The End of the Journey

by Robert Farrer Capon

The rest of our journey, once we have passed through that door in the bottom of the world, is predictably unpredictable. The Miller’s Third Son following the cocked hat in the gloom has no idea where he is going or what will happen next. Everyone who reads the story, however, knows that, whatever happens, he will make home safely. Mystery may never stop being mystery; but the happy ending comes on willy-nilly.

It can be argued that the whole business is just an elaborate game of wishing-will-make-it-so. There are answers to that. The first is the old anti-reductionist one-two punch: How do you know that this elaborate game of wishing-will-make-it-so is not the divine device for clueing us in on what, in fact, really is so?

The second is to trot out Pascal’s “wager”: No matter what happens, we are going to have to wander around down here in the dark of badness as long as we live; why not take a chance on the invisible guide? If he’s for real, you win hands down; if not, you only lose what you had to lose anyway. It is a proposition no betting man would refuse: The worst you can do is break even.

The third answer goes one step further: Even if the invisible guide turns out to be the little man that wasn’t there, he sounds nicer than the Crown Prince of the Salamanders. If the whispered love of the Word is a lie, it is at least more appealing than all the ghastly truths we have to put up with.

In the long run though, who really cares about smart answers? On both sides of the fence, everyone who has his head threaded on straight knows that there is no possibility of proving or disproving these things. What we think of them is always decided on the basis of taste. If you find something fetching about the idea of the Word making love to creation in the midst of its passion, you take to it; if not, you call a spade a spade and brand the whole thing as a cop-out, a fool’s promise to do everything someday by doing nothing now.

But what you do about it all is another question. The world commonly assumes that the faithful are uniformly delighted, everywhere and always, by the faith. That is partly because they have never paid proper attention to the Book of Job, and partly because the faithful are sometimes a bunch of fakers who refuse to admit their doubts. There are days when any honest Christian will admit that he thinks the promises of the Gospel are just so much incredible bologna. Even when he tries to catch the last handhold—the fact of the resurrection of Jesus—it gives way and he sees it only as the delusion of a handful of peasants, inflated to cosmic proportions by a tentmaker with excess intellectual energy.

But what he thinks has nothing to do with what he does.

Ah, you say. Intellectual dishonesty!

No. Or yes. It doesn’t matter. You forget what kind of proposition we are dealing with. There is no harm in thinking I am on the wrong bus when, in fact, I am on the right one—as long as I don’t talk myself into getting off the bus. We have been offered a guide who says he can bring us home; either he can, or he can’t. But what I think about him has nothing to do with his competence. I may believe in him with all my heart: if he is a fraud, it gets me nowhere. Or I may doubt him absolutely: if he really knows the way, I can still get home by following him.

You have failed to distinguish between faith, which is a decision to act as if you trusted somebody, and confidence, which is what you have if, at any given moment, you feel good about your decision. It is probably not possible to have confidence without faith; but it certainly is possible to act in faith when you haven’t a shred of confidence left. Intellectual honesty is a legitimate hint for your own mental housekeeping; it has no effect whatsoever on things that already are what they are. I suggest, therefore, that we stop this bickering and think about something more pleasant. We still have a long way to go. Have the last piece of venison pie while I tell you a classroom story.

When I teach dogmatic theology, I try to set up the faith on the same framework I have used in this book: the Trinity creating the world out of sheer fun; the Word romancing creation into being, and becoming incarnate to bring it home; Jesus as the sacrament of the Word; and the Church as the sacrament of Jesus. Having done that, I then ask the crucial question: How does the story actually end?

Invariably, I get all the correct but dull answers: The Word triumphs; creation is glorified; the peaceable kingdom comes in. And I say, Yes, yes; but how does the story actually end? The class looks at me for a while as if I were out of my mind, and then offers some more of the same: The Father’s good pleasure is served; man is taken up into the exchanges of the Trinity. And I say again, Yes; but how does the story end in fact? No answer. I try another tack: Where does the story end? Still no answer. All right, I say, I’ll give you a hint: Where can you read the end of the story? And eventually someone says: In the Book of Revelation—but who understands that? I’m not asking you to understand it, I say. I just want to know what you read there. What is the last thing that happens?

And, slowly and painfully, it finally comes out: The New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to be the Bride of the Lamb.

They never see it till they fall over it! It’s the oldest story on earth: Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl! He marries her and takes her home to Daddy. The Word romances creation till he wins her; You are beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. By his eternal flattery, he makes new heavens and a new earth; the once groaning and travailing world becomes Jerusalem, the bride without spot or wrinkle. And finally, as she stands young and lovely before him, he sets her about with jewels, and she begins the banter of an endless love: Jasper, sapphire, a chalcedony, an emerald; Behold, you are fair my love. Sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl; You are fair, my love; you have doves’ eyes. A topaz, a chrysoprasus, a jacinth, an amethyst: You are fair, my beloved, and pleasant: also our bed is green. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: There I will give you my loves. The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.

The Third Peacock, chap. 7

(Return to chap. 1)