Don Williams’ Blog

Don July 15th, 2010

“I’m back.” Sam’s statement to Rosie is the way The Lord of the Rings ends. Of course, one can never say these words in this life except provisionally. There is a sense in which finite mortals cannot step in the same river twice. The Hobbiton and the Bag End to which Sam returned was not the same Hobbiton and Bag End without Frodo in them, and so we move on from the supposed ending to the Appendices and the Lost Tales and learn that eventually even Sam sailed into the West.

Nevertheless, the phrase does have a kind of truth for a while–a day, a year, an age of men. I am “back” from Mythcon, the annual meeting of the Mythopoeic Society, in Dallas this year from July 9-12. But one never returns the same.

How to describe a Mythcon to those who have never been? Imagine a serious academic conference with world class papers and panels on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, the other Inklings, and fantasy literature in general breaking out in the midst of a Renaissance Festival, with an Inklings meeting, a fan convention, a film festival, a Society for Creative Anachronism meeting, a theology/apologetics conference, a spiritual retreat, and an insane asylum all going on concurrently–and you will have just an inkling (ahem) of the weirdest and most satisfying convocation of Inklings devotees on the planet. Picture this astounding conglomeration as a seamless whole in which each part enriches all the others and you will have an even better idea. But you will have to attend to really understand. Warning: Mythcon is highly addictive. Like the infamous potato chip, you cannot do just one.

This year I did a paper on Lewis’s view of truth. It was part II of “A Tryst with the Transcendentals: C. S. Lewis on Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.” Part I, Beauty, was last year. Beauty came first because for Lewis it was beauty, received as sensucht, that led Lewis to truth. But it was to truth that he thought he had arrived. In an age of Post-Modernism and Post-Foundationalism, the very concept of truth finds itself subject to deconstruction. Lewis held to the old “correspondence theory” of truth, but did so in a way that withstands contemporary assaults better than many traditional formulations because he sought to integrate Reason and Imagination in ways not typical of earlier philosophy. Essays like “Bluspels and Flalansferes” provide a framework for understanding Lewis’s statements on the nature of truth. They make possible a view of truth that is neither relativist nor reductive, but rather profoundly humane. Or so I tried to argue.

I also participated in a panel discussion of the influence of a writer’s religion on his work. Some were so opposed to “preaching” in literature that they seemed to imply an author’s faith should have no influence at all; they had a problem with passages like the one in Narnia when Aslan tells the children that they had met Him there so that they could learn to know Him in their own world. I maintained that an author writes out of his total personality, which includes his faith (or lack of it), and that this should not be shocking. Some Christian “writers” have palmed off on their readers sermons disguised as stories, and this is a problem, not with their content but with their craft. But abusus non tollit usum. The question is not whether Aslan should be allowed to say such a thing but rather whether the Narnia books present him consistently as a Lion who would and could say that kind of thing with credibility. Christians should appreciate a novel like Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha because it lets them see the world through Buddhist eyes, and does it more effectively than any hundred treatises on comparative religion could ever hope to do. This understanding is a good thing, irrespective of whether it leads to conversion. Why shouldn’t non-Christians appreciate a work like Narnia in the same way? If they are afraid of being converted, let them be honest about that rather than blaming the work for daring to reflect its authors’ world view! For all works inevitably do.

My former student Brian Melton, a military historian, attended his first Mythcon and was absolutely enchanted. He also gave an excellent paper on War in Narnia, which was very well received. I was gratified to see him taking his place among the great Inklings scholars. Look for his name in the future!

And so I am back–but not the same. The other papers were almost all stimulating and enlightening. But what makes me feel that my own–not just understanding, but life–has been deepened is the level of integration between seriousness and fun, reason and imagination, intellect and heart, represented by the whole experience which is a Mythcon. The Inklings hold that kind or wholeness before us more effectively than any other group of writers, and their influence is not just celebrated but incarnated by the Mythies (as they call themselves) who gather around their works every year. I am blessed to be a part of it.

