Walker Percy - The Message in the Bottle - How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

To put it briefly: When Kierkegaard declares that the deliverance of the castaway by a piece of news from across the seas rather than by philosophical knowledge is the Absolute Paradox, one wonders simply how the castaway could be delivered any other way. It is this news and this news alone that he has been waiting for. Christianity cannot appear otherwise than as the Absolute Paradox once one has awarded total competence to knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, once one has disallowed the cognitive content of news as a category of communication.

The stumbling block to the scientist-philosopher-artist on the island is that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But scandalized or not, he might at least realize that it could not be otherwise. For no knowledge which can be gained on the island, on any island anywhere at any time, can be relevant to his predicament as a castaway. The castaway is he who waits for news from across the seas. It is interesting to see what criteria of acceptance Kierkegaard does allow to faith. Clearly he removes faith from the sphere of knowledge and science in any sense of these words. Is it not then simply a matter of God’s gift, a miraculous favor which allows one to embrace the Absolute Paradox and believe the impossible? No, there is more to be said. Kierkegaard recognizes that a category of communication is involved. Faith comes from God, but it also comes by hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a newsbearer. But why should we believe the newsbearer, the apostle? Must the apostle first prove his case to the scientist in the seminar room? No, because this would mean that God and the apostle must wait in the porter’s lodge while the learned upstairs settle the matter.

Why then do we believe the apostle? We believe him because he has the authority to deliver the message. The communication of the genius (the scientific message in the bottle) is in the sphere of immanence. “A genius may be a century ahead of his time and therefore appear to be a paradox but ultimately the race will assimilate what was once a paradox in such a way that it is no longer a paradox.” Given time, knowledge may be arrived at independently on any island. It is otherwise with the apostle. His message is in the sphere of transcendence and is therefore paradoxical. It cannot be arrived at by any effort and not even eternity can mediate it.

How then may we recognize the divine authority of the apostle? What, in other words, are the credentials of the newsbearer? The credential of the apostle is simply the gravity of his message: “I am called by God; do with me what you will, scourge me, persecute me, but my last words are my first; I am called by God and I make you eternally responsible for what you do against me.”

Kierkegaard recognized the unique character of the Christian gospel but, rather than see it as a piece of bona fide news delivered by a newsbearer, albeit news of divine origin delivered by one with credentials of divine origin, he felt obliged to set it over against knowledge as paradox. Yet to the castaway who becomes a Christian, it is not paradox but news from across the seas, the very news he has been waiting for.

Kierkegaard, of all people, overlooked a major canon of significance of the news from across the seas — the most “Kierkegaardian” canon. One canon has to do with the news and the newsbearer, the nature of the news, and the credentials of the newsbearer. But the other canon has to do with the hearer of the news. Who is the hearer when all is said and done? Kierkegaard may have turned his dialectic against the Hegelian system, but he continued to appraise the gospel from the posture of the Hegelian scientist — and pronounced it absurd that a man’s eternal happiness should depend not on knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but on a piece of news from across the seas. But neither the Hegelian nor any other objective-minded man is a hearer of news. For he has struck a posture and removed himself from all predicaments for which news might be relevant. Who is the hearer? The hearer is the castaway, not the man in the seminar, but the man who finds himself cast into the world. For whom is the news not news? It is not news to a swallow, for a swallow is what it is, no more and no less; it is at home in the world and no castaway. It is not news to unfallen man because he too is at home in the world and no castaway. It is not news to a fallen man who is a castaway but believes himself to be at home in the world, for he does not recognize his own predicament. It is only news to a castaway who knows himself to be a castaway.

Once it is granted that Christianity is the Absolute Paradox, then, according to Kierkegaard, the message in the bottle is all that is needed. It is enough to read “this little advertisement, this nota bene on a page of universal history—‘We have believed that in such and such a year God appeared among us in the humble figure of a servant, that he lived and taught in our community, and finally died.’”

But the message in the bottle is not enough — if the message conveys news and not knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. There must be, as Kierkegaard himself saw later, someone who delivers the news and who speaks with authority.

Is this someone then anyone who rings the doorbell and says “Come!” No indeed, for in these times everyone is an apostle of sorts, ringing doorbells and bidding his neighbor to believe this and do that. In such times, when, everyone is saying “Come!” when radio and television say nothing else but “Come!” it may be that the best way to say “Come!” is to remain silent. Sometimes silence itself is a “Come!”

Since everyone is saying “Come!” now in the fashion of apostles — Communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as advertisers — the uniqueness of the original “Come!” from across the seas is apt to be overlooked. The apostolic character of Christianity is unique among religions. No one else has ever left or will ever leave his island to say “Come!” to other islanders for reasons which have nothing to do with the dissemination of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and nothing to do with his own needs. The Communist is disseminating what he believes to be knowledge sub specie aeternitats —and so is the Rockefeller scientist. The Jehovah’s Witness and the Holy Roller are bearing island news to make themselves and other islanders happy. But what if a man receives the commission to bring news across the seas to the castaway and does so in perfect sobriety and with good faith and perseverance to the point of martyrdom? And what if the news the newsbearer bears is the very news the castaway had been waiting for, news of where he came from and who he is and what he must do, and what if the news-bearer brought with him the means by which the castaway may do what he must do? Well then, the castaway will, by the grace of God, believe him.

* Some of the bottles must have been launched by Rudolf Carnap, since the sentences are identical with those he uses in the article “Formal and Factual Science.”

* See, for example, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger in What Is Life? and the psychiatrist C. G. Jung in Der Geist der Psychologie.

† I wish to make an objective distinction here without pejoration to castaways on the one hand or scientists, scholars, mystics, and poets, on the other — while at the same time readily admitting we could use a few more of the absent-minded variety at, this time.

* If the depth psychologist objects that the scientist and artist is no different from anyone else: he undertakes his science and his art so that he may satisfy the deepest unconscious needs of his personality by “sublimating” and so on— the castaway will not quarrel with him. He will observe only that, whatever his psychological motivation may be, the scientist and artist — and depth analyst — undertake a very extraordinary activity in virtue of which they stand over against the world as its knowers.