I attended the Ward Lecture here at LTS on 10/22 to hear Dr. Carol Hess present “Fiction as Truth: Novels as a source for (Paradoxical) Theology. It was a decent lecture and Dr. Hess articulated many things that i've been trying to say for a while now...
She began with Picasso’s quote “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” She then talked about how novels ought to be read alongside theory as novels do certain things that theory can’t. Novels make readers participators in lives of others different from themselves and make them sympathetic to characters they don’t interact with in their day to day lives. I completely agree with this. I couldn’t see racism through the theory, but through the history and reading novels with Black characters is how I started to understand.
I couldn't help but think of the difference between Gallielo's narrative presentation of his theories vs. Newton's mechanical and formulaic presentation. Gal is a hoot to read, and fun! Newton... not so much
Dr Hess then jumped to what makes good fiction and good theology and how they overlap. She stated that fiction and theology is set in time and place, it is provisional, it is paradoxical, ironic, and revelatory. I wish she would have spent more time here because I feel this is the core of the argument. We’re seeing this in our churches today with the “established” voice versus a more emergent model. This is not the usual Conservative versus Liberal theology that we have seen but something else due to the study of post-modern thought.
Many people ask me for my systematic theology and I state that I can’t fully give them one, and usually give them something close to this model. They then state that this couldn’t possibly be a theology that does any good and that even novels have a structure and plot devices. The problem with systems is they sanitize and simplify an ambiguous and complex world. No system ever contains the full picture.
Barry Taylor (Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy. Grand Rapids Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008.) holds Fight Club up as a prime example as what it means to be Postmodern Gothic. There is a transgressive nature in the mindset of the Gothic and the dominant message is “learn to live with mystery” and this is accomplished by sharpening one’s instincts (Taylor 142). So then the Gothic radically embraces passion, learning how emotions like fear, terror, horror, and sadness (as well as the more fiery passions of anger and rage) are means by which people learn to fight back. Fight Club does this to help people liberate themselves from a system that is draining the life away from their souls and keeping them from forming a true community. They find a new code of living through being shocked out of their old ways of doing things. They are able to “come to terms with the world around them through a renewed sense of self through their commitment to a new code of living” (Taylor 143).
For Tyler, dominant ideologies and cultural values exist to be subverted. The means of constructing identity is based on communal relationships, particularly with men although Marla becomes a bigger role as the film goes on, instead of material capitalistic measures.
Tyler does not turn to religion, although the language is frequently used in the film. The Narrator talks about the feeling of Fight Club as being in a Pentecostal church. The grunts were like speaking in tongues and the fights were like dancing. The Narrator seeks a nirvana, however; not salvation first and foremost. “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
Even more overt is the scene where Tyler seems to declare that he is an agnostic:
Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? Narrator: No, no, I... don't... Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. Narrator: It isn't? Tyler Durden: We don't need him!
Here we see the complete rejection of all that has rejected Tyler. In the philosophy of Fight Club, salvation is letting go of everything and depending on the community. This is very much like the church described in Acts. The renouncement of property, the subversion of the dominant culture, and finding identity not through the institutions of the day but in one another are all paralleled. The statement of "We are God's unwanted children" comes from Tyler's family system. He is trying to get's his father's attention and this morphs into trying to get God's attention, as noted in this trailer:
The first two rules of Fight Club echo Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, not to tell anyone of his being the Messiah. Word gets out and both movements take off. So is Tyler Durden a Christ figure? I would argue yes and his Christ figure is more in keeping with the Jewish-Christian church than the current idea. The idea of the Messiah as a political agent, anointed by God but completely mortal, that overthrows the oppressors. This is exactly what Tyler does, even going so far as to die at the end and even have a duel-nature. Tyler is both spiritual and human. This could be more along the lines of a Gnostic image of Christ and the real question at the end becomes who dies? Does the Narrator shoot Tyler and is still the same? Or, in Tyler’s death (the Brad Pitt version) we know have the Narrator fully “put on the mind of Tyler”? I would go with the last statement. In the ending scene of the film, we have the Narrator and Marla watching the buildings blow up in a quasi-romantic happy ending. The film then messes up and shows a rather graphic picture of a penis, just like Tyler used to splice into children’s films. This shows that the movement is very much alive and it’s real. Tyler is now in the projector booth and the audience should beware.
Fight Club’s dim view of institutions, including religious ones, are much like the postmodern suspicion of all things systemized. We see a member of Fight Club in the movie try to pick a fight with a priest, smacking the bible out of his hand and spraying water on it. The next scene shows the very same priest wining a fight and hugging his opponent. Even the leaders of the institutions are taken by the message of Tyler.
This idea is best summed up by Robert Capon when he states
“The gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race's perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man's well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won't be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now" (Capon 166).
Tyler has the same thing in mind. All systems fail, all we need is trust in one another, and to be honest with ourselves. We get our identity from being in community, true community, open and vulnerable. Fight Club embraces the uncertainty of the postmodern life, experienced as is, in the collapse of the supporting structures of modernity, in the loss of traditional social ordering. Reconfigurations of what it means “to be” are explored in every way possible and what emerges is a new idea of what constitutes family and community much like what came out of Christ’s teachings some 2,000 years ago.
