Critical and Edifying? a Historiography of Christian Biography
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CRITICAL AND EDIFYING? A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY by PATRICIA JANZEN LOEWEN B.A. The University of Manitoba, 1997 M.A. The University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg, 2000 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) January 2009 © Patricia Janzen Loewen, 2008 ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that edifying dialogue is an appropriate and satisfying component of historically critical biography. It has been a part of biography. The edifying and critical intent is traced through pre-modern biography to demonstrate that this was the case in the Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Early Christian and Medieval eras. Key authors examined include the author(s) of the Pentateuch, the Gospel writers and the authors of the Biblical epistles, Herodotus, Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, Athanasius, Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, and John Capgrave. It can be a part of biography even given the challenges of contemporary theory posed by the extreme positions of positivism and postmodernism (or their chastened re-formulations). Important authors discussed in this section include Arthur Marwick, Keith Jenkins, David Harlan and Peter Novick. It is a part of some biographies meant for a particular audience (such as feminist works). And hopefully it will be increasingly looked upon as the preferred way of writing biography. My dissertation follows these stages. I begin with what biography has been and argue that the Greek and Roman historians believed that the intent of biography was critical and edifying. In fact, critical and edifying intent is notable also in Biblical and medieval biographies. The next section argues that edifying discourse is compatible with both traditional and postmodern theories of history-writing. The third section of the dissertation moves from theoretical considerations to the work of two notable Christian historians, George Marsden and Harry Stout. I note that these two scholars in particular are, in theory, open to my argument but that they can hesitate to engage in edifying discourse in biography. Finally, I briefly examine a few authors who write edifying and critical biography. Toril Moi, Carolyn Heilbrun, and the Bollandists are discussed in this section. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents............................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ iv Dedication............................................................................................................................v CHAPTER I Critical and Edifying History—Something Has Been Lost ...........................1 CHAPTER II The Critical and Edifying Impulse of Classical History and Biography ....25 CHAPTER III The Critical and Edifying Impulse of the Bible ........................................81 CHAPTER IV The Critical and Edifying Impulse of Medieval Christian Biography ....133 CHAPTER V The Critical and Edifying Impulse and Modern and Postmodern History187 CHAPTER VI The Critical and Edifying Impulse and Recent Christian Biography......242 CHAPTER VII Critical and Edifying History—What Might Be Regained....................286 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................303 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisors and my committee for their generous work on my behalf. Dr. George Egerton and Dr. John Stackhouse, Jr. gave me much helpful advice and feedback along the way. I am deeply indebted to them. I am also grateful for the advice of Dr. Mark Vessey, Dr. Dietmar Neufeld and Dr. Susanna Egan. Each of these provided me with insight at various points in the process of writing this dissertation. What mistakes or errors in judgement remain must be charged to my account not theirs. I am also grateful to the University of British Columbia for awarding me a Graduate Fellowship and Travel Bursary. I am also thankful to the Erasmus Institute for its generous support which allowed me to participate in the Faculty Forum, Spiritual Autobiography, in the summer of 2005 at the University of Notre Dame. My thanks also to the Conference of Faith and History which allowed me to present some preliminary work on my engagement with George Marden’s text at the 2004 Conference in Hope, Michigan. My thanks also to Regent College which kindly adopted me and allowed me to have locker space and access to their beautiful library. I am very grateful to the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program. Thank you to Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, Margaret Schabas and John Beatty, all who were part of my ISGP experience. Thank you to Janice Matautia who helped answer many questions and more. To all these people and institutions I am immensely grateful. iv DEDICATION To Brian And to my family v Chapter One: Critical and Edifying History—Something Has Been Lost In the 1990s among the members of one particular sub-section of the American Historical Association, the Conference of Faith and History, there was an infamous exchange pertaining to a certain biography of George Whitefield.1 The biography, renowned for its controversial content even among its supporters, was reviewed by some evangelicals with a degree of rancour its author, Harry Stout, had not anticipated. His detractors charged Stout with failing to portray Whitefield as a kind of emblematic hero. At best, Stout depicted Whitefield as pious and diligent. Furthermore, there was no sense of the work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, evident in Stout’s account of Whitefield’s life.2 Iain Murray, Whitefield scholar and author of numerous biographies, including one on Whitefield’s contemporary Jonathan Edwards, levelled similar charges against Stout’s biography and added another. For Murray, Stout’s text was paradigmatic of all that was wrong with what Murray called the new evangelical approach to history: it failed to engage history from a standpoint which included the supernatural.3 Although to many Murray’s comments could seem bizarre (historians have situated their task in the realm of the mundane rather than the supernatural for quite some time now), from other perspectives Murray’s views can be understood sympathetically. First, Murray knew he was reading a biography about a prominent religious figure that was written by a like- minded, confessing, practicing and prominent Christian historian. Murray expected to find 1Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans 1991). 2For example see David White’s review of The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, by Harry Stout, The Banner of Truth (March 1994): 2. 3This exchange was summarized by D.G. Hart, “History in Search of Meaning: The Conference of Faith and History,” in History and the Christian Historian, ed. Ronald Wells (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 68- 87. Hart suggests that the strong reactions which Stout’s biography garnered point to much larger questions of historical method still unresolved by members of the Conference of Faith and History (CFH). See also Iain Murray’s review of Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, The British Isles and Beyond, 1700-1990, eds. Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Rawlyk, The Banner of Truth (July 1994): 8-14. See especially page nine of this review article where Murray takes aim at Stout’s chapter, “George Whitefield in Three Counties.” 1 evidence of that shared faith perspective within the biographical composition. It troubled Murray, as previously mentioned, that the Holy Spirit was not credited as prime mover in the conversions experienced by many in Whitefield’s audiences. Instead, observes Murray, Stout suggests Whitefield’s theatrical and marketing skills were the animus driving the Great Awakening. Murray had hoped for a different tone from a fellow Christian. Second, throughout most of the history of Christian biography, both readers and authors entered into the biographical task as a form of discourse that went beyond historical recitation. Although Murray does not explicitly discuss the history of biography, he seems to have hoped that more of the character of pre-modern biography would be a part of Stout’s text. In the past it was expected that examining the life of a godly person would reveal something of the character, will or hand of God. Furthermore, biography before modernity was concerned with questions of morals and ethics. In terms of the history of the biographical genre, Murray’s expectation of some form of direct discussion of Whitefield’s spiritual importance was not unreasonable. If Murray can be understood sympathetically, so too Stout’s surprise at the reception his biography received from members of his own Reformed denomination is not unexpected. While the kind of biography Murray was calling for is consistent with previous modes of discourse, Stout assumed that overtly religious biography was a past form that should be abandoned in the present, or at least confined to a church context.4 Stout responded to Murray’s articles with a critique