Purity and the Holy Grail

Tom and I were talking about purity and its discontents a while ago in a post on theology. I want to talk about it a little more, in terms of the Quest for the Holy Grail and then in terms of practical societies. The quest for purity seems like a good ethical norm at first, but it reliably leads even very good men to destruction -- and normal men to truly terrible things. 

I'm starting with the Arthurian fiction because that's what I want to think and talk about today, much more than I want to think or talk about the practical societies of today. The Arthurian vision is one that inspired me for much of my life, adding beauty and meaning to existence. The knights of the Round Table were recognizably human, motivated by love and lust, family and kinship bonds that occasionally contested with their bonds of political loyalty or honor, virtues and vices. Yet they were recognizably good men, too, in spite of their flaws. Their society led men to strive for what was good and just, and to sacrifice of themselves to realize that kind of goodness and justice that was capable of being realized in the world. Their adventures nearly always began with an appeal from someone who had been wronged, and involved them striving and sacrificing to bring about a just ending to the adventure. 

So when they were granted a vision of the Holy Grail, most of these knights decided to go on that adventure too. It was a divine vision, one that called them to achieve the very highest things, things that could only be achieved through actual human perfection. As a consequence, the Round Table was destroyed, most of the knights killed or savaged; in Malory the few who proved good enough all died, one of them because he prayed to God to be allowed to die to avoid having to return to the impure world. In other versions Perceval achieves the Grail, but alone and only through tremendous suffering (the name per ce val seems to mean 'through the valley,' i.e. the famous one from the 23rd Psalm). Sometimes he dies afterwards, too.

In later literature partly inspired by all this, Fritz Leiber has a wizard tell his heroes: 

"Never and forever are neither for men/
You'll be returning again and again."

So too perfection and actual purity, which belong in Christian theology only to God. Like "never" and "forever," these perfections exist in the realm of ideas rather than in the real world. The character of Galahad in Malory is a kind of blasphemy because he is an imagination of what Lancelot might have been like if he had been morally perfect. Galahad is Lancelot's son, conceived ironically out of wedlock; but the king's daughter who was Galahad's mother tricked Lancelot by enchantment into thinking she was Guinevere. Now that means that Lancelot didn't conceive his son while intending to commit the sin that he was committing, only a different sin of which he wasn't actually guilty (i.e. adultery with Guinevere); and somehow this is as close as Lancelot can get to a blameless union. His son, who descends on his mother Elaine's side from the lineage, King Pelles', that is associated with the Grail's keeping, is therefore allowed to be perfect. Perceval, more human, does not end up having as good a time in search of the Grail.

Yet all these sinful knights had been having a wonderful time up until this quest for perfection. They went from success to success in their wars, until no more wars needed to be fought. Then they had joyous tournaments and feasts, punctuated by occasional and successful quests for practical justice. The striving appropriate to the human condition -- as opposed to the devotion to true metaphysical perfection that is impossible for men -- brought about Aristotelian flourishing, eudaimonia, happiness.

Tom and I were talking about all that in terms of religious sects' attachment to the idea of purity and perfection, which I think goes overboard in similarly destructive ways. Chesterton talks about having a practical set of guards to keep us from the terrible consequences outside.

“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.” (Orthodoxy)

The walls aren't just rules about what you should do, but ways of dealing with the fact that you do wrong. Confession as a sacrament is part of the wall, because it creates a protection for some of the 'frantic play' -- play that can be turned to the good even if it is itself impure, as Lancelot's intended adultery and the lady Elaine's intended deception and trapping Lancelot into sex and fatherhood produced a good man and knight. If we trust in the walls and in the providence of God, we don't have to worry as much about purity; and the practical outcomes are better. A happy, flourishing society can exist that is imperfect as we are imperfect, but that is good as we can be good. 

Questing for perfection beyond such borders reliably leads to destruction because no one is pure. No one can be pure. One might say that it is submission to God to accept that fact about yourself, as much as to accept it about everyone else: and if one is to accept it about everyone else, that entails forgiving everything -- in other words, it entails one of the harder commandments. Notice also, however, that it aligns with Epictetus' teaching on forgiveness from Enchiridion V: "It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself."

So for literature and the practice of religion and morality. The churches that seek perfection fragment over a straw; they find not fellowship but discord and disruption. 

This all applies a fortiori to physical perfections, however, where seeking purity has reliably led to awful things. When it is applied to things like perfection of lineage or heritage, of race or ethnicity, there is no purity that can satisfy. Nor can even the greatest athlete achieve perfection, though they can destroy a very excellent body by trying too hard for it. As the saying goes, every corpse on Everest was once a highly motivated individual.