Second Terrace

The spiritual attributes of God: notes on the mind bending 9th chapter of Staniloae

 

The attributes discussed last chapter — infinity, eternity, supraspatiality, omnipotence — were formal “structural” attributes that could be experienced “externally.” They could be observed in what is commonly called “general revelation.”

But the attributes discussed in this chapter (omniscience, justice and mercy, holiness and love) are experienced “internally,” through the spirit of man. They are the manifestations of what God is in His essence, in which the “self-sacrifice” of the Three Persons is absolutely complete, so that there is no movement to cover any interval, but there is, instead, a “stability.”

Frequently, Staniloae is not at all shy about saying that God “cannot” do something. When he says that God “cannot” do something — like “he cannot make them to be as he himself is, that is uncreated and sources of existence” (p216) — we misinterpret “cannot” as a limitation, and as a contradictory constraint upon God’s infinity. Actually, however, the “cannot” refers to the infinitely transcendent gulf between the created and the Creator, and so the “cannot” — far from being a contradiction of the infinite — is actually an enlarging indicator of the infinite.

The spiritual attributes which “bridge” this gulf between Creator and the immediacy of souls are rooted in this perfectly and infinitely complete stability (i.e., “perichoresis”) work “from within” the soul, in what Staniloae calls “interiority.” In each of these cases — omniscience, justice, holiness and love — God is essentially unknown, but He is experienced in these energies.

But He is experienced personally. This is true of all the energies of the Holy Trinity, but it is especially true of the “spiritual attributes.” The personal character of these energies are the main reason why the energies are called “Names.” To understand these attributes as impersonal forces is to utterly distort them, and to cause grave theological errors all the way down into practical understanding.

(Click here to read the rest at Max's Progeny)

Scripture and Tradition, in Staniloae's Experience of God

First published in Max' Progeny (a website of the Fellowship of St Maximos), started by Fr Gregory Long, Daniel Greeson and yours truly. Presently, essays are written for each chapter of Staniloae's "Experience of God, volume 1." This essay discusses the third chapter.

There are probably too many essays already that refute (or at least attempt to refute) the Protestant tradition of sola scriptura. The third chapter of Staniloae’s Experience of God – “Scripture and Tradition” – never explicitly names this most important of the Protestant “five solae,” but he certainly answers it, as he responds to its parallel (and, in a morose note, consequential) tradition of scriptural disregard.

Many of us who are products of a Protestant and particularly Evangelical upbringing can remember the old motto “Scripture interpreting Scripture.” This motto attempts to surmount the obvious problem raised by the Reformers (i.e., Luther et al) – if Holy Tradition (or the Magisterium in the West) is to be discarded as an interpretative framework of Scripture, then what should take its place?

The Reformed answer is that Scripture interprets itself, and thus there is no need for a human intermediary. The familiar explanation is that the Holy Spirit Himself is the sole agent of interpretation. This concept of “sole divine agency” is what unifies all five “solae” of the Reformation, in which “sola scriptura” (exclusion of Tradition, especially in human history after the writing of the “original autographs”) is joined by “sola fidei” (exclusion of the necessity of human work); “sola gratia” (exclusion of synergia); “solus Christus” (exclusion of human priesthood and, most likely, the possibility of sacrament); and “soli Deo gloria” (exclusion of veneration to the Theotokos, saints and angels).

Generally, the refutations of sola scriptura focus upon the inconsistencies, if not outright impossibilities, that accrue to the Protestant history of interpretation. It is difficult to proceed under the hermeneutical rubric of “Scripture interpreting Scripture” without at least implicitly referring to some external reference. Some times, that external reference is to an artifact of doctrinal Tradition, which is often referred to as “small o orthodoxy.” This “orthodox” reference accounts for the persistence in Protestantism of doctrines like the Trinity, and the Person and work of Christ. Other times, however, that external reference involves (perhaps unwittingly) the inclusion of a contemporary cultural trend that is contrary to Tradition. Fr John Romanides famously discerned a patterned reference that involved “Frankish” dominance, which seems to account for everything wrong with the West.[i] Other critiques have discerned external references that presently involve an increasing identification with the dominant materialistic worldview.[ii]

But Staniloae responds to the deeper claim of “sole divine agency,” a claim that lies at the heart of the heterodox rejection of the Church and her Tradition.

