Enzimas

James is not a theologian, of course. However, doctrine such as original sin, the fall of humanity, and evil recurrently inform her fictional writing. They are boldly evident in her novels’ titles and also present, although sometimes more subtly, throughout her plots. These themes are frequently linked to disordered love. In order to gain a better understanding of how these themes impact her writing and establish her motives for murder, it would be helpful to look at Augustine’s understanding of disordered love. Augustine presented the idea of disordered love, or “cupiditas,” in his Confessions. 214 He described it as a selfish love which is directed towards the self or wrongly directed towards others. David Naugle, in his book Reordered Love, Reordered Lives, claims that disordered love eventually leads to criminal behavior. He asserts that:

Crimes…will be necessary to get the thing or person we want. We may attack a human being or institution we perceive as a threat in order to protect what we already have and love. We may physically harm or even murder an enemy out of revenge…all for the sake of validating the self…. The disorder of crime…may seem necessary to get what we love in order to find peace and be happy.”215

James’ novels support Naugle’s conclusion that disordered love can lead to disordered lives which can result in chaos, crime, and murder. She is fascinated by the effects of disordered love and the way in which it contaminates every aspect of

214 _{In Confessions and The City of God, Augustine discusses the struggle between the two wills. In} book two and book eight of his Confessions, Augustine contrasts rightly ordered love with wrongly ordered love. Rightly ordered love, or “caritas,” directs love towards God in a selfless way and gives us the desire to be like God. Love for God should always be first in the ordering. Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. F. J. Sheed (London: Sheed & Ward, 1943), 27, 155; and St. Augustine, The City of God, trans. and ed. Marcus Dods (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1948).

215 _{David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing} Company, 2008): 82.

community, family, faith, and religion. It is this kind of love that James finds a compelling subject for murder.

James not only regards disordered love as a theme for the tragic motives for violence and death within her stories but estrangement, isolation, and exclusion are also themes that resonant throughout her novels. Paul Tillich, the twentieth-century German-American theologian, writes about the demoralizing effects on the soul that estrangement causes. He declares that “man finds himself, together with his world, in existential estrangement, unbelief, hubris, and concupiscence.” This estrangement contradicts man’s essential being, which is intended for good, and drives him towards self-destruction.216

Tillich asserts that the self-destructive implications of humanity’s condition of estrangement result in personal guilt and tragedy. “Estrangement cannot replace sin…. Man’s predicament is estrangement, but his estrangement is sin. It is not a state of things, like the laws of nature, but a matter of both personal freedom and universal destiny.”217 James is intrigued by the implications of humanity’s condition of estrangement and the sinful acts that ultimately result from it. What compels any human to commit murder? Given the same temptation, might we commit the same crime?218

In his book, Theology and Culture, Paul Tillich addresses the issue of morality. In the chapter, “Moralisms and Morality: Theonomous Ethics,” Tillich challenges readers to think about morals and morality from a theological perspective. “The moral imperative expresses itself in laws which are supposed to be just,” he claims. “Every system of moral commandments is, at the same time, the basis for the system of laws…. Justice, in Aristotle, is determined by proportionality. Everybody

216 _{Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957): 59-60.} 217 _{Tillich, Systematic Theology II, 46.}

gets what he deserves according to quantitative measurements.” This is not true for Christianity. “Justice, in the Old Testament, is the activity of God toward the fulfillment of his promises. And justice, in the New Testament, is the unity of judgment and forgiveness. Justification by grace is the highest form of divine justice…. In other words: Justice is fulfilled in love.”219

Susan Rowland, in her chapter entitled “The Horror of Modernity and the Utopian Sublime: Gothic Villainy in P.D. James and Ruth Rendell,” from the book

The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film, asserts that James writes reactionary Gothic novels which embody the horror of the secular modernity. To support her claim, Rowland states that societies “abandon the manifesting of moral order though traditional Christianity” because through this model, they are unable to secure justice. Rowland’s evidence for the failure of justice is the inability of the detective to re-solve past atrocities. She cites Shroud for a Nightingale as an example of how “gothic aesthetic form challenges the potential of the genre to heal social order. In Shroud for a Nightingale, Rowland claims that Dalgliesh acts as a “sign of the absence of God.”220 _{However, I must oppose Rowland in this regard. It seems}

evident that that Dalgliesh acts as both the agent of grace and love. Both of these characteristics are ones that God extends to humanity through humanity. This is evident in the opportunity that Dalgliesh gives the murderer to confess and be forgiven.

219 _{Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press,} 1959): 143-144.

220 _{Susan Rowland, ““The Horror of the Modernity and the Utopian Sublime: Gothic Villainy in P.D.} James and Ruth Rendell,” in The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film, eds. by Stacy Gillis and Philippa Gates (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2001): 135.

James has often been described as a writer deeply concerned with the morals and conditions of her society.221 She is not, however, merely a secularly moralizing writer but accesses the deeper Christian morality that Tillich describes in Theology for Culture. Recognizing that we live in a “terribly fragmented and secularized social world,”222 James understands that the satisfying justice that Tillich refers to is justification by grace. Regarding the confessing Christian author’s role in this “fragmented and secularized world,” Ralph Wood says:

This religious and political calamity has been compounded by the widespread belief that the natural order itself is the product of chance and perhaps of chaos. How can the novelist have moral and religious responsibilities in such a shattered world—a world having no immutable value system, [no] accepted view of the universe and man’s place in it, [no] set of ethical rules of conduct to which all right-minded people conform?223

James bears a responsibility as a writer. She accepts this burden when she began writing about the very issues that plague her society. By writing about disordered love, estrangement, and exclusion, James also becomes responsible for writing about the other side; that is grace, love, acceptance, and inclusion. James is quite capable of presenting the corrupting power and results of the evil that she portrays, but she fails to deliver a message of redemption with the same resolve. It is much easier to write about evil, James claims. She confesses “regretfully, that evil is much easier to depict than good…Goodness, by contrast, is enormously difficult to give vibrant fictional life. Precisely because it is quiet and undramatic…charity is hard to make artistically compelling.”224 James’s aim is simple: to show evil and its

221 _{“James’s novels do not offer pleasing literary escapes into unreality. They wrestle, on the contrary,} with the very largest moral and social questions: abortion, euthanasia, environmental destruction, terrorism, multiculturalism, homosexuality, etc.” Ralph C. Wood, “P.D. James and the Mystery of Iniquity,” 350.

222 _{Wood, “Deep Mysteries,” 960.} 223 _Ibid.

contaminating effects.225 _{However, the reader cannot help but wonder—does the}

author not bear some responsibility, as a public Christian figure and as one who writes novels that are of Christian significance, to show the other side of evil as well?

Despite her failure to adequately portray the solution to the problem of evil and estrangement, James remains a recognized Christian writer and public figure. She accepted an Order of the British Empire in 1983226 _{and has received numerous honors}

and achievements in writing, civil service, government, professional health, and contributions to the arts. James has even been called “our greatest neo-Augustinian Theologian” by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.227 Although this title is deserved due to her ability to adeptly speak and write about theological issues, particularly in novels like The Children of Men, James’s neo-Augustinian theology is usually expressed through her literary subtlety. Her ability to provoke Christian thought and to provide insight into the fallen and estranged nature of humanity demands a careful reading through a theological lens.

5.3 A Traditional Model of Detective Fiction Re-examined: