Son of Perdition is no son of mine

From time to time I deliberately subject myself to books that I suspect are not going to be stimulating literary treats. It was in this frame of mind that I bought Son of Perdition, a novel by Wendy Alec (writing as W Alec), the co-founder of GOD TV (which I didn’t know when I bought it).

My first piece of advice to Ms Alec – or, at least, the team responsible for her cover art and bindings – is, if you’re going to write a novel that is part of a series, somewhere you should show which part of the series the book constitutes. Nowhere on the front or rear covers, spine, or opening pages does it inform you that this is the third in a proposed series of seven novels. In consequence, I was well into it before I began to suspect there was a whole lot of backstory I was missing.

Anyway, the plot: Lucifer kicks off the Apocalypse by begetting a child in a weird kind of virgin birth, whereby he clones his own genetic material. The boy, Adrian De Vere, is one of three brothers (as is Lucifer, whose brothers are Michael & Gabriel), and the two triads of brothers give their name to the series: Chronicles of Brothers. Adrian is now President of the EU, and in the aftermath of the Third World War he is the most powerful man in the world. His ascent to that position has been assured by the Illuminati (yes, them again), guided through Satanic ritual and running the world through a combination of global financial control, military black ops and total media dominance.

No conspiracy theory is left untouched, with 9/11, the credit crunch and economic meltdown all attributable to this shadowy council of 13. Meanwhile, in the First Heaven the angelic forces are marshalling to wage war and fight Armageddon, while in Hell Lucifer’s host is growing stronger and some now are beginning to walk the earth…

All of which is a set-up for a great supernatural thriller, which Ms Alec does not provide. Partly this is a question of technique. Ms Alec has never met an adjective she didn’t like (like? She’s practically co-habiting with them), which has led to such fine examples of the literary art as:

His face, although strangely scarred, was regal. The wide brow and straight patrician nose framed imperious sapphire eyes that held a mesmerising beauty.

His thick raven hair was silvering at the edges. On a normal day, he wore it pulled back fastidiously into a braid bound by a simple black band….

But today was not a normal day and this evening De Molay’s gleaming tresses fell loose to the shoulders of an exquisitely tailored Domenico Vacca suit that accentuated the well-honed body beneath it.

And so on and so forth for 393 interminable pages. One wonders if this is now the style encouraged after the success of such literary luminaries as Dan Brown. Dan Brown, incidentally, comes under fire in a neat little sideswipe on page 160:

“According to last decade’s pop culture, [the Illuminati] were a renaissance-era society of great thinkers who were expelled from Rome and hunted down mercilessly by the Vatican”

“Poppycock! Fiction writers.” The professor pursed his lips in annoyance. “A flagrant flight of the imagination.”

All of which makes for rollicking good – if somewhat hypocritical – fun for devotees of metafictional references. But the game of spot the literary heritage does not stop there. There are echoes of J.R.R. Tolkien in her insistence on naming every possible geographical feature and every conceivable rank or title. Sometimes these arrive in a veritable avalanche. And, like an avalanche, one feels that the relentless deluge could easily overwhelm whole villages in a matter of seconds. Take, for example, this masterful presentation of extraneous and irrelevant detail:

Charsoc the Dark, Chief High Priest of the Fallen, bowed deeply. Charsoc’s fall from the First Heaven had been second only to his nefarious Master’s. Formerly one of Yehovah’s eight High Elders of the First Heaven and second only in rank to Jether the Just, Charsoc had sunk effortlessly to become the most depraved of Lucifer’s Necromancer kings. He was Governor of the dreaded Warlock Kings of the West and the Dark Cabal Grand Wizards.

One wonders if the caps lock on her computer had developed an intermittent fault.

There are, I was once told, three types of writing. There is writing that is visible because it is bad. There is writing that is invisible – writing that conveys the story without interfering with it. Then there is writing that is visible because it is good – such as is utilised by China Mieville, who can (if I open ‘Perdido Street Station’ at random) produce such examples as

A few grey blocks rose from the streets like weeds in a cesspool, their concrete seeping and rotten. Many were unfinished, with splayed iron supports fanning out from the ghosts of roofs, rusting, bleeding with the rain and the damp, staining the skin of the buildings.

Ms. Alec’s writing, sadly, falls into the first category. It actively interferes with the narrative. It is like a clock whose ticking, once you become aware of it, proves impossible to ignore.

All this, of course, is mere superficial criticism. There are much deeper and more interesting things to discuss. There is, for example, a vein of American conservative Christianity running through the work like a faultline, and, like a faultline, it is where things tend to break down. There are the old prejudices fashionably repackaged: the devil incarnate is a Jesuit (the old idea that the Roman Catholic Church is somehow facilitative of Satan’s endgame); perfidious Europe is to be the source of the World Government (because the most popular of the books in this vein, the books by Jenkins and LaHaye and Alec and Lindsey, all see the downfall of America as being critical. That’s right – no American could be the Antichrist…); and good ol’ American conservatives are particularly singled out for elimination since they offer too serious a threat for the antichrist to countenance:

“Then, gentlemen, our coup d’etat – the United States sovereignty will be permanently eliminated.” Piers Aspinall, chief of British Intelligence Services, removed his spectacles and breathed on the lenses.

“In the first phase of the North American Union we launch the Amero currency and introduce mandatory gun control.”

He leaned back leisurely in his chair.

“We divide the world into ten superblocs. Then stage a false-flag incident – nuclear or bioterror, weaponised Avian flu, smallpox – ushering in martial law and mandatory vaccination.” He removed a perfectly pressed, linen handkerchief and polished the lenses. “We eradicate resisters. Patriots. Constitutionalists…Christians.”

This particular passage occurs just six pages into the novel, and it’s nice to see the political ducks that for the more rabidly Conservative  constitute ‘demonstrations of evil intent’ lined up so neatly in a row: destruction of the American dollar, mandatory gun control, mandatory vaccinations, the death of ‘Patriots’ and ‘Constitutionalists’. It’s all so au fait it could make you weep. She’s got Avian flu! On the previous page she namechecks the 2008 market crash, the Patriot Act, bin Laden’s apparent kidney problems, the Iraq war and even the precise contents of Nawaf al-Hazmi‘s car. This is a novel designed to appeal to the more frighteningly ‘Christian’ members of the Tea Party. You know the ones: they’re the people who put the ‘mentalist’ into ‘Fundamentalist’.

And, of course, no cliché is left unexploited. Where would Americans be without British villains? (Incidentally, the goodwill Ms. Alec generates with me, a devoted reader of thrillers, through the correct use of the term ‘false-flag’, is immediately dissipated through her referral to British Intelligence Services. Either she is referring generally to the British intelligence services – note the absence of capital letters, since this is not a proper name – or she means either the British Secret Intelligence Service [popularly if inaccurately known as 'MI6'] or the British Security Service ['MI5'].) Even the chapter titles have the inescapable ring of the familiar to them: ‘Raiders of the Ark’, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, ‘Dark Clouds on the Horizon’ (an interesting chapter, since you may not have been aware of the vital role the shipping forecast has to play in the end times), ‘The Cold Light of Day’, ‘Bolt from the Blue’, ‘Skeletons in the Closet’…

You know, just once I would like to see someone get a bit inventive with this kind of thing. Why not a Malaysian antichrist? A Japanese? A Cambodian? A Paraguayan? An Australian? It’s all so Western (and particularly American) -centric. To call this stuff formulaic is to insult the infinite and majestic variation of formulae. And then there’s the dialogue. Milton‘s demons had a looser and more modern turn of phrase than Ms. Alec’s, who appears – throughout, and with every character of every race – to have mistaken ‘pomposity’ for ‘majesty’. Even I, on the side of the angels, felt an urgent desire to give the Archangel Michael a good swift kick in the pants. It is also the case that everyone’s dialogue is festooned with adverbial modifiers. People seldom simply say things: they say them with ‘foreboding’ or ‘mutter darkly’ or ‘grimly’ or ‘cheekily’ or ‘sadly’ or any other of the gamut of emotions that, had the author been more competent, we would already have known from the context. Even when we do know from the context those adverbs are there to keep you on the straight and narrow.

The bits where she lets her imagination run riot are, I grant you, more entertaining: I quite like the idea of comets lighting the frozen skies of Hell, or Lucifer breeding an army of underworld creatures for the forthcoming War. (I’m sure I’ve come across that idea before, the idea of hybridising ‘evil races’ for footsoldiers. Oh yes, how silly of me: the Uruk-Hai. Tolkien’s influence, as I have said before, looms large.) But it’s not enough, not nearly enough, to save a manuscript staggering under the weight of its inadequacies.

Jim Macdonald, who reviewed the book, described Ms Alec as ‘obviously a master of the fantasy genre‘.Mr Macdonald, poor, lost soul that he is, has clearly only been exposed to the worst that the fantasy genre could offer. Ms Alec is not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett or Michael Moorcock or HP Lovecraft or Stephen King or…well, you get the idea. There is a banquet of fantasia on offer at the moment, in comparison to which Ms Alec’s contribution seems an ill-made cupcake sat on by an elephant – flat, uninspiring and leaving a nasty taste in the mouth. To other would-be authors, I recommend it as an educational tool and an encouragement. It is deeply, deeply educational in the ‘how not to do it’ sense. And it is very encouraging because it’s dreadful and it still got published. There is indeed hope for us all.

Your moment of zen for today:

LMS Jubilee 'Australia' snakes under the road bridge on 'Tynedale'

Making the internet just that little bit worse

Good afternoon, dear readers!

I swither between thinking the internet a very good thing and a very bad thing, and my reason for adopting either position is in fact the same in both cases: anyone can say anything. And while you might think this is a neat little segue into a discussion of Ryan Giggs, in fact it isn’t. It’s a segue into Yahoo Answers.

On Yahoo Answers you can ask, or answer, any question. I have started doing this in the last week or so, and it ought to come as no surprise to those who know me that I’ve been looking mostly at the ‘Poetry’ section. There I’ve been able to help with the technical and formal questions (what is trochaic tetrameter? How are sonnets constructed?), which I find very rewarding. Something, however, that makes me grit my teeth and move on are (for example) the 14-year-old Emo kids romanticising suicide.

The best poetry advice I was ever given was offered to me by Donald Cairnduff, the head of English at my school, who, when I was starting to write poetry myself, offered 4 words of criticism that proved massively useful and ought to be dispensed to teenagers as a matter of national policy. The 4 words were “Angst is never interesting.“

Other 4-word credos that might prove equally useful to the Yahoo Answers crowd of poetic teens are You aren’t Sylvia Plath and Pay attention to rhythm. If we expand beyond 4 words, we can include You aren’t as disillusioned as you think you are, You don’t know as much as you think you do about this, and Punctuation is really, really important.

However, I said I was going to make the internet just a little bit worse, and I intend to do that by subjecting you all to one of my poems. It was published in October in Causeway/Cabhsair, published by the University of Aberdeen. It’s a sonnet (if you want to get really technical, it’s a Shakespearean sonnet according to rhyme but with modern metrical flexibility – so there) called ‘Sunnyside’, which was the name of the farm my grandfather grew up on in Comber, Northern Ireland.

Sunnyside

The carthorses are clop-shuffling in the yard
In their trap and tackle, trace and trim,
All muddied at the feathers from the field ploughed
And furrowed, turned by God Save The King.
Behind them, hunched over with potatoes
For the sowing, by seventy years
Of memories to come, my grandfather follows
The horses in their buckle, brass and gear;
Enacting his own plantation of Ulster
In uneasy years between bigger wars
Than that which sets grown men to mutter -
In the church halls and on the threshing floors -
Of the Free State and the simple truth
That troubles come of troubled youth.

The Evil of Banality

Some people who until recently I considered my friends introduced me to Rebecca Black’s ‘song’ “Friday“. In brief, in “Friday” everything that could possibly go wrong with a song, has. It puts me in mind of an old Muppets sketch where a piece of music is given to The Electric Mayhem and they are asked ‘what can you do with this?’. Zoot – the saxophonist – replies ‘well, if you give me a match, I can put it out of its misery’.

I don’t wish to be overly harsh on Rebecca. She’s 13. Her problem is that her problems are those of a 13-year-old, and even then they are the problems of a well-off middle-class white American. They therefore don’t make for particularly good source material for a song. There’s no narrative, there’s no friction, there’s no hook. There’s no hook musically either – there’s no real melody to speak of, no interesting chord progression, no complexity. It’s a song written – both lyrically and musically – in crayon.

At this point I am not going to trot out that hackneyed old untruth that one should only write what one knows. If that were true we would have no science-fiction or fantasy. A much more accurate aphorism, therefore, is that one should only write about that with which one can empathise. It is this power of imaginative association, the ability to understand, that gives literature most of its power and almost all of its value. It is what enables ‘poetry after Auschwitz’; it is why Seamus Heaney was able to write that he was one ‘who would connive / in civilised outrage / yet understand the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge.’ There is always a complicity between the author and the thing authored, and however many tricks are employed to avoid that juxtaposition, in the end it remains inescapable.

