Beeson podcast, Episode 408
Dr. Karen Swallow Prior
September 4, 2018

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson podcast. Coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George.
Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. My guest today is Dr. Karen Swallow Prior. She is an award winning professor of English at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia where I had the privilege of meeting her last fall, when I was there for a conference. We had a conversation together over lunch and it was wonderful to get to know her a little bit. She's a person I've long admired. Her work is well known to people who care about the issues of the day and the deep things of faith. She's a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. She's a senior fellow with the Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement at Liberty. A senior with Eternity Forum, and something I found very interesting, a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States.
	So, Karen, you have covered a lot of bases in your life and interest. And welcome to the Beeson podcast.
Karen S. Prior:	Well thank you for having me. It's a great honor.
Timothy George:	Now before we get going, you've got to say a word about the Humane Society. I don't think I've ever met anybody who was a member of the council of the Humane Society. What's your interest there and what do you do?
Karen S. Prior:	Yeah well one of the biggest secrets in evangelicalism is the fact that our forebears actually founded the first society against cruelty to animals. William Wilberforce, who abolished the slave trade in England. Also helped found that first society. And so, care and concern and good stewardship of animals is part of evangelicalism's history. And so, when I discovered that in working on my doctoral dissertation, I just became passionate about the issue and serve on the faith advisory council for this organization. Which is a secular organization, but I'm thankful that they actually want to hear from people of faith and as a way for us to have influence in that realm.
Timothy George:	Yeah. You mentioned your doctoral dissertation. That was done at the State University of New York in Buffalo. Tell a little bit about what you did. Your dissertation, your research there.
Karen S. Prior:	Yes. Well my area of expertise is 18th and 19th century English literature. Particularly the English novel, which developed during that time. And as I was researching that, I stumbled across one of William Wilberforce's best friends who's been long forgotten by history, and her name is Hannah Moore. She was a poet and a dramatist and wrote one novel. And I did my research on that novel and of course, in doing that, learned so much about not just her life, but the life of those late 18th and early 19th century evangelicals who were so influential in so many areas including the abolition of slavery.
Timothy George:	Yeah. And this led you into more research on literature and writing and how that relates to the Christian faith, to the life of the church. We're gonna talk about your brand new book On Reading Well, which is released today by Brazos Press. So, if you're listening, run to your telephone or your internet and get On Reading Well. It's just brand new. But before we get to our discussion today, maybe we could start by having you say a little bit about your first book, which is titled, interestingly, Booked: The Literature in the Soul of Me. What an interesting title. What were you doing there?
Karen S. Prior:	Yeah well it's similar to my new book in talking about different works of literature, but it's much more personal. It's really my spiritual journey. I grew up in a Christian home, accepted Christ as lord and savior at a very young age. Grew up going to church and teaching Sunday school. I mean I was teaching Sunday school almost as soon as I was going to Sunday school. But I somehow just got the message that worldly things including literature were not compatible with the sayings of the Lord. That the life of the mind was not compatible with the life in the church. 
	And so I, for a long time, felt like I loved books more than I loved God. And I felt like I had to choose between them. And it wasn't until I got into grad school, at a very secular, liberal, humanistic program, where I actually, and through the help of one of my very secular professors who pointed out to me the connection between Christianity and words, and language. And everything began to come together for me. And so this first book that I wrote is kind of that, is the story of that journey of how my love of books and literature led me to a greater, and deeper, and lasting love of God and the things of God.
Timothy George:	That's wonderful. Now, in this new book, you make a distinction. You use two terms, and I want to ask you to explain, a little bit, each of them because they're provocative. One is "reading promiscuously", and the other is "reading virtuously". What do you mean by those terms?
Karen S. Prior:	Well, the first one, reading promiscuously, I do talk about a great deal in my first book, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. And it actually is a phrase that I borrow from the 17th century Puritan, John Milton, who argued in a famous treatise, against censorship. I mean, he was actually a Puritan, and the Puritans had just come out from under the thumb of the court, who was censoring them. And the Puritans were now, that they were in charge, wanted to censor their opposition. And Milton makes a very theological and Christian argument for what he calls "promiscuous reading." Reading a mixture of things, that's actually what the word originally means, is to mix up and to read widely, to read truth, to read error, and to weigh the two, and to learn, through that, what real truth is. 
