Recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury has caused some controversy by praising a dramatic adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. These books are especially notable for portraying God not as the real creator of the universe, but as a fraud and a tyrant, who consigns the souls of the dead to a “prison camp” that prevents them from being reincorporated into the world soul, and whose favorite angels conspire to use the Church as an instrument of human misery.
Pullman’s Subtle Knife, the second book of the trilogy, is especially disturbing. By the end of the book, it is clear that a conspiracy has been hatched to kill God…and for some reason, I, at least, was rooting for the assassins. So perhaps it is unsurprising that the Archbishop of Canterbury has earned such flack. He’s condoning deicide. However, Pullman’s God is not God. He is not the Creator, who yearned (as Dionysus the Areopagite puts it) to make us and all we see and don’t see. Pullman’s universe, though Christ is once or twice mentioned, is Christless. We are not so loved that God gave his only son for us. It is not Christ, but the brave young man who wields the subtle knife who enters the prison camp to set the captives free. And it is a truly a Christless universe in which deicide is so exciting and novel. In our universe, it has happened all before. Tomorrow, nineteen hundred and seventy, give or take a few years, ago and ever more, God dies.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Pullman Loses II (q.v. Haligweorc)
From a Maundy Thursday sermon of mine:
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4 comments:
I've never had the chance to read Pullman's stuff, though given time and available book cash I probably will... What you're sketching here sounds like classic Valentinian Gnosticism--just in a really bleak form. The dud with the subtle knife seems to be a redeemed redeemer but what is it that motivates his actions---a god of pure love outside of the material system or just a drive against tyrrany?
See, that's the problem with atheism as I see it. I do understand the appeal of a desire to get rid of God but if you do so where do you turn...to humanism? I would think that a quick review of the 20th century--from the Armenian genocide at its opening to the Rwandan one at its close--ought to put paid to any notion of redemption through human progress. Truly our technological progress has greatly outstripped our moral progress.
Heh--I meant "dude" in the above; don't know if "dud" also fits...
William's motivation? Compassion. Pullman's universe is also panentheistic (a popular concept, q.v. Star Wars) with something called Dust involved. But unfortunately, William's compassion most purely comes from his innocence. Yet the innocent in that sense never can participate fully in the communion of panentheistic being. I'm curious how Pullman will handle all of this in his sequel/manifesto, "The Book of Dust."
That's what happens to some few who grow up in severe Christian homes, Calvinist (Pullman) or otherwise. In my opinion, our finest theologians are in part to blame, being unable to provide accessible materials on the basics of the faith. Protesting "our God isn't like that" isn't good enough, I know too well in my own life experiences that for many Christians, their god is exactly like that, a vicious bastard worthy only of rejection. Theologians have to do better, should be held accountable for talking about angels on pins when basics are not communicated well. And that goes for catechists as well. In that sense, in my opinion, Lewis still serves us far better than Williams.
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