I read widely, and I have read some truly awful books. I have read Stephanie Meyer. I have read Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins. But what I don’t understand – and I know I’ve said this before, but bear with me – is why there are so many Christian authors who are simply appalling at being authors. In the light of the aforementioned complicity, I find this worrying.

I will try to set out my questions as simply and as clearly as possible, so that if any of you have any answers you can provide them. These are not rhetorical questions: I really want to know.

1. Popular Christian books appear to be written for idiots. With a popular science book on a complex subject – like, for instance, quantum mechanics – I would expect the more basic, premise-establishing opening chapters to lead into progressively more detailed chapters on the subject. I would expect the basic ideas to appear and then be enhanced as additional, more complicated information appears. This is not a progression I see in similarly themed Christian books. You want an understanding of Grace? God is good, so He is gracious to us! And…err…that’s it! That isn’t an argument, it isn’t the progression of an idea facilitating comprehension. It just leaves the idea stranded, gasping for life like a fish left flapping on a beach. Why does this happen? Why are no theologians first getting down in the muck with us plebs, and then lifting us out of it? Who is the theological equivalent of Ben Goldacre or Jack Cohen or – heaven forefend – Richard Dawkins?

A further problem presents itself. If Christian books are written for idiots, and treat the people reading them as idiots, and the authors appear to offer no deeper insight or path toward conclusion, can we really blame the rational secularists who treat all Christians as idiots? If everything suggests Christians are intellectually subluminescent, can we honestly find fault in – for example – Christopher Hitchins if he concludes that Christians don’t really think the difficulties of their faith through?

2. Christian prose is either manic or comatose. (This may be a larger problem than mere literature: there seems to be an increasing polarisation of church services along similar lines too). That which is not incendiary is pedestrian; that which is not hidebound is frenetic. “God is good all the time” may well be true (and a great truth at that), but saying it for 300 pages with only minor changes in vocabulary does not a worthwhile book make. So my question is, where are the good writers? Where are the men and women whose technical ability matches their desire to write in the first place? I can think of very few, and the only one still alive is Adrian Plass.

3. There being so much bad Christian literature about, what is the excuse that can be offered in its defence? This, to me, is perhaps the most intractable problem of all. Modern Christian music may well be (and in my opinion, mostly is) ‘fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music’, as one eloquent apologist once put it (though he then defended it, not because it wasn’t sixth-rate, but because it was sung with genuine devotion, which is the more important thing), but how do we defend such a thing in terms of its quality? How can we? Where did the idea of doing one’s utmost for His highest fall by the wayside? That is of course to take the worst view of it – that the people involved in the hymn’s or book’s creation were too lazy to make a good job of it. But it is not much less troubling if we are more charitable. Suppose this doggerel really is the best the author could do – does this confer more worth on it? No one doubts their devotion – only their merit. At its best Christian art is among the very best of all art ever made – Michaelangelo’s David, Da Vinci’s Last Supper, the poetry of Dante and Milton and Donne and Hopkins, the Book of Common Prayer, the music of Bach and Handel – all can stand up to be counted with the greatest achievements of the human race. My question now is, why has there been such a sharp and catastrophic falling off of genuine worth? It didn’t used to be the case that the devil gets all the best tunes – but ask me to choose between the complete works of Hillsongs and the complete works of Led Zeppelin and I know who I’d consider more aesthetically worthwhile.

I know there is an argument against this. The argument usually runs something along the lines of “Well yes, musically, Led Zeppelin are probably better. But the lyrics aren’t as edifying, and that’s the point of Christian music.” This is not a good argument, and it’s an argument that I’ve heard before. It used to be advanced by proponents of badly-written Science-Fiction. “Yes, I know the characterisation is paper-thin, and the plot is pedestrian – but the ideas are spectacular.” In the case of Christian Music, the defence – as was offered above – was that the devotion of the listener was what mattered. But doesn’t that sidle away from the real problem? There would be no need to mount that defence if the music itself was impervious to musical criticism. I return to the original question: why must we put up with fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music when our God is worth the best of both? Why shouldn’t Christianity’s music be vibrant, its lyrics fresh and deep, its literature illuminating and intoxicating? Shouldn’t it, in fact, be more likely to be these things, given the nature of the One to whom it is primarily offered?

4. Are we, as Christians, so hamstrung by the defence mounted above – that the devotion is the important thing – that we have become unable or unwilling to winnow out the chaff of the qualitively unacceptable? There is a song in a hymnbook that begins with the immortal lines “I want to be a blooming tree / Bear more fruit than Sainsbury’s”. Leaving aside the sheer ludicrous crashing awfulness of the thing, what concerns me more is a) no one was prepared to say that this really is not good enough for the hymnbook, and b) now that it’s in the hymnbook, some people will feel obliged to sing it. There are other great examples of the same sort of thing. What does “Rise up church on broken wings” actually mean? It’s my job to deconstruct metaphors, ones much more elaborate than this, but the ones I deal with on a daily basis have some kind of connection to the thing they talk about. This is an interesting image, but not one that appears tethered to any kind of sustained metaphor, or even perceived reality, concerning the nature of the Christian church today[1].

This sort of thing concerns me. I’ve never quite been able to suppress or move past the idea that Christians are ambassadors for Christ. Christian art, therefore, must be able to stand as art, first and foremost, whose aim is to glorify God. Our aesthetic sensibilities are as God-given as any other part of our beings. That which offends them, almost certainly, is not the greatest offering we could bring to He who offered all for us. It is also unlikely to impress those who are not Christians. I sometimes wonder how tone-deaf, and how insensitive to suffering, would be the god who considered ‘Great is the Darkness’, with its hideous clash of music and lyrics, the greatest hymn offered in his name.

So in conclusion, and to compress my arguments to their shortest possible form, my questions would be these: Why do we offer God such paltry fare? Why do we consider this acceptable? Why does there not appear to be a more strenuous discernment in what is, or is not, ‘good’ in terms of Christian art? Where can one go for legitimate, grown-up edification? And how have we managed to get ourselves into this mess in the first place?

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Finally, some good music (non-Christian, but you were expecting that by now, weren’t you?) Via the wonder of Facebook, I have reconnected with an old friend from my school days, Stephen Macartney (in fact I believe we even went to nursery school together!). Stephen is in a band called Farriers, and they – it turns out – are seriously good. But you need not merely take my word for it. The link above will take you to a downloadable 5-track EP (you know it’s worth the £3. You do. You know this because you can listen to all the tracks in order to determine this) that will demonstrate their listenability. Below, I provide the Farriers live in Lagan Meadows. Enjoy!

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[1] The complete verse is:

Rise up church with broken wings
Fill this place with songs again
Of our God who reigns on high
By His grace again we’ll fly

The biter bit, the bitter bite…

Many years ago, when I was in a church worship group and playing, not as the drummer, but as a bassoonist, I used to obsess about the wrong notes I played. I would hit a duff one and immediately cringe. All those people! All of them hearing my crassest clangers! What must they think of me?

After a while I mentioned this to another, older, member of the group. “Look,” he said, “if those people had any musical ability they’d be up here too. How many of them, do you think, can discern the sound of the bassoon in the first place; and of them, how many would know a wrong note if it landed in their soup?”

I was thinking about this yesterday when I was looking online at amateur reviews of a novel I’ve just finished reading, Dan Simmons‘s ‘Carrion Comfort‘. “Far too long”, complained one. “Didn’t have anything to do with vampires,” whined another. “Too many characters” moaned a third, “and not enough characterisation”.

These are critiques of a novel that Stephen King, a man who knows more than a little about horror fiction, described as “one of the three greatest horror novels of the 20th Century”. (I don’t know what the other two are. If I had to guess, based on things King has written elsewhere, one might be ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘, by Shirley Jackson, while the other may well be amongst the works of Peter Straub, with whom King has co-authored two novels.)

I’m with King on this one. ‘Carrion Comfort’ is an extraordinary novel. Long? Certainly. Too long? Not in the slightest, unless you are of that unfortunate majority who demand instant gratification in all things. The book is a 767-page meditation on violence, power, manipulation and predation, and it is not afraid to explore some of the darkest territory the 20th Century has to offer.

Saul Laski is a survivor of Chelmno extermination camp, a Nazi death camp where he first encountered SS Oberst Wilhelm von Borchert, a man with the Ability. The Ability in question is simply the facility to compel another to do your will: to seize control of their mind and hence their body. Such a seizure diminishes the seized while nourishing the hijacker: it is possible for these ‘mind vampires’ to hollow out a person entirely, leaving their bodies as empty vessels to carry the manipulator’s consciousness.

Having survived his encounter with the Oberst, Saul becomes a psychologist, publishing a book on the pathology of violence. But the Oberst has also survived, becoming a Hollywood producer, and he is not the only one with the Ability – two friends from his youth, Melanie Fuller and Nina Drayton, can do the same thing. They meet every year to compare their scores in the Game – a game in which they compel others to kill, and gain points for style. When one reunion turns ugly, and leaves a trail of bodies, Saul and two of those affected by the latest massacre join forces to try and bring down the gamers. Then they discover that the Oberst’s is not the only Game in town, and the new one is more terrifying in its implications than they ever could have dreamed…

Simmons’s is a magnificent novel. Brilliant throughout, brutal when it has to be, as discomforting as it ought to be, as redemptive as only true horror can manage, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s also one of the best vampire novels I’ve ever read.

I have an affection for vampire novels. Of the four classic supernatural monsters – The Vampire, The Werewolf, The Ghost and The Thing – I find vampires far and away the most effective, because they are – at least from a literary point of view – almost infinitely adaptable metaphor machines. My undergraduate dissertation looked partially at ‘Dracula’, and analysed it as a metaphor for sexually-transmitted diseases. This was one of about a hundred different ways I could have analysed the book and the creature. Simmons sees the vampire as a metaphor for everyone who has ever exercised undue authority. In the introduction to the current, 20th Anniversary edition, Simmons writes

As adults, we suffer such mind-vampire attacks in almost all of our jobs – some petty, power-mad manager making our work harder and daily life miserable, some administrator or supervisor who revels in exercising arbitrary power over us and then lapping up the violence of that power as if it were warm blood – and we also encounter mind vampires in our daily lives, on the highways, in public places, in politics, and, sadly, in too many of our personal relationships.

Ignoring for a moment the term ‘mind vampire’ and the inherently pragmatic reaction we have towards its fantasy, is there not something entirely recognisable and real about what Simmons is saying here? And because it is real, because it is recognisable, it lends far greater credibility to Simmons’s central conceit (the One Big Idea, as SciFi puts it) – that some people can do this on a far greater, far more potent scale. Simmons’s great success in this novel is this fusion of the vampire – a metaphor machine we all recognise – with the power-mad manager – a real figure we all recognise – to create a monster that works on multiple levels simultaneously while giving Simmons himself a chance to talk through violence and its implications in a way that forces us to think anew on old ideas.

‘Carrion Comfort’ is a brilliant reinvention of the vampire mythos for precisely this reason – it forces us to re-examine old themes in an entirely new way and in an entirely new light. It is the inability to do this that makes Stephanie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ novels such a monumental failure, at least as vampire novels (they fail on different levels depending on how one reads them. They fail as romances because the relationship they describe is so fundamentally unhealthy; they fail as novels for women because Bella is a spectacularly poor role model; they fail as thrillers because every potential for suspense is killed before it can be born; they fail as horror novels because everything even remotely scary is either excised or circumvented; they fail, basically, because Meyer can’t write and doesn’t know what she’s doing when she tries).

I like well written vampire novels. On those grounds, I enjoyed ‘Carrion Comfort’ tremendously. But I also like literature – the books that force us to re-examine ourselves and our beliefs – and on those grounds, I would nominate ‘Carrion Comfort’ for inclusion in the canon.

A great book. I recommend you read it. I particularly recommend this if you are Stephanie Meyer.

And now, your moment of Zen for today:

The driver leans out the window as a K3 prepares to depart Perdido Street Station

George Orwell was a communist and Harper Lee was a racist.

There are times, dear reader, when you realise that it is almost impossible to overestimate the ability of stupid people to be cataclysmically dumb.

Now you know, dear reader, because you are a dear reader, that from time to time it is possible to come across books that force you to think. To use the little grey cells for the purpose for which God gave them to you, and actually consider the world around you and the ideas of the people who occupy it. But some people are actively frightened at this prospect. What’s worse, some of them have children, and they seek to prevent them thinking too. This is where censorship of school libraries rears its ugly head.

