I finished Browne's Religio Medici some time ago now, right at the start of the year. I pulled it due to a little controversy as I found that I had started working through the Anonymous Forest for some of those more obscure titles and trying configure how they might fit into my lists. I will continuously find little errors in this list compilation, and I don't want a repeat of the Philip Sidney issue so I thougth how am I going to address these concerns. With Thomas Browne, I thought I wanted to find the document that I should read from him before I got there as his name was tied up with a collection of sorts I think. However it happened, I pulled the name on the Big Book list and was forced to confront Religio Medici which was fantastic.
The story of how Religio Medici came to be is fascinating in and of itself. It seems from my very minor research on these topics, that Thomas Browne was a well thought of writer and thinker of his time, but he had decided after university to return to his hometown and sort of just live out his existence in sort of small town notoriety but that he didn't seem to reach for the type of renown that many writers of his time would have, thinking here of Milton or Dryden who probably set out to write the important works of their time. Browne wrote the Religio Medici in obscurity really. It is hard to parse, but it seems that the work was published without his consent which seems strange to me how such a thing would come about. Nevertheless, the text is very personal almost private in nature and Browne later wrote a preface to the work that describes why the text may be as it is.
There is a section of the text entitled, "To the Reader" which resolves itself with this appeal:
"There are many things delivered Rhetorically, many expressions therein meerly Tropical, and as they best illustrate my intention; and therefore also there there are many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason" (Browne).
I wish anything that I say in this blog, in any of the videos, or in any social media post the same disclaimer, please (and I meant this only half in jest) do not try to hold these writings up to the rigid test of reason. I do not research these texts very deeply. I want the work and the words to speak for themselves. I want this human being to speak to me something essential from across the sea of history and context because I believe in the project of writing and reading. I believe that there is this essential component of the human endeavor something of the divine spark or something of the universal that genius is genius and that there is something true and good about these highly esteemed texts. Browne's work proves this, in some ways.
Because this work was published behind his back, he had to come out and defend it with this introductory material to his own writing. Then, because of this volume being published probably before he was 'ready' to do so himself, he is rushed out of his hermit's hideaway and publish more works on various topics as was common in his time from of the 17th century. Because of this work he felt probably responsible to create after the decision was taken away from him, he was knighted in his own town when Charles II, after the restoration, came to Norwich. This is got to one of the most British stories in the history of Britian.
So for the work itself. It is a deeply religious text and outside of being very well versed in these types of documents, I am not sure much value is still in reading it. I had not intended that my seminary training would be put to such a test in this project but as I have stated before I have most of a master's degree in Christian theology from a mainline protestant seminary. My own relationship with the church is not full germaine to this project but from time to time, these expressly religious texts will come up. I really enjoyed this text for those reasons.
To put simply, there is a historic debate in Protestant Christianity about the relationship of God to their creation. It is often situated in the discourse between predestination and free will. I think this type of debate is deeply exhausting and not very fruitful, but Browne approaches this debate out of the corner of obscurity that it forms an interesting divergence from these corners of the debate. Browne suggests that the way God interacts with their creation is instead of an engineer aware of every cog and widget in the machine and how it turns, but more like the artist that shapes a lump of clay with skilled hands but also allowing for the medium that the artist is working with to reveal something to the creator about its creation. The drafting is a part of the creation itself not an error or mistake to overcome. In this way, the question of whether God knows the end before he began sort of becomes irrelevant or changed in a way that loses its meaning. When the scultpture sat down with their clay, they knew they wanted to make a bowl but they did not know each and every movement they would have made beforehand to get to the final product. I enjoy this metaphor a great deal. I am not sure I would defend this idea before a panel of judges but it is a nice thing to reflect upon.
I hope to have not alienated anyone in the process of unpacking this theological idea. It is not my intention to make this a religious space. I just had a religious text on my list for a number of reasons I supposed and had to reflect on it here. I hope you do not hold this up to the rigid test of reason as Browne asks as well.
Comments
Post a Comment