Christ is the Revealer, through the “radiation of the Holy Spirit”:

The Word and the Holy Spirit are the two persons who together accomplish and jointly bring to fulfillment the whole of revelation and of its efficacy until the end of the world … Between the Word and the Holy Spirit exists a continuous reciprocity of revelation and both bring about a common revelation of the Father, and a common spiritualization of creation.[iii]

Here it is plain that revelation – both natural and supernatural – continues to be active. In fact, Staniloae’s tone suggests that revelation can only gain in force and depth as it continues through the space-time inaugurated at Creation. Any revelation – especially the written supernatural revelation that is Scripture – cannot be objectified and rendered static in examination. Just at the Epistle to the Hebrews says: For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4.12 Douay-Rheims)

But not only is revelation active, it is also personal. Revelation is never an impersonal dynamic or force: neither is it a phenomena framed by a historic narrative and imposed violently upon its members; nor is it an esoteric gnosis reserved for those pre-determined before birth. Revelation is nothing less, and nothing anything else, than a personal work of Christ that is “irradiated” by the Spirit in the Church.

Revelation is given only through communion – and Staniloae has made it very clear that only persons can commune. In natural revelation, the communion between the Creator and His creatures is indirect. But what distinguishes supernatural revelation is that the communication is direct (e.g., I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you – John 15.15 KJV).

Language is the rational memory of communion: and here is the haunting semantic coincidence whereas Christ is known principally as the “Word” of God. He can only be the Father’s revelatory initiative to us. So he penetrates into our consciousness, and reveals God in experience and is remembered in thoughts.

And those thoughts are written in human art. Again, this is the synergistic communion of persons: on one the infinitely transcendent side is God, and on the other is the creature, Man. God reveals personally: Man personally remembers and writes. The significance and necessity of the written word should not be surprising: written language is a relatively unchanging solidification of commonly held memory through history. And Scripture is the written memory of special revelation that is fulfilled and closed in Christ.

As Staniloae puts it: Sacred Scripture is the Son and Word of God who translated himself into words in his work of drawing close to men so that he might raise them up to himself, until the time of his incarnation, resurrection, and ascension as man. Through these words by which he is translated, Christ words upon us to bring us also to that state which he has reached.[iv]

That last statement marks the third characteristic of the agency of the Church in interpreting Scripture: the written narrative of the supernatural revelation of Christ not only reveals the identity of Christ, but also clearly describes His intentions for humanity and all creation. Salvation can be nothing less and nothing other than deification: it is Staniloae’s considerable genius to define revelation in terms not only of Cyrillian Christology, but also of theosis.

In effect, the special revelation that is narrated in the written text of Scripture can only be expressed as a whole by the ecclesial culture of deification – that is, the community that preserves Tradition.

Staniloae suggests, in this chapter, that there is a double peril that results from the fact that Christ is the “active Revealer” of Himself (through the Spirit) in Scripture, in the Church. First: a Christ that is not expressed (i.e., through Tradition and Scripture) does not manifest his effectiveness. And second: the Church is alone capable of understanding and interpreting Scripture effectively.

This not only rules out the possibility of sola scriptura and the idea of “sole divine agency” behind it, but it makes uncertain the ecclesial identity of any community that does not express Him.

Now to the final point: what is the genealogy of Scriptural disregard? That is, the failure to “express Him”? Is it possible that this disregard could have occurred only after the disregard of Tradition?

It seems so. One could take, prima facie at least (a “plain reading of the text”), such a lesson from the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip in Acts 8.30-31: So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him (NKJV). Someone had to elucidate the meaning, and Philip did so allegorically, but only within the parameters of a community that had been infused with revelation, natural and supernatural.

Had it been otherwise, that this community would have ever discarded the oral tradition of the Apostles, there would have been no written tradition to speak of.

______________________________________

 

[i] An interesting exemplary quote from Fr Romanides: The attitudes of the West and East Franks toward the Papacy and the Filioque were different, the first being mild, and the second fanatically hard. One of the important reasons for this is that, after 920, the new reform movements gained enough momentum to shape the policies of the East German Franks who took over the Papacy. When the Romans lost the Papacy, the Filioque was introduced into Rome for the first time in either 1009, or at latest by 1014. In the light of the above, we do not have the situation usually presented by European, American, and Russian historians in which the Filioque is an integral part of so-called “Latin” Christendom with a “Greek” Christendom in opposition on the pretext of its introduction into the Creed. (The addition to the Creed was supposedly opposed by the popes not doctrinally, but only as addition in order not to offend the “Greeks.”) What we do have is a united West and East Roman nation in opposition to an upstart group of Germanic races who began teaching the Romans before they really learned anything themselves. Of course, German teachers could be very convincing on question of dogma, only by holding a knife to the throat. Otherwise, especially in the time of imposing the Filioque, the theologians of the new Germanic theology were better than their noble peers, only because they could read and write and had, perhaps, memorized Augustine.

