Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

ideas, undertaken in faith that such experiences do exist and such ideas do refer to realities beyond themselves. This makes theology a more specialized activity. If you are already offended by what I have said, you’ll prefer theology. But there may still be a God never dreamed of in your theology, and He (or She, or It) may be laughing at you. On the far side of theology, you don’t know very much; even Dr. bloody Bronowski doesn’t know very much.32

That “far side” is where philosophical consideration of God finds itself after a couple of World Wars and a Cold War. Thus, where the faith can no longer be assumed, one moves past theology into philosophy. While we might be tempted to build an “alternative theology” based upon the Pythonic revelation, indeed, sorely tempted (forgive me Brian), instead we need to grasp how the Pythons enter the philosophical world precisely on the assumption that (the old) God is dead, or at least might be (I mean, maybe he’s not dead yet, but will be any moment). At the end of the infamous passage quoted above, Nietzsche’s madman says “I have come too early. My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way.”33 If his time was not yet in 1882, certainly by 1979 (when Monty Python’s Life of Brian was filmed) the days had been accomplished. The Pythons speak of God and all this hilarity is not only tolerated, it drowns out the rage of those “serious” Christians.

Yet, laughing at God is dicey business any time. As I said, I’m right with Brian, and I am here to help you get right; I think it may be too late for Nietzsche. Even the Mormons, with their wise doctrine of salvation for the dead, show no interest in reclamation of the retiring little guy with the migraine that wouldn’t quit. In some ways, however, Nietzsche’s seriousness touches upon a characteristic of all that is comic. We can use it here.

So Brian Cohen (Maximus) stands continually before new incarnations of the same crowd as Nietzsche’s madman, asking the same sorts of questions. But Brian’s pathos is different from the madman’s; Brian has the sincerity of the divine idiot.34 Recall the following exchange, when Brian finds himself obliged to prophesy:

Brian: Don’t you, eh, pass judgment on other people, or you might get judged yourself.

Colin: What?

Brian: I said, ‘Don’t pass judgment on other people, or else you might get judged, too.’

Colin: Who, me?

Brian: Yes.

Colin: Oh. Ooh. Thank you very much.

Brian: Well, not just you. All of you. . . . Yes. Consider the lilies . . . in the field.

Elsie: Consider the lilies?

Brian: Uh, well, the birds, then.

Eddie: What birds?

Brian: Any birds.

Eddie: Why?

Brian: Well, have they got jobs?

Eddie: Who?

Brian: The birds.

Eddie: Have the birds got jobs?!

Frank: What’s the matter with him?

Arthur: He says the birds are scrounging.

Brian: Oh, uhh, no, the point is the birds. They do all right. Don’t they?

Frank: Well, good luck to ’em.

Eddie: Yeah. They’re very pretty.

Brian: Okay, and you’re much more important than they are, right? So, what are you worrying about? There you are. See?

Eddie: I’m worrying about what you have got against birds. Brian: I haven’t got anything against the birds. Consider the lilies.

Arthur: He’s having a go at the flowers now.35

All one needs is a literal-minded group who neither believes nor disbelieves, asking obvious questions. Religious sincerity crumbles. The same could be done to any preacher in his pulpit anywhere, but none will do it. Yet when fire-and-brimstone evangelists ply their trade on college campuses, sometimes this scene is replayed. More often the listeners are beset with the countervailing pathos, opposing the pathos of the evangelist. Throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, detachment from pathos pushes the plot and generates the humor. The story depends not upon mocking God, Jesus, or even Brian, but upon holding oneself at a distance, not allowing the countervailing pathos of opposition to take hold—Nietzsche called this countervailing pathos ressentiment.36 And how is the latter pathos avoided? One can rise above it, as would an Übermensch, but that isn’t funny; or one can idiotically fall below this dialectic, a sort of divine Untermensch. Brian doesn’t claim to know anything. He would be glad to, but he doesn’t. He is a well-meaning moral idiot, just like nearly everyone else. When questioned, he shifts ground and finally gives up, like anyone with common sense.

The Plumage Don’t Enter into It

Thus, the death of God is not simply the end of a certain concept of God, nor of the power of that concept to fill us with fear. The death of God is the onset of a detachment from the entire question of God, and common sense telling us that no one actually has the answers to questions like “is there a God?” Those who possess such detachment by native temperament find Pythonic religious humor pleasing, while those who do not find it troubling, offensive, or even blasphemous. Common-sense detachment from impossible questions leads us to tend our mortal souls, leaving the immortal soul, if there is one, to its own fortunes.

Today we need not be as upset about all this as Nietzsche. He thought that killing off this old God means humans would have to bear God’s burden—and would be unequal to the task. But I think we are probably up to the chore, which is part of the revelation I received when I asked Brian into my heart. Yet there really is a “moment of decision” Brian puts to his hearers: “shall I shun this, be offended by this, condemn this?” If the still small voice in the back of your brain says, as mine did: “no, if there is a God, He’s surely enjoying this too, and if not, bugger Him,” then you are open to salvation of the sort Brian brings. Of course, this is salvation from the pathos of religious authorities who would