Arthur McGill, in a phenomenal book entitled Life and Death: An American Theology, makes the argument that the ethos of America at large is marked by a fatal need to extinguish all visible signs of death from its existence. This, for him, is motivated by an ultimate fear of death, wherein one believes it to be the ultimate lord of existence, but puts up a valiant fight against it. These are what he calls the bronze people. It is my suggestion that the best in American literature has always stood as a sign and symbol against this fear (Isaiah 8). Of course, there is the strand that develops through Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and all the rest who seek life by embracing life. But what has survived as the canon of American literature has sought to show the abundance of grace through an honest look at sin’s increase. This strand runs from Washington Irving to Stephen Crane, from Kate Chopin to Flannery O’Connor, from Raymond Carver to John Kennedy O’Toole. I have to ask a big favor for this, but allow me to clear up what I’m talking about with help from a German. In Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, he is setting forth what he calls the “Theology of the Cross,” the main point of which is that things, especially things of God, are made known by their opposite. This means specifically that we don’t seek the goodness of God in what we think of as good, but rather in the cross and suffering. The 28th thesis and it’s proof couldn’t explain more clearly what these writers are shooting for when they write about the dark side of life:
The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.
The second part is clear and is accepted by all philosophers and theologians, for the object of love is its cause, assuming, according to Aristotle, that all power of the soul is passive and material and active only in receiving something. Thus it is also demonstrated that Aristotle’s philosophy is contrary to theology since in all things it seeks those things which are its own and receives rather than gives something good. The first part is clear because the love of God which lives in man loves sinners, evil persons, fools, and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise, and strong. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good. Therefore sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive: For this reason the love of man avoids sinners and evil persons. Thus Christ says: “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” [Matt. 9:13]. This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy, but where it may confer good upon the bad and needy person. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” [Acts 20:35], says the Apostle. Hence Ps. 41[:1] states, “Blessed is he who considers the poor,” for the intellect cannot by nature comprehend an object which does not exist, that is the poor and needy person, but only a thing which does exist, that is the true and good. Therefore it judges according to appearances, is a respecter of persons, and judges according to that which can be seen, etc.
Of course, Herman Melville is the shining of example of the American who writes about darkness, greed, hatred, and suffering as the proper place to think about love. This is why Hawthorne is his hero. Think of the story “Ethan Brand” or “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Both of them are talking about the beauty and possibility of life precisely by means of a dark portaryal of what happens when you withdraw from human fellowship. Melville simply says this more beautifully, epically, and with less moralizing. Right off the bat in Moby Dick, you have Ishmael talking about how you can’t appreciate the warmth of a bed unless the window is open, surrounding your comfort with the cold, and this is basically what the book is about: life is found not in the mastery of the ungraspable phantom; life is not found in life, but in death. An so,
“That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true – no true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men as the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s and Ecclesiatses is the fine hammered steel of woe. ‘All is vanity.’ ALL….But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell…not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.” (Moby Dick, Chapter 96).
And so it is that Ishmael (seriously, your supposed to check Genesis 16 for how his name is meaningful) does not find, but rather is found in the end.