From Mr. Tumnus’ Library,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD
Prof. of English, Toccoa Falls College
Editor, The Lamp-Post
Web Site: http://doulomen.tripod.com/
Blog: www.journalofformalpoetry.com

• Apologetics , Art/Aesthetics , Inklings
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Don July 14th, 2010

MISSION REPORT: AFRICA 2010

Once again this summer I had the privilege of ministering in Uganda and Kenya for Church Planting International and Christian life Teachings International (CLTI), the indigenous training ministry founded by Rev. John Robert Opio, one of the students on my first trip. I conducted a modular course in theology for two groups of rural pastors, one in Kitale, Kenya, and the other in Mbarara, Uganda. These are men in ministry who have had no opportunity to receive formal theological training. In these countries, the church is growing faster than it can train leaders. Since these men cannot go to Bible school, I take a little Bible school to them. With men of such zeal and dedication, a little goes a long way.

Thurs., 6/12-Sat. 6/14, 2010: Travel: Atlanta to Paris to Nairobi to Kitale, Kenya.

Sun., 6/20: AM, Preached at God’s Family Restoration Church, Kitale; PM, spoke to Kamukuya Pastor’s Fellowship, 21 pastors and elders representing seven village ministries from Pentecostal to Baptist.

Mon., 6/21-Thurs., 6/24: Modular course in Survey of Christian Doctrine taught to 34 pastors and church leaders.  For seven of them it was their last course with CLTI leading to a certificate in Christian ministry.

On the second day of the Kenya seminar, we covered the doctrine of the Trinity with special reference to Islam. Why do Muslims think Christians are polytheists? How can we get past that impasse? What does the doctrine of the Trinity actually affirm? Not that we simultaneously believe that there is one God and that there are three Gods–that would be a contradiction. Rather, there is one God who contains three Persons. This is merely incomprehensible, not contradictory. We went over a lot of Scripture that affirms as true the following propositions: there is only one God, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons, not just three different names for God. The doctrine of the Trinity is simply the only way to affirm the simultaneous truth of all these biblical statements.
There are four reasons to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is true.  1.  The bible teaches it. 2.  Allah is just too simple. Any God I could understand without difficulty must by that fact be a false God.  3.  If God were a simple monotheistic deity like Allah, the incarnation would be impossible—for how should God abandon Heaven for existence as a Man and still rule the world?  Only a Trinitarian God could become incarnate without abdicating the throne of the universe.  Therefore, only the Trinity can save; Allah cannot.  4.  Only if the Trinity is the true account of God could the affirmation that “God is love” be meaningful. Before creation, there would be no one for Allah to love; but the Father, the Son, and the Spirit loved each other in the unity of the Godhead from all eternity, and now through faith in Christ invite us to share that love with them for all of future eternity. Now, that’s a God worth believing in!

In sum, the incomprehensibility of the Trinity is in the light of the above facts actually an asset to Christian faith, not a liability.  The Muslims cry, “Allah U’Akbar!”  “Allah is great!”  But we have already discovered two very important things that the God of the Bible can do and which Allah cannot do: save and love.  How great can Allah be?
There was a lot of intense attention to the apologetic points against Islam, because these people have Muslim neighbors. One man said, “I thought I was coming to a seminar, and I find myself in college!” Not quite–he doesn’t have to write a paper or read a systematic theology textbook (and a couple of C. S. Lewis books!) in addition to the biblical texts. But his unintentional hyperbole has a point–that is exactly what I was invited to bring these men.

