'Saints Without God'

‘Saints without God’ Camus’s poetics of secular faith NJ Grace Whistler Abstract • This article addresses Camus’s response to Christianity and the problem of suffering in the context of the early twentieth century. Owing to his association with the existentialist movement, it is often assumed that Camus, like many other French intellectuals of the period, rejected Christianity altogether. For this reason, his sympathy with Christian thought is overlooked, and it seems altogether bizarre that some theologians even claimed Camus to be a convert. Among these wildly conflicting claims, Camus’s philosophical response to Christianity has become somewhat muddied; in this article I attempt to rectify this. I argue that Camus’s entire philosophy is underpinned by his response to Christianity, and that he wanted to re-establish the position of morality in the face of the problem of suffering. I thus demonstrate how his writings manifest this struggle to achieve this goal, in what I refer to as Camus’s ‘poetics of secular faith’. Camus once claimed, ‘I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist’. This article aims to elucidate just what is meant by a statement like this, as well as to catalogue and analyse Camus’s innovative attempts at reconciling spirituality and suffering through philosophical literature. 1. Introduction ‘Black Flakes’, and everything in between. What is of interest to this article, however, is not to be ‘In short,’ Tarrou said simply, ‘what interests found at either extreme, but somewhere in the me is to know how one becomes a saint.’ middle. Albert Camus, who was born in 1913 ‘But you don’t believe in God.’ in predominately Catholic French-Algeria, lost ‘Precisely. Can one become a saint his father in the First World War, and was an without God: that is the only concrete active member of the French Resistance, is an question that I know today.’ artist who was perfectly situated to feel the full (Albert Camus, The Plague) force of this spiritual upheaval, and naturally The magnitude of suffering experienced and this is manifested in his writings. In this art icle, witnessed in the first half of the twentieth I examine what I refer to as Camus’s ‘poetics century understandably led many people to of secular faith’. Camus wanted to re-establish re-evaluate their moral and spiritual position the position of morality in the face of the prob- in the world, and consequently their faith also. lem of suffering, and his writings manifest this No doubt for some, faith in God’s divine wis- struggle to do so: behind much of his work lies dom was sufficient consolation, but many others the implicit question of whether this is possible rejected religion altogether, unable to accept that without religion – as Tarrou put it in The Plague any theodicy could justify the immense pain and (1947), ‘Can one become a saint without God’? chaos around them. The art that the world wars (Camus 2002: 196). Camus once claimed, ‘I inspired naturally embodies the whole spectrum do not believe in God and I am not an athe- of spiritual responses to suffering and doubt, ist’ (Camus 2008: 112, italics in the original). from the liturgy of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Ash-Wednesday’ This article aims to elucidate just what is meant all the way to the desolation of Anselm Kiefer’s by a statement like this, and thus this article 1 Nordisk judaistik • Scandinavian Jewish Studies | Vol. 29, No. 1 49 catalogues and analyses Camus’s innovative a while to seem relevant to the young Albert, attempts at reconciling morality and suffering despite his being confirmed in a local church, through literature. While there is evidence of and having received holy communion (Todd such attempts throughout his works, this essay 1996: 33). But in spite of (and perhaps precisely will lay a particular focus on The Fall (1956), because of ) the indifference to religion in which because this work demonstrates more fully than Camus was raised, as a young adult he became any other, the troubled, conflicted nature of rec- fascinated with early Christian thought, the dis- onciling morality with a godless universe. tance from religion that his upbringing entailed So multifaceted was Camus’s engagement allowing him to approach the philosophical side with Christian thought that he is construed of Christianity, and evaluate it from the outside. in Christian scholarship as everything from This early interest in Christianity as philoso phy an avid atheist to a ‘crypto-Christian’. I will inspired him to write his dissertation on Plotinus therefore begin by unpacking some of these and Saint Augustine for the Diplôme d’études claims, and attempting to give a firm account supérieures, which he submitted to the Univer- of Camus’s complex stance with regard to sity of Algiers in 1936 (Camus 2017: 1). Camus Christianity, making reference to both his continued to engage