Author Spotlight: Eugene Webb

In Search of the Triune God: The Christian Paths of East and West, by Eugene Webb

Under the broad umbrella of the Christian religion, there exists a great divide between two fundamentally different ways of thinking about key aspects of the Christian faith. Eugene Webb explores the sources of that divide, looking at how the Eastern and Western Christian worlds drifted apart due both to the different ways they interpreted their symbols and to the different roles political power played in their histories. Previous studies have focused on historical events or on the history of theological ideas. In Search of the Triune God delves deeper by exploring how the Christian East and the Christian West have conceived the relation between symbol and experience. 

Q. What prompted you to write this book?

A. There were several stages in the development of my interest in this topic.  I first came to Christianity myself as an adult with no prior attachment to any religious tradition.  At the time I found the doctrine of the Trinity perplexing, especially because the explanations I was given seemed both abstract and arbitrary.  I subsequently found that many Christians felt similarly.  Later, I decided it would be good to create a course on Eastern Christian traditions for the programs on Comparative Religion and European Studies that I had organized and taught in at my university.  Teaching the histories of both Western and Eastern Christianity I became increasingly aware of differences between them, and I found that most of these were connected in some way with their different ways of understanding this fundamental doctrine.  Since I also found that this was mostly unknown territory to both Christians and non-Christians, I decided a book explaining the differences could be helpful.

Q. What is the Triune God?

A. The Christian doctrine of God as triune--i.e., both one and three--was formulated in the fourth century CE in the Nicene Creed as a way of understanding the relation between God as the source of all that is and God as encountered in the personhood of Jesus of Nazareth and in the life of those who follow him and are incorporated into his life.  The development of that way of thinking about the relation between God and humanity goes back well before the Christian era, however, to early Hebrew biblical images of God breathing life into creation (the root meaning of the word spirit, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, is breath or wind) and of God calling Israel into a relation of sonship.  The early Christians interpreted Jesus as the one in whom that calling was truly fulfilled, and they believed the animating breath of God, the Spirit, was also uniting them with Jesus in his filial relation to God. 

Over time, the Eastern and Western Christian patterns of thinking about this diverged, with the West following Saint Augustine’s speculation about what there might be three of in the one God, while the East’s pattern of interpretation tended to be based on the story of Jesus’s baptism, with the Spirit descending to “rest upon” Jesus as a voice from heaven proclaims him “my beloved son.”  Few modern Christians in the West realize that the trinitarian creed they call the Nicene Creed is not the original one formulated and affirmed by the ancient ecumenical councils but an altered version imposed in his domain by Charlemagne (to conform the creed to Augustine’s speculations as well as to serve Charlemagne’s own political purposes in his rivalry with the Roman emperors in Constantinople) and that it was at first resisted by the papacy, which did not itself adopt the new version of the creed in Rome until the eleventh century.

Q. How do the Christian East and the Christian West differ in their conceptions of the relation between symbol and experience?

A. In the pattern of thinking that developed among Eastern Christian thinkers, the symbols of Father, Son, and Spirit expressed their experience of living, as they put it, “in Christ”—knowing the Son of God from within and knowing the Spirit as the breath of God moving them from within and raising them into participation in the Son’s life, a process Eastern Christians call “deification” (theosis).  In this way of interpreting them, Father, Son, and Spirit were experiential symbols that articulated in consciousness the three essential dimensions of the mystery Christians found themselves caught up in.

Augustine, on the other hand, in his book On the Trinity, began with the assumption that the doctrine of the Trinity must refer to three “somethings” (aliquid) inside God, and he tried to work out how to connect the biblical images of Father, Son, and Spirit with those.  In his interpretation the biblical images became speculative symbols used to identify a triad of objective components of the one God; they could have no experiential meanings because Augustine believed the experience of fallen human beings in this life could have no direct relation to the inner being of God.  After trying numerous triads to assess their fit, he concluded that Father must name God’s memory, Son God’s intellect or reason, and Spirit God’s will and that, since a will that did not proceed from intelligence or reason would be irrational and therefore defective, this implied that the Spirit must “proceed from the Father and the Son.”  (“And the Son” [Filioque] was the crucial phrase that Charlemagne added to the Nicene Creed to conform it to Augustine’s interpretation.)

