In Defense of Creation: A Comparative Study of Goethe’s Faust and the Book of Job

In Defense of Creation: A Comparative Study of Goethe’s Faust and the Book of Job – Spring 2023

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust is often considered one of the greatest works to come from Germany, right up there beside Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Faust, however, while a piece of literature that helped Goethe’s legacy to remain as strong today as when he first published it, is also known for works like The Sorrows of Young Werther, a story that led to a hysteria called “Werther’s fever,” and also for a literary movement, Sturm und Drang, which is characterized by turbulent emotions and the rejection of neoclassical literary traditions. Not only was Goethe adept at causing societal uproar and knowing how to play to a crowd, he knew the rumors and stories of the crowd as well, as evidenced by his reinterpretation of an old folk tale: the legend of Dr. Faust. This legend revolves around a German man who, allegedly, knew or practiced all manner of things that people were afraid of: alchemy, necromancy, and possession of healing powers. One critic, B. W. Wells, says that “[Faust] must have made a deep popular impression, for after a violent death, in 1540, he became almost immediately the nucleus around which gathered a great number of diabolical tales” (Wells 1).  Sadly, as with most stories of people who reach too far or get too deep in black magic, Faust of legend faced his “violent death” and went to hell. Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, which Goethe would have been familiar with, capitalized on this plot, showing the world a Faust who wanted too much, messed around with magic and devilry, and paid the price. Goethe, however, about a century later and in the midst of the Enlightenment, found a different story in the old legend: a story about a man who has grown disillusioned with the world, bored with academia, and wishes to know things beyond his realm of logic and thought. However, my purpose here is not to discuss the stagnation of Faust, or even to relate Faust to Goethe’s own life, as some critics have done; rather, the story of Faust is in some way similar to the story of the Book of Job–or, to be more specific, it is an inverse of that story. 

The prologue of Faust is, perhaps, the most intriguing part of Goethe’s play, in that it sets a scene that may at first look typical to most denominations of Christianity, and is the prime excerpt to correlate the stories of Job and Faust. The normal stuff helps to orient the reader, with the three angels (Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael) commenting about the creation story. Raphael notes the “first creating day,” (Goethe line 224) suggesting that we are following the creationist story, that Earth was created in seven days, and, as this usually follows the same story, that we are talking specifically about young Earth creationism, in which the Earth was formed roughly 6,000 years ago. Then, Gabriel mentions the “eternally turning world” (l. 232), which leads the reader to imagine a period where humans believed the world to be eternal and not in danger of the sun eventually burning out–the eternity of the world was something that had been argued for many centuries beforehand, and then reignited around the 13th century when some work of Aristotle’s, the eight books of Physics, came up.  However, it is when the Lord begins to speak that some of the traditional elements begin to unravel, as the God that Goethe presents does not appear to meet the standards of this fundamentalist belief system. 

The Lord brings up Faust to Mephistopheles, then, on line 277, calls him a “good servant.” It is almost as though the Lord is either unknowledgeable about Faust’s true feelings–which later become known to the audience, as Faust is inconsolably depressed and even seems on the verge of harming himself–or deliberately playing the fool, as Faust is certainly already far from being a “good servant,” even before Mephistopheles begins to toy with him, thanks to his interest in magic and the sense that he, as a human, is god-like. In fact, it is Mephistopheles that seems to have a greater understanding of our nigh-insane protagonist, calling him tormented and crazy. God calling Faust a “good servant” has also been a hot topic in this area of literature, with researchers struggling to agree on what Faust even represents. According to Merkel F. Gottfried, a late professor at the University of Cincinnati, there are four potential Fausts: Faust as a perfect or idealized man, Faust as a representative of real life man, Faust as an adventurer who desires power and sensuality, and Faust as the superman. The group with the most influence here is those who believe in Faust as superman, which means that Faust is “the representative of a new master race” (Gottfried 12), yet if this is the case, Gottfried poses the next necessary question: “how can a man who commits during his lifetime a number of capital crimes […] receive the salvation accorded a good servant of God?” (12). This question is solved by calling Faust a superman, or an exceptional being . . . but Gottfried does not agree with this. He claims that God chose Faust because Mephistopheles is putting Him on the defensive: the Lord must defend his creation, and He does this by pointing to the individual who must “represent the whole in order to prove the value of his creation” (14). In this way, Faust becomes not an exceptional being, just a chosen man. This argument seems to hold some merit, as anyone who reads the play can clearly see Faust is hardly worthy of the title “good servant” with his misdeeds–such as murder! However, Faust is a good representation of a typical man; he’s emotional, full of desires and passions, and a true example of the whole.

