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The territoryhas expanded since then.Wesee now that the journey iswithout end,and there is no joyin the knowledge.Going on,goingback,standing aside—the alternativesare appalling,as is the imaginingof the lost traveller,what he wouldsay to us,if he were herenow,and how discredited we would find it.(CP 308)

Chapter Two:Keeping Balance over an Unfathomable Abyss

2.1 The Gulf between Expectation and Reality

Thomas feels the gap between expectation and reality,or observation and revelation,as Elaine Shepherd points out that“the world as he sees and feels it and the world as theChristian faith claims it to be”are different(qtd.in Morgan,Strangely Orthodox 45).There isa gap in one’s expectation of God as a loving agent and the fact that a“benevolentcreator-God”creates an indifferent or even hostile world with evils.There is also a gapbetween the expectation of a God eavesdropping everywhere and who would respond to theirprayers,punish and reward according to people’s deeds,and“intervene in the world byperforming miracles”(Brook 18),and the reality that God is nowhere to be found.

The question of love is unavoidable for priest-poets,who need to wrestle with how topacify the conflict between a benevolent creator-God and cruel nature.Thomas expresses hissense of unease in front of the cleft between the loving God claimed by Christians and thecruel reality he observes through intentionally plugging readers into a situation in which they have to deal with the same sense of unease when tripping over the crack brought by Thomas’srevised biblical stories.In“Making”(CP 221),God found the bacteria sheltering in thedarkness,so he called them forth to the light,obviously a plot not detailed in the Bible.“Soliloquy”is also a complaint of a revengeful God who intended to destroy the earth;it’shinted that men would either be destroyed by machine they created and“genuflected”or bythe“invisible/Viruses,the personnel/Of the darkness that do my[God’s]will”(CP 230).Viruses become God’s personnel to erase his error;they counterstrike when men attempt to“domesticate”God to their uses(CP 318).Now that Thomas is rather familiar with theBible,12 and his mythopoeic poetry is strongly linked with the Christian tradition anddoctrines,he must revise biblical stories purposely.

2.2 Refusing Domestication and Accepting Paradoxes

Walking over seventy thousand fathoms,Thomas spares no efforts in revealing thedizzy gap between one’s expectation of God and the reality,which makes his stance of faithunstable.Barry Morgan considers Thomas to be honest enough to face his own“doubts andlack of belief”(40);Thomas just plainly writes about God the way God is“in spite of all hisdoubts”(46).Shepherd notices“uncertainties,mysteries and doubts”Thomas’s poems arepervaded with(11).Sloan points out the uncertainness as the“fluctuations in his sense ofrelationship to God”(33).Almost all critics notice the contradictions and inconsistencies inThomas’s poems but they diverge in interpreting them:some discover a subversive powerunder Thomas’s doubts which undermines Thomas’s faith while others see a harmoniouseffect on the whole to strengthen his faith.Thomas is faithful from a modern perspective(from Tillich’s perspective,for example)and archives a balance(rather than certainty)byemploying two strategies:liberating God from the moral categorie本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。