Deus ex Machina Salvation

Before beginning, let's set the stage with some background music from Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884).

The legend of Faust is an ancient story, some say based in an actual 15th-century alchemist named Johann Faustus, some say mere myth.  Wherever it originated, it has fascinated men for centuries, leading to pulp-fiction-style books, puppet plays (for which the song hopefully now playing was written), plays, and operas.  The two most famous of these works are Christopher Marlowe's drama Doctor Faustus and Johann Wolfsgang von Goethe's closet drama (that is, not meant to be actually performed) Faust: A Tragedy.

According to the legend, Faust was a scholar and alchemist who sold his soul to a demon named Mephisto (or Mephistopheles, Mephistophilis, Mephistophilus...there are many spellings of this demon from German folklore).  Because he never repented of his decision, at the end of his life he was damned, and the devil claimed his soul, taking it to eternal punishment in hell.  Though I have not read Christopher Marlowe's play, I have heard that it ends the traditional way: Faust is damned for his evil decisions and his lack of repentance.  I have read, however, Goethe's Faust, and I have one comment to make:

Goethe hates Christianity.

Now, that may seem harsh, but delving into the drama shows this.  Christianity is shown as useless and almost laughable.  Faust himself cares nothing for Christianity, though he attempts to use symbols of the Cross and the Trinity to fight off a demon (to no avail), going so far as to curse the faith and its virtues:

"My curse I hurl on all that spangles 

The mind with dazzling make-belief,

With lures and blandishment entangles

The soul within this cave of grief!...

A curse on faith!  A curse on hope!

A curse on patience, above all!" 

(ll. 1587-90, 1605-6).

Even though he has some words of praise for the Gospel before ruinously translating it (from "In the beginning was the Word" to "In the beginning was the Deed"), and even though the bells and choruses of Easter morning stop him from committing suicide, Faust disregards it all: any Christianity in Faust's life was in the past.  Instead, he seduces a Catholic peasant girl when he sees her exiting Confession, which leads to the death of her, her son (by him), and herself.  Faust speaks with witches and goes to their gatherings, carouses with the beasts and gods of Greek mythology, and even has a son with Helen of Troy.  One of his last acts in the play is ordering a devout Christian couple living on his land to move, but when they will not, his servants turn their house into a funeral pyre.  For a man so far gone as to sell his soul to a demon, Christianity seems to hold no appeal.

Yet, though Faust has no respect for Christianity and no belief in God at all, and though the demon Mephistopheles won the wager for his soul, Faust is saved.  Yes, you read that correctly: Faust is saved.  "How," you may ask, "could one like this be saved?"  The answer is simple: as Goethe wishes, so shall it be.  Goethe wants his tragedy to end in Faust's salvation, for whatever reason, so he devises a dramatically terrible deus ex machina plot device to save him.

Gösta Ekman in F.W. Murnau's 1926 film Faust

First, after Faust has died and Mephistopheles and his fellow demons are waiting to catch his soul as it leaves his body, a cohort of angels appear, distracting the lusty Mephistopheles with their beautiful, young male bodies (yes, Mephistopheles seems to be bisexual, and possibly ephebophilic as well, depending on the age the angels are supposed to be), thus allowing them to snatch Faust's soul, though Mephistopheles won it fair and square in the wager.  Yet why did angels come to rescue the soul of an unrepentant atheist?  Though one prayer of his former lover, Gretchen (the Catholic peasant girl he seduced, which led her to murdering her mother and son and being executed for infanticide), who had just recently been saved by the joint prayers of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with her tears at Bethany, the Samaritan woman at the well, and St. Mary of Egypt.  Because of this one prayer of Gretchen's, Mater Gloriosa (Jesus is nowhere to be seen, and God only appeared in the Job-like prologue of the drama) saves Faust.  The end.

It is possible one could spin this into a drama celebrating the "power of prayer," but that is not how prayer works.  Prayer cannot save an unrepentant sinner after his death.  An unrepentant sinner does not want to be saved.  Faust only sees God as a force, not a Person (or Three):

"Call it fulfillment!  Heart!  Love!  God!

I have no name for it!

Feeling is all;

Name is but sound and fume

Befogging heaven's blaze" 

(ll. 3454-8).

Faust is going to have a hard time in Heaven, spending eternity with the Personal Triune God and listening to angels and saints ceaselessly proclaim the praises of Jesus Christ, "the name above all names."  Seen from this angle, the drama's subtitle A Tragedy makes sense: it is a tragedy when God does not give someone what he wants and worked for--that is, hell--and gives him the opposite--Heaven--instead.  Thankfully, God does not work that way.  There is no arbitrary will of Mary deciding who goes to Heaven and who to hell (this takes the "Mary as Co-Redemptrix" idea way too far).

 The deus ex machina angel in F.W. Murnau's 1926 film Faust

In the end, Faust's salvation is a deus ex machina event.  If that were true, Heaven doesn't seem as perfect a place, since there may be God-hating occultists there sulking about, cursing all they see and hear.  (Though if salvation has no connection to one's actions, the Westboro Baptist Church could be right about Pope Bl. John Paul II's being in hell: not because he was evil, but because he was unlucky.)  With Goethe's view, there will be hardened atheists in Heaven and saints in hell.  That's what happens with an arbitrary system of salvation.

To wrap up this far too long post, the soteriology of Goethe's Faust is: man's actions accomplish nothing, for the Author's will alone separates the sheep from the goats.  Thankfully, this is not the truth: instead, God will send us where we want to be, whether with Him or with Mephisto.  I, for one, would rather be with Love than with a black poodle for eternity: poodles annoy me to no end.

 Sat--"That name's forbidden, hag, you hear?"--I mean Mephistopheles.

Nota Bene: The quotes from Faust are taken from the Norton Critical Edition, Second Edition, translated by Walter Arndt.  The overall idea for this post came from a paper I wrote for one of my classes, entitled "Striving and Its Results: The Soteriology of Goethe's Faust."  If, for some odd reason, you want to read the paper, send me an e-mail.  As for the poodle comment (caption quotes l. 2505), Mephistopheles first appears to Faust in the form of a black poodle, according to Goethe's drama.