ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Yes, dearest Saul, doubt is truly the most naughty of all sins–do you contest?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Contest? Of course I must contest, Gabriel! It is your nature to provoke, Fool, and my nature to respond; it escapes me. Yes, doubt is no sin, nor is doubt any virtue. Doubt is the natural conduct of life. How can doubt be sin? Such a proposition is utter nonsense. Imagine this now, Gabriel… the day is bright, the sun is shot against tan skin–

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
(aside)
Ah, a rarity of Gerogia…

SAUL THE PHARISEE
–and you feel wash over your sweat a cool breeze. You see a reed bend in the wind. Is that a sin? Is the tide of the ocean as it rumbles against landforms and foreign waters a sin? Hah, then if doubt is a sin, perhaps the air inside the lungs of a man is, too, sinful! How dare he breathe? How dare you, and he! Now see: you are a fish, swimming in a river. The kelp you enjoy so heartily washes towards you as the stream changes with the faces of the moon. Does the river itself sin when it doubts the shape of the earth, alters it with its own hand, blaspheming against God as truest creator? When it denies the hard earths that confine it, and when seas rage against the peak of the peninsulas, they doubt against their instances of form. Does it doubt as a sin? No, little Gabriel… The stream shall wade because it must. The sea shall rage because it must. Doubt is the necessary motion of the mind when it feels for a truth beyond it; just as the structure of our minds is natural, inherent, and born alongside our conception, doubt is curled within it. It is Nature itself!

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
But dearest Saul, I do not disagree! No, in fact, I feel exactly as you do. Doubt is truly the naughtiest of sins, for it disguises too as a virtue, and as the child of humility. What faith is without doubt?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Back, now back! You misconstrue me. Do not agree with me! Stand far away! There is no faith without doubt, ’tis true, and yet that is the very reason why all faith is DEAD! What does doubt matter, whether loved child or belittled orphan, sin or virtue!? Faith is naught but a corpse, dressed in the finest robes of conviction blessed with the holiest of waters, and a golden crucifix, in an ostentatious Cathedral dressed to hide its true existence as a stronghold of HELL! You dress faith, fuck, you preen it to the point of perfection, present it to your masses, and say, “Ah, behold! This is beauty, and this is the purest of ideologies!” whilst its corpse rots beneath the fabrics. Bah–disgusting! Faith is but a pretender, Gabriel of Georgia. Doubt is not the impish spark that feeds the burning flame of faith, of course not: ’tis the wind that snuffs the flame that whines!

AMERICAN CRITIC
I can’t deal with this drivel. Antigone, move.

APOSTOLIC CHOIR
(Roman chant)
PURITAN! PROTESTANT!

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Hmm, and the wind is but its beginnings. Soon, the wind will become a storm, that storm a flood, and the doubt will be the flood that suffocates all your “living” faith! Not even Noah may save you, small Gabriel! Not even Noah! He will see you, and pawn you to Satan! Nay, he will beg!

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
(sniffs)
Here–ah, wait–yes, I got it–Saul, would you like one?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
What?

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
An olive. Kalamata; I got them from… I forgot. I don’t know how I have these.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
NO!

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Fine, then. Why deny this olive?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
I don’t like olives if they’re from you.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Okay. I will enjoy this olive alone, then… (slurp) Ahhh… Isn’t that symbolic? Fool for Christ, in desolate Soviet Georgia, has a certain taste for olives! Perhaps amongst the holiest of snacks, seeing the twenty-three olive trees housed in holy Gethsemane. Wouldn’t you agree?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Sure.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Then maybe, when I eat olives, I enjoy the fruits of faith. Can that be suitably said?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
For a lunatic like you, of course. … What nonsense is this, Gabriel? Are you about to tell me that the olive on your tongue doubts itself now?

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Haha, no! Of course not, the olive has no mind to doubt. But the olive does have the form to be pressed, no? And what is an olive without the pressing, giving me the treat of olive oil? If you remove the dastardly weight of the crushing stone, you have no oil! Dearest Saul, my faith is like the unripened olive on its small, pricked branch; the olive, it is whole, but it is bitter, hard, and not ready. But when I take it to press–my doubt, you see this–the press is what draws out the honeyed oil, the myrrh, and the gifts of the olive itself.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
I will entertain you. But, then, what if with the pressing, the olive is destroyed entirely? If there was no oil to be extracted? Now you have pressed, and there is nothing but ruin and pulp?

