Loving the Creation, Loving the Creator: Dorothy L. Sayers's Theology of Work

Central to Sayers's theology is the claim that we are called to be co-creators with God. Therefore, work must be understood as a participation in the reign of God and the value of our work defined by the quality of the product. To think of work solely as something that we do to survive or obtain wealth is to misconstrue our calling, overlook the importance of Christ's redemptive work, and commit ourselves to the destructive, materialist ethics of capitalism and socialism.

"It may well seem to you-as it does to some of my acquaintances-that I have a sort of obsession about this business of the right attitude to work";1 thus says Dorothy L. Sayers in her essay entitled, "Why Work?" From our standpoint, this statement may seem a little curious. Its strangeness does not reside in any lack of evidence of Sayers s obsession, which appears in many of her novels, plays, essays, and speeches. Instead, the statement seems odd because we (a "we" which includes her friends, as well as her reading public) seem to have paid remarkably little attention to her revolutionary doctrine of work and its implications.2

Sayers's approach to the question of work differs profoundly from those most common in the modern and postmodern worlds. She focuses upon the end (telos) of work, arguing that the purpose of work must be found in the value of its product, which must be of such quality that it glorifies God. As creators, people must make themselves subservient to the work for which they are best suited, in order to bring into being that which they were created to create. This way of thinking changes both the theological meaning of work and its social ordering. Sayers shifts discussion from a focus upon the value of labor to an emphasis upon participation in the divine work of creation and redemption.

Christian theology, insofar as it has adverted to the issue of work, has tended to use the language of "vocation." Martin Luther, whose theology grounds the most common understanding of vocation in Western theology, thought highly of eveiyday working tasks and regarded them as tasks done unto the Lord, though not in any sense salvific.3 However, he had little to say about the quality of work; the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of any particular sort of task was not relevant to his concerns (which had to do with opposing the medieval priority of the monastic life over all other forms of activity).4 The immediate result, as Miroslav Volf points out, is that Luther was "indifferent toward alienation."5 The long-term result is to be found in the tradition of Western thought (Calvinist and non-Calvinist) chronicled by Paul Marshall, according to which vocation is to be understood as "a kind of life imposed on man."6 Work is a requirement and something which we do in order to live. It is a job to which we are assigned. Our way of working may serve as evidence of our faith or be the context in which we live our faith, but it lias no Christian value in itself.

Partly as a result, the focus of Western Christians from a variety of theological traditions has been on improving the conditions of human labor, rather than generating new understandings of work. The anti-slavery movement and Christian socialism, Roman Catholic social teaching and the Protestant social gospel have all combined to focus attention on the need to treat workers appropriately. However, remarkably little effort has been made at thinking about work, as such, in a way which gives to it redemptive value and accounts for the possibility that some tasks which are not actually sinful may yet be dehumanizing.7

Sayers has a rather different idea of how work ought to be addressed theologically. She begins at the end, with the product of work. In "Why Work?," Sayers points out that one of the major lessons of wartime is that we must "estimate work not by the money it brings to the producer, but by the worth of the thing that is made" (p. 57). This is the heart of Sayers s theology of work. Though she identifies it in this and other explicit statements on work, her viewpoint is best investigated in The Zeal of Thy House, a play.

The Zeal of Thy House is an extended development and investigation of the doctrine of the primacy of the product and its worth. It is a historical play about the building of Canterbury Cathedral, with William of Sens (architect and chief builder of much of the cathedral)8 as its central character. The question of how far the quality of the eventual product, the cathedral, will be permitted to dominate the process of its construction is the point upon which the plot turns.

The first critical issue is the choice of architect; the play opens with the monks of the cathedral chapter discussing the matter. Ultimately, William is chosen as the architect because he has the greatest vision for the building. This is cause for some surprise. William is not from the area and lacks evidence of fine, Christian character, both of which are the great strengths of one of his competitors. Moreover, Williams project will prove to be much more expensive than the reconstruction planned by another opponent (pp. 15-35). William is aided by the monks' commitment to do that which will give the most glory to God (as well as by the good fortune to have been named by one monk who was awakened solely for the vote-Sayers is conscious of both human frailty and the power of happenstance) (pp. 30-35).