re MDDM 35 Christ and History

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Rob wrote:

> 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? 

Yes. 

> 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.

Yes, I am rooting for Ethelmer, too. As for the coach journey: I have
only just reread it, but doesn't the Reverend here give voice to the
fear
that the universe might be inanimate after all, that at the end of the
journey one may find out that there's no destination, that there's
"naught behind the mask", just a prairie or an ocean of "desperate
Immensity"? I agree with Terrance that the prarie here has the same
metaphorical and symbolical significance as the ocean in MD. It is a
place of doubt, a spiritual wilderness. 

> 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.

Yes, he is a little condescending. But he is also attempting to moderate
the discussion.

> 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".

Hmm. Yes, but for a Reverend he shows an unusual sensibility for
despair. If my reading of the coach journey holds water, this seems is
due to the fact that he himself is constantly in doubt.

Thomas