Q. What are some other basic differences between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity?

A. One is that the West adopted Augustine’s doctrine of Original Sin, which was a particular theory of human fallenness that involved both universal inherited guilt and a disposition to sin that is inexorable in this life (which ruled out the Eastern belief in the Christian life as a process of deification).  A further development growing out of that same theory is that “atonement” (which originally meant becoming “at one” with God), came to be thought of in the West as referring to Christ’s crucifixion as payment of the penalty due for sin, whereas in the East Christ’s atonement has been associated with the union of humanity and divinity in the Incarnation, in which, as St. Paul put it, Christ came as a son in order that he might be the first of many brothers (and sisters).

Still another difference was that in the West, after Charlemagne’s empire became broken up among his heirs and their rivals, the Church entered as an independent political power into the ensuing competition to claim the kind of authority Charlemagne had held, whereas in the East, where the Roman empire continued intact until 1453 CE and was succeeded by the Ottoman and Russian empires, the Church was never in a position to strive for such power.  This preoccupation with power has gone hand in hand with a tendency in the West to imagine the relation between God and humanity in terms of a command system entailing rewards and punishments, with Christ at the top of a chain of command in which he is represented on earth either by a ruler like Charlemagne or by popes or by an inerrant scripture.

Q. How have the differences between them manifested themselves in the lives of Christians?

A. It is important to recognize, to begin with, that there is diversity within both Eastern and Western Christianity and that due to influences passing back and forth over the centuries, individual Christians don’t conform consistently to the basic patterns of one or the other.  That being said, the frequently commented tendency of Eastern Christianity toward the mystical and of Western toward the juridical is not inaccurate as a broad description.  Eastern Christians often say that “theology is lived” and tend to look for examples of this in their monastic tradition (Dostoevsky’s portrait of the Elder Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov would be an example).  The Western tradition’s preoccupation with institutional power and its concern with knowing what to do to gain reward and avoid punishment has led to both inquisitions and rigid scriptural fundamentalisms. 

On the other hand, the struggles, both ideological and political, within the Western tradition of Christianity have stimulated valuable intellectual development in recent centuries, whereas that aspect of the Eastern tradition’s life flourished mainly before 1453.  I think both Western and Eastern Christians can recognize that there have been saints (and saintly lives even among people not formally recognized as saints) in both traditions during the whole course of their histories—both before and after they split apart.

Q. How did you first become interested in studying religion?

A. Growing up without a religious tradition but surrounded by a great variety of forms of religion, I first became interested in them because they seemed efforts to address the most searching existential questions: where do we come from, what are we here for, what are the best possibilities for human life?  As an academic study, however, my involvement with religion began rather indirectly.  My degrees were in philosophy and comparative literature, both of which I was also drawn to as ways of exploring such existential questions.  As it happened, after writing a book on religion and literature, The Dark Dove: The Sacred and Secular in Modern Literature, I found myself asked to organize a program on the study of religions in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, and I subsequently headed that program and shifted the larger part of my teaching to it.

My reason for being willing to undertake that role was that having studied the way possible visions of life could be explored through logical analysis and through metaphor and narrative, I became interested in the way they could also be concretely embodied and lived, which is what religions try to do.  The reason I have continued to find that a compelling study is that in the history of religions I found both the best and the worst of human possibilities expressing themselves.  I am convinced personally that religion has been and will always remain a powerful force in human life, but that shining as much light as possible on religious traditions may help to prevent their striving toward self-transcending love from being subverted, as so often happens, by the lust for power that Saint Augustine called libido dominandi.

See also the Author Spotlight for Eugene Webb's Worldview and Mind.

Author Spotlight: Eugene Webb

Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development by Eugene Webb

Worldview and Mind covers a wide range of thinkers and movements to explore the relation between religion and modernity in all its complexity. Eugene Webb invokes a number of topical issues, including religious terrorism, as he unfolds the phenomenon of religion in all its complications, from the difference between faith and belief to the diversities among—and within—religions.

What drew you to write about this complex topic?

