Monergist Meditations: Presuppositionalism, Love, and Romeo and Juliet

Introduction

Today I substituted for a Spanish and Literature teacher at the same public school where I studied for 12 years of my life. This morning’s assignment should have been a delight; the students, myself, and another teacher were going through the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet. But, for some reason, the story was less captivating this time around.

Like it, or You Fail

I’ve read through Romeo and Juliet in numerous texts, seen it performed live by “professionals” in the Twin Cities, and watched both the 1968 Zeffrelli and 1996 Luhrmann films. Why? Did I love the story? Did I enjoy literature?

…are you a fruit cake? Heavens no, I was never a fan of literature classes (except where  “literature” meant God’s Word). Public, institutionalized education simply forced me to be a fan – and such force not only required my exposure to the material, but made it look as if I was a complete moron for not being utterly captivated by the play. Indeed, if you went through life never having been exposed to the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, most people (certainly most of those teaching in public schools and universities) would consider you a hermit, if not simply intellectually inferior. It’s as if to understand the balcony scene and to capture its glory is to understand the glory of love itself. To master Romeo and Juliet is to master the art of love.

What a hopeless assertion.

Unacceptance

We finished reading the scene and a student in the front row blurted out, “This is really cheesy.”

I was about to laugh. He knew he wasn’t supposed to say something like that – not to say something rude, but to say something that contradicted the norm, to challenge the idea that the balcony scene was really as grand as everyone told him it was. It made me stop and think: is it really possible this scene is blown out of proportion? Could it really be just as foolish or immature or overrated as it seems to the virgin-reader who is unmarred by centuries of literary criticism?

But thinking stopped when the other teacher in the room quickly began her apologetic, saying the scene portrays “pure love, which is something everyone finds desirable.”  Furthermore, all reasons for finding it awkward or foolish are simply due to our different culture.  We don’t understand because we just don’t understand the context enough. If we don’t “get it,” it’s a fault on our part, certainly not on Shakespeare’s part. We don’t really have a good reason for not admiring Romeo and Juliet and everything in this scene, even if by today’s standards (or any standards, for that matter) it might seem altogether a bit foolish. The fact is Shakespeare kicks serious butt cheeks in the balcony scene, and everything else  – everything secondary and less authoritative – comes after that principle.

Of course,  I immediately wanted to ask, “who’s standard of desire are we talking about?” and “why do we assume this principle first and assume everything in the scene is right?” “isn’t it possible that this kid’s assertion is actually true, objectively – that this story really isn’t the greatest expression of innocent, pure love in literature, but just a cheesy invention of some playwright? Or is there even such a thing as knowable, true love at all?”

Another student was already thinking ahead of me, but along a different train of thought. She asked, “But, how can they truly love each other if they just met? They don’t even know each other.” The teacher responded, “Some believe in ‘love at first sight,’ and Shakespeare is playing along those lines.”

Love at first sight? Maybe.

Or maybe pure immaturity and a completely artificial sense of love? I guess we can only arrive at that conclusion (or any other radical one) if we question the entire presupposition of the scene.

But, presuppositions always seem to be the issue anyway, so perhaps that should be our course of action…

“Pure” and “True” Love?

If such a “pure love” like that between Romeo and Juliet existed in the first place, how does it actually exist, and what does it mean?

The first thing we must realize is that there are many types of love. As long as love has a source and an object, and as long as there are different sources and different objects of love, then there are different types of love.

Yes, there are many types of love.  CS Lewis identified four loves: στοργή (affection, such as in a family), φιλία (friendship), ἔρως (eros, indifferent love that is not necessarily sexual), and ἀγάπη (charity, love regardless of circumstance). This can be very helpful, and incredible insight has been wrought out of Lewis’ work in this field. As a literary critic – and a sharp, Christian one at that – CS Lewis surely knows what he’s talking about.

But, I don’t completely buy it. If one is going to get philosophical, systematic, and Christian about love,  I’m compelled to opt for Van Til’s epistemology on this one. His take wins hands-down (probably because he has a philosophical, systematic, and fully committed Christian mind; do read his Introduction to Systematic Theology).

First and foremost, there is:

1. Love between God and Himself (i.e. Father’s love for the Son, Jesus).
2. Love between God and His images (i.e. Covenant, the sending and work of His son, etc.).
3. Love between God and the rest of creation (notice the distinction between #2 and #3 in Luke 12:24).

Then, there is peripheral love, love that extends more broadly and indirectly out of the nature of God:

1. Love between God’s images and God’s creation (man and woman subduing creation).
2. Love between God’s images, manifested (A) in marriage (husband/wife), (B) in immediate family (parent/child), (C) in distant family (community, friends, etc.).
3. Love between God’s non-image creation and other parts of God’s non-image creation (i.e. animal love, etc.).

Thus, love begins with God, since He is the origin of all things, and His love is manifested most brilliantly and fully in Himself. God then expresses love towards His images (man) in creation, and then to the rest of His creation. That love is expressed with complexity between God Himself, images, and other images. Finally, love exists in simple form between non-image bearing creatures. From the incomprehensible glory of the Trinity to a female dog nursing its pups, love is, in many ways, everywhere.

That is a presuppositionalist (fully theological, philosophical) prolegomena of love.

