The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus is a play by Christopher Marlow, an Elizabethan playwright and contemporary of William Shakespeare. The play is based on a German folktale and was reworked centuries later by the great German author Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. This is the story of a brilliant but ambitious scholar who sold his soul to the devil to gain wealth, power and beautiful women. It is a story with many variations in literature. One of the most popular contemporary versions is The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet, which is based in turn on a short story by Washington Irving. The question that every version of the story askes is what price is worldly success worth? How far are we willing to go in our pursuit of wealth, women, power and fame?
It is fascinating to observe that in each variation of the Faustus tale the main character makes a deal with the devil. Why the devil?
During the early years of the Church Christians were a persecuted minority who were trying to avoid public notoriety and simply stay alive. Once Constantine became a Christian and made the Faith a protected and then favored religion, the situation changed dramatically. Christians were no longer targets of persecution but major players on the political scene. In many places bishops were not just religious leaders but were given extraordinary political power and influence. A bishop could function as the local magistrate under civil authority. The traditional politicians, business and military power players were now Christians. They had civil authority and the responsibility that went with such authority. How was a Christian to exercise this authority? Did a Christian play the traditional power games or where there some new criteria by which Christians were called to live out their Faith?
The perennial wisdom of every enduring culture going back as far as we can find records, as well as the Gospel message, is that material benefits are temporary. They depend on external circumstances and that can change from one moment to the next. One day you are enjoying your million-dollar home in all its comfort and glory, then the next day a lava flow is running through your back yard.
What endures isn’t the external but the internal. What endures is our character, as it is shaped by how we react to life circumstances and by the virtue that we incorporate into our lives. We admire the altruistic person who sacrifices himself for another, who honors the responsibilities he has taken on and whose word can be trusted. On the other hand, our stomach turns at the narcissist, the liar or the opportunist who treats responsibility as a means for self-aggrandizement. This is almost an instinctive reaction because a healthy human being has an active conscience that is attracted by virtue and repelled by the opposite.