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Christianity and the Limits of Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

J.F. Worthen
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Extract

I wish to argue for two related theses. Both concern the debate that has been conducted in recent times about the compatibility of Christianity and tragedy; as typical protagonists we might select Steiner from the side of those viewing an unbridgeable chasm, and MacKinnon as a seeker of common ground. The first thesis for which I am arguing is that much Christian defence of the compatibility of the tragic insight with the truth of the gospel too easily accepts the definition of the tragic insight supplied by critics such as Steiner; a brief survey of actual texts, for the purposes of this article the works of the Greek tragedians, uncovers a far more intricate and ambiguous picture. The study of this new picture paves the way for the second thesis: that the core of the good news, the resurrection of the crucified one, only constitutes the negation of tragedy in so far as it remains its perfection, its completion, its limit, and to that extent its affirmation.

At the heart of the argument lies the question of evil, of how, if at all, it is to be understood. In tragic drama, evil appears with three faces apparently alien to Christian faith: the face of incomprehensibility, the face of ineluctability, and the face of irrevocability. We shall take each of them in turn.

As far as the first aspect, the incomprehensibility of evil, is concerned, it would seem that this must be denied by Christianity. Christianity is the religion of a God who is at once transcendent and benevolent, i.e. providential.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 825 , March 1989 , pp. 109 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 See Steiner's book The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961)Google Scholar; e.g. ‘Christianity is an anti‐tragic vision of the world’ (p. 331).

2 MacKinnon has written various pieces on this theme. So, for instance, ‘Order and Evil in the Gospel’ and ‘Atonement and Tragedy’ in Borderlands of Theology and Other Essays (London, 1968), pp. 90–104Google Scholar; ‘Tillich, Frege, Kittel: Some Reflections on a Dark Theme’ and ‘Ethics and Tragedy’ in Explorations in Theology (London 1979), pp. 129–137Google Scholar, 182–195; ‘Creon and Antigone’ in Themes in Theology; the Threefold Cord (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 110–134Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Steiner, op. cit., p. 8: ‘Tragedies end badly. The tragic personage is broken by forces which can neither be fully understood nor overcome by rational prudence’.

4 On this subject see the second chapter of P.A.J. Feeney's Theism, Tragedy andNeo‐Tragedy, with Special Reference to Lucien Gotdmann ‘s Critique of Pascal (Diss, U. of Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar.

5 Borderlands Of Theology And Other Essays, p. 96.