"And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13: 13
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I started reading Walking on Water in response to a conversation I had with one of my student assistants during a slow period at the circulation desk. She and I had been discussing what we liked in literature and what themes were consistent throughout our favorite books. I admitted that I have a very difficult time reading late19th and 20th century authors (John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Hardy to name a few) because of their lack of hope. The a fore mentioned authors and other tend to leave me in a funk. I don't need a happy ending per se, but I need a sense of completeness or wholeness.. For instance, the end of Return of the King, is bittersweet. Sam loses Frodo and large-scale adventures, but he regains the stability of a home, family, and hope for the future.
As we were talking of this theme of hope, I brought up Harry Potter, and how I also liked the theme of self sacrifice for the good of others and that I see that this is a type of the Christ story. She was very quick to say she is skeptical of symbolism and assuming we know what has influenced authors. How can we know what authors had in mind as they wrote? She argued that we shouldn't read into this. This left me a bit flummoxed. I was ready to hang my hat on the fact that Rowling was influenced by her knowledge of the Christian story. Furthermore, I was also convinced that the sacrificial dying and rising hero could find its original roots in the Christian story.
And so, work ended on a bit of an incomplete note, and I went home. The following weekend, I rediscovered Madeleine L'Engle's book. I had bough it in high school with the high aspirations that I would one day be an author writing in the Christian artist tradition. I never got past the first chapter. Now I was more curious about how Madeleine could add to and grow my thoughts on the interaction of Christianity of art. How do we understand the relationship of cause and effect in literature?
The most important takeaway from her book for me was not about the root of sacrificial death and resurrection (though more on that later), but about Christian art in general. I'll let Madeleine speak for herself: "And perhaps that is an essential ingredient of a Christian children's book (or any Christian book): the message of love. A Christian children's book must have an ultimately affirmative view of life... [that is] a book that says yes to life." My heart and intellect say yes to this thought. I appreciate books that are life-affirming and that champion the cause of goodness, completion, and sacrificial love that will do anything for the beloved with no strings attached. Harry was protected by his mother's love, and his own greatest moment is when he comes to realize that he must die for evil to die. This is the only way to save those dear to him. He greets death as a friend, and thereby without knowing it's even possible, he also defeats death. Death to self is life to others.
But, let us not forget the original conversation: Was Rowling (and Tolkien and Lewis) influenced by the story of Christ? I mentioned that I thought the root of the sacrificial hero is in Christ, while my colleague's opinion is that it is too simplistic to read symbolism and causation into literature. I'd like to offer a thought from a friend of mine that helped me understand this a little better. Obviously, Christ's death and resurrection is not the first time we this kind of hero going through a death and resurrection cycle. Every year Persephone must go to the underworld for a time and then rise again to bring the life of spring. Achilles is dipped in the river Styx (death). Orpheus attempts to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades. And many other pre-Christian religions and mythologies are full of this theme.
We can choose a few ways to react to this. As my friend said (please forgive my feeble paraphrase!), "Some choose to be scandalized by this theme appearing in so many places and take it as proof that the Christian story is not unique. However, why would we expect for Truth to manifest itself differently throughout the ages? How much more reasonable to accept that other traditions have had glimpses of the Truth." So, while Christ is not necessarily the source in chronological time or in influence of these stories, as Christians we believe that Christ is Truth outside of time and the origin of right belief. So whether Rowling realized it or not, she hit on key truths that echo the Truth: love, sacrifice, and my favorite, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15:26).
There's a quote from St. Justin Martyr (or more accurately a paraphrase) that I think is appropriate here: That which is true, is ours. The Orthodox Church has always said it has the fullness of the faith, and thus the whole Truth. We've always assumed, going back to St. Paul preaching in Athens, that parts of the Truth can be found in any tradition that is honestly seeking it.
ReplyDeleteGiven that, before Christ, the whole world was waiting to be redeemed (even if not consciously) I don't think it's surprising that the story death followed by a transforming resurrection would be as old as human history. The story Christ's Resurrection is the fullest in that His Resurrection destroys death and renews all of creation. Other resurrections are more limited. Odin merely dies to gain power, Osiris to become the god of the dead. Gilgamesh actually fails in his attempt to do what Christ did (namely conquer death) although it should be noted that he's only seeking immortality for himself. In fact, the selflessness of Christ's death and generosity (for lack of a better word) of his Resurrection is also probably unique to the Gospels.
