Research & Aesthetics: Part 2

            William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been called one of his more controversial plays. Because the major antagonist is Jewish and the play ends with his forced conversion to Christianity, it is primarily viewed as anti-Semitic. Nicole M. Coonradt would agree with this generalization. However, she argues that this could not have been Shakespeare’s original intention. Rather she states that, “Shakespeare employs the trope of anti-Semitism ironically to convey a coded message about the moral incoherence in popular Christianity (74).” In light of the historical context of Protestant-Catholic warring that enveloped Shakespeare’s lifetime, it is possible to see how The Merchant of Venice could have been written as a social or religious commentary. Looking at the play from this perspective one can also see elements of postmodern approaches to sharing one’s faith. This essay will elaborate more on the latter by evaluating The Merchant of Venice in its social context, comparing it to the contours of a postmodern gospel (Grenz 167), and finally comparing it to my own approaches toward sharing my faith.

            The English Act of Supremacy in 1534 essentially started the warring between Protestants and Catholics and thus created the dark social and religious context in which The Merchant was written.  Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. Thomas Cranmer was willing to okay the divorce and marry Henry to Anne Boleyn. By doing this, England’s church would no longer have ties to Rome; it had separated itself from the “catholic” church and become its own ecclesiastical entity (Noll 176-178). This separation took Early Modern England through numerous shifts between Catholicism and Protestantism, and with each shift and change of leadership came more violence and terror done under the name of Christian charity. This was the world of Shakespeare and his family.  He saw all of the devastation caused by the violence of the age (Coonradt 82). He understood the need for discretion, disguise and fiction in regards to writing about faith or any other kind of religious content (Coonradt 84).

Seeing the dark world Shakespeare lived in brings light to the reason why so much is unknown about the inner workings of his mind. Theatre became the best place for him to practice “techniques of dissimilation and disguise that guaranteed one’s survival” in Early Modern England (Coonradt 84).  The Merchant is one of the best examples of this.  It is a play that portrays the conflict between Christians and Jews in late 16^th Century Italy, but it is also filled with subtext that would have resonated with its audiences in 16^th Century England. 

There are many sections of The Merchant that serve as examples of these “techniques of dissimilation.”  A conversation in Act III, scene ii between Portia and Bassanio is used in Coonradt’s essay to prove this very point.  In this scene, Bassanio has to choose between the three caskets and attempt at the same to be chosen by Portia as a suitor. This alludes to “the doctrine of the elect” which was a serious point of conflict between Catholics and Protestants.  This conversation includes mention of being “upon the rack,” reference to an early torture device used in 16^th century England. Portia says, “Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack / Where men enforced do speak anything (3.2.32-33).”  This conversation is essentially about the love they are discovering for each other but looked at through historical context has some very dark political messages as well (Coonradt 85).

But how then does the dark disguise of The Merchant and Shakespeare’s way of alluding to hidden truths relate to post modern approaches to sharing one’s faith? Stanley J. Grenz, in his book titled A Primer on Postmodernism, explains what the gospel looks like in the already present postmodern era.

Grenz begins by comparing this postmodern age to its predecessor.  The modern age has been entirely about objective, universal, and absolute truth. It frightens the church that the up and coming generation disbands the correspondence theory of truth, or “the belief that truth consists of the correspondence of propositions with the world ‘out there’ (163).”  Even more frightening is that postmodern thinkers want to gain an “all-encompassing truth” and that there is no “unified whole” in which we as Christians have aligned our basic theology and doctrine. Grenz puts it this way:

Postmodern thinkers have given up the search for universal, ultimate truth because they are convinced that there is nothing more to find than a host of conflicting interpretations or an infinity of linguistically created worlds (163).

So how does the Christian who believes in absolute truth proclaim the Gospel in such a way that it reaches those who consider our truth just one of many? To show us what this type of sharing your faith looks like, Grenz coins four statements that help the church to “embody the gospel in the context of [postmodernism] (167).”  The church needs to embody the gospel in ways that are “post-individualistic,” meaning it focuses less on the individual and more upon the individual in community (167-168). Secondly, it needs to be “post-rationalistic” meaning it lets go of the concept that we can know everything about God and instead clings to the mystery of God (169).  Thirdly, the church should inhabit a “post-dualistic” mindset and think less about the dualistic nature of soul and body being separate entities but one “unified whole” (171).  And finally, it should take on a “post-noetecentric” mentality which means we should not just accumulate knowledge for the mere purpose of knowing, but to acquire a “wisdom for living so that we might please God with our lives (172-173).”

