God's foolish grace
You don't usually think of going to Italian opera to discover theological insight, but you might take a look at Boito's Mefistofele. If you aren't an opera fan, Arrigo Boito may not be a familiar name to you. He is actually best known for the very literate libretti he did for Verdi's Otello (from Shakespear's Othello, obviously) and Falstaff (from Merry Wives of Windsor and a little Henry IV). But his own take on Goethe's Faust has some excellent insights, I think, into grace and salvation.
As you may recall, in Goethe's telling of the Faust legend, the wager hinges on Faust finding something that so fulfils his longing for wisdom and beauty that he says "Remain, for thou art fair". After creating a utopian society Faust finally utters these words and it takes some what I find rather unconvincing metaphysics to release him from his bargain and gain his salvation. In Boito's version Faust is dying and has a vision of a utopian society and Mephisotfeles thinks he's got him, but then Faust sees the citizens of his society ascending to heaven and then the heavens open and he sees the heavenly host and at that point says "Remain, Thou art so fair" and Mephistofeles loses his wager with God. As he descends into the earth Mephisofeles cries out "Already God destroys the work of evil with His foolish grace."
And it is "foolish". I think that those of us who have been raised in the church or have at least been Christians for a long time, become numbed to the foolishness of the cross that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians. I have run into more than one non-Christian who thinks this whole idea of grace is cheating. We as fallen humns want to make it on our own , pull ouselves up to heaven by our own bootstraps. I believe that when we as disciples of Christ lose our awarenss of the foolishness of the cross we fall into that same way of thinking. We try to live the Chrisitna life on our own power. We don't conschiously think that, but we lose the sense of our daily, total dependence on God's grace.
I recommend that you take a listen to Boito's opera, or if the whole thing is a bit much at first, listen to the final scene. I can never hear that without tears in my eyes. We all need to keep alive the wonder of what we just celebrated this Holy Week.
You don't usually think of going to Italian opera to discover theological insight, but you might take a look at Boito's Mefistofele. If you aren't an opera fan, Arrigo Boito may not be a familiar name to you. He is actually best known for the very literate libretti he did for Verdi's Otello (from Shakespear's Othello, obviously) and Falstaff (from Merry Wives of Windsor and a little Henry IV). But his own take on Goethe's Faust has some excellent insights, I think, into grace and salvation.
As you may recall, in Goethe's telling of the Faust legend, the wager hinges on Faust finding something that so fulfils his longing for wisdom and beauty that he says "Remain, for thou art fair". After creating a utopian society Faust finally utters these words and it takes some what I find rather unconvincing metaphysics to release him from his bargain and gain his salvation. In Boito's version Faust is dying and has a vision of a utopian society and Mephisotfeles thinks he's got him, but then Faust sees the citizens of his society ascending to heaven and then the heavens open and he sees the heavenly host and at that point says "Remain, Thou art so fair" and Mephistofeles loses his wager with God. As he descends into the earth Mephisofeles cries out "Already God destroys the work of evil with His foolish grace."
And it is "foolish". I think that those of us who have been raised in the church or have at least been Christians for a long time, become numbed to the foolishness of the cross that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians. I have run into more than one non-Christian who thinks this whole idea of grace is cheating. We as fallen humns want to make it on our own , pull ouselves up to heaven by our own bootstraps. I believe that when we as disciples of Christ lose our awarenss of the foolishness of the cross we fall into that same way of thinking. We try to live the Chrisitna life on our own power. We don't conschiously think that, but we lose the sense of our daily, total dependence on God's grace.
I recommend that you take a listen to Boito's opera, or if the whole thing is a bit much at first, listen to the final scene. I can never hear that without tears in my eyes. We all need to keep alive the wonder of what we just celebrated this Holy Week.
posted by Pastorjeff | 5:27 PM
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