Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 231

`` Yes.

If life and death did not both present themselves to us, there would be no inscrutability.

If there were only darkness, all would be clear.

It is because there is not only darkness but also light that our situation becomes inexplicable.

Take Augustine's doctrine of grace given and grace withheld: have you pondered the dramatic qualities in this theology??

Two thieves are crucified with Christ, one saved and the other damned.

How can we make sense of this division??

In classical drama, such problems do not arise.

The destiny of Racine's Phedre is sealed from the beginning: she will proceed into the dark.

As she goes, she herself will be illuminated.

At the beginning of the play she has partial illumination and at the end she has complete illumination, but there has been no question but that she moves toward the dark.

That is the play.

Within this notion clarity is possible, but for us who are neither Greek nor Jansenist there is not such clarity.

The question would also be removed if we believed in the contrary -- total salvation.

But where we have both dark and light we have also the inexplicable.

The key word in my plays is ' perhaps ' ''.