Calm endurance answers some questions infinitely more conclusively than the loftiest eloquence. C.H. Spurgeon
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I’m wondering if anyone here is familiar with the stories of Philip Pullman? I just listened to the lively conversation conversation between him and Iain McGilchrist and that has me thinking of reading his novels which seem to have a strongly religious flavor judging from the titles, or at least this one trilogy does:
His Dark Materials
First combined edition (publ. Ted Smart, 2000)
I’ve not read them myself. But I recall reading somewhere that (and I think this may even have been from the author himself) these were written as a reply to or perhaps a rebuttal against Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia - a work that I gather Pullman rather despised.
If you do read them - I’d be curious of your appraisal of his message, or even an assessment of what Pullman’s message even is. As always, a ‘conversation’ between Lewis and his critics could be very enlightening all around.
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Mark, you have seen a recommendation before over here:
https://discourse.biologos.org/t/iso-book-recommendations-for-a-socially-minimal-adolescent-gamer-boy/50705/9
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Check out this @Mervin_Bitikofer! A gift from the internet 
Ken Myers and Alan Jacobs talking about Philip Pullman’s trilogy:
The “lively conversation” I linked above is all I have to go on but I take it that Pullman thinks Christianity as it has been realized has over emphasized God’s power, control and anger a mischaracterization caused by having been filtered through human minds whose egos are drawn to those characteristics. I’m interested in at what point Jesus changes that view just as God is transfigured from the OT to the NT.
If I don’t plunge right in it will be because sci-fi just doesn’t draw me the way it used to. But I found the author very appealing and insightful just from what he has to say there. My impression is that he thinks the overemphasis on God’s power obscures His love but he is clearly motivated by a high regard for the sacred.
@Liam you thumbs upped the list KLAX had shared so I wonder if you read it whether you found it more uplifting or depressing as criticism of the church?
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Apparently this is an epigraph from The Golden Compass:
Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and look a while,
Pondering his voyage…
John Milton, Paradise Lost
This is a very live topic for me right now too, and I ponder the place that authoritarianism has in Christianity and the legitimacy or applicability of that as a principle. Everybody (including Christians) seems to reject autocracy and tyranny as bad things, and it appears (also from having listened to @heymike3’s link) that Pullman (to hear his critics tell it in that podcast anyway) has a thing against all authority as inherently bad … and that self-rule is the ultimate good.
If that’s all the books were about, then yeah (through the critics eyes anyway) there wouldn’t be much in the way of any positive messaging there, and it’s just (at least in the 1st two books) a well-told and captivating story.
But if less hostile eyes are allowed to have their say, I could see there being a very necessary conversation over how we handle the whole concept of tyranny and the classic Christian conception of God. Most of us, Christian or not, have no problem seeing tyranny (and especially tyranny that cloaks itself in religious and even ‘Christian’ garb) is a great evil throughout history. And yet many a tyrant probably thinks of themselves as just ‘being like God’ - and aren’t we supposed to do that after all?
This is where I see MacDonald’s Christocentric focus for how God can be known to us as being an essential antidote to what would otherwise be an understandable reaction like Pullman’s. It isn’t an easily answered question since we (most of us western Christians at any rate) seem quite willing to see the essential value of democracy for human rule - and even church polity and governance, and yet partition off a religious section of our brains that is willing to let that value go in favor of a supreme monarchy as the only appropriate and desired model for how we think of God. But obviously some Christians have weakened and blurred that partition recently, and want to let such dictatorial monarchy bleed over into human governance affairs where such things have never, ever ended well for us (even - or especially in any Christ-centered religious sense). But they never seem to take that historical or biblical lesson on board - never seem capable of seeing that power always corrupts humans. And that the only one in history about whom we could say power didn’t corrupt him - he refused every overture to pursue that kind of power with strong rebuke for all followers who so wished for him to establish himself in the same form as earthly tyrants.
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Super glad you listened and got to hear Ken Myers, I was about to post a comment on something disturbing Jacobs brought up towards the end, quoting from Pullman’s story,
“He (Yahweh) was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.”
This argument that God did not create anybody or any thing else, is exactly the argument Satan makes in book 5 of Paradise Lost:
Th’ Apostate, and more haughty thus replied.
That we were formed then say’st thou? and the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferred
From Father to his Son? strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learnt: who saw
When this creation was? remember’st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
By our own quick’ning power.
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“All authority has been given to me on heaven and earth.”