	He even goes so far as to say that if we actually just believe something because our pastor tells us to believe it, and we don't know why, and we don't really understand it, that that actually becomes a heresy to us. Because we have to understand, and reason, and argue things out in order to not only know what truth is, but to claim it for ourselves.
	And so he uses that term, and that's the term I describe how I grew up reading. Reading everything. Reading good books and bad books, and maybe books I shouldn't have but through that sort of dialectical process, came to understand truth and how to understand really a biblical world view. And how we can weigh any words out there, any works of literature against the word of God and know truth better.
Timothy George:	You know that sort of reminds me of the story of Thomas Wolfe, the novelist who went to Harvard as a student, and he determined to read through the entire depository of Widener Library. One of the largest libraries in the world, starting with the letter A. And I don't think he ever got to B, there's so many. [inaudible 00:07:22] I'm just going to read everything. I'm not going to discriminate. Not just books I like or famous, but everything starting alphabetically. 
	That may not be the best way to do it, but you've made the case here that reading widely, reading promiscuously, mixing and matching, and delving into new and different and strange things might be a worthy activity.
Karen S. Prior:	I certainly think that it is, and of course it requires discernment on the part of the believer, but it actually helps us to exercise discernment too. And that's what Milton argued. He argued that the difference between innocence and virtue because he says, "Innocence has never been exposed to evil, and so is not the same thing as virtue, which has you choose between good and evil, and chooses good instead of evil." That's what's virtuous.
Timothy George:	So reading virtuously is related to reading promiscuously in your understanding.
Karen S. Prior:	Exactly. And so with this new book, I kind of picked up on that idea because I argue, in the introduction that it's not enough to read widely, as I argue in my first book. One must also read well. So in this book I'm kind of taking the next step in saying, "Let's read widely, but also let's read well, or read virtuously."
Timothy George:	We're gonna get into discussion of the structure of your book, which is fascinating in itself, but before we do that, you have another point in that introduction about reading as an aesthetic experience. Talk about that a little bit.
Karen S. Prior:	Yes. You know, especially as Christians, I think, evangelicals, conservatives, we focus a lot of content. We focus on whether an idea is true or false, or biblical, or not biblical. We also see movies the same way. What ideas does it convey. And that's important, but really what's even more important than what something says is how it is said. And so literary reading is, you know, it's reading, writing that focuses on the art of words and how words are used. And we are trained less and less, in our culture today to pay attention to the aesthetic experience. 
	And we are losing the culture because of that. Because the culture does this very, very well. It understands that when we read a work, or watch a movie, or listen to a song, there's a feel that goes along with it that reaches us in a heart place that is prior to, and affects us before our conscious, rational, reasoning mind does. And it can get us in a way that we don't even consciously articulate or reason out.
	And so we really need to pay attention to the way that reading and all works of art and cultural artifacts are part of an aesthetic experience. And we can't help it. We are aesthetic creatures, and we do respond to the feel and the sense of things. And if we ignore that, it's to our peril.
Timothy George:	Now your new book, On Reading Well, is divided into three parts in which you match up, in each distinct chapter, one of the virtues, as we're talking about them, along with a particular literary work. Often a masterpiece, or one that is very well known anyway. And the way you categorize the virtues, you begin with the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice, courage. And then the three theological virtues, all of which are mentioned in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13: faith, hope, and love. And then the heavenly virtues, which are maybe not as well known as the first seven we've mentioned: chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility.
	Now, we don't have time to go through each one of these in any depth, but I do want to ask you about the virtues themselves. How you think about these virtues. Are they important for us to know and to learn? Where do they come from? What is virtue ethics? All of this is swirling around this very interesting book you've written.
