Other people's arguments preserved on my bookshelf

Over the years we've bought a number of second hand books with various messages written in them. I had a small cull of the shelves recently and discovered this gem of an interpersonal conflict on the frontispiece of a book by CS Lewis.

"The owner hastens to add that this book was not bought by choice, but rather that is was forced upon him in a most Unchristian manner by [pen colour changes] The Reverend Skene Catling who in an even more unchristian manner, refused to sign.

October 1953."

I found that funny and can imagine the Reverend reading the snarky comment and then telling his friend where to step off when his friend asked him to sign. It's doubly ironic that it's in a book called 'Christian Behaviour'.

But that's not all. On the back dust jacket was a doodle (of a film projector I think) and this argument recorded for posterity. 

"This book is based on Christian principles though very often they are nympholeptic ideals. The Christian religion is very "Castles in the air-ish" in it's origin -"

[Retort] "Absolute bunk old man!"

I had to look up nympholeptic. It means being in a passionate mystical state. I can't see me using it very often in day-to-day conversation. 

I've kept this book. The accidental comedy of the inscriptions saved it from the cull. 

The compelling mystery of ruins, and the things that lurk in them

If you've read The Lord of the Rings, what's your favourite part? My favourite of the three books is The Fellowship of the Ring. And my favourite part of The Fellowship of the Ring is when Gimli persuades the fellowship to enter the abandoned Dwarf realm of Moria. I have loved it ever since I was a child and my Mum read the book to me and my brother during long car journeys.

I'm not sure what it is about Moria, but I think that whole sequence is the best plotted and most compelling part of the entire book. It starts with Gandalf trying to work out how to get in. Then, just as he opens the doors, the fellowship are attacked by a hideous creature that lurks in the pool by the gate. After running into safety they hear the doors behind them being barricaded shut. From this point on, the only way out is forward. I guess that's part of the thing - everywhere else the characters have a choice. Here they have no choice. They have to keep going forward. Into the dark.

The gates of Moria

The film actually showed the journey through Moria quite well, although it was obvious immediately that there were no dwarves here. Just dusty, long-dead armoured skeletons. You don't learn that as quickly in the book. You have to wait until the fellowship find the annals of the dwarves who tried to retake Moria. As Gandalf reads the final, hurried entries, with the accounts of which dwarf heroes fell where, the sense of danger and impending doom is truly claustrophobic. Something evil has befallen in the ruins. And it is most likely still out there.

Discovery in the dark

That sense of evil lurking in the ruins is also present early on in The Magician's Nephew, which I think has been my favourite of the Narnia books since I was a kid. Written as a prequel to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, some time after that book, The Magician's Nephew tells the story of how Narnia came to be, as witnessed by two small children, Digory and Polly, who had been given the opportunity to move between different worlds. But here's the thing. Before they discovered the world that would become Narnia, the two children discovered Charn.

Exploring Charn

Charn was a nearly dead world, a ruinous, gigantic, deserted city under a blood-red, tired sun. Drawn by enchantment, the children enter a hall of kings and queens and wake the last Queen of Charn, a cruel and wicked tyrant called Jadis. She tells them about the grandeur of Charn; the magnificence of the world before it met its doom. And we learn that Jadis was the author of that doom, using a deep and terrible magic to win a civil war against her sister, by extinguishing all other life on the planet.

The mystery of Charn

It's a magnificent, evocative tale, which I always found more interesting than the birth of Narnia that follows. And while it provides an origin story, of sorts, for evil in the good and perfect world of Narnia, the emergence of Jadis in Charn is a much more interesting story. The series of royal statues grow harsher and crueler as the children walk along them, reaching the pinnacle of hatefulness in Jadis. The implication is that power corrupts and poisons people, leading to a situation where a wicked queen would rather eliminate every other living being than not rule over them.

I've often felt this was a commentary by C.S. Lewis on the existence of nuclear weapons and the folly of the idea of mutually assured destruction preventing someone from starting a nuclear war. What if you got someone so totally warped and wicked that they would rather turn the world into a burning atomic husk than allow their opponents to continue to exist?