– from Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine, part 3 (“The Filioque”), from http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.03.htm#s16 (retrieved 7/15/2014)

[ii] Pontifical Biblical Commission, “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (preface by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger). Presented on March 18, 1994. Retrieved 7/15/2014 at http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pbcinter.htm. This is a superior descriptive catalog of various and current hermeneutical approaches to Scripture.

[iii] Staniloae, Experience of God, p30.

[iv] Ibid., p40.

Is a Christian space opera possible? on O'Brien's Voyage to Alpha Centauri

(Voyage to Alpha Centauri, by Michael D O'Brien)

The idea of "Christian" science fiction is nice, but the writing of it is hard. This longish effort of O'Brien shows the tension between this niceness of intention, and the hardship of realization.

The promise of "Christian science fiction" is something indeed that O'Brien offers. He brings to this project an established profile of a careful conservative Catholic writer. One thing that he actually delivers in this book is good-quality writing in a consistent, carefully crafted style. He does not descend into preaching rhetoric (always a danger with religious writers), nor do his symbols ever step out into the living room and shed their Halloween costumes. They remain decently veiled. So props for that.

Nevertheless, what happens to O'Brien occurs as a general malady for this troubled genre. And it is a malady that affects Christians in particular.

The premise of the science fiction genre is that it involves the construction of an alternative, but possible, world. Indeed, that is true of all novels -- in fact, the construction of a believable, conceivable "world" is the most important difference that distinguishes a novel from a short story (and anything else, for that matter). This is the business of a "sub-creator," as Tolkien would say -- the implication here is that "sub-creation" becomes, more than any other literary craft, most prominent in a novel.

In science fiction, the construction of the possible world is usually built upon a "scientific" foundation. "Science" here is operationally defined as "materialistic" or "naturalistic" philosophy (not "science" in its best and real sense -- i.e., "actual knowledge"). I say "usually" here: if only to emphasize the fact that the science fiction genre is populated by a historic membership that accepts the metaphysical bias of materialistic philosophy.

I do not think it can be refuted that most science fiction -- headed up by the luminaries H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke -- is rather jazzed up about the possibility of finding, and proving, that the traditional monotheistic God (especially the Trinity) does not exist, and therefore, need never trouble the poor human mind again with Its troublesome rules, expectations, and maddening interference in the management of the universe. This is the ironically and patently eschatological hope of science fiction -- and it is a very religious hope at that.

So in general, this is the generic promise of science fiction world building. Occasionally, exceptions to this rule creep in. C S Lewis' Space Trilogy is, in my mind, a fine, successful example of such an exception. In the hands of a master writer, such exceptionalism can work well (and, once in a while, the general readership agrees). The exception lies mainly in the importation of other genres into the often superficial "shopping mall" province of science fiction -- but it takes adept writing to manage such importation. Lewis does this in his first volume by melding motifs from the sea voyage (think Odyssey here), with the strangeness of alien lands, characters, flora and fauna. In the second, Lewis very perilously attempts (and I don't think with complete success) the importation of high fantasy and the rhetoric of the Paradiso. And finally, in the third novel, he brings into the contemporary moment the hard themes of dystopia and post-apocalypse (despite the comic fact that he closes his last tale with a fairy-tale deus ex machina).

It is strangely interesting how important the themes of dystopia and the post-apocalypse have become in the science fiction genre. It is almost as though the anti-theological world of the materialist philosophy is collapsing in on itself, as if cursed by its own black hole lodged in its soul.

Yes, I know. O'Brien "baptizes" (i.e., "Christianizes") his science fiction tale precisely in his oft-repeated theme of dystopia. Heck, there's even a nod to a possible apocalypse toward the end. The dystopic theme reveals itself in the cynical tone of the central character's narration (first person, for the most part -- a voice disrupted in the epilogue, of course). Even the description of the big space ship and the ubiquitous computer (ever an important character in dystopia) carries the heavy note of impending disaster.

And it is at this very appearance of dystopia where I lodge my biggest complaint about O'Brien's Christian tale of science fiction. When one engages the dystopia theme, one must create a malevolent culture. Perhaps a despot can be at the center of it, or even its source. Perhaps the malevolence can be communicated through the media, or through a virus (e.g., zombies), or through the Big Computer (i.e., virtual reality as in Neuromancer). This is not hard to do if one has accepted the premise of the genre: the notion of evolution proceeding beyond humanity and disposing of it -- like one does with an opposing pawn in chess en passé) -- is simply a logical extension of evolution in its anti-theological form (a form which, drearily, is a majority opinion). But if one does not accept this premise, then the dystopian work becomes more difficult.

