To: Muser44
From: Hudson hermit
Re: Sipping from the Cup of Hope, Part II
The Truth about Hobbits
I've already mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien and his character Samwise. I'll be shortly introducing C.S. Lewis the second of the great triumvirate completed by G.K. Chesterton. They roughly belong to the same era, although Chesterton is the senior by a wide margin. They were all once Anglicans, although Tolkien was a cradle convert to Catholicism, and Chesterton converted as an adult. They are all known by their initials rather than their Christian names. But more importantly for my purposes, they all expressed an admiration for George MacDonald's stories placed in the setting of the land of faerie.
I'd like to digress a bit back to our discussion some years back about evolution. Not because I wish to re-awaken that argument, but because I wish to expose my thoughts about Genesis. I don't recall exactly where your beliefs are situated, but I'm aware that various levels of creationism suggest some sort of literal interpretation of Genesis. I've never had trouble reconciling Genesis with the theory of evolution (with caveats, as you'll see shortly). I've always insisted that Genesis imparted the Truth. More plainly stated, I view Genesis as Myth.
At this point, some people are recoiling, and are interpreting what they've just read to mean that I believe Genesis to be a lie. If they're doing that they've got it exactly backwards. I know those sorts of people are out there because I was one of them, once upon a time. I once viewed myths as fairy tales as stories for children who are not old enough to know better. Myths were for superstitious and primitive men as fairy tales and Santa Claus are for children.
After completing high school, I worked for a year with my uncle as an optician (making lenses and mirrors for industrial uses, not eyewear) when he told me that Genesis was not factual, it was just stories. I'm certain that there was no malice in his action, but it was certainly a shocker considering that I stood in two worlds, one described by religion, the other through secular training in public schools and essays by Isaac Asimov. I had hoped for some symbolic interpretation of Genesis that would reconcile with evolution and the big bang. No one had bothered to explain how to bridge those two worlds. I constructed that bridge mostly on my own (although I'm sure that some people suggested a sketch of how it might be built). My uncle had planted a seed of doubt that suggested perhaps the bridge by way of a symbolically interpreted Genesis was a poorly constructed one.
Later in the mid 80's, after I had finished my submarine qualifications and being somewhat of a bookish person, I naturally headed for the ship's library. I certainly bemoaned the fact that I could not bring my own library, especially since there was a dearth of science fiction books (which I devoured at the time). From my meager choices, I chose to read The Creation Controversy: Science or Scripture in the Schools by Dorothy Nelkin. It stands out even though I had only read the book that one time, because several times since I've had to do a search to refresh my memory on the title of the book. I'm hazy on the specifics, but the general gist is that Nelkin was trying to find the middle road. She had observed that both sides were suspicious of each other's motives and she made a case for appeasement or compromise.
Somewhere in all that mess, my faith had slipped. I had been brought up to be a rational man, and somewhere, somehow I lived with the contradiction of a myth as a lie, and Genesis as somehow true. Within the Catholic Church, it is not considered heterodox to accept the theory of evolution. It is important though, to accept God as Creator.
My return to faith hinged on this. The rational mind was fed the facts about universe. The universe followed certain rules. Elections spun around protons and neutrons. Worlds spun around stars. And wonder captured my mind. There is an elegance and order to creation. Without a doubt, the world was Created. Facts fed faith, and soon faith fed facts. The rational mind once thought that John's gospel was the most mystical gospel as opposed to the synoptic gospels where the "real" facts about a historical Jesus could be discovered. The rational mind was wrong. The fully formed mind understood. Finally. Or rather the beginning. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
To digress even further, I'd like to step up to the soapbox for a bit. The sad fact is that I'm doing a bit of a forward reference here, which means you'll probably need to read this twice to fully understand me. I've plugged this side issue in the best spot I could think of, but in my mind, orthodoxy is a weave. There is no starting point once the clothes are finally stitched together. To the point... I believe that Nelkin was too narrow in her compromise. Certainly, I'll get little argument that schools should teach facts. The theory of evolution has its place since it is the currently accepted scientific model (this will not change no matter how hard creationists and supporters of intelligent design desire it; the model will change when there is a better model to fit the facts). I also believe that schools should teach culture. That is to say that they should teach Truth. Capital 'T' Truth. The left sort of agrees with me in multiculturalism, but they mean to teach anything but western culture. I mean to teach western culture, and that certainly involves religion which means Christianity. I understand that pages could fill up in response, to explain to the dimwitted author of this essay, about the grand ideal in the separation of church and state. Yet, to take religion out of the culture is to take the heart from the chest. What little evidence I have is clear. I'm fortunate to have The American Heritage Dictionary on CD-ROM. In that package, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy is included. There are all sorts of phrases, clichés and metaphors that come from Shakespeare, the Romans, and the Greeks. But the largest font of common sense comes from the Bible. But these are just words that describe, summarize or recall a story. The stories are the thing. This is how meanings are transferred. We pass our values on in these tales. Yes, fathers and mothers should read fairy tales to their children. But fairy tales are not just for children. The tales of Odysseus should be explored. Shakespeare's players must strut upon the stage. Twain should take us down the Mississippi. And Job, Jonah, and the Flood are no way lesser tales. If a father in ancient Rome can tell his son what is sweet and seemly, a father of the Western world certainly has some value to impart. All in all, one of the many root causes of illness in our society is Men without Chests. We teach fact without value.
