re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[jbor]

Thomas wrote re. Sam's question:
> 
>> Rev C: p 75 (I think)
>> 
>> History is the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far'd.  If it
>> is undeniably so that he rose from the Dead, then the Event is taken into
>> History, and History is redeem'd from the service of Darkeness, - with all
>> the secular Consquences, flowing from that one Event, design'd and will'd to
>> occur.
>> 
>> Doesn't this imply, I am asking, that Rev C. believes history to be linear
>> and predetermined?
> 
> Great passage, and very relevant indeed. "History is the Dance of our
> Hunt for Christ" is a strangely beautiful metaphor. "Dance" does not
> sound too linear, but at least it is a predetermined affair. A hunt may
> be perceived as a linear, even teleological affair - Ahab's hunt for
> Moby Dick certainly is.
> 
> But does Cherrycoke believe in the factual veracity of the resurrection
> and thus see history as a linear and teleological process? This is the
> important question. His phrasing is dubious, no? If my English does not
> fail me, the "if" at the beginning of the relevant sentence implies that
> he is making a subjunctive statement, talking about a possibility,

It does imply a subjunctive construction, however, Wicks isn't really
framing the event as a possibility or hypothesis at all, and the indicative
verbs and emphatic adverbial phrase ("undeniably so") exemplify the way that
the Rev's language is shifting the Christian *belief* in Resurrection from
the subjunctive to the declarative, the way that the original sense of the
subjunctive mood is being consumed or absorbed. It's an "if ... then"
construction, like a scientific proof, a causal chain. The elision is "If
(we accept that) it is undeniably so that He rose ... ", and Wicks assumes
that everyone does accept this, and thus marginalises anyone who doesn't,
including Ethelmer, to whom the condescending lecture is addressed, and
whose reply certainly receives equal weight in Pynchon's text:

"Including ev'ry Crusade, Inquisition, Sectarian War, the millions of lives,
the seas of blood," comments Ethelmer. "What happen'd? He liked it so much
being dead that He couldn't wait to come back and share it with ev'rybody
else?" (76.3)

Wicks does not respond to this, of course. Instead, it's Ives who tells
Ethelmer to hold his tongue, and the young man is compelled to apologise
over his passion for human justice.

> while
> the use of "is" instead of "was" implies that the statement is in the
> indicative, i.e. that Cherrycoke takes the factuality of bodily
> resurrection for granted.

Yes.

> Elsewhere RC tells us that "Doubt is of the
> Essence of Christ", so I am inclined to take his statement here as
> expression of a possibility.

I think it is, again, purely rhetorical. The Rev.d uses language to control
his audience, to shape their opinions. He is a preacher, after all.

> The possibility is that Christ's bodily resurrection is a fact. Then,
> and only then, history would be provided with an origin and a goal, it
> would be linear and teleological, a single chain of cause and effect, an
> event from which all the secular consequences flow, "design'd and willed
> to occur". History would have a sense and a reason, and all secular
> events - "including ev'ry Crusade, Inquisition, Sectarian War, the
> millions of lives, the seas of blood", in a broader sense also
> Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Wounded [Knee] Creek, September 11, to add just a few
> random examples - would be redeemed by the grand scheme

Yes, it's that appalling "reap the whirlwind" argument, the Scriptural
justification for the Paxton Boys to slaughter the Susquehannock.

> (the ideology of
> Manifest Destiny is, of course, one of the shapes Christian teleology
> has assumed in the course of history).

Yes indeed.
 
> In V. Fausto tells us something else, and I believe, or like to believe,
> that Cherrycoke here also is talking about just one possibility: the
> possibility of history flowing from a single source, a single authority,
> moving towards a specified goal - and that, at least in this passage, he
> is not sure whether this is the case.

I don't know. Just before the snip that Sam cited we are told how Wicks's
expression changes, the "lambent Spark in his Eyes [is] now but silver'd,
cold Reflection" when he addresses Ethelmer's "Despair", and reframes it as
Christian "Hope". And he rather nastily gives Ethelmer the choice between
"Savages" who "commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing", and "good"
Christians who "Hunt for Christ", as the two (or binary) options. No wonder
the boy gets annoyed with him.

> In the excerpt from "Christ and
> History", though, he seems to oppose that point of view. Torn between
> his duty as a Reverend and his experience as a human being?

I think that he takes a consistent line.

> Is Christ
> either the source and telos of history or is he ahistorical?

I don't think these are the same thing. An *historical* Christ would be a
separate category, but there's no reason to construct that as an either/or
either.
 
> By the way, in the excerpt from "Christ and History" Cherrycoke tells us
> that History is not restricted to facts, a statement he contradicts here
> when he states that only if the resurrection was a fact it would enter
> history. 

No, I think here he distinguishes between lawyers' "Facts" and some higher
notion of "Truth". I think as well as justifying his methods Wicks is also
indicating that "History" should serve a moral or ethical (i.e. Christian)
purpose. As one of the listeners (Ethelmer?) observes: "It may be the
Historian's duty to seek the Truth, yet must he do everything he can, not to
tell it." He's talking about Wicks's version of "History".

best