LAWRENCE AND CHRIST
43
of his career, Lawrence evinced an admiration for the pagan ele–
ment in the Catholic Church and was even hopeful about the re–
generation of Christianity as an active religious force. Moreover,
Lawrence's attraction to the figure of Jesus was deep and abiding,
and
The Man Who Died,
despite the elements of parody and satire
that it
contains
is a significant (and in certain ways) reverent re–
creation of the Christ story. Lawrence's affection for the resurrec–
tion idea alone would seem to provide a ground for asserting his
kinship with Christianity. One critic suggests that Lawrence may
have been working all along toward a Christian view of
things
and
calls Lawrence "almost a Christian."
All this, of course, is to ignore the fact that the essential
animus of his work is averse to Christianity.
If
he celebrates the
resurrection, he reminds us in
Apocalypse
that the resurrection
theme is prominent in pre-Christian religions. Indeed, Christianity
involves the transcendence of the idea of resurrection. Man is to
rise to a place in the eternal scheme of things never to
rise
again.
For Lawrence the rhythm of death and rebirth is an eternal rhythm
which can never be transcended so long as there is life. Lawrence,
consequently, loathed the idea of immortality. Even more crucial
to Lawrence's view of Christianity is his peculiar appropriation of
the idea of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, according to Lawrence,
is that capacity within man which "can scent the new tracks of
the Great God across the Cosmos or Creation." It is not a Way or
a Word; it
is
rather the eternal capacity in man to discover the
Way and the Word at every moment of his quest. Lawrence writes:
... never did God or Jesus say there was only one way of
salvation, for ever and ever. On the contrary, Jesus plainly
indicated the changing of the way. And what is more, He
indicated the only means to the finding of the right way.
Lawrence appropriates the idea of the Holy Ghost precisely to free
himself from a commitment to Christianity. He separates Christ
from Christianity, and it is this separation that has given him the
freedom to pursue God in his own way. Nietzsche (in
Thus Spake
Zarathustra)
provides us with a motto for understanding Lawrence's
version of the Christ story in
The Man Who Died.
"He died too
