Jacques Barzun, who died yesterday in San Antonio at 104, had an intellect that was recognized as widely as it ranged. Yet evident as his erudition was, as powerful his judgment, it was never apparent just what he believed. He had surveyed the world, but where did he stand? Did his criticism reflect a creed? Richard John Neuhaus posed the question directly on the occasion of the publication of Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence:
That Professor Barzun is learned, cosmopolitan, amusing, and wise there is no doubt, but I kept wondering what he really believes. In all his masterful displaying of the ideas, philosophies, and artistic representations of reality that have captured minds and souls over these five hundred years, where does Jacques Barzun stand? What are the core convictions that anchor and direct his way of trying to make sense of the world of which we are part?
The closest thing Neuhaus could find to a creed in the work’s many pages was Barzun’s declaration that, “Nature is conscious of itself in and through man. And what man has made of the world, intellectually and materially, is his mission—chosen by him, it is true, but so universal that it is tantamount to fated, obligatory.”
Neuhaus lamented Barzun’s “reticence” but said that from this and similar statements “there would seem to be no doubt” that Barzun’s project is in response “to an obligation not entirely of its own creation.” While not wanting to over-read his work in a different direction, I would say there would seem to be some doubt as to how theological Barzun’s idea of nature was.
Indeed, what Neuhaus generously mistook for reticence turned out to be a lack of interest. In a 2000 interview with Women’s Quarterly, the great critic displayed about as much indifference to the existence of God as is humanly possible; he had neither the commitment of a true believer nor the paradoxical loyalty of the atheist who kicks against the pricks:
I was reared in what might be called a semi-Catholic, French fashion—that is a good Catholic, but not intense, like a convert, or the way that many Catholics are today, because the Church is attacked. In my time, the Church was just there and people took it in stride. I am not a practicing Catholic now, particularly because of the conditions of the Church, both its fragmentation and its extreme conservatism and other considerations. American Catholicism is a very different thing from French Catholicism or, indeed, European, and I would not fit into any parish or organization. I’m perfectly willing to go to a Protestant church, and I find that some of them, which are called Presbyterian, have very high-church ways of being Presbyterian. So that the whole religious question today is almost incapable of being described by the old labels. When I find a choir, the minister coming down the aisle in a procession with the choir behind him in a Presbyterian church, I’m a little amazed. But that is exactly what I’ve encountered here in San Antonio, which is so largely Catholic.
I would suspect that Neuhaus’ hopes for Barzun’s sprang not just from a general Christian desire for the salvation of all. It is unsettling that a man could read so widely and reach so many conclusions amenable to the orthodox believer as did Barzun, while somehow missing that consuming, primary question of our creation and calling. That such a staunch defender of Western culture could have so little interest in the cult that lies at its center suggests that the cult itself is dispensable. Any assessment of Barzun’s achievement and shortcomings will have to take account of the fact that he remained at a comfortable remove from these first things.
If Barzun could dispense with God and steer such a sure course around the various madnesses of his time, do any of us need the divine? We might ask in turn how sure the course really was, but as to the first question, I know what answer Neuhaus—a man who lived every day in the hope of the resurrection—would have offered. Mine, on the occasion of Barzun’s passing, is the same.
October 26th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
The universe is estimated at being 15 to 20 billion years old.
The number of galaxies in the universe is estimated between 10^11 and 10^12.
The number of stars is estimated between 10^22 and 10^24.
Humans are estimated to have been on Earth for approximately 100,000 years.
So after “creating” the universe, with an incomprehensively huge number of uninhabited galaxies, God took about 14,999,900,000 years to create humans.
This was after millions upon millions upon millions of years of brutal evolution, where 99% of all species that ever existed died out on Earth.
Hundreds of millions of years of dinosaurs roaming the Earth, before a random meteorite smashes into earth (near what is today the Yucatan Peninsula) sending them into extinction.
After humans had been around on Earth for about 97,000 years, where had lived a very harsh existence (short lifespan; inter-tribal fighting; death during childbirth or surviving but killing their mothers; dying of bad dentition and other horrible diseases; extreme weather and earthquakes, sitting in the cold and the dark and being terrified of anything and everything that they didn’t understand etc.) before we became ‘civilized’. Then God decided that he would talk to his beloved creation, by talking to a tiny group of people in the Middle East, giving them some ambiguous messages in Hebrew, of which would take hundreds of years to reach other parts of the world.
Do these central facts ever make you question whether there really is an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent Theist God who created the universe and Earth just for us, and has a personal relationship with us?
Matthew
October 26th, 2012 | 1:04 pm
[...] What Did Barzun Believe? – Matthew Schmitz, First Thoughts [...]
