THE SUMMONS
SECTION FOUR OF WH AUDEN’S “FOR THE TIME BEING” (FTTB)
(For Section Three, click here)
After a break for New Year’s weekend, let’s continue with our conversation about WH Auden’s “For the Time Being,” (FTTB) and section four, in which we meet the “Wise Men.” I should note that this is all a bit out of sequence now…in that the Church calendar puts their arrival on January 6th…or as it’s otherwise known “Epiphany.”
The Christmas season is the twelve days between Christmas Day(12/25) and Epiphany (1/6). I won’t belabor this, of course. In a great many depictions of the manger scene, the Magi are already there…even though the text really does indicate they probably came by later.
I’m slightly disappointed that Auden doesn’t make more of the “Wise Men’s” interaction with Herod…although that is hinted at later. Further Auden calls them Wise Men. As you may or may not known, the actually Biblical text calls them “Magi,” which is where we get our modern word “Magician” from.
In terms of the Biblical text, these strangers are just “from the East” somewhere.
We don’t know who they were…but we do know they are most definitely not “Kings” of any kind. They are not “heads of state.” They are magicians, sorcerers of a king. They are definitely not seen as “Jewish,” but rather perhaps we might imagine them as from some other Eastern form of religion. Evangelicals seems to suggest that their appearance means that somehow renounce all their former ways…but there’s absolutely no evidence of this…they go “home by another way” and disappear from the story.
Auden makes them stand-ins for those who are “future looking.” And in this next bit, I am completely indebted to a new copy of FTTB that I’ve just gotten this holiday season. A great edition, with a truly fantastic Introduction by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs notes that the “Wise Men” and the “Shepherds” are somewhat juxtaposed as those who are “future focus,” versus those who are “past focused.”
Jacobs says: “Auden uses the responses of the Wise Men and the Shepherds to illustrate what may well have been his favorite binary opposition, that between Arcadians and Utopians.”
Arcadians long for some perfect, nostalgic PAST…they hope to never leave home, maybe even “never left the place where [they] were born” as the poem says, and as Jacobs describes: “are afflicted by the “sullen wish to go back to the womb” and to have “no future.”
Jacobs continues: “By contrast, the Utopian temperament looks with “arrogant longing” towards a perfected future and therefore wishes “To have no past”; it is embodied in the Wise Men and, by extension, in all who seek shaping power over their worlds.”
So, let’s talk about “all those who by extension “seek shaping power over their worlds.”
These “Utopian” Wise Men….they are, IMHO, like all who in our world believe in the “Myth of Progress.”
As a progressive theologian myself, I suppose I believed in the “Myth of Progress” somewhere until the appearance of Donald Trump and the first few years of his presidency. I have written many times that the shooting at “Mother Emmanuel Church” of innocent Black worshippers, was a seminal event for me. More recently, people were slapped awake by the killing of George Floyd, other mass shootings, the overturning of Rowe v Wade, the Othering of Immigrants and Trans people, the fear over teaching Amerca’s true racial history, and environmental voices like Greta Thunburg.
If you still embrace the “Myth of Progress” without any hints of concern for all the horrors that continue to unfold around us…you might not like this next section…ijs…and you might still be (in my opinion) dangerously naive….
I continue to believe progress IS possible.
But equating political, commercial, scientific progress with specific movements can be dangerous.
And no gain…no law…no change of heart…ever seems to be permanent. Every gain can be reversed.
Which gets us to Rome, and a reminder from me of my view that America is a modern Empire, and every American president (even the ones you like…) are like the Caesars of a great modern Empire. Again, if you don’t like this critique, you’re gonna feel SUPER lost in what I am about to say…
After introducing us to the Wise Men…those stand ins for all those who a “future focused” and believe in the “Myth of Progress.” Auden welcomes Caesar to his state. There are seven stanzas in which a chorus describes the greatness of Caesar, and they all being with this line:
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.”
And they end with:
“Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
“God must be with him.”
Here is the heart of the problem with equating earthly powers with heavenly powers. They are NEVER equivalent. Jesus didn’t want to create the kinds of “Christian Nationalism” that we see far too often today. That wasn’t Jesus’ plan.
As Jon Dominic Crossan suggests, one of the primary exclamations of the early Church was “Jesus is Lord…” with an implicit “…and Caesar is not” on the end.
“Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.”
That rings true to me. It still does.
And it even applies to America.
Of course, this all changes.
Christianity goes from proclaiming “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not,” to becoming the state religion of the Empire itself!
Constantine Christianizes his Empire, and the Church makes a deal with a Roman devil that continues to this day.
This becomes an apparently endlessly repeating cycle of how politicians try to “Christianize” their political movements.
Constantine puts crosses on all the shields in the Roman Empire.
