What if Simone Weil belonged to a fight club?
Suppose, instead of resolving theological differences through disputations and councils and seminars and symposia, we opted for something a little more robust. What if we asked our theologians to submit to a completely different process—a cage match. We would lock opposing theologians in a wire–mesh in the middle of an arena, or maybe a more appropriately liturgical setting, like the back parking lot of the local Gospel Assembly Hall late at night under dim street lights reflected in the shards of broken beer bottles. A fight club of the soul. The theologians would take their weighty books and bludgeon each other unconscious. The last one standing at the first light of dawn would be declared the winner—a learned doctor of the church. And people throughout the land would gape in awe at the marvel of the mighty doctor’s hair-splitting. They would kneel in awe at the length of the words, the breadth of the knowledge, mightier than well–greased pecs on a beach in southern California.
Let’s hold such a fight club. But to make it interesting why don’t we invite anybody living or dead to take part. First pair up on our roster? In the far corner, weighing 90 pounds and standing at 5 foot nothing, is France’s amateur champion of 1942—Simone Weil. And in the near corner, conveniently located where he can fix the fight, weighing in at—ahem—well it ain’t under 200 pounds, and standing at 5 foot 9 and shrinking, is one of Canada’s more obscure theological bloggers—that would be me. A Catholic mystic takes on a Protestant liberal. Let the pummeling begin …
Contender #1 — profile:
Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909 to marginally Jewish parents who were situated comfortably in the upper middle-class. She happened to grow up alongside the rise of Nazism, and this fact lies in the background of her writing as a more general question: how can legitimate boxing nevertheless produce monstrous evil? She found herself drawn to the Roman Catholic gym, and caught the attention of Fr Perrin who agreed to be her coach and sparring partner. She refused to become involved in the institutional Gym and refused to be baptized. She consistently maintained her unworthiness, insisting that it was for God to choose her, that no act of will on her part could influence God, and that it would make no difference whether or not she chose to be baptized. She didn’t even have showers after grueling sessions at the gym, and Fr Perrin complained bitterly about the stench. She was involved in many causes, including an attempt to join troops in the Spanish Civil War, and later helping in the French resistance organize an amateur boxing association. She agreed to emigrate to America with her family, but found the separation intolerable because she couldn’t find a decent trainer and most of the fights in America were low–stakes affairs. And so Weil returned to England. Weakened by starvation, she died at the age of 34. She had been on a long fast, restricting herself to the rations allocated to her compatriots in occupied France.
Strategy to look for during the fight:
Weil was a fighter’s fighter. Not only did she learn her technique cold, she decided to pass on nuggets of wisdom in letters and essays. So we have a good idea how she’ll move. See her Letter to a Priest, which was just that—a long letter she had delivered to Fr Perrin in which she set out 35 questions relating to technique in the ring. It’s extremely accessible, written in an aphoristic style, free-wheeling and open-ended with lots of suggestions for footwork, working the corners and playing off the ropes. For a Protestant reading Weil, this is the best place to begin, because she makes it plain that differences in fighting styles are of little concern to her. This is not so apparent in Waiting For God, a posthumous collection of letters and essays, in which she is more deliberate in her discussions about issues that are contentious for Protestants, namely eucharist and incarnation, both of which can be subsumed under the larger question of god as a revelatory experience, the very sort of thing that’s likely to throw a Protestant off his balance right from the first bell.
That said, reading Letter to a Priest nevertheless feels to me very much like a revelation. Lately, I’ve been rethinking the “I am” statements which appear officially only in the Book of John (see 14:6), but also unofficially in apocryphal and Gnostic texts. (For those who don’t know much about our fight club, John comes from an official manual that’s printed by the Association, whereas the other books have never been formally adopted and so tend to be useful only for street fights and parking lot brawls.) “I am the way” has typically been interpreted as authoritative for the claim that “the way” is exclusive to Jesus: if you don’t confess Jesus as Christ, then you have no hope of salvation. (Note for those who don’t know: Jesus was a legendary scrapper.) However, in the Greek, the word for “way” is “hodos” which can also mean “road” or “path.” The claim that “I am the path” suggests two things: 1) there is no claim to exclusivity (different people can walk along the same path, yet notice entirely different things as they go); and 2) a “path” can be understood as a metaphor for “method.” Maybe Jesus is saying: “I am the method. If you want to be a better fighter, do as I do.” This is not a demand for loyalty to a particular gym but rather an invitation to follow a good example.
So let’s say that Jesus likes to bob and weave, then duck and come up with a nice one-two combo, say a left hook and right jab. Jesus would make a lousy trainer if he went around all the time saying to us: “The most important thing you’ll ever learn while you’re training in my gym is that I am the greatest.” At the end of the week, everybody’d hang up their gloves and go home feeling like shit. Instead, Jesus would really be worth his salt if he said: “See how I bob and weave, then duck and come up with a nice one-two combo? Stick with me kid and some day you’re gonna fight just like that. Maybe even stronger.” Now that’s a trainer I could work with!
