Spider-Man and the Moral Force of Beauty

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands...." Ps. 90:17 (KJV)

Our God is beautiful. In an abstract sense, He is Beauty: the source, summation, and perfection of all that is beautiful. In a practical sense, however, He is beautiful to us: our senses, our hearts, and our sentiments. The Hebrew word used for "beauty" in this verse is "no'am," which means (amongst other things) someone or something that creates delight to the beholder. It is not beauty in the void but rather beauty beheld, gazed upon, contemplated, and desired (Ps. 27:4). It is not a static thing but a dynamic thing, because it drives us to do something. Something to please it. Something to make it proud. Thus, our delight in God's "delightfulness" is what establishes the work of our hands.

The parallels to romantic love are impossible to ignore. Naturally, I'm not referring to mere lust or affectionate infatuation (i.e., a "crush"), but a true and deep soul-stirring and -shattering reaction caused by one who can only be described as "beloved," the one who is loved. For the beauty of the beloved, the young man will make a fool of himself with sappy poems or silly treats or stupid feats; he will exhaust himself in charming idiocy. For the beauty of the beloved, the older man will not leave her for any other; who she is makes him whole. It's like that great American philosopher and film icon Peter Parker said in Spider-man about Mary Jane: "You know what kind of man you wanna be." Of course, I can only speak for men, since I am one by the accident of birth. However, I am sure that women can think of their own parallels to the theme: the beauty of the beloved establishes the work of your hands.

Remember, this is not about outward appearance; this is about delightfulness, which is something more all-encompassing. God is a Spirit and has no outer form, and yet He creates beauty in those who behold Him. The mystery of that paradox is deep, but the point here is that beauty is far greater than outward show; it is about finding deep, abiding joy in someone because of who they are. Everyone who's ever been and is still in love knows what I'm talking about: it's as if the other person fills up the whole room. Not necessarily because of their personality or their physical shape, but because it's them.  They are beautiful; you cannot reduce it to one thing, for to reduce it is to lose it and make an idol out of one of their many facets.

This is what makes beauty, true delightfulness, so important. Beauty has moral force, for good or ill. In the best case, it will create true love, which will drive you towards acts of true goodness. So in Paradise Lost, Satan himself is struck "stupidly good" when he sees the unfallen beauty of Eve (IX.455-66). In the worst case, false beauty (evil and error disguised as beauty) will create perverted love, which will drive you towards destructive ends. So in "Book I" of The Faerie Queene, Redcross is turned from the journey of holiness by the false beauty of Duessa. In either case, beauty has great moral power: it shapes our sentiments, which in turn shapes our actions, which in turn shapes our culture (esp. our arts and entertainment), which in turn shapes us further. It is an inevitable and valuable as well as perilous cycle, especially if it falls into the wrong hands: moral milksops with shallow views of everything, or moral perverts who have exchanged beauty for ugliness.

For the Christian, the beauty of God is our moral force. The beauty of who He is and what He has done creates delight and desire and love, which in turn constrains us to do (II Cor. 5:14-15; John 14:15). We do not "do" out of duty or fear but love, love for our beloved, the Beloved, who has called us His children and brothers and sisters and friends and lovers and every affectionate and intimate name and category that we have. In the name and for the love of our Beloved, let us go and do. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and let it establish the work of our hands. Let our works be acts of goodness and compassion to the outcast and suffering. Let our works be acts of truth and reason against the skeptic and the madman. And (perhaps above all) let our works be acts of beauty and wonder and glory in our culture, filling it with songs and books and works of light. Let it season like salt our goodness and truth. They too must be acts of beauty, for the way to a man or woman's mind, soul, and body is through their heart.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Iconoclasm as Heroism in Spenser's Book One of The Faerie Queene (an academic essay by an orthodox rebel)

In Book One of The Faerie Queene, being enamored with and thereby enslaved to the signifier rather than the signified seems to adequately identify Spenser's iconoclastic (and thus Protestant) tendencies in literature. Of course, it's not as simple as saying that Spenser was a Protestant in the absolute sense. His sympathies with medievalism greatly irritated his puritan and humanist peers, who could not understand why he wrote a story about knights and dragons and dwarves and other such papist trappings. Nevertheless, Spenser still allows for iconoclasm to be a kind of heroism, even while he maintains his medievalist leanings.

