Robert Penn Warren on God

I’m finally getting around to reading classics I should have read twenty years ago. And the current classic is All The King’s Men. At first I didn’t enjoy it, but I’m most definitely enjoying the story now. I’ll be done with it in another day or so. I recommend it to anyone who likes well-crafted artistic fiction. His word choice clearly reflects his poetic side, with some really brilliant word choices and phrasing. I find many times I'm reminded of reading Nabokov.

And imagine my surprise in the middle of this outstanding, Pulitzer Prize-winning work when Robert Penn Warren through Jack Burden muses on the nature of the divine and all-powerful. Here are the relevant excerpts:

". . . God-Almighty, Who knows how it is going to come out. Who knew, in fact, how it was going to come out even before He knew there was going to be any History. Which is complete nonsense, for that involves Time and He is out of Time, for God is Fullness of Being and in Him the End is the Beginning . . . I thought God cannot be Fullness of Being. For Life is Motion."

I like this logic here, very straightforward and simple. God is everywhere, everytime, always and never, forever and ever. How bored must be God be if he knows everything that is going to happen? Of course, Frank Herbert explored that curse of omnipotence in the Dune series, and I would have to agree that it would be a horrible, horrible curse to be omnipresent and out of time; there would be no surprise, no hesitation, no anticipation, and consequently no hope, and therefore no real reason to enjoy life whatsoever. The only possible conclusion is that total knowledge, unconstrained by time, is antithetical to life.

The logic continues almost exactly as I've described, " . . . (For Life is Motion toward Knowledge. If God is Complete Knowledge then He is Complete Non-Motion, which is Non-Life, which is Death. Therefore, if there is such a God of Fullness of Being, we would worship Death, the Father . . ."

Now, 'life is motion toward knowledge,' that has a very Hinduistic, Buddhist ring to it. Life is not a thing, it is a path, it is a process from some thing to another thing. I’m not too sure that this is what life actually is, as this is something that occurs in life in order to justify its importance. Life isn’t really anything but what it is, and that is random and erratic, capricious and split-second deadly and final. Life is whatever happens. It could be wealth and success and a giddy delirium of all dreams realized, all hopes met, freedom from fear. Or it could be horrific torture, rape, and death at age 7 at the hands of your favorite, most trusted uncle. Life is whatever happens, and no one is fully capable of making a solid determination of what will happen. Some are lucky, and some are not.

". . . (For Life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don’t know, our Ignorance, and the trails of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man’s Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man’s Knowledge will be equal to God’s Knowledge and there won’t be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder key, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trails of ash will be blown completely away."

I do like the analogy of life as fire. The imagery is wonderful, as is the pure fragility of fire. It can be all-consuming, immensely powerful and intense, huge and seemingly unstoppable, yet can be snuffed out immediately and permanently, if one knows how to do it. Or if the universe/environment does it.

". . . I’ll draw you (a) picture. It is a picture of man trying to paint a picture of a sunset. But before he can dip his brush the color always changes and the shape. Let us give a name to the picture which he is trying to paint: Knowledge. Therefore if the object which a man looks at changes constantly so that Knowledge of it is constantly untrue and is therefore Non-Knowledge, then Eternal Motion is possible. And eternal Life. Therefore we can believe in Eternal Life only if we deny God, Who is Complete Knowledge."

I’ve got to admit he’s lost me here. I can’t make the connection from the inability to grasp current knowledge to how non-knowledge is eternal motion. Maybe eternal motion is the quest for knowledge, which I’d have to agree with, and as long as there is life then that motion is occurring. But how is it that eternal motion requires denying the existence of God? He’s onto something here, but the communication of it didn’t quite get through to me.

That’s all I’ve got to add. I offer it here as yet another interpretation, another approach, another possible answer from another man who is seeking to see, define, describe, and discover God. Is The Big Man really out there? And if so, what’s he doing with his time? And why can’t he make time for me, the cripples, or the other victims? Is there really any point at all in even thinking about this to begin with?