Against the Colorful Grey

A post on Facebook by C. R. Wiley, Reformed author—former Nazarene gone Presbyterian—and public intellectual, prompted a trail of thought that would lead me to this blog. He posted, “Third-wayism’ seems essentially Hegelian. We need a new Kierkegaard.”1 Kierkegaard was, as leading Oxford Kierkegaard scholar George Pattison put it, a young firebrand or philosophical rebel who was still young enough to paint in “black and white.” Age (and crowd pressure) often soften a philosopher to paint “grey on grey.”2 Kierkegaard was Hegel’s opposite. C. R. Wiley’s concerns about “Third-wayism” lift nicely to concerns about “middle way,” or “big tent” arguments (that frequent in Wesleyan circles), but it also, as Kierkegaard would say “goes further” to concerns about the crisis of modernity and post-modernity in general as well.

When it comes to grey-on-grey painting, nobody does it like Hegel. His system paints in grey par excellence; thesis—black, antithesis—white, and from the dialectic between them a new synthesis—the grey that alleges to preserve the best of black and white. A vibrant grey. This new vibrant grey becomes the new black and thus the grey gets greyer. It is a progressive greying much like aging. Thus, grey is the color of progress. Grey is the color of cities with its rivers of grey. Where big grey dreams can come true. Thus, the invitation of modernity rings out, “come, join us in Grey Town” (see C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce). An earnest invitation as grey, of course, is the color of modernity in all of its optimism.

Passing at the age of 42, Kierkegaard was too young to grey. Lacking the grey on grey of a Hegelian “middle way” Kierkegaard offers us an alternative to grey. He offers black and white, that is, contrast and clarity—yes or no in place of yes and no. Yes and no is the mantra of the grey area—which consequentially is the only area available when one paints in shades of grey. Shades of grey is popular today, evidenced by the success of the book and film Fifty Shades of Grey. Compare fifty shades of grey sexuality with black and white sexuality—either married, or single.

Grey is so popular in fact that everything has become so grey that the grey has become self-conscious. The grey looked at itself and said, “they clear cut the forest for this?” That of course gets mixed with grey. The result is the sort of grey green of windmills and solar panels (notice that we call windmills and solar panels green but they are literally grey). Again, the grey grew self-conscious, “grey sexuality seems so boring,” the grey said to itself, “let us color ourselves in rainbow.” Of course, it is only colorful in appearance, this “colorful only in appearance,” that attempts to conceal the grey underneath is the clever disguise of post-modernity.

The cry of progress today is that everything must grey colorfully. Pink and blue grey out to one colorful bathroom where little girls pee standing up. Leave the sitting to the boys as masculinity colorfully grows grey. Ah, post-modernity, finally, the colorful grey the modern world has been waiting for. But like Kierkegaard, I am too young to paint in grey and too honest to pretend it is colorful. C. R. Wiley is right, “we need a new Kierkegaard.”

George Pattison captured nicely why I agree that “we need a new Kierkegaard.” He writes, “It has undoubtedly been at times of crisis—of which there have been not a few in this period—that [Kierkegaard] has especially come into his own, times when prevailing systems and worldviews have collapsed under the weight of modernity’s complex and contradictory demands, and when culture, intellectual life, and religion have come to the brink of disintegration.”3 I think we Christians are at a time of crisis, that we have come to the brink of disintegration under the weight of today’s complex and contradictory demands. But hope is not lost, and I think Kierkegaard can help.

Kierkegaard offers us the decisive gift of either/or; either the narrow way or the broad way. A welcomed gift in an age that so readily confuses peacekeeping with peacemaking. Holiness requires distinction—set apartness. The profane is its opposite, a grey between them is not holy and profane but simply profane. Where does the middle way between the narrow way and the broad way lead? Probably to Grey Town (where Modernity has been beckoning us all along). Nietzsche invited us to consider what is beyond black and white; he said it was the Antichrist—turns out he was wrong. Beyond good and evil is grey (wait, perhaps he was right after all).

—Janus Vel Griseo

Endnotes

1. https://facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02hjjm1DuJMY8GpLZFG8ox93TsazKCS5Fr72apeiS1cpZ8qsVcJLFQWt5s3YG5ZybUl&id=100013031624370

2. Pattison, George (2015-01-27T22:58:59.000). The Philosophy of Kierkegaard (p. 2). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

3. Kierkegaard, Soren; Pattison, George. Spiritual Writings (Harper Perennial Modern Thought) (p. xi). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Editor: Christopher Kamp