Tues., 6/20: After the class ended for the day, spoke to an assembly of St. Philip’s Secondary School, Kitale, and then addressed the faculty separately after the students were dismissed.  I spoke to the students on the adventure of reading.  There is a poster one sees in Kenya that proclaims, “Literacy for Improved Food Production!”  I don’t doubt that improved food production is a worthy goal and that literacy can help attain it, I said; but there is so much more to reading than that!  It makes available to us the Word of God, the world of ideas, and the world of imagination—all of which can expand the mind in such a way as to facilitate things yet undreamt of (including better food production).  It was Newman’s Idea of a University recycled impromptu for an African context.  I encouraged the faculty to actively cultivate two things: love of their subject and love of their students.  It is only when both are present that transformative teaching can emerge.

Fri., 6/25: CLTI Graduation.  We had a graduation ceremony for seven students who had completed the whole pastoral training course from Christian Life Teachings International. After the service and before the recessional, an African graduate’s family and friends will come up and drop garlands of tinsel over their mortar-boarded heads, so that during the photo session afterwards (which puts most weddings to shame) they look like walking Christmas trees with black trunks (the bottoms of their robes still showing beneath). During the next American graduation I have to endure, I will be sure to remember that it could be worse!
The Valedictorian, Peter Sisunga, included in his speech–really a fiery sermon–some things he learned from me two years ago. That made me think maybe I’m not wasting my time here after all! Some of my American students have difficulty remembering things I said two weeks–er, sometimes two days—ago.
Sat., 6/26: Travel to Mukono, Uganda.

Sun., 6/27: Preach at Campus Church of Uganda Christian University.  The visit to Uganda Christian University in Mukono (Evangelical Anglican) was a great success. My sermons to campus church congregations of about 1,000 (first service) and 200 (second) were very well received. The Rev. Canon Frederick Baalwa, the campus chaplain, was astonished that I had actually presented the text and topic he had asked for (“The Place of Authority in Christian Leadership,” Mark 10:42-5). “That was powerful,” he said. Christian leadership is the theme for this term. When I saw the whole programme I was impressed with how he had broken it down. Perhaps the best thing that came of our short time there was making a connection between Rev. Baalwa and Rev. Opio. Baalwa was quite taken with the vision and ministry of CLTI and said that there were many rural Anglican (Church of Uganda) congregations led by lay preachers who desperately needed just what John Opio is doing. They soon had their heads together plotting blessings for the Kingdom–a wonderful ecumenical moment. Baalwa was astounded that I, a Muzungu (white man), was taking Public Transport to Mbarara. “You really practice the servant leadership you preach!” he marveled. Apparently Muzungus on public are a great rarity. There is a reason why.

If God has put anything in the world to remind us of human weakness, it must be the African public transportation system. The journey from Kampala to Mbarara Sunday afternoon–about 280 kilometers to the West–took a full eight hours of being bumped and pounded half to death. But I survived to begin the second week of classes

Mon., 6/28-Weds., 6/30: Second Modular Theology Course, at Mbarara, Uganda.  I used the same material as in Kenya but covered less of it because many of the men (and women leaders too) are even less prepared academically than the CLTI students I had in Kenya. Sometimes here it takes a while just to explain something to the interpreter so he can render it. In Kenya, half of the students were confident enough in English to ask their questions in English. Here, almost no one is. So the interpreters are even more essential, but they too are less prepared. Nevertheless, we are accomplishing some good teaching.  The Trinity explained as a positive response to Islam rather than a theological liability was a hit here too.

One encouraging factor in Mbarara was that several of these students had already seen through the Prosperity Gospel on their own–unusual in Africa. They were asking for effective ways to combat it. Apparently “Name it and claim it” translates into Lyancole as “Take it! Take it!” So I said, just ask people to read the Gospels and ask them whether they are seeing a Jesus who says “Take it!” or one whose message is “Give it!” Was Paul in perfect health right after being stoned and left for dead? Where was his faith? Was Jesus lacking in faith because He had no place to lay his head? This theology is not just wrong, it is blasphemous! What of the Missionaries who first brought the Gospel to Uganda? They packed in their coffins because they expected to die from Malaria–yet they came anyway. Aren’t we glad their preachers weren’t saying, “Take it! Take it!”  Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

Thurs., 7/1: Preached to midweek service of Ruti Reformed Presbyterian Church in Mbarara and addressed an assembly of Hillside Primary School in nearby Biharwe.

