and often minuscule hand. He was about his own present, pressing, and remarkable intellectual adventures. Still, the paper clips attaching little sheets to larger sheets to note cards in sometimes thick and puzzling disarray are thwarting. And the abbreviations . . .
The concern here is to respect the text. “Man” and “he” and “him” are untouched. Commas and semi-colons posed a temptation: add some, subtract others. With rare exceptions, punctuation-wise, spelling-wise, capitalization-wise and otherwise (and apart from possible misreadings of the manuscripts), the texts have been permitted to stand. When manuscript baffles or temptations triumph, there are brackets [ ]—different kinds and a “non-kind”: 1) [word?] means this is an uncertain but best-guess reading; 2) [?] means there is a word, but I haven’t a clue; 3) [??] means more than one indecipherable word; 4) no brackets means either no need for brackets or that possibly there were brackets which have been removed because the reading is likely and because the reader needs to be spared endless, distracting brackets. When the manuscripts become outline or word-notes, I have risked making coherent connections, again within brackets. Originally, every added “a,” “the,” “we,” “our” and infrequently added punctuation mark was dutifully placed in brackets. Brackets, brackets everywhere. I decided to do away with the brackets in the case of articles, etc., but retain them in the case of other additions. There are too many brackets, and every set of brackets is (for now)35 a defeat. References given by McGill are in parentheses. Added references are in brackets. Often the manuscripts slip into “inverse paragraphs”: instead of indentation of the first line, lines under the first line are indented. This accounts in part for many of the short—and one-sentence—paragraphs; though at times I have created paragraphs. Then there are the dreaded outlines and infinitesimal marginal notes.
McGill uses different translations of scripture, the King James Version (identified in the text as KJV), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and, quite often, The New English Bible (NEB). Sometimes there seems to be no exact fit, and no translation is designated. The version may well be MM = McGill’s Memory. When a text is indicated but not quoted by McGill, the RSV is used—unless McGill’s words operate off of another translation.
David Cain
University of Mary Washington
1 Sermon 17, p. 141. McGill is referring to the so-called parable of the good Samaritan: “Tonight we will concentrate on one parable of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is not only an interesting story, but it has some real surprises.” I apply his phrase to his sermons. References to McGill’s sermons are hereafter in text: (Sermon #, p. #).
2 Arthur C. McGill, The Celebration of Flesh: Poetry in Christian Life (New York: Association, 1964) 14; see 187–90, “Against Spiritual Pride.”
3 William F. Lynch, SJ, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970) 136.
4 Ibid., 85, 87.
5 A temptation is to look about from “today” and to sound a myopic or at least immediate alarm. But when does “temptation” become obligation?
6 Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1983) 54.
7 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957) 28–50.
8 Ibid., 30, 32.
9 Ibid., 33, 37, 39.
10 Ibid., 43.
11 See David Cain, “Arthur McGill: A Memoir,” Harvard Theological Review 77 (1984) esp. 106.
12 James Breech grasps this: “This view of love which tolerates everything and which does not see things as they are is rooted in the contemporary hatred of actuality, in resentment”—James Breech, The Silence of Jesus: The Authentic Voice of the Historical Man (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 206. See 13–18. With the help of Max Scheler, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others, this fine book is pervaded with McGillian perception, as Breech’s “Acknowledgments” acknowledge (ix).
13 See The Celebration of Flesh.
14 McGill invites us to “[c]onsider our attitude toward romantic love. According to the popular songs [do they render “our” attitude?], the final truth about love is that it will leave us. However real it may be now, the day will come when we will ‘wonder who’s kissing her now . . .’ . . .” See McGill, “Reason in a Violent World” in Wesleyan University Alumni-Faculty Seminar, The Distrust of Reason (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, June, 1959), 43.
15 Johannes Climacus (Søren Kierkegaard), Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, I, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 452, Kierkegaard’s Writings, XII.1, translation altered. The Hongs translate, “To be in existence is always somewhat troublesome . . .” See also Johannes Climacus (Søren Kierkegaard), Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 404: “For to be in existence is always a somewhat embarrassing situation . . .” ).
16 C. FitzSimons Allison, Guilt, Anger, and God: The Patterns of Our Discontents (New York: Seabury, 1972), 88.
17 See Cain, “Arthur McGill: A Memoir,” 100–101.
18 For example, “At the present moment [ca. 1975] witchcraft and Satanism are enjoying a mild popularity in the United States. It seems to me that these are simply faddish archaisms, and as such they will not concern me here,” “Structures of Inhumanity” in Alan M. Olson, ed., Disguises of the Demonic: Contemporary Perspectives on the Power of Evil (New York: Association, 1975), 116. Or: “Let me begin with some preliminary remarks which will indicate certain directions that I will not follow,” “Human Suffering and the Passion of Christ” in Flavian Dougherty, CP, ed., The Meaning of Human Suffering (New York: Human Sciences, 1982), 159.
19 Stringfellow is working with the book of Revelation: “If America is Babylon, and Babylon is not Jerusalem—confounding what, all along, so many Americans have been told or taught and have believed—is there any American hope?
“The categorical answer is no.” William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973; reprinted, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 155.
After