Let me be perfectly clear – I am all in favour of protecting children from harmful material. What I am not in favour of is hiding them from material that is merely controversial, and I am not alone in this. The American Library Association maintains a watch on all attempts to censor the reading materials in American libraries, and publishes the details on its website. However, for some light relief I was browsing the ‘challenged classics’ section, and I thought I’d share some of the more startling attempts with you…

To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Challenged in the Vernon Verona Sherill, N.Y School District (1980) as a “filthy, trashy novel.” Challenged at the Warren, Ind.Township schools (1981) because the book does “psychological damage to the positive integration process” and “represents institutionalized racism under the guise of good literature.”…Banned from the Lindale,Tex. advanced placement English reading list (1996) because the book “conflicted with the values of the community.”(Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

The Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

Challenged at the Owen, N.C. High School (1981) because the book is “demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal”…A committee of the Toronto, Canada Board of Education ruled on June 23, 1988, that the novel is “racist and recommended that it be removed from all schools.” Parents and members of the black community complained about a reference to “niggers” in the book and said it denigrates blacks…(Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

1984 (George Orwell)

Challenged in the Jackson County, FL (1981) because Orwell’s novel is “pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter.” (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

Of Mice And Men (George Steinbeck)

Just for the record, I consider this to be one of the two finest American novels ever written. Oh, and I’ve only picked the creme de la creme of the lunacy for this one – GB

Challenged in Greenville, S.C. (1977) by the Fourth Province of the Knights of the Ku Klux KIan…Challenged as a summer youth program reading assignment in Chattanooga, Tenn. (1989) because “Steinbeck is known to have had an anti business attitude.” In addition, “he was very questionable as to his patriotism’…Removed and later returned to the Suwannee, Fla. High School library (1991) because the book is “indecent”…In 1992 a coalition of community members and clergy in Mobile, Ala., requested that local school officials form a special textbook screening committee to “weed out objectionable things:” Steinbeck’s novel was the first target because it contained “profanity” and “morbid and depressing themes”…Challenged as an appropriate English curriculum assignment at the Mingus, Ariz.Union High School (1993) because of “profane language, moral statement, treatment of the retarded, and the violent ending.”… A citizen group, the 100 Black United, Inc., requested the novel’s removal and “any other inadmissible literary books that have racial slurs in them, such as the using of the word ‘Nigger: ” Challenged as a reading list assignment for a ninth grade literature class, but retained at the Sauk Rapids Rice High School in St. Cloud, Minn. (1997). A parent complained that the book’s use of racist language led to racist behavior and racial harassment…Challenged in the Normal, Ill. Community High Schools (2003) because the books contains “racial slurs, profanity, violence, and does not represent traditional values.” (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

Again for the record, this is the other finest American novel I’ve ever read – GB

Banned in Strongsville, Ohio (1972), but the school board’s action was overturned in 1976 by a U.S. District Court in Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District. Challenged at the Dallas, Tex. Independent School District high school libraries (1974); in Snoqualmie, Wash. (1979) because of its several references to “whores.” (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide, Robert P. Doyle.)

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Removed from classroom in Miller, MO (1980), because it made promiscuous sex “look like fun”…Challenged as required reading in the Corona-Norco, California Unified School District (1993) because it is “centered around negative activity.” Specifically, parents objected that the characters’ sexual behavior directly opposed the health curriculum, which taught sexual abstinence until marriage…Removed from the Foley, Ala. High School Library (200) pending review, because a parent complained that its characters showed contempt for religion, marriage, and family.  The parent complained to the school and to Alabama Governor Don Siegelman…(Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)

Banned in Italy (1929) because of its painfully accurate account of the Italian retreat from Caporetto, Italy…burned by the Nazis in Germany (1933)…challenged at the Vernon-Verona-Sherill, N.Y. School District (1980) as a “sex novel”(Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

Challenged in Waukegan, Ill. School District (1984) because the novel uses the word “nigger.” (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)

Challenged as part of the curriculum in an Aberdeen, Washington High School honors English class (1986) because the book promotes “secular humanism.” The school board voted to retain the title. Challenged at the Placentia-Yorba Linda, California Unified School District (2000) after complaints by parents stated that teachers “can choose the best books, but they keep choosing this garbage over and over again.” (Source: 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide, by Robert P. Doyle.)

Slaughterhouse-5 (Kurt Vonnegut)

Challenged in many communities, but burned in Drake, N. Dak (1973). Banned in Rochester, Mich. because the novel “contains and makes references to religious matters” and thus fell within the ban of the establishment clause…Retained on the Northwest Suburban High School District 214 reading list in Arlington Heights, Ill. (2006), along with eight other challenged titles.  A board member, elected amid promises to bring her Christian beliefs into all board decision-making, raised the controversy based on excerpts from  the books she’d found on the internet…(Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien)

Burned in Alamagordo, N. Mex. (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic. (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

And finally…I had to include this one because the action taken was like something out of ‘Wacky Races’! – GB

Sons and Lovers (DH Lawrence)

In 1961 an Oklahoma City group called Mothers United for Decency hired a trailer, dubbed it “smutmobile,” and displayed books deemed objectionable, including Lawrence’s novel. (Source: 2007 Banned Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.)

———————

So there you have it – 12 cases of authentic idiocy, recorded for the ages. Now, to the smutmobile, fellow crusaders!

And here is your moment of zen for today:

The singular of ‘cattle’

Hello all, and yet another fiendish mess of English-paper tricksiness has landed on my desk.

The AQE, or Association for Quality Education, is responsible for the transfer exams in Northern Ireland (the exams I knew as the ’11+’). For those of you who do not know what these are, at the end of primary school one sat these exams and those who did well were eligible for grammar school education while those who struggled were directed into comprehensive schools. These exams directly affected the course (and potentially the quality) of the education you received afterwards.

The AQE has just released its 2009 test papers back to the schools (though they do not yet seem to be on the website), in which, apparently, they ask the question “what is the singular of ‘cattle’?”

When my nearest and dearest – some of whom are primary school teachers in NI – read this, it provoked great consternation, because it is a question that really doesn’t have an answer anything like as obvious as it seems at first glance. When someone phoned me to ask my opinion, I realised that all I could tell them was: there is no right answer. This is an impossible question.

Let’s dismiss the obvious contenders first. The singular of ‘cattle’ is not ‘cow’. Cows are female, whereas cattle can be animals of either sex. The plural of cow is cows, and though a herd of cattle may be composed solely of cows it does not therefore follow that the reverse is true. That’s like saying ‘all swans are waterfowl therefore all waterfowl are swans’. What about ducks, geese and coots? In the same way, where ‘cattle’ is concerned, what about bulls, calves, bullocks, oxen and steers?

But in fact the issue is even more complicated again. ‘Cattle’, according to the massed dictionaries accumulated at dictionary.com, is not even specific to ‘the bovine ilk’, as Ogden Nash once put it. ‘Cattle’ can be used correctly of any domesticated animal. You could argue, with some justification, that the singular of ‘cattle’ is ‘horse’, ‘sheep’, ‘pig’ or even ‘husky’. And that’s not even factoring in the derogatory sense of the word, in which it can be applied to human beings. (On a related note, what is the singular of ‘sheeple’?)

The word derives from the Norman-Picard ‘catel‘ (which is itself a version of the Old French ‘chatel‘, from which we derive ‘chattel‘), and both these words come from the Latin ‘capitale‘. So Capital Gains Tax, for instance, is directly related etymologically to how many head of cattle you have. The use of the word ‘cattle’ implies ownership; therefore, the closest thing to a correct answer I can offer is this: “The singular of ‘cattle’ is ‘one animal that is someone’s personal property’.”

Now, how many 10-and-11-year-olds are going to work that out?

Even more interestingly, how many markers do we think are going to work that out? I phoned the AQE this morning to ask. The guy on the other end of the line – who couldn’t fob me off fast enough, it seemed, once he realised my concern – told me that the question had already provoked great discussion with the markers. I bet it had. He also told me that there were three answers they were prepared to accept, though he couldn’t tell me what they were. When I told him I could think of at least six that would be equally acceptable, he reiterated that they had three. And just to repeat my point – these may be acceptable answers, but they’re not correct answers, since there is no right answer to the question.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with the idea of the transfer exam. What I have a massive problem with is rigging it with impossible questions, and then marking as correct answers which cannot possibly be so. Of course there are questions that do not have simple right or wrong answers – but is it really fair to ask them of 10-year-olds? And is it good educational practice to mark as correct answers which are not?

The question should not have been asked. Otherwise it opens the door to other, even more tricky ones, like: who was the person who posed it in the first place? Who was on the committee that approved it? And why do we trust them to determine the remainder of our childrens’ education?

These are questions for which I suspect the answer, like the singular of cattle, will not be easily forthcoming.

Anyway, and while wondering “What is the sound of one cattle clapping?”, here is your moment of Zen:

No cattle, but something black-and-white in a semi-rural setting. It's the best I can do.

Plunging upward from the black underworld: China Mieville’s ‘Kraken’

There are a few authors who literally make make me bounce up and down on my seat with childlike anticipation when I hear that they have a new book on the way. Neal Stephenson and Peter F. Hamilton; Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon; Stephen King and Neil Gaiman; Terry Pratchett and China Mieville.

Mieville writes fantasy. But he writes fantasy like no one else I’ve ever read. His worlds are gloriously messy, his characters refuse to be pigeon-holed, and his use of language is poetry-deft. He also manages to have a higher idea-to-paragraph ratio than just about anyone else I’ve ever encountered. He is, I think, my favourite living author, though caveat lector: if you want books to curl up with, try someone else (like Pratchett). Mieville’s do the rather more dangerous thing of setting off fireworks inside your living brain.

Mieville writes cities. Of his seven novels, three (Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council) are set in and around the city and polities of New Crobuzon; one (The City & The City) is set in the fictional eastern European city(s) of Beszel and Ul Qoma; and three (King Rat, Un Lun Dun and Kraken) are set in London.

Kraken, Mieville’s most recent book, concerns the impossible theft of a preserved giant squid from the Darwin Centre, at the side of the Natural History Museum. Despite being in a huge tank of preservative, the 8-and-a-half metre Architeuthis Dux is no longer in the building, and has left no trace of how it disappeared. Its curator, Billy Harrow, must first deal with the suspicions of the Metropolitan Police’s Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit and then attempt to navigate through the increasingly dangerous and incomprehensible undercurrents of a London to which he has never been exposed – a London where the guardian angels of museums go to war, where cults’ rival apocalypses duel in the night sky, where a man who’s died hundreds of times keeps a Tribble, where the sea has an embassy, and where extreme origami can compress a cash register through inconceivable dimensions. Billy must find the squid, because there are those who worship it as a god, and there are those who believe it can bring about the end of the world. And after what he’s seen, Billy’s no longer sure that they’re wrong…

Of all Mieville’s works, this book most resembles the New Crobuzon books, in flavour if nothing else, but Mieville has eased up on the mesmeric, incantatory prose that defines that trilogy. Kraken is far and away the funniest of his books – there are some wicked one liners, and the line “One took hold with autumn-gutter fingers of the closest attackers and bit exactly as rooftop bites” reminds me of Douglas Adams’ playing with metaphor – and possibly the most accessible (though personally I think The City & The City, which in some respects is Mieville’s most atypical book, an easier entrance point). That being said, enough of Mieville’s characteristic linguistic flourishing remains that longtime fans will not be disappointed.

There are, too, some wonderful characters, such as Wati, the statue-bound guiding spirit behind the strike of London’s unionised familiars; and Goss & Subby, a pair of murderers-for-hire who bring to mind Gaiman’s Croup & Vandemar, Pratchett’s Pin & Tulip, Tarantino’s Jules & Vincent… But Goss & Subby are so much worse. So, so much worse.  By the end of the book you too will fear them nearly as much as the characters do.

I loved this book. It’s about faith, belief, the city and identity and the politics of belonging. It is (as we Mieville fans have come to expect and demand) brilliantly written, with one of the most intricate structures I have seen in a very long time (every little piece of arcane and obscure information turns out to be relevant by the end). Its beguiling cast of grotesques are never rendered unreal through unfamiliarity: we recognise Billy, or WPC Collingswood, or Marge and her sentient iPod.

I recommend Kraken unhesitatingly. Five stars!

And your moment of Zen today:

The fishing boats bob at the quayside as a J72 wheezes past, while a V3 clanks over the suspension bridge

The end of the line.

It seems the disagreement between Vicky Dillen and me has come to the end of its natural life. I reproduce for you below the two concluding emails of the exchange. I leave you to draw your own conclusions as to how accurate Ms. Dillen’s understanding of the final situation might be.

My email to her:

Hi Vicky

Again, I have taken the time to answer some of your criticisms. My response is here: http://starlingford.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/aaaand-were-back/. It strikes me, however, that we are rapidly approaching some kind of Critical Disparity Event Horizon, whereby we are both going to get so entrenched in our positions that forward movement becomes impossible and the whole thing bogs down like WWI’s Western Front.

That being said, if you think I have made some egregious criticism, by all means take me to task. But perhaps another 7,000-word email might be considered excessive? Can we not keep this pithy, if we mean to go on?

Anyway. I look forward to your thoughts.

Regards,

Gavin

And here is Ms. Dillen’s gracious reply:

Hi Gavin,

You seemed to have missed the fact that I am done with the conversation. You can accept what I have said or not. It makes no difference to me. I wrote something on a topic that you didn’t like and you don’t agree with because you like what I wrote against. You have concluded that anyone that could write like that is somehow likened to a lower subspecies who must be uneducated and who spews worthless drivel, must be arrogant to write with conviction, and that no one could possibly consider as useful. Yet you have taken weeks considering it.

When I write people are given the option to read or not–agree or not. When you write you appear to expect to be agreed with. Yet I am accused of being arrogant for writing with conviction. IN other words I write what I believe–take it or leave it. Apparently that is a sin.

I am not interested in what you have responded with and don’t plan to read it. I told you I was not interested in arguing or debating. I told you I was in the midst of a series of articles, which are much more important than worrying about someone’s focus on fantasies and myths as wonderful, which I have addressed in those articles that you don’t like. And focusing on secular things which Christians participating are called to view in a secular mindset. I simply have no interest to pursue this Gavin. And now you don’t like my line to line answer because it was too lengthy, but previously you said I hadn’t answered line by line. Whatever you think Gavin.

Please understand, everyone has an opinion and belief and if that belief is real or just an idea they have comes through in how they present themselves. Feel free to believe whatever you want. I am not condemning you Gavin, for whatever you believe… But, Don’t waste your time with me any further. I have way too much on my plate to give any more time to this.

Thank you for writing. Hope this isn’t too lengthy.;-)

Colossians 3:16-17 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 17. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

Ephesians 1:17-19 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Vicky Dillen

Seek God

http://www.SeekGod.ca/index.htm

Discussion Forum >

http://www.SeekGod.ca/forum/

And that, I think, ends it. Which is a shame, but probably for the best, as now normal service can be resumed.

So here it is, your moment of zen:

A 57xx Pannier tank hauls a Sherman tank away from the battlefield. This is in no way a symbolic picture.

Aaaand…we’re back.

Vicky Dillen of Seekgod.ca has emailed me her reply to my last blog post. As before, I reproduce it below, with my commentary in bold…

Hmmm….apparently my deadline is not only whooshing past, it’s hitting a wall called Gavin and his blog.

“Reading anything good this minute? “

Actually I have been reading the good books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, John, Matthew, Romans, Acts, Ephesians…you get the picture…..and then I read your blog…hmmm

So, I will attempt to send another response, only because I feel some things need to be addressed.

>To what other writing are you referring?>>>

What you wrote in the article/blog…aside from your email to me. That’s all I was referring to.

>>>No. That’s neither what I said nor what I meant. Of course you can believe whatever you like. The point about ‘letters after the name’ is that it allows you to evaluate what level of expertise a person is bringing to the discussion. You may well know the Bible inside out and back to front. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that you know anything about literature. So when you start evaluating literature, in a sense it doesn’t matter that you know the Bible so well: you might be a formidable Biblical scholar, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to take apart, say, The Lord of the Rings in any depth.>>>

Just because someone does not have the letters does not mean they have not studied the subject matter. Many people never go to college/university, hence no ‘letters’ but can become very well versed in whatever topic that is of interest to them.  However you are incorrect in that it does matter that a believer evaluates all to the Word of God. That appears to be where we differ. As I stated to you Gavin, I am fairly well read.

“One thing I should clarify is what appears to be an assumption on your part concerning my having read anything and somehow I have missed out on something. I was an avid reader growing up-it was my escape;ex.  in Junior High (gr 7-9) I read a novel within 2-3 days, and then got the next one, and when I completed a section or topic/subject area in the school library I read the non-fiction related to the subject matter. I was a solid student in high school for literature and yes we studied Shakespeare etc. In other words….I am not totally ignorant of books, fiction or otherwise, as one might be inclined to believe. I read quite considerably as a young mom as time permitted as well. Which grew less as our children grew…our children are avid readers to this day–and what they often read is not what I would agree with.

In saying that, as I have grown in Christ, I have come to believe that in our presentation of Truth of Him, that should be presented clearly without, ‘cunningly devised tales” as some are wont to do. Further, I believe our days are to be focused on sharing Him with others. We don’t know how much time any of us have, and we are to do all for His honor and glory and be about our Master’s business. Not sure if that clarifies anything but….”

In other words, the perception that I have no knowledge of literature is a false assumption and apparently, based on what is being said, a false accusation. Incidentally what I threw out when I was 14 were things that were clearly of the occult.

>>>>Fair enough. But you still choose to affiliate your website, through using those bottom-of-the-page buttons, with both Top 1000 ranking systems. Therefore the claim is made that you are in the top 1000. It says so at the bottom of every page! Perhaps it is time to think about getting rid of the buttons? Their association doesn’t seem to strengthen your position. 1 Corinthians 15:33 – “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”>>>>

Actually it does pose a quandary doesn’t it for all Christians…Simply being on the internet on any search engine, means being ‘listed’ according to rank of that search engine…Regardless… The name of  the group doesn’t matter because every site is ranked by search engine criteria. That you think the directory called Christian Top 1000 actually means its the top 1000 of all Christian sites on the internet is amusing but certainly not correct. That is merely the name the owner of the directory chose. It certainly was not even in the top ranks of directories when I joined it and there were a few hundred listed in it.. Where it stands today on the internet…I really don’t know. I don’t check those things. When I do check my stats–once in a few months- I see I do get a few hits occasionally from that directory, but most of my traffic comes via search engines. People using search terms.  I realise that sounds foolish, but as I stated to you, I have not promote d my site since I first submitted it to several search engines in 2000.  It doesn’t matter to me where or ‘what rank’ I might appear at to someone. It’s inconsequential to me. There’s billions of websites out there. If someone finds my site, it’s by God’s grace. Because it isn’t my issue.

“That you think the directory called Christian Top 1000 actually means its the top 1000 of all Christian sites on the internet is amusing but certainly not correct.” Ah – so false advertising then is a commendable Christian virtue? Or are you honestly trying to tell me that I’m being ludicrously silly to think that ‘Top 1000 Christian Websites’ means it contains the ‘Top 1000 Christian Websites’? Hmm…take a step back and consider whether you really want to defend these people…

As you yourself put it, on the introduction page to your own website:
“While Biblically obedient Believers would not wish to be joined with many individuals and groups linked with the many “Christian” ventures, others would suggest the end justifies the means.”

I found your website via Google. I didn’t need the Top 1000 ranking thing. Is it time for Dumbo to let go of the feather?

>>>>There is a single reference to Berea in the New Testament, and the Berean denomination has a single church in London (founded by Americans). Although the Bereans began in Scotland, they only lasted a couple of decades in the 19th Century before being absorbed into the Congregationalist denominations. Just because I have never heard of a denomination that has been extinct in this country for nearly 200 years, and a single reference to a city slipped my mind (do you honestly think I haven’t read Acts?), you can’t assume that my priorities are all screwed up. Using ‘Berean’ as shorthand to describe a concept isn’t necessarily helpful: of course I believe in the rigorous application of Scripture. I just don’t refer to that as Bereanism, that’s all. (In the UK, we would cover that with ‘conservative evangelicalism’.)>>>>

I simply found it amusing. Because being ‘as a berean’ is about seeing if what people say/teach is in the Scriptures, is actually there. It was never known to me as a denomination. My point was that you know about myths and fables but missed that. Just a point being made. Had nothing to do with whether you know the bible or not. As you said, your focus on this issue is from a literary standpoint. My focus on this is from a Scriptural standpoint. That means we are quite literally apparently on a different page. You have said that also.

>>>>I’m happy to acknowledge that you never claim to be a teacher. I know it’s a claim you haven’t made. But I was very careful in what I said: you don’t claim to be a teacher, you merely set yourself up as one. When you promulgate a Biblical message, you ‘teach’ it. You impart information. You hope, I presume, to ‘instruct in righteousness’. And that is fine. It is what we are all commanded to do. But in so doing, you must acknowledge that there is a stricter standard, a more rigorous analysis, to be applied: no Christian (I would hope) would want to be a ‘false teacher’, even if they only become one through innocent ignorance. By publishing your research online, you make available a resource through which you hope Christians will improve their understanding of God. And even if you don’t acknowledge your teacherhood, that is still the mantle you have chosen to take up.>>>>

Actually what has always been my hope is that people won’t go by what I say or my opinions but rather…..that they would know it has always been about Christ, about a relationship with HIM , obedience to Him and abiding the Word of God, which is to be our standard to form our beliefs from. It’s about following Him, not people or their opinions. That’s actually what I am about.

And helping people to do that confers a level of responsibility on you that it behooves you to acknowledge. That’s all I’m saying.

>>>Of course you are. It is not my intention, nor has it ever been, to silence you or your ministry. But where I think it is misguided, where it is mistaken; where it is restrictive or unhelpful; where it is erroneous or unconsidered, there I will raise a flag. Not to destroy but to improve. All I want, in the end, is for people to know why they believe what they believe.>>.

Fair enough. Just so you understand that I don’t have to agree with what you call misguided or mistaken. etc. IN other words, I might just be saying you might be mistaken and misguided.

>>>No. My right to make it lies in the fact that I can and do produce evidence to back up my assertion. People, as you point out, can either take it on board or not as they see fit. And that, too, is fine. The judgement you made, that you ABSOLUTELY do not have any right to make, is over who is saved and who is not. That is a sin born of the most dangerous of the vices, Spiritual Pride. >>>

Actually I documented heavily all the articles. You can draw different conclusions, but I based my evaluation on full documentation. However, you are ABSOLUTELY right that No one has the right over who is saved or not. My statement concerning Lewis was more of a gasp of no Christian would do this. But I don’t normally and guard against determining if someone is saved or not. Jesus did say we would know false prophets and false teachers by their fruits, and we can evaluate their fruits which include what they teach and evidence of fruit of the Spirit and what they do in abiding the Word of God. Because Jesus said if we love Him we will keep His commandments.

That said. You are absolutely correct I should not have said that statement concerning Lewis. It has been removed. It was not intended in the way you read it…but more as a knee jerk reaction from me. It simply should not have ever been said.

Thank you. I appreciate that it’s never pleasant to back down (especially when you know you’re in the wrong – been there, done that, own many of the tee-shirts…) so doing so graciously reflects well on you

>>>True. But secular qualifications do qualify you (as the name might suggest) to form judgements on secular matters….Similarly, if we’re going to be talking about fantasy and mythology, then I want to know that the person leading the discussion understands these things in their own right, so that they know how to apply their Biblical knowledge>>

Yes, but as Christians we are to view things through ‘the mind of Christ..” The lens we are to look through is the Scriptures. Everything –even secular teachings can have religious connotations. That’s why Christians try to read Christian things into secular books. That’s why you attempt to put meaning and evaluate the ‘message’ in myths and fables. Because of trying to find meaning in them.

You seem to think I have drawn the conclusions I have without using the lens to which you refer. When I see Christian virtue in a secular resource, am I then to ignore it? Or should I tell people that hey, here’s something else they can read that doesn’t replace, but merely reaffirms, Biblical truths (and perhaps, as some of my more hardcore atheist friends might acknowledge, in a more palatable form)?

1 Corinthians 2:11-16  For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.  12.  Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.  13.  Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.  14.  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.  15.  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.  16.  For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

The problem seems to be in determining what the bible says about these things.

>>>Similarly, I trust the Bible, and I’m even prepared to take it on faith that you are a biblical scholar – but I have no assurance from you that you know what you are talking about when it comes to myth and fantasy. You don’t offer me any evidence to suggest that you have the least idea what you are talking about, and actually your misreadings of, for example, ‘That Hideous Strength’ suggest quite the reverse. Fundamentally, you haven’t argued anything – you have merely asserted.>>>

Well, see that’s where we would disagree isn’t it? As I stated, I am not devoid of knowledge of those topics. I just happen to have a different understanding and apply the scriptures different than you. Does that make you right? Your assertions appear to be based on your belief that you can separate your knowledge of literature from the Scriptures…and evaluate accordingly.  I disagree.

<<<This is why qualifications and credentials help. They mark out terms of reference and engagement. You say ‘Merlin to the average person’ – but there’s no evidence to support your claim >>>

Qualifications and credentials work in the secular world–but Not according to God’s perceptions of such with believers and non believers. I already gave the verses on that.