Karen S. Prior:	Well, and I have to be completely candid and say that, you know, I'm an English professor. I teach literature and writing and I'm not a theologian or a philosopher. And so in writing this book, I actually had to research it. I've always been fascinated with the virtues, but have not really known a lot about them. I think especially within Protestantism, and even more so in Evangelicalism, we don't talk about them a lot. There's much more to be found among the early church fathers and the Catholic theologians and philosophers than among our tribe. 
	And so there is actually a very long history of the classical virtues, both within the church and also within Greek philosophy. And there isn't any necessary agreement on one list. There are lots of different lists, although the cardinal virtues, those first four that you mentioned, prudence, temperance, justice, and courage, are pretty well agreed upon.
	But there's just a long and rich history of these virtues that I had to research and I actually like research more than writing. So it took me a long time to write this book because I could've just stayed in the research phase for a long time. 
	So there's a long, rich tradition that I've just really scratched the surface of in this book. And part of doing that was figuring out which virtues to focus on and how to structure the book, and how to find works that exemplified them well. It really was, at times, like a puzzle. 
	But I think I hope I made some sense out of it in the end. At least it made some sense to me, the way that I structured it and put these works [inaudible 00:13:18] the virtues.
Timothy George:	It's very well written, and very compelling. I mean, you make the argument, when you begin reading about these virtues and how they match up to these particular works of literature. There's a kind of light bulb that goes off, "I know that's right."
	But not necessarily something I would've thought about necessarily before. So let's dive into a couple of these virtues and see why you chose the books you did and what we have to learn from them. 
	One of the most famous books, I suppose, of English literature of your period of study, is Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which you say exemplifies, in a certain way, justice. What's going on there?
Karen S. Prior:	Of course, Dickens was an easy choice for me because I do love Charles Dickens.
Timothy George:	Me too. He's one of my favorite novelists.
Karen S. Prior:	He's just a delight. And one point I want to make before talking about it, is I really wrote this entire book geared toward two audiences, which is hard to do. Well, more than two. But in terms of the works of literature, I really hope that people who have already read these works, and who love these works will find my analysis of them interesting and compelling, even though they know the works. But I also wrote it for people who might not be familiar with the works.
	I tried not to give everything away, but write about what, you know, I didn't cover everything that happened in any of these books, but I hope that people who aren't as familiar with them will be interested to read them for themselves.
	And so, A Tale of Two Cities is one of those works that will be familiar to many readers, but maybe they haven't read since high school or don't remember all the details. It's one of Dickens' most famous works, one of his most controversial ones, in terms of whether it's considered his best or worst. 
	But to be honest, this was actually the hardest chapter for me to write because the virtue of justice is very, very difficult. Because all of the other virtues have to do with the individual. They have to do with individual character. Like being courageous, or kind, or humble. But justice, to just define it very simple, is the morality of the community. It has to do with the society, the city, the polus, the culture giving to each one what is due to each one. 
	And so it's very- and you know, I think we have a lot of contemporary conversations going on right now about justice and what constitutes justice. It's a very difficult philosophical and political concept. And so it was challenging for me to write, but the thing that really I found compelling about A Tale of Two Cities is, as the title suggests, is a tale of two cities. The cities being London and Paris. 
	And what Dickens was very concerned in the 19th century London that he was living in about the excessive injustices that he saw. You know, ones that we're familiar even just from seeing film versions of A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist. We know the world that Dickens lived in. He saw those excessive injustices and he feared that they paralleled the injustices of the previous century in France, that led to the bloody, horrific, terrible French Revolution, and the excesses of that and beyond.
	And so, I tried to write this chapter in a way where we could see today how excessive injustice, or injustice denied and not taken care of will lead to further violence and injustice. It's just a fact of human nature and human society. And we can learn so much about the injustices of the past to help correct the injustices that we might be dealing with today.
	And that's how I try to address that topic. And it was, you know, it's very hard. Justice is a very difficult and complex topic. 
Timothy George:	One of the things you point out, maybe you can comment a little bit, is the way in which we use the words "just" and "fair". We often use those, almost as synonyms, and yet there's a different meaning, in a way, behind the two.
Karen S. Prior:	Yes. We talk about things being fair or unfair and there's an interesting etymological connection between the word "fair" meaning justice, and the word "fair" meaning beauty. And beauty is a form of fairness and sort of a form of justice. If you think of, you know, you're hanging a painting on the wall, and you want the corners to be just or fair or correct, so it will look right, and be in proportion and symmetry. There's lots of interesting philosophical connections there.
	So there's something about justice that is sort of square and fair and proportionate, but then there's something about fairness in the sense of beauty that can often go beyond that. N so I make the connection in this chapter about how Sydney Carton's self sacrifice at the end of the novel, for anyone who remembers it, you know what that is, it's not just because he was innocent.
	But it exceeds justice in the sense of being fair and beautiful because his giving up his life for the sake of others is the kind of love that the Bible talks about. The kind of love that is exemplified in Christ's sacrifice for us, and it is something that is fair in the sense of being beautiful.
Timothy George:	Yeah. Moving from the cardinal virtues to the theological virtues: faith, hope and love. I want you to comment about your chapter on love. And you used, as an example of that, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. 
	Let me tell you before you comment on that. This, I thought, in some ways, was the saddest chapter in your book, even though it's on love. And there's hope in it, but it was a very sad telling of that story.
Karen S. Prior:	Well, you know, that's a point that might be made about literature and my own taste in literature, is that often literature gives us negative examples of things. And so many of the works I give here, they present someone who perhaps doesn't have the virtue we're talking about, and so offers an example through negative. Now, Ivan does discover love at the end of the story, but most of it is about how he did not have it through his life. And so, it is a very sad and powerful story. 
	And this is actually, probably one of my favorite chapters because I love the story and I just love what it teaches about love. Which is not, I'm not talking about romantic love. In this chapter I'm talking about agape love or charity, which is the kind of brotherly love we should have for one another.
	And as a theological virtue, along with faith and hope, which are different from the ones discussed by the Greek philosophers because the theological virtues are considered supernatural, not natural. Meaning that we really can't have the faith or the hope, or the love that's talked about in the Bible unless we are redeemed, we are in Christ. That's where those true virtues come from.
	But we can practice them. Once we have them from the Lord, we can cultivate and practice them intentionally, and purposefully, and try to increase those habits in our lives. And I don't know what else do you want me to say about this story and this virtue? There's so much to say.
Timothy George:	Yeah well, one of the figures in the background of this virtue, really of all the virtues, I suppose, is St. Augustine. You quote him in this chapter about the true purpose and meaning of life. And how God is to be loved and everything else is to be used in relation to God. It's really getting at the question of what we desire isn't it? And what forms us as desiring creatures.
Karen S. Prior:	Yes. I draw heavily on Augustine in this chapter and throughout the book because what he talks about, so famously, is how we have many different loves and objects of love. And the virtuous life, ultimately, is about ordering those loves in their proper place and proportion. And so I talk about this in this chapter because that is really what virtue is. It's habits, it's ordering desires, and love is actually, as Augustine says, the form of all the other virtues. 
	We can think about all the other virtues as being sort of the content of our character, like, we can be courageous, and we can be humble, and we can be patient, and kind. But all of those things have to have the form of love, or they are not virtuous.
	Because you know we can fake, I suppose, being kind, or being patient, or being humble, but if we aren't really doing it and it really isn't rooted in love, then it's not virtuous at all. And that's one of the things the church fathers say over and over, is that none of these virtues can be separated from the other virtues.
	If we tried to act out any of the other virtues and say, apart from any, a good goal, or a just goal, it's not virtuous. They're all connected, and the one that connects all of them is love. Which, of course the Bible teaches us. You know, if we don't have love, we are but a clanging cymbal.
Timothy George:	It's a great chapter. It's about death. How to face death, which we all do and will do, but also how to tend to those who are facing death that are near to us and dear to us. Another experience that's common to all of human life.