There's another interesting biblical story that appears just about everywhere. Almost very civilization, including those in the new world, has a flood myth...
Your graciousness is always heartwarming, but the paraphrase is not feeble. You captured the idea quite elegantly. Christ our True God who said - "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." - is both Incarnate for our sake and for our salvation, and, as He by whom all things were made, is ever transcending any limitation of time and space.
ReplyDeleteTo see and recognize the Truth in such a way that it manifestly transcends geographical limitations, as well as all constraints of time and culture, is the most natural thing in the world for a Christian to do. This does not diminish or supplant the inestimable pearl of great price revealed to us in the Incarnation, but rather by the Light of Christ Himself we learn to recognize that He who is the God of all is everywhere present and constantly filling all things in a way that is truly mysterious.
For the Christian, it is not so surprising that there are echoes of the Truth throughout all the world, but rather, it would be surprising if it were not so.
For the skeptic, such a Christian view of the world is hopelessly self-congratulating. I have no problem admitting that my own is a "hermeneutic of faith" so long as I may likewise point out that the alternative is not an "unbiased" hermeneutic but rather one shaded by its own presuppositions. In sorting through the many and uncounted systems of meaning-making in this world (systems of meaning-making, by the way, most frequently are expressed as stories), the thinking person is forced to make a choice about which meaning-making system he/she is going to use in order to interpret and make sense of the others. The myth of so-called "post-modern" thought is that it is possible not to assume any identifiable system of meaning-making and simply see every system of meaning-making as purely arbitrary without any one system being used to interpret any of the others, but this, I contend, is patently balderdash. The idea simply breaks down when actually thinking about some particular system of meaning-making.
As we interact with attempts at constructing meaning, we either "buy in" or we do not. We make evaluations. This simply cannot be avoided. It is a part of who we are as humans. And the way we begin to engage with other systems of meaning-making is always by means of our currently employed personal system of meaning-making. The alternative to the Christian way of seeing the world is not some "unbiased" point of view; it is simply some other system of meaning-making.
The apologist, Ravi Zacharias, makes a compelling point, in my opinion, when he answers skeptics as to why he has a personal faith in Jesus Christ. After all, they challenge him, at the end of the day, can it truly be "proved" (with all of the connotations that that word implies) that Jesus was and is who Christians believe Him to be? Ravi's response is something to this effect. It is not by the light of some other "evidence" that he has come to recognize Christ as his Lord and God and Savior; but rather, it is by the Light of Christ that he has come to see and understand everything else. This is compelling to me because it resonates with my own lived experience. It is as if to say, if we merely grope about, searching for a light that will illuminate Christ for us such that we can see and recognize Him, we will never find such a light. However, if we allow Christ to Himself be a Light for us, all the world and even that which is beyond it will be illumined in such a way that everything else will be see and recognized for what it is. We are not in need of a means to see Christ, because Christ Himself *is* the means whereby we see everything else. It is a very ancient adage... We do not seek to understand that we might have faith, but we have faith that we might understand.
Hopelessly self-congratulating? My only response is... Taste and see that Lord is good.
Zacharias's apologia, at least as you described it, is really the only one that has ever made sense to me. Every attempt to "prove" God's existence that I've ever seen would be laughed out of an undergrad proofs course in the math department. But if you start from Christianity as a first principle a lot of things in the world, and in particular a lot of human nature, makes a lot more sense otherwise. And it's not just "God in the gaps" type stuff. I find human psychology makes much more sense if you assume a fallen human nature.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I find Chesterton's Orthodoxy such a good apologetic. He explains exactly why Christianity is a rational choice without resorting to logical proofs (and has a few choice words for those who would need them while he's at it.) Instead he writes about how the Light of Christ illumines all, and without ever quoting the Gospel. There are more than a few of us who have been converted by just such a process.