The Reforming Truths of Christmas

I n 1944, the English poet W. H. Auden published his Christmas oratorio, “For the Time Being.” The sprawling work was never fully set to music. Yet, it has become a classic work read by many each Advent and Christmas. It tells a tale that’s historical, metaphysical, political, and spiritual — one that’s singularly focused on the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Auden’s oratorio includes a meditation from the Biblical character Simeon. We know him from Luke’s Gospel: Simeon sees the baby Jesus in the temple, fulfilling God’s promise to him that he’d witness the Messiah before dying.

Auden’s Simeon says much more than what’s provided in the Gospel narrative. It provides a much-needed perspective on contemporary times, tempering our fears and reforming our misconceptions in the light of Christ’s birth.

Much of our present panic stems from the exaggerated magnitude we ascribe to political events. We increasingly relish in attributing world-changing, epoch-making significance to elections, speeches, Supreme Court decisions, and even tweets. Simeon’s message? “By the event of this birth, the true significance of all other events is defined.” Even the greatest of our political or historical occurrences pale in comparison to that birth. As Auden’s Simeon elaborates, this birth was the necessary event, not the others. It moved the truest, most fundamental narrative of world history inexorably forward — that stunning migration from human Fall to sacrificial redemption to eternal glorification. All these other moments, seemingly of consequence, obtain their entire eternal meaning as mere footnotes to this event.

Our political idolatry and hatred come from turning our policies into dogmas and our affiliations into church memberships. We designate saints and demons, elect and damned, through adoration or cancelation. But Auden’s Simeon continues that “by the existence of this Child, the proper value of all other existences is given.” Making our own gods, declaring saved and sinner, betrays the arrogance we inherited from our first parents — the gall to try and rule as if we ourselves were Divine. Yet in this Child, the worth of all humanity is affirmed. If the Divine can unite with the human, then the latter is not without hope nor doomed to ultimate defeat.

In reforming the perception of human value, Auden’s Simeon doesn’t simply affirm humanity. Simeon reminds us that “all men are without merit.” Our current politics reveal our depravity, especially in what we call virtue and vice, justice and injustice. We live in an age that confuses brashness for courage, blindness for fortitude, and hatred for loyalty. Therefore, the incarnation cannot bring affirmation alone.

Ultimately, the Son’s incarnation tells us that our highest worth comes not in what we do but in what He did, not in who we are but in what He is for us. Simeon tells it like this: “our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present.” Grace cannot replace virtue, but it does point to its only perfect manifestation: away from us and to our Savior. Grace summons us to surrender first, not fight; to rest first, not strive. Such knowledge holds radical implications for our politics if only we would stare its truth in the face. Such knowledge forms essential grounding for the claim that all men are created equal, with inherent dignity. Such truth tells us that justice is not the last word, even among men. Grace is. Mercy is. And, thus, political community among fallible persons is possible.

Finally, Auden’s Simeon teaches us a different view of virtue: For him, mercy and grace are not just spiritual but political, and though they are in some sense primary, that doesn’t eliminate the good or make political effort pointless. To the contrary, through the truths communicated by Christ’s birth, we can steer from the “course of History” that is “predictable,” namely where “all men love themselves.” This self-love is at the heart of our ills; the root of our vices is that we think good is in us and thus wrongly put praise in others. Instead, because of Christ, we can live against the fallen norm. We can live more wholly “in the degree to which each man loves God and through Him his neighbor.” Jesus would say this life of loving God and fellow man fulfills the Law and thus comprehends justice. Justice done rightly stems from, and fulfills, the call to love. It’s in the noble pursuit of this loving justice that we may realize one of the greatest ends of politics.

Auden’s Simeon makes this pursuit one that’s grounded not only in love, but humility. We live in times when humility is a vice and bombast a virtue. Our scientific age, moreover, sees in human knowledge salvation from all ills — both of ignorance and depravity. By this Christmas act, however, “Reason is redeemed from incestuous fixation on her own Logic.” We see that the highest Sovereign, the greatest Lawgiver, the most eminent Judge, is not entirely explainable by human reason. The incarnation itself, like the Trinity of one God in three persons in which it participates, is beyond our fallen and finite capacities. But in that truth, we see the best affirmation of reason. God is not contrary to reason but its Originator and most perfect example. And in Christ’s birth, we see this infinite God partake of the finite, giving us hope in our efforts but also rest in His accomplishment.

So, this Christmas, may we take to mind and heart Auden’s Simeon. We need not fear. We need not languish in prophecies of our country’s doom. Auden, in his own voice, says toward the oratorio’s conclusion that “God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.” Let us see how that birth 2,000 years ago remade our world then and does so evermore, even today. We measure our men by this child, our rulers by this (seemingly) feeble one, our thrones by His manger.