Fri.-Sat., 7/2-3: Journey home via Kampala, Entebbe, Amsterdam, Paris, and Atlanta.

Summary: Preached in five services at four churches, spoke to two Pastor’s Fellowships and two school assemblies, held two training seminars for about seventy pastors and church leaders, and spoke at one graduation service in two weeks of intense ministry.  Pray that the men who attended the seminars will commit what they heard to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That way, the church will be strengthened and the mission will have been a success.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don June 16th, 2010

I have an acquaintance who has been marveling over the fact that she knows people who just can’t seem to get into C. S. Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity.  That wouldn’t be so astonishing in itself.  But they complain that this masterpiece of winsomeness and clarity is wordy and confusing!  What can be going on here?

I can empathize with this lady’s mystification at her friends’ inability to follow Lewis, but I have run into the phenomenon too many times to be surprised by it any more.  Because some of the people whom I’ve encountered with this disability have been my students, I have had an opportunity to study the syndrome up close in some detail.  It is not due to any lack of clarity or failure to be engaging on Lewis’s part.  The real culprit for many postmodern readers is their inability to follow a linear argument–any linear argument.  Often in Lewis, in other words, the ability to “get” the paragraph you are in depends on your having gotten the one that preceded it.  Many people today have such short attention spans that they can only deal with soundbytes and get frustrated by anyone who expects them to put two and two together to arrive at four, however plainly he maps out the path for them.  Or, worse, they have actually been taught to be suspicious of discursive Reason as something that has nothing to do with reality and which can only lead them astray.

Lewis’s linearity is a virtue, not a fault, and I stoutly maintain that we should not respond to the abysmal failure of our educational system to teach critical thinking (or even foster the conditions that make it possible) by dumbing down the Faith (or its most winsome representative).  That would be to falsify and misrepresent it, and therefore to lose the very reason why we should be caring whether people can follow it in the first place.  For some (if they have the patience for it, or an ornery professor who won’t let them out of it), Lewis can be a bridge out of the soundbyte solipsism they naturally inhabit into the larger world of rationality.  For some; not all.  That even Lewis cannot reach many is the greatest indictment of our so-called education system I can think of.  Remember that Mere Christianity was written for uneducated British laymen of the 1940’s.  They got it because they had not had their ability to think destroyed like “educated” modern Americans have.

It’s all in Lewis!  It’s all in Lewis!  What DO they teach them in those schools?

From Mr. Tumnus’ Library,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD
Prof. of English, Toccoa Falls College
Editor, The Lamp-Post
Web Site:  http://doulomen.tripod.com
Blog:  www.journalofformalpoetry.com
E-Mail:  dtw@tfc.edu

P.S.  I leave for Africa tomorrow.  Your prayers for the mission would be appreciated. — DW

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Don November 23rd, 2009

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING, new Orleans, LA, November 18-20, 2009: a REPORT

It was a pleasant (as far as the weather went) half-mile walk from my affordable hotel to the main one where the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting was held in New Orleans, about a quarter mile of it down Bourbon Street. This was an interesting, er, cross-cultural experience, especially when returning in the evening. For then the tourists were milling about trying to “earn their beads” (flung down from the out-jutting balconies above as a reward for people who “flash” publicly various body parts intended to be shared only privately in intimate moments), and the clubs were sending their exotic dancers out into the street to entice passers by into their establishments by, shall we say, displaying their wares. As is my wont in such situations, I waxed objective and scientific, yea, clinical, as an observer, regarding my own reactions with the same cool and detached eye as I was using for the phenomena to which I was being “exposed” (what a fortuitous choice of words!). I was not tempted (at all) nor even disgusted (very much), but saddened (mostly), thinking what a poor substitute all these shenanigans were for a real relationship, such as two people who had known True Love might enjoy with one another.