Much more difficult, that is. Actually, if one is a Christian (as O'Brien is), then the work enters a realm that should be a genre in its own right: "Christian dystopia," that is, vis-à-vis "science fiction dystopia." The latter is easy, with easy lines of consistency and easy expectations of plot and character development. In a genre where most things are superficial -- as is expected with the bodiless realm is either dismissed completely or relegated to Halloween status) -- and so it is easy to deliver on one's promises. It is, as the nameless rider of spaghetti westerns should have observed, quite easy to paint the town red when the town is composed of facades and rote characters.

But Christian dystopic literature must be apocalyptic in a believable, literary manner -- that is, in a manner where characters become human; where symbols become flesh, or real flora and fauna; where the tone prefers the feeling of "haunting" over "being bludgeoned by the doctrinaire axe': and, fundamentally, where the world is not only internally consistent, but is quite conceivable. And, most important of all, Christian dystopia must be cognizant of its inescapable genealogical link to the Gospel.

Ah yes. The one and only real story that all humans must find themselves nested within. There really ought to be a "eu-catastrophe" that is eminently (but not explicitly) "Christological."

Just about anyone can write about dystopia -- all they have to do is engage in psychic projection, which is not so hard to pull off. But artistic eu-catastrophe? Ah, there's the rub: it happens so rarely, like a golden coin shows up not so often on the early morning sands. And good eu-catastrophe on a spaceship? Now that is the question.

It is the more difficult task of the good Christian writer to build such a dystopic world that is believable, beautiful (i.e., literary), and most of all linked without disruption to the Gospel. It should go without saying that one cannot do this with a preaching rhetoric, because then it would not be beautiful literature. I think Flannery O'Connor did this, but she wrote short stories that only had to intimate, incompletely, a whole world. Fyodor Dostoevsky did this, but that novel -- Brothers Karamazov -- is sui generis. Tolkien did not, simply because he simply wasn't dystopic -- he was writing an alternative to Genesis (a frightening possibility), and he did it well (he was, after all, patently "eu-catastrophic," something that never happens effectively in any dystopic literature). G K Chesterton dabbled almost exclusively, in his novel experiments, with Christian dystopia -- but the novels he wrote do not qualify as good art so much as they stand as just holographic projections of his essays: one really does not find much reality in his rollicking tales (which I very much enjoy).

I think that O'Brien does what GK did -- i.e., that holographic business. He projects his favorite mashup of conservative Catholicism and rightwing libertarianism onto a spaceship. His conservative Catholicism works well for a literary dystopia. The rightwing libertarian note does not. In my mind, it falls with a cardboard thud.

I have lesser beefs with O'Brien. A number of things just did not hit the mark of believability. The Big Spaceship -- always an important character -- seemed as though it were designed by the plot: and I really don't know what to make of swimming pools and fireplaces in a lightspeed vessel. The origin story of the aliens is not only inconceivable, but is really theologically unforgivable. The climactic moment of salvation failed at "eu-catastrophe" because it is wildly arbitrary: one would hope that a science that could make for a lightspeed ship would 1) have safety mechanisms that would rule out the failure to begin with, and 2) not have navigation engineered with such vulnerabilities that would make the last-moment "patch" possible.

I will set aside my larger complaint of the conservative Catholic penchant for conflating itself with rightwing libertarianism -- a dull practice that is getting too much airplay these days. Perhaps this failure of imagination should be looked into.

These lesser beefs are problems that are depressingly over-represented in science fiction at large. Maybe O'Brien shouldn't be faulted for falling prey to the sirens of this genre.

I applaud O'Brien in his courageous choice of an unattractive character. He attempted a good backstory for this character, and it works for the most part. The post-climax narrative was clever and engaging. The resolution and redemption epilogue acted as a short-story in its own right (probably better than the entire novel). There were the more-than-faint notes of "Canticle for Leibowitz" running here and there -- and these notes were, for the most part, welcome.

At the end, then, O'Brien should leave off GK in the writing of novels, and follow Tolkien and Lewis more. He should remember that the catholic conservatism of the latter two is more artistic and imaginative than the unfortunate superficial complaints of other voices -- complaints that end up corroding art.

Still, it remains to be seen if a beautiful Christian space opera is possible at all.

For the writer and ghostwriter of Left Behind rapturology

Behold the Bear of the Land you besmirched.
Behold and despair, if you can deduce.
This is the only Beast these mountains produce.
No other will come where this one is perched.

If Belloc were at a townhall meeting

Here is what he might say, from his trusty book, The Four Men (which, drat it, should be in print and taught in every school).