In comparison, the frame story that kicks off the Book of Job is fairly similar, if much shorter. In chapter one, the entire frame is set up in a mere twelve verses. In verse 6, God asks Satan, “‘Where have you come from?’” and Satan responds that he has been roaming the earth, before God goes and calls out Job as a good servant. Satan then tests God, asking, “‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’” (Job 1.1-12). This leads to their bet, and though both begin on the basis of testing Faust/Job’s faith, there is a sense that Faust is not on the same narrow path that Job is walking, as the Lord in Faust says: “If today his service shows confused, disordered, / With my help he will see the way clear forward” (Goethe ll. 284-285). For all the correlations between Faust and Job, then, there are inconsistencies, since while Job is rich in wealth, Faust is more rich in studies and thought. Faust is struggling in his faith, and the goal of Mephistopheles is not to take everything away from him in order to make him curse God, but to prove that he can push Faust ever farther down his wayward path, until he becomes irredeemable. This difference in character already marks a huge rift between the stories, and yet they have begun the same way. As compared to Job, a man who is “blameless and upright” who “feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1.1), Faust is struggling, with his “mirth all gone” (Goethe l. 19). In terms of personality and places in life, they could hardly be more incomparable.

While it is easy to see the differences between the characters of Job and Faust, the plots of their respective stories are even easier to contrast. Faust’s story opens with the bet, then follows Faust as he makes a deal with Mephistopheles and, together, they do various activities. Some are slapstick, such as Mephistopheles messing with the drunkards, and some are illegal such as murdering Valentine, brother of Faust’s love interest (seems like terrible game). The Book of Job’s plot, on the other hand, has no direct interaction with Satan, and over the course of five verses and four messengers, Job proceeds to lose everything he holds dear. Then, in chapter 2, Satan visits God again, asking for more privileges, and ultimately afflicts Job’s health. Andrew Steinmann, a professor of Theology and Hebrew at Concordia University, breaks down the events of Job into seven parts: The prose prologue, Job’s complaint, speeches of Job and his friends (three sets of these), a wisdom poem, Job’s second complaint, Elihu speeches, Yahweh’s discourse with Job, and the prose epilogue (Steinmann 86-87). With most of Job being pure philosophizing, it becomes much harder to relate it to Faust. However, what is important is not how the characters walked their journey, but rather, the integral themes and purposes are what continue to bind these two wildly different works. 

Steinmann argues in his article that the Book of Job is not, in fact, about the problem of suffering–which, put into a question, would sound something like “why does God, who is supposed to be benevolent, allow suffering/bad things to happen?”–but rather, Steinmann claims that “[p]erhaps all the supposed contradictions of the book that moves scholars to slice out parts of the book would not be nearly so contradictory if the book were understood to have a different central theme” (Steinmann 90). He continues a paragraph later, stating his interpretation of the book: that the theme is maintaining one’s faith and integrity, and the suffering was what brought about the struggle in the first place. This suddenly makes the Book of Job’s themes and Faust’s themes much easier to compare, as in the very first scene (omitting the introduction with non-Faustian-characters) the point of Mephistopheles and God’s bet is to prove that Faust’s faith will never waver. The Lord says, “If today his service shows confused, disordered / With my help he will see the way clear forward” (Goethe ll. 284-285) which leads to Mephistopheles’s challenge to make Faust stray onto a “primrose path” (l. 290). So we have two men, who are put through struggles (admittedly of incredibly different calibers) who are attempting to maintain their faith. However, the different caliber is what makes Faust an inverse of the Book of Job; certainly, we start with the same frame story, and end the same (with both characters maintaining their faith), but Goethe approaches the ultimate goal differently: by… good things happening to Faust? 

