{"id":7819,"date":"2023-05-12T02:07:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T02:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=7819"},"modified":"2024-03-11T20:36:42","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T20:36:42","slug":"leaving-the-limelight-entering-the-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/12\/leaving-the-limelight-entering-the-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving the Limelight, Entering the Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Leaving the Limelight, Entering the Mystery<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Engaging Narrative Anagogically<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Noah R. Karger<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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In an age obsessed\u00a0with narrative, what we need is not a return to a more critical Enlightenment hermeneutic, but instead, the anagogic\u2014a return to mystery.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Growing up in Evangelical churches, I was frequently asked to share my testimony, the condensed, narrativized version of how I became a Christian. I hated this question because I didn\u2019t have a good<\/em> testimony. The recipe for a good testimony is: (1) some kind of \u201cfall from grace\u201d\u2014drug addiction, porn obsession, overt atheism\u2014(2) a subsequent \u201ccome to Jesus\u201d experience, and, finally, (3) a complete, overnight life transformation. One time a pastor instructed me to give the \u201cthirty second version,\u201d to which I replied, \u201cI don\u2019t know if I have one.\u201d He countered: \u201cEveryone has one. You just need to find it.\u201d<\/p>

We are obsessed with narrative, something literary theorist Peter Brooks addresses in his most recent book, Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative<\/em>. Brooks argues<\/a> that this fixation has resulted in a \u201cstorification of reality,\u201d undermining our ability to distinguish fact from fiction. We are in danger, he says, of \u201casserting the dominion of our constructed realities over the real thing.\u201d<\/p>

While Brooks largely attributes this storification to the proliferation of certain themes in the novel, in their reviews of his book, Caterina Domeneghini<\/a> and Sophia Stewart<\/a> both argue that it probably has more to do with our digital era. For instance, social media prompts us to make stories out of our own lives, suggesting that they should present as novel, organized, and readily accessible packages of meaning. In an entertainment-obsessed world, we compete for the dwindling attention of our peers\u2014or followers\u2014at every turn. Joan Didion famously opens her essay \u201cThe White Album\u201d by remarking<\/a> that, \u201cWe tell ourselves stories in order to live.\u201d But what\u2019s more, says Stewart, \u201cwe\u2019re also turning ourselves\u00a0into\u00a0<\/em>stories in order to live.\u201d<\/p>

Brooks posits<\/a> that, among other things, narrative seems \u201cnearly always to be bound up with questions of knowing,\u201d and is, thus, \u201ca cognitive instrument.\u201d He cites historian Hayden White, who demonstrates<\/a> that narrative\u2019s etymology can be traced back to the Sanskrit root gn\u00e2<\/em>, \u201cknow.\u201d If stories are a cognitive instrument, what kind of knowledge do they permit us? Though they have long served an interpersonal function\u2014a way to communicate shared religious and cultural values\u2014they now increasingly serve a primarily intra<\/em>personal one. Today, we see narrative as a vehicle for both defining the self and motivating it to fuller actualization.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Social media prompts us to make stories out of our own lives.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Take, for instance, \u201cmain character energy<\/a>,\u201d the social media trend that promotes seeing yourself as the protagonist of your own life. It is especially interesting, notes<\/a> Kyle Chayka, that this trend has taken off in the wake of pandemic-induced self-isolation, almost as a response to the lack of control\u2014an effort to \u201cexert ourselves upon the world\u201d again. One main-character-energy advocate claims that \u201cTikTok and social media has made it more attainable for you to write your own story.\u201d<\/p>

Spotify capitalized on this movement, frequently updating a playlist called \u201cmy life is a movie<\/a>,<\/u>\u201d which has nearly 2 million followers and counting. After all, who wouldn\u2019t want a little \u201cEverybody Wants to Rule the World\u201d while walking around campus<\/a> or dancing alone in Central Park<\/a> or staring out the window of a bus<\/a>? \u201cWelcome to your life<\/em>,\u201d which, in the case of one<\/a> TikToker, involved buying a plane ticket to Miami just to visit her favorite thrift store, all after deciding one morning: \u201cIt\u2019s time for me to start acting like I\u2019m a main character.\u201d She reassures her followers, \u201cI know I\u2019m not, but sometimes it\u2019s fun to pretend.\u201d<\/p>