The conference itself I make bold to pronounce a success. My paper (on the validity of Lewis’s “Trilemma” argument) was well attended and enthusiastically received, the response including two editors (Global Journal of Classical Theology and Southwest Theological Journal) fighting over the right to publish it. I had to say that Touchstone had beaten them to that privilege (scheduled for spring of 2010), but that if Touchstone required sufficient cutting to make a more scholarly version justifiable, and then agreed to it, I would be in touch with them. And so I departed with their cards safely tucked away in my pocket.

Several of the other papers were worth hearing. A young Indian scholar, Ashish Varma, spoke of Calvin on Virtue: Forensic Justification and Imputed Righteousness seem like a mere legal fiction leading to license to those who do not realize that Calvin goes out of his way to tie them to Union with Christ. When they are seen as flowing from that Union, then rather than hindering Virtue they become the only things that make it truly possible for fallen men, since the only Virtue that matters flows to us from Him. We can only be joined to Christ if we are righteous, and the only righteousness that makes this possible is His imputed to us, since, if we waited until we had attained our own, not an eternity in Purgatory would suffice. But it is imputed to the end that, being joined to Him, we may be conformed to his image as His Spirit brings His life into our own. It was encouraging to hear such things being said so well in clipped Indian English.

Gene Fant explicated the sacrament of Communion by means of the biological concept of Homeostasis. Our bodies cannot exist without exchange with things outside of us. It is a picture of Sola Gratia, a reminder of our total dependence on that which is other, turned into a synechdoche for the things of the Spirit.

While Michael Travers was expounding the use of anthropomorphic imagery as a way of revealing the nature of God (one fourth of all the references to ears and eyes in the OT are to God’s!), I suddenly found himself cross-referencing this discussion with the absolute prohibition of images in Yahweh worship, which is grounded in the observation that on Sinai Israel saw no form. If visual images are verboten, why are verbal ones OK? There is certainly a kind of tension there, from which some great fruit of understanding ought to be born. Then I realized that all the verbal images are anthropomorphic. God brings Israel to Himself on eagles’ wings, but He himself has no wings; He gathers us like a Hen, but it is always a simile, not a metaphor when the comparison is to an animal. Only when the images are human is full metaphor allowed; and then only to one part at a time, not to the whole image of a Man, lest we think God a man that he should lie. Whence all this if not to prepare us for (and shut us up to) the Incarnation, the only adequate Image? That was the tangent I hurtled off on, more interesting perhaps than the paper itself.

Dorian Coover-Cox quoted Walter Eichrodt to the effect that all the other NE religions are nature religions; that is, the god is a personification of the natural powers of a given land and its people whose power flows from below, i.e., from them; but Yahweh is the opposite. He is wholly from above, the Suzerain from another country who elects Israel as his vassal. She noted the many OT passages that use the form of the ancient NE suzerainty treaty to convey what it means to be in covenant with God; the Covenant is precisely a suzerainty treaty. But what a difference! Suzerainty treaties are imposed by a conquering overlord, while Yahweh invites men into covenant with Himself; normal suzerains rule from a distance, but Yahweh comes to dwell with his people in the Tabernacle; other suzerains exact tribute to support their rule, but the Tabernacle is built with freewill offerings; other suzerains rule for their own benefit, or at most that of their own people (the angels in God’s case?), not that of the vassal people; but Yahweh feeds his people with manna and then with milk and honey Therefore, instead of resenting this Suzerain and rebelling against Him when we get the chance, as we would with any earthly one, we ought to realize that He deserves our obedience and devotion because of His grace.

