of revelation as a private and incommunicable experience, but in its proper sense revelation does not mean a mystical experience, but it means exactly what it says: revelation is something that reveals. the King's Regulations are a revelation, a revelation of the rules laid down by his Majestyfor the conduct of his army. the Christian revelation might be described as 'God's regulations', and, just as the King's Regulations do not tell us everything about the King, so the Christian revelation does not profess to tell us everything about God.
'Reason, you write, is common to all; revelation is not. hence revelation, unlike reason, can carry no conviction to those who have not shared it.
you might as well talk about sharing King's Regulations. naturally a soldier must be satisfied that King's Regulations are authentic and naturally the Christian must satisfy himself that the Christian revelation is authentic. when the christian talks about accepting certain facts about God from revelation, he does not mean that God has spoken to him
62 in a vision. he means that he has tested the claims of Christ and that he has examined Christ's credentials to speak with authority about God. and that he has satisfied himself by reason that Christ is an infallible authority on the subject of God. I accept certain truths on Christ's authority, just as the man-in-the-street accepted evolution of Darwin's authority, just as you swallow a pill on the authority of your doctor. you would, however, be much annoyed if I accused you of 'falling back upon revelation' every time you swallowed a pill.
so far as pain and evil are concerned, it is simply untrue to say that I abandon reason and fall back upon revelation: I admit that this problem is insoluble. the universe is full of problems insoluble for the scientist, but the universe nevertheless exists. and I cannot see why theologians should not, and scientists should, be allowed to leave certain problems in their scheme unsolved. I daresay you have been reading the recent correspondence in The Times about the universe. a finite universe, Sir James Jeans assures us, is busily engaged in expanding into nothingness. the explanations of our scientists of today contain far more daring challenges to common sense than anything to be found in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, far more apparent contradictions than could be unearthed by the most critical examination of Christian theology. 'we must accept with resignation, writes Dr. Singer, 'the inscrutable fact that there are an increasing number of antitheses in the world of our experience which science exhibits no sign of resolving'...
72.1 ..the mention of others reminds me that the uses of God are by no means confined to individuals. he is employed by governments, by classes and by nations. since the era of christianity His social utility in particular has become very marked. the Christian virtues are precisely such as a governing class might have prescribed in the governed for benefit of the governors. meekness and humility, temperance and unselfishness, contentment in that state of life to which (as you have corrected me) it shall please God to can them, with their thoughts centred on heavenly things and not on Trade Unionism or Socialism - what could be on Trade Unionism or Socialism - what could be more desirable, what more convenient? that last phrase, by the way, about heavenly things and Trade Unionism...brings out the very clearly the utility of religion in taking the revolutionary edge off poverty and discontent, a utility which the governing classes have not been slow to exploit.
listen, for example, to Napoleon, who knew most of what was worth knowing about the art of government, defending himself for refusing, although a sceptic, to be drawn into anti-clerical legislation: 'what is it, he asked his critics
73 'that makes the poor man think it quite natural that there are fires in my palace while he is dying of cold? that I have 19 coats in my wardrobe while he goes naked? that at each of my meals enough is served to feed his family for a week? it is simply religion, which tells him that in another life I shall be only his equal and that he actually had more chance of being happy there than I. yes, we must see to it that the floors of the churches are open to all and that it does not cost the poor man much to have prayers said on his tomb'. and Napoleon is quite right. what christianity does is to tell the poor man that this life is fundamentally unimportant, the next immensely important. one's position in this life is only to be regarded in so far as it determines one's prospects in the next , and nothing is so detrimental to success in the next world as success here, nothing so conducive to success there as misery here.
hence, ever since some early governing class realist slipped the story of Lazarus into the text of St. Luke and the parable about the camel and the needle's eye into the mouth of Christ, christianity has made for political quietism and the conservation of the political status quo. promising the poor man divine compensations in the next world for the champagne and cigars he is missing in this one, it helps him to do without the champagne and cigars; it even helps him not to envy those who have them, by assuring him that they will come to a bad end hereafter - the camel-needle business again - and admonishing him that, whether they do or not, luxury is a sin anyway. hence, the value of christianity to governments. God is cheaper than a living wage and the governing classes have found it expedient to exploit Him to the utmost.