This internalizing of narrative is also evident in the rise of Jordan Peterson, the internet\u2019s most polarizing self-help guru. Aside from his political opinions, Peterson became famous for convincing people that the hero\u2019s journey should inform their own lives, primarily via his obsession with Pinocchio and the Bible (which apparently have a lot to say to each other). His most popular YouTube series<\/a> is on \u201cthe psychological significance\u201d of the book of Genesis, the videos having almost 50 million views combined. In an increasingly secular society, anytime religious literature gets that much (positive) attention without the endorsement of a religious organization, something\u2019s up.<\/p>

Peterson opens the first talk<\/a> of his series by confronting the elephant in the room: \u201cWhy bother with this strange, old book at all?\u201d Throughout the series, Peterson guides the audience to his answer, arguing that \u201cthis strange, old book\u201d is a story that can help us make sense of our own. Analyzing God\u2019s call to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3<\/a>, he says<\/a>, \u201cIf you leave your country and your kin and your father\u2019s house and you go out into a land that your intuition guides you to, you\u2019re going to undergo these radical transformations\u2026 and that\u2019s the same as the dragon fight\u2014that\u2019s the hero\u2019s story.\u201d He speaks like this for two and a half hours without intermission, a packed auditorium of college students hanging on his every word. This is an impressive feat, and evidence that story construed in this way is commensurate with our zeitgeist. Today, narrative is turning us inward more often than out.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Narrative is turning us inward more often than out.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Peterson\u2019s wildly popular interpretation of the Bible reveals what happens when this main character hermeneutic dictates our engagement with story\u2014or perhaps the other way around. In her incisive analysis, Dani Treweek commends<\/a> Peterson for his profound interest in \u201cthe human story,\u201d but notes that this interest is, most specifically, in \u201cthe human<\/em> story.\u201d To Peterson, the story of Abraham is about self-optimization via adventure. And yet, Treweek explains, in reality, it isn\u2019t about that all\u2014none of Scripture is. It\u2019s about \u201cthe eternal glorification of the Son of Man.\u201d The Son of Man who knew nothing of self-optimization \u201cbut emptied himself<\/a>, taking the form of a slave,\u201d becoming \u201cobedient to the point of death\u2014even death on a cross.\u201d<\/p>

Our problem is not an obsession with story, but the function we think it serves\u2014self-optimization\u2014and the consequent self-focused hermeneutic we employ to engage it. We are consumed with creating, revising, and telling our own story; we insist on seeing our lives as mini narratives\u2014what philosopher Galen Strawson has coined his \u201cPsychological Narrativity Thesis.\u201d<\/p>

Reminiscent of Didion, Brooks further posits that \u201cwe have fictions in order not to die of the forlornness of our condition in the world.\u201d He suggests that story forms the basis of our interaction with the world but, in doing so, reduces it to a \u201cform of play.\u201d He here adopts pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott\u2019s construal of \u201cplay,\u201d that is, the infant\u2019s original \u201cnegotiation between subject and objective world.\u201d In this, the infant learns to imbue \u201ctransitional objects\u201d (stuffed animals, toys, etc.) with illusory value and thereby \u201cobtain a sense of mastery over things.\u201d Brooks argues that stories function like this, as well, and are therefore valuable not insofar as they are true but only insofar as they are useful<\/em> (a prioritization which is very much in line with Peterson\u2019s pragmatism). Without such imaginative play, he claims, \u201cwe risk being overwhelmed by an inhuman world.\u201d In other words, all that stands between us and our erasure is the occasional suspension of disbelief.<\/p>

I\u2019d like to suggest the opposite, that our humanity is held together not by pretense\u2014and our ability to stomach it from time to time\u2014but by truth: stories which do not mischievously play on our capacity to believe but invite its full, authentic participation. That\u2019s because our<\/em> stories\u2014our solipsistic \u201cmain character\u201d constructions\u2014do not form the basis of story but rather signal our privation. Narrative does not originate in the playful \u201cnegotiation between subject and objective world,\u201d but in God\u2019s creating both, and in their reconciliation in Christ.<\/p>

Brooks seeks to come to the aid of a humanity consumed by myth, but in doing so, he makes the same mistake which spawned the very problem he diagnoses. Attempting to return story to its \u201cproper\u201d epistemological place, he reduces it to child\u2019s play, asserting over it the dominance of rational scrutiny. He is not the first to do so. For this was the work of what Nietzsche called \u201cSocratism.\u201d Beginning with Socrates himself, Nietzsche argued<\/a>, the movement resulted in an age \u201cbent on the destruction of myth.\u201d But it was this belittling of myth that birthed Nietzsche, and with Nietzsche, a progeny of aspiring \u00dcbermenschen \u201cmain characters.\u201d<\/p>