I don’t want to be unfair to New Orleans. Just a few blocks from Bourbon Street the French Quarter is delightful, with wonderful little restaurants and Dixieland bands. The locals say that they never go to Bourbon Street; it is too “trashy” (their word) and only for tourists, and the better food and music is elsewhere. They are right. There is nothing but Rock and Country on Bourbon Street itself; no Dixieland, no Cajun! What would Pete Fountain and Al Hirt say? But off Bourbon it gets interesting. The beignet at the Café du Monde are the snacks of the gods. And Old Man River rolls on toward the sea, reminding one of history as well as nature, two endless topics of fruitful rumination.

If anyone would like a copy of my paper, write me at dtw@tfc.edu and just ask.

Toccoa Falls College, Georgia

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Don October 1st, 2009

A correspondent on a philosophy forum that I frequent notes accurately that “many people on this board agree that certain aspects of Christianity require faith, and faith alone, since our human mind cannot grasp it.”

I am not one of those people. The phrase “faith alone” applies strictly to soteriology (how we are saved), not to epistemology (what and how we know). That is, we are justified by faith in Christ alone, not by faith plus works or human merit. But there is nothing that we believe by faith alone, i.e., by faith divorced from experience, reason, and evidence. People who say they do are simply too unaware of their own mental processes to realize that their experience and their personality are contributing tons to what they believe and why.

I personally try to believe in true things for good reasons in so far as I can. Whether I succeed or fail, faith and reason are working hand in hand at every point of the process.

 It’s all in Augustine, it’s all in Augustine.  What do they teach in those schools?

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Don September 25th, 2009

REVIEW:  “REVENGE OF THE SITH” 

[This review was originally published as “Film: Strider’s Screening Room, Star Wars Episode III” (review), Mythprint 42:6 (June 2005): 4-5.]

“Star Wars Episode III” is indeed much better than I or II; and that is what makes it much worse.

            In explaining my paradoxical judgment, I forebear to nit pick.  I will not ask why Jedi can apparently use their light sabers to deflect an infinite number of blaster bolts coming at them from every conceivable direction until order 66 is given, whereupon it suddenly becomes relatively easy for clone warriors to pick them off.  I will not ask how, if Padme dies right after childbirth, Leia can remember her mother as “beautiful and sad.”  (The conversation when Luke asks her about her memories in its own context always seemed to me to be about her real mother, not her adoptive one, because Luke is trying to establish some connection with his own, whom he now knows to be the same person).  I will not ask why, since the first Death Star is already well under way by the end of Episode III, and an entire galaxy of slave labor is available, it is only just being finished twenty years later at the time of Episode IV.  All this I omit, being studious of brevity and disposed to charity.

            O.K., then, on to the good part.  The first two movies did an inadequate job of building up Anakin’s nobility so that his fall could be from a sufficient height.  He was a cute kid and a bratty teenager, but when was he really noble?  But the first half of Episode III significantly ameliorated that problem.  We see a more mature Anakin with a better relationship to Obi Wan, who insists on saving Obi Wan during the rescue of Palpatine, and who is feeling a real loyalty to the Jedi order for the first time just as that loyalty is coming into conflict with the lies he has been fed by Palpatine.  I think we do see the Jedi he could have become, just in time for that destiny to be sacrificed on the altar of his misguided but natural and understandable ”attachment” to Padme.  This irony heightens the sense of tragedy, as does the horrible irony that the death he turns aside from the path to prevent is caused by that very turning aside from the path to prevent it.  That is an irony worthy of Oedipus.  At that moment the film rises to the archetypal and made me want to forget all the inconsistencies and plot-holes and grant that it had achieved in spite of them a grandeur rivaling that of the original trilogy.

            But  . . .  it all came crashing down into an incoherent mess because of one horrible, intolerable, and inexcusable line.  When Obi Wan confronts the newly fallen Anakin, he is convinced that the fall is real when he hears Anakin declaring that if Obi Wan is not with him, he is his enemy.  Obi Wan’s response is, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”  Well, I guess we see where that places Lewis and Tolkien’s Christianity, or any other traditional view that takes certain verities as unchangeable and non-negotiable! 

