Thomas Merton (Part 2)

Here is another passage from the same book (“No Man an Island”):

“God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.”

In regard to the opening clause in this passage above here I would offer that God does not demand anything from anyone; and that God is he who stands at the door with patience and awaiting for the human knock for him to open it. Moreover this word Thomas Merton uses, the word ‘theoretically’; he repeats it twice in this passage, but uses different constructions, where he writes the words ‘abstractly speaking’ or else plain’abstraction’.

The terms ‘abstractly speaking’ and ‘theoretically’ appear to me to be being used by Thomas Merton as synonyms here. That this is so can be shown by us substituting the one term for the other in their occurrences in the passage. Thus we have ‘God does not demand that every man attain to what is abstractly speaking highest and best” and again we have “And yet, theoretically, what is more holy than the priesthood”

There is a great confusion in this passage, between the usages of his sets of laudatory terms and their rhetorical juxtapositions beside their corresponding sets of pejorative terms. We have a good sweeper, a good bartender, and correspondingly a bad writer and a bad doctor. What might this arrangement of ideas mean in the light of these good and bad examples being used to illustrate, as they are meant by Thomas Merton to do, the practical application of what he terms ‘what is theoretically highest and best”?

Is a writer to be thought higher and better than a roadsweeper; a bartender to be thought higher and better than a doctor; or is a good roadsweeper to be thought higher and better than a bad writer, and a good bartender to be thought higher and better than a bad doctor; or is it both these sets of meanings simultaneously? Whichever the meaning, it remains that case that The Lord Jesus is pointed out two or several times very clearly in the gospels as being ‘no respecter of persons’ which is to say that Jesus did not see people as roadsweepers and bartenders as doctors and writers; but that he saw people always on a single level of their fundamental existential plain humanity.

Thus we have parables and stories about The Widow’s Mite; about The Blind Beggar; about The Ten Lepers; and these stories are pointed up purposely and in particular to us to show us that Jesus distinguished nothing between a Centurion; a Master of Israel; or a Roman Procurator; and these humble but equally needful and so blessed persons in His treatment.

To believe that God thinks higher and better of a doctor or a writer than of a bartender or a streetsweeper, as seems to be the foundation upon which Thomas Merton is building his arguments here, and it is to see Jesus and God very mistakenly I believe. To believe that a bad doctor – in that s/he is poor at dispensing medical help – or that a bad writer – in that s/he cannot put two sentences together, is therefore and necessarily a bad person in any ethical sense is a non sequitur also.

Thus when Thomas Merton comes to his point about The Repentant Thief at Calvary with Jesus, and his marking him out as being ‘more perfect than the holy ones who had Him [Jesus] nailed to the cross”, at this point we are now talking ethical and transcendental ‘perfection’ and not about whether the High Priests did their day jobs better than The Thief did his.

That these High Priests who ‘had Jesus nailed to the cross’ are “abstractly speaking”, amongst those whom nothing “is more holy” – this is a statement of hyperbole, for is not Jesus himself more holy than any set of only human persons? – and that this Repentant Thief is of a type, a criminal, of whom nothing ‘is less holy” – is this not also mere rhetoric in that ‘less holy’ is a fudge here for the term ‘most evil’, and surely there are many who fit this bill above how a common thief might? – that these rhetorical tropes are made by Thomas Merton and made with some panache on his part I think, begs a question whether he stopped to consider seriously his reductive and naive equation of civil lawbreaking with Godly commandment breaking.

The condemned thieves were petty criminals. Jesus himself in the eyes of the Jerusalem law enforcers was such in his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple courtyards, and driving them away with a whip of cords. The fact remains that a man or woman can be a lawbreaker in a civil sense and yet be relatively unblemished from the point of view of her/him being a sinner or being an evil person; and commonly perhaps may be far less so than a person whose office is to uphold the civil law.

Thomas Merton tells us that ‘the Pharisees had kept the [Mosaic] law to the letter”, which of course is a non-Biblical statement, one not found in or upheld by The Bible. Had they “kept the law to the letter” there would have been no need for Jesus and his Incarnation – hyperbole yet again – words running away with Thomas Merton’s enthusiasm.

Thomas Merton ends this passage with a flourish which is more a gratification of a failed triumph, than anything which has to be considered seriously as holy truth.

“But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.”

The sentence just does not make sense. Its final conclusion just does not follow from its first premise. It is set up rhetorically (rather than linguistically) as if it ought to make sense; but only a purblind enthusiasm is able to carry through to its end with any satisfaction a reader who is not so careful and critical as s/he should be.

Once again it’s the absoluteness of the terms of the claims Thomas Merton wants to try to make; his usage of phrases like “intent on perfection” and like “God’s… perfection” and also “concrete and definite” and “no choice but to reject” and so on. One senses the writer’s energy and vitality, his urgency and his earnest; but this is also in a bad sense because he is not filtering his feelings and measuring them by his reasoning and thought processes.

Ask yourself: were the Pharisees actually ‘intent upon perfection as an abstraction”? In fact they had books and scrolls filled full of practical applications of the Mosaic Law; when one might plant; when one might bath; when one might eat ears of corn in the ripe fields and so on. If anything it is the opposite; the Pharisees were laden down with too many facts and particulars, contingencies and practical minutiae of hedges against breaking a commandment. Theirs indeed was an attempt at a ‘concrete and definite way” to “manifest God’s will and perfection”.

The “abstraction” if it lay anywhere lay with Jesus and with his gospel message; with his completion and fulfilment of The Mosaic Law by way of its psychic internalisation, and so to some degree its subjectification, as one’s apprehension of one’s standing with God. It is The Lord God whom Isaiah tells us is sick and tired of burnt offerings and libations; of external and practical performances by his people in a vain effort to cleanse ‘the inside of the cup’.

God, Jeremiah tells us, and Jesus bring the same message home, “will put his spirit in us and he shall write his law upon our hearts”. Hardly tangible; except in the fruits borne of such a transformation.

And yet why should the Pharisees “have no choice but to reject” God’s gift to the world of his son Jesus Christ? Certainly Nicodemus was able to accept him; and who was a Master of Israel. For any person to have no choice but to reject The Lord Jesus, this statement, as it stands unqualified, is unBiblical.

I’ll say no more, except a general point that talking and writing about God and his love is not a game of Cowboys and Indians. In God’s games everyone is included; and he never – I use this unqualified absolute carefully – plays off one side against another.

Our own preferences and predilections, our assumptions about social norms and values; none of these are Gods’ predilections and preferences; and we do well to curb ourselves and to measure and temper what we say in his name, as it were attempting to say in his behalf.

It’s not much of a pleasure writing such an article as this; to perhaps burst a person’s bubble and to pull apart a person’s prose. Only for the persons who read this article and who accept the drift of what I am saying; it may do them some good; it may make their own choices of words and their writings that bit more circumspect, and as it were,by trying to let go of ones petty self we give just a bit more of our hearts to God ever and anon?

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