Myth has made a comeback so robust that we are not now discussing its destruction, but the storification of our age. The Nietzschean variety of myth, specifically, is identified<\/a> by Henri de Lubac as deliberately barbaric and self-idolizing. It does not lead us into the fruits of our humanity but locates<\/a> us \u201cback among the beasts.\u201d Both Socratism\u2019s rejection of myth and the Nietzschean appropriation of it leave us with cultures that cannot rightly engage narrative, that cannot tell the truth. It is Nietzschean myth\u2014and not myth itself\u2014that has resulted in our age of information disorder<\/a>. While Stewart is right that<\/a> \u201ca more critically minded and media-literate populace\u201d would be of use in setting this to rights, it is not \u201cthe only antidote.\u201d In fact, it is not an antidote at all, but is only useful in service to the actual antidote: the mystery of Christ, the one and true story.<\/p>

As de Lubac articulates<\/a>, \u201cthere is no more disastrous illusion than\u201d that of Socratism (and Brooks): \u201cthis victory over illusion.\u201d Reducing narrative to a \u201cuseful\u201d form of \u201cplay,\u201d to a fictional imposition on a disjointed string of events\u2014this is no cure for a storified world. What we need is not de-mystification of myth but, in fact, the opposite. We need myth to be properly situated in mystery once more. Only then can its epistemic function be restored.<\/p>

\u201cWhat can it be but that we have lost the breast that fed us, we have lost Myth?\u201d Nietzsche asks. And today, as we overcorrect in the other direction, what can it be but that we have lost the breast that fed myth, we have lost mystery<\/em>? This, as it did to Nietzsche, has caused us to become self-involved in our mythologizing. We have taken after Nietzsche\u2019s hyperbolic self-affirmation, on display in his Ecce Homo<\/em> (including works such as \u201cWhy I am so Wise\u201d and \u201cWhy I am so Clever\u201d). Myth sans mystery, says de Lubac, \u201clinks us with nature\u2026 but also enslaves us to her fatal powers.\u201d This \u201cpagan myth\u201d is utterly unchristian in that it takes as its blueprint one\u2019s own image, a form of idolatry. What we need is not our own image, but a \u201cchaste and sober rapture of the Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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We are not to orient ourselves as the protagonist of our own story, but as a participant in the creative work of God.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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And so, we are not to orient ourselves as the protagonist of our own story, but as a participant in the creative work of God\u2014a servant. When we read of Abraham being called out of Ur, we aren\u2019t to read it as a myth about self-transformation because, as Treweek notes, the story isn\u2019t even about Abraham<\/em>. Rather, it is about God\u2019s covenantal faithfulness and love for humanity. Unlike in Peterson\u2019s reading, Kierkegaard proposes<\/a> that Abraham acts beyond the universalizable myth, and thus he stands only to be judged by God. He is \u201ctherefore at no instant a tragic hero,\u201d and in the case of his journey up Mount Moriah, is \u201ceither a murderer or a believer.\u201d Our lives, like that of Abraham, are not by themselves stories but are lived in response to one\u2014and in that way become mysteriously part <\/em>of one.<\/p>

Because story is more than a solipsistic game, having an actual objective basis beyond the psyche, it requires a different hermeneutic\u2014one that doesn\u2019t turn us further into ourselves, but opens us up to the world. We need a framework that allows us to step outside of our narrativizing and into the<\/em> narrative, to operate in faith. Moreover, while for Nietzsche<\/a>, \u201c\u2018knowledge\u2019 is a referring back,\u201d for the Christian, knowledge is a looking forward<\/em>. Thus, our foundation must also invite us to look ahead, to hope. This hermeneutic of faith and hope is the anagogic.<\/p>

Hugh of Saint Victor differentiates allegory from anagoge by noting that, while allegory denotes an invisible fact symbolized<\/em> or represented<\/em> by a visible one, anagoge is a \u201csursum ductio<\/em>\u201d (reasoning upwards)\u2014an invisible fact revealed<\/em> by a visible one. This reasoning upwards is a mystical approach to knowledge; it\u2019s an ecstatic encounter\u2014from the Greek ekstasis<\/em>, meaning \u201coutside of oneself.\u201d While the self-discovery hermeneutic takes one\u2019s own personality as its object, moves us into ourselves, and produces restlessness, the anagogic orients to God and thereby to neighbor, moving us outside of ourselves, stirring up faith and hope. Thus, in interpreting narrative, the anagogic befits the climax of all story, the person of Christ. Like Christ, we become capacious for sacrifice, opened to the world, full of life.<\/p>