Though several of the events may look ideal, this is where the difference between Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Goethe’s iteration of the same story comes into play. Goethe’s approach to the world differed from Marlowe’s because of the era in which he lived: the Enlightenment. Therefore, instead of a moralistic tale as this ripoff on an old folktale usually is, Goethe turned the “evil” of the story into a more abstract notion, rather than evil personified in characters, like Satan. The thing Faust wishes to avoid the most is stagnation. In Part 1, Faust’s Study II, directly after making a bet with Mephistopheles, Faust doubles-down and makes another. He says, “If ever I plead with the passing moment, / “Linger a while, you are so fair!” / […] / The unreluctantly I’ll perish” (ll. 1363-70), and then several moments later, he adds, “But if I stagnate, fall into a rut, / I’m a slave, no matter who to” (ll. 1374-75).  Faust’s bet, then, means that he must always be striving to learn more–as this is what threw him into despondency from the start–and should he ever linger on a topic, place, or person–stagnate–then Mephistopheles is free to leave and Faust may perish. 

This turn from a religiously-based tale to a message that appears more science-driven was not a mistake. Goethe’s personal beliefs were influenced heavily by another philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who, in his day, was “called a ‘blasphemous Jew” and an ‘atheist’ full of ‘cursed and monstrous opinions” (Seidel 57). Yet, as Esther Seidel, a philosopher who taught at several universities (such as Düsseldorf University or Leo Baeck College) and who mainly researches Spinoza, notes only moments after the prior statement that Spinoza’s reputation and philosophy “rose significantly during the German enlightenment” and that “Goethe was deeply impressed by its [Spinoza’s philosophy] ‘boundless unselfishness’” (Seidel 57). What this meant for Spinoza is that, while he may have been hated and dismissed during his own lifetime, he was merely ahead of his era and people like Goethe found him about a century later and liked his work. In Spinoza’s main works, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Ethics (published only posthumously because of public outrage), one can find most, if not all, of Spinoza’s philosophical thoughts. Much of his philosophy can be categorized under the blanket of existentialism and/or determinism, as he believed that free will does not exist and “the disposition of our mind and body at a given time” (Seidel 62) is what causes us to desire things. Without getting too deep into his philosophy, Spinoza’s God was one where God is unified and interconnected with the world; his God is “the internal cause and logical ground of the entire universe and all its entities” (Seidel 63) meaning that God is everything and everywhere, all at once. What this means, however, is also what made a lot of people incredibly upset with Spinoza: that free will and freedom do not exist. Seidel makes a case though, that we must read Spinoza more carefully and purports: “Our only kind of ‘freedom,’ if we can still call it this, consists in exercising reason to such a degree that we transform the passive emotions and the confused ideas which enslave us into a clear awareness of our motives” (64). In relation to Faust, our main character may seem to have free will, though this is cast into some gray area when Mephistopheles and the Lord make their bet. The Lord firmly believes Faust will not stray, and God is supposed to know everything–hence, we already should know the end of Faust’s journey. And, as for Faust’s freedom to exercise reason, that’s the bit that kicked off this plot: he wants to have a clear awareness of the things he does not understand. 

And Faust’s desire is a natural one. There are a plethora of stories out there, either condemning or celebrating (in many cases condemning–looking at you, Nathaniel Hawthorne) man’s desire to progress, to know more and more. As far as free will is concerned, while it may be icky to think about, Faust’s free will (and, subsequently, Job’s) is definitely limited–making Spinoza at least partially correct. This is because of God and a devil making a bet with human lives in the first place. In fact, Steven Frankel, a Xavier University philosopher and professor, writes of Spinoza that, “our power of choice is illusory” (Frankel 57). Indeed, in this circumstance, it seems to be, as the higher powers are treating Faust and Job as something to defend creation as mentioned earlier, but also as playthings. While Faust may have been literally asking for it, Job did not want to experience the things Satan (and, albeit indirectly, God) forced on him. In terms of control, neither character had control over what their respective devils did to/for them. This may suggest that these stories had predetermined endings–Job will return to health and wealth, just as Faust will end up staying on his true path. 

