I began working through Ray Sutton’s That You May Prosper today. Sutton articulates the biblical vision of the covenant, the way which God has chosen to interact with humanity. The covenant has five points: Transcendence, Hierarchy, Ethics, Sanctions, and Succession. I am building a Shakespeare e-course around these five points and will be working with his tragedy Julius Caesar (1599) over the next three weeks as the play that most overtly deals with the subject of transcendence.
What are the key points from Sutton’s chapter on Transcendence and how do they apply to literature and the play Julius Caesar specifically?
- God demonstrates His transcendence through creation.
- He interacts with His creation through a personal covenant.
- He is both transcendent over creation (i.e. His works are NOT of the same being as He is) and immanent through His personal covenant with humanity.
- His covenant is both LEGAL and ETHICAL.
- Humanity has continually substituted counterfeit forms of transcendence. One is DEISM, a transcendent god who is not personal. Another is PANTHEISM, an immanent god who is not transcendent.
- The alternative to COVENANTAL religion is METAPHYSICAL religion that assumes a continuity of being between humanity and divinity, either vertical or horizontal.
- God’s transcendence affects the human institutions of FAMILY, STATE, and CHURCH.
Now for the takeaways for literature in general and Julius Caesar in particular…
- The study of literature begins with understanding the doctrine of creation. God’s creation is different than humanity’s creation, but we draw attention to our creator through things like literature. Assuming that any human created artifact can be transcendent makes the mistake
- Interpretation is part of God’s transcendence. He verifies objective reality through His personal sustaining and complete interpretation of all reality. When we explore what things mean (like a piece of literature) we are seeing in ourselves the image of our creator.
- Thematically, TRANSCENDENCE is a perpetual theme in Western Literature. To what extent are characters redeemed ETHICALLY or METAPHYSICALLY? Does a particular work offer COUNTERFEIT TRANSCENDENCE or point to the TRANSCENDENCE/IMMANENT God of the Bible?
- The play Julius Caesar is set in a Rome that is debating the continuity of being. Rome seems to think that the title character has become a god and deserves worship. This angers the senators and they kill him. The play features a realm beyond the material world and judges Caesar for putting himself on the level of a god. Still the play does not favor the way Brutus and Cassius take Julius down. They take God’s authority upon themselves. How will the play reconcile its criticism of Caesar and the men who take him down? That’s what I’m working on.
Experiments in Criticism 