At the same time, to be honest, I’m glad that reasonable people can disagree about the inerrancy and authority of the Bible. Until Jesus returns, that should keep the Church’s grubby hands off the levers of worldly coercion. Maybe like David wanting to build a temple, it’s just not something Jesus intends to give his people who have way too much blood on their hands.
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For what it’s worth even for me, in regard to what I see as greater, there is a desire to see that other’s will done. But lacking any societal edifice that can speak for that I remain cognizant of my necessary role in recognizing when a course of action would be pleasing or not to the silent partner. There is no opportunity to grant that responsibility of diligence to another. I think you would agree that everyone should remain mindful of their role in signing off on any interpretation of what is sacred. What is divine can’t be wrong, but our understanding always can be.
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It looks like my attempt to link the Pullman/McGilchrist “lively conversation” didn’t work. Here I believe is the corrected link which I will fix in the first post on this after I test it here.
Okay, that’s better. Gave up on linking the podcast and found a YouTube video of it. If anyone listens to it I’d appreciate knowing how well my read was for what might be compatible with Christian beliefs.
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It’s an informative discussion for anyone interested in the subject. It didn’t surprise me to hear McGilchrist say that words necessarily fall short of describing the sacred and that we never actually arrive there. I mean what else did you expect him to say? And what does any of this have to do with revealed religion?
During the talk something reminded me of pseudo-Dionysius’ via negativa, and I dug up this quote, “Here of course I am in agreement with the Scripture writers. But the real truth of these matters is in fact far beyond us. That is why their preference is for the way up through negations, since this stands the soul outside everything which is correlative with its own finite nature."
If you open the video in YouTube, there is a link to each subsequent segment. There are 4 all together. I haven’t watched them all, just the first one. I love IM’s description of what we do to poetry in lit classes, “It’s kind of an unmagic trick.” I’ll try to catch the rest of these; Pullman and IM seem like a great pair.
(Wish there were an edited transcript.)
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I just started listening to Greg Boyd’s book Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty. Provocative title and thesis. I haven’t had his experience, but I know many do. I swim in different waters, where many are perfectly situated for such an experience. And I’m raising a questioner. I think it’s worth hearing from people like Boyd and Austin Fisher (Faith in the Shadows).
I encountered Christ in a very powerful way when I was seventeen years old. The experience was so overwhelming that for about a year I felt absolutely certain that everything this … church taught me was true. Unfortunately, as is so often the case …, this church valued emotional experiences over reason. In fact, questioning matters of faith was viewed with suspicion, and expressing outright doubt was considered positively immoral.
This didn’t bode well for me, for up until my conversion I’d always been a questioner. Since childhood I had found it hard to accept things just because someone told me it was so…
For me, such certitude was destined to crash. As I’ll share in this book, it took just one university course in evolutionary biology and one course in the critical study of the Bible to blow my blissful certainty sky-high. I obviously managed to piece my faith back together eventually, but my yearlong vacation from my incessantly questioning brain was over for good.
The Benefit of the Doubt by Greg Boyd, p. 4
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Confidence in the strength of a good Father has some benefit.
ETA: From the intro to the list:
This does not contain any of the multiple caveats against false confidence, but shows that there are way more than several reasons for true confidence.
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It is not unrelated to the most frequent mandate in the Bible, “Do not be afraid” or one of its several variations – “Fear not!”, “Be anxious for nothing”, “Fret not”, and the like.
(The earth is not a safe place to live.)
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Thanks. Good to know. Just became too hard to fix it but most of Pullman’s best contributions come at the end of the podcast so probably in the last two videos. Now that I’m home and get on my laptop I expect those videos will be easier to find. I was trying to fix it on my phone in SF while waiting for my better half to finish with an appointment. If only Pullman didn’t write sci-fi. I’m finding it hard to get excited about that genre these days.
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I can’t help but wonder if Boyd’s doubt ever touched his powerful encounter with Christ? Which reminds me of one skeptic who never really could shake his encounter with a Turkish translator. If I read the story right, he later renewed his Christian confession, but the skepticism was there for years it seemed.
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In an environment full of emotionalism and easy-believism that accompanies some evangelical efforts, just sign here, one certainly wonders. It reminds me in contrast with the real encounter that Phil Yancey had, personal yet objective, and quoted at length here:
For years before, yes, but not after:
(And interesting that an indirect reference to our late and future friend Glenn Morton should arise a second time today, the first in a private message involving who cited Charles Colson.): Questioning what it means to be a creator - #16 by gbob.
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