with Christian thought philosophical works and the life that informed throughout the entirety of his career, the formu- them (chs. 2–3). Following on from this, I shall lation of his own philosophy being in many ways begin my investigation of Camus’s poetics of a response to it. secular faith by looking at how he approaches Of course, Camus’s concern with religion theological and moral problems throughout comes not from a place of belief, but rather from his creative works – not only his criticisms, but a preoccupation with human finitude, and a also his longing for spiritual coherence (chs. yearning for meaning and coherence in the face 4–5). The subsequent section (ch. 6) will take of suffering and death. As Roger Quillot put it, The Fall as an extended case study for Camus’s ‘Camus was at once both a stranger to the reli- poetics of secular faith, as not only is this work gious spirit, but also profoundly moved by meta- particularly rich in Christian imagery, it also physical anxiety’ (Camus 2017: 6). Nevertheless, epitomises the spirit ual conflict of mid-twen- his engagement with Christian thought is so tieth-century art. extensive that interpretations of his stance vary tremendously. Despite being a self-professed 2. Camus the Christian? agnostic, many writers continue to refer to ‘Camus’s atheism’ (e.g. Blackburn 2011: 315), Albert Camus grew up in French Algeria in while one critic, who refers to Camus as ‘the lay the early twentieth century, in the poor, work- saint’, claims that while Camus was ‘profoundly ing-class district of Belcourt, Algiers. While opposed to all Christianity stands for’ (Peyre Catholicism was an important part of French 1960: 23) he ‘found himself posthumously serv- society, the poorer classes only really observed ing as a theme for many sermons’ (ibid. 20). religion as a formality, the grandeur of the Others have called him ‘a religious thinker’ and ‘a church and its teachings seeming so very far religious moral philosopher’ (Hanna 1956: 224), from the mundane struggles of everyday life. In or suggested that ‘Camus’s apparently anti-reli- such an environment, Christianity represented gious thought’ is marked as ‘secretly religious’ by little more to the Camus family than the cere- the very fact he considers death to be a prob- monial pomp of special occasions, and thus the lem at all – apparently this proves that he ‘works moral and metaphysical aspects of religion took within the essentially religious apprehension 50 Nordisk judaistik • Scandinavian Jewish Studies | Vol. 29, No. 1 that life, if it is to have meaning, must in some Camus tombe, sa philosophie tombe avec lui’ way be extended’ (Wood 1999: 93). (‘if Camus falls, his philosophy falls with him’: These supposed ‘subterranean theolog- Gaetani 2017: 60). Rather than dismiss this ic al residues at work in Camus’s own corpus’ fanci ful story as irrelevant, then, it would instead (Cristaudo 2011: 152), at the extreme, have even be prudent to investigate why a Christian minis- inspired several bizarre claims (for which there ter would even want Camus on their side. appears to be no real evidence) that Camus in fact converted to Christianity in secret. While 3. ‘Dialogue croyant–incroyant’ Jean Sarrochi (a sometime respected Camus scholar) called him a ‘crypto-Christian’ (Gaetani Of course, most believers will attest that faith is 2017: 51), perhaps the strangest of all comes not something constant and reassuring, despite from Protestant Minister Howard Mumma, what some atheists might assume. Believers who claims to have befriended and personally experi ence times of doubt and uncertainty, and converted Camus. In 2000, Mumma wrote a in fact these incidents are a necessary part of book entitled Albert Camus and the Minister, faith; even non-religious philosophers can iden- which claimed that Camus, whilst living in tify with the need to question and investigate Paris, made a habit of attending the American our assumptions in order to formulate better church to listen to the organist, Marcel Dupré. theories, and thus something resembling cer- According to Mumma, Camus was captivated tainty. A philo sopher like Camus, non-Christian by Mumma’s sermons, and the two men became though he may have been, nevertheless spent a friends. Mumma wrote that Camus had never great deal of his career tackling the challenges really read the Bible before (despite what we of Christianity, and saw the value in dialogue know of his fascination with Christian the- between believers and non-believers (in French, ology), until Mumma made him the present ‘un dialogue croyant–incroyant’: Camus 1950: of a French translation. Until then, Camus had 212), so it is easy to understand why Christians apparently never thought of reading the Bible themselves would find engaging with his works in terms of allegory or symbolism, or the subtle a fruitful pursuit.

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