October 26th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Haha, thanks for that, Matthew. I’m definitely not a militant atheist “kicking against the pricks” myself. Why should I be? I simply think (as I suspect Barzun probably did, along with nearly all his fellow Europeans) that it goes without saying that fables, beautiful as they are, are fables. Which is to say, they’re useful, even vital, on a spiritual or psychic level…but never to be confused with the actual worldly facts of science or history. To point out that the supernatural is fiction is not to say that it’s meaningless.
October 26th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
Barzun likely took for granted the inheritances of Christendom, such as the European university system and the scientific method. As he said, the Church was simply there, and he does not seem to have given a great deal of thought as to understand how things might have been different were the Church not there.
To those commenters suggesting that the Bible represents myth or fable: I don’t think you really understand the difference between the God of Israel and the gods of, say, ancient Greece or pagan Europe. They really are two qualitatively different types, which is a point made repeatedly through the Old Testament and even more forcefully in the person of God Incarnate in the New Testament.
And this is not simply an article of faith, but a historical fact well-understand among the better educated. If you read for example the very interesting book “Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man” (published by the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, not by a church) you will note that the editor makes a point to distinguish the Hebrew God, transcendent of the world, being itself rather than a being, totally from any other god, and places this distinction on par with Greek philosophy as a world-historical intellectual achievement.
Now, having studied Christian theology, you might still find the account of that God to be unconvincing. But to lump the Bible in with Zeus and Poseiden is to misunderstand both the nature of mythology and of Christianity, and to make it difficult for people who are able to make relevant distinctions to take you seriously. (And also, New Atheism is a bit “last season” by now, isn’t it?)
October 26th, 2012 | 10:17 pm
I seem to recall in a letter to the editor of First Things the writer arguing that Barzun believed in polytheism – in response to Father Neuhaus’ querry about what Barzun actually thought about religion. This would make sense, since I personally also recall Barzun in a CSPAN interview saying simply that he believed in spirit and just leaving it at that. My sense is that he appreciated the beauty of Christianity throughout the ages but did not see it as true, but that he was open to the very general idea that God might exist and might be working in the world.
October 27th, 2012 | 1:34 am
Matthew is of course correct to point out the folly of Christians. The wise have correctly diagnosed it in us from the start; to which we must making no argument but to say: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” These are childish words of course, but if by chance they are true they make all the difference. Why some see them as true and others do not is a great mystery and best left to the counsel of God’s will. But one thing is abundantly clear; to see them as true can never be cause to boast. Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
October 27th, 2012 | 2:40 am
Matthew Anderson: I say this with respect, but you have provided no arguments as to why one cannot be a Theist. Your comments seems to imply that you believe that God is within time and space. He’s not. He created time and space, and is in no way constrained by them. If he wanted to “wait” (I use the word “wait” metaphorically) billions of years before creating humans, who are we finite humans to argue otherwise? God’s mind in not our mind. We will never, as Aquinas has argued, fully understand who God is, or what he thinks. We have a partial picture of reality.
No thinking Christian believes that the Bible is the only word on reality. it’s a partial record, historically. And it contains a plethora of metaphors.
October 27th, 2012 | 9:03 am
Patrick –
C.S. Lewis was sometimes asked if he, a modern, 20th century man, could really believe in the devil. As he wrote in Mere Christianity. “Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know.”
If one is actually convinced of something, intellectual or social fashions are irrelevant. So, can you explain what the ‘season’ has to do with it?
October 27th, 2012 | 9:12 am
Patrick –
As I’ve pointed out before, alchemy begat chemistry, astrology begat astronomy – but that doesn’t mean alchemy and astrology are more likely to be true because of that ancestry, nor that they are necessary now to support chemistry and astronomy.
October 27th, 2012 | 9:30 am
[...] The New Yorker by Barzun’s close friend Arthur Krystal. And Christian readers might check out Matthew Schmitz’s reflection on Barzun‘s seeming disinterest in that religion so closely bound up with the civilization about which [...]
October 27th, 2012 | 9:53 am
What did Barzun believe in? The emancipation of the individual. This is an inference I draw from his characterization of the course of western civilization as the ever increasing emancipation of the individual against princes, kings, emperors, bishops and popes, political and scientific ideology, and any other form of tyranny. So while he says he took religion in stride, if without passion, I think he would approve of St. Pauls proclaiming the new life in Christ frees us from our old selves and we are no longer greek nor jew, free men nor slaves, etc. However, Barzun always spoke of good manners as being an important thing–quite traditional and charming. So evidently not all chains are to be unbound.
October 27th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
He was baptized. He attended church, not only Catholic churches, but Presbyterian congregations and contemporary churches where the pastor walks up and down the aisles. Doesn’t being baptized and going to church count for anything? It certainly would for a European. Being a Christian is about belonging to a supernatural community and is more than just individual piety.
October 29th, 2012 | 5:47 am
[...] And yet, he was baptized and sometimes attended both Catholic and Protestant churches. (See this for the question of his religious [...]
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