Honor and Glory
Illustration of the day: “Icebergs on the Sea of Ymn” (for Marriage is Irrelevant)
Tonight’s topic is that most misunderstood of virtues, honor. I mentioned it back in the comments as a non-Christian value in The Lord of the Rings, with the example of Faramir holding himself bound by the statement that he wouldn’t take the Ring if he found it lying in a crossroads. RJ related this to “let your ‘yea’ be ‘yea’ and your ‘nay’ be ‘nay’” — in effect to be so honorable and truthful that a simple “yes” was as binding to them as any sworn oath. The biblical passage, however, is about simple honesty and in some quarters is even considered to be a prohibition against taking oaths.
Honor is not about honesty or courage or chastity or any of the other virtues which it encourages. Honor is about the actor, not the acts. Consider, for example, The Rape of Lucrece. (Read it now if you haven’t; there are spoilers coming.) (Don’t make me say I told you so…)
Lucretia pays the ultimate price; she chooses honor over life itself, because she values honor more than life. One can therefore be a martyr to honor. During the Spanish Inquisition, some of the accused refused to recant their heresy and thus save their lives, not because they still believed in the heresy but because they never had. Honor did not permit them to lie to save their lives. There was some question (among the genuine heretics) of whether these martyrs should be counted towards their God or condemned as suicides.
Honor means, among other things, doing good not because it is good but because you are good. It is an entirely irreligious motive. Similarly, C.G.J. Jacobi cites honor in explaining the purpose of mathematics: C’est pour l’honneur de l’esprit humain. A more religious mathematician should have said the glory of God rather than the honor of Man.
It’s getting late and I haven’t been all that coherent. Here’s the Asatru perspective on why honor and Christianity conflict. Asatru is a Nordic pagan revival religion, bringing us back to the (other) underlying spirit of The Lord of the Rings.