The Biblical Comic and the Demands of Reality

C.A. PATRIDES The Biblical Comic and the Demands of Reality Nor is the Ridiculous aspecies any longer of the Ugly; for since ofthemselves all men are without merit, all are ironically assisted to their comic bewilderment by the Grace of God. W.H. AUDEN, For the Time Being 'GOD HATH MADE ME TO LAUGH' 'I said of laughter, it is mad,' remarks the despondent narrator of the Book of Ecclesiastes (2.2). He adds later, in the threnodic rhythms characteristic of his entire discourse: Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of lools is in the house olmirth.lt is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the 1001: this also is vanity. (7.3- 6) This dismal viewpoint is normally regarded, 1expect, as representative of the Judaeo-Christian tradition at large. After all, occasions for laughter were severely restricted as much for the founder of Judaism as for the founder of Christianity; and their arduous lives ended equally devoid of gaiety, in the one case outside the boundaries of the Promised Land, and in the other most humiliatingly on a Cross. For a Christian, it would appear, the limits of 'jesting' are precisely the ones that the widely respected Calvinist theologian William Perkins set forth in the 1590s: two kindes ofiesting are tollerable: the one is moderate and sparing mirth, in the vse of things indifferent, in season conuenient, without the least scandall ofany man, and with profit to the hearers. The second is that which the prophets vsed, when they iested against wicked persons, yet so, as withal they sharpely reprooued their sins. At noone Eliah mocked them, and said, erie aloud, for he is a God: either hee talketh or pursueth his enemies, or is in his iourney, or it may bee hee sleepeth and must be awakened.11 Kings 18.27]' Not accidentally, the only expressly Biblical 'jesting' here acknowledged involves mockery, its archetype the celebrated confrontation between UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 1, FALL 1983 THE BIBLICAL COMIC 73 Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, but its ultimate authority the cumulative precedents sanctioned at the highest possible level by the Lord God. According to one of these precedents, in the Book of Proverbs, the Wisdom of God warns somewhat too explicitly, 'I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh' (1.26). According to another precedent, in the Book of Psalms, 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them [i.e. the proud ones] in derision' (2·4·)· We expect such statements to have embarrassed Christian spokesmen. Traditionally, however, the contrary has obtained quite often. In a representative reaction, Thomas Playfere, Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge from 1596, decided that the statement in Psalm 2 was not forceful enough; he therefore paraphrased it to read, 'he that sitteth in the heaven, shall laugh all such to scorne, the Lord shall have them in derision, and hisse them off." Much the same prospect is relished in the metrical version of the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter, doubtless because the laughter of God was as usual judged to be an appropriate response to the laughter of his enemies (Psalms 22.7 and 80.6): But he that in the heaven dwel'th, their doings will deride: And make them all as mocking stockes, thorowout the world so wide.) No less traditional, however, has been a contrary tendency to interpret the same Psalm much more literally. Here the emphasis was transferred from God's vindictiveness to man's folly, as in the representative claim of David Dickson, professor of divinity at Edinburgh from 1650: 'All the devices and conspiracies of men against Christs Kingdome, (how terrible soever to Gods people) are but ridiculous and foolish attempts in Gods sight.'4 As still other commentators explained, God is not even distantly concerned to hiss...