Appalling Strangeness
A classic novel dives deep into theodicy
As a person who writes novels, I often receive the question, “What novels have you read recently?”
I confess I feel rather caught out in these situations, for I have little time to read anything for pleasure, and when I do it is more often non-fiction than fiction. My sheer need to gain information—to converse with academics by sharing their points of reference—tends to trump my desire to be swept away by a great story. For most of my adult life, reading fiction has felt like an indulgence I can ill afford. In a given week, I can devote perhaps an hour or two to reading books: nothing more.
This means that when I do choose a novel to read, I feel I must pick one of tremendous historical weight—something that is likely to come up in conversation and therefore be of use to me in the future. Rarely have I felt more devoid of intellect than when I was forced to query agents for my latest manuscript and saw their lists of “things I’ve been reading lately” or “the kind of books I like.” Hardly any of the titles were known to me, and I was reminded of how vast the expanse is between myself and most of the literary community. My life is thoroughly different than that of a junior literary agent in Manhattan.
Nevertheless, I have managed to read a few novels over the past year or two. One book I completed was Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed work Hamnet. I had heard of this novel and thought it sounded interesting—something along the lines of Wolf Hall. But I probably never would have gotten around to reading it had it not been specifically recommended to me by Sadie Holland, wife of the historian Tom Holland. I spoke with her briefly at a party in London (a phrase that makes my life seem far more glamorous than it actually is), and when she heard that I write novels, she immediately asked, “Have you read Hamnet?” Well, I certainly wasn’t going to turn down a personal recommendation from Mrs. H. I picked up a copy at Heathrow on my way home.
O’Farrell’s novel was certainly good. Her descriptive work is top notch. The ending felt a tad contrived, but one could forgive her for that. She did not, however, cause me to have many thoughts of the philosophical sort, and this in my mind is the greater fault. I grant it is not a fault by the general reckon of human beings, but remember that I can only read so many books. I therefore want a lot of bang for my buck, so to speak. If a book can be both a novel and a philosophical text, so much the better.
It is not very surprising, then, that I have connected more with the work of Graham Greene. No, not his spy novels. Those are exactly the sort of indulgences I do not permit myself. I have commenced a tour of his so-called Catholic novels: a series of works that include theological themes. First, I tackled The Power and the Glory, the tale of a Mexican priest on the run from the local authorities, who at the time the novel is set were heavily persecuting the Catholic Church. An alcoholic with a child born out of wedlock, the Whisky Priest, as he is usually called in the novel, is the kind of complicated antihero typical of twentieth century novels.
Boy, that priest does make you think! I confess that the further I waded into the story, the happier I was to be a Protestant, for everywhere the priest goes he meets people begging him to perform his clerical duties: hold a Mass for them, hear their confessions, grant them grace and forgiveness. As Catholics, they believe they need the sacraments for salvation. If they die with unconfessed mortal sins, they will perish eternally, and how can they expect to avoid those mortal sins without the grace that comes in the Eucharist? By the time most people meet the Whisky Priest, it has been years since they enjoyed one of the sacraments, and they are driven to desperation.
As I joined the priest on his series of misadventures—scrambling to find some wine for a secret Mass, longing to use it to feed his addiction instead—I kept thinking, “Thank God, oh thank God that I am a Protestant!” I doubt this was the reaction for which Greene was hoping, though he leaves matters ambiguous enough that nearly any conclusion is possible.
The Power and the Glory is certainly a towering literary and philosophical achievement. But as I moved on to the second of Greene’s Catholic novels, I found something even more…maddening? Intriguing? Confounding? Perhaps all three at once.
Although I read it second, Brighton Rock is Greene’s first Catholic novel. The plot revolves around a pair of teenagers in the English seaside resort of Brighton during the interwar period. Pinky is a boy on the cusp of manhood who has already gained the top spot in a local gang. The plot kicks into gear when he murders a newspaperman on the town’s famous pier. A local waitress named Rose comes across a piece of evidence that ruins Pinky’s alibi. He therefore seeks to marry her so she cannot testify against him in court.
The central conceit of the novel is that Pinky is the height of sin. Not only his actions, but his thoughts and intentions are completely self-centered. He comes from a Catholic family and understands the concept of sin well enough, but he is completely ambivalent about the state of his eternal soul. Rose, by contrast, is as pure as unpopped bubble wrap. She is also Catholic, but unlike Pinky, she is bent upon righteousness, up to and including charity toward those in dire straits. This creates a conundrum when Pinky begins courting her, for even as she becomes increasingly aware of the depths of Pinky’s depravity, she feels herself bound to him in spirit.
As Rose’s sympathy for Pinky reaches epic heights, so does her ethical quandary. She becomes unwilling to let him suffer damnation alone. Yes, she will follow him even into the depths of hell, joining him in his mortal sin. Rose is the type of Christian so bothered by the fact that God would send anyone to hell, she wants to be sent to hell herself. Her religiosity will see its highest fulfillment in her willingness to identify herself with sinners. It is the kind of theological solution an impressionable sixteen-year-old might devise, and it nearly results in her death as Pinky attempts to manipulate her into committing suicide.