The Balcony Scene Evaluated with A God-Centered Lens

Where then, does this “purest form of love” in Romeo and Juliet (if such an interpretation is even correct, which it may very well not be) find itself?

Clearly, it finds itself expressed in the image-to-image category, where marital love (along with pre-marital and post-marital love) takes place. It is the glorious and profound love between a man and a woman.

But the obvious problem is that the secular world mistakes this love for the grandest, purist, and fullest form of love that exists in the universe, period. That’s all there is. Scholars, professors, and watchers of TV mistake the “innocent” and “pure” love in Romeo and Juliet for ultimate pure love, which, in truth, only exists in the Creator of the universe Himself.

Indeed, for whatever glory there is in being enraptured by a person of the opposite sex, it is derivative of God’s first and most glorious love of Himself. God constructs, we reconstruct. God makes out of nothing, we invent out of something. God is original, man is derivative. Some of us might not like it, but that’s the way it is. We are not the Creator. We are the created.

Thus, in the line of Van Til, John Eldredge’s thesis in the book Epic is correct: man cannot invent a story better than God’s original story. As I wrote a number of years ago in Light Up the Darkness:

No one can create a story truer and more captivating to the human heart than God can. Therefore, all good stories that do exist in the world essentially borrow – if not directly steal – from His story, the gospel story. All the common themes of bondage, evil forces, a beauty, a savior, and so forth have their ultimate source in the Christian worldview. This is because God (creator) is original and we (creatures) are derivative.

Vanity then, is the love of Romeo and Juliet without the love of the Creator.

True love between human beings cannot exist without God’s love of both Himself and of His human images manifested in Jesus the Christ, who gave his life for his “bride” (Rev. 19:7), “for his friends” (John 15:13), and “for the sins of the world” (I John 2:2, John 3:16). Human love cannot exist without some form of God’s love. What is secondary cannot fit in where it is supposed to fit unless what is primary is revealed, admitted, and established as primary.

The existence of a US Representative of California is meaningless, powerless, and devoid of all purpose if California didn’t exist. A glass-encased, miniature display of Mt. Rushmore is meaningless if Mt. Rushmore didn’t exist. God’s images, who are explicitly made to be like God, have no purpose or meaning in their life if God did not exist. Only the most rebellious and insane pots in the cupboard would try to erase “Made by the Sovereign Potter” imprinted on their bottom. True meaning and true experience of love, then, arrives at knowing God first.

Yet, mocking the Potter is precisely what people do when they hold up a creaturely scene of  love like that of Romeo and Juliet without first looking at the cognitively substantive and historically demonstrated love of Jesus Christ. The balcony scene is presented by literary critics as if God had nothing to do with the emotions Juliet and Romeo were experiencing. It’s as if pure love can be experienced without the Source of pure love. In fact, we’re even further encouraged to believe it is true love when it seems to lack any substance beyond mere physical attraction.

But, are we really to believe the scene portrays the height of pure love even within the category it belongs when the substance of the entire relationship is – unless we want to read into Shakespeare a bunch of things he never asserts in the scene – nothing more than the unrestrained, sensual obsessions of a teenager?

Granted, Adam and Eve were in love with each other, captivated by each other to an even greater degree than that of Romeo and Juliet. But that love – and indeed their purpose for existence – transcended their own desires. Their purpose for existing and their love existed only because of God’s first and more complete love.

Love in opposite sex relationships never exists for itself. It always points to something greater, something outside of itself. Romance, eros, and sexual experience is not self-contained, and for that reason is never eternally satisfying. Adam and Eve were given their abilities, desires, and tasks by God because the meaning of their lives is bigger than what they can even come up with.Yes, their job, and their most glorious experiences only point to the greater glory of their romantic, wise, and sovereign Creator.

If we don’t acknowledge this, we are forced to try to create meaning for ourselves. Glory that should have gone to the Creator, wrongly falls into the hands of a dead playwright.

Conclusion: Real Love is Godly, God-Centered, God-Glorifying Love

So, what if the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet really is cheesy, and that their love is just foolish, immature, self-indulgent, and devoid of all purity? Could we even know it without a Creator – an immovable source from which all love comes?

Impossible. And so, in Modern society, Romeo and Juliet continues to be required reading while virtually every story in the Bible does not – and to our demise.

We spent two hours expositing Shakespeare this morning. Think if kids spent two hours expositing the Bible every morning instead. I shall restate the obvious: The Scriptures must be the primary source of romance and drama – for that is one of the greatest reasons it was given to us, and one of the greatest reasons God’s Son came to earth. Make no mistake about it: Shakespeare is a literary thief. He stole every single feeling, climax, and resolve from His Creator, whether unintentionally or not. Indeed, none of Shakespeare’s work is original, it is but an imperfect reconstruction of what God has already demonstrated in history. And whatever Shakespeare did happen to offer is smoke compared to the drama contained in Holy Scripture.

God-centeredness orients the creature’s mind so that the creature can be truly free and can experience true love. Only when God is on His throne can the magnificence of image-to-image, man-to-woman, husband-to-wife love come to life – not come to life on paper or the lumens of a television screen, but in the life we actually live.

Is that not pure, and desirable?