if you will allow me one more quotation to clinch the point, let me regale you with a passage from a book, An Enquiry into the State of Mind Among the Lower Classes, published by Mr. Arthur Young in 1798: 'a stranger, says..Young, would think our churches were built, as indeed they are, only for the rich. under such arrangement where are the lower classes to hear the word of God, that Gospel which in our Saviour's time was preached more particularly to the poor? where are they to learn the doctrines
74 of that truly excellent religion which exhorts to content and to submission to the higher powers?...
the governing classes were emphatically...Young's opinion. in the circumstances it is not surprising to find that: 'twenty years later', I am quoting from the Hammonds' The Town Labourer, 1760-1852, 'one englishman out of seven being at that time a pauper, Parliament voted a million of public money for the construction of churches to preach submission to the higher powers. in the debates in the House of Lords in may, 1818, Lord Liverpool laid stress on the social importance of guiding by this means the opinions of those who were beginning to receive education.
but it is by peoples in their relation to other peoples that God's assistance is most frequently invoked - invoked and, if we may judge by the prodigious slaughters that men have made of their fellow men, most frequently given.
the greek gods had favorites and protected them; Paris having been overthrown and disarmed in single combat by Menelaus, is in imminent danger of his life, so Venus snatches him away, covers him with a silver mist and puts him down in his own chamber in Troy. the custom of obtaining the assistance of gods in battle, so naively begun by the Greeks , has continued ever since, until it has culminated in the 'God of Battles'. we laugh at the multitudinous warring gods of Olympus, but the Greeks at least had the sense to see that the same to see that the same god could not assist assist both sides at once and accordingly each side had its own divine supporters. we, on the other hand, having rolled all the goods into one, have only one to pray to, with the result that european nations confidently praying to the same protector for victory against one another. this, when you come seriously to think of it, is on astounding piece of imbecility. you laugh at me for supposing that God could give the scholarship to more than one boy at once; i was only fifteen and having, as you point out, had a christian upbringing, still in the stage of believing what i had been told. but what are we to say of nations who continue confidently to exhort God to scatter the king's 'enemies and make them fall'; to 'confound their politics' and 'frustrate their knavish tricks, when they
75 could convince themselves by a moment's reflection that the kings 'enemies' are putting up a precisely similar prayer in respect of themselves? and that you may not evade by stigmatising 'God save the King' as unofficial and not, therefore, true christian doctrine, allow me to supplement with 'Saved and deliver us, we humbly beseech Thee, from the hands of our enemies; abate their pride, assuage their malice and confound their devices' , from the prayer to be used 'in the time of War and Turmoils' in the English Book of Common Prayer. this deliberate request to God to do harm to His own creatures is so familiar to christians that its strangeness excites comment only among agnostics.
it is in war time that these anomalies become most apparent. 'God could not stop the European war, sad an English bishop, but He did the next best thing; He produced a million recruits. German bishops, equally confident of divine support, blessed Him for His bountiful supplies of German cannon fodder, so that, if we were to take a dispassionate view of god's war time activities in terms of results, one can only suppose that His main concern in the matter was the death and mutilation of the maximum possible number of young men. yet it is, perhaps, in our relations with inferior peoples rather than with our european equals, if I may unpatriotically venture so to term our late enemies, that our confidence in god's goodwill has had the happiest results. it was the theologians and the jurists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who promulgated the doctrine that 'lands inhabited by infidels were rightly to be acquired and exploited by christians and that the lands of Africa belonged to no man'. this doctrine was at once acted upon by the merchants and trading companies, who obtained letters of right from their respective Kings to 'invade, conquer, storm, attack and subjugate and to reduce the natives to helotism; occupying and possessing in the name of the King and the Christian Church.
