Universitatea Petrol-Gaze, Ploiesti

Master CSCI, an II
An scolar 2017-2018

Teorii ale schimbului economic şi comunicare

Masterand: Ion (Dumitru) I. Liliana Raluca

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 The desire of God and the gift of life in

‘’The Scarlet Letter’’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne

‘’In On the Name (1995), Derrida writes: "The desire of God, God as the other
name of desire, deals in the desert with radical atheism." In what follows, I wish to tease out
some of the issues thrown up by this arresting statement. When we speak of the desire of God,
do we mean our desire for God or God's desire for us? Or both? And if, as Derrida suggests,
the desire of God deals with radical atheism, is it possible to reconcile this desire with
theism? I Making the wager that it is possible to speak of a genuinely theistic desire of God, I
will suggest that this requires us to distinguish between two different ways of desiring
Godnamely, onto-theological and eschatological. First, what I refer to as the ontotheological
paradigm construes desire as lackthat is, as a striving for fulfilment in a plenitude of
presence. Here desire expresses itself as a drive to be and to know absolutely. Conatus
essendiet cogniscendi. This relates back to the biblical tales of Adam’s Fall and the Tower of
Babelwhat Genesis, and later the Talmud, referred to as the “evil drive” (yezer hara)to be
God by refashioning Yahweh in our own image.’’1

The novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne explores the idea of sin as a symbol of
destruction, of separation between God and humans. Back at the creation of life, the Bible
begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for
eating from the tree of knowledge. As a result, they discover their condition as humans and
the sufferings which followed as a punishment.
Although the main character and the one around whom the plot is constructed is
Hester, the most complex character is Arthur Dimmesdale.
Reverend, a male Christian priest, a person who is, by definition very close to
God, Dimmesdale is caught between his inner life and outer world. The central conflict of the
story consists in the profound fracture of Dimmesdale’s spirit. The spirit is not only the
man’s soul but is also the human’s body, the image of God Himself. Man is the tool, the

1
Caputo, John D., God, the Gift, and Postmodernism Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion, Indiana
University Press, 1999, 221(112 – the original document)

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visible form of God, the connection between Heaven and Earth, God’s last creation, the
crown of his kingdom.

‘’Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and
over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”2
So, even the Bible says that the Man is one with his Creator.
People around him saw him as an angel, almost perfect as God therefore the
trauma he felt when he realized that he was responsible for Hester’s drama , was unbearable.
Dimmesdale’s words are the words of God to humans around him (male or
female) as the human being is created by God’s image. Dimmesdale desires God as his
guide, to lead his thoughts, to protect him from the initial sin. The sin is what humans can see
and what they are capable to see (and I am not referring at that ability of eyes). To see is to
understand what eyes cannot see. When Adam and Eve were expelled from Heaven, they
could saw each other. They realised that they were different-man and woman – and were able
to understand their nakedness. So, before knowing Hester, Dimmesdale represents the initial
creation of God, the Adam. Like Adam, all men are controlled by two entities, human and
divine. The dual nature of man (atheistic and theistic) is controlled by desire: the desire of the
other. But if God is everywhere and inside every one of us, we may say that we desire the
Creator? Without his presence we don’t have the parent, the origin, the beginning of life.
And, is the love between two creations of God a sin, as long as they are one being? What a
want to point out here is that Man and God are one being, inseparable. God needs Man to
complete His work and Man needs God to heal his soul. And, as the Bible says, the woman
was the gift which God gave to Adam.
Genesis 2:4-25
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will
make him a helper fit for him. ”Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast
of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would
call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man
gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But
for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to

2
https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/

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fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought
her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.3

The fracture of the Dimmesdale’s spirit and the remorse he felt is not for what he
did: fell in love with a woman in the most honest and sincere way, but because he found out
that Hester had a husband. She belonged to someone else and that person was returned
looking for revenge. Dimmesdale took someone else’s woman and this is a sin. In the same
time he is a priest, endowed with the voice of God. By breaking the code of honour, the oath,
he become a sinner.
‘’He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief
that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness
to perform its humblest mission here on earth. ’’4
The idea is that Dimmesdale is a man who believes that God will take care of
everything, that God controls and guides humans in every arena. Dimmesdale seems caught
between living a life tied to his fate and living a life of free will and choice. At the end of his
life, we don’t know if he make a choice or he surrenders to his fate.
‘’The red mark on Dimmesdale’s chest in the shape of the letter A is the physical
sign of the minister’s guilt. We are never given an exact description of this mark or its
origins, but Dimmesdale tells Hester it is from God. Although he refuses to confess and be
punished, his sin ultimately marks his body more permanently than Hester’s scarlet letter
made from thread does.’’ 5

