the builders rejected, and the rebuilt temple which is identical with his risen body.
“Third Essay: Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths” (1957), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006), CW, 22.
Christ’s life can only be told mythically, but as myth is so obviously a human invention the myth cannot be the real form of the revelation.
Entry, Notebook 12 (1968–70), 177, The “Third Book” Notebooks of Northrop Frye, 1964–1972: The Critical Comedy (2002), CW, 9.
In this age Christ is no longer a peculiar society nor a historical individual, but the body of man.
Entry, 6 Feb. 1950, 92, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
The real or eternal Christ is the form of man, and the real body of art is that which art reveals.
Entry, 9 Aug. 1950, 534, The Diaries of Northrop Frye: 1942–1955 (2001), CW, 8.
Christendom
Christian faith produced the civilization of Christendom, which reigned supreme in the Western world from the Atlantic to the Caucasus for many centuries, and is still one of the greatest forces of the contemporary world. But while Christendom is a colossal achievement, once we think of all its intolerance, its persecutions, its “religious” wars, its bigotry, it is clear that it too is still not the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Christianity
There is nothing that we get from Christianity except a body of words, and they become transmuted into experience. I wouldn’t talk about the objectivity of God. I’d talk about the transcendence of God.
“Northrop Frye in Conversation” (1989), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
Christianity, similarly, had to outgrow the notion that the end of the world was going to come in the next week or so, and after it had outgrown it, it settled down to being a way of life, rather than a way of postponing life.
“Style and Image in the Twentieth Century” (1967), comparing Christianity with Russian and Chinese Communism, Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
I think it is the conception of God as the power that recreates man rather than God as the creator of the order of nature that is the really valid element in Christianity.
“Into the Wilderness” (1969), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
A genuinely tragic Christian attitude would see suffering as a participation in the passion of a hero who was both divine and human, and so would establish a place within Christianity for the tragic hero.
“Fools of Time: III, Little World of Man: The Tragedy of Isolation” (1966), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (2010), CW, 28.
Hence being a Xn [Christian] is one way of being a Buddhist.
Entry, Notebook 50 (1987–90), 34, Northrop Frye’s Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2000), CW, 5.
In the official Christian myth, the Creator is pure and innocent and the creature is foul and vicious; in the fabulous counterpart, the creator, being man, is foul and vicious but his creature, the work of art, is pure and innocent.
Entry, Notebook 54-4 (late 1970s), 193, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks on Romance (2004), CW, 15.
For Christianity, like the humanities, is teachable only to a very limited extent: the rest consists in realizing anew for oneself what every Christian has always known, but can explain only to a receptive mind.
“Education and the Humanities” (1947), Northrop Frye’s Writings on Education (2001), CW, 7.
It’s given us a very strong sense of a meaning emerging out of human history rather than history as a meaningless series of cycles from which you have to be liberated.
“Between Paradise and Apocalypse” (1978), Interviews with Northrop Frye (2008), CW, 24.
It still seems to be true that Christianity has some affinity for stupidity. If I were to see a small church labelled “the foursquare gospel” I’d give it a wide berth, because I know I’d find nothing inside except what I’d call hysteria.
Entry, Notes 54-5 (1976), 152, Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
The revolutionary core of Christianity is its identifying of God with a suffering, persecuted, and enduring man. It was in the sign of the cross, a ridiculous and shameful emblem, that an outcast religion conquered the world’s greatest empire.
“Silence in the Sea” (1968), Northrop Frye on Canada (2003), CW, 12.
However, early Christianity discovered that Christianity would be much more saleable if you perverted its good news into bad news, and in particular if you put at the centre of your teaching the doctrine that after death, unless you did what you were told at this moment, you would suffer tortures for eternity, meaning endlessly in time.
“Symbolism in the Bible” (1981–82), Northrop Frye’s Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), CW, 13.
It may be possible to Christianity to have its God and eat Him too, but it is not yet possible for a Christian philosopher to choose either the committed religious or the disinterested intellectual path and still get all the benefits of both.
“Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture” (1950s), Northrop Frye on Literature and Society, 1936–1989: Unpublished Papers (2002), CW, 10.
The central form of Christianity is its vision of the humanity of God and the divinity of risen Man, and this, in varying ways, is what all great Christian artists have attempted to recreate.
“Part One: The Argument,” Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (1947, 2004), CW, 14.
Christmas
It is the latter vision that turns the darkness of Advent into the festival of blazing lights, the lights which are the glory of a God who is also Man, who is continually born and continually dying, and yet remains unborn and beyond the reach of death.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), referring specifically to Christmas, Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The present secular Christmas is, in any case, really a New Year festival, with Santa Claus representing the spirit of the Old Year and the New one hazily identified with the Christ child. The identification is not pressed, because that would lead to the unwelcome inference that the birth of Christ and the death of Santa Claus are the same event.
“The Leap in the Dark” (1971), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
The story of Christmas, from its primitive beginnings to the present, is in part a story of how men, by cowering together in a common fear of menace, discovered a new fellowship, in fellowship a new hope, and in hope a new vision of society.
“Merry Christmas (III)” (1949), Northrop Frye on Religion (2000), CW, 4.
Christmas
