Truth vs. Conscience: Against Alan Jacobs’ Defense of A Hidden Life
…Not only is bad hagiography uninspiring; it tells something false about Christianity. In stripping away the historical facts about the actual Franz, Malick treats sanctity as a force which makes a person more abstract and less particular. This simply doesn’t make sense within the context of Christian theology. Christians believe that God became a historical person; why would we then suppose that Christian practice reduces the saint to an ahistorical abstraction? Moreover, if Christianity is true—if to be a saint is to be an excellent Christian—we should expect that the saints will be more unique than the average person. True excellence usually makes a person more distinct: the diversity amongst great writers, pianists or philosophers is much greater than the diversity amongst mediocre ones. We should expect to see the same dynamic among the saints.
Jacobs is therefore wrong to suppose that showing the details of a saint’s life could get in the way of depicting Christ’s Passion. The excellence of the saint is an excellence in imitating Christ, in bearing witness to him. (“Martyr” means “witness.”) This doesn’t require that the saint crudely ape the activities of Christ: many saints have never engaged in carpentry or commercial fishing, have never been itinerant preachers or been killed by Roman soldiers. Rather, the saint manifests the presence of Christ in her personality and in her historical circumstances.
The best way, then, to show Christ’s Passion in the life of a saint is to show the saint’s actual martyrdom, in its messiness and particularity. Whether it is the martyrdom of Joan of Arc (who briefly recanted before accepting her death at the stake), or of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang (who was still addicted to opium when he was beheaded in the Boxer Rebellion), we can't make the story “more Christian” by stripping away these weaknesses. Christ told the disciples that they would face martyrdom and warned them: "Make up your minds not to prepare your defense, because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict." (Luke 21:14-15.) Christians should listen to these expressions of Christ’s eloquence as actually expressed in history, rather than crudely cutting and pasting scenes from the Passion narrative in their place. The best way to show Christ's Passion through the life of the saint is to show the life of that particular historical person, as it actually occurred.
Read the rest at Ethika Politika.