Donald Trump holds a Bible up, outside a church for an offensive photo-op.
Even Hitler embraced the symbolism of Christianity, while simultaneously stripping it of all its actual teachings.
This is what tyrants and Empires…that’s what the Church does… when both collude with each other.
Church gets married to State, and vice versa.
They feed on each other, in deeply unhealthy ways.
It’s where we get all of America’s “Civil Religion” in its hard and soft forms.
Auden is writing in the early 1940s, during the time of both the Nazis AND the “Allied Powers.”
FTTB appears to be critiquing ALL OF THEM for the ways in which they assume “God must be with him(them)”
If I may, I think this is why Auden puts this section on Caesar squarely with his introduction of the “Wise Men”….because while the Wise Men seem to represent independent forward-thinking people, their ideas are constantly being embrace BY Caesar.
But not just by Caesar…also by “captains of industry,” and also by those who believe that “science can save us.
By those who put far too much “faith” in governments, scientific methods, or the “free market’s” ability to solve all our problems.
Again, NONE of these problems have gone away since Auden’s day. They have not gone away, because they are eternally a part of what I as a theologian suggest is our “human condition.”
Let’s look at some of the text in the Caesar sections…because it’s densely wonderful in its sarcastic critique….
The first two sections appear to eviscerate both the soft and hard sciences….theology/philosophy in the first, and and hard sciences in the second (I’m skipping the third section, but it kinda continues the science critique in the second section…)
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.
The First was the Kingdom of Abstract Idea:
Last night it was Tom, Dick and Harry; tonight it is S’s with P’s;
Instead of inflections and accents
There are prepositions and word-order;
Instead of aboriginal objects excluding each other
There are specimens reiterating a type;
Instead of wood-nymphs and river-demons,
There is one unconditional ground of Being. (Eric’s note: Auden seems to be making fun of his own friend, Paul Tillich!!!)
Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.
The Second was the Kingdom of Natural Cause:
Last night it was Sixes and Sevens: to-night it is One and Two;
Instead of saying, “Strange are the whims of the Strong,”
We say, “Harsh is the Law but it is certain”;
Instead of building temples, we build laboratories;
Instead of offering sacrifices, we perform experiments;
Instead of reciting prayers, we note pointer-readings;
Our lives are no longer erratic but efficient.
Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
The next two sections, four and five, it seems to me, are a pretty damning critique of Capitalism, and what I’d call “The Myth of Progress,” and our faith in it, which seems to still be pretty spot on today:
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.
The Fourth was the Kingdom of Credit Exchange:
Last night it was Tit-for-Tat, to-night it is C.O.D.;
When we have a surplus, we need not meet someone with a deficit;
When we have a deficit, we need not meet someone with a surplus;
Instead of heavy treasures, there are paper symbols of value;
Instead ofPay at Once, there is Pay when you can;
Instead of My Neighbour, there is Our Customers;
Instead of Country Fair, there is World Market.
Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
What a slam of free market capitalism!!!
Section Five, seems to talk about those who turn our desires into marketable gadgets:
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.
The Fifth was the Kingdom of Inorganic Giants:
Last night it was Heave-Ho, to-night it is Whee-Spree;
When we want anything, They make it;
When we dislike anything, They change it;
When we want to go anywhere, They carry us;
When the Barbarian invades us,
They raise immovable shields;
When we invade the Barbarian,
They brandish irresistible swords;
Fate is no longer a fiat of Matter,
but a freedom of Mind.
Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
And, finally, a section that reminds me of social media, popular culture, and the need for us all to be a “brand” today…for all the ways in which we are entertaining ourselves to death, and creating folks like Donald Trump…who it seems to me is a kind of Moloch arising out of our collective desire to be entertained and embrace simplistic answers to everything:
“Great is Caesar: He has conquered Seven Kingdoms.
The Seventh was the Kingdom of Popular Soul:
Last night it was Order-Order, to-night it is Hear-Hear;
When he says, You are happy, we laugh;
When he says, You are wretched, we cry;
When he says, It is true, everyone believes it;
When he says, It is false, no one believes it;
When he says, This is good, this is loved;
When he says, That is bad, that is hated.
Great is Caesar: God must be with Him.”
WHEW.
There’s a lot to unpack there…feel free to read and reread until the critique starts to leap out at you.
Auden’s point seems to be…
Neither Empires, nor science, nor capitalism, will save us.
They are all capable of doing great things that help the human condition.
But for every progressive, forward-thinking political leader, there is a fascist waiting in the wings.
For every scientists who faithful follows the scientific method, there are Nazi scientists, Tuskegee experiments, and the atom bomb.
For every “free market” era, there are robber barons and oligarchs waiting to enslave us in our “pursuit of happiness.”