I'm not sure why as a kid drawn to the idea of ruined civilisations. I think both Moria and Charn exuded a mystery that you didn't get in many imaginary worlds. There was a sense that something has happened here - something terrible. And you need to find out what it was. But finding out won't make it better. In fact, it might make it even more terrible.

But at least you will know.

A more personal review of Love Wins

As a follow up to my previous post, which was more of an examination of the theology in Love Wins, I decided to post about how I felt reading it.

Firstly, it resonated with me because many of the questions he asks are questions I've asked. Reconciling the idea of a loving, all-powerful God with the view that God condemns millions of created beings to hell is a difficult one.

It's a difficulty that I saw articulated years ago by Scott Adams in a cartoon about not mixing logic and religion. "What happens to the people that don't knowthat God loves all his children?" asks the protagonist. "Eternal hell!" is the response. That cartoon has always challenged me.

(Of course, Calvin's response to the exact same issue was that God sends people to Hell as evidence of His glory. (Section 3.22.11 of the Institutes) I've never felt particularly comfortable with that, ever since I read Calvin at University. The idea that our view of God as holy and glorious and righteous is contingent on him sending sinners to Hell makes God's attributes only applicable through the actions of human beings. Or, to put it another way, Calvin's articulation of God is that He is not self-sufficient.)

What I felt reading Love Wins was that here was someone else articulating many things that I've thought before, particularly the idea that an obsession about where you end up after death means you end up ignoring the realities of the here and now.

I think Rob Bell does a good job of evaluating Jesus' teaching on heaven and hell, and the commentary of the early church. I think he is fair to the Scriptural texts and his exposition of the original Greek is actually quite good. It's not the usual kind of thing I've heard in evangelical contexts, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

I was particularly struck by his use of the parable of the prodigal son to highlight the negative images many Christians have of God - as a 'slave-driver', constantly looking over our shoulder to catch us out, and us not rejoicing in always being with him.

I think that chapter is actually a very good corrective to how God is talked about - his comment when talking about the atonement that Jesus doesn't save us from God, but that God saves us from the hell we create for ourselves is a good counterbalance to other technical theories of atonement that imply God is all about the wrath.

There were one or two throwaway remarks I wasn't happy with. Saying that a woman wrote Hebrews is a definite statement on a subject that from a Biblical Studies standpoint is hard to make definite statements on. There were one or two comments about people who hold a rigid view on hell (as not throwing good parties, for example) that were a bit needless. But generally, he reigned in the sarcasm.

The general tenor of the book - that we create heaven and hell through our choices and that affects how we live now and in the world to come reminded me of CS Lewis in The Great Divorce. I wish he had referenced Lewis' book, as it's not that well-known.

His comment on the literal nature of hell, based on his experience of seeing amputee survivors of the Rwandan genocide, is an intelligent way of taking something that can be quite theoretical and applying it. "Do I believe in a literal hell? Those weren't metaphorical limbs..." And then, later: "We can all choose to pick up machetes." Earlier he said "Our eschatology shapes our ethics." That's true too.

In that sense his realised eschatology is more realistic and relevant than the idea that it all happens after judgement. I've believed for a while that we need to start locating heaven and hell in the here and now to render them real. I said as much last year when talking to the youth.

For me, personally, it's been a bit of a journey to get where I am, theologically. On the subject of hell, I was helped by an insight of Frederick Buechner who made the point that if someone choose to withdraw from God, then they are withdrawing from the source of all things. That way leads to utter destruction or non-existence.

Buechner asked whether Hell was the stopping point - that God says 'You can go so far and no further'; that God wouldn't allow people to tip over the edge and cease to exist. Seen like that, Hell is an extension of God's mercy and love, because however far people run from him, he won't let them disappear forever.

I don't think Rob Bell's book was really written for those who are in churches and are happy with what's taught there. I think it's more for those who are unhappy, or who have left a church because they sense there is a discrepency between the emphasis on God's love, and the way hell is talked about.

What Rob Bell has done is offer an alternative view, that I feel is faithful to the Biblical texts, and presents a positive and affirming view of God as a loving Father. It made me feel hopeful and inspired to talk about my faith experiences with people to try and open up the reality of the Kingdom of  Heaven right now.