In the autumn of 1997, Jamie Howison invited Robert Farrar Capon to speak at St. John’s College in Winnipeg, where Howison was then serving as the college chaplain. A pair of brilliant lectures and a lovely dinner prepared by the College chef were followed by late evening drinks at the hotel where Robert and Valerie Capon were staying. Bidding adieu for the night, Capon remarked, “If anything ever brings you to New York, you should come out to Shelter Island and look us up.” Three years later, Howison did just that, and then arranged a return visit in the winter of 2004, bringing with him a tape recorder and as many questions as Capon could handle.
(For part one, click here, and for part two, click here, and for part three, click here)
On Religion, Ritual and Sacrament:
Christianity is not a religion. It is the proclamation, by grace, of the end of religion. However, because precisely it is the proclamation of the end of religion, it uses the forms of religion to make perpetually clear to us what it is the end of. There is no question that this is all religious paraphernalia. It’s all religious stock. The liturgy, words, singing, standing, kneeling, sitting, genuflecting, all that stuff — it’s all religious behavior, but it’s all transformed by grace into the reminder that none of this works, as such. We are delivered from falling into the trap of thinking that it works as such. But it is a trap. We begin to think that because we have done these things, God owes us one. Witness our freedom from serious religion.
Christianity and Humor:
This is fun religion. Especially Holy Week. Holy Week is a huge joke. First of all, you get to Palm Sunday and its three cheers and triumphal procession, and then he goes in and whacks the temple apart. And then clouds darken, and Judas betrays him, and then Thursday, and there’s this dark supper, and then he goes out and he prays, and the passion and the agony in the garden, and then the trial before the Sanhedrin and the trial before Pilate, and the crucifixion, and oh it’s all gone to hell and everything else … and then three days later, wow! It was joke. Christ catches the devil by baiting the hook of the cross with his death, and the devil bites on the bait, and it turns out to be fake bait. It’s a rubber duck.
On Reading the Psalms
I read the Psalms like mad. And I’ve had all the reactions everyone’s had to the Psalms: glorious, problematical, difficult, nasty and snotty and vengeful and just weird. And also, totally applicable to me at this point. “Forsake me not in my old age.” Like I said before … “my God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Christ is in all men; his passion is in all passions; his failure is in all failures; his success is in all success.
On the Church:
It’s family. Church is a family, not a prize commission. In 40 years, you can sit around and joke about what Irving did with his youth. Well, that’s Irving. May he rest in peace; his death solves all his problems, unless he insists. He goes home in Jesus unless he insists on not picking up a glass and toasting the host. And that’s hell. In the nail hole in the left hand of Jesus. They are at the party. They are in the hand of the guy, the host, who’s passing out the hors d’oeuvres and the drinks. They won’t see it. He’s got them in the nail hole. They can come out and run around and jump up and down and scream, yell and sing. But they don’t. They stay there. But Jesus has them in there, reconciled. Therefore, all their friends — this solves the problem of what you do with all your damn relatives — literally damn relatives — you look in and see them restored as Jesus has them and as they won’t see themselves. And you can say, “gee, he’s done nice things for them.” Let’s pray for them. Encourage them, and someday maybe they’ll say, “Oh nuts, this is ridiculous, I give up.” That’s all you have to do. Give up, surrender. It is hilariously good news, cheerfully good news. It is.
Translating the Psalms:
For large number of years, I read the Psalms in the vulgate. Now the vulgate is not a totally satisfactory translation, but it also is a marvelous translation in many ways. Jerome is a genius. It’s lovely stuff. He’s very close to the Hebrew, when he doesn’t miss it completely. But he has the knack of translating everything — the words, the images, not telling you the meaning of anything, but giving you the strange stuff. Not dressing it up. All modern translators, they temper things and they adjust things.
On Daily Eucharist:
[For his daily eucharist] We sit here. I use the shortest rite possible, from the 1979 prayer book. We do the lessons from the office. Then we do the offertory, and then it begins with the Sanctus, and so on. I usually read from the Greek, and Valerie reads the Old Testament. King James, right now. RSV next. NRSV, hmmm. Those are the only ones I’ve paid much attention to.
Bible Translation:
Leave the images in, and not explain what they mean. Explanation is not the province of the translator; it’s the province of the expositor and the preacher. You can make a decision in advance to stay as close as possible to the original awkwardness.
Control and the Cross of Christ:
There’s a most wonderful prayer at the end of the Good Friday liturgy. You know it. At the end, right at the end. This is the last gasp on Good Friday. “O God of unchangeable power and eternal life, look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things that had grown old are being made new, that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made.” Great prayer. That’s the framing for the veneration of the cross. Because you know where it’s going. It’s all in control. Out of control is God’s way of control.
God and Time:
God is the eternal contemporary of every moment in time.
On Use of Prayers That Bid God to Come:
It is perfectly legitimate. Veni creator spiritus. You don’t have to tell him what to do, but ‘come’ is a good word. To remind us that we’re talking about a real meeting, because we can’t see it, so consequentially we say ‘come.’
On W.H. Auden:
I was with Auden on the Psalter Commission when he was on it for a while. He tired pretty quick … he didn’t work after the cocktail hour. I saw him at evening prayer one day at the General Seminary chapel, and he looked like a bum. I saw him from behind, and he had a raggedy overcoat, creased face. He was a very handsome young man. Stravinsky once said of Auden’s creased face, “soon we shall have to spread him out to see who it is.”
On Grace:
Grace is good news, and everything else is not.
On the Church and Judgment:
The church has had a 2,000-year love affair with excommunication. The church is a body, it is the body of Christ, and the eye cannot excommunicate the foot.
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I’m not in the club; who is Irving?