	So there's a lot to learn from here. I think about how to be a human being, how to care for those in need who are with you. How do we show love in the midst of death and fear.
	So it's a compelling chapter, but one that is not- you can't romanticize this. It's life in it's fullness.
	Now the heavenly virtues. Again there are five of these: chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility.
	I have a question about humility, but first of all, say just a little bit about diligence, because your example there is maybe the most famous book in Protestant Christian literature, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
Karen S. Prior:	Yeah. That seems like a very obvious choice to talk about diligence, but it actually was one of the last pieces of the puzzle that I put together. I kept wracking my brains, "What work can I talk about with diligence?"
	And then someone actually suggested Pilgrim's Progress to me, and then the light went on, "Of course." And, you know, diligence, I think we all know what the word means, but in terms of being a virtue, it's interesting because one thing that most people don't realize about the virtues is every virtue is a mean or a moderation between two extremes, an extreme of excess or an extreme of deficiency.
	And I explain all of that in the book with each of the virtues. And so diligence is actually the mean between too little and too much care, attention, and effort. So we think of diligence, I think we tend to think of it as always working hard and being attentive, which it is that, but it can also become a vice if we do it too much. And there's so many applications of that.
	We all know the expression like, you know, someone who's just trying too hard. In a more Christian sense, I think we can try too hard to do things ourselves, and not let the Lord do things. And so, each virtue is that exact medium, that excellent point in the middle between the two extremes.
	And so, in Pilgrim's Progress, of course, great classic, they're just so many way that the pilgrim, despite all of these obstacles and horrific tortures and deaths and trials, continues on his journey towards the celestial city.
	And so, we know the story, I think most of us, but I try to, in talking about that and diligence, draw some application to real life and how, even if our lives aren't as dramatic as Christian's are in the story, although sometimes they can be, we still are called to be diligent even in the small things, especially in the small things.
	It's just like a muscle that needs to be exercised.
Timothy George:	And you bring this into connection to the doctoring of perseverance of the saints. A wonderful teaching, but one that is often misunderstood. We use this expression, "once saved, always saved." You make a decision and you never lose this wonderful gift of salvation. And yet, perseverance shows this is really, to borrow that metaphor again, a pilgrimage. It's a long process, twists and turns, ups and downs, vanity fair, all of this, that John Bunyan's character, Christian goes through on his way to the celestial city.
Karen S. Prior:	Right. We really need to persevere and we do that through our diligence.
Timothy George:	Now humility. We don't have time, you use Flannery O'Connor as the example of humility. But my question is, is humility really a virtue? I've had this argument, friendly argument with a good friend of mine, who claims it is and has written about it. And yet, it seems to me that humility is different from these other virtues, in that, once you begin to seek it, once you begin to cultivate it even, you've lost it.
	Immediately, you've become proud that you're humble. There's an irony here that we need to maybe take a little more into consideration. What do you think about that?
Karen S. Prior:	Well, my goodness, I think we could have a whole show about this one, so I'll try to keep it short. 
	Well, I think, because again, humility, as a virtue, is a mean between two excesses. And I think we always think of humility as kind of the basement and not being self seeking or celebrating one's own work, but the virtue of humility is actually, very simply, it's accurate self assessment.
	Having a realistic and truthful view of who we are. And so that actually means that part of humility is being honest and not denying our strengths as well as our weaknesses. 
	So someone who is too modest to understand what their strengths or gifts that God has given them to exercise and to steward is actually not virtuously humble. It's just simply having a truthful assessment of who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses, and that's the opposite of pride. And so, I argue in this chapter that it's actually, to be too modest and to be too self effacing is actually the vice of pride.
Timothy George:	And you do quote the Bible, I can't be against the Bible. You quote 1 Peter 5:6, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the might hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time."
	So my guest today on the Beeson podcast has been professor Karen Swallow Prior. She teaches English at Liberty University at Lynchburg, Virginia. Author of a number of books and very outstanding leader in the Lord's church today. I wish you well in all your good work and thank you for this conversation.
Karen S. Prior:	Thank you so much for having me.
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