5 A temptation is to look about from “today” and to sound a myopic or at least immediate alarm. But when does “temptation” become obligation?
6 Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1983) 54.
7 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957) 28–50.
8 Ibid., 30, 32.
9 Ibid., 33, 37, 39.
10 Ibid., 43.
11 See David Cain, “Arthur McGill: A Memoir,” Harvard Theological Review 77 (1984) esp. 106.
12 James Breech grasps this: “This view of love which tolerates everything and which does not see things as they are is rooted in the contemporary hatred of actuality, in resentment”—James Breech, The Silence of Jesus: The Authentic Voice of the Historical Man (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 206. See 13–18. With the help of Max Scheler, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others, this fine book is pervaded with McGillian perception, as Breech’s “Acknowledgments” acknowledge (ix).
13 See The Celebration of Flesh.
14 McGill invites us to “[c]onsider our attitude toward romantic love. According to the popular songs [do they render “our” attitude?], the final truth about love is that it will leave us. However real it may be now, the day will come when we will ‘wonder who’s kissing her now . . .’ . . .” See McGill, “Reason in a Violent World” in Wesleyan University Alumni-Faculty Seminar, The Distrust of Reason (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, June, 1959), 43.
15 Johannes Climacus (Søren Kierkegaard), Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 452, Kierkegaard’s Writings, XII.1, translation altered. The Hongs translate, “To be in existence is always somewhat troublesome . . .” See also Johannes Climacus (Søren Kierkegaard), Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 404: “For to be in existence is always a somewhat embarrassing situation . . .” ).
16 C. FitzSimons Allison, Guilt, Anger, and God: The Patterns of Our Discontents (New York: Seabury, 1972), 88.
17 See Cain, “Arthur McGill: A Memoir,” 100–101.
18 For example, “At the present moment [ca. 1975] witchcraft and Satanism are enjoying a mild popularity in the United States. It seems to me that these are simply faddish archaisms, and as such they will not concern me here,” “Structures of Inhumanity” in Alan M. Olson, ed., Disguises of the Demonic: Contemporary Perspectives on the Power of Evil (New York: Association, 1975), 116. Or: “Let me begin with some preliminary remarks which will indicate certain directions that I will not follow,” “Human Suffering and the Passion of Christ” in Flavian Dougherty, CP, ed., The Meaning of Human Suffering (New York: Human Sciences, 1982), 159.
19 Stringfellow is working with the book of Revelation: “If America is Babylon, and Babylon is not Jerusalem—confounding what, all along, so many Americans have been told or taught and have believed—is there any American hope?
“The categorical answer is no.” William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973; reprinted, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 155.
After including this reference, I found among McGill’s papers (474 file folders of mainly handwritten notes and manuscripts—McGill liked pencil, note cards held together with paper clips, and any size sheet of paper at hand), a folder (#200) identified in McGill’s hand as “Demonic: Misc notes.” Rather than miscellaneous notes, the folder contains but one reference on a 5” x 8” sheet: “On demonic principalities Stringfellow, An Ethic for Xians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land [no underlining of title] 1973.”
20 Characteristically, the perspective at which we might wish to get a closer look “breaks away” from the text. The tease again. McGill leaves us wanting more, but this is also an invitation for us to do some work. For an analogy, see David Cain, “Notes on a Coach Horn: ‘Going Further,’ ‘Revocation,’ and Repetition” in Robert L. Perkins, ed., Fear and Trembling and Repetition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993), 341–42 (International Kierkegaard Commentary, 6).
21 Is this “perspective” language finally too tame? Is injustice done to the boldness, the radicality of McGill? Finally, he is not proposing one perspective rather than another but pointing: open your senses and hear, touch, smell, taste, see. By “perspective,” I mean way of entertaining (I almost wrote “seeing,” but McGill wants all senses; see The Celebration of Flesh, 22–23), not what McGill denounces as “viewpoint Christianity”(see Celebration, 13–14, 187–90, p. 2 above, and n. 26 below). I am grateful to William F. May for calling my attention to this matter—and to others.
22 The Celebration of Flesh, 36.
23 Ibid., italics added.
24 A whisper of redundancy . . .
25 Screenplay, Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, with Ennio Flaiano, La Strada, 1954. I am transcribing these words from a soundtrack, so the punctuation—and italics—are mine.
26 McGill labeled file folder #188 “Concrete.” Inside are seven 8 ½” x 11” lined sheets (but eight pages—the first sheet contains writing on both sides—and all but the last sheet are numbered) with one 5 ⅜” x 8 ½” sheet originally paper-clipped to page 7. The heading is “The Concrete.” Here are a few suggestive excerpts: “Cultural difference, ie. differences in what people in different cultures think & see, are really determined by concrete features of their environment; they are not just developments coming out of internal collective history. Cf Wallace Stevens on exchanging person in [?] African jungle with [?], on meaning of sounds, on whole imaginative apperception. One source of cultural relativism is fact that the concrete impact of sensory exper[ience] is left out of view: culture is looked at too wld [world]-viewishly, too generally, too internally. The dynamic of life wrestling constantly with the concrete as such is neglected. Why? A common assumption that the concrete is wrestled