But let those of us who are believers bracket for a moment our personal disappointment and offense as Christians, and think of the line only as it functions in the context of Lucas’s mythology.  I wearily ask if you do not smell something fishy, not about the content of Obi Wan’s statement (which is bad enough), but its form.  It is an absolute statement!  Only a Sith deals in absolutes.  Therefore, if Obi Wan’s statement is true, then he, having just dealt in an absolute, is a Sith Lord too.  And if that is the case–and logically it follows inexorably–then what is the fight about?  What is the difference between the Light and Dark sides of the Force? 

A moment in the original series foreshadows this fall into shallow relativism.  Luke thinks he has been deceived about his father, whom Obi Wan had claimed to be dead—“from a certain point of view.”  Luke finds this rationalization incredible.  “You’re going to have to realize,” Obi Wan responds, “that a lot of the truths we hold depend greatly upon our point of view.”  Oh, really?  Then how do we respond to Anakin saying, “From my point of view, you’re evil”? 

Our ability to perceive truth depends on our point of view, of course.  It may powerfully influence what truths we are able or willing to accept.  But truth itself does not and cannot depend on our point of view.  If it does, Anakin’s “point of view” is simply unassailable and no basis is left for distinguishing between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force or for claiming that the choice between them is anything more than an arbitrary personal preference.  If only the Sith deal in absolutes, the whole Star Wars ethos collapses into nonsense so nonsensical that Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith” becomes simply impossible.  And the worst part is that it taints the whole mythos, three episodes of which I loved.  

Star Wars is more than just “escapist entertainment.”  It connects with some very basic and universal truths that our technological age tends to forget, and they, rather than great special effects, are why we care about it.  Many of them are consistent with the world view we get in Lewis and Tolkien, though in Lucas’s world they lack its biblical basis.  Self sacrifice in a good cause is noble and powerful (Obi Wan in Episode IV; cf. Gandalf at Moria, Frodo).  Choices have consequences, and you cannot use evil for good and get away with it (Yoda and the clones, Anakin wanting to use the Dark Side to save Padme; cf. Saruman, Denethor).  There is something inside us more powerful than technology (though Lucas’s new-age mysticism is vastly inferior to the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei as an explanation of what it is).  Little people, even flawed people, can make a big difference for good (Ewoks, an obscure, whiny orphan from the back side of a desert planet, a ne’er do well smuggler; cf. hobbits).  Evil is real and does great damage, but no one is beyond redemption (Vader in Episode VI; cf. Boromir, almost Gollum).  These truths are profound and important–and that is why I wish Lucas had worked a little harder to get his secondary creation right, rather than creating a mishmash of truth, error, and contradiction that is sometimes so flimsy that I can’t keep on believing in it even as fiction.  He should have paid less attention to Joseph Campbell and a little more to Tolkien’s “Essay on Fairie Stories.”  In other words, Star Wars could have been almost another Lord of the Rings, a work (the book supremely, the movies a little less so) that has all the same virtues (and more) without the same flaws.

            So then, you see why I say that “’Star Wars Episode III’ is indeed much better than I or II; and that is what makes it much worse.”  Because it does at times rise to the mythic power of the original trilogy, the message that “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” that, in other words, anyone who believes in absolute truth is evil, will be disseminated far and wide, and disseminated effectively to an audience with whom it will powerfully resonate.  Logic has little power with a generation that has been taught to “trust its feelings.”  But my message to them is this paraphrase of one of Obi Wan’s better moments:  “Be mindful of your thoughts, Master Lucas; they betray you.”

 Reviewed by Donald T. WilliamsToccoa Falls College

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Don September 15th, 2009

One challenge to the argument from desire (see the post of 9/14/09) is people who deny having any unsatisfiable desires. One person I read admitted that certain desires of his had never been satisfied perfectly, but maintained that they could be in theory, or that the satisfactions he could find in this life were good enough. How does one respond to this line? It’s rather like trying to convince the dwarfs in The Last Battle that they aren’t in a stable!

