If there is a creative force in the world which is greater than the purely human one, we shall not find it on the level of professed belief, but only on the level of common action and social vision.
Creation and Recreation (1980), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
When we consider beliefs that others hold and that we do not, our feelings are increasingly those of a sense of freedom delivered from obsession. In short, the less we “believe” in the ordinary sense the better, and one comes to distrust believing in anything that has to be believed in.
“Pistis and Mythos” (1972), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Thus the artist may keep his life continuous by a belief in creativity, the businessman by a belief in productivity, the religious man by a belief in God, the politician by a belief in policy. But the more intense the immediate experience, the more obviously its context in past and future time drops away from it.
“The University and Personal Life: Student Anarchism and the Educational Contract” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
A man may go to church on Sunday morning and find himself repeating an extremely impressive statement of what he believes in, but by Monday evening he may have demonstrated that his real conception of human society is a very different one.
“Preserving Human Values” (1961), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Belonging
To participate in anything in human society means entering into a common bond of guilt, of guilt and of inevitable compromise. I am not saying that we accept the evils of what we join: I am saying that whatever we join contains evils, and that what we accept is the guilt of belonging to it.
“The Ethics of Change: The Role of the University” (1968), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Bereavement
In moments of despair or bereavement or horror, we find ourselves staring blankly into an unresponding emptiness, utterly frustrated by its indifference. We come from the unknown at birth, and we rejoin it at death with all our questions about it unanswered.
“To Come to Light” (1988), Northrop Frye on Religion (1999), CW, 4.
Bestsellers
A modern bestseller has only a temporary incarnation as a book between its initial appearance as a magazine serial and its ultimate appearance as a movie.
“The Church and Modern Culture” (1950), Northrop Frye on Modern Culture (2003), CW, 11.
Bible
The Bible is the world’s greatest work of art and therefore has primary claim to the title of God’s word.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
… the Bible (which would still be a popular book if it were not a sacred one).…
“Second Essay: Ethical Criticism: Theory of Symbols” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
The Bible never calls itself the Bible nor does the phrase Word of God ever mean the Bible.
Entry, Notebook 11e (1978), 79, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The Bible is a structure of fiction and a structure of syntax, I think, rather than of meanings.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
If the Bible did not exist, at least as a form, it would be necessary for literary critics to invent the same kind of total and definitive verbal structure out of the fragmentary myths and legends and folk tales we have outside it.
“The Road of Excess” (1970), Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake (2005), CW, 16.
I can only point out the inner coherence of the book and the way in which if you look for guidance in life you get a great deal more than you actually bargain for.
“The Hypnotic Gaze of the Bible” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
The Bible begins by showing on its first page that the reality of God manifests itself in creation, and on its last page that the same reality is manifested in a new creation in which man is a participant. He becomes a participant by being redeemed, or separated from the predatory and destructive elements acquired from his origin in nature. In between these visions of creation comes the Incarnation, which presents God and man as indissolubly locked together in a common enterprise.
“Spirit and Symbol,” Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (1990), CW, 26.
If a book is believed to originate from a source beyond the limitations of the human mind, and a benevolent source at that, one would expect it to speak the language of breakthrough, a language that would smash these structures beyond repair, and let some genuine air and light in. But that, of course, is not how anxiety operates.
“History and Myth in the Bible” (1975), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The Bible is to me the body of words through which I can see the world as a cosmos, as an order, and where I can see human nature as something redeemable, as something with a right to survive.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In the Bible there are references to a prophecy which has to be sealed up and hidden away until its time has come. That time comes when in the age of the people the gods become names for human powers that belong to us, and that we can in part recover.
“The Responsibilities of the Critic” (1976), “The Secular Scripture” and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976–1991 (2006), CW, 18.
Yet the suggestion in it of infinite mysteries connected with logos or articulate speech is as fascinating to the literary critic in me as a flame to a moth, even if in the end it proves equally destructive.
“Teaching the Humanities Today” (1977), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
Even the Bible must be shaken upside-down before it will yield all its secrets.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Bible as Literature Plus
The real reason why the Bible fascinates me as a literary critic is that its language comes out of direct experience. It’s not secondhand language.
“The Primary Necessities of Existence” (1985), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Fact is objective, and fiction is a human construct. The Bible is neither. It’s something beyond both.
“The Great Teacher” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
In the Bible I think you have uniquely a book which has no outside.… In the Bible what is inside the book and what it points to outside the book have become identified. The Bible is not confined by what we usually call the imaginative, which I sometimes call the hypothetical.
”Maintaining Freedom in Paradise” (1982), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW 24.
The Bible to me is not a structure of doctrine, not a structure of propositions, but a collection of stories making up one single story, and that’s the interrelationship of God and man. You can understand the importance of that interpenetration without necessarily believing in God.
“Canadian and American Values” (1988), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
… it is, in short, a work of literature plus. The present book attempts to explain once