Abstract
‘Interpreting the world tragically stands in sharp and indissoluble contradiction to the Christian view of human life and history’. This position has been taken as self-evident by many Christian theologians and scholars of tragic literature alike. Via seeks to provide a critique and his attempt is accessible and creative. The argument begins with the comparison of classical views of tragedy alongside scriptural notions of sin. According to Via the quintessential feature of the tragic is suffering born of finitude. A limited perspective, inadequate knowledge and hubris ensure that even well-intentioned acts become susceptible to outcomes both disastrous and unexpected. Natural desires or obligations conflict with no resolution by common self-interest. For the Greek tragedians, finitude is the root cause of human downfall and there is no way to transcend it. This appears to contradict scriptural claims regarding the intrinsic goodness of finite creation and the fact that the ‘fall’ should not result in resignation to fate. The scriptural alternative is to insist that the problem is conscious rebellion against God’s moral order; a rebellion that is ‘inevitable but not necessary’ according to Niebhur, yet stems from ‘hardness of heart’.
Via’s thesis is that tragic finitude does play a role – albeit secondary – in the way in which Old and New Testaments present the human condition marred by sin and that tragic hubris is not alien to biblical notions of pride underlying ‘hardness of heart’. To this end, he engages with Genesis, Job and the writings of St. Paul to make his point in a way that is illuminating and at times controversial, particularly as he deploys a Derrideran-inspired hermeneutic to magnify (often debatably implicit) perspectives on finitude. These are seen to provide a counter witness to what he interprets as the ‘dominant tradition’. Perhaps Via’s most memorable speculative argument pertains to the perpetuation of primeval darkness in the Genesis myth after God’s creation of light and before ‘the fall’. To Via, this suggests a pre-existing potentiality that forms the context of sin: not human freedom in the first instance, but finitude. A focus on finitude helps to supplement what classical doctrines miss in explaining the sin’s inevitability and the impossibility of overcoming it without divine aid. Via develops his argument in spirited conversation with contemporary debates within and outside the church about the doctrine of original sin’s continuing viability. The ambition of Via’s exegetical approach will inevitably court criticism on points of detail and his broad definitions of tragedy will raise the ire of those with a grasp of the complex history of the notion in its ancient and modern forms, but the book is nonetheless coherently structured and its thesis plausible.