The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers

First published: 1941

Edition(s) used:The Mind of the Maker. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Critical analysis; spiritual treatise; theology

Core issue(s): Creation; God; Holy Spirit; Incarnation; Jesus Christ; the Trinity

Overview

In her preface, Dorothy Sayers clearly states what The Mind of the Maker is not. She argues that contemporary knowledge of Christian theology is appallingly limited and that true literacy among the supposedly literate is often absent; consequently, statements of fact are frequently confused with statements of belief. The Mind of the Maker is neither an articulation of Sayers’s beliefs nor an apology for the beliefs of others. Rather, it is an explanation of the Catholic Church’s statements about the nature of God. More specifically, she intends to explicate the doctrine of the Triune God as it has been stated in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.

In dealing with the divine mystery of the Trinity, Sayers approaches mystery in a different sense than that for which she is usually known. She addresses the differences between the mysteries of detective fiction and the mysteries of life at the end of the work.

In an introductory chapter, Sayers distinguishes between fact and opinion, argues that the Christian creeds purport to be statements of fact about the world and its creator, and indicates that she intends to explain these facts, then she turns to her subject in earnest.

Genesis begins by showing God as a maker. It then says he made man and woman in his image. Therefore, Sayers argues, one part of the image in which human beings were made is creativity: We are able to make things. Our understanding of God usually comes from the analogy of God as father, which does not tax the imagination too much. We imagine an ideal human father and compare his characteristics with God’s. When we want to understand God’s fatherly nature, we turn to fathers. However, when we want to understand his creative nature, we must turn to creative artists. By doing so, we gain the additional benefit of understanding more about the Trinity because the writer (the kind of creative artist that Sayers understands best, though the principles apply equally to other artists) is a trinity that reflects the creator of all things.

The Athanasian Creed states that there are three persons in the godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but only one godhead. The three persons are eternally co-equal; they are distinguishable but indivisible. No one of them can (or does) exist without the other two, yet there are not three gods but one God.

This trinity exists in the writer as well. In the ideal writer, the three persons are co-equal, but Sayers notes that the three are often out of balance (even if only slightly), and she addresses what happens when that is the case toward the end of the work. Sayers’s terminology for the trinity of the writer, drawn and expanded from the ending speech of her play The Zeal of Thy House, is Idea (corresponding to the Father), Energy (the Son), and Power (the Holy Spirit). All three are present, each contains the whole work, and each is the whole work.

The Idea is eternally present. It can be discovered only by the writer working it out in the Energy, but it is not limited by its working out in the Energy.

The Energy (also called the Activity) comprises everything the writer does in time and space to put the work together. Thinking about the work, making notes, and writing all fall into this category. The Energy is the Word made flesh. The Power is the communication of the work to others. As Sayers goes on to argue, this is both a social and an individual phenomenon. The writer becomes the reader of the work, and the response of the reader (whoever it may be) is part of the pattern.

These three can be distinguished, but they cannot be divided. The Idea can be revealed only through the Energy; the Energy finds its being in reflecting and working out the Idea; without the Power, neither the Energy nor the Idea could be communicated; and without the Energy and the Idea, the Power would have nothing to communicate.

The rest of the book examines this thesis while also incorporating other ideas from the creeds. For example, in “The Energy Revealed in Creation,” Sayers points out that the work of the creative artist can reveal how God can be both immanent and transcendent: William Shakespeare’s creative output is immanent, but Shakespeare himself is transcendent. In “Pentecost,” she explores the work of the Holy Spirit in its role of aiding belief. The reader, encountering a work at a given point in history, will point toward its Idea (which must be taken on faith) and its Energy (which is manifest in the book as read).

In “Free Will and Miracle,” Sayers offers some insight into her specific creative process in writing Gaudy Night and Murder Must Advertise. She attempts to demonstrate that forcing the characters to serve some authorial end will falsify them and the work itself, while giving them their independence will serve the needs of truth.

In the last two sections, Sayers applies the theory. Modern life is often presented as a series of problems to be solved and not as raw material with which we may work. However, the artist reveals that you need to cooperate with your materials rather than try to become the master of them. Life is not a mathematical problem or a detective story.

The popularity of the detective story lies in the ways in which it differs from life. Sayers offers a list of four ways in which the problems presented in detective fiction differ from the materials presented by life (which should not be called problems at all). Problems in detective fiction can always be solved; they can always be solved completely; they are solved on their own terms; and when they are solved, they are completely ended.

Life does not work in this way, Sayers says. Instead of seeking solutions, we should look for a creative synthesis of the materials brought to us. Only by creative activity can we turn the evils of the world to good.

Christian Themes

In addition to the deep meditation on the nature of the Trinity and on the role of each of its persons, the work calls Christians to think and to act on their having been created in the image of God, the creator of all things.

Sayers’s exploration of the origin of evil is one place where Sayers advises us to act creatively. The creation of the character Hamlet simultaneously created the category of not-Hamlet (potential evil). With David Garrick’s rewriting of Hamlet, anti-Hamlet (or positive evil) entered the world. By looking at Garrick as a problem to be solved, we may right an evil, but we have not redeemed it. The redemption of evil—turning it to positive good—can come about only through creativity. When we laugh at Garrick, parody him, or write him into an example of literary evil, we creatively redeem the evil he has done. This redemption must take place on the same terms as the evil, just as Christ’s redemption had to take place on the same terms as the evil created—those of experience in matter.

Sayers calls Christians to recognize that the reflection of the Trinity is contained in every man and woman. The Christian approach to work must reflect this; the Christian must love creation and recognize that work is creation.

Sources for Further Study

Downing, Crystal. Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Chapter 4, “Minding the Performance,” compares Sayers and Bakhtin on the incarnational theory of literary criticism and on their statements about the hero’s autonomous nature.

Kennedy, Catherine. The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990. Contains a chapter devoted to The Mind of the Maker. Kennedy provides analyses of Sayers’s work and of her contributions to the many fields with which she was associated.

Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1993. A more authoritative and scholarly biography than earlier ones, the work provides overview, detail, and analysis of Sayers’ life and work in almost equal measure.

Simmons, Laura K. Creed Without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005. A book that, in its approach to The Mind of the Maker, focuses on its views of work and of the incarnational nature of creativity.

Webster, Richard T. “The Mind of the Maker: Logical Construction, Creative Choice, and the Trinity.” In As Her Whimsey Took Her: Critical Essays on the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers, edited by Margaret P. Hannay. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979. An analysis of the philosophical strategies used in the work. Examines Sayers’s approach to metaphysics. Compares the view of Sayers with that of Saint Augustine.