This is not a difficult inference to make. Practically every incarnation of evil in Book One, whether they be man or monster, is some kind of deceiver, spellbinder, or (if I may coin of term) a sign-weaver. Error spews forth false doctrines, Archimago weaves illusions, Duessa lives for deception, the House of Pride is a thin yet flashy veneer covering the dungeons of the dead, and Despair twists scripture in order to produce suicide.

In response to these "sign-weavers" is an apparently iconoclastic retaliation. Error is beheaded (defaced?), Duessa is stripped, and Despair's deadly interpretations are thwarted by Una's reiteration of true grace. Even the Dragon's death is described as erosion, which is a type of defacement: "So down he fell, as a huge rocky cliff / whose false foundation waves have washed away." It seems as though the weapons of the enemy are the deception of false images, and the weapon of holiness is an iconoclastic resolve guided by the word(s) of truth (viz., of Una).

As already stated, Spenser's use of "sign-weavers" as enemies is more than mere anti-papist propaganda: it is a statement about the intimate connection between evil and falsehood as well as between goodness and truth.  Holiness is not simply Protestantism; holiness is reality, living in and being guided by the real (esp. the highest real, i.e., God). Still, since The Faerie Queene was not ashamed to dabble in sensationalist elements (elements that had deep correlations to the everyday lives and experiences of the common folk of 16th century culture), asserting Spenser's use of iconoclastic heroes and image-bound villains is not an unfair interpretation.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Shakespeare meets Twilight: The Serious and the Sensational in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (an academic essay by an orthodox rebel)

I think that, if anything else, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene ought to be an encouragement to other writers. We often think that a true literary work must avoid the ludicrous trivialities of "sensational" literature: one needs to be serious, and very serious about one's seriousness. Spenser, however, was not ashamed to dress up his "seriousness" in children's clothing. He took the best of what would have been considered "sensational" to the Elizabethan culture of England and used it to make a masterpiece. To put it in contemporary terms, it is as though he dressed up Shakespeare in the garb of Twilight.

Of course, Spenser dealt with extremely "serious" issues, e.g., archetypes, Platonic imagery, and various moral, theological, and political themes. However, he felt it necessary to dress them all in the imagery and language of a fairy tale: knights on quests, princesses in peril, wizards and sorceresses, dragons and monsters, giants and dwarves. There were even elements of conventional patriotism and nationalism (like St. George the Dragon Slayer, the patron saint of England). Spenser did this on purpose: a fairy tale would capture and keep his audience's attention faster and better than anything else.

C.S. Lewis, in his book Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, said that if one is to properly understand and enjoy The Faerie Queene, one must approach it as a fairy tale first. To approach it primarily in any other way (viz., scholastically) will only result in you drowning in the dense layers of meaning behind every image and event. A good example of this is the Giant Orgoglio. In an essay titled "The Orgoglio Episode in The Faerie Queene," S.K. Heninger, Jr., argued that Orgoglio must be seen as emblematic of God's judgment against the Roman Catholic Church specifically, the Anti-Christ in general, and Pride ultimately. All of those elements, however, no matter how true, must not distract us from the fact that Orgoglio is first and foremost a giant: a foe of knights, a thing of myth and fairyland.

Thus, Heninger, Jr., rightly points out that "Spenser has done an admirable job of sublimating the serious argument so that on the level of simple narrative-plot Orgoglio is quite convincing in his role of giant in a fairy tale. He carries His heavy allegorical burden without impairing the childlike wonder and excitement which attends the adventure" (emphasis mine). That is the necessary point. Spenser had a very "serious argument" to get across, but he also wanted that argument to be heard by all. Therefore, he used the "sensational" elements of his own period to endear his "heavy allegorical burden" to a mass audience, an endearment that worked in his time and can still work in ours.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011