One of the writers I talk about, Robert Kegan, has described our modern world as one in which many of us find ourselves “in over our heads,” overwhelmed both by competing visions of life in our pluralistic world and by the demands of mental development these make on us.  I conceived my book as a kind of guide for the perplexed that would help people deal with these challenges by showing the reciprocal relation between the worldviews we hold and the minds we develop and hold them with.  It is a book not about what to think but about how to think--that is, about what is involved in the process of thinking carefully and critically about issues of ultimate meaning and value.

What is the difference between faith and belief?

Since the rise of modern science in about the seventeenth century, the word belief has taken on the rather narrow meaning of holding opinions, usually with insufficient evidence.  In its root meaning, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith showed, believe is cognate to the German belieben, meaning to cherish or hold dear.  The root in Latin is similar: credo (I believe) is formed from cor (heart) + do (I give).  It is in modern usage, therefore, that the two words diverge.  In their original meanings they were quite close, with faith referring to loving trust and loyalty under conditions of uncertainty.  In the book I discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s conception of living faith (fides formata) as animated by love, as compared with dead faith (fides informis), which lacks animation by love.  The word belief, in modern usage, tends to be understood as referring to the latter.

What are the basic steps we can take to be more tolerant of others’ beliefs?

One key element, I think, it to recognize that all worldviews are developed by interpretation and that careful thinking in any domain requires a willingness to consider different possibilities of interpretation.  Another is to recognize that religions tend to address questions that have no simple and straightforward answer, so that alternative symbolisms may be helpful in further illuminating the areas of mystery and spiritual experience religions are concerned with.

Why do you think religion has had such a huge impact on society since as far back as religion dates? What is it about us that makes religion such a big part of our lives?

I think human beings have a basic thirst for meaning that is all-encompassing in its reach.  Religions are not the only way people can try to satisfy this thirst, but religions, at least at their best, tend to be the most open to living in the face of mystery.

In your introduction you say, “Almost every person alive today is aware that there are people who hold visions of life different from his or her own, and almost everyone suffers at least some degree of anxiety about the lack of certainty this implies.” Do you ever find yourself guilty of having this anxiety?

I don’t think anxiety is something anyone should have reason to feel guilty about.  I agree with Kierkegaard that anxiety is a great teacher and that if one listens to it, it can lead toward greater intellectual and spiritual openness.  Anxiety comes as an indication that one may be resisting new possibilities of interpretation that might be more adequate to experience.  If one attends to the voice of anxiety, it can make one aware of areas of resistance.  Anxiety becomes chronic, and therefore problematic, however, when one resists it by trying to cling to impossible claims to certainty that would exclude further questions and further possibilities of experience and interpretation.

Do you think that it is likely in our lifetime that “the world’s religions might manage to develop a way of living together with mutual appreciation and respect”?

Certainly not in our lifetime, but even so, each individual can try, by living in intellectual and spiritual openness as a reasonable, responsible person, to contribute to the development of a world in which such mutual appreciation and respect can take root.

What can you tell us about your next book?

In Chapter 7, on “The Dynamic Diversity of Religious Worldview,” I said that the vitality of a religion depends on its openness to differences of interpretation and that just as there is diversity among different religions, there is also diversity within any given stream of religion.  In this book I used the diverse forms among Islamic traditions as the main example, but I also mentioned that there was similar diversity within the Christian tradition and that the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity would be worth exploring.  That is what my next book, In Search of the Triune God: The Christian Paths of East and West (University of Missouri Press) will be about.

The Mark of the Twain

I've lived in Missouri for twenty years, and I've never read a Mark Twain book. I realize this is near-blasphemous to say. I still don't know how I squeezed through the Missouri public school system without laying a finger on a well-worn copy of Huck Finn. To be clear, this is not a point of pride for me; I'm downright ashamed.

Instead of actually reading his books, I've spent most of my life wondering if Mark Twain would be a cool guy to hang out with. It's probably just a consequence of the state of photographic technology around the turn of the twentieth century, but to me, Mark Twain always looks like some forlorn steamboat captain who strokes his mustache and stares wistfully off into the distance. You know, the type of guy who stands by the chip bowl at a party and accidentally dips his hand in the salsa for too long because he's not thinking about the chips; no, he's thinking about something deeper than that. Now, this portrait of Twain doesn't exactly paint him as the party god he'd probably rather be remembered as, but this is exactly the kind of person I like to be around. Mark Twain and I likely would have gotten along just fine.

