From the Ashes: The Tragicomedy of Justice and Mercy in a Providential History, Part 4

Justice

Justice is an unquestionable good. Every society throughout time has had laws and has had punishments for the transgression of those laws. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were commanded to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The transgressions of God's laws demands His justice and vengeance. Paul commands that the secular rulers be obeyed, “for he does not bear the sword in vain.” The great body of tragic work is based on the idea that the hero, though he may be pitied as a pawn of Fate, yet must bear the consequence of his flaw, because his flaw must be punished for justice to be satisfied.

It appeals to the human psyche in part because it is the most fundamental of laws, and also because it is the one law that is given consistent application in the world as we can see it. While mercy and altruism are rarely exemplified, and even more rarely rewarded in the present world, justice is done fairly consistently. At the very least, it is pursued and extolled more regularly than are the other virtues. One sees police cars and statues of Justice much more often than one sees busts of Mercy. It is natural to man, and normal to reality, and “revenge appeals to the dramatists because they are masters of reality, and not ideologues.” (Bentley, 328)

The Insufficiency of “Justice”

But too often does justice become an idol to be pursued for its own ends, or for selfish ends. Too often, the reflex for “justice can easily deteriorate into mere revenge, and drama into melodrama.”(Bentley, 326). There comes a point when justice is no longer justice, for “when men enjoy carrying out the lex talionis, something has been added to justice, namely cruelty.” (Bentley, 326) Justice cannot be anthropocentric; it cannot be accomplished merely by human laws or for human satisfaction, precisely because its source and reference point is not human, but divine. The ultimate end of Justice is not for each man to “get his own,” but to exalt the justice and preeminence of God.

There is definitely a place for justice, but it does not lie in man's power to accomplish by his own hand. Human justice by the lex talionis can only propagate violence via revenge; one act of “justice” requires another in order to atone for itself, and another to atone for that one, ad infinitum. “Leviticus is still ahead of the human race, which, in the theatre as elsewhere, is ever on the lookout for revenges.” (Bentley, 324) Justice is necessary in the context of ordained authority, indeed, this being the means which God has given to prevent a complete devolution into anarchy as individuals enact revenge upon each other, but this is an extension of God's enacting justice. But the traditional theme of justice in tragedy references justice's source no further than other individuals or the polis or capricious gods and goddesses, and thus relegates it to a vicious cycle from which there is only one escape: mercy, via forgiveness, and the redemption achieved thereby.


Mercy and Redemption
Mercy is unnatural and unnecessary. Man's natural instinct is to punish wrong-doing, not to forgive it—and there is nothing in justice that requires mercy to be granted. Indeed, by its very nature, mercy cannot be forced. That said, it is contingently necessary to the end of stopping the cycle of revenge among humans. On the other hand, there is nothing to say that this is itself a necessary end: all humans could destroy each other in self-enacted justice, and this would be no more than any of them deserved. God's justice would still be untouched were mercy never to be enacted either by Himself or by His creation.

However, God has, in His grace, decided to show mercy upon His creation: “...The LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.” (Genesis 8:21) Instead of immediately striking down every man in a world of rebels, He has granted us life and manifold blessings in the natural world: “for He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) Not only is this manifest in the physical blessings He sheds in His common grace, but also in the specific spiritual blessings He sheds upon His elect as He calls them to Himself, converting and sanctifying them. “There is a remnant according to the election of grace.” (Romans 11:5).

God thus enacts His eternal characteristic of mercy in space-time and gives it to humans. They are forgiven first at the ultimate level. This forgiveness then extends itself through them to others by virtue of the forgiveness and grace they've received; they are not in a superior position to those who have not received forgiveness and extend it as they realize they are given it. We must never conceive of mercy as in opposition to justice, and this previous point is how that position can be maintained: everyone is equally guilty and equally under the curse of Justice: “by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.” (Bentley, 330) But, because of the grace of God that has been given to us, we can see that we are not righteous, and we will come to a conflict less assured of our own rightness and more inclined to grant the same mercy that has been given us. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

This tragicomedy is better than, say Greek tragedy, precisely because of these elements of providence, and grace and mercy. It avoids the problem of irresponsibility in Greek drama, derived from the tension between the whims of the gods and the roots of justice lying in the polis. Because the source of justice is the same that condemns evil actions in accordance with the actor's innately evil character, there is no divine trickery here. The audience's sympathy for the character is thus not at the expense of God, but is rather derived from the gracious element whereby we realize that we are no better and are fully deserving of the same justice he deserves. Even if his story ends tragically, we can still sympathize, precisely because that could have been us, but for grace. “What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.” (Romans 9:22-23)

Conclusion

“Art that is rightly condemned as 'mere propaganda' is often just such a virtuous display of moral disapproval: 'superior,' simplistic, one-sided, gutless.” (Bentley, 344) Christian writers ought to reflect the ultimate reality of both justice and grace. We cannot succumb to the “free” creativity of the Romantics nor to the stark pessimism of the Realists and Absurdists in theatre. Both end in philosophical absurdities that undermine the meaning of the play. The classical tragedy comes too close to blaspheming God with “the gods give and the gods take away, cursed be the gods,” and the comedy is saccharine and unrealistic. Our world is a tragicomedy—justice being the chief motivator for the action, mercy being the redeemer, both being exemplars of God's nature and thus of His glory—and we would do well to reflect that as we seek to explain the world to ourselves and unbelievers in our dramatic literature. A good Christian drama will be neither moralistic nor maudlin; rather, it will make the assertion of both guilt and grace, justice and mercy. It will not sacrifice the tragic for the comic, nor the comic for the tragic. Rather, it will engage them both: every character deserves a tragedy, but God has taken that upon Himself and made, by the deus ex machina of the Resurrection, a just way for mercy to be enacted and for the final destruction of all those comprehended in Christ, the ultimate Tragic Hero, to be averted.

