Anti-Climacus

JANE AUSTEN CHRISTIANS AND DOSTOEVSKY CHRISTIANS:

I have a rule of thumb when I confront an author who writes on theology, and their status as a Christian is either unclear to me (if you have longstanding opinions on Lactantius, I tip my hat to you), or held suspect (*cough*Hugo Grotius*cough*): a defense of the resurrection of the body is a pretty sure sign you're dealing with someone within orthodoxy. On this point, I am indebted to Peter van Inwagen, who pointed out in one of his occasional essays this very rule: bodily resurrection differentiates Christians from humanistic materialists (for whom their is only body) and the west's neoplatonic tendencies (for whom only the soul is real or important). It is a good point of doctrine for this purpose because it, like (for example) the Trinity, is a difficult concept to grasp, at the point where the metaphors we use to apprehend the reality begin to break down. So far as it goes, I've found this rule of thumb to be a good one.*

This brings me to the question of whether Jane Austen or Fyodor Dostoevsky makes for a better exemplar of Christian (ethics? morality? life? this part is always left a little unclear). The impetus for pondering this question arises from this American Scene post which linked to this other post, both of which clearly preferring Austen. Now, I enjoy her very much as a novelist, but the thrust of the post I was planning to write was that the judgment that she's a better Christian novelist is certainly wrong: the characters she writes about are, for the most part, just a little too good. If they have flaws, they are decidedly minor (Mr. Darcy: that rich, handsome man, is also rude and socially inept!), and mostly run to wanting to get married to collect and inheritance, or threatening the family's social standing by marrying poorly. We want to believe these are the sort of people we are, but a Christian (especially evangelical) 'sin-and-redemption narrative' (oh, that pesky narrative) should indicate to us that we should hold off on that self-congratulation. We do not all murder pawnbrokers, or dissipate our lives on drink and women, but we all have serious problems that are beyond our capability to solve.

But this, I can see, hangs quite a bit on how much you're prepared to accept the evangelical sin-and-redemption story. However, when I read David Copperfield, and one of the major characters dies, it did occur to me that death almost never visits any of Jane Austen's novels. I think this is the key difference. There is nothing quite like the reality and significance of death for Christianity; we know what it is and why it is. Here I do not mean to argue for a death-centric Christianity (no one likes to be that morbid, I hope); but it is always there. It is the cross at the front of the church, the way the Pieta or Crucifixion scene affects us; for those who do not take the Reformed view of sacraments, it is quite literally there during communion, and for us, it's there still (question: what's the last thing you think about before you take communion?).

In Dostoevsky's novels, death is there: not always front and center, but real, and weighty, and able to crush the living who take it too lightly. It's unpleasant, but, I think, true. Jane Austen has many wonderful qualities as a writer and may be a good guide to a number of situations one finds oneself in, but I think Dostoevsky's craft is superior here.**

*Grotius, for those who care, places the resurrection of the body amongst the indisputable dogmas of Christianity in Ordinum Hollandiae, and places great emphasis of Christ's return on Easter Sunday to be as more than just spirit in De veritate.

**I sheepishly admit in a footnote I think this is somewhat unfair to Austen. I am fairly certain Dostoevsky is trying to be an explicitly Christian novelist; I am also fairly certain Austen is not. It doesn't strike me as any defect on her part that she does not exceed one who sets out to do the thing she doesn't really try to do.