3
https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/
4
Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999,112
5
Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999,140

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 The gift of God to Dimmesdale was not only the woman, but everything else that
made him take the ultimate gift. In fact, the whole life was a gift which God gave him in
order to save him from sin.
‘To the high mountain peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not
the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath
which it was his doom to totter. It kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of
ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered! But this
very burden it was that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of
mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself
and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive
eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew not the power that
moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied him
the mouth-piece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love.’’6

The connection with Divinity is man’s soul but in the same time the soul is
deeply connected with earthly life and sins. He can be considered a Holly spirit because he is
a priest. But in the eyes of mankind the gift of love and wisdom are inherent. The miracle of
holiness is God’s gift for humanity not for a single person, for the priest only. The priest is
only the voice, the sender, the keeper of the faith but also a man. The sin is part of our human
being and the sin which Dimmesdale holds deep down in his heart makes him closer to
humanity not to God. His sin is carved deeply into his heart and mind therefore people cannot
see the sin unless it is revealed.
I may conclude that to be a priest means to be the chosen one, to be the person
that gets the gift from God but is our own choice if you want to bring to life that hidden face
of the same person: the humanistic part of life. Marion says that as long as we cannot see the
donner, the giver of the gift thus missing the economical interest of the gift maintains its role
as gift,
‘’The gift does not always imply that something is given. Now this remains true,
not only in daily life, but in the most important and meaningful experiences of human life. We
know that, to some extent, if the gift is really unique, makes a real difference, cannot be
repeated, then in such a case, the gift does not appear as something that could shift from one
owner to another owner. Each genuine gift happens without any objective counterpart. When

6
Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999,96

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we give ourselves, our Fife, our time, when we give our word, not only do we give no thing,
but we give much more. Here is my point: We can describe the gift outside of the horizon of
economy in such a way that new phenomenological rules appear. For instance, the gift or the
given phenomenon has no cause and does not need any.’’7

But in the case of the priests we now that the giver is God. We also know that
priests should not reveal the sinner (human) part of their beings because this means refusing
the gift of God and accept the gift of Satan.
Dimmesdale recognizes that he suffers, but the only doctor that can cure his soul
is the one that gave his soul –God. In the same time God can refuse and can let man’s soul in
pain, in the hands of Satan.
“No!—not to thee!—not to an earthly physician!” cried Mr. Dimmesdale,
passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger
Chillingworth. “Not to thee! But, if it be the soul’s disease, then do I commit myself to the
one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure; or he can kill! Let
him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou, that
meddlest in this matter?—that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his God?”8
By this statement Dimmesdale takes the position of Adam, feeling guilty of
tasting the poisonous apple of the sin but he cannot tell who was Eve. So, I may conclude
that he is aware by his human dimension and that he is not afraid the divine punishment but
the earthly punishment, the shame she feels being judge by his inferior followers.
And yet he knows that God will not turn his back to him as He never did, to any
other human being:
"We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even
the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in
cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!" 9
He considers himself superior because he was chosen to be God’s voice and by
placing himself as sinner is like the rest of the people-pagans , sinners, ordinary. I may say
that at one point he felt himself superior, an idea that only people have. God doesn’t shows

7
Caputo, John D., God, the Gift, and Postmodernism Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion, Indiana
University Press, 1999
8
Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999, 146

9
Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999, 122

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his superiority. He forgives and forgets, He helps, loves if you only believe in Him. Therefore
Dimmesdale is aware by his human condition and he is afraid not of God punishment but
peoples’.

In the end he chooses to die feeling released and finally returns to God who will
accept him.

Even if we accept the existence of God, humanity have its own way of seeing: it
is not a supernatural revelation, nor the Church or the Holly Scripture that have the last word
but our logical way of seeing, our rationality. Toma de Aquino, a priest and a philosopher
who lived between 1225-1274 said that the human nature must learn to divide between the
nature around him, which can be seen or touch and the world of supernatural, of gift ( a
harului ) , the world of God. The Fall of man had destroyed his will but not his reason. Man
and women are the creation of God as one entity (the woman was born from Adam, therefore
she is a part of him). So, between a man and a woman cannot be sin as long as they are united
by the gift of love.

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 Bibliography

1. Caputo, John D., God, the Gift, and Postmodernism Indiana Series in the Philosophy of
Religion, Indiana University Press, 1999
2. Hawthorn Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter , Wordsworth Editions Limited , 1999
3. Christliche Literatur – Verbreitung, Asa a aparut lumea, CLV, 1993
4. Derrida Jaques, The Gift of Death, The University of Chicago Press, 1995
5. Derrida Jaques, Given TIme: I. Counterfeit Money, The Universil1 of Chicago Press,
1992