God’s diversion into the devil’s territory

According to Flannery O’Connor, the theme of her prose is ‘the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.’ Taking his cue from this claim, the author reconstructs in theological terms the relationship between grace and human nature in O’Connor’s stories. The sharp contrast between the divine and the human, and the violence of the encounters between these two realms of existence has led some scholars to claim that O’Connor’s religious thought owes much more to the Southern Protestant tradition than the Catholic Church’s theology. The author attempts first to show what is specific to the Protestant approach to the relationship between human nature and grace, and then to consider whether such an approach can be found in O’Connor’s stories. The main conclusion is negative; although one can hardly accuse her of anthropological optimism, in her stories she presents a vision far removed from Lutheran pessimism. Among the typically ‘Catholic’ features of her worldview have been highlighted: her faith in a finite, material, imperfect reality – especially in the human body, which becomes a place of epiphany.