Empires always embrace all of this. At least, successful ones like the Roman, British, and American.
Yes…American really IS an Empire too….
(I said this in a sermon once, and a worshipper literally shouted out “NO!” It’s a hard truth to hear, if you’ve never considered it…)
And I am reminded here of a jaw-dropping quote from Auden that I’ve found online several places.
The quote is from March of 1942….just months after Pearl Harbor…as World War II was raging around the globe, and as it was suddenly all too easy to see that war as an existential fight of “good verses evil.” (Which it was…)
That said, Auden seems clear that the “Allies” are Empires as well, albeit once fighting with a “just cause.”
And Auden writes an incredible essay about art and war for the Chicago Sun. This is the line that stops me in my tracks:
“I think it not unlikely that the aspect of this war which will be most reflected in the poetry of the next few years is the danger that, in order to win it, the democracies will construct an anti-fascist political religion, and so, by becoming like their enemies, lose the peace.”
This is a major theme/fear of FTTB, and of much of Auden’s political critique that comes ever after.
And in our world…
From Christian Nationalism in our country, Zionism in Israel, and “Jihad” in the Middle East, is it not clear that to this day modern Empires attempt to claim the “high ground” or “an anti-facist political religion,” can be coopted by politics, science, and commercial interests?!!
Again, there is a loss of innocence that can come to us when we realize this….when we come to realize that, to use our modern language…both Capitalism and Socialism have/can fail us.
Democracy can be twisted into Fascism…institutions we believed to be beyond reproach can be corrupted.
Science can tell us all we need to know about global warming, or how to live longer, healthier lives, and Corporations will still sell us crap that destroy our world and harm our bodies.
So…after this long critique of Caesar, modernism, progress, capital, science, theology…. the narrator comes back in, and begins to pull back the curtain a bit on all this.
Again, this seems like verse that fits our time too. These feel like words all of us could say in early 2024:
“If we were never alone or always too busy,
Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true:
But no one is taken in, at least not all of the time;
In our bath, or the subway, or the middle of the night,
We know very well we are not unlucky but evil,
That the dream of a Perfect State or No State at all,
To which we fly for refuge, is a part of our punishment.
Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,
For Powers and Times are not gods but mortal gifts from God;
Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,
For all societies and epochs are transient details,
Tiansmitting an everlasting opportunity
That the Kingdom of Heaven may come, not in our present
And not in our future,
but in the Fullness of Time.”
This last part is the part that is so hard to embrace…that the “Kingdom of Heaven” cannot come to “our present,” nor likely to “our future,” but only in “the fullness of time.”
In some future, unimaginable time epoch.
Our attempts to equate Caesar with God, and God with Caesar….
To equate Commerce with God…and God with commerce…
To equate Science with God, and God with Science…
….all these are bound to fail and are bound to disillusion us.
And we know it. As Auden wrote then, we feel this existentially in our bones today. Those of us who truly study American history know of our White Supremacy, the failures of science, the lack of will among politicians, the crushing greed of Oligarch and robber barons…
We can perhaps begin to embrace that our world’s cultural problems truly do come from “the sins of the Fathers.” (And they are almost always “Fathers”)
Even after all this cultural critique Auden ends this section of FTTB with a prayer, the last section of which is still, somehow, hopeful:
“Inflict Thy promises with each
Occasion of distress,
That from our incoherence we
May learn to put our trust in Thee,
And brutal fact persuade us to
Adventure, Art, and Peace.”
Our faith in God should lead us…. not to Empires, Capital, or Science…but to the powers truly behind all three:
“Adventure, Art, and Peace.”
This is the mystical understanding of Incarnation that will can hopefully still trust in our day today. We can, and should, embrace politics, science, Church, commerce.
We really can’t live without systems. But we cannot and should not equate these with GOD…make them Gods, or fail to believe that, since they are all created by fallible humans, they will most certainly fail us. We have to simultaneously embrace and reject them…and this is what a Christian Incarnational theology can help us do…to trust that God works IN and through this world, but to not deify the world or our own thoughts about it.
As with myself and many other theologians in the modern era believe, the entire Gospel narratives are contrasting the idea of our earthly powers (Rome in the Gospels, countries like the United States in our time) with the realm that God promises.
“Jesus is Lord…and Caesar is not…”
There is incredible DANGER in equating earthly political power with heavenly power.
God works in and through ALL OF US…in these broken and fallible decisions we make.
I think Auden might be deeply right when his closing “prayer” here suggest that we should be focusing in mind is on more esoteric things like “Adventure, Art, and Peace.”
It is foolish to pray for these, to engage in these? OF COURSE it is…
But it we don’t, we’re like to make gods of our earthly systems, and forget that “God is God, and we are not…and that is good…”