Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Wednesday Commonplace: On Achilles, and How Jesus Changes Everything

Most of you already know that I participated in a group discussion on The Iliad over on the AO Forum last spring.  We wrapped up that book back in May, but I've found myself still chewing on it all these weeks later.  The central character in The Iliad is Achilles, considered the quintessential Greek hero.  But most of us in the book discussion group had a hard time understanding why he was upheld as such a paragon.  To us he appeared to be a selfish, brooding tyrant.  What was so wonderful about him?  What did the Greeks see in him that we as modern Christian women were just not seeing?  Was it a cultural difference?  Religious difference?  Gender difference?  My gut instinct to answer that question was that the difference was because of our belief in the one True God, and perhaps even more specifically because of Christ. Throughout the discussion, many of us noted that we were grateful to serve a God that we could rely on to be Faithful and True in contrast with the capricious nature of the Greek gods and goddesses that were 'running the show' behind the scenes in The Iliad.
 
Shortly after finishing our Iliad study, I picked up John Mark Reynolds' When Athens Met Jerusalem and have been very slowly working my way through that.  With these thoughts about the contrasting natures of our God and the Greek pantheon in the back of my mind, I found Reynolds' comments about Homer very interesting:
"Homer taught human beings to fear the gods - not in the Judeo-Christian sense of awe and love, but in terms of terror. His great study of the Trojan War, The Iliad, begins in war and ends there. His is a hard view of reality, skeptical about progress from humans who are born into pointless struggle with gods and nature, a torment that does not even end in death….Homer, the greatest Greek poet and mythmaker, pictured gods who used humans as playthings in the famous Trojan War. The war began with a petty quarrel between the gods to determine which of the female deities was the fairest, and it grew to swallow up human heroes. The irrationality of the war was matched by the futility of human existence itself. Mortal man was doomed to die. Unlike the beasts, humans were aware of their own immortality, but strive as they might, they could not overcome it. Humans could not escape their fate no matter how powerful their passions. The first word of Homer's Iliad, the magnificent poem about the Trojan War, can be translated 'divine wrath'. The Greek hero Achilles possesses this godlike passion and was the ideal warrior. His anger, so potent it condemns hundreds of Greeks to death, does nothing but destroy everything he loves. He is man with only one weakness, the famous Achilles' heel, but that is enough. He falls. He is merely a man."
~John Mark Reynolds, When Athens Met Jerusalem
 
Isn't that fascinating? The world that Homer pictures is a world of chaos, hopelessness and futility, no matter how hard one may strive. Achilles was the great hero in that world because he reflected the 'godlike passions' that acted according to whim and used those around him as pawns. We find that repulsive because in Christianity, we have an orderly world ruled over by an unchanging, Sovereign God. We have a 'future and a hope'. And the model we set before us as an ideal is Jesus Christ Himself who 'did not consider equality with God to be grasped' but humbled Himself to death on the cross in the place of sinners.  
 
God sending His Son into the world to save sinners – this changes everything.

7 comments:

  1. Your reflections have brought me back to our memorable book club. I agree with your thoughts. That When Athens Met Jerusalem seems pretty interesting... You are a life long learner, Jen, that is why it is always so nice to come to your internet corner and read your thoughts.

    I am starting to miss our book club, and though we will do Frankenstein next, I really see the great value of that AO book club we have is to tackle titles that would otherwise be truly hard and not as meaningful if done alone.

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    1. Oh Silvia, you are so kind to say so. If I am a life-long learner, I credit that to finding AO and all you lovely ladies there who have inspired me. I don't think the same thing could have been said of me even two or three years ago. :) While I am looking forward to our next book club read in the fall, I am kind of enjoying the time off at the moment too - giving me a chance to get some other good reading in and process all of the good stuff I read in the spring. There are always so many books to read...which I know you understand.

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  2. Amen to everything Silvia said. Loved this, Jen. You are making me more and more eager to pick up this book, as it sits so temptingly on the stack next to my bed. But I MUST finish a few current reads first before adding in another one.

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    1. Thanks Dawn. :) I do understand the temptation. I have a ridiculous number of books going right now and am requiring myself to finish something before I pick up anything.else.new!! :)

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  3. Very interesting. I agree with what you say here. This is pretty much what I said to my brother when we read The Iliad together - that the world is so different without Christ.

    I do think that Achilles had some very admirable qualities though, in spite of his giving in to his anger and resentment. He loved Patroclus so deeply and he also was able to show mercy to Priam when he begged for Hector's body. I think his mercy to Priam in that instance is even more remarkable precisely because of his great anger.

    It's been awhile since I read it now, but I love Achilles very much (even though I love Hector much more).

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    1. and one more thing about Achilles that I love is that he chose to stay and fight rather than go home and live a long and peaceful life. Our life as Christians is not in this world, but in the world to come, so this is an example of how choosing immortality (or choosing life in Christ) really ought to take precedence over choosing comfort in this life.

      I think it's so neat to see a forshadowing in Homer of what we now know to be true after the revelation of Christ. In spite of all the chaos and confusion and power struggles and fear that was present in life without Christ, there was still a sense of something more, something greater that hadn't been realized yet, but they were intensely searching for.

      Sorry to get off topic from your post, but I love this stuff! I guess I should have participated in the discussion on the forums... :)

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    2. Oh, it would have been great to have your perspective in our Iliad bookclub, Lisa...I can tell from your comments here that you would have been able to give us all some good food-for-thought. We've talked about tackling The Odyssey at some point if you want to join us for that one...:)

      I love what you say here about seeing a foreshadowing in Homer of what we know to be true in Christ and how the Greeks were searching for that Something More - this is actually kind of the premise of Dr Reynolds' book that I am quoting from here - why it's important for Christians to understand Greek thought because it is a foreshadowing of the Truth we have in Christ. I actually had an interesting conversation about this very idea with my dd8.5 who was reading "The Spartan Twins" this week and noted that the people in the book didn't believe in the true God. We talked a little about how that was because they didn't know about Him, even though they were searching for truth. I told her she should go read in Acts about what happened when the Apostle Paul came to share the gospel among the Greeks...

      Anyhow, no worries about derailing the topic...I'm glad you did. It's very interesting to me how the trail of thoughts and comments about The Iliad have continued on all these weeks later. I guess that's what they mean by the Grand Conversation....

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