God chooses not to vouchsafe to me who is or is not an expert. Therefore, I have to get that information from some other source. Accredited Universities don’t tell me who is or is not a Christian, but they’re very good at letting me know who is an expert microbiologist, philologist…or theologian! Look, I didn’t set out to be a cheerleader for academic qualifications here, but I seem to have wound up being put there. So setting academia to one side for a moment, can we not just agree that someone who has read lots and lots of fantasy is likely to know more about it than someone who hasn’t? And might be better placed to offer insight than someone who knows less about it? Forget, for the moment, that by Christmas this year I’ll be entitled to put MA, MLitt, PhD after my name – can we not just take it that I, perhaps, have access through training and experience to analytical tools that a layperson might not?

Actually I did list viewpoints concerning Merlin. Even children associate Merlin with the Sword and the Stone….haven’t you read that? I did. Just one  source but one of  997,000 in the search I used.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin

So your issue is with Walt Disney, not with me! (Hey, I have issues to take up with Disney too: he wrecked folkloric traditions in my native Ireland ) And if we’re talking about sourcing, I recommend this article here, as it seems to describe a trap you have fallen into. What I’m saying is, if you’re going to make general assertions, you need a systematic review in order to back them up. That’s how it works.

To make another point entirely: have you considered that perhaps Lewis was writing against the Merlinic tradition? ‘Kicking against the pricks’, so to speak?

<<<One last point, before I move on. Aren’t all Christians to be compared with Christ? Isn’t every Christian meant to represent Christ, that he might be seen in them? What makes Merlin any different? (I know that isn’t what you’re saying. But this does seem to me to be the ground on which our eventual agreement might lie).>>>

Absolutely! and that is my point. Christians are to follow Christ, from the Scriptures. Not some made up person, or another Jesus or another gospel. Merlin is not Christ, nor does he depict Christ of the Scriptures in whatever literature he is found. That’s my point. There is one Lord…not a bunch of made up variations.

So Merlin cannot be redeemed in fiction, then? That seems a bit harsh…

As far as proving my statements—it’s in the quotes in the articles.

<<<Yes, this is absolutely part of the academic reality I live in, and that is not in the least controversial. It’s really very simple: the critic knows more about the book than the author. Provided, of course, that the critic is qualified to comment on the work in the first place (not necessarily by producing credentials or letters after their name, but through long experience in the field in which he works.) >>>

Every person that picks up that book becomes qualified to critique that book. It has nothing to do with being in ‘the field.’ It has everything to do with understanding what is written through the lens that person sees that writing through. That’s the reality of reading comprehension. If all understanding of the writing must only be done by particular people then there is no need for anyone to ever read a book. They can merely read the critical review aka someone’s opinion and grasp what that person says it is about and be satisfied with that. You know how ludicrous that sounds.

Assuming that the person who picks up the book reads it, then yes, they are qualified to offer a critique. But that is not the same as saying they are qualified to offer an informed or valid critique. That’s like assuming that just because you crack a joke, everyone will laugh. But there will be people who don’t get the joke. Books are far, far, FAR more complicated than jokes. What you’re suggesting is akin to saying everybody who can wire a plug is certified to rebuild a fried computer motherboard. And that’s simply not true. I know I’m going to sound elitist here, but actually, I only sound that way because I am. Everybody who sits down at a piano is qualified to play that piano, but not everyone has musical ability; not everyone is going to be a great pianist. Everyone who can hold a paintbrush can sit at a canvas and paint: not everyone is going to be Michaelangelo. Now, I know that what you’re suggesting is slightly different: you’re saying that everyone who can listen to a CD can determine if the pianist is any good, and everyone who can look at a painting can determine whether the artist was worth his salt. If so, that is where you and I irretrievably part company. I believe in the existence of experts. You appear not to. It does make me wonder how you could suffer to be taught English in school, since you were, apparently, as qualified to teach the subject as your teacher by the time you’d finished reading the book… Now, maybe yours is a cry for egalitarianism in readership. But the real world simply doesn’t work that way: there are such things as bad readers, and there are such things as expert critics. They do not replace readers, but they may support them by showing them things they had not seen otherwise.

I read the Bible. But that doesn’t mean I don’t credit John Stott (for example) with wisdom and expertise, and it doesn’t mean I know as much about it as he does at first reading. John Stott doesn’t replace the Bible – but his writings do augment my understanding of it. In the same way, myth and fantasy don’t supplant the Bible – but is worth considering the points at which they converge, because learning cuts in both directions and I might discover something anew in all the texts in question.

Every author knows that what they write will be received by different readers in different ways. It doesn’t mean one interpretation is going to be better than another. UNLESS, the author prefaces the writing with an outline analysis of any and all hidden meanings and/or intent behind every concept and phrase….including choice of presentation, characters and so on. Many people actually agree with my articles about Lewis, Potter etc. Shocking I know. But it’s because of their view and understanding of things. That includes pastors…and other people with ‘letters’ behind their names. In fact, I know there are others who have written similar critiques. For the same Scriptural reasons. And irony of ironies, those who love Potter ect use my research and have thanked me for it in spite of my stand.

The person upon whose poetry I am writing my doctoral thesis is a Northern Irish poet called Paul Muldoon. Muldoon, who is one of the best poets of the 20th Century, once said “It is the poet’s job, as best as he or she is able, to take into account all possible readings of the text.” But you seem to go further than that: you seem to suggest the author’s intent is the ultimate trump card. And that doesn’t fly. It never has done. The seminal work on this idea is Roland Barthes’s essay ‘The Death of the Author’, which explains that the reader, if he or she is sufficiently alive to the subtleties of the text, is in a better position to comment. And as I’ve already explained, there are such things as bad readers. Good readers get the subtleties. Experts explain them.

To pick a secular example…You may not have read ‘Dracula’ but you will know, I’m sure, the basic tenets of the plot. Dracula, a vampire, comes from Transylvania to England, essentially to surround himself with a vast food supply. A small band of vampire-hunters accretes round Jonathan Harper and Van Helsing and drives Dracula back to his castle, where they kill him. (Sorry about the spoilers!) But there is much more going on in that book that that sparse two-sentence synopsis suggests. Christopher Frayling, an expert on gothic fiction (gothic here used in the correct literary and cultural sense, having nothing to do with wannabe-consumptive teenagers wearing black and doing silly things to their hair), compiled this list of things you can read Dracula as being ‘about’:

“…civilisation and its discontents, the return of the repressed, sex from the neck up, homo-eroticism, bisexuality and gender bending; reverse colonialism (the East getting its own back on the West) and a cosmic racial conflict between modern Anglo-Saxon stock and the 1,400-year-old bloodline of Attila the Hun; hysteria, the empowerment of women, the disempowerment of women; the sense of displacement of a middle class Protestant Dubliner, complete with retreat into the occult, crumbling aristocracy and sense of being strangled by red tape. And so on.”

The list is by no means comprehensive, and actually when I was writing about Dracula I was looking at it from yet another angle. But my point is this: it takes someone intimately familiar with a text to point out what it might be ‘about’, since there is normally much more than one interpretation available. Stating definitively ‘this text is about THIS’ is doomed to fail even before you begin to utter the words. Multiple readings excavate multiple meanings, and the more you spend time doing something the more likely you are to become good at it. So while anyone who reads a book becomes qualified to talk about it, there are very good reasons for saying “yes but the person most likely to teach me something new about it is someone who has properly studied it, whether they were in an academic context or not.” The only advantage to academia is that it not only enables you to study thoroughly; it also teaches you how to do that most effectively.

So let’s not devalue expertise, shall we? Apart from anything else, I think you and I both would expect the minister of a church to be an expert on the Word of God…

<<<You have misunderstood me. I meant that we must be careful in what conclusions we draw, because Lewis wasn’t writing to us and the potential for misinterpretation is therefore very great. Of course God sees all – my point is that we don’t. >>>

No we don’t and that is why we evaluate what has been made public….which I evaluated. I fully disagree with your analysis of the “praying to Christ “sub species Apollinis“.  issue. There is no sub species in Christ. This to me is where it matters. This is about knowing the Scriptures and applying them and knowing who Christ is. I find the statement spiritually wrong. You don’t have to agree…and I don’t have to agree with you.

Then let’s leave it as an irreconcilable difference. I think the issue is more complicated than you’re suggesting, but I suspect neither of us will be able to change the other’s certainty or lack thereof.

<<<Have you ever tried writing fiction? Long fiction? To criticise Tolkien on this suggests that you have not. Tolkien was writing a story, first and foremost, not a tract; the themes brought out in later drafts >>>>

Actually Gavin, I took a writing for children course–aside from the many stories I wrote through school assignments. And I wrote considerable, planning, doing the outlines etc. I think I still have the complete novel draft which was the final assignment. I also wrote some children’s stories aka ‘parable style’ for sunday school.. You see Gavin, you presume because I reject the notion that we can present evil as good in our writings, to mean I don’t comprehend that we can write things that glorify God and uphold Scriptural Truths. You also misread where I wrote about imagination. I am going to quote something here …

“.There are those who believe that unbridled imagination, fables, fantasy and fairy tales are simply a good exercise for the imagination of children and adults alike. Everything is supposed to become acceptable in an imaginary world, despite the varied ideas being contrary to Biblical truth. However, God views imagination, that is, the purpose, fabrications, ideas and thoughts that come out of a person, to be rooted in their spiritual beliefs.  Imagination, which are the deep thoughts of a person, reveals what is inside of them.

Mark 7:20-23  20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

There is a massive question of context here. Let’s analyse the Parable of the Prodigal Son together.

Foolishness: “Father, give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me”

Adulteries, fornications, wickedness, lasciviousness: ‘riotous living’, ‘living with harlots’

Covetousness: ‘And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat’, “thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends”

Evil thoughts: ‘And he was angry, and would not go in’

Pride: ‘Therefore his father came out, and intreated him.’

So here’s the question. Do you really want to apply these verses as you are doing? Because Jesus imagined these characters. That, according to your application of the verses, has some very serious implications on your analysis of Jesus’s character. Of course we need to be careful what we think about. But there is all the difference in the world between (for example) indulging a sexual fantasy and writing a story in which a character has to face the consequences of his infidelities.

We can see that Imagination is not just fun or harmless. It is what a person is about. Imagination is defined in the dictionary as, “the power of forming in the mind pictures of things not present to the senses. 2 the ability to create new things or ideas or to combine old ones in new forms. 3 a creation of the mind; fancy.”  Imagination emphasizes power to create new pictures and ideas by giving new meaning to things seen or known before or by creating things that never existed and making them seem real. …

What we think about, through our imagination or thoughts, what we focus on, what we enjoy and call good is who we are. If we focus on and enjoy evil and sin and the things of the occult, our hearts are focused on and accepting evil. …”

You said to me we are to reflect Christ. That is exactly the point I am trying to make. Everything, including the things we imagine is to be honoring to God. I don’t think that is a difficult concept. Every part of who we are including our imaginations–which are God given— are to honor Christ. That means what we think about and imagine and write about should be acceptable to HIM.  Can you honestly say that all that you read could pass HIS evaluation of what is true and right before HIM? That to me is what it is about.

>>>>I recommend you read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ >>>>>

You want me to read Stephen King…..roflllllllllllllllll  I honestly have better things to read.

Ah – so you’ve read ‘On Writing’ then? You are equipped to make this evaluation that it’s no good? Otherwise, you may just have judged the man’s textbook on the grounds that he writes fiction of which you disapprove, and that, in turn, would leave you looking somewhat silly. I do hope this isn’t the case.

<<<<Alright – that’s fair enough. But what that actually entails is by no means clear. For example, one might argue that an imagination suborned to God will not construct a shocking, sexually-explicit metaphor. But Exekiel 23 is exactly that – a sustained and explicit sexual metaphor (it is the source of the expression ‘hung like a horse’). As always, the problem is not in the instruction, it is in its application. And a lot of the answer will be down to individual consciences. >>>

We can learn so much from the OT. It definitely is a record of who God is, about Israel’s obedience and disobedience, the effect of sin on lives and behavior, and so much more; and the law and the prophets pointing to Christ. If we want to live according to Christ then we need to look at the New testament….because He brought in the New Covenant where there are over 1000 do’s and don’t–if one wants to be ‘technical. We have no righteousness in ourselves. It is Christ who is our righteousness. We know that in the NT we see what things are to characterise those who live for Christ–who are indwelt with the Holy Spirit.

Here’s what I mean:

Galatians 5:22-26  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,  23.  Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.  24.  And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.  25.  If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.  26.  Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

Ephesians 5:1-7  Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;  2.  And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.  3.  But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;  4.  Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.  5.  For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  6.  Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.  7.  Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

Ephesians 5:8-13  For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:  9.  (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)  10.  Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.  11.  And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.  12.  For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.  13.  But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.

