What Mr Waugh thinks of God.
God. Alexander Waugh. Review (Hodder Headline). £18.99. 340 pages. ISBN 0-7472-7016-3.Alexander Waugh is one of the far from lost tribe of Waughs, son of Auberon and grandson of Evelyn. He is also cartoonist, illustrator, publisher, music critic, and composer, and -- if this book is any guide -- an individualist lay theologian of what might be called an Impressionist School. He claims that his father, shortly before his death, offered to pay for the book to be withdrawn from publication. Readers will disagree about whether he should, after all, have taken the money. An author of such robust and apparently self-confident personality, ready to explore the nature of divinity, risks the reaction of the John Buchan here who, obliged in the course of counter-espionage to listen to a progressive lecturer on 'God', sourly concluded that 'as far as I could make out it was a new name he had invented for himself'.
But Mr Waugh does not make God in his own image. He is perplexing and perhaps perplexed rather than merely arrogant. His technique is to reproduce, mainly by extensive quotation and interpolated commentary but with a few pictorial illustrations, many images of God found in the Old and New Testaments, in various non-canonical and Jewish books, and in the Koran. There are also a few landings on some farther shores of comparative religion. Nor surprisingly he finds there is probably not an adjective that couldn't be made to fit God -- as humanity has perceived Him -- and lists 'mighty, jealous, rude, babyish, deluded, omniscient, vicious, ratty, benign, merciful, duplicitous' and a string of others.
It is not clear what the reader is intended to make of it all, or what the author himself has made of it. His motives and often his conclusions remain obscure. He calls his presentation 'a patchwork approach', designed to show from as many angles as possible that 'God is the most perplexing and yet compelling figure in human history'. But some of the angles are odd, and some are avoided. The Mormon, Joseph Smith, Nietzsche, and Saint Teresa are called as witnesses, along with the great Fathers and minor eccentrics of the Church, but not Calvin, Ignatius Loyola, Barth, or Wesley.
The approach is selective but lively enough. The Ark of the Covenant is God's 'mobile home'. There is rather a lot about naked ecstasy, and vile bodies, and digressions about God's skin-colour, gender, and absence of genitalia. There are mild little witticisms about the Lord's Supper as an acquired taste and some long, solemn jokes, including one in which the Almighty is called as a witness at a trial to establish Jesus' paternity. It might be too much to say that Mr Waugh is irreverent but perhaps he does need a good advocate if he finds himself, on either side of the Great Divide, charged with breaches of the Third Commandment.
There is more flair than fury in the book, despite its preoccupation at times with the bloodier passages of the Old Testament, but not much, if anything, that has not been said before by Voltairean sceptics, clergymen of the Enlightenment, Victorians with doubts, troubled Christians of various times, Soviet departments for the suppression of religion, and an array of biblical scholars, 'higher critics', commentators, and expositors in the last century and a half. But perhaps the aim, and any achievement, is to produce a unique mixture. It comes from some familiar ingredients and a few exotic flavourings, including some of the books which what Mr Waughs calls the 'violent and disagreeable', even debauched, Council of Ephesus wisely decided were not to be included in canonical Scripture. (In fact other councils and more obscure discussions share that credit.) The author clearly enjoyed writing his book and wants others to share his enjoyment. Some may.
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| Author: | Kernohan, R.D. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Contemporary Review |
| Date: | Sep 1, 2002 |
| Words: | 630 |
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