Amongst the educated, fewer than ever in the English-speaking world are familiar with the world of Greek myth, and so the exploits of worthy Theseus go unsung. On Crete, he tracked down the Minotaur, hybrid of bull and man, and used a golden cord, supplied by Ariadne, to guide his way through the labyrinth where the Minotaur dwelt. It would be cruel to keep in suspense any reader of BOOKS & CULTURE who has happened to miss this particular episode, so let it be relieved by announcing that Theseus got his half-man in the end. Since then, the golden cord has been extended to become an image or metaphor, and Charles Taliaferro uses it to explore the possibility of finding our way through the secular world to sacred reality.
The Golden Cord: A Short Book on the Secular and the Sacred
University of Notre Dame Press
206 pages
$30.00
Will the 17th-century Cambridge Platonists prove to be a kind of Ariadne? Taliaferro thinks so. C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers, whose spirituality has some affinities with the Cambridge Platonists, are known to us, but Taliaferro aspires to make the latter company lively on the contemporary scene: “The main thesis—or question—that this book addresses is whether there are signs all around us that we live in a created order and are made for something other than absolute death.”
The stakes are high—the context of our interest in the Cambridge Platonists is our enquiry into goods and values in our everyday world—so this book is not a purely academic exercise in the retrieval of a relatively neglected strand in intellectual history. As an academic exercise at all, the volume is consciously self-limited: “My book is more of an exploration or extended essay than a work of systematic apologetics.” Taliaferro’s essay goes as follows. To find our way out into the open air of God’s eternal love, we must reckon with the rigors of philosophical discussion of naturalism, but only as much as is needed in a short guide that follows the course of the cord. Once we are assured that naturalism need not trap us in its cave, we can be the more attentive to religious experience. Establishing its reality is a central concern of the book. Once established, our passage has taken us to the place where we can glimpse the sunlight of God’s love. Admittedly, I am fusing imagery from Plato’s allegory of the cave with the imagery of the labyrinth in a way that Taliaferro does not, but this does not misrepresent his intention, and it brings the Cambridge Platonists into the center of our picture. Their vision of the divine beauty, truth, and goodness which constitute the divine life at the heart of ordinary reality, bequeaths to us the kind of theism which we need in today’s world, as in every world; the classical account of God’s perfections may be formally acceptable in the main, but we shall find our salvation in the pervasive warmth and strength of the love of the God so described.
According to its subtitle, the book is “short” and, in principle, its main thesis is the more effectively advanced in terms of this summary form. Much of the book’s space is taken up with lengthy quotations from ally and opposing protagonist; I do not say “friend and foe” because the whole argument is conducted in an irenic manner and the very length of the quotations illustrates the author’s desire for as many voices as possible to be heard, apart from his own. These quotations enrich. It is true that brevity also has its drawbacks. Taliaferro discusses the nature of consciousness, selfhood, the existence of God, religious experience, evil, redemption; and more. The reader will find her- or himself assessing dozens of arguments along the way, agreeing with this, questioning that; and, in the end, we are likely to find ourselves standing back and asking what we think of the project as a whole, rather than wondering too much whether, left to ourselves, we would have described the trajectory of that cord differently here and there. But doubtless this is a response which accords with the author’s intent in a short book.
So what should we make of the project as a whole? I am not sure that the book quite delivers on its promise. We are in for rather more of a rehearsal of traditional questions in philosophy of mind or philosophy of religion than the introductory chapter would lead us to expect. Sometimes the Cambridge Platonists get lost; sometimes, when they put in an appearance, one does not always or immediately identify anything distinctive in their contribution. Yet, we learn enough about them here for us both to catch sight of and be attracted to their contribution. The final chapter, I think, is the one where the author most comes into his own, in the fuller account of the kind of spirituality and thought which the Cambridge Platonists are capable of inspiring. Back in 1882 Nietzsche remarked that “[w]hat decides against Christianity now is our taste, not our reasons” (The Gay Science). Taliaferro does a good job of giving reasons and helping us to acquire taste. The glory of divine, eternal love is, indeed, great, and it is certainly important to find the cord that will lead us to it out of the environs of bleak naturalism. All things considered, I hope that the author will persuade many to become fellow-travelers. Still—and here a reviewer is always on the hazardous terrain of requesting of an author a slightly different kind of book than the one produced—it might also have been an advantage to have delved a little more deeply into the Cambridge Platonists themselves.
Does this tentative request betray an academic concern a step removed from the existential concern which Taliaferro blends so admirably with the academic? No: it takes its cue from the ambition of the book itself. Actually, with regard to the academic, I think that the boot is on the other foot. We see the influences of an academic culture on this book in a way that invites our critical reflection. Two examples are outstanding. The first is in connection with Taliaferro’s argument on the nature of the self. To make his point in the service of an integrative dualism, he prefers to talk about the logic of body-switching rather than the evidence for out-of-body experiences. However, the former is an exercise in pretty abstract reasoning which will interest only the few, whereas attending to the latter keeps us on more solid ground (relatively and in principle!). The second is in connection with the social context of either religious experience or humanly enriching experience regarded from a religious point of view. Taliaferro narrates his own religious experience after dining in a restaurant overlooking Hong Kong harbor and then later reproduces a striking passage from G. K. Chesterton (a tautology, perhaps; can we come up with non-striking passages from Chesterton?) in which he reflects on an evening dinner-table conversation. I neither disparage the former nor diminish the latter. But few can afford the enabling vision of Hong Kong harbor; and few have the capacity for the enabling conversation over a meal. We must find the golden cord in the vast majority world of material and cultural need as well as the small minority world of material and cultural plenty—certainly, if love has anything to do with it.
Finally. Granted, no book in which we read of the “numenous,” the “indiscernability of identicals,” “Schliermacher,” or momento mori should summarily be judged actually heretical. Granted, no book should be burned in the public square for calling two recently deceased Welshmen “contemporaries.” (Not only may the use be defensible, but it may be a welcome sign that they continue to live in the mind.) But what penalty is sufficient when one of the two, none other than R. S.Thomas, is dubbed “the poet and vicar of Aberdeen”? Aberdeen is in Scotland. R. S.Thomas worked in Wales. In the eyes of the world, Aberdaron may be nothing compared to Aberdeen, but it is (within about 86 miles of being) home to me.[1]
Stephen N. Williams is professor of systematic theology at Union Theological College in Belfast.
1. The other “contemporary” is D. Z. Phillips.
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