Anagoge draws the reader not into themselves but into the incarnation and its eschatological import, pointing to the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. It invites hope\u2014a hope that does not escape present realities but discovers the object of its expectation in and through them. In ascending the ladder of detail and data to arrive at a thing\u2019s eternal import, the anagogic does not overlook or denounce the particularities of a story. Rather, it pervades\u2014and thereby elevates\u2014them. Essentially, it invites resurrection.<\/p>

This method of scriptural interpretation\u2014like the literal, moral, and allegorical\u2014need not be reserved for Scripture alone. Instead, it ought to shape the way we read all stories and, beyond that, the way we observe life. Flannery O\u2019Connor, for instance, felt it the appropriate approach to the reading and writing of her work. She describes<\/a> it as \u201csee[ing] multiple levels of reality in one image or one situation.\u201d While Nietzsche argued<\/a> that the capacity for myth is what gives us our power of creativity, for O\u2019Connor, it was, more basically, mystery. Those familiar with her work can attest to this. It\u2019s the kind of experience you can\u2019t put a finger on, the kind you can\u2019t dissect or even digest. In a way, it swallows you.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The task of storytelling is not to manufacture but to see<\/em> narrative, to discover what is true and beautiful by noticing its presence in the mundane and mysterious alike.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The anagogic does not fabricate illusions but engages through the literal meaning. Dante explained that the literal should always precede the anagogic, as it is \u201cthe sense in whose meaning the others are enclosed.\u201d Or, as O\u2019Connor puts it, fiction ought to \u201cembody mystery through manners\u201d\u2014through the very concrete details which comprise our existence. The anagogic does not seek meaning in the mundane just to move past it, but seeks meaning there because it desires to dwell, like Christ, in all its corporeality. In suffusing the details of daily living with the mysteries of Christ, we become more alive.<\/p>

Therefore, stories engaged anagogically fall outside of Didion\u2019s definition: \u201cthe imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images\u2026 the \u2018ideas\u2019 with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.\u201d Phantasmagoria comes from the Greek ph\u00e1ntasma<\/em> (by way of the French, fantasmagorie<\/em>), denoting a ghost, an apparition, a dream. Yet, in its proper form, storytelling is not the work of imposing chimerical fictions on a disjointed series of events. Rather, it is the work of seeing through these events to the meaning from which they flow.<\/p>

This is why O\u2019Connor said she was \u201calways irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.\u201d The task of storytelling is not to manufacture but to see<\/em> narrative, to discover what is true and beautiful by noticing its presence in the mundane and mysterious alike. Seeing rightly, the stories we tell become contextualized in that of Christ.<\/p>

Watching Jesus walk atop the sea, the disciples cried, \u201cPh\u00e1ntasma estin!\u201d <\/em>(It is a ghost!).<\/em> It is no wonder, then, that we make the same error. It is no wonder that, peering into the deep well of narrative, we come up with little more than our own reflection, a ph\u00e1ntasma <\/em>of story itself. Engaging narrative anagogically, the apparent \u201cshifting phantasmagoria\u201d of our lives proves to be otherwise.<\/p>

A taxonomy of story commonly attributed to Tolstoy goes like this: \u201cAll great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.\u201d This man is Christ, who journeys to the cross; he is a stranger to his own, come down from heaven. Learning to discover story on its proper axis, we are liberated from the ph\u00e1ntasmas<\/em> of our anxiety-ridden self-involvement. We are invited to stand outside of ourselves, outside of our vanishing ten-second stories and inside the eternal story of a God who sent his Only Begotten Son. We are invited into a life of faith.<\/p>

To put it another way, for G.K. Chesterton, the epistemic purpose of fictional stories is to remind us of the beauty and wonder of real stories. They \u201cmake rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.\u201d They serve not to augment an abysmal reality, but to remind us of a wonderful reality: Christ. By anagogically engaging fiction and fact alike, we are liberated from our Truman Show<\/em>-esque prisons and into a life of resurrection. The question becomes not whether I can craft a sensational thirty-second testimony, but how a thirty-second myth will birth its accompanying mystery. May we be, as de Lubac pleads, \u201cmore at pains to live by the mystery than eager to defend its formulas.\u201d For it is the mystery of our God in whose company alone everything is made to run with wine.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Illustrations by Sarah Clark
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Noah R. Karger<\/strong> is an MDiv student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a research assistant at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. You can reach him at <\/em>noahkarger.com.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an age obsessed with narrative, what we need is not a return to a more critical Enlightenment hermeneutic, but instead, the anagogic\u2014a return to mystery.
\nBy Noah R. 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