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Christ's Passion as Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

A. J. Lunn
Affiliation:
15 Lampton Park Road, Hounslow,Middlesex. TW3 4HS

Extract

It is clear that the story of Christ's Passion has a certain family resemblance with tragic stories: the presence of moral conflict; the death of a man; a certain inevitability. But there is another resemblance popularly recognised in tragedies which is problematic: the point to which they bring their audience as they conclude; tragedy is thought of as involving an ‘unhappy’ ending. The conclusion of the Passion comes with the resurrection which is seen as contradicting the proper ‘unhappy’ ending expected in a tragedy; yet the resurrection is surely essential to this story of faith. Is it possible to reach this end-point of tragedy while holding to an active and healthy Christian faith? To answer such a question we need to get to grips with both the nature of tragedy, and with the conditions under which Christian faith is lived. Let us consider first some writers on tragedy who have suggested a rather different idea of tragedy's conclusion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1990

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References

1 MacKinnon, D., The Problem of Metaphysics (Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar

2 Aylen, L., Greek Tragedy and the Modem World (London, 1964).Google Scholar

3 Jaspers, K., Tragedy is not Enough (Hamden, Connecticut, 1969).Google Scholar

4 All quotations from the Oresteia are taken from The ‘Oresteia’ of Aeschylus (Cambridge 1938), edited and translated by Thomson, George, using the work of Walter G. Headlam.Google Scholar

5 Jaspers, op. cit., p. 57.

6 Ibid., p. 104.

7 Aylen, op. cit., p. 338.

8 Jaspers, op. cit., p. 97.

9 Ibid., p. 99.

10 Ibid., pp. 100–101.