The following comment is honorably incorporated into Goethe’s Faust I: The Making and Impact of a Contemporary Performance edited by Heinz-Uwe Haus and David W. Lovell, which is published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing

We can reconsider Dr. Faust’s downfall on the axis of the Word, which is sure to provide an enlightening solution to the universal problem of the redemption of man’s soul. Especially in this postmodern international community, the unresisting power of God’s words is definitely helpful in solving any conundrum which an individual who pursues the limits of possibilities may encounter. The young lions are in need and suffer hunger, but they that seek Jehovah shall not want any good. Faust himself, central character of the epic drama, emerges as a Romantic hero, ever testing the limits of possibility. Yet to achieve his ends he must make a contact with the devil: as if to say that giving full scope to imagination necessarily partakes of sin. The scene can be well compared with the temptation Jesus Christ encountered right after he had been baptized. “The devil takes him to a very high mountain , and shews him all the kingdom of the world, and their glory, and says to him, All these things will I give thee if, falling down, thou wilt do me homage. Then says Jesus to him, Get thee away, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy God, and him alone shat thou serve. Then the devil leaves him and behold, angels came and ministered to him.” The word of God is living and operative, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and penetrating to the division of soul and spirit, both of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. God’s words are effective enough to resist the worldly temptation. So for the modern man, in consideration of the conundrum Dr. Faust had ever faced, why not use more and more God’s words to help himself to resist the temptation? The theological solution may shed a light of this poetic drama, to be read with pleasure in the richness of its language, the fertility and daring of its imagination.