Thou ugly, lowering, treacherous Queen
   I think thou art the Devil!
To pull them down the rich and mean,
   And bring them to one level.
      Of all my friends
      That found their ends
   By only following thee.
      How many I tell
      Already in Hell,
   So shall it not be with me!

   On hearing this last line they all banged and roared heartily, and shouted in enormous voices:

      Zo zhall ee not be,
      Zo zhall ee not be,
   Zo zhall ee not be wi' me!

which, by zealous repetition, they made a chorus, and one old fellow that had his chin very nearly on the table said, 'Aye, marster! But who is she?'

   'Why,' said the Sailor [i.e., one of the Four Men], 'She whom we rail at in this song is that Spirit of getting-on-ed-ness and making out our life at the expense of our fellow men and of our own souls.' 

Fantasy of the Real, now affordable

Back in January 2008 I noted a very good book by Alison Milbank entitled Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: the Fantasy of the Real. I even linked a nice endorsement in First Things about the book.
I took the occasion, however, to grizzle about the hardcover price. 

Rev. Milbank just emailed me with the glad tidings that her book is now out in paperback. I'm going to pick up a copy for my profit, and I suggest you do, too.

You can find it here at Amazon, or here at Barnes and Nobles.

Shack amok

This is not a review of The Shack. I may write a more responsible critique later on, but for now, a serviceable (and protestant) review can be found over at Tim Challies' "reformed" blog.

There are a few things that I will say, simply because I've been asked to say something. Shack-writer William P. Young attempts to appear anti-dogmatic and reader-friendly to all those out there (probably millions, he must think) who won't be Christian because God hurt their feelings. Apparently (and "apparency" seems to be the dominant ontological theory), "hurt feelings" (not lack of faith) is the apologetical object: ergo, God must apologize for being mean.

Young writes a "theological fiction" story -- and for some reason, he chose not to write in an allegorical idiom, in which there might have been some salvation. Instead, he chose to write in the postmodern "narrative" idiom, which is more akin to Oprah and the Celestine Prophecies.

This idiom, just in case you haven't had the pleasure of imbibing such stories, goes something like this: protagonist (neurotic like Willy Loman, not heroic like Everyman) gets hurt personally by a tragedy. The personal hurt takes narrative precedence over the reality of the tragedy itself. In the personal hurt, the subjectivist (you can go ahead and read "dejected," as this particular passion is usually empowering a subjectivist descent into cynical despair) mindset turns toward the theme (and cliche) of theodicy. God is blamed and life goes dark. Protagonist then goes on a hero quest (a la Joe Campbell) that the author intends as romance (but his postmodern episteme can't help but tend toward irony). Protagonist meets God somehow, and the author tries ever so sincerely (like Linus in the Pumpkin Patch) at improving on God's Whirlwind Speech to the Righteous Job.

This idiom attempts to put out a Living Bible paraphrase of good doctrine (at times) and bad (more times than not). Some have fallen for this siren call: one breathless commenter on Amazon said that reading the Shack was so much better than his seminary education. And to be sure, many have gushed over Young's wildly popular book. On the back cover alone are Michael W. Smith and Wynonna Judd. On the "What Others are Saying about The Shack" page are, among others, Kathie Lee Gifford (I would expect this) and Eugene Peterson (I really, really did not expect this).

There are a few good things in this book that I may list in my critique. But there are bad things. And these bad things are enough to put The Shack on the "You don't have to read this" list, especially if you've got better things to read like Gregory the Theologian, Basil, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theophan, Pomazansky, Lossky, Hart, Staniloae, Vlachos.

Speaking of St. Gregory: the Shack is really bad especially at the point where Young tries to be so good. He wants to discuss the Trinity in response to tragedy, which I think is a good pastoral endeavor. However, his Trinitarian doctrine becomes a hypermodernist icon of egalitarianism and deconstruction. "Submission" is redefined as mutual self-denial (which is true), but a denial that is limited and made meaningless by a renunciation of obedience and hierarchy (which is not true).

There is also no repentance. There is a lot of therapeutic cartharsis. There is that weepy crisis, that "psycho-denouement" where "all is revealed" through -- and only through -- self-understanding. It is like depth psychology becoming ontology and eschatology (scary thought, that). Like John Bradshaw turning  out to be right in the end.

There is no Prodigal "coming to one's senses." No renunciation of passion in ascesis. No old-fashioned fear of God. There is, as might be expected nowadays, no perdition. Salvation is only warm fuzzy relationship in The Shack: Mack is told, by Papa, that "God submits to you."

Instead of repentance, there is the absolutely crazy notion of needing to forgive God. This is akin to that great psychobabbular "Christian counseling" endorsement of "it's okay to be angry at God."