Lest some get distracted, and assume that I've detached myself from reality, I maintain that I am still pouring from the cup of hope. This is a serious business. In a lecture titled "On Fairy Tales", Tolkien explains, "Children are meant to grow up, and not become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive. But is one of the lessons of fairy tales (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom."
C.S. Lewis once held a wrong-headed belief about myth, as he said that myths were "lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver."
No, they're not, Tolkien replied. Tolkien was a philologist who deeply understood the connection between words and myth. In a very real way, Tolkien was an anti-Chomsky, or rather Chomsky is an anti-Tolkien. At a pivotal moment as they passed by a tree, Tolkien remarked that it is inadequately described by the word tree.
Tolkien: "There it stands, its feet in the earth, its head among the stars. A majestic miracle of creation! And what do we call it? A tree. The word falls absurdly short of expressing the thing itself."
Lewis: "Of course it does, like any word, it's just a verbal invention -- a symbol of our own poor devising."
Tolkien: "Exactly, and here's my point: just as a word is an invention about an object or an idea, so a story can be an invention about Truth."
Lewis: "I've loved stories since I was a boy. You know that, Tollers! Especially stories about heroism and sacrifice, death and resurrection -- like the Norse myth of Balder. But when it comes to Christianity well, that's another matter. I simply don't understand how the life and death of Someone Else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago can help me here and now."
At this time Lewis was still a theist (coming from atheism some years before). But, this was soon to change.
Joseph Pearce in Tolkien: Man and Myth recounts Tolkien's argument:
We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor, whereas materialistic "progress" leads only to the abyss and the power of evil.
[...]
Building on this philosophy of myth, Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality. Whereas the pagan myths were manifestations of God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using the images of their "mythopoeia" to reveal fragments of His eternal truth, the true myth of Christ was a manifestation of God expressing Himself through Himself, with Himself, and in Himself. God, in the Incarnation, had revealed Himself as the ultimate poet who was creating reality, the true poem or true myth, in His own image. Thus, in a divinely inspired paradox, myth was revealed as the ultimate realism.
And a few days later, Lewis became a Christian through the efforts of Tolkien and a gent named Dyson. Chesterton also played a part. He had fertilized the soil years earlier through his book The Everlasting Man. Lewis went on to become the prolific apologist that Christians have enjoyed since. In addition, Lewis also wrote fantasy stories, first with his space trilogy (where the hero of these tales is a philologist, as Tolkien was) and later with his more famous Chronicles of Narnia.
Currently, I'm trying to digest Lewis's The Abolition of Man -- which is not a story all, but here I will here bumble my way through and tether his argument to the importance of true myth and story. It is partly because I'm not comfortable with my understanding of the book that I've tarried so long in replying to you.
In The Abolition of Man, Lewis attacks a textbook that he called "The Green Book" (He felt it was unfair to attack the book and its authors by name). The reason he savaged this book is because the authors had disguised it as a textbook, but they had introduced the unorthodox concept that emotions are useless to a rational man. Lewis's book is a little dated; the current liberal heterodoxy seems to embrace both extremes, one the celebration of feelings to the exclusion of rational thinking, the other is as Lewis describes in his book -- the denial of emotion for the sake of rational thinking (however Lewis's book, as a defense of orthodoxy and tradition, is timeless). The Green Book was a philosophy book masquerading as a school textbook.
The Abolition of Man contains three essays. The first is "Men without Chests" where he describes man in three parts: the cerebral man, the visceral man, and the spirited element. "The head rules the belly through the chest -- the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments." The main fault in The Green Book was that it was leading school children into becoming Men without Chests.
Lewis relates how a Roman father would tell his son "that it was a sweet and seemly thing to die for his country" (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori -- Horace). The father was communicating an emotion to his son, and importantly, the father was communicating a value to his son. This is an important insight, not only in the immediate sense, but for the long term viability of our society. Without trained emotions, none of the constructed "rational" arguments about the benefits to society are going to keep a soldier in the trenches when the shelling starts. I know the reason why the French are "cheese-eating surrender monkeys;" it's called the French Revolution.
It is here, I reiterate the importance of stories in their ability transmit values. And not for the last time. In the volume The Two Towers, Tolkien chooses the entrance of the evil land Mordor on the stairs of Cirith Ungol to have Sam pronounce a bit of wisdom. Samwise understands the consequence of choices:
'And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it when we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually -- their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect that they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten.'
In the Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, Samwise isn't as subtle (and consequently appears as a wiser man, um... hobbit, rather than a simple hobbit as portrayed in the book). He openly declares that the meaning of the stories becomes clear as they march toward Mordor.
That there are lessons in stories is in no way foreign to the Christian milieu. While Christ's stories may have been fictional, His parables related the Truth to the world. As stories can reveal a Truth (True Myth), the Truth can be told by story (parable).
Tomorrow I will continue with true myth and stories.
Peace be with you,
a hermit from Hudson