One conclusion might be that the argument from desire just doesn’t work with a certain type of person. Some of us are just too emotionally undeveloped–or jaded–to be susceptible to it. But I would suggest that we make a mistake by taking such people’s statements at face value. Solomon tells us that “God has set eternity in their hearts.” Either Scripture is wrong or the denial of transcendant desire is a smokescreen, a defense mechanism to protect dwarfish atheists from reality.

A person who is still human is not in fact satisfied by the temporal and physical, however hard he tries to convince himself that he is. But you probably can’t argue him out of his position. You can only try to arouse the desire, to fan it to the point where he cannot ignore it any more. And the best way to do that might be to talk about the foretastes of fulfillment we have already been granted in Christ, or just to live a life of transcendant openness to Joy before him.

If you can get him to read Thomas Traherne’s Five Centuries of Meditations, it wouldn’t hurt. “Things unknown have a secret influence on the soul, and like the center of the earth unseen violently attract it. We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us. . . . Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation of some Great Thing? . . . You never enjoy the world aright till you see how a [grain of] sand exhibiteth the wisdom and power of God. . . . You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars. . . . Infinite wants satisfied produce infinite joys. . . . You must want like a God that you may be satisfied like God. Were you not made in his image?”

Lewis learned the argument from desire from Augustine’s Trinity-shaped vacuum and his heart that was “restless until it rest in Thee,” as developed by  writers like Traherne and MacDonald. It will have a certain logical cogency–which Victor Reppert well analyzes (http://dangerouside a.blogspot. com/2006/ 09/bayesian- argument- from-desire. html)
–to those in whom Desire has been sufficiently aroused. The best service those earlier writers–and Lewis himself–may do us is to fan that flame. In it, let us burn.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 14th, 2009

One of C. S. Lewis’s many interesting contributions to Christian Apologetics is the “Argument from Desire,” which appears in Mere Christianity.  Nature does not create desires that have no fulfillment.  A duck wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water.  People get hungry; well, there is such a thing as food.  So if I find myself with desires that nothing in this world can fulfill, then I must have been made for another world.

Is this argument valid?  Maybe.  My hunger does not prove that I will get any bread, or that any given loaf exists; but it does prove I was designed to need nourishment.  John Beversluis contends that the argument fails as a syllogistic proof and refuses to consider it as anything else.  I’m not sure he is right on either count, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on the latter.   

There are more conclusive proofs for the existence of God than the Argument from Desire; but I do think that the argument has value. It points to a critical difference between human beings and other animals. A cat which is full and warm is perfectly contented. It just curls up and goes to sleep. A human being is mighty ill at ease if he is not full and warm, but when he has satisfied those desires he will pretty soon start asking, “Is that all there is? What’s next?”

I think we can say at minimum that the existence of beings who cannot ever be completely contented by the fulfillment of their physical wants is consistent with Christian Theism and less consistent with Naturalism. By itself it might not be a “proof” in any rigorous sense, but it is an important indicator and helps to confirm the conclusion we are led to by the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, by Lewis’s Argument from Reason, and by the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ.

One of Lewis’s forerunners in the Theology of Desire, George Herbert, described the human condition well in his poem “The Pulley.” The Argument from Desire in Mere Christianity can at least serve to focus our attention on the reality Herbert describes:

When God at first made Man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “poure on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisedome, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For If I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both would losers be.”

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness.
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.”

If like Lewis we examine our own history of desires and their fulfillment or lack thereof, I believe we will find that the results are consistent with Herbert’s perspective, and are less well explained by Naturalism. The Argument from Desire may not be a proof, then, but it is an indicator and a confirmation.

Longing but not (yet) satisfied,

Donald T. Williams, PhD

