We think liars are dishonest lawyers, cheating used-car salesmen, and drug addicts. They are instead pastors, news commentators, and doctors of philosophy. Liars can also be silent. That is, what defines the liar is not just the speaking of lies but the loving of lies.
God is true and every man a liar. Liars, however, dress like their father. That is, just as the Devil appears as an angel of light, so he and his minions appear as tellers, indeed lovers, of the truth.
For this reason, we wrongly tend to attach that word liar to a specific kind of liar. We think liars are dishonest lawyers, cheating used-car salesmen, and drug addicts. They are instead pastors, news commentators, and doctors of philosophy.
Liars can also be silent. That is, what defines the liar is not just the speaking of lies but the loving of lies. To believe the lie is, at the very least, to lie to oneself. Enter The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Christopher Marlowe’s tale, based on earlier folktales, tells of the man who sells his soul to the Devil. It has been retold over the years in sundry forms, including Johann van Goethe’s poetic version.
What intrigues us about the story, however, isn’t the form in which it is told. Our interest in the story, what captures our attention, is the folly of the trade. Jesus, the Truth, wisely asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Dr. Faustus wants the whole world, and he trades his soul to get it. The truth is, however, that the deal Dr. Faustus makes is not selling his soul for the world but trading the truth for lies. Not content with what he has learned in his theological studies, he wants a different truth. Dr. Faustus leaves behind a medieval world of revelation for a renaissance world of science. In doing so, he comes to symbolize the whole of Western culture. His story is our story, and his end is our end.
The Beginning of It All
Things are not going well for us. The kingdom of God, in the West, in our day, is less visible than it once was. We are, culturally speaking, in full retreat. We have a U.S. government intent on protecting the “right” of mommies to murder their babies. We have “evangelical” leaders denying the reality of hell. Bible believers are, broadly speaking, perceived to be backward, throwbacks at best, unhinged jihadists at worst. What went wrong? Does Dr. Faustus have anything to teach us? It is certainly the case that moving from truth to lies is the beginning of the end. But where did that begin? Did our cultural decline begin with the advent of the Renaissance?
That particular epochal shift, the Renaissance’s rejection of God’s revelation in favor of our own wisdom, is small potatoes compared to the original epochal shift. If we really want to understand the horror of someone selling his soul to the Devil, we need to look to history rather than fiction. When Solomon sought the wind, he reaped the whirlwind of vanity. Earlier still, however, our first mother and father set the pattern. If we want to understand how we got where we are, if we want to understand how a learned man such as Dr. Faustus can play such a fool, we have to go back to the garden. It was there that a man and a woman did far worse than Dr. Faustus. They didn’t merely sell their souls to the Devil; they sold the souls of their children, their children’s children, and all who would follow.