No, it is not. Ever.

Moreover, there is an insane, reader-friendly personification of the Trinity that goes like this: God the Father is played out as an African woman who goes by "Papa." God the Son is a middle-aged large-nosed plain-looking man who goes by "Jesus." And God the Spirit is an Asiatic woman named "Sarayu." To be sure, Young means (I hope) for these figures to be anthropomorphizations, which are adopted by God as "means of communication."

I hope you are whiffing the naffy, six-day old carrion scent of some old, hackneyed ideas here -- ideas which have occasioned some withering comments from the Ecumenical Councils.

This Trinitarian Dogma, along with the usual counsel about forgiving one's enemies nested in a screenplay, ends up being the very worst kind of dogmatization -- the kind that hides its imperious authority under the cloak of Barney's purple dinosaur suit, or Fred Roger's cardigan sweater and tennies. How can you argue with heresy, when it is couched in catharsis? When someone is busy having a self-revelation moment, in which he is coming to terms with his personal tragedy, who am I -- a cranky doctrinaire male clergy intolerant and exclusivistic hide-bound thoroughly uncool anachronism -- to tell him that his theological fictional self-realization is a fantasy?

That would be like telling Phil Donahue, who is busy gushing and burbling, that he is not evolved, and that, tears or no, tolerance or no, devolution is a much more likely state.

So let us forget, for now, a full-blown critique of Young and his good intentions.

What bothers me is how the Shack got so popular in the first place. How did Evangelical culture permit this Shackness to ever happen?

A book flies up to number one on the New York Times list, #7 on Amazon, and in the Top 50 on the USA Today list only because it services a pre-existing mindset. This is much like the problem of King Ahab's four hundred state-supported prophets who kept telling him self-serving messages, and only giving him news that he wanted to hear (as opposed to that pesky Micaiah: "I hate him," Ahab said, "for he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil").

Best-sellers (and large groups) are produced because opinions and fantasies are confirmed, and endorphins are released into the cultural bloodstream.

Thus, there is now a new Shack industry in the Evangelical world, just like there was a Prayer of Jabez industry, a Promise Keepers industry, the CCM and Branson industry, an ugly plastic wristband industry, and the ever-popular Rapture industry.

There are industries of self-confirmation, but there is no repentance offered to the Holy Trinity, Who is above all Names.

Mr. Young's protagonist Mack should not have gone to the Shack.

In Orthodoxy, one only goes to the Cross, the place where one does not dare bring up theodicy, because it is in such very bad taste

New tome on GK and Beren

The First Things site has an enticing review of Alison Milbank's Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: the Theology of the Real.

Ralph Wood sets into motion an almost hagiographic essay, and concludes with this superlative:

With clarity and wit and verve, she shows that the gift-quality of Tolkien’s and Chesterton’s art is premised on the gift-character of the universe itself. Their work, as she splendidly verifies, has profound moral implications. For in a gift-giving and gift-receiving world, we are not meant to seek our own advantage at the expense of others. Rather we are meant to create gifts—like those presents into which Galadriel has woven her own character before she gives them to the Company—that serve to free their recipients rather than putting them into our debt. Milbank has gifted us with what may well become our finest study of these Catholic artists in their unique relation not only to each other but also to our imagination-starved churches and culture.

I would like to purchase anything that almost hagiographizes these two heroes of mine. Trouble is, Alison Milbank's nice book, only 184 pages printed by T & T Clark, lists at the intriguing price of $120. My calculations reveal that this comes out to $0.65 per page. That's pretty steep, given the fact that for about 2 cents a page, you could get a lot of Proust, in a deluxe edition no less.

Of course, what you would do with Proust might differ from what you would do with GK or Tolkien, or their expositors like Milbank.

Tolle lege (while you can)

On a single day, the December Touchstone appeared in my mailbox, and the 26 November issue of Newsweek fell in my shopping cart at Giant Eagle.

The cover story of the latter trumpets Jeff Bezos of Amazon, holding up and eclipsing half his face, his new Kindle gizmo ($399), which is set to replace the old fashioned sort of paper-and-leather book.

The article gushes about this new e-book and e-books in general. Here are the ecstatic text-boxes:

1. “’The vision is that you should be able to get any book – not just any book in print, but any book that’s ever been in print – on the Kindle, in less than a minute,’ says Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.”

2. “Errata can be corrected instantly. Updates, no problem – in fact, you could subscribe to a book with the expectation that an author will continually add to it. A novelist might rewrite an ending.”

3. “Devices like the Kindle, with its reader-friendly ink and type face, can subsume consciousness in the same way a physical book does. It can take you down the rabbit hole.”