no country has felt more confidence in its divine mission to acquire land 'in the name of the King and the Christian Church' than our own nor can the very great services rendered by the Almighty in the extension of our Empire be
76 justly overlooked. that well-known procession in which nuder pretext of exploration and colonisation, the flag follows the filibuster and trade follows the flag, has always insisted on the missionary to bring up the rear and it may well be the case that without his assurance that it was god's will that black men should be ruled by white, as a reward for their submission to whom they were to be instructed in His ways and wishes, our Empire would not have reached its present splendid and secure condition. certain it is that, whenever those whom we have from time to time added to it have shown signs of resenting the benefits we have decided to confer upon them by occupying their country, we have had no hesitation in ascribing the successes secured by our superior weapons to the direct intervention of the Almighty in our favour.
here, for example, taken from an old Prayer Book, is a 'Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God', printed in 1846, for the 'Repeated and signal Victories obtained by the Troops of her majesty and by those of The Honorable East India Company in the Vicinity of the Sutledge, whereby the unjust and unprovoked Aggression of the Sikhs was gloriously repelled and their Armies totally discomfited. the prayer so well illustrates the attitude I am describing and is so typical of its kind that I cannot refrain from quoting a few sentences:
'O Lord god of Hosts, in whose hand is power and might irresistible, we, Thine unworthy servants, most humbly acknowledge Thy goodness in the victories lately vouchsafed to the armies of our sovereign over a host of barbarous invaders, who sought to spread desolation over fruitful and populous provinces enjoying the blessings of peace under the protection of the British Crown...To Thee, O Lord, we ascribe the glory: It was Thy wisdom which guided the counsels, Thy power which strengthened the hands of those whom it pleased Thee to use as Thy instruments in the discomfiture of the lawless aggressor and the frustration of his ambitious designs...Continue, we beseech Thee, to go forth with our armies, whensoever they are called into battle in a righteous cause'.
you see with what sublime confidence we demand and
77 assume God's support. nor, when you reflect upon the circumstances of His origin, is this confidence seen to be misplaced. God is guaranteed to take the same view of the rights and wrongs of a quarrel (or a treaty) as we do ourselves, because it was for precisely that purpose that we evolved Him. the more the pity, therefore, that other nations will insist on demanding the same support and professing the same confidence in obtaining it. this competition for God's assistance is one of the great drawbacks of monotheism.
and so you see how in a thousand ways 'God works...His wonders to perform'. in a thousand ways He assists the purposes of those who invoke Him; He is sympathetic to our aims, attentive to our interests, malleable to our desires. He constructed the brute creation to satisfy our material wants - as I write, I have before me a sermon preached by an early 19th century divine expatiating on God's goodness in giving rabbits white behinds, thus making them a better target for human sportsmen - and thoughtfully included the beaver and the any to edify us with their industry.
He assists our armies and extends our Empire; He even confers a cachet on our commerce, or rather He does if He is a foreigner, for, although fastidious about our own, we do not hesitate to make use of other peoples gods. I am writing by the light of an admirable electric bulb, the Mazda lamp. the significance of the name, I take it, resides in the fact that Ahura Mazda is the Zoroastrian God of light. this stealing of the lighting of other gods for purposes of salesman ship is not, I cannot help thinking, in the best of taste. I wonder what you would say if, travelling in persia, you came upon a hoarding by the roadside exhorting you to 'Buy our Jesus Lamps. The Light of the Word! Yours ever, Cyril Joad
82 your next complaint is that christianity has exploited the poor in the interests of the rich.
you have already been reproved in this correspondence for gross misquotation from the Catechism. you repeat the offence under the sincere impression that you are really getting it right this time. the christian virtues, you tell us, prescribe 'contentment in that state of life to which )as you have corrected me) it SHALL please God to call them. I suppose I ought to be grateful for the fact that you have at least got the tense right this time ('shall, not 'hath') and if I hammer away long enough you may in time get the rest of the quotation right and substitute 'do my duty' for 'contentment'.
