Nobel Laureate in Literature Thomas S. Eliot on Christianity

Author/Compiler: Tihomir Dimitrov (http://nobelists.net; also see http://scigod.com/index.php/sgj/issue/view/3)

T.S. ELIOT – NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE

Nobel Prize: Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) won the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his outstanding pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.” His prestige is still apparent, most prominently in his selection by Time magazine as “the poet of the XXth century.”

Nationality: American; later British citizen

Education: M.A. in philosophy, Harvard University, 1910

Occupation: Poet, philosopher, playwright, literary critic; assistant in philosophy at Harvard (1909–10); editor, The Criterion (1922-1939); editor and director, Faber & Faber Ltd. (1925-1965)

1. “What is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true, but because it might be beneficial.” (Eliot 1988, The Idea of a Christian Society).

“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.” (Eliot 1988, The Idea of a Christian Society).

2. “I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes.” (Eliot 1967, 200).

3. “The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.” (Eliot, as cited in Draper 1992, No. 599).

4. In ‘The Rock’ (1934) Eliot challenges the so-called “advances” of our high-tech information age:

“The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.” (Eliot 1934).

5. “Lord, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?

Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers
For life, for dignity, grace and order,
And intellectual pleasures of the senses?
The Lord who created must wish us to create
And employ our creation again in His service
Which is already His service in creating.”

(Eliot, as cited in Poetry and Belief in the Work of T.S. Eliot by K. Smidt, 1961, p. 55; see also Michael Caputo, God - Seen through the Eyes of the Greatest Minds, 2000, 116).

6. In The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) T. S. Eliot stated: “We must treat Christianity with a great deal more intellectual respect than is our wont; we must treat it as being for the individual a matter primarily of thought and not of feeling. The consequences of such an attitude are too serious to be acceptable to everybody: for when the Christian faith is not only felt, but thought, it has practical results which may be inconvenient.” (Eliot 1988, Ch. I, p. 6).

7. “The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.” (Eliot, as cited in Yancey 1999, 88).

“Our times are corrupt, the whole of modern literature is corrupted by secularism.” (Eliot, as cited in Ozick 1989, 151).

8. “Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?

She tells them of Life and Death, and of all they would forget.

She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.” (Eliot 1934, The Rock).

9. This is the sad picture of the XXth century:

“Here were decent godless people:

Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand lost golf balls.” (Eliot 1934, The Rock).

10. “A society has ceased to be Christian when religious practices have been abandoned, when behaviour ceases to be regulated by reference to Christian principle, and when in effect prosperity in this world for the individual or for the group has become the sole conscious aim.” (Eliot 1988, Ch. I, pp. 9-10).

11. In Christianity and Culture (1948) T.S. Eliot stated: “The tendency of unlimited industrialism is to create bodies of men and women – of all classes – detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion: in other words, a mob. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.” (Eliot 1988).

12. “Christ is the still point of the turning world.” (Eliot, as cited in Castle 2002, 219).