Sermons of Arthur C. McGill. Arthur C. McGill

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20 Characteristically, the perspective at which we might wish to get a closer look “breaks away” from the text. The tease again. McGill leaves us wanting more, but this is also an invitation for us to do some work. For an analogy, see David Cain, “Notes on a Coach Horn: ‘Going Further,’ ‘Revocation,’ and Repetition” in Robert L. Perkins, ed., Fear and Trembling and Repetition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993), 341–42 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, 6).

21 Is this “perspective” language finally too tame? Is injustice done to the boldness, the radicality of McGill? Finally, he is not proposing one perspective rather than another but pointing: open your senses and hear, touch, smell, taste, see. By “perspective,” I mean way of entertaining (I almost wrote “seeing,” but McGill wants all senses; see The Celebration of Flesh, 22–23), not what McGill denounces as “viewpoint Christianity”(see Celebration, 13–14, 187–90, p. 2 above, and n. 26 below). I am grateful to William F. May for calling my attention to this matter—and to others.

22 The Celebration of Flesh, 36.

23 Ibid., italics added.

24 A whisper of redundancy . . .

25 Screenplay, Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, with Ennio Flaiano, La Strada, 1954. I am transcribing these words from a soundtrack, so the punctuation—and italics—are mine.

26 McGill labeled file folder #188 “Concrete.” Inside are seven 8 ½” x 11” lined sheets (but eight pages—the first sheet contains writing on both sides—and all but the last sheet are numbered) with one 5 ⅜” x 8 ½” sheet originally paper-clipped to page 7. The heading is “The Concrete.” Here are a few suggestive excerpts: “Cultural difference, ie. differences in what people in different cultures think & see, are really determined by concrete features of their environment; they are not just developments coming out of internal collective history. Cf Wallace Stevens on exchanging person in [?] African jungle with [?], on meaning of sounds, on whole imaginative apperception. One source of cultural relativism is fact that the concrete impact of sensory exper[ience] is left out of view: culture is looked at too wld [world]-viewishly, too generally, too internally. The dynamic of life wrestling constantly with the concrete as such is neglected. Why? A common assumption that the concrete is wrestled with only derivatively & secondarily; the real wrestle is with whole wld. Here is fund[amental] princ[iple] for me: to locate human venture not at level of whole wld or God . . . but at level of wrestling with the concrete. That is where the creative edge of human exs [existence] always is. Hence primacy of phenomenology. . . . What ethics are involved in this attention to the concrete? . . . Here’s where ethical impact of eschatology on relations to the concrete comes into play.

      “The focus on the concrete means that art has a fundamental & indispensable role. . . . Art finds a form to recover the concrete as we newly & freshly experience it. Cf Celebration of Flesh Chap. 1.

      “But obviously, to make a case for the centrality of the concrete for theology, I must be able to translate the basic & obvious theological categories—sin, salvation, judgment & grace, God, JX [Jesus Christ]—immediately into concrete experiences. That ‘immediately’ is

       crucial. . . .

      “The concrete exper[ience] is not self-enclosed [or need not be self-enclosed; this is one of the grand intimations—and realizations of art: tapped in certain ways, the concrete can touch the universal] . . .

      “Does Ritual belong to the concrete exper or not? . . .

      “How is naiveté related to concrete experience? Naiveté is the acceptance of concrete experience . . .

      “Concrete exper[ience] has an appalling inadequacy about it. Eliot ‘Portrait of Lady’ ‘Gerontion’ Eliot identifies this with transiency. The theoretical way is a response to this inadequacy. But it is a false response. Question: Does JX [Jesus Christ] give us another focus away from concreteness, involving renunciation of the world? Cf Eliot ‘Ash Wednesday.’ Or does he establish us in a relation to God that requires concreteness, in its inadequacy? Humility, acceptance of our littleness & transiency. Does the inadequacy of concreteness direct us elsewhere in JX? Or is it to be accepted in JX by virtue of letting God be our glory?” As often in McGill, “inadequacy” is the way to the adequate—or to the more than adequate.

27 McGill says much when he writes in his “Confession of Faith,” “. . . I came through readings in American literature [with a little Russian literature on the side], curiously enough [or not], to the shattering apprehension of the reality of God . . .”—see below, p. 148. Literature implicates specificity. See the reference to literature again, p. 154. In this statement, McGill writes also of “the positive acceptance of the other person . . .” (p. 152). This, again, is specificity. Appropriately enough, much in this “Confession” helps to prepare one for the sermons. The sermons help to explicate the “Confession.”

28 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950) 281. James Breech quotes and comments on this passage in The Silence of Jesus, 18.

29 McGill affirms, “Victory . . . is the decisive and final fact of human existence”— “Reason in a Violent World,” 47.

30 Abner Dean, Wake Me When It’s Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955) 59.

31 Stringfellow gives this account: “I raised with Karl Barth during his visit [to the United States, 1962] the matter which is basic here. Again and again, in both the public dialogue and in our private conversations, it had been my experience that as Barth began to make some point, I would at once know what he was going to say. It was not some intuitive thing, it differed from that, it was a recognition, in my mind, of something familiar that Barth was articulating. When this had happened a great many times while I listened to him, I described my experience to him and asked why this would happen. His response was instantaneous: ‘How could it be otherwise? We read the same Bible, don’t we?’”—William Stringfellow, A Second Birthday (1970; reprinted, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2005) 151–52. Hermeneutics! The point must be: we read the same Bible because we read the Bible in the same way.

32 Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 488 (italics added).

33 The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 43.

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