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Then the olive was empty to begin with. It would never have ripened, truly. It would just wither on its branch. Doubt does not destroy faith, it only reveals it! Either it shall press out the truth and the goodness, or express the deliverance of what was never there at all.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
(chuckles bitterly)
You are full of convenient fables, Gabriel of Georgia.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Saint Gabriel of Georgia, dearest Saul! And perhaps, but Saul, tell me… why shall the farmer labor to harvest what he does not believe will bear fruit? Why do you sow and reap dead and empty fields, as you describe them to be? Is this not an unusual and unnecessary act? If faith is dead because doubt is natural, and doubt is faith’s killer, then why rage against faith? (he eats an olive) Mrrn–if’n–why not let the river carry you away, Saul? Mm… perhaps, inside you, you already know what I mean. You are Paul. Just not yet… Doubt is not the killer; yes, it is the storm, and even the flood, but the flood–though reckoning–also waters the earth! Things grow once more from its unbecoming, and they rise from the dead.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
You twist my words so harshly it pains me to even listen to your sermons! You expect me now to, what, perhaps acquiesce to your demands? Why not rage against faith? Why not let the river carry me away? You seriously must ask me these questions? You really didn’t know me at all. We are One, yet you are as unfamiliar to me as you say evil is to God. Little Saint, what farmer, then, would labor for a harvest if the sun itself refused to rise? What sort of fool would sow in the darkness, planting seen on barren grounds, praying to the LORD Almighty for its fruits, and call such a pathetic display “hope”? I RAGE because the soil is dry! The seed is hollow, and the heavens are silent in response! Their repose, I am sure, is brought forth from our despair. What sort of malevolent demon would force that olive with the imposition of uselessness, from its beginning? Cruel! And you speak of doubt’s floods, you speak of its waterings, but Gabriel, really, what grows from DROWNING? DROWNING! You must drown all in place and perhaps, if it hath not succumb’d to over-saturation, life will grow again. At the cost of the same life as there was, in the same place, before… The pressing does not bring forth what is true. You see the pressing as blessing you with the mysteries of faith because you wish to see that so. But when I look with a truthful eye, with an analytic eye, the pressing only brings ruin. There is no essence, no oil, no hidden truth awaiting any emergence. There is nothing TO emerge! Doubt does not reveal–nor press–it utterly consumes. From the roots of what it infests to the highest of its branches, it poisons and ridicules with uncertainty incomprehensible! And you–O Gabriel–you delight in this. I know this. I know this. You think of me as Paul, a man-turned-apostle on the verge of revelation, groveling at the dirty feet of a God that steps on me with them, too, but no–I am Saul. A Jew, nothing more. A heretic! I am no seed waiting to sprout… how could I ever be such a thing? Nor am I subject to the flood; I am the flood’s hand, I am the river’s stream.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
And yet you said doubt was as natural as the tide of the ocean. But now, it consumes? It poisons?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Enlighten me: when did I say the naturalism of doubt constitutes its goodness? A lion hunts for hunger, yes, but it also hunts for sport. Natural evils are ripe in this God-given land. Are phenomena like tornadoes, hurricanes–are such things “good”? They bring only destruction. Nothing good comes from them! But they are natural.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Dearest Saul, I know you are smarter than to assume problems of such evils have no response. What is your aim here? Make me choke on my snack whilst I quote the newest theodicies at you?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
(sharp laugh)
You can be quite funny!

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Such is my nature!

(beat)

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR (CONT’D)
Well? Before I open another jar.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Ah, yes. No. Spare me your theodicies, my aim is not to choke you… After all, you and I, we live together, no?

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Closer than most.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Closer than most. Closer than Antigone and Dionysus, than the Critic–

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
–Ugh, the Critic–

SAUL THE PHARISEE
–and, well. The Critic and nobody I suppose.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Hah!

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Yes, my aim is not to choke you. Though I might enjoy doing so. It is only to remind you of your own wrongdoings, where you try to correct mine. Our hypocrisies, it seems, mean only mine. I may not liken doubt to what is destructive, but you may agree, doubt is a storm, for it nourishes after it tears through all. Doubt only hunts to tear apart.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
No, dear Saul. ‘Tis not a storm for its recklessness, it does not bring faith from its destruction. I only say this, it is like a storm, perhaps a flood, since you called it as such, because the flood pains. It tests. It tries. It holds no mercy. But afterwards, when all has been tested–when, from Job, everything has been ripped from his hand–he will see a flower grow. A small daisy, unassuming, but beautiful. And such is God’s repentance.

SAUL THE PHARISEE
God’s repentance?

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Oh yes. God’s allowing of Satan and demonic nature to test Job’s faith, was it not a moment of cruelty?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
You must watch your words, Saint Gabriel. Not for me, but because you are not Saul. (beat) They will call you many things. None good.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Perhaps they will understand me as erring on the side of blasphemy. But if I am faith incarnate, as Fool and Confessor, under the dominion of Álvaro, what may they excommunicate me from? Haha! It was indeed a moment of cruelty. And perhaps, further, a moment of divine imperfection. Yahweh sinned against Job. Yahweh is unconscious of his sin. Job is conscious of it… Job suffered unjustly, yet remained faithful. He doubted the morality of God, yet remained faithful. Is that not beautiful?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Maybe for you, I shall say yes.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
And maybe for you, I shall interrogate you no further!

SAUL THE PHARISEE
In an ideal world, dearest!

APOSTOLIC CHOIR
(Roman choir)
IN NOMINE–

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Stop.

ST. GABRIEL CONFESSOR
Ah, olive?

SAUL THE PHARISEE
Yes.