Ephesians 4:17-25  This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,  18.  Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:  19.  Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.  20.  But ye have not so learned Christ;  21.  If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:  22.  That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;  23.  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;  24.  And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.  25.  Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour : for we are members one of another.

Ephesians 4:29-32  Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.  30.  And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.  31.  Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:  32.  And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

1 Peter 4:1-5  Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;  2.  That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.  3.  For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:  4.  Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:  5.  Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.

Philippians 4:5-9  Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.  6.  Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.  7.  And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  8.  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.  9.  Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

Believers are called to live Christ. I think Paul said it most eloquently when he said, for to me, to live, is Christ. That’s what we are to be about. There is no separation of any area of our lives from that. It’s all for Christ, for His honor and glory, or it is not.

All of which is a massively wordy way of avoiding the question, which was: how do you reconcile God’s use of allegory, metaphor and imagery – God, remember, whom the Bible teaches us repeatedly as being ‘unchanging’ – with your particular strictures on the ‘Christian’ use of allegory, metaphor and imagery? Frankly, if you and God seem to disagree as to what is appropriate, who do you think should take a step back and re-evaluate things?

>>>For example (and this is a genuine question, not me poking at you), how do you reconcile running your website, and providing your research, with 1 Timothy 2: 11 – “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection”? For the record, I have no problem with you doing what you do. But I am curious as to how a Berean woman who runs a website applies this instruction.>>>>

Because I am not simply learning….I am not in a church asking questions and disrupting the service in order to comprehend a scripture. I am in fact sharing what I have already learned after years of learning. It used to say that the website was for women….. How come you are reading it?  ” It is very much a ministry for women, and I  enjoy the correspondence with the many, especially women, who write and share their struggles and growth.” I’ve taken heat over that from men, wanting to know what is wrong with sharing with men. There’s no pleasing people.

The ‘equipping of the saints’ means at some point people are actually supposed **to be equipped** to be a solder of the cross and do the ministry God has for each person —men and women. All are called to share the Gospel and be a witness of Jesus Christ.. All are called to edify one another in the Body of Christ. This happens to be our family ministry. That God has given me a desire to research and write–and has provided information that I would never have found …I can attest to. Am I perfect or do I think I have all my ducks in a row….hardly. But the things that I do understand..I will stand for. People don’t have to agree. Just as I don’t have to agree with them.

Right…so, your interpretation of this verse allows you to do what you want to do. Fair enough. But it does rather open the door on ‘differing interpretations of scripture’ not necessarily being quite as black-and-white an issue as you have hitherto made out

<<<This is true. But Lewis’s characters, who do not have any equivalent of a Bible, or of the Holy Spirit, are doing what they can to contact the equivalent of Christ. Where witchcraft is encountered in the books, it is condemned (you could not read Jadis, for example, as a heroine): magic is trickier, because it is the only mechanism the characters believe they have to reach out to Aslan. Condemning witchcraft is good. But what you’re condemning, in the Narnia books, is the Narnians’ equivalent of prayer. >>

To me that is utter nonsense. On the one hand people say it’s depicting Christ and then it’s like…well sort of… and well the prayer is actually magic but we can pretend it’s really prayer. And it’s ok to present another gospel and another Jesus—with all manner of doctrine coming from ‘him’ contrary to Scripture because it just works that way, because they didn’t have a bible to refer to in their world.

Guess what. The readers do, as did the author. And he created another ‘jesus’ that couldn’t bring ‘salvation’ on his own. This is where we are going to seriously disagree. Because you cannot separate Biblical truth from the mind of a believer who belongs to Jesus Christ. That would go against the Scriptures.

What you are saying is that a person aka a believer can make all manner of false doctrine in a mythical writing and call it truth because of it being a myth. Yet in the same breath you are saying it’s supposed to represent Christ. Therefore you are changing who Christ is. Sorry—it doesn’t jive Scripturally. Can you prove to me from the Scriptures that we can invent another gospel and another Jesus and say it is Truth? And say that it depicts the real Jesus, our Savior and Lord. I don’t mean the ‘literary’ answer. I want to know Scripturally…

Wow. Okay – I’m not sure what the ‘false doctine’ is to which you refer. But I think we both agree that a representation of Christ is not the same thing as Christ Himself. That includes the Gospels too , incidentally – Christians are not saved by reading a historical account of Jesus, they are saved through meeting Him as a real and living Person right now. And we cannot write new Gospels, but we can write allegories. I am not, nor have I ever, claimed that the Narnia books are equal to the Gospels. I would consider that blasphemous. I am not suggesting children pray to Aslan, nor that adults should start wondering whether they can put an extension on the house via the back of the wardrobe. Lewis himself made the point, in one of the books (I can’t bring to mind which one – maybe ‘The Last Battle’?), that the Earthly manner of worshipping God was quite, quite different to the Narnian, and that the children’s experience of Him would be vastly different. No one appears to be making the argument against which you are writing; neither me, nor my friends, nor Lewis himself. Again, are you sure you haven’t misread a few things here?

James 3:12-18  Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.  13.  Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.  14.  But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.  15.  This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.  16.  For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.  17.  But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  18.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

2Co 11:3  But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 4  For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

2 Corinthians 6:14-16  Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  15.  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  16.  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Galatians 1:7-10  Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.  8.  But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.  9.  As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.  10.  For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

What you appear to be saying is that in the world of literature and myth and legend, they are off limits to Biblical scrutiny and Biblical standard. People -Christians-can create their own myths, filled with false beliefs or evil and call it their truth, even when it is fully against the Scriptures and that is good. And I have to say from a believer’s standpoint—it goes against the scriptures

No, I’m saying that before you start applying Biblical scrutiny and Biblical standards to anything you need to know what it is, exactly, that you’re applying them to.

You said to me…<<<<<<One last point, before I move on. Aren’t all Christians to be compared with Christ? Isn’t every Christian meant to represent Christ, that he might be seen in them?>>>>

What part of that is representing Christ in us to others?

1Co 13:6  Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Eph 5:9  (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

Titus 2:6-8  Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded.  7.  In all things shewing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity,  8.  Sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.

James 1:21-22  Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.  22.  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

>>>They are, like yours, anchored in the Bible. My arguments are rooted in academia, because that is what academia teaches you: it teaches you how to argue, how to debate and persuade by reason and logic. You aren’t arguing, you’re asserting, and actually you’re not ‘answering’ anything line-by-line, because you’re not providing evidence>>>

Show me Scripturally the answers to the above. Not literature—but as someone reflecting Jesus Christ to the world. Who may only see you as that possible reflection….what do they see? I don’t need to debate you Gavin. In fact we are told as believers, not to debate, which I know is contrary to what secular teachings have instilled in you.

2Co 12:20  For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults

Romans 1:28-29  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;  29.  Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

Let’s check this out, shall we? I provided a very clear and precise definition of what I was about: ‘to debate and persuade by reason and logic’. And you tell me I am not to debate, providing a very specific Biblical justification. So let’s look at it.

First of all, the King James Version is the only version of an English Bible I could find that uses the word ‘debate’. The majority of the others use ‘strife’ or ‘quarrel’. Now, I believe in not sowing strife and I have no desire to do so.  Likewise quarrelling: in neither strife nor quarrelling do reason and logic have any place. I’m up for discussing and debating, not fighting and name-calling. Even academics would argue that it’s not a helpful thing to do . So let’s check out the Greek, and see if you and the KJV are right here, or me and the NIV, NASB, Amplified Bible, NLT, ESV, ASV, YLT, DT, HCSB, WE and ISV. The Greek word in question is ‘eris‘. Now, Eris is also a proper name in Greek: she was the goddess of discord. And I’m all in favour of avoiding discord: I am, however, in favour of elengkhos, against which there is no Biblical prohibition, and which is what I’ve been talking about all along.

You will believe what you want to believe, just as I will believe what I choose to believe. I can assert my beliefs, just as you are doing. I don’t need to argue about it. You appear to want to argue about it. I just don’t see it as necessary. You will uphold your beliefs and promote them. I said I normally respond line by line but couldn’t see the point because of how far apart we are in our thinking. I also told you I am in the midst of writing a series and need to focus on that. However, I thought I should respond one more time.

Incidentally I don’t think considering or thinking about things is exclusive from Scriptural beliefs, as I am being accused. That would be tantamount to saying those who believe the bible lack intelligence or the ability to think, wouldn’t it.?

1 Corinthians 1:5-7  That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;  6.  Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:  7.  So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:

I am saying one doesn’t need secular credentials to be able to comprehend or discuss or have an opinion about a topic. Based on your comments and your poster responses, I am being accused of being arrogant, ignorant and whatever. Yet what I did was a critical review of your favorite writings. I analysed, I quoted, I researched, I challenged, I asked hard questions, and gave my opinion, personally and Scripturally. Exactly what you say you do… Now you  -meaning you Gavin and what appear to be men commenting, are hypocritical because you all think no one should be able to do that but you, or those in the realm of secular credentials.. And if it’s about something you like, it better affirm your analysis and critiques.

Let’s all take a step back from the ad hominem attacks, shall we? That really is what was being criticised in (for example) 2 Corinthians 12:20. First of all, I think you have just demonstrated in fairly spectacular fashion the danger of making assumptions: the first two commenters – ones whose comments, in other words, I know you’ve seen – would be somewhat startled at your analysis of their personages: would you care to apologise to Faye and Josephine?

Secondly, I entirely agree that you performed a critical review. I acknowledge that you quoted, that you researched, that you analysed, that you challenged and that you asked hard questions. No one, I’m sure, could be in any doubt that you offered your opinion based on this. Here’s the thing: your essay wasn’t very good. It wasn’t convincing. And you yourself have offered a reason why: you offer me your opinion ‘personally and Scripturally’ but not, crucially, in a way that demonstrates any understanding of the books you were reading. It was a bad critique.

University education has nothing to do with it. This is simply about doing a job, and whether or not you’re doing it well or poorly. Literary criticism is a skill, and you can be good at it or bad at it regardless of whether or not you happen to have a degree in it. Training helps, in the same way that good doctors have been trained in medicine and good plumbers have training in plumbing. I happen to be trained in literary criticism: you have, in that regard, simply had the misfortune to start making arguments in front of someone who, for the last few years, has been learning both how to make those kinds of arguments and how to take apart ones that don’t hold up. And to make something quite clear: I have no problem with you personally. I don’t know you, I’ve never met you,  I am holding no grudge and I’m sure you’re a perfectly lovely individual. But you have said some things which, as I said before, I consider to be ‘palpable nonsense’.

Let me also make clear that I am perfectly willing to go away and re-evaluate the things I know (or think I know) on the basis of good argument. That I have not done so on this occasion is because I have not been presented with a good argument. As I have said before, you make wild assertions and then fail to back them up. It’s no good proving a point in one book by quoting another. Context is everything, and this is really where your arguments fall down. Where, in ‘That Hideous Strength’, is Merlin equated with Christ? What is the context of that evaluation? Is it the narrator who says so? A character? A Christian character? All this is vital information and you haven’t provided it, not because you are lazy but because you didn’t seem to realise it was important. It’s examples of things like that, as opposed to letters-after-the-name, that make me think you are not qualified to do a good job in this regard. (And just so we’re clear: letters-after-the-name folks make mistakes in this regard too. It’s just that they are less likely to do so. In the same way, going to a doctor is no guarantee that they won’t make you feel worse. But they are less likely to.) Of course you can comprehend and evaluate and discuss and hold opinions – but you should be prepared to have to defend them, and you should equally be prepared to have them demonstrated as requiring a little more work.

1Co 1:19  For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1Co 1:20  Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

I also think God uses many things to bring people to Himself. But we are called to prove all things to the Word and to make sure our doctrine and what we do, can stand the test of Scripture. What He does and uses and what He calls us to do according to the Scriptures…isn’t necessarily the same. See: Job 38-42

Isa 40:13  Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him?
Isa 40:14  With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding?

Isaiah 40:28  Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

Sincerely,

Vicky

Vicky Dillen
Seek God

http://www.SeekGod.ca/index.htm

Discussion Forum >

http://www.SeekGod.ca/forum/

Thanks, Vicky.

Look, everybody! Trains!

Thomas, from the children's books written by the Reverand W. Awdry. Possibly satanic.

Seekgod.ca responds!

Earlier today I sent an email to Vicky Dillen, authoress of the website seekgod.ca., inviting her to consider my post about her website. This is my email:

Dear Ms. Dillen,

My name is Gavin Browne. I am a Christian PhD student in Aberdeen, Scotland, and I came across your website recently while hunting for a quotation of C.S. Lewis’s.

I am a fan of C.S. Lewis. I have found his work to be intellectually stimulating and spiritually nourishing. I was therefore dismayed to read some of the criticisms made on your website. In fact I was so moved to respond that I published a blog post devoted to discussing some of the claims you make and judgements you form.