[I bet your imagination is piqued by that phrase, "it can subsume consciousness." Do books "subsume" your consciousness? No. But do virtual/techno books? Hmmmmm ... ]

Not to be outdone by Amazon, Google is doing its own digitization thing. Adam Smith (what a name) of Google’s Book Search project line, says that digitizing the world’s libraries is all about “getting rid of the idea that a book is a [closed] container.

Honestly, despite my misgivings about the constant press of technology into daily life and my romantic luddite proclivities, I find much in this project attractive. I won’t pay $399 for a Kindle, but in a year, I’ll probably pay $50 for an even better e-book. I kind of like the conservationist appeal: “We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put dirty marks on them, then cut the sheets and bind them and ship the thing around the world. ‘Do you really believe that we’ll be doing that in 50 years?’ asks Microsoft’s Bill Hill” (what a name).

No, we won’t be doing that for sure. I know that I will have to accustom myself to wincing at more screens.

But I am not so offended by clean white paper in codex, the feel and smell of leather, and the texture of imprint, and the beauty of typeface, the aroma of a newly-printed page in a book with wide margins, rich apparatus, and pages meant to be fanned and opened up into a play of apparent random and predestined, appointed revelation. I also like a sharp No. 2 Faber pencil for the scrawling of marginalia. I like the sound and feel of graphite scribing on paper.

And let us remember, fondly and morosely, that it took a book to call forth this rather cruel clue of Fermat's on a real live page: Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet. [Supposedly, Andrew Wiles back in 1993 fulfilled Fermat's challenge with a proof of Pythagoras' cultic riddle. Here I find myself very much like the atheists: I am not convinced by Wiles' proof because I will not understand him.]

Then there’s Touchstone. Fr. Michael Ward of Peterhouse in Cambridge reveals the secret unifying blueprint underlying the Narnian heptology. I will have to chew more on his idea that Lewis associated each of the seven books to a different planet in the Ptolemaic astrology.

But before this feature article, there’s this homily by that inestimable Dante (and Tasso) translator, Dr. Anthony Esolen. The penultimate section of his reflection on Josiah’s discovery of the Book of the Law in the shabby Temple is a threnody on the passing of books in this age.

Here it is, in Esolen’s very fine “Finders Weepers,” under the heading “A Land of Books”:

Books … Yes, I see books. I see a land littered with libraries. In them I see relics: wooden chairs and balustrades no one any longer has the skill to carve, and a few old books to go with them, dusty, forbidding, small-printed filled with observation, eloquence, and sometimes genius.

Nobody reads them. Few can. I can see those books packed in boxes to make room for the ephemeral. I see the boxes carted to the landfill.

I see crows pecking at the centuries …

I see Latin and Greek textbooks on the shelf behind me as I write. They are the works of years of devotion, by men who strove to understand the empires of our past, their glories and their fall. Their title pages take me aback. “Chairman of the Latin Department at Westfield High School,” reads one. “B.A., formerly fellow of King’s College,” reads another. Sometimes the editor boasts no title, because he is an amateur, a lover. I see these, I the holder of a doctorate, and am ashamed.

No Magic in Potter-land

[My apologies and prayers for everyone in southern California and north Georgia: this whole discussion must sound disagreeably irrelevant to you: May the Lord's graceful rain fall gently upon you, and bring solace to your forests and your land.]

Hey, everyone, (note the element of fatigue and cheerful aggravation) I did not get in this to argue about Dumbledore with the fandom. The blogosphere sounds like a bunch of angry villagers at a certain lightning-prone laboratory -- especially if one is attempting to steer a course via media.

I am neither endorsing Harry or condemning him. His books were entertaining, but I would not go to the Rowling texts to pan for nuggets of meaning. That would be like forcing poor Bertie Wooster into some loopy postmodern theory, or -- worse -- a special session at the MLA walpurgisnacht shindig.

I'll wager that at the Chicago MLA Convention at the end of this December, there will be more than one presentation on Rowling that focuses on some sort of faddish theory found hidden in her pages.

One goes to great books for meaning. One finds symbols in literature: metaphors are not all that hard. Heavens, even I can make a metaphor. But a real symbol is a hard thing to make, and takes greatness. Symbols make for great literature. Entertaining books are fun, and a lot better than video games and virtual reality, but it's a stretch to call them "meaningful."

It's true that I don't like it that JK said that the "father figure" is gay. That makes me neither anti-Potterian nor homophobic. And it doesn't matter one bit when and how and in what context applause after the Carnegie announcement was made. I don't want to talk about applause or Dumbledore's celibacy. It's getting a little ripe, n'est-ce pas?, when we surmise the unknown, unreported, unwritten inclinations of a fictional character. I don't know what "gay" means here, but I note that she didn't say "I've always thought that Dumbledore was a celibate gay." Did I miss the author's qualification that the gay-ness was a non-active gay-ness?

