Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent by David Jasper (review)
- Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent by David Jasper
David Jasper is a key theological figure who highlights the need for interdisciplinary work involving both theology and literature if theology is to have an impact on the contemporary world. His Literature and Theology as a Grammar of Assent serves as a memoir and reflection upon his contribution to and participation within this scholarship, as well as a vivid introduction to the importance of scholarship that intersects theology and literature. Indeed, the book functions both as a history of the interdisciplinary movement, paying special attention to the earliest conferences in Durham beginning in 1982 and the subsequent publication of those conferences in the journal Literature and Theology, as well as a methodological assertion in the midst of Jasper's attempt to understand the impulse behind their early meetings. [End Page 95]
Jasper identifies "the dark days of the post-Holocaust generation" and the group's proximity to "the unutterable trauma of the mid twentieth century in those who had suffered and endured the murder of 6 million Jews" as a locus of their restlessness and the fundamental impulse behind their turn to literature. Indeed, the book is haunted by this pain. For Jasper, moreover, the tragic events of the twentieth-century have rendered theology "helpless" (4). The Holocaust has (or, for Jasper, should have) driven theologians to silence. The trauma of this era has even affected a "death of God," so to speak. Jasper appreciates how a "well-known English theologian" identified him as one of the few thinkers "who took Thomas Altizer seriously" (48).
Since the Holocaust silenced theology for Jasper and his colleagues, a turn to literature has proven their one way forward: "theology was of fundamental importance, but its resources had been rendered almost impossible by the firsthand experience of war or conflict. Literature, it seemed, offered a way back" (64). For Jasper, where the Holocaust drove even God to silence, the telling of stories is all that remains: "Here the truth claims of theology have no part, at least in the first instance … and there is no place yet for God" (79-80). As Jasper concludes from his conversation with Werner Jeanrond, "there is only [in literature] the 'courageous risk' of the one who, even without belief, dares to search for some preliminary grasp upon sense—the making of meaning in an utterly meaningless world. And in this space of fiction may be sensed … an absent presence—the otherness of God in literature, the future hope in the darkness of the present, the beginnings again, perhaps, of theology" (79–80). The only way for theology to speak again will be in following the footprints of literature in conversation with the darkness of modern evil.
As the book's title indicates, John Henry Newman's presence and influence is unmistakable. Jasper even identifies Newman's articulation of the religious imagination in the Grammar of Assent as the impulse behind his turn toward literature. Jasper's insistence upon the use of literature appeals to the need for theology to consider the imagination's role in human knowing just as Newman highlights the personal nature of all human assent and understanding. Moreover, Jasper's own telling of his movement's history of integrating literature with theology utilizes the religious imagination poignantly. Jasper's vivid descriptions of the personalities at these conferences allows one to suffer with figures like Ulrich Simon who brought to their meetings (and to Jasper's reader) "a terrible, tangible presence" of suffering (44).
Jasper also parallels Newman insofar as they both seek to understand the roles of different disciplines within the academy, especially that of theology. Like Newman, Jasper seeks an integration of disciplines, in this case, a reintegration of theology with literature so that theology can once again become intelligible. Lastly, Jasper understands his turn toward literature as a move animated by Newman's [End Page 96] attempt to recover lesser known voices in his On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine. Jasper sees his...
