J.B. v. Job

Ever since Poet Archibald MacLeish's version of the Biblical Book of Job, the verse-play J.B., opened on Broadway last December (TIME, Dec. 22), viewers and reviewers have been choosing up sides to attack and defend MacLeish's Biblicism or lack of it, his humanism or his sentimentality.

"Incredible" Job. The Christian Century's drama critic, the Rev. Tom F. Driver, who also teaches Practical Theology at Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary, criticized MacLeish for making his play a non sequitur by jumping down from the theological discussion between God and Satan to dwell upon J.B.'s purely human sufferings.

In a later issue of the Century, Samuel Terrien, professor of Old Testament at Union, maintained that MacLeish's J.B. is an entirely different character from Job. The Bible's Job "shouts his pride, shrieks his blasphemy, and fights with a God who eludes his attacks." By comparison, Terrien finds MacLeish's J.B. "emasculated." He is merely "the diseased victim of fate, who hardly, if ever at all, rises above the level of intellectual stupor and spiritual impassivity."

Terrien's and Driver's academic boss, President Henry P. Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary, took them both to task in the Christian Century for not taking into consideration the fact that the Book of Job is not one book but two--a poem with a prose introduction and conclusion on a much lower level. Since the picture of Job is not consistent in the first place, says Van Dusen, Dr. Terrien's complaint that J.B. is not faithful to the Book of Job is irrelevant. Instead of "slavish imitation" of the Biblical Job, "Mr. MacLeish authentically sets forth the response of a very modern man to substantially parallel adversities. And again, his J.B. is far more convincing, as he is certainly vastly more moving, than the incredible Job."

"Loving" Job. In the current issue of the Century, Poet-Playwright MacLeish speaks out for himself. Whatever the opinions of scholars about the question of the Book of Job's split authorship, he takes it as a whole. The prologue in heaven is to him supremely important. Why, he asks, does God deliver the innocent Job into Satan's hands?

"Because," he answers, "God believes it will be demonstrated that Job loves and fears God because He is God and not because Job is prosperous . . . that Job will still love God and fear him in adversity, in misfortune, in the worst of misfortunes--in spite of everything . . . Which means that in the conflict between God and Satan, in the struggle between good and evil. God stakes his supremacy as God upon man's fortitude and love. Which means, again, that where the nature of man is in question . . . God has need of man . . .

"Man depends on God for all things: God depends on man for one. Without man's love God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death . . . The justification of the injustice of the universe is not our blind acceptance of God's inexplicable will, nor our trust in God's love, his dark and incomprehensible love, for us, but our human love, notwithstanding anything, for him."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.