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Religion Without Beliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Hugo Meynell
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Northrop Frye’s views, both on the Bible and on other works of literature, are strongly influenced by the writings of William Blake. When the University of Toronto Press published a collection of Frye’s writings on religion, it was thus very fitting that William Blake’s picture of God answering Job out of the whirlwind should be used as a frontispiece to the book. In the spirit of Blake, Frye treats the Bible as a sovereign means for the expansion of human consciousness and imagination, and I believe that this is one very useful way of looking at it. But the question between Frye and most traditional Christians is, whether it also contains, however implicitly, a message about what is so, what philosophers might call propositional content. Frye seems to hold that such propositional content as there is in traditional Christianity may be abandoned, indeed is much better abandoned.

It appears to me that Frye is a thinker of genius rather than mere talent. Quite apart from the brilliance of his work on other parts or aspects of literature, few other writers, if any, have thrown as much light as he on the way in which the Bible ‘works’ on the human mind, as an imaginative structure of narrative and imagery. But however much Christians may stand to learn from Frye’s understanding of the Bible, his views are by no means compatible with any form of orthodox Christianity. What are the outstanding differences, and what are the reasons for them?

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 84 , Issue 992 , October 2003, pp. 448 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1 Cf. 9, 20, 23, 34, 70–1, 81 etc.

2 Northrop Frye on Religion. Excluding The Great Code and Words of Power. Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 4. Edited by Alvin A. Lee and Jean O’Grady (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). All references not otherwise assigned will be to this volume.

3 Among recent authors, his only peers that I know of are Austen Farrer and Hans Urs von Balthasar. See Farrer, The Glass of Vision (Glasgow: The University Press, 1948) and A Rebirth of Images (London: A. and C. Black, 1949); Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics (San Francisco: Ignatius. 1982–91) ,volumes VI and VII.

4 23.

5 4.

6 6; 10–22.

7 17–18. This would no longer be strictly true; but certainly such study is on the whole a recent phenomenon

8 18.

9 4, 18.

10 38.

11 3, 15, 107–8, 49–51.

12 See The Great Code. The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1982), 221–4, Chapter Five.

13 6.

14 26, 86, 163, 179–80.

15 6, 18, 86.

16 24–30.77–8. 130–2, 158–9. 160–5.

17 27.

18 5, 39. For further discussion of the three phases of language. see Words With Power (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1990), 5–13

19 29–30, 80. 158.

20 8; cf, 23–34.

21 8, 22.

22 8

23 4

24 See Plantinga, A., ‘Rationality and Religious Belief‘, in Steven, M. Cahn and David, Shatz, ed., Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Oxford and New York Oxford University Press. 1982), 265.

25 3, 176–82

26 For Frye on the Virgin Birth, see 180–1, 222, 223.

27 32.

28 For Barth on scholasticism, see his Church Dogmatics, IV, 2 (Edinburgh: T. & T Clarke, 1958), 497f.

29 Paul, Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1 (University of Chicago Press. 1951). 54.

30 Hebrews xii 29.

31 Deuteronomy vi 21, vii 8; Psalm cxxxvi 12.

32 I Kings xxii 6.

33 Jeremiah iv 4

34 1 Corinthians xv 5–7; John xxi 24. cf Luke i 1–2.

35 7.

36 Very roughly and summarily, God is the ‘unrestricted act of understanding’ that understands all possibilities, and wills those which actually obtain The Father is understanding generating a conception of the divine self, from which love flows the Son is the conception so generated evincing love together with the Father; the Holy Spirit is love as issuing from Father and Son. See Lonergan, B. J. F., De Deo Trino (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964) Verbum Word and Idea in Aquinas (Toronto: Toronto University Press 1997) This is of course in marked contrast with sinful human beings, who cannot form accurate conceptions of themselves or others because of lack of love, and vice versa

37 I have written at greater length on this subject in ‘Philosophy and Christianity’, Philosophy of Religion. A Guide to the Subject, ed. Brian, Davies OP (London: Cassell 1998), 236–8.

38 Northrop Frye Words With Power 8–13.

39 In this paragraph, I am responding to some points raised by Dr. Jeffery Donaldson, to whom I would like to express my gratitude for this, as well as other suggested improvements to this paper.

40 Words with Power, 34.

41 Loc. cit.