John Updike: Seven Stanzas At Easter
January 28, 2009
John Updike: March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas At Easter,” 1964
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
January 28, 2009 at 9:27
My all-time favorite Easter poem.
January 28, 2009 at 10:53
Lovely
January 28, 2009 at 14:38
Sorry Reed, but this poem highlights everything that is wrong with the fundamentalist’s literal interpretation of scripture. In my humble opinion.
It’s pretty though.
January 28, 2009 at 15:56
John Updike was anything but a fundamentalist.
January 28, 2009 at 16:29
Reed’s right; Updike was not a fundamentalist. But it’s a sign of Jeremy’s ignorance of the Christian tradition that he seems to think a literal interpretation of Christ’s resurrection is “fundamentalist.” Then again, maybe Jeremy thinks Tertullian, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Menno Simons, John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, etc., etc., etc., were all fundies. Hey, if they were part of the fundie club, maybe being a fundie isn’t so bad.
January 28, 2009 at 20:55
Here’s more Updike from his 1960 novel Rabbit, Run. This is Lutheran minister Fritz Kruppenbach speaking to another pastor:
Thanks to http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/ for the quote.
JEREMY: in case you’re unaware, Updike was a two time Pulitzer winner who wrote extensively (and explicitly) about the sexual revolution as well as the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Again, he was no Fundamentalist.
January 29, 2009 at 9:59
George,
You’re a typical A/G-fundie, name dropping like that (tisk, tisk).
:0)
Shawn
January 29, 2009 at 11:15
I know, I know. I just can’t help it. Perhaps I should’ve name-dropped my dad while I was at it. That would’ve sealed the deal.
January 29, 2009 at 11:53
George and Reed,
I readily profess to know nothing about Mr. Updike. I am unfamiliar with his work and his life. That said, I was not saying anything about Updike at all. I was pointing out that this poem highlights the way that many fundamentalists read the bible. As George so arrogantly pointed out there are many strands of the Christian tradition that read the resurrection accounts in this literal way. I am not claiming that anyone who reads the resurrection account as literal is a fundamentalist. Rather, I was pointing out that the way in which this poems sees the resurrection is parallel to the way fundamentalists see the resurrection. As Reed and I have discussed many times, my opinion is that believing in a literal resurrection or not is an arbitrary choice. There is no way to prove one way or the other what is factual and what is mythical. One simply chooses based on their presuppositions. Thus, this poem does not resonate with my personal choice of seeing the resurrection as mythical truth rather than factual truth. That was all that I was saying. Thank you for clarifying for me some of what Mr. Updike believes. It is always nice to be informed so as to not be ignorant of the Christian tradition. With that I say again I don’t like this poem, but its pretty none the less.
Jeremy
January 29, 2009 at 12:19
“As George so arrogantly pointed out…”
I love it. Next time Jeremy posts, I plan to begin my riposte with, “As Jeremy so ignorantly pointed out…” since he admits his ignorance.
“There are many strands of the Christian tradition that read the reusrrection accounts in this literal way.”
Yeah, like the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant “strands.” But perhaps Jeremy could enlighten me on which strands of the Christian tradition don’t interpret the resurrection literally.
“Believing in a literal resurrection or not is an arbitrary choice. There is no way to prove one way or the other what is factual and what is mythical.”
If the choice is arbitrary, why are you critical of fundamentalist readings of the Bible? Evidently you think they are inferior to your own readings. And if Jesus returns “to judge the quick and the dead,” in the words of the Creed, I’m pretty sure that will prove one way or another whether his resurrection was factual or mythical. Then again, perhaps you should just read The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright.
January 29, 2009 at 14:48
Gentlemen,
If I might mediate (just a little).
George, you know that Jeremy is pointing out a hermeneutical issue of which you, I, and any theologically trained individual is well acquainted. Namely, the use of the word “literal” has no real meaning when you are talking about interpretation. ‘Which “literal” reading is really the literal reading?’ would be a great conversation on how convoluted some of our methodological debates have become. So, you have Jeremy over a semantic barrel, and I am not even sure he knows he is in trouble or that he knows the parameters of the fight he has just gotten himself into. All name calling aside, aren’t you having a little too much fun with this one?
That being said, Jeremy, I understand what you are trying to say – but, the literal reading that fundamentalists call for is often not the same thing as reading the “literal” intent of the author. Did that make any sense? If this is all information to which you are already privy, then I leave you to your own devices.
Shawn
January 29, 2009 at 14:50
George,
By all means continue to post personal, if not relevant, responses to each of my comments. In response to your question,
“which strands of the Christian tradition don’t interpret the resurrection literally”
I point you toward the works of liberal Protestantism. Please tell me that you are not ignorant of writers such as Crossan, Funk, Borg, Spong, etc. I would hate to think that you have coupled arrogance with ignorance, or is it that you simply dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as unchristian?
January 29, 2009 at 14:50
oh, BTW
George, did you just name drop the Bishop Wright? You know he is a dirty, liberal Anglican, right? :0)
January 29, 2009 at 15:14
Jeremy,
“I point you toward the works of liberal Protestantism. Please tell me that you are not ignorant of writers such as Crossan, Funk, Borg, Spong, etc. I would hate to think that you have coupled arrogance with ignorance, or is it that you simply dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as unchristian?”