Part of these predetermined endings are merely due to the fact that they are stories, and humans generally expect happy endings of some sort, with the good guys coming out on top. Even some of the best tragedies end up with a happy, or at least not dead, party. Plenty of this predetermination could be attributed to a lack of free will, though, with spiritual matters controlling characters. Obviously, this is not a belief that many people today subscribe to–it is much more preferable to believe we humans have the ability to choose how to live our lives and what happens in our lives to some extent–and it is even less compelling when someone does not believe in a spiritual realm at all. Another problem faces this belief system, too: personal responsibility. If one believes that, say, demons and devils are the cause of all the bad things that happen to them, there is no room for personal responsibility, or when you are accountable for your actions and decisions. I have some experience with this issue; some members of my family attend a church called Global Vision Bible Church, the pastor of which is named Greg Locke. After many hours of listening to Locke, I’ve determined he’s less of a preacher and more of a political instigator–to him, all democrats are demons (Locke 0:15). One of Locke’s main points in most of his sermons is how demons influence our lives, by oppressing or possessing people–in essence, he adheres to the belief system mentioned earlier, though I wager he does not comprehend the full meaning behind it, which is a lack of free will. In any case, his existence serves as a good basis for how this belief might manifest in real life; no person has true control over their life, and are at the whim and mercy of the spiritual realm. The same holds true for Faust and Job. The evils that befall Job are directly caused by Satan and indirectly caused by God, just as his eventual return to health and prosperity are blessings of God–nothing is attributable to his own effort or knowledge. Faust’s ultimate return to faith might look a little different, but if we keep in mind the train of thought that these stories had a predetermined ending, Faust had little control over what happened to him. 

All of this being said, even with a fairly strong case for a lack of free will, this is not how the stories were meant to be taken. Just as the Book of Job’s overarching theme is how to maintain one’s faith through trials and tribulations, so is Faust’s. Faust and Job are not supermen, or exceptional beings; at the end of the day, they were just picked at random to represent the faithfulness and resilience of mankind. These stories contrasted are just another example of how so many stories are parodies of other stories. Clearly, the idea of a frame story involving a supernatural bet has enchanted us for many centuries; both Faust and the Book of Job have their own sets of dedicated scholars even today. Furthermore, while a concentration on the Biblical elements of a text may not be necessary to understand the theme or plot, I find it exceptionally interesting and helpful to find and understand the allusions and references. 

Knowing the history and philosophy behind a text like Faust makes not only for great discussion, but leads to more questions that might not have been considered by the greater literary community. In my opinion, looking at Faust through the lens of Job has had more of a personal agenda–as someone who has been questioning their faith for a long time, and has always been told to look at the Bible as God’s inspired word, I find the more I look at the Bible as literature the more I appreciate allusions and references. I also really like the Book of Job–in relation to the rest of the Bible, it feels like a curious installment. And, while there may be plenty of differences in the middle of their stories, the stories in question begin and end the same–Faust is an inverse of the Book of Job only in the sense that the path Faust took to reach the goal is quite nearly the opposite of Job’s–which makes me remember how stories are told over and over again. They may have different names and slightly different plots, but there are still a limited number of plots. For Goethe to create a story loosely based off of one so old is fascinating and reiterates my point: good stories stick, and despite having the same frame, plot, or setting, the possibilities are infinite.

Works Cited

Frankel, Steven. “Determined to Be Free: The Meaning of Freedom in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.” The Review of Politics, vol. 73, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23016492. Accessed 26 Feb. 2023.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Translated by Martin Greenberg. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. E., edited by Martin Puchner et al., 4th ed., Norton, 2018, pp. 100-212.

Job. (New International Version.) Bible Gateway. www.biblegateway.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Locke, Greg. “Extremist Pastor: Democrats Can’t Be Christians.” Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey. YouTube. 22 May 2022. youtube.com/watch?v=qe27h0TIfl0. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Merkel, Gottfried F. “Goethe’s Faust. Man or Superman?” The German Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 1, 1950, pp. 9–25. JSTOR, https://doi.og/10.2307/401100r. Accessed 26 Feb. 2023.

Seidel, Esther. “SPINOZA.” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, pp. 57–69. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41443516. Accessed 26 Feb. 2023.

Steinmann, Andrew E. “The Structure and Message of the Book of Job.” Vetus Testamentum, vol. 46, no. 1, 1996, pp. 85–100. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1585391. Accessed 26 Feb. 2023.

Wells, B. W. “Goethe’s ‘Faust.’” The Sewanee Review, vol. 2, no. 4, 1894, pp. 385–412. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27527817. Accessed 26 Feb. 2023.