Disputed Questions was published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in 1960. The title borrows from the medieval scholastic tradition of “disputed questions” — formal academic debates on unresolved theological problems — but Merton’s disputes are with modernity itself: with its assumptions about progress, its reduction of the person to function, its inability to contemplate.
The most significant essays concern Boris Pasternak (Merton had corresponded with him and was deeply affected by Doctor Zhivago and the Pasternak affair), the nature of sincerity in an age of performance, the relationship between contemplation and action, and the crisis facing Christianity in a secular age. Merton argues that Christianity’s failure is not intellectual (it has answers to modernity’s questions) but contemplative — the Church has forgotten how to pray and therefore has nothing distinctive to offer.
The essay on Pasternak is particularly revealing: Merton recognizes in the Russian novelist a kindred spirit — a man who insisted on the primacy of the personal, the poetic, and the spiritual against a totalitarian system that denied all three. The parallel between Soviet atheism and Western materialism is implicit throughout: both systems, in Merton’s analysis, reduce the human person to a function of economics.
Collecting Disputed Questions
First edition (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1960): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $50–$150
- Very good: $20–$50
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Faith and Culture
Disputed Questions (1960) collects essays on figures and topics at the intersection of faith and culture — including Boris Pasternak (Merton was one of the first Western writers to champion Doctor Zhivago), the desert fathers, sincerity, and the relationship between Christianity and modernity. The essays show Merton’s range: he is as comfortable discussing Russian literature as patristic theology, and his literary sensibility gives these theological essays a freshness absent from most religious writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Merton a literary critic? Not formally, but his literary judgments were sharp and influential. His early championing of Pasternak and his insights into the poetry of Rilke, Dylan Thomas, and others demonstrate a sophisticated literary intelligence.