Reference List

Bentley, Eric. The Life of the Drama. New York: Applause Theater & Cinema Books, 1964.

Westminster Confession of Faith. Accessed at http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
on 23 December 2008.

From the Ashes: The Tragicomedy of Justice and Mercy in a Providential History, Pt. 1

Introduction

History is a tragicomedy, and this is best. Much ink has been spilt over the question of what literary genre is best and whether or not the best art will conform to life or is purely creative. We will take the position that art should conform to life at its root and that the genre is best which best conforms to reality. But the metaphysical question of reality's nature must be resolved before we can discuss how reality affects art. We shall thus deal with this question, seeking to paint the frame of reality and history in dramatic terms—as being a coherent plotline with crucial characters and an order and purpose derived from the intention of its Author. We shall then analyze it and demonstrate its effectiveness in affecting the human heart and soul for good, attempt to demonstrate that such a philosophy of life and art is necessary to the preservation of art and criticism, and that, in artistic terms, such a dramatic view of reality itself is at once biblically, philosophically, and artistically satisfying.

As we shall attempt to demonstrate, the drama of history best fits the form of a tragicomedy. The tragicomic drama relies for its effectiveness on the tension between justice and mercy, retribution and forgiveness. The struggle and synthesis of these in dramatic literature shall thus be analyzed, as well as how the drama of history exemplifies this, making the fundamental framework of ultimate reality a beautiful work of art itself and reinforcing the idea that art should be mimetic of life.

These two major points—analysis of tragicomedy and the conformity of reality to its form, and the dramatic form of history itself—shall be the focus of this essay.

Literature and Life

Should art conform to life? Can it? It is typical to be told, in Romantic fashion, that true art is spontaneously created. One cannot allow himself to be limited by forms and modes. To attempt to conform to reality is to limit one's creative abilities and submit to arbitrary conventions about the nature of reality. But this assumes a number of things about man and his abilities. The Romantic idea is based on the concept that man is truly the measure of all things; indeed, it goes beyond the Deism of the preceding Neoclassical period, in which Alexander Pope asserted that man should only be concerned with the mundane things which are proper to him, to the idea that man is barely, if at all, answerable to anything outside of himself. Further, his creative abilities are unbounded by “nature.” Nature is whatever proceeds from the writer, freely and spontaneously. Man has creative abilities without bounds and without an objective reference point.

But does this not ultimately end in an art without purpose, “a sound and fury, signifying nothing”? If each man is the measure of his own work, and if his creations have meaning as his creation of them grants purpose to them, then there is no transcendent order beyond himself. There is no reason for him to expect that it will impress anyone else with the same urgency or message that he meant for it. It implies a chaotic world with no transcendent order—that is, such a one in which literary conventions, if enforced, would be arbitrary of necessity. But this is to undermine all framework of dramatic and literary theory. If each author is the sole judge of his own work, then it follows as a corollary that no one else may dare presume to judge it. If no one may judge it on any level, then literary criticism is ended, and we have a mass of narcissists writing plays for themselves. Without order to drama, an author may elicit feeling in others—a grin or even grim laughter or despair—but no serious intellectual engagement; one may produce a melodrama or farce, but never a tragedy or comedy. The reason one may not interact with anything based in this literary theory is simply because one can neither ask nor answer the question which is most proper to literature, insofar as literature is a concrete manifestation and application of philosophy: “why?”


Sisyphus and Hell

But what if there is no transcendent order to the universe? What if life is chaotic and without meaning or direction, and one does not know and cannot answer “why?” On these grounds, wouldn't a dramatic theory reflecting this be appropriate? Some, such as Samuel Beckett, have applied this to such plays as Waiting for Godot. Godot is without a traditional plot structure and has a directionless story; the characters' end state is no different from their beginning state, despite the many things that happen in between. The events within the play have no effect on the characters or their situation. It would be a comic tragedy, a grim laughing in the face of despair, were there at least a downfall into darkness, but there is no tragic hero and no downfall. The characters begin as fallen and remain as fallen, with no lasting relief in the meantime. Eric Bentley puts it thus: “The motto of the movement is...that hell is the place we are already in.” (Bentley, 338) “The movement of a modern tragedy is all that Schiller's Mary Stuart is not: its movement is simply and steadily down to defeat.” (Bentley, 339)

This is obviously an untenable literary theory for any Christian, and especially those who view all reality as constant evidence of a loving and providential God who is immanently involved in His creation. This shall be discussed further below. But it even seems internally inconsistent. If there is no meaning, then why bother to write drama and present it as drama? If there is no message, why bother to present something that transmits a message? There is substance to Bentley's analysis: “if a transcendence by beauty argues an unflinching courage, transcendence by courage argues a courage just as unflinching in the face of a world even more comfortless.” (Bentley, 339-340) To know that the world is meaningless and still to live on does argue a sort of courage. Most men would quail, and it takes a grand effort to overcome the despair resulting from such a reflection. But in the final analysis, the effort is still Sisyphian, and the world is still meaningless, and thus even the effort itself is ultimately meaningless and will make no impression on the plot of the world, or even on the character of the actor. Even his courage is worthless, and the Sisyphus who continues to roll the stone is of no more meaning than he who sits down and lets himself be crushed beneath its weight.

On the other hand, the fact that such courage does exist, and the fact of our admiration of it—when we do not cynically laugh at it—is evidence that the world is not as we think it is. If the author wishes courage to be admired, he is upholding courage as a transcendent good, or at least as something intrinsically valuable. And this is ultimately in defiance of his own worldview.