I am writing this email because, as an academic, I believe that debate and conversation is the best way to learn about differing points of view; and as a Christian I believe that we have a duty towards each other to strive for unity and understanding even where opinions are in conflict. So I invite you to read the post and to respond to my criticisms, either with defences that invalidate them or, if you believe that I have been too harsh (and I am aware that this criticism could be made: there are cultural differences at work here, where North Americans have very different ideas as to what constitutes reasoned debate than us Brits), rebukes that may be justifiable. To reiterate: I was not having a go at you, I was having a go at your ideas. In Britain that is a self-evident description, but I know from experience that that distinction doesn’t always make it across the Atlantic.

Feel free to use the comments section beneath the post, or to email me at this, my personal address. Either way, I believe an exchange of views to be a constructive endeavour, and I look forward to it.

Yours sincerely,
Gavin Browne

The post in question:

http://starlingford.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/if-you-teach-you-will-

be-judged-more-strictly/

She has responded, and I reproduce here her email in full. Sections in bold are my latter insertions, answering as best I can some of the criticisms she makes. Some of them are entirely justifiable, and let me take this opportunity to say publicly that my initial post might best be described as a ’4,181-word detonation’, and my language may have been as intemperate as that implies. For that I apologise. But the meat of my criticisms, the things I actually said (regardless of how I said them), still stand. Still, here is Vicky Dillen’s email to me…

Dear Gavin,

I find it interesting you posted your critical review–I assume that’s what you would refer to it as—on February 6, but didn’t think to contact me to “debate” or discuss anything until February 17. Perhaps the lack of comments to your dissertation concerning me personally and my website persuaded you? Perhaps I am not as popular a subject or read as you might think.

Actually, as Facebook friends and others will know, the last 11 days have been extraordinarily stressful. My email today was really the first opportunity I had to address an oversight on my part, which was this: criticising someone’s arguments is no use unless they know that they have been criticised! Frankly, this blog’s traffic is so miniscule that my contacting anyone about anything is pointless in terms of generating interest: it just seems to me that courtesy demands I tell someone if I have decided to criticise what they say. So apologies for the delay in informing you, but there was no ulterior motive in terms of making this blog any more interesting .

I think what you have written is based on a knee jerk reaction to begin with, because as you say, you are a fan of Lewis, Tolkien, etc. And you wrote as an academic first which, based on your other writing, pre-empts Biblical discernment.

To what other writing are you referring?

I also think, while you have totally misunderstood what my site is about, and accused me of being judge and jury, you have done that exact thing to me. We are called to share our faith, and in my research to prove all things and research to find resources, the direction took evaluation of things called Christian. That I choose to share my research and evaluations is merely as a resource for people to start their own research. My documentation generally can stand alone for people to evaluate-(and many that disagree with my beliefs use the research)–based on their own beliefs—and they can take my opinions and evaluations OR NOT.

NO ONE has ever been forced to read or agree with anything I believe or write. I believe each are free to believe what they wish. Don’t you agree?

Yes, of course! If everyone agreed all the time I wouldn’t have a career! And I, for one, disagree entirely with some of what you have said. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

On the other hand you seem to think that I am not entitled to believe what I believe, have differing opinions, but rather should agree with whatever someone with letters behind their names declares as true. That doesn’t even come to close to what Paul wrote about concerning the wisdom of the world and wisdom of the scribes. It’s not about what people think, but what the Word of God says about it all.

No. That’s neither what I said nor what I meant. Of course you can believe whatever you like. The point about ‘letters after the name’ is that it allows you to evaluate what level of expertise a person is bringing to the discussion. You may well know the Bible inside out and back to front. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that you know anything about literature. So when you start evaluating literature, in a sense it doesn’t matter that you know the Bible so well: you might be a formidable Biblical scholar, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to take apart, say, The Lord of the Rings in any depth.

[quote]Her website consists of analyses of current cultural trends, strained through her own interpretation of the Bible. [/quote]

Actually, I simply look at what someone claims to be Scriptural truth and see if it is that in the actual Scriptures. Don’t you do that? Aren’t we supposed to learn to discern between good and evil by use of the Word of God?

Yes, and I do.

Hebrews 5:13-14  For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.  14.  But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Tongue in cheek here–maybe more time in the Word and less worrying about myths and fables would overcome that possible deficiency.

I find that a tongue in my cheek makes it difficult for me to ingest anything at all! Besides, ‘worrying about myths and fables’ is my day job.

Most often I merely insert Scriptures which to me pertain to what is being presented/discussed and let God’s Word stand as the litmus test. People can agree or disagree.

[quote]It is, apparently, one of the world’s top Christian websites, according to Jesus Christ Saves Ministries (I love the semantic ambiguity here: does Jesus Christ save ministries, or are these ministries promoting the idea that Jesus Christ saves? Either way, it must be significant that their top Christian website, the most edifying, the most helpful online resource they could find, is a Christian dating site called ‘Christian Dating for Free‘) and also according to Christian Top 1000, a website that allows you to add your own site and which also features Christian Dating for Free in its #1 spot.[/quote]

Apparently, Gavin, you didn’t do you homework. I have never claimed my site to be one of the top Christian sites or even near no1–nor is it.. Christian Top 1000 was joined years ago when I was unsure where to promote my site when I first started, and it was one of the few directories I joined at that time. It has grown since I joined and has 13,500 plus sites listed. Like many other directories used all over the internet. I have simply allowed my website to be seen as God chooses. I submitted it to some of the major search engines back in 2000, (as most website authors do) and have not resubmitted to any since then. I find it ironic that dating and such sites are the most popular….but that is how the internet goes. The top site when I joined the Top 1000 used to be a Baptist Board debate forum.

My site is hardly one of the most popular. It never has been and I doubt it ever will be. I am not affiliated with any other ministry or website. It is our family ministry. That’s all.

Fair enough. But you still choose to affiliate your website, through using those bottom-of-the-page buttons, with both Top 1000 ranking systems. Therefore the claim is made that you are in the top 1000. It says so at the bottom of every page! Perhaps it is time to think about getting rid of the buttons? Their association doesn’t seem to strengthen your position. 1 Corinthians 15:33 – “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”

That you had to look up what is meant by a Berean, I find of note. Yet you are well versed in all manner of literature but that Scriptural concept. I guess it has to do with a person’s focus doesn’t it?

There is a single reference to Berea in the New Testament, and the Berean denomination has a single church in London (founded by Americans). Although the Bereans began in Scotland, they only lasted a couple of decades in the 19th Century before being absorbed into the Congregationalist denominations. Just because I have never heard of a denomination that has been extinct in this country for nearly 200 years, and a single reference to a city slipped my mind (do you honestly think I haven’t read Acts?), you can’t assume that my priorities are all screwed up. Using ‘Berean’ as shorthand to describe a concept isn’t necessarily helpful: of course I believe in the rigorous application of Scripture. I just don’t refer to that as Bereanism, that’s all. (In the UK, we would cover that with ‘conservative evangelicalism’.)

[quote]Nevertheless, Ms Dillen has set herself up as a teacher and interpreter of the times, and so I will treat her as such. I came to her website in the first place because I was trying to find the source of a C.S. Lewis quotation about myths, and I came to this extraordinary page, some of the comments on which so astonished me that they literally drove the breath from my body. I urge you to read it; I similarly urge you not to bounce hard off the ceiling when you have done so.[/quote]

I have NEVER claimed to be a teacher. I am merely a believer who likes to research and evaluate what falls under the banner of Christian. Every single believer in Jesus Christ is supposed to evaluate what is called doctrine. Every single believer is supposed to prove all things to the Word of God. Every single believer is supposed to try the spirits to see if they are of God. Every single believer is to study to show themselves approved and to make sure they are in the faith and holding to sound doctrine—meaning it can be proven to the Scriptures themselves not someone’s opinion of the Scriptures. I can provide the Scriptures that prove that stance if you like. So….how that makes me some sort of oddity is perhaps a question for an academic such as yourself.

I’m happy to acknowledge that you never claim to be a teacher. I know it’s a claim you haven’t made. But I was very careful in what I said: you don’t claim to be a teacher, you merely set yourself up as one. When you promulgate a Biblical message, you ‘teach’ it. You impart information. You hope, I presume, to ‘instruct in righteousness’. And that is fine. It is what we are all commanded to do. But in so doing, you must acknowledge that there is a stricter standard, a more rigorous analysis, to be applied: no Christian (I would hope) would want to be a ‘false teacher’, even if they only become one through innocent ignorance. By publishing your research online, you make available a resource through which you hope Christians will improve their understanding of God. And even if you don’t acknowledge your teacherhood, that is still the mantle you have chosen to take up.

[quote]Ms Dillen makes some extraordinary claims, particularly on the nature of fantasy, myth, fiction, and Christian participation in any of these, and I want to take a long hard look at what she says. She has set herself up as a teacher of Scripture: that is her choice to make. [/quote]

Incorrect. I have never claimed to be a teacher of anything. Every believer is to be equipped to be a soldier of the cross. At some point each are to be doing what God has called them to in order to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and edify the Body of Christ. Each has a role and we are to mature in the faith and in the knowledge and wisdom of Christ. I have belonged to Jesus Christ for almost 40 years. I am not a babe in the Lord but am old enough to have understood certain things—with an awful lot still to understand. But what little I do know, God allows me to use to encourage others that it’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ and obedience to Him and His Word. That is the standard of what our beliefs are to be about. And that is what I always point people to. NOT my opinion, but Jesus Christ and the Word.

However, I am free to have opinions am I not?

Of course you are. It is not my intention, nor has it ever been, to silence you or your ministry. But where I think it is misguided, where it is mistaken; where it is restrictive or unhelpful; where it is erroneous or unconsidered, there I will raise a flag. Not to destroy but to improve. All I want, in the end, is for people to know why they believe what they believe. “Without contraries is no progression”, as a poet once put it, and continuous consideration and reconsideration strengthens faith, not weakens it.

[quote] I think a lot of what she says is palpable nonsense and because I think she is making judgements she has no right to make.[/quote]

Fair enough. That’s YOUR opinion, but there are many that agree with my opinion. You have made a judgment about me—can I say –that you have no right to make?

No. My right to make it lies in the fact that I can and do produce evidence to back up my assertion. People, as you point out, can either take it on board or not as they see fit. And that, too, is fine. The judgement you made, that you ABSOLUTELY do not have any right to make, is over who is saved and who is not. That is a sin born of the most dangerous of the vices, Spiritual Pride.

[quote]As for my credentials enabling me to do so: like Ms Dillen, I am a Christian (and have been for a long time); unlike Ms Dillen, I do claim a level of expertise on literature, fantasy and mythopoeia [/quote]

Actually, the only thing that matters in all your secular credentials and expertise is: Do you belong to Jesus Christ, and do you abide the Word of God as the standard of your beliefs? That for a Christian is what we are to be about. The focus is HIM. And what pleases HIM. And what is obedient to HIM.

True. But secular qualifications do qualify you (as the name might suggest) to form judgements on secular matters. For instance, let us suppose that I have a pet snake and I go on holiday, leaving him in your care while I am away. When I return I discover that my snake is dead of starvation. “I don’t understand it!” you exclaim. “I fed him in strict accordance with Biblical precepts!” And you point me to Genesis 3:14: “you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life”.

The moral of the story is that if I wanted good care taken of my pet snake I should have left him with a herpetologist, not a Biblical scholar. Similarly, if we’re going to be talking about fantasy and mythology, then I want to know that the person leading the discussion understands these things in their own right, so that they know how to apply their Biblical knowledge.

[quote]Someone who declares that they have no credentials whatsoever (declares without a qualm and even with pride, which is more bizarre) chooses to raise an argument against someone who not only was supremely well qualified on the argument’s topic (myth and fantasy), [/quote]

You don’t seem to grasp, even with all your intellect, that God doesn’t care about credentials or worldly wisdom. He wants our understandings to be rooted in Him.

Colossians 2:6-10 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7. Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. 8. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 10. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:

John 15:1-8 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing . 6. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

1Co 1:4  I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;
1Co 1:5  That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
1Co 1:6  Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:
1Co 1:7  So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:

1Co 1:17  For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
1Co 1:18  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
1Co 1:19  For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1Co 1:20  Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
1Co 1:21  For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

In saying that you are free to think Lewis and Tolkien and myths and legends and witchcraft and sorcery are merely fun or amusing or intellectually stimulating and innocent when in books….you can believe that. I believe the opposite.

