I've been taking a class that studies medieval texts such as Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae, Christine de Pizan's Livre de Paix, and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Willehalm. And I'm writing about this because my professor said something about Johannes von Saaz's Death and the Ploughman that sparked me off to critique his interpretation: "God cannot give eternal life because it is contradictory to [inevitable] Death". Von Saaz words it this way in the last chapter of this intense philosophical and religious duel between Death and the Ploughman - God says, "...since every man is bound to give his life to Death, his body to the earth and his soul to Me".
This tedious imagined dialogue pitches the Ploughman, a noble who had lost his wife to childbirth and hates Death for robbing life, against Death, an allegorical figure who has emotive capacities and claims its inevitability. The Ploughman fights for life on earth, while Death defends his taking away of life from earth. Yet both arguments are flawed. I personally believe this overarching biblical inaccuracy falls in line with the general character of the Dark Ages - politicizing a faith into a religion at the expense of the Bible's authority. It reveals a distorted, Augustinian Christian faith, with rulers and nobles sake to justify their morality by decontextualizing verses from the Bible, and keeping the laypeople in their lowly, disenfranchised estate because they "always want war", and are "ready and armed to do all sorts of evil" (Livre de Paix 3.11, 12).
Death says life "must all come to nothing" (10). Consider this dystopian speech Death makes (20):
..every man in the moment of birth swallows the drink which pledges his death. Beginning and end are kith and kin...No one may resist what must happen in the end. The individual may not oppose what all must endure. What a man borrows he must return. On earth all men till an alien soil. From being something they must become nothing. Men's lives flee swiftly away. Though they be yet living, in the twinkling of an eye they are dead. To conclude in a word: every man owes us a death and dying is his inheritance..Either age or death must destroy all human beauty. Rosy lips must lose their color, red cheeks must pale, bright eyes must dim...Do not lament a loss which you cannot recover."
This sense of vanity in all temporal things is reminiscent of Boethian philosophy and (especially, Zen) Buddhism. The Bible says similar things too, the Teacher says that all toil on earth is in vain, "a chasing after the wind" (Eccl. 2:11), and David writes that Man is a "mere phantom" who "bustles about, only in vain", whose days are like a "passing shadow" (Ps. 39:6, 144:4). On beauty, Lemuel records a family oral tradition: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain" (Prov. 31:30). Death as an inevitable end is a fearful truth we often seek to obliterate from our lives, because it reminds us that our toil on earth for comfort and pleasure is not only not going to last, but is going to decay.
But let's consider also the Ploughman's retort. He exposes Death as a "liar" for slandering Man, the "finest" and noblest of divine handiwork because he "alone possesses reason" (25). The Bible does tell me something similar, that we have been made in God's image (Gen. 1:27), and are "crowned with glory and honour" (Ps. 8:6). Reason as the celebration of worldly human existence carries a heavy humanist tone - God says that the noble quality that Man alone has is the image of God, thereby having the innate desire for the eternal, immutable, spiritual (i.e. intangible).
The Ploughman's idealistic celebration of worldly human existence and Man's God-ordained goodness is however only half-true. It fails to remember the Fall, which has since fully corrupted our moral and spiritual capacities, and carries grim and very fearful consequences for all in this life and after death. To the mind that perceives only the tangible, the end of mortal life is a "loss", as Death put it. But God says the contrary, that all men are "destined to die, and after that to face judgment" (Heb. 9:27). Like it or not, we are going to be judged according to His commandments on morality as revealed in the Bible. The Ploughman said that God could only be a "bad and culpable creator" if he were to create us in such moral filth (25). He's right too. God didn't impose sin on us. Death is the only and inescapable result of sin (Rom. 6:23), and God had commanded extremely early in the existence of the universe that whoever murders a man will be killed, for "God made man in His own image" (Gen. 9:6). And we know too, that Eve took that forbidden fruit out of idolatry, and Adam blamed God and Eve for causing him to sin - their feelings of idolatry and pride were not instigated, but points to our capacity to freely act and think how we deem best.
"On earth all men till an alien soil". As opposed to that bevy of Freud-Derrida-Jung theorists, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Rahab, Hannah, David, Ruth, Paul, Peter, John and others in the Bible got it right. They were humble and honest enough to recognize their absolute inability to do that which is good (i.e. of eternal and spiritual value). What did they do that God honours and celebrates them in His Word? I'm reminded of the verse(s) I shared in the book I gave to Kat (Hi! Honorary mention, h_h_ > sekret joke)
They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth...Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
Heb. 11: 14, 16
Returning to what my professor taught in class today, I say that YES, God can give eternal life and He does! We can do nothing to earn it, the Bible says many times that it is "the gift of God" (Jn. 4:10; Rom. 5:15-6, 6:23; Eph. 2:8-9; 1 Jn. 5:11 and others) It is gratuitous, yet freely available to all (Mk. 10:24; Jn. 3:16; Heb. 9:27-8 and others). The God of old - waaay older than the old antiquity - calls out to all men, His beloved creation, fashioned in His own image that He was and is giving eternal life, thus overcoming Death, inevitable as it is as a means to punish unholiness (i.e. sin).
Son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'This is what you are saying: "Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?" ' Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.
Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'
Ez. 33:10-1
Dear God, thank you for this unceasingly wondrous promise of hope amidst bleakness and evil. Amen and Amen!
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