Instead, Rose blinks at the last minute, unable to pull the trigger on herself. It is Pinky who ends up dead through an odd twist of fate, and Rose is left to brood over the state of his eternal soul. In the novel’s final scene, she speaks with a priest who attempts to comfort her by declaring that, “You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”1 That is to say, even though Pinky was rotten to the core and died in mortal sin, there may be some unknown aspect of God’s mercy that would allow even him to be spared eternal damnation. Whatever the solution to the theodicy caused by hell’s existence, it will be far beyond human reason, hence the “appalling strangeness” of the matter.
As it turns out, Greene was heavily influenced by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century French author Charles Pierre Péguy, who obsessed over the damnation of sinners. He seems to have even desired, much like the character Rose, to join in their damnation. Péguy’s views were complicated and changed throughout his life, as is the case with most people. During World War II, both the Vichy government of southern France (which collaborated with the Nazis) and those who opposed it cited aspects of Péguy’s thinking as an inspiration for their cause. It is unlikely that any of those persons were interested in the aspects of Péguy’s thought that so fascinated Greene.
The standard orthodox Christian response to all this might be to declare it a load of drivel. God’s punishments are righteous and just. No one goes to hell who does not deserve it, or one might even say, no one goes there who does not choose to do so. God is no monster for punishing evil. Why should we sympathize with doers of evil over the God who is goodness itself?
According to this viewpoint, people like Rose (and perhaps Péguy) have lost sight of the real meaning of Christianity, which is to pursue God and become like him. Questioning God’s judgments and siding with the damned is a favoring of creature over Creator. It is a failure to realize that love of neighbor finds its telos in love of God. To be damned is to be driven away from God’s presence, and no true child of God could desire that.
So, Rose is deemed a rather silly girl, and that is the end of the matter.
However, it occurs to me that there is one more shoe that needs to drop. After all, when Rose shows such overwhelming love for the sinner, she is doing something Christlike. Martin Luther wrote, “The love of God does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it.”2 Could Rose’s affection for the deplorable Pinky, who manipulates and abuses her at every turn, not be characterized as divine?
And as for her desire to join Pinky in damnation, is that not exactly what Jesus Christ did on the cross? As the Scripture tells us, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)3 So, the pure Jesus Christ, who alone among human beings never knew sin, identified himself with the sinner and drank the cup of God’s wrath.
Rose’s true vice is her failure to recognize that she is not Jesus Christ. She is called to be like Christ, yes, but she cannot actually be him. For as pure as Greene makes Rose out to be, she is not fully pure. After all, naivete is not the same thing as righteousness. Rose has so much compassion for Pinky that she has lost any concern for justice. When she realizes that Pinky killed the newspaperman, she does not report the matter to the police and bring justice to the victim’s family. She thinks only of what will happen to poor Pinky, the person in the tale who one could argue is least deserving of Rose’s sympathy.
Only Jesus Christ pulled off the truly divine feet of showing complete love for the sinner while also upholding justice to the letter. He could do this not only because he was genuinely sinless, but because he was God in human flesh. He could descend into hell for the sinner’s sake and ascend from it again, leading a train of captives in his wake. That is why, far from being an evil monster, the Christian God is the abundance and entirety of love: a love far purer than any offered by human beings, for it creates the goodness it seeks in the beloved.
It is a truly great novel that can spur me on to such ponderings. Again, I do not know if my conclusion is the one Greene would have desired, but I have once again found myself enriched by his Catholic novels.
I am sure you will wait with bated breath to hear what I think of The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter, should I ever manage to conquer them. Until then, if someone asks me what novels I have read recently, I can at least seem halfway sophisticated in saying, “I’m in my Graham Greene era.”
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I listened to the audiobook and therefore do not have a page citation.
Theological Thesis 28 for the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation. https://bookofconcord.org/other-resources/sources-and-context/heidelberg-disputation/
Quoted from The New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation
I adore The Power and the Glory, and I’m a Catholic, so it was really interesting hearing a Protestant perspective on reading the novel. I see a lot of beauty in the novel, exploring how God’s grace can work even through imperfect individuals, and that no sinner is beyond redemption if they choose to open up even a little bit to God. One of the most comforting things about the sacraments, to me, is that I don’t have to worry about how “holy” is the priest administering them to me. God knows my good intentions in wanting to receive his grace through the avenues I (as a Catholic) believe he instituted-if the priest is a) still ordained and not excommunicated/laicized and b) following licit forms for their administration, I will receive Jesus in the Eucharist, and Christ’s forgiveness for my sins. Jesus administers these sacraments through priests, and He knew from the beginning that priests would be imperfect at best, and sometimes horrible sinners at worst (Peter and Judas). And that’s what we see in the Whiskey Priest-he’s a sinful man, but he is one of the few left, and through even him Christ will not abandon his church. I haven’t read the other ‘Catholic’ novel of Graham’s you discussed but it sounded soooo interesting. I really like the distinction you make between the call to be LIKE Jesus, and the reminder that we are at the same time not Jesus ourselves. We are not saviors. We can be avenues of Christ’s grace (priests in a special way) but it is always Christ who is saving, loving, judging, etc. All is ultimately his work, we merely cooperate.
It has come as a surprise to me that I read so little now. I am busy living life. I have heard that great literature does three things: inspire, educate, and entertain. I love the Patrick O'Brian novels. Some of the best writing ever. Full of deep thoughts, technical explanations about how things worked in the British Navy in the early 1800s, humor, and pathos. It is a twenty book series, but I have read the whole thing about six times.