if you are an honest controversialist, you will have the decency in your next letter to admit that you have grossly misinterpreted the Catechism, and that the resolve 'to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me' is an unimpeachable sentiment and might be echoed with sincerity by a navvy who was determined to become Prime Minister or by a socialist who was determined to abolish the upper classes. please do not evade my challenge on this point; I expect an apology to the Catechism in your next letter.
your persistent misquotation is an excellent example of the difficulties with which we christians have to contend, of the ignorance which is literally invincible and of a prejudice which continues to resist the pressure of undisputed fact.
there is some truth in your statement that the christian virtues 'are precisely such as a governing class might have prescribed for the governed for the benefit of the governors'. some truth, but not the whole truth, for christianity is a climate in which slavery cannot flourish and a creed which emphasises the infinite dignity of every human soul cannot
83 be favourable to the cultivation of purely servile virtues. but my real criticism of this statement is that it is incomplete. as usual, you have been so pleased with scoring an apparent point against christianity that you have not bothered to probe below the surface. you have only given us one side of the picture. the answer is , of course, that the christian virtues are precisely such as the underdog might have prescribed for his governors for the benefit of the underdog. if all masters had been inspired by the Christian virtues, there would be precious little social discontent today.
I do not myself believe that the gospels provide a hopeful quarry either for capitalists or for communists, for Christ, so it seems to me, was concerned with the individual and his relations to God rather than with problems of social reform. to say: 'sell all that thou hast and give to the poor' is not quite the same thing as saying: 'take all that he hath and distribute it among your pals'. none the less, the emphasis in all the gospels is on the tremendous danger of wealth. had the gospels been edited by the governing classes, they would have been purged of many a text manifestly inspired by sympathy with the underdog. 'He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich He hath sent empty away'.
do you really suppose that this sort of thing is calculated to inspire the lower classes with contentment, meekness and humility?
vaguely aware of the difficulties of your position, you try to anticipate the obvious rejoinder by suggesting or rather by baldly stating that 'an early governing class realist slipped the story of Lazarus into the text of St. Luke's and the parable about the camel and the needle's eye into the mouth of Christ.
now this sort of thing, my dear Joad, would be all very well if you were lecturing to an audience of uncritical under-graduates, who would with delight anything which tells against Christianity. you and I both acquired the technique for this sort of thing in the debating societies at
Oxford, but we have both grown older since those
84 far of Balliol days and you must try to remember that we are engaged in a serious correspondence about the greatest of all possible issues. in this correspondence you will be expected to back up your assertions with proof and you will not be allowed to assume that any text which is inconvenient for your theories has necessarily been interpolated.
meanwhile will you allow me, in all courtesy, to describe your excursion into higher criticism as a museum piece of modern bosh. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.
i am prepared to admit that the governing classes have made more than one attempt to exploit christianity in their own interests, but this proves not that christianity favours the rich but that noble things may be prostituted by base men for base ends.
i am inclined to think that there is something to be said for Mr. Belloc's contention that Calvin was the spiritual father of modern capitalism. I come of Irish Protestant stock on my mother's side
few anglicans would dispute Arthur Young's view that Anglicanism in 1798 was far too closely identified with the upper classes. the Anglo-Catholic revival did a great deal to destroy the smug, self-satisfied erastianism which you very properly criticise. it is a pity, however, that you cannot see the sun for the sun-spots. you have spent so much time in unearthing facts to discredit christianity that you have no leisure to find out the really important facts about Christianity. had you pent a little time in some of the East End parishes, you would soon realise that Anglicanism has long since ceased to be the religion of the rich. again, you might read what John Wesley has to say on the subject of riches and their danger. W practised what he preached. as a young man he had an income of about 50 pounds a year: he lived on 28 pounds and gave the balance away. as an old man he had an income of about 400 a
85 year; he still lived on 28 pounds and gave the balance away.
