Flannery O'Connor's Beatific Vision

Abstract

It is dangerous to show man too clearly how much he resembles beast, without at same time showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow him too clear a vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. --Blaise Pascal Christianity is a humanism, else it is misunderstood. On other hand, secular humanism is absolute antithesis of gospel. --John Milbank, summarizing views of Henri de Lubac, S.J. It is not too much of a stretch to argue that American culture has been bombarded by dangers laid out here by Pascal and de Lubac. The so-called new atheists insist that we are no more than product of our genes and environment, while transhumanists devote themselves to deification of humanity through technology. Whether one is a scientific materialist or a New-Age spiritualist, only verboten thing is to believe that God made us, is outside of us, calls us to obedience, loves us, and died and rose to save us. With each new insistence that humanity is end of meaning and source of religion, gospel of Jesus Christ recedes into background, reduced to a mere symbol of our deepest desires. But one sign that gospel endures is ongoing appeal of O'Connor. Though her entire oeuvre fits easily into one volume, it continues to stimulate substantial critical interest, including numerous books, articles, and a dedicated journal. There are many reasons for this, of course, but one of them must be that O'Connor represents something readers need that is very different from despair of new atheists and presumption of transhumanists. O'Connor's hope was in Christ, and she believed that human beings were created to glorify him. She thus flatly refused to separate nature from grace; as Ralph Wood argues in this issue, her work unites them in a radically surprising way (36). She was committed to telling stories that insist that God's love for his creation, his validation of humanity's goodness, was literally incarnated in Christ. What is of great value to rest of us who share her convictions is that her stories are wicked good--at once laugh-out-loud funny and profound. This special issue of Christianity and Literature is both a testimony to O'Connor's well-deserved reputation and a commitment to its continuation. Collectively, essays focus on distinctiveness of O'Connor's Christian vision, illustrating how she sought to avoid dangers described by Pascal and de Lubac. They each point to O'Connor's agreement with St. Thomas Aquinas that human beings have been created with a desire for something outside of themselves, a desire for bonum universale, whole good. Although that complete good is found only in God, it is suggested everywhere in creation. What men and women can possess of happiness on earth is limited by our vision of that good. As Josef Pieper explains, the fulfillment of existence takes place in manner in which we become aware of reality; whole energy of our being is ultimately directed toward attainment of insight (58). That O'Connor was fundamentally interested in exploring this question of insight--sight into good of creation--is reflected in how each of these essayists concern themselves, in some way, with O'Connor's novella The Violent Bear it Away. The novella enacts a battle between secular vision of Rayber and audacious supernatural vision of protagonist Francis Tarwater and his great uncle, Mason Tarwater. And since battle is for nothing less than dignity of most vulnerable members of humanity--a dignity that is under siege in twenty-first century--it is worth paying attention to. In Flannery O'Connor, Benedict XVI, and Divine Eros,' Ralph Wood argues that O'Connor's work can be seen through main ideas of proponents of la nouvelle theologie to share interesting similarities with ideas of current pope, Benedict XVI. …