Great Theology is Great Drama

[bluemaydie]

Apropos of submitting a piece here at some point, I want to share Dorothy Sayers' introductory essay to her radio-play-cycle, The Man Born to Be King. You can find it on googlebooks here:
books.google.com/books?id=HkqY_0adLxAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=dorothy+sayers+the+man+born+to+be+king&source=bl&ots=Iv6fVy73qX&sig=tiOKsrhDPbTjk9Hqq3OjL-e5Tho&hl=en&ei=Jn47TKDtDcT68AaJhuSnBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CC0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The first half of this essay is THE BEST I have ever read on the subject of Christian writing. To sum up: Graet theology is great drama. Now, it's been 6 months or more since I've read it, so I can't quote more off the top of my head, but it makes more sense to me than anything else I've ever read. If the work is faithful to the Gospels, it'll be good, without having to worry about making it "Christian enough."

The second half is about the play-cycle specifically, and even that has some valuable lessons to glean about ignoring ridiculous critics.

You know, I meant to say something profound in posting this link, but my brain is out the window today and I can't think of anything else to write. Let me just repeat that this essay is well worth the time it takes to read.

Kate

[max]

Certainly anything proposed by Dorothy Sayers should be considered a strong candidate for truth, as her introductory essay here demonstrates. Thanks so much for sharing it.

I took her point to be a bit broader than advice to hew close to the Gospels, suggesting generally that a writer’s comprehensive, organic vision of the purpose of life sets the stage for dramatic tension between what conforms to it and what does not. To the extent that that vision is comprehensive, it integrates all the parts of the work, imbues them with meaning, and makes obvious the choices about what to leave out: “[T]heology is enormously advantageous, because it locks the whole structure into a massive intellectual coherence . . . It must be a *complete* theology” (emphasis original). In that sense, she refers not just to Christianity as providing such a vision but to classical sources as well. Yeats’s fabricated neo-paganism also serves as a useful and instructive Modernist example. Even if not our visions, the classical and modernist may aid in developing an understanding of the technique that helps good theological art do its work.

Perhaps just as important to remember (for me, at least) is Sayers’s admonition that the “dramatist must rid himself of all edificatory and theological intention.” It is a mighty temptation to play the pedant and forget to make good art, as I've learned the hard way.