There is a vital question of application here. If I am sick, I will pray for healing – but I will also visit a doctor. If I want to understand myth and fantasy in relation to the Bible, I will read the Bible – but I will also make sure I understand myth and fantasy. God heals without need of medical certification – but I trust doctors not because they are good Christians but because they have studied and learned medicine. Similarly, I trust the Bible, and I’m even prepared to take it on faith that you are a biblical scholar – but I have no assurance from you that you know what you are talking about when it comes to myth and fantasy. You don’t offer me any evidence to suggest that you have the least idea what you are talking about, and actually your misreadings of, for example, ‘That Hideous Strength’ suggest quite the reverse. Fundamentally, you haven’t argued anything – you have merely asserted.

[quote]That being said, let us look at the article itself. Ms Dillen, discussing That Hideous Strength, says:

The reader is supposed to equate Merlin with Christ, who defeats Lucifer and evil. How blasphemous! That Merlin, who is revered by occultists as a druid, sorcerer, witch, wizard and every abomination thinkable, is viewed as Christ and that witchcraft and psychic powers parallel the saving power of Jesus Christ is wicked at best. For those who say children should just read Lewis’ Chronicles of  Narnia books, we have the same menu with witches, elves, Bacchus, false gods, and so on, all being part of the stories.

This demonstrates precisely the problem Lewis identified earlier – Ms Dillen is not equipped to offer a detailed, critical appreciation of the themes, characterisation and imagery of the novel. There is no acknowledgement, for instance, that the title is taken from a poem describing the tower of Babel, nor that the entire book reaffirms the community of Christianity as a refuge from, and defence against, the brutalities of apotheosistic, sinning man. Apart from anything else, Merlin is not compared with Christ,[/quote]

Merlin to the average person is a sorcerer–and he is portrayed that way time again in many writings and media. In years past and currently. Would you believe I really don’t care about any supposed hidden meanings—that most readers don’t see—he is compared to Christ. And occultists, as stated, view him as of the occult. For you to say otherwise…. oh well.

This is why qualifications and credentials help. They mark out terms of reference and engagement. You say ‘Merlin to the average person’ – but there’s no evidence to support your claim (who are these average people? Where can I read the results of this survey?). You talk about ‘supposed hidden meanings’ – my contention is that you are the one imprinting meanings onto the text that actually can’t be supported. Look, if you are correct you will be able to prove it. So that’s my challenge to you: if you’re right, prove it. Show me, and everyone reading this. Quote ‘That Hideous Strength’. And let’s forget the occultists because they’re not relevent. Occultists think tea a mystical resource because they can read the leaves, but that doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t drink tea, or even that they should consider leaf-reading one the primary functions of brewing up a pot…!

One last point, before I move on. Aren’t all Christians to be compared with Christ? Isn’t every Christian meant to represent Christ, that he might be seen in them? What makes Merlin any different? (I know that isn’t what you’re saying. But this does seem to me to be the ground on which our eventual agreement might lie).

Further, Lewis’s own family said the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe series were NEVER intended with any Christian symbolism or meaning. HIS own family stated that is not what they are about. So the author and his family say it’s not Christian–but Christians are arrogant enough to claim it is. Is this part of the academic realities you live in?

#1 – Evidence please. You make two separate claims here, and both require support. Firstly, you say Lewis’s family claim the Narnia stories are not Christian. You then change that slightly to include Lewis as well. If you want to convince me, show me the evidence. Don’t assert, argue. Don’t tell, show.

#2 – Yes, this is absolutely part of the academic reality I live in, and that is not in the least controversial. It’s really very simple: the critic knows more about the book than the author. Provided, of course, that the critic is qualified to comment on the work in the first place (not necessarily by producing credentials or letters after their name, but through long experience in the field in which he works.)

So – evidence, please, and then we can assess how useful or reliable it might be.

[quote]As for Lewis’s blasphemy: first of all, I want to know the context to the remark. It does not read as something intended for public consumption; the mode of address seems much more akin to a diary or letter. If that is true then we must be more lenient in our analysis: we write in shorthand what we mean when we write to ourselves or our intimates, we do not begin at first principles every time. To suggest that Lewis worships other gods, as Dillen implies, is at best silly and at worst mendacious. Note well exactly what Lewis says: he does not pray to Apollo the Healer, he acknowledges that it would have been wrong if he had done so, and he concludes that the prayer thus offered would nevertheless have been intended for Christ. Lewis’s great blasphemy, according to Ms Dillen, is that he was once tempted to pray to Christ in a pagan aspect.[/quote]

I really had to smile here. You think that if Lewis was writing that comment in a private manner it should be allowed or overlooked as somewhat personal and private and not indicating what he is about?Do you think God saw what he was doing if writing it in private about something he did/thought in public? Do you think God knows the secrets of the heart?

You have misunderstood me. I meant that we must be careful in what conclusions we draw, because Lewis wasn’t writing to us and the potential for misinterpretation is therefore very great. Of course God sees all – my point is that we don’t.

YOU misquoted what he said in your defense of him and attack on me. [quote]he acknowledges that it would have been wrong if he had done so, and he concludes that the prayer thus offered would nevertheless have been intended for Christ.[/quote]

This is what the quote was—-Lewis stated, “I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica!  At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer.  But somehow one didn’t feel it would have been very wrong – would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis.”

Lewis stated he did NOT think it would have been wrong to pray to the false god because it would have been praying to Christ “sub species Apollinis“. And you think that is ok?

I think I was right the first time. Lewis said ““I had some ado to prevent Joy and myself from relapsing into Paganism in Attica!” – this does not mean that he did relapse, it means he did not. And note well the tone, that concluding exclamation mark. Can you not see this as being tongue-in-cheek?

“At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer”. Again, this tells us, in black and white, that he did not pray to Apollo the Healer. The temptation (“it was hard…”) was there: Lewis resisted.

As for Lewis’s (entirely hypothetical) prayer, which – I remind you again – was not offered, when he describes it as ‘not very wrong’ that is nevertheless an acknowledgement that it would have been wrong. It is, in Lewis’s mind at least, a question of degree. (“I didn’t fail by much” is not another way of saying “I passed”!) I suppose the question here, and the fundamental point of divergence between you and Lewis, is this: do you think any non-Jew, prior to Christ’s coming to the earth, was saved? To be honest, I’m not sure, because I don’t know exactly what ‘crediting to righteousness’ entails. In the end, I’m happy enough not understanding, because short of Divine revelation I know that I will never have the information I would need to state definitively one way or the other. But that doesn’t, ultimately, matter: I trust God to get it right!

[quote]Ooops… Bradley Birzer, Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College and author of “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth” (so someone with proper credentials and demonstrable expertise, which must surely trump Ms Dillen) explained in an interview that “Tolkien wrote in an oft-quoted letter to a close friend [Jesuit priest Robert Murrey] in 1953 that “The Lord of the Rings” is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.”[/quote]

So he didn’t have a clue what he was writing to start with and then decided to make it appear Catholic in the revision….oh well.

Have you ever tried writing fiction? Long fiction? To criticise Tolkien on this suggests that you have not. Tolkien was writing a story, first and foremost, not a tract; the themes brought out in later drafts are highlighted because Tolkien wanted to emphasise what was originally present (it is difficult to the point of impossible to go back and artificially insert a theme later). I recommend you read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ for a fuller discussion on this (I suspect you don’t rate King, particularly, but you must acknowledge that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to writing books. And let’s be clear here: the criticism you make above is an exclusively literary one, and will be answered in exclusively literary terms). Writing the theme first and the story second makes for very bad fiction – but see every criticism I have ever made of the ‘Left Behind’ series…!

[quote] What unbelievable intellectual poverty, and what an odious, noxious attempt at persuasion to an unsupportable and suffocating final position. Christians, according to Ms Dillen, ought not in the final analysis to have anything to do with fiction or the imagination. Earlier in her article she claims[/quote]

What I have said and which is Biblical, is that our imagination can be used to honor and glorify God or it can be used otherwise. And believers are to do all for the glory and honor of God. Every imagination and every thought is to brought into obedience to that end.

2 Corinthians 10:5-6  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;  6.  And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

Alright – that’s fair enough. But what that actually entails is by no means clear. For example, one might argue that an imagination suborned to God will not construct a shocking, sexually-explicit metaphor. But Exekiel 23 is exactly that – a sustained and explicit sexual metaphor (it is the source of the expression ‘hung like a horse’).

As always, the problem is not in the instruction, it is in its application. And a lot of the answer will be down to individual consciences. For example (and this is a genuine question, not me poking at you), how do you reconcile running your website, and providing your research, with 1 Timothy 2: 11 – “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection”? For the record, I have no problem with you doing what you do. But I am curious as to how a Berean woman who runs a website applies this instruction.

When I threw out books and such when I was 14,  that I knew were occult in nature–because I had been a non Christian raised in a non Christian environment– it was because of understanding that things such as witchcraft were an offense to God. He calls it of the flesh. And it is listed in these verses:

Galatians 5:16-25  This I say then, **Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.  17.  For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.  18.  But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.  19.  Now ***the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these***; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,  20.  Idolatry, **witchcraft,** hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,  21.  Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.  22.  ***But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,  23.  Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.  24.  And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.  25.  If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.****

This is true. But Lewis’s characters, who do not have any equivalent of a Bible, or of the Holy Spirit, are doing what they can to contact the equivalent of Christ. Where witchcraft is encountered in the books, it is condemned (you could not read Jadis, for example, as a heroine): magic is trickier, because it is the only mechanism the characters believe they have to reach out to Aslan. Condemning witchcraft is good. But what you’re condemning, in the Narnia books, is the Narnians’ equivalent of prayer.

We could duke it out–as I have a tendency to answer people line by line. But I think it is pretty pointless. You have your beliefs rooted in academic thought and I have mine rooted in Christ and Scriptural Truth. You offer a moment of ‘zen’ at the end….how incredibly Christian and Biblical. 

So…not a fan of The Daily Show, then? I think the reference went over your head . But don’t presume to know where my beliefs are rooted. They are, like yours, anchored in the Bible. My arguments are rooted in academia, because that is what academia teaches you: it teaches you how to argue, how to debate and persuade by reason and logic. You aren’t arguing, you’re asserting, and actually you’re not ‘answering’ anything line-by-line, because you’re not providing evidence. Quoting the Bible won’t tell me what ‘That Hideous Strength’ actually says: only quoting ‘That Hideous Strength’ will do that.

1Co 2:5  That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

1 Corinthians 3:18-21  Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.
19.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
20.  And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.  21.  Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

You will dismiss what I have said of course because I don’t have any *credentials* and that for you is really how one defines what is truth.  You appear to have no interest in Biblical truth – academia is your answer to define the “mysteries” of the mind, where fantasies and myths are superior to the reality of the Bible. If one sees what Jesus taught as “myths”, then there is no real plumb line for the truth. God’s truth is not subjective to man’s imagination, however that is defined or used.

No, if I dismiss what you say it is because you haven’t demonstrated its relevence. Firing Bible verses at me doesn’t strengthen your literary arguments. And there are times when I have no idea how to respond to you – what do you mean when you talk about the ‘mysteries of the mind’ (where did that phrase come from?), or the ‘plumb line for the truth’? Ultimately, biblical wisdom by itself is useless without instruction concerning application. It’s not enough to know that Christ saves: you have to believe it, and then do something about it. God’s truth, in that sense, is entirely subject to man’s imagination: what is belief if it is not an imaginative leap of faith? Imagination is the tool by which we determine reality – including ‘Biblical reality’. Imagination is what enables us to create, but it is also what enables us to perceive truth and wisdom. Imagination is also what enables self-awareness. It is your imagination that says “Hey, doing that would be a sin, so you probably shouldn’t do it.” Imagination is what applies Biblical wisdom.

Credentials are shorthand for ‘this is a person who has given this a lot of thought, and knows a lot about it’. No more…and no less, either. For instance, would you prefer a lawyer defending you in court to begin their argument with “speaking as the Dean of Harvard law school” or “speaking as a mother”? That is not to say experts never get things wrong. But one would expect that they do so less frequently than the rest of us So when you say you are a Biblical scholar, I have only your word for it. And I’m prepared to accept that -’Assume Good Faith’, and all that – but I wouldn’t have to make that assumption if you had any credentials. You say you’re a scholar; credentials would prove it. They don’t make you any right-er or wrong-er. They just enable an outside observer to assess how seriously to take you.

1Co 1:19  For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1Co 1:24  But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
1Co 1:25  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1Co 1:30  But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
1Co 1:31  That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

Oh, btw, I am Canadian (that’s what the SeekGod.*ca* stands for)…so understand the “Brits” just a little bit.

Thank you for writing Gavin. You made my day most interesting.

Sincerely
Vicky Dillen
Seek God

http://www.SeekGod.ca/index.htm

Discussion Forum >

http://www.SeekGod.ca/forum/

Thank you very much, Vicky, for taking the time to provide such a comprehensive response.

Thanks again,

Gavin

And here is today’s moment of zen Christian unity:

60163 'Tornado' passes Starlingford Castle