"We Christians, young men, hold that this human life is not a supremely precious thing, nor do we recognize anything as unconditionally a blessing which benefits us in this life only. Neither pride of ancestry, nor bodily strength, nor beauty, nor greatness, nor the esteem of all men, nor kingly authority, nor, indeed, whatever of human affairs may be called great, do we consider worthy of desire, or the possessors of them as objects of envy; but we place our hopes upon the things which are beyond, and in preparation for the life eternal do all things that we do" (Basil II). I love this quote because it illustrates in detail that this life is temporary. Not only temporary, but very short. Pagan literature is useless other than as a form of entertainment. I'm not saying entertainment is a bad thing, I'm just saying that we need to be wary of things that don't benefit us. One might say that reading does benefit us because it can be intellectually challenging. But one could also say that challenging yourself intellectually on evil things such as magic, is a bad thing.
Obviously, as Basil admits, there can be some good things that come out of pagan literature. Under most stories lies an important message of virtue. We've read the Iliad (pagan literature) in class. There are good things that we can take out of that story and apply to our own lives. However, because the author is not a Christian, and not writing with Christian intent, we must be wary.
God can find ways to speak to us through literature other than the Bible. While reading Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius, I found many Christian ideas in their writings, even though Christianity didn't even exist yet. If a philosopher is writing about spiritual things, it only makes sense that they would stumble upon Christian ideas because of God's sovereignty. The same thing can be true for Christian writers. I read a biography of C.S. Lewis, a Christian author, once, and one of the most interesting things was about the Chronicles of Narnia. If you've read the series, you would know that there are a lot of Christian themes in it. However, Lewis was not trying to write them as Christian books; they just turned out that way.
All of this out of the way, what we need to realize is this: all we really need for literature is the Bible. I think what Basil was saying is that pagan literature is best left up to people who can discern and understand what going on, and the rest of people can learn from them. The Bible is what we should be focusing on, since it is the Word of God. In the other reading, "Go with God," Hauerwas writes about how, as Christians, going to college is our "calling." I think that this "calling" is to learn to be the discerning people Basil was talking about. Hauerwas says our calling is to "meet the needs of the church" and we are doing that through getting an education.
I want to conclude by driving this point home: we really need to be wary of the things that we read and watch. We have to be careful of unbiblical ideas, and in order to do that we must be grounded in God's word. His word is the foundation for all truth.
Ethan, I liked the point you got out of the Basil reading, about how we need to be careful about what we believe in pagan readings, "to read with discrimination" as Basil would say, but I also like the other side of this point he made though: we can learn important virtues through anyone and anything, including pagan writings. So that being said, I don't necessarily 100% agree with your statement "all we really need for literature is the Bible", because through the reading of Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius, I learned a lot about Christianity and godly virtues, and it in turn helped me in reading Romans. So, personally, I feel like we do need to ground our beliefs in God, but we shouldn't confine ourselves to just the reading of the Bible.
ReplyDeleteDepth: 18/20, you engaged with his point about the pagan reading awesomely, but you can make your blog even better by engaging with a few more of Basil's points.
Scholarship: 19/20, I liked the personal Harry Potter connection you made, and you mentioned Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius, but it would make your blog more scholarly if you expanded on the connections to those texts a bit more.
Polish: 8/10, there were some grammatical errors, and a few places were a bit awkward to read, but overall, it was well organized.
Total: 45/50, overall, good job! If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me!
First off I partially disagree with your writing in the second to last paragraph. I believe that our reason here at college is, yes, to get educated, but it also to act like ambassadors for Christ in the here and know. If we do everything as a means to an end we'll miss the opportunities along the way that God opens up. Anyway, I am glad that you stated this because the question "what is our goal" is address in almost all the readings we've done for Honors.
ReplyDeleteDepth: 18/20 You proved that you had read the article and made points that connected you with the writing. The reason I took away points is you did not expand on (give examples, explain, etc.) sentences such as “We've read the Iliad (pagan literature) in class. There are good things that we can take out of that story and apply to our own lives”. After this sentence would have been a prime opportunity to add maturity to your writing by writing an example like “Achilles, showed mercy and this is a virtue we need to follow.”
Scholarship: 20/20 You made a great personal anecdote at the beginning of your article and tied it together very nicely with the point that pagan literature can be detrimental to undiscerning minds.
Polish:9/10 There were a couple grammatical error but nothing to detriment the readability of the article.
Total: 47/50