These men, also, are not the sole representatives of their respective traditions. In fact, many, if not all, are in direct conflict with their respective church authorities. They are hardly an adequate example of any kind of valid Christian tradition that denies the literal bodily resurrection. While they may belong to a long and illustrious line of critical scholarship, critical scholarship does not itself constitute a Christian tradition, either.
January 29, 2009 at 15:26
Shawn,
What parameters are you using for determining if something is a “valid Christian tradition”? This seems to me to be simply dismissing them because they do not fall in line with the majority of Christian thought. Are you arguing that there must be a certain amount of time before something can be considered a valid Christian tradition? If so, what exactly would that time restraint be? After all there are many Christian communities that have been founded based on the critical scholarship of these writers, much like there were on the critical scholarship of Luther. What is the difference?
January 29, 2009 at 15:48
Jeremy,
I think all I am asserting, is that there is an element of conventional certainty at work here. There are some things, when contradicted, that disqualify the idea from association. If you have a mammal, that satisfies all the same criteria of being a canine, but is a biped, then you don’t have a dog – no matter how similar it is in all other regards. In the same way, there are certain doctrinal non-negotiables, the resurrection is one of them. Now, I concede that there are plenty who have questioned the bodily nature of either Christ’s or the believers resurrection (or both), but these ideas have been traced back to other non-Christian sources (Plato’s philosophy for instance) and they have been dis-associated from the broader traditions.
It may not be as clean a break as we would like, but I am unsure how any of these theologians or critical trends can be ratified as orthodox or recognized as legitimate Christian tradition, if orthodoxy has ultimately rejected them. Perhaps, just one more example of my intended meaning; are you really a U.S. citizen if the United States government won’t claim you? In some senses you may be, but not in the important ones.
January 29, 2009 at 15:49
Jeremy:
I owe you an apology for the last two comments I directed at you. They were intemperate and ad hominem.
On the substantial issue. Yes, I’m familiar with liberal Protestantism. What strikes me as strange about your reference to “Crossan, Funk, Borg, Spong” is that they do not agree with your assessment that “[t]here is no way to prove one way or the other what is factual and what is mythical.” In fact, they believe that a literal resurrection is metaphysically impossible and therefore historically false. It is this belief that compels them to come up with a “mythical” interpretation of the resurrection in order to salvage their reputation as “Christian” theologians.
Indeed, except for the fact that Spong is a retired Episcopal bishop, I wouldn’t classify him as a Christian at all. He denies every traditional doctrine of his own church. Going further, he argues that theism (belief in a personal God) is no longer a credible way of thinking about God. How this is Christian in any sense of the term is beyond me.
But, substantial issue aside, the way I wrote to you in my last two comments was demeaning, and I ask your forgiveness.
George
January 29, 2009 at 15:57
If I may weigh in, reading the Bible literally and reading the Bible figuratively are both methodologies which none of the people mentioned by George or Jeremy practice exclusively whether they are ancient Church Fathers, fundamentalists or liberal Protestants. Athanasius did not interpret everything in the Bible literally, and Crossan does not read everything in the Bible figuratively (he takes literally, for instance, that there was a historical figure named Jesus who grew up in Galilee in the first century if nothing else). Origen, the most famous propagator of an allegorical reading of Scripture took Jesus’ admonition to remove an offending body part very, very literally–more literally than even the most daring and misguided fundamentalist. If we interpret Scripture at all, then we practice a mixture of literal and figurative interpretation. I know of no one who can honestly live at either extreme for long.
January 29, 2009 at 16:28
I’m thinking of renaming this blog bickeringwithgeorge.com
January 29, 2009 at 17:14
I do what I can to keep things interesting.
January 30, 2009 at 0:59
the loss of John Updike makes me wonder if the literary world is being replenished at the same rate that it’s losing such great writers
January 30, 2009 at 1:13
One look at the Twilight series provides you with the answer.
January 30, 2009 at 9:35
Reed,
Why did you have to go there? I, regrettably, read a chapter of one of those turds in Borders one day. I am still trying to purge it from memory. I was almost there, and then you bring it back to the front of my mind. Hopefully “a Canticle for Leibowitz” will help me kill the memory for good.
April 12, 2009 at 11:32
Thank you for this. You theophiliacs now have a new reader.
April 12, 2009 at 13:06
Well thanks Elly. Hopefully the Lord will replace John Updike for us
April 23, 2009 at 21:53
… A more liberal Updike …
April 6, 2010 at 0:18
[...] » Like the much quoted Updike (cited around the web at this season – here and here and here) Christians are materialists, particularly at Easter. McCabe (God Still Matters, p. 227-8) puts it [...]
April 20, 2011 at 20:27
I have always read this poem as a rebuking of weak, bunny and egg Christians. And I remember. And I repent
April 26, 2011 at 10:29
lovely.
June 20, 2011 at 11:00
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