One of the brilliant things about Weil’s Letter to Fr Perrin is her willingness to look at the techniques of other training manuals. Consider this passage:
His words: ”I am the Way” should be compared with the Chinese ”Tao”, a word signifying literally ”the way” and metaphorically, on the one hand the method of salvation, and on the other hand the impersonal God who is the God of Chinese spirituality, but who, although impersonal, is the model for the wise and acts continually.
His words: ”I am the Truth” call to mind Osiris, Lord of Truth.”
For Weil, the notion of exile is foundational. Exile is not the wandering of a people in search of a better gym or a trainer with a bigger stable of prize fighters. Instead, exile is an opportunity. The best fighters can pick up tips wherever they find themselves, and by gathering a wider variety of moves, they can become formidable in the ring.
Another important feature of “the Way” is demonstrated by Weil’s own method. She is persistently inquisitive, never afraid to ask questions of her coach. “How does this move look to you? How’s my footwork? How could I improve my balance?” On and on it goes. The problem with lesser fighters is that they often lose the desire to ask important questions. There’s nothing wrong with asking even questions that might seem likely to offend. Maybe it’s not that lesser contenders lose the desire; maybe it’s that they’re afraid to ask difficult questions. Some trainers feel threatened by difficult questions and respond by compensating with anger. They beat the desire to know the truth out of their protegés, who learn only to parrot back simple combinations and to use unimaginative footwork. Looking to Weil’s example, perhaps it is important, not only to ask questions freely, but also to find a good trainer—the sort who is willing to entertain questions, even those questions that stump the trainer.
But then we turn to Weil’s Waiting For God, and we see precisely the chasm that divides her view of the world from the view held by a typical Protestant. Certainly Weil has a good coach and sparring partner and an excellent gym, but she contends that she picks up her most important tips from an altogether different source. They are revealed to her, almost as if the manual here on earth is a pale reflection of a higher-order manual filled with far better fighting tips and fairer rules. This is a problem for Protestants because, at least superficially, it sounds like standard Roman Catholic fare. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Weil believes quite literally that God is present whenever her coach sticks in the holy mouth guard. Perfectly orthodox. And yet Weil sees it more as mystical experience. The literalness is literal only from within the experience.
From a strictly rational Protestant approach, it is easy to reject mystical experience without taking a closer look. That kind of arrogance could be my great weakness when I climb into the cage.
Contender #2 — profile
Theoblogger (i.e. me) is a Protestant living in Canada and currently freezing his butt solid in the middle of a winter chill. I come from a long line of Congregationalists who, themselves, were descended from Puritans who fled persecution in Suffolk County, England and sought a new world where they could enjoy the right to inflict persecutions all on their own. Although not entirely proud of my heritage, it’s the only one I’ve got, so I just own up to it and resolve to do better. At present, I hang out at a Progressive gym where there are some decent sparring partners and excellent trainers but no showers. There’s nothing worse—especially at this time of year—than working up a sweat and then catching a chill on the way home.
Strategy to look for during the fight:
The Progressive playbook has a few interesting ideas which may catch Weil off her guard. For instance, it tends to think that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which means that it trashes a lot of the bobbing and weaving for a straight–forward move to the center of the ring.
But don’t let the Progressive label fool you. I’m not really a member and so I feel perfectly at ease with the Weil move of incorporating the unexpected into my footwork and combos. If she can throw the Tao at me and sprinkle in some Coptic mythology, then I can answer with moves from the Qu’ran. One of my best strategies is to lull my opponent into making unfounded generalizations about the Progressive gym (like “He won’t use any of the tips from gyms that use Jesus footwork”) then I come out swinging with an unexpected reflection on the nature of a theistic deity or quote scripture with a nice uppercut. Usually when this happens, the opponent is so surprised that they act like a deer caught in the headlights. By the time they’ve recovered, I’ve managed to land a couple solid punches to the ribs.
And the winner is …
Probably Weil. (I’m trying hard to swallow my pride to give an honest prediction.) The Progressive gym has no moves to answer the mystical experience. Certainly the brand that I’ve been exposed to is rooted firmly in the rationalism of the Protestant world view. It is apt to explain it all away by talking about psycho-biochemical events in the brain. It feels uncomfortable with the idea that some things in this universe may be forever ineffable, that no amount of intelligence or phenomenological investigation will ever throw light on some corners of our experience.
On the other hand, if Weil ever falls to the mat, I could rush in and sit on her. She’s so skinny, that’d probably finish her off.