Man's Role in the Divine Order
Universally, mankind has struggled to comprehend the
existence of evil and disorder in a divinely created and ordered world. How
could God, who is all knowing and good, be responsible for atrocities and
injustices that take place in his perfect creation? In An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope seeks to illuminate the “Wisdom
infinite” (Line 44) of God’s divinely ordered universe and persuade humanity to
accept its limited comprehension of the order of God’s plan. Man is prone to
taking tragedies personally and using his unique power of reason to try to make
sense of wrongs in the world. His reasoning leads him to question how God could
allow such wrongs to exist, and to this question Pope responds, “whatever wrong
we call, May, must be right, as relative to all” (51-52).
Pope asserts that man’s pride fuels his reasoning but “to
reason right is to submit” (165) to the mysterious will of the divine and
accept that each individual is simply a part of “the amazing Whole” (248). It
is absurd and narcissistic to assume that the universe should revolve around
man or for man to challenge the divine Order. Pope compares the “stupendous
whole” (265) of the world to existing of nature as its body and God as its
soul. In this sense, man is but a miniscule part of nature, and everything in
the universe is as perfect as it was designed to be. Pope commands man to accept
his limited scope of the “mighty maze” (6) and to “Secure to be as blest as
thou canst bear” (295). Man’s purpose is to attain happiness in this life, not
to use his power of reason to try to grasp knowledge that is beyond his realm
of comprehension. To achieve happiness, man must surrender his pride and
acknowledge that “Whatever Is, Is Right” (293).
Pope’s arguments certainly seem legitimate when one
considers humanity’s limited understanding of the universe and all of its scientific
functions. Though man would like to believe he is the most intelligent
creature, he is limited in his ability to fully access the complex workings of
nature. Man still hasn’t mastered science; humanity is constantly researching,
inventing, and progressing, but it is still far from ever uncovering all the
secrets of physics, biology, and chemistry. If man struggles to comprehend science
and nature, how can he ever comprehend or think to question God, the “soul” of
the world, and his divine will?
Work Cited
Pope, Alexander. An Essay of Man. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Vol. 1.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 90-97. Print.
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