Father Forgive ________

Dr. Herbert started by reminding us that the statue of Michael, the leader of God's army, is symbolic of a moral danger.  This danger is that when we assume we are aligned with God, we could easily be mistaken.  When someone thinks that they have the authority of God Almighty on his or her side, one can easily rationalize terrible and violent things.

Remember, the tenor voice in Briten's song is asking for reconciliation.  He asks God to "give us peace".  It is unclear whether "us" refers to soldiers or all of humanity.  This ambiguity tends to ward off the kind of moral absolutism and self-righteousness as described above.  Hence it seems that Britten is more morally complicated than the cathedral.

Dr. Herbert then draws our attention towards the back of the old cathedral, where a phrase is engraved on the walls on the burned-out cathedral: father forgive.  The question is then, who is to be forgiven?  One possibility is that the Germans should be forgiven for the bombing of the original church.  In this case, the message is to ask God to forgive them, the others--the Germans.  This establishes a distance between the victims and violators, the good and the evil, the English and the Germans.  In this case, the English are on the side of God and the Germans are evil.  Another possibility is that God should forgive all of us.  Indeed, English troops certainly bombed German cities and buildings.  In another sense, all are equally sinners and guilty in the eyes of God.  All humans are fallen and imperfect.  This establishes a unity between two former enemies and aims at reconciliation.

Herbert seems to suggest that we have a need for moral absolutism.  He thinks we will not be satisfied without the authority of an absolute moral judgment.  However, he notes that we should be humble about our ability to know whether a moral judgment is right or wrong.  We do not have direct access to the divinity.  Hence, we can never be certain that we know what God wants of us.  This means that even if there is an absolute moral standard, we can never be certain that we know what this standard is.

We then talked about the end of Britten's "War Requiem".  "Libera me" has a soprano solo where she asks for God to save her from eternal damnation and judgment.  There is dissonance and a lot of loud, surprising noises.  Then there is a dialogue between an English tenor and a German Baritone.  They both share how similar their lives are in spite of the fact that they were enemies during WWI.  The baritone and tenor solos end by being joined by an overly sweet boys' choir.  Dr. Herbert claims that this is done to provide a contrast with the very end of the piece of music.  There is total harmony between the boys and the soprano solo until the very end, when the boys break out of harmony.  Then, at the very end, when all voices since "Amen, amen", there is first dissonance among the voices, and then a harmonious resolution made in a forced way.  So although there is resolution, it is only glimpsed, just as we have limited access to God.