Faust the Theologian.  By Jaroslav Pelikan.  New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1995.  Pp. ix + 145.  $20.00

This is a grandly conceived but not quite perfect book . Readers who expect the elegance of style and design of Pelikan's earlier volumes will be disappointed. Pelikan uses Goethe's Faust as a collection of data and references from which to extract all that relates the protagonist "to theology, theology as an account of religious faith but also theology as an academic discipline among other academic disciplines" (p. 3) in order to document the validity of the poet's epigram: "When we do natural science, we are pantheists; when we do poetry, we are polytheists; when we moralize, we are monotheists" (p. 19). For this purpose Pelikan chose to furnish his own translations, aiming "to be literal rather than literary" (p. x) in order to get as close to the original German as possible.  This results in some cumbersome passages, for the transliterations, of which there are many, are inevitably less elegant than the author's own fine prose. Most importantly, however, Goethe's poetic language and framework are part of the work; stripped of its poetry some of it is bound to sound silly or worse.  In any case, much of Goethe's text making its appearance on these pages is too awkward to be inviting.
Pelikan's familiarity with Goethe's work and the important secondary material is obvious and admirable, even as one must dispute the accuracy of some of his readings. Mephisto's "Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenschaft" is a contemptuous dismissal of human folly: You are a fool to scorn reason and learning. In Pelikan's translation, "if you will only despise reason and science" (p. 8) it sounds rather like a suggestion. The "nur" in "drohe nur, mich zu vernichten is idiomatic as well: Threaten me all you want, not "only threaten to destroy me" (p. 103). A "Komoediant" here is not a "comedian" (p. 13) but a second-rate actor. "Schrauben" aren't "bolts" in this context (p. 64) but "screws" with the sinister connotation of thumb screws. There are other mistranslations, fortunately most of them minor or just stylistic aberrations.
More serious are misreadings such as Mephisto's hatred of light, summoned to support an erroneous claim in the wrong context (classical nudity), namely the devil's alleged "disgust with the human body in any form" (p. 83, also p. 103). It that were so, how does one explain Mephisto's calamitous infatuation with all those pink butts on wings in the final act? It is important to remember that the devil's realm is darkness. Light therefore is a hostile environment. Yet "it streams from bodies, it makes bodies beautiful, it is intercepted by a body ... and will perish when bodies do" (p. 83). The main thrust of the reference to "bodies" is that they are matter, the celestial bodies that generate, reflect and block light. The origin of matter, however, in the mythical context from which Goethe draws, was a direct result of Lucifer's rebellion and subsequent banishment. The devil's only chance to return things to the status quo ante, to a lightless environment of pure energy as it were, is to destroy matter. That's why in his own words destruction is his true mission, the resilience and fertility of matter his most enduring frustration.
Pelikan sees Faust, like Dante's Divine Comedy, as a "narrative of pilgrimage" (p. 17). Not, as Goethe's Prelude would have it, from heaven through the world to hell, but in Dantean fashion from the world to hell to heaven. Whether the story records a transition from pantheism to polytheism to monotheism and for that reason is also "a narrative of development and growth" is open to question. Goethe's epigram implies no change or progress. In fact Pelikan himself insists repeatedly like others before him that these states of mind are not mutually exclusive but interpenetrate one another (pp. 22/3, 91 and elsewhere).  The poem does however describe a  pilgrim's progress who will in the end arrive.
Debating but then leaving unresolved the question of whether Faust is a "Doctor of Theology" or whatever may be his "academic home base" (p. 8)  Pelikan devotes his second chapter to Faust the scientist. It is a splendid collection of evidence from throughout the work. Yet missing is the recognition of Faust's early agenda, his ambition "to know what holds the world together at the core, and to behold the all-creative vital energy" (line 377 ff., my translation). Knowing and beholding, (maybe even comprehending through beholding), are complementary here. The scientist and the mystic are inseparably joined in this bold and futile quest. In the end, realizing that the view ("Aussicht") into the beyond is blocked Faust determines to devote himself to the here and now.  We've come full circle. "The beginning was action," was Faust's rendition of St. John's elusive opening phrase. He now lives according to the early, then only vaguely appreciated insight. The scholar Faust was lamentably unfocused. The Lord called it "verworren", i.e. scatterbrained, not "verwirrt"-confused. The erratic and disillusioned scholar has now been replaced by the dedicated engineer and creator of new land for settlement. Pelikan himself comes close to recognizing this as Faust's true development in another chapter (p. 94). Also, that immortality is not guaranteed by an immortal soul but, in ancient military-aristocratic fashion, by immortal fame gathered through immortal deeds (p. 100). Hasn't the theologian become rather secular?
Chapter Three deals with Goethe's polytheism which Pelikan finds "far more prominent in the final version of Faust than in Urfaust " (p. 59 f.), "Walpurgis Night with Walpurgis Night's Dream, Carnival, and Classical Walpurgis Night" being the most prominent episodes (p. 84). Again, the author's erudition and background as an intellectual historian allow superb observations as for instance in the little treatise on astrology through the ages (p. 86 ff.).
In the final chapter Pelikan returns to the topic of learning and teaching encountered in Faust's first monologue. He sees in his dejected statement that he no longer believes in his ability to teach anything useful (lines 372/3) issued in a night of bleakest despair that nearly ends in suicide, "an abdication of moral responsibility in scientific research" (p. 92), calling it his "tragic flaw" which is redeemed when he "is summoned to an eternity in which, as the Boy Souls sing, he 'has learned, and he will teach'" (p. 93). Namely what? Pelikan is no more specific than the boys who seem to look forward to a vicarious life through Faust's experience. Still, as Pelikan rightly implies, it is the answer to Mephisto's claim at Faust's death that it "is over as though it had never been" (line 11597, my translation). Something can not become nothing. It merely changes and survives in another fashion. Eventually there may even be "eternal emptiness" again, but not nothingness in a literal sense. Where the word is used, as in Faust's rejoinder: "in your Nothingness I hope to find the All" (p. 107), it is important to remember that in seventeenth century theosophy, to which Goethe is indebted, "nothingness" and "all" aren't necessarily opposites.
An impressive scholarly exercise. The collection and organization of relevant data alone, from Faust and other works, makes it invaluable.

Herbert Deinert      Cornell University