Myth and Science as Images of God

Abstract

Among the many images of God which Thomas presents, two recur frequently. These might be figured as God present and accessible, and God absent but in a relationship defined by that absence. These images of God find their origin in traditional theology and mysticism. But a further body of poems, while still drawing on orthodoxy as a source, deals with its informing myths in a disturbing, radical way. I will identify poems which operate in this way as ‘mythic poems’. In the mythic poems Thomas seems to set his face steadily to look at the challenging possibilities which present themselves on an objective appraisal of the experienced world: challenging particularly to faith and religious belief. The mythic poems offer an image of a God who is often indifferent, frequently objectionable and altogether unlike the God of popular imagination. In these poems subjective experience continually pushes against objective reason. Hence the two vias — the via positiva and the via negativa — are, in this new frame, on the same side, set against an imaginative construction based on reason. But the subjective experience which is challenged by these poems is that of the reader. The challenging, objective stance is set up by the poet, and this has confused many readers, not to say some critics.1