GRGR re: Logocentrism

[Doug Millison]

Coming to any definite conclusions about Pynchon's use of Christian 
theology and spirituality would seem to be problematic, as Terrance 
says because TRP brings so many religious, mythological, and 
spiritual concepts into play in his novels, GR especially.  But, it's 
not that difficult to trace back some of the terms P uses to the 
various religious writings to which he alludes, however, and thus 
ground the discussion in something other than mere speculation, fuzzy 
generalizations, and misinformation.

The "Word", as in "shit, money, and the word" represents a 
centuries-old conversation that goes back to the works of the 
earliest Church theologians, and to the Greeks before that. To give a 
sense of the long chain of commentary to which Pynchon could be seen 
to append his use of "the word", here's something that contemporary 
theologian Matthew Fox has written, in the course of commenting on a 
sermon in which the 16th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart 
replies to a comment centuries earlier by St. Augustine on the Word:

"All of Meister Eckhart's theology can be understood as an exegesis 
or development of the biblical concept of Dabhar, or Word. This is 
the Word with which Genesis begins the Scriptures -- it is the 
dynamic, active word that, when spoken, creates. God said, 'Let there 
be light' and there was light, we are told. God's Word gets things 
done. Thus Eckhart can say that the Father or Creator _is a speaking 
action_ -- who truly creates and does not merely cogitate about truth 
or about creating. So full of mystery and power is this creative Word 
who is God that we humans are left dumb and speechless by the beauty 
of creation. Creation is almost too holy for us, surely too holy for 
mere human words. 'This entire created order is sacred,' says 
Eckhart. ... And yet God has spoken a divine word in creation itself. 
There is revelation in creation and natural things -- the existence 
of a stone reveals God -- and all creatures may indeed echo God. 
Creatures are an echo of the divine, they are a communication of the 
divine."
       --from _Breathrough:  Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality 
in New Translation_ Introduction and Commentaries by Matthew Fox 
(Image Books, 1980)

It also may be of interest to note that this "creation spirituality" 
-- the notion that the physical world is God visible,  the 
manifestation of the One as the Many, that _this_ is the Kingdom of 
God (to use Jesus' phrase), that there is no place we can be that is 
not in God -- and its reverence for life, stands as a major thread of 
Christian theology (and goes back to Plato and Socrates before the 
Christian era), one which reverses and opposes another major 
Christian  theological thread that devalues creation and puts God 
within human reach only in another world or dimension beyond this 
created world -- the kind of Christianity that says you have to die 
into order to enjoy union with God.  These two ways of looking at 
creation have alternated in importance throughout the history of 
Christianity, with the creation-devaluing theology prevailing for 
several hundred years, until the 20th century and the Christian 
mystical revival which continues in full bloom (and which, perhaps 
not incidentally, has elevated the status and worship of Mary). 
Careful reading might show Pynchon to be playing with these two 
strands:  the closing lines of GR, for example, would seem to echo 
the life-embracing, creation-loving Christian tradition in which 
Meister Eckhart is a leading light, while elsewhere in the book 
Pynchon deals with the creation-devaluing, body-hating Christian 
theology that puts man on top of nature in a pathological, dominator 
hierarchy.

The fact that there are such radically differing Christian traditions 
confuses a lot of people, especially those whose opinions are shaped 
largely by mass culture, where, at present, the fundamentalist 
Christians -- with their creation-devaluing, body-hating Christian 
theology that puts man on top of nature in a pathological, dominator 
hierarchy -- currently do the better job of getting their message out 
through the media. It's important, to me at least, to recognize that 
the mainstream, liberal Christian churches, including the Roman 
Catholics, generally endorse the other, life-embracing, 
creation-loving tradition.
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