with the exception of one quotation from Napoleon, your examples are drawn, as usual, from Anglicanism. it is curious that a man like you, who are cosmopolitan in your tastes and international in your politics, should be so quaintly insular in your outlook on religion. the Catholic Church has been fairly successful in its struggle to curb the natural acquisitiveness of human nature. i do not pretend that it has been completely successful in restraining the arrogance of the rich, but at least it has consistently upheld the virtue of 'holy poverty'. 18th century england glorified the industrious apprentice as a typical product of protestantism: catholocism reserves it's highest honours for the saintly monk and for the saintly nun. again, the guild system of the Middle ages was a magnificent attempt and recognized as such by writers who, like Mr. G.D.H.Cole, are completely hostile to christianity, to realise the ideal of a society in which profit making was far from being the main motive. the guildsman expected a fair return for his labour, but the ideal of the guild was good workmanship rather than big profits. the Middle Ages made an heroic attempt to solve problems of social justice which still remain unsolved and I sometimes wonder whether the modern world would not be a far happier place if the great doctors of the Church had succeeded in their attempt to impose upon the world their conception of 'just price'. again, had the Church succeeded in suppressing usury, which might be defined as interest on unproductive loans, the present crash, which Mr. Belloc foretold in Essays of a Catholic, might conceivably have been avoided. i do not wish to dogmatise on these points, but merely to suggest to you that your discussion of the Christian attitude to social problems is superficial and one-sided. please give your reference for the charter ending with the words: 'In the name of the King and the Christian Church'.
i propose in the latter half of the book to reply in detail to your general charge that the Church has always favoured the rich against the poor and the white man against the black.
101 If you could find time to read Alice Lady Lovat's Life of St. Theresa
102 you would understand the difference between the prayers of your Newfoundland fisherman, a praiseworthy, but elementary type of prayer and the prayers of a saint. St. Theresa describes various degrees of prayer, beginning with the first degree which all may attain and ending with the divine union which is attained by the great mystics alone, and i ask you to observe that even in the first degree of prayer there is no allusion to prayer for temporal benefit.
'to meditate with simplicity on the mysteries of our Saviour's life;
to keep in His presence,
expect all things from His love for us and
to abandon ourselves entirely to Him ''in order to follow Him even on to Mount Calvary, helping Him to carry the Cross and never leaving Him alone to bear its burden':
these are the solid foundations on which Theresa bases the edifice of prayer. this is the first degree to which all may attain and all persevere in, by the ordinary succour of divine grace.
now listen to what St. Theresa herself has to say;
'in this prayer (of quiet) there is a gathering together of the faculties of the soul within itself, in order that it may have the fruition of that contentment in greater sweetness; but the faculties are not lost, neither are they asleep. the will alone is occupied in such a way that, without knowing how it has become a captive, it gives a simple consent to become a prisoner of God'.
the supreme object of prayer is not the attainment of temporal benefits (such as oysters), but may be summed up in the words of St. Theresa herself, 'Lord, that I may know Thee, that I may know myself'.
briefly then the christian prays for 5 different reasons:
first, because Christ prayed...
second..because Christ both commanded us to pray and taught us how to pray;
third..because those who have approached nearest to Christ, the saints, have achieved their sanctity by prayer;
fourth..because it is a matter of common experience, verified by countless millions of christians , that prayer is an effective weapon against sin
fifth..because prayers for temporal blessings are sometimes granted.
103 to return to your specific charges. 'prayer, you say, is ridiculous because god'does not need that we should remind Him of anything. is it necessary that we should 'draw his attention to the fact that rain is wanted in Rutlandshire? does He really commit oversights? and again, 'when we beg Him to give up what we desire, do we not attribute to Him weakness and irresolution, hoping by importunity to incline the balance in our favour'?
it would save time and space in or correspondence, if, before attacking what you conceive to be a christian doctrine, you would ring me up on the telephone to discover whether the doctrine in question is held by christians. 'it is not necessary for us, writes St. Thomas Aquinas, 'to offer our prayers to God so as to let Him know our needs and desires, but so that we may reflect upon ourselves and so have resort to the divine assistance in all things. and again, 'nor is prayer meant to change God's arrangements, but to obtain by our prayers what god has arranged.
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