| Robinson Crusoe:
A parable of modernity
A tension between biblical faith and self-sufficiency is present in Crusoe’s perception of providence, which is shifting with the tide of theological attitudes in emerging Enlightenment (17-18th C), though not without an undertow of evangelical conviction. In his castaway circumstances, Crusoe fluctuates between personal trust in God and confidence in his own industry amid nature’s provisions. Yet the discovery of a single footprint in the sand haunts Crusoe with an unknown that tests his shifting views of providence. v Crusoe’s discovery of an enigmatic footprint dramatically changes the mood and tempo of a potentially utopian story. With his many inventories and inventions, Crusoe is at home in his world. His schedules for gathering food and husbanding animals, mending clothes and making tools, enhance the comfort of an increasingly idyllic lifestyle in a tropical paradise. This changes dramatically when he discovers a single footprint in the sand, which now suggests something unknown and threatening in Crusoe’s world. He is terrified by its inexplicable appearance. Anxiously, he ascertains the gravity of his situation and gravitates toward utter despair. After years of self-absorbing industry, Crusoe is driven to tortuous distraction. Could it be his footprint? He also suspects that he might merely be frightened by his own shadow. After the shock of discovering the footprint, Crusoe’s fear becomes an anxious flurry as every aspect of his existence is turned into a hidden fortress and every movement in his lifestyle assumes painful caution. He strengthens his fences, camouflages his dwelling, limits his movements about the island and reduces the scope of his industry. Crusoe’s fear of the unknown dramatically changes his regulated habits on the now familiar island. A single moment in his experience is recapitulated in an ever tightening stranglehold on his providential industry, yet his imagination runs wild with conjectures concerning this one appearance of a human footprint. He remains immobilised by this impression for at least two years before the tourniquet on his mind begins to slacken. Yet he is no longer free from the memory of this trace of another on his island. For eighteen years, until the footprint discovery, Crusoe oscillated between depression and industry, danger and thanksgiving, faith and agnosticism, survival as burdensome and a challenge to inventiveness. These oscillations in Crusoe’s experience are only intensified by the shock of discovering a familiar but terrifying impression in the sand. For nearly two decades, Crusoe was ignorant of any other human life on the island. After discovering the footprint and then subsequently, further traces of visitors coming to another part of the island, he lives in morbid apprehension. Crusoe surmises that the footprint belongs to cannibals who habitually visit the island. After two years, he discovers the gruesome evidence of his greatest fear—the remains of a feast. Fear of cannibals mingled with a desire to kill now haunts an insomniac Crusoe. His previous passion for industry is transposed into inventions of violence. Even in his sleep, he dreams of enacting his plans for a well-rehearsed ambush. He surmises that unless he destroys them, they will eventually find him. Crusoe’s vigilance is driven by a desire to hunt before being hunted and to destroy before being destroyed. As long as “they” exist, Crusoe is haunted and uncertain, neither autonomous nor the sovereign of his island world. v Crusoe exhibits two perspectives of providence, which are confused by the footprint discovery: one, biblical faith of his evangelical heritage, which gives testimony to God’s care of his personal existence; the other, deist providence, which only relates to the world and nature as providential resources, reflecting emerging Enlightenment attitudes. In the second, God is not personally involved in people’s lives. Despite achieving a degree of serenity in his difficulties, Crusoe’s perception of providence is thrown into turmoil after the footprint discovery. Fear consistently overwhelms any inclination to the self-assurances of providential enterprise but neither is fear defused by his attempts to recall the resources of earlier piety. Crusoe oscillates between two perspectives of providence. The island world of Robinson Crusoe simulates the world of Enlightenment and another emerging theological perspective. Crusoe had gradually adopted a deistic view of providence with its intricate laws of natural provision in the world—a closed world akin to life on an island. God provides through the abundance of the island and Crusoe’s inventions toward survival. During the Enlightenment, two forms of Christian providence reflect different views of reality. Providence, in evangelical faith, reflects a fusion of biblical themes and the individual’s story, whose despair and joy are read through the prism of biblical examples of prodigality, repentance and trust in God’s guidance. As a wholly rational theology, Enlightenment Deism focuses on providence solely within nature’s provisioning and human initiative. Crusoe’s view of providence is suspended between trust in God’s sovereign and specific care for him and an endorsement of nature as the locale of human provision and survival or “salvation.” Faith in God’s sovereign care and grace amid the trials of life reflects biblical testimony to providence. Faith in creation’s natural order and human autonomy, discovery and invention reflects an emerging but different view of providence. The latter diminishes any need for God’s personal interest. Crusoe is never sure as to which form of providence he is finally committed. v Crusoe’s shipwreck and desperation at first revives neglected evangelical influences of his youth. Yet Crusoe’s experience of survival or salvation on the island is also patiently constructed by reason and industry that give him a sense of self-accomplishment and autonomy beyond any perceived need for personal trust in God. Crusoe gradually assumes what is later known as a “modern” perspective. Confidence in nature’s general providence and human powers for its assimilation toward survival, displace faith in God’s personal providential care. Yet for all the inventive powers of an enlightened subject, fear of chaos and the unknown haunts every moment from its intrusion in the story. Providence that provides by unbounded initiative and industry within the natural world is haunted by a fear of pending chaos in personal existence. People have always reflected on providence, generating different views of God, the world, faith and human possibilities. In biblical testimony, integral human possibilities can be otherwise than life defined within compromise and mortality, even as human self-standing remains dubious amid self-assuring projects within the natural provisions of nature and human initiative. Crusoe’s experience of island shipwreck and survival reflects a tension within modern humans concerning faith—neither wholly confident in God amid the world’s natural resources nor finally given to human initiative and achievement before the enigma of human life. Crusoe anticipates a modern crisis of faith that is unable fully to trust the reality of biblical witness; he is absorbed in the exhilaration of autonomous achievement that is also experienced as incomplete. Yet fascination with modern rational and autonomous possibilities cannot finally supersede the desire to trust another reality otherwise than our own—after the biblical theme of faith in God. Just so, the gospel still speaks to people’s hearts in any age.
Reference:
Daniel Defoe The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Select source:
A Norton Critical Edition of Robinson Crusoe. |