            It would take many more pages to fully unpack each of these ideas, but the purpose of this study is to relate these postmodern approaches with tactics used by Shakespeare to disguise his own hidden truths about Catholic-Protestant warring. The first point to make here is that Shakespeare knew his audience. As was stated previously, he understood the need for dissimilation and disguise in his work. Just as any postmodern thinker would discredit absolute truth, the religious powers would have the same reaction to Shakespeare writing The Merchant directly about the forced conversions of Protestants and Catholics, regardless of how real and true that was, only on a much larger scale.

As Christians we also need to live by example. We are individuals in community (post-individualistic) living with an absolute truth inside of us (Jesus’ saving grace), and we need to reveal that absolute truth through the example of community.  Shakespeare did this as well in The Merchant.  He was an individual expressing a hidden truth to a community (Early Modern England) in the form of community (theatre).

Keeping a post-rationalistic mindset, we as Christians need to live in the mystery of God.  Shakespeare wrote The Merchant about a different country and culture altogether, shrouding the truths about his own country in mystery.  As post-dualistic Christians, we stop thinking of soul and body as separate and consider our bodies and souls to be one.  Grenz says that this means combining the emotional and sensual with the intellectual or rational in one body (172).  As a stage production, The Merchant would have done just that, as the actors would have physically embodied the characters and truths of the play and applied them to their intellect and any intellect of the audience.  Lastly, as post-noeticentric Christians we acquire knowledge to gain wisdom and live out our absolute truth.  Shakespeare was not just attempting to state intellectual facts, but portrayed a story that contained a message. It hopefully provoked social awareness or wisdom for the audience to live by in accordance with the play’s “absolute truth.”

These connections come from my own observation and understanding of Grenz’s approaches to the gospel message, the perspective that is laid out in Coonradt’s essay and reading The Merchant of Venice. I am inspired by these ideas, so it is relevant for me to explain how my own theories and practices of sharing my faith are very similar to that of Grenz and hypothetically Shakespeare as well.

One of the most formidable times in my life was the two weeks I spent ministering in southern France during the summer of 2006.  The people of France, as well as the missionaries we were working with, are prime examples of living with hidden truths.  As it was explained to us by the missionary on our first day there, the people of France have a very negative and humanistic approach to religion and to the church as a whole.  The mere mention of Jesus, let alone how important his saving grace is, would sever any sort of relationship you could ever hope to have with them.  The missionary said that he had been working on some of the relationships with the people of Aix-en-Provence for five years and had only recently revealed to them that he was a pastor.  It was not because he was ashamed of who he was or what he believed in, he simply understood the cultural context he was living in and knew that his actions would need to exhibit the absolute truth inside him.

Since that time I have seen very similar reactions to outward and outlandish approaches to sharing faith in the States.  Anything that is too outwardly “Christian” is almost immediately discredited by people who are not believers, especially when it comes to elements of the arts. This ranges anywhere from the stigma that all Christian theatre is unprofessional and low quality to the fact that many Christian artists who speak outwardly about their faith are simply not taken seriously.  All of this stems from the new postmodern generation that is encompassing society, primarily in the rejection of absolute truth.  Christians must understand that we live in a world that is different from its modern predecessor.  This is a perspective that has definitely changed for me since that trip to France.

I would not go as far to say that this study has changed my worldview in any way, especially in regards to the worldview approaches that I have written about before.  It did, however, help me apply a more academically-sound reasoning behind what I have seen play out in my own surroundings.  Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, as anti-Semitic as it is in tone, is at its heart a piece written by a man who could not outwardly bring to light the truths of his age for fear of much more than just being discredited. The same is true for us as Christians in a postmodern society: We must understand the way the world around us is thinking and feeling in order to bring credit and validity to the absolute truths that are so needed by the many that are just not willing to listen.

Works Cited

Coonradt, Nicole M.. “Shakespeare’s Grand Deception: The Merchant of Venice—Anti-Semitism as ‘Uncanny Causality’ and the Catholic-Protestant Problem.” Religion and the Arts 11 (2007): 74-97. Web. 25 Sep 2009.

Grenz, Stanley J.. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.

Noll, Mark A.. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. 2^nd ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2000.