But I've recently been reconsidering my lack of actual Twain knowledge. Working at the University of Missouri Press tends to do that to people, I think. The Mark Twain & His Circle series published by the Press explores facets of the writer's life I didn't even know could be studied: his thoughts on living in the city, the use of gender play in his work, even hypothetical conversations between Twain and the hottest philosophers of the modern world. And surprisingly, looking at all these Twain books for twenty hours a week sparked my interest enough that I picked up a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at the bookshop next to my laundromat the other day.

The Mark Twain & His Circle series is a nearly twenty-strong team of books on the beloved humorist and his work. Below are just a few offerings from the series, but Mark my words: you will find a Twain tome in here that's to your liking.

The Jester and the Sages approaches the life and work of Mark Twain by placing him in conversation with three eminent philosophers of his time—Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. Unprecedented in Twain scholarship, this interdisciplinary analysis supplements the traditional appreciation of the forces that drove Twain’s creativity and the dynamics of his humor by exploring how his reflections on religion, politics, philosophy, morality, and social issues overlap the philosophers’ developed thoughts on these subjects.

In Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor, James M. Cox pursues the development of Mark Twain’s humor through all the forms it took from “The Jumping Frog” to The Mysterious Stranger. Instead of seeking the seriousness behind the humor, Cox concentrates upon the humor itself as the transfiguring power that converted all the “serious” issues and emotions of Mark Twain’s life and time into narratives designed to evoke helpless laughter. In those sudden moments of pleasurable helplessness, we glimpse the great heart of a writer who imagined freedom in the slave society of his youth and discovered slavery in the free country of his old age.

Delving into the psychological aspects of metaphor to reveal Twain’s attitudes and thoughts, John Bird shows how using metaphor as a guide to Twain reveals much about his composition process. From “The Jumping Frog” to the late dream narratives, Mark Twain and Metaphor considers Twain’s metaphoric construction over his complete career and especially sheds new light on his central texts. He reconsiders “Old Times on the Mississippi” as the most purely metaphorical of Twain’s writings, goes on to look at how Twain used metaphor and talked about it in a variety of works and genres, and even argues that Clemens’s pseudonym is not so much an alter ego as a metaphorized self. In addition to dealing with issues currently central to Twain studies, such as race and gender, Bird also links metaphor to humor and dream theory to further illuminate topics central to Twain’s work.

Mark Twain in Paradise is the first comprehensive study of Samuel Clemens’s love affair with Bermuda, a vivid depiction of a celebrated author on recurring vacations. The book sheds light on both Clemens’s complex character and the topography and history of the islands. Donald Hoffmann has plumbed the voluminous Mark Twain scholarship and Bermudian archives to faithfully re-create turn-of-the-century Bermuda, supplying historical and biographical background to give his narrative texture and depth. He offers insight into Bermuda’s natural environment, traditional stone houses, and romantic past, and he presents dozens of illustrations, both vintage and new, showing that much of what Mark Twain described can still be seen today.

A century after Samuel Clemens’s death, Mark Twain is still thriving. His books are widely cherished, and fans flock to his homes in hopes of learning more about the first true American writer. Literary historic sites have long pinned their authority on the promise of exclusive insight into authors and texts, but Hilary Iris Lowe encourages readers to think critically about this celebration of Clemens. As tempting as it is to accept the authenticity of Clemens’s homes, Mark Twain’s Homes and Literary Tourism argues that house museums are not reliable critical texts but are instead carefully constructed spaces designed to satisfy visitors.

Searching for Jim is the untold story of Sam Clemens and the world of slavery that produced him. Despite Clemens’s remarks to the contrary in his autobiography, slavery was very much a part of his life. Terrell Dempsey has uncovered a wealth of newspaper accounts and archival material revealing that Clemens’s life, from the ages of twelve to seventeen, was intertwined with the lives of the slaves around him. Carefully reconstructed from letters, newspaper articles, sermons, speeches, books, and court records, Searching for Jim offers a new perspective on Clemens’s writings, especially regarding his use of race in the portrayal of individual characters, their attitudes, and worldviews.