Sárospataki Füzetek 17. (2013)

2013 / 1-2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Sawyer, Frank: Krisztus, egyház és világ T. S. Eliot Kórusok "A sziklá"-ból, 1934 c. versében

Sawyer Frank

The Apostle Paul, commenting on the Old Testament, said: “...they all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ” (I Corinthians 10:4). This allegorical interpretation refers to the spiritual resources God gives: manna from the heavens and water from a rocky clifF in the desert, but also spiritually living water from Christ (John 7:37-39) and from God’s Spirit. The point Eliot wants to make in The Rock is that we need the visible church as a sign of the invisible work of salvation by Christ. Said in another way: the invisible light must become apparent in daily life. Eliot believed that the way of regeneration would restore the individual person and society as well. A view of Christ in The Rock can be made via an extrapolation of the ecclesiological views of Eliot. The ‘rock’ in the play represents the divine foundation, and seems sometimes to be an Old Testament prophet, or a more modern saint, or the voice of the church, or the voice of Christ. The question is: what is the basic message, or in biblical language: what is the Spirit saying to the church and world?

Let us look at Eliot’s Christology in this pageant. In general his views about Christ here run via ecclesiology, that is, his view on the church. Since Christ is the head of the church, the two are highly related, though not identical. The human historical expression of the church, as Paul Tillich says, may even become demonized and express the opposite of what Christ the head says and does. Eliot would recognize the following opinion of Tillich as important:

“The churches which represent the Kingdom of God in its fight against the forces of profanization and demonization are themselves subject to the ambiguities of religion and are open to profanization and demonization.”14

The answer Tillich gives to this problem is the “prophetic criticism of the churches by the churches”. Eliot would say the same about faith and religion: there was be an on-going self-critique. Actually, Eliot’s view on Christ includes this kind of sifting of faith.

TV.l. Christ the Light

This view on Christ is the culmination of the pageant. So we may ask: What do we learn about Christ the Light?

First, we should ask if the Light referred to in the tenth chorus really refers to Christ. We can say that it does, because Eliot ends the play (in the final words of St. Peter revealed as the rock) with a reference to the Lamb of God as a lamp (Revelation 21:22fT). Light is a parallel alternative to the ‘objective correlative’ or symbol of Christ as the rock. Yet Eliot did not have a muse that easily let him sing ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me’, without first dashing his days against many rocks of experience. These rocks of pain, anguish, questions, and doubt also appear regularly in his poems.

TV.2. The light of Christ is brighter than our little lights.

The poem refers to the Greater Light, which is an analogy of the sun, but actually

14 Tillich, op. cit., Vol.III, 403.

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