Exploring the Numinous in Literature: Learning from Paul on Mars Hill

Abstract

A BIAS AGAINST a Christian perspective in the teaching of literature in the secular university is generally recognized as well established. This bias seems out of place because the present climate in such studies favors the open acknowledgment of whatever theoretical praxis (feminist, Marxist, Freudian, deconstructionist) is being used to approach the literature. A Christian teacher searching for irenic and productive rather than agonistic responses to this bias can learn from St. Paul's address to the Athenians on Mars Hill. Paul's assumption that any serious attention to the sacred dimension of human experience is ultimately a reference to the Christian God suggests a methodology of using the numinous spaces – ideas of transcendence or the sacred found in nearly all significant literature – as guideposts to insight into Christianity in the classroom. Whether such alternate spaces are those of the Romantic sublime, the existential human self in sublimated sexual experience, the realm of Art as sacramentally holy, or a creation cursed by the absence of God, identifying and exploring the space can lead to a comparison with other numinous spaces, including Christianity. Carefully conducted, such teaching can move from reading pagan poets whose writings betray their ignorance of the God whose “offspring” they are to gaining insight into the true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of historic Christianity, “in whom” all persons “live, and move, and have” their “being.”