Here in my last post on Potter (I think), I will state my main and darkest suspicion about what happened to the Potter stories -- a set of tales I found thoroughly entertaining, though increasingly not so meaningful. While others find signs of Austen, narrative misdirection, Florentine alchemy and symbol, and Christian themes in Rowling, I find mostly, by the end, the influence of Judy Blume and Jung.

The Rowling partisans buoy themselves with the discovery of Christian symbols and themes, and induce the conclusion that this makes for a Christian book, or an okey-dokey book. It is true that there are Christian elements in Rowling's canon: but the same can be said for most, if not all, of Western literature, whether great or otherwise. For that matter, I can also find a good deal of Norse elements in Tolkien, Buddhist in Eliot, even Arab in Narnia, but that does not make these great writers anything but Christian. Furthermore, there is a lot of regrettable ilk written and marketed under the rubric of "Christian book" that can be described as "book" only because there are pages between two covers, but cannot be called "Christian" at all, even with a surfeit of Christian ingredients.

The purpose of fantasy in a Christian story is to pronounce, in human language, the usually unpronounceable things of the bodiless worlds. Christian fantasy takes magic seriously, because it finds magic and the larger world of the spirit quite real. The Good is painfully beautiful and bright. The Evil is demonic, decadent and decayed, always declining toward the satanic.

I strongly suspect that Rowling really doesn't believe in magic at all. I, on the other hand, believe it exists as a realization of the way things really are, as I hope to be more certain of spiritual realities than the physical ones. I am especially happier that miracles and "eu-catastrophes" exist.

I am afraid, though, that the magic of Rowling is the tiresome business of Jungian extrapolation from intra-psychic phenomena.

If that is so, there is no mythopoeia in Rowling. Mythopoeia depends on symbol -- each symbol linking, in one phenomenon, this world and the greater one. Rowling has all sorts of metaphor and metonymy, I'll give her that. But not transcendent symbol that speaks with a still small voice of the other side of appearances.

I wish (along with Fr. Stephen) that children could have their stories and the hearth would be safe from blood-sucking hyper-modernity, the firelight shutting out the dark and cold. They should be told of monsters, and not of gruesomely maudlin cutesiacs like Elmo, and certainly not of Freudian deconstructions like Bettelheim's Red Riding Hood, or of Jungian constructs like dementors and bogeys.

They should be told, in  good story, the honest truth that monsters are evil. They should be told, by a home fire that crackles merrily, about the heroes and angels that always win, because they always have and always will.

They should be told of fantasy that is true, instead of "fantasy" that is utilized only as instrumental narrative.

They should be told that God and the saints are always violating man's crummy prejudices about nature: the rules of science are always being broken, as time itself shatters science with every advance into the next moment. That single reason is why magic is really no big deal.

They should be told that sometimes, the hero does not come back except upon his shield. They should not be discouraged with that modernistic nonsense that the hero's victory over evil is merely a metaphor for puberty or growing up. No, no, and a thousand no's. The hero's victory is over a real external psyche, and the whole real world has changed accordingly. Things are really better because a good thing was done in history.

The hero doesn't get "well-adjusted," nor does he become a more complex person (which is the psychobabble heaven of Blume's Fudge and Forever): the hero in a good story journeys, fights and slays a real dragon. Other real people in the real village are saved, even if the hero dies.

When the "happily ever after" is only a showing up at home after a devil has been bound, and normal boredom has been restored, then things are neither happy, nor are they "ever after." It is likely that the return of the status quo ante to the stage deflates the mythic Journey and the Battle down to the gray, psychotherapeutic meanings of Judy Blume, or the dread angst of Leopold Bloom.

For my part, I think that a hero who fights death in the crisis really needs to go to the Home of which his hearth and heart were gleaming symbols. The community is healed, because he, as a saint, "filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh for His body's sake, which is the Church" (Colossians 1.24, KJV).

That's what should happen in the stories we tell our children. We should give talk show psychotherapy and guerrilla-egalitarianism a miss. Instead, we should revel in spooky magic and thrilling fantasy. We should read out loud to ourselves and our children stories that illumine our landscapes from within and haunt our consciousness with good ghosts.

My business with Rowling, which is now at an end, finishes with a "whatever" shrugging of the shoulders: she is neither magic nor fantasy, but at heart, only that other dismal stuff.

No magic, because there are, in the Potter-lands, no bigger worlds.