The Man Born To Be King (Sayers)

Dorothy Sayers The Man Born to be King (1943; reprinted 1990) Twelve radio plays (first broadcast in 1943 by the BBC) telling the story of Jesus from shortly after his birth to after the Resurrection. It is told from a believer’s stance: Sayers is trying to make those events historically and narratively real, and she succeeds superbly.
     For example, she brings in a secondary plot of an aborted Zealot uprising, which provides both historical and human motivation for a variety of otherwise puzzling actions, chief of which is Judas betrayal of Jesus. Judas wanted Jesus to be the Messiah as Judas conceived him, which of course he was, up to a point. However, because he has insufficient information and does not trust Jesus, Judas misinterprets Jesus’ actions, thinks Jesus has sold out. The betrayal follows inevitably.
     Another example is Pilate’s puzzling decision to reopen the case against Jesus after throwing out the Sanhedrin’s petition. Claudia, Pilate’s wife, has had bad dreams about Jesus, whom she has encountered earlier. Pilate’s one great virtue is his love for his wife, so when she warns him, he listens. And the story follows its natural course.
     In other words, Sayers shows that the events of Jesus Passion all had hinged on human beings pursuing their various political, spiritual, personal, and careerist ends. God did not twist events to follow a pre-arranged pattern. Even Judas’s betrayal did not have to happen. If Judas had been less egotistical, and more trusting (if he had had fides, faith), he would have drawn back from his bargain with the High Priest, but Caiaphas’s men would have arrested Jesus anyhow. And so it goes. The events of the story are inevitable, but at each step some other decision could have been made, and the cost to some individuals would have been less.
     The scripts are written for the ear, which makes them easier to follow. Sayers's notes to each script (directed to the producers and actors) are worth reading just for the theological and psychological insight they offer. Sayers is an uncompromising Christian, in the sense that she takes Jesus’s godhead and all that flows from it for granted. However, she is no pietistic literalist, and knows that God works with the material at hand. This includes Sayers’s own plays: they work as plays, first and foremost. Though we know the story before we read them, they convince as dramatic story-telling. You don’t have to be Christian to understand and enjoy them. For the Christian, however, these plays may help clarify several mysteries: God-in-Man, the function of free will in God’s plans, the variety of religious experience, and so on.
     A wonderful book. **** (2001)