re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[jbor]

Thomas wrote:

snip 
> I don't think that Ives and Cherrycoke share the same attitude
> towards religion and/or history. Doesn't seem to fit in with the excerpt
> from Christ and History, in which Cherrycoke definitely argues in favour
> of "more than one version".

He certainly conceives of a "great disorderly tangle of Lines" leading back
to a single "Destination" which, as I read it again now, is the
Resurrection, isn't it? And his metaphor of the coach journey at the end of
Ch. 35 again insinuates fairly strongly the Rev's belief in predestination
(that human events - "all the secular Consequences" - have been "design'd
and will'd to occur" 76.1). I think that Wicks is perhaps less dogmatic in
his piousness than Ives, but that they do share a Christian teleology.

It's this idea of predestination which Ethelmer - rightly, in my opinion -
attacks at 76.3.

> Neither does it seem to fit in with his
> character in
> general, IMHO. 

Possibly.

> But for now I put this forward only as a general
> impression. As far as the passage under discussion is concerned, I find
> this reading plausible and interesting.
> 
>> 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".
> 
> Nope, it is Ethelmer's expression that changes.

You're right. But I still think that in addressing 'Brae with his reproach
to Ethelmer, as well as by what he says, Wicks is being somewhat superior,
and patronising the younger man.

>> 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.
> 
> "As Savages commemorate their great Hunts with Dancing, so History is
> the Dance of our Hunt for Christ, and how we have far'd."
> 
> I can't see where there's a choice involved. Neither do I think that
> Cherrycoke is employing a nasty rhetorical strategy here.
> 
> The simile, come to think of it, is quite remarkable: The dancing of the
> "savages" is in commemoration of a succcessful hunt, and probably also
> performed in the hope that future hunts will be as succesful as the
> commemorated one. We may extend this to the second part of the simile, I
> think: There has been, so to speak, at least one succesful hunt for
> Christ taken place before. And ever since then the "civilized" Christian
> world has been dancing a dance of commemoration, or remembrance, of that
> singular event and its "secular consequences", in the hope this might
> bring about Christ's second coming. Cherrycoke certainly depicts history
> as a teleological process in this combination of simile and metaphor.
> But the strange thing about the imagery he uses to do so is that Christ
> as the telos of all actions of mankind is not described as "eternal
> light", "eternal life" or some such, but as history's prey. A very
> strange metaphor indeed - but hardly a lame one, given the reports we
> have of how Christ's last stay on earth came to an end, and all the
> atrocities committed under the sign of the cross.

I hadn't thought about it in that light at all. Perhaps it is a comparison
rather than an opposition, as you say, and Wicks is implying that the "Hunt
for Christ" by means of "History" is the pursuit of "Savages", i.e. a pagan
(or, less provocatively, a "secular") pursuit. Only that brand of "History"
which accepts Christ's Resurrection as an "undeniabl[e]" truth and its
starting point is "redeem'd from the service of Darkness". This, then, in
Wicks's terms, is the opposition of "Despair" and "Hope".
 
> B-but if Cherrycoke does agree with the concept of history as a
> teleological process, why does he employ such a nasty metaphor?

I think there are indeed overtones of the mortal fate of Jesus in Wicks's
metaphor. Wicks rhetorically aligns those who hunted Christ with the
"Savages" of the first part of the simile. But I think he also includes
anyone, but particularly educated men - men of Science and History, men such
as Ethelmer - who don't accept the "Truth" of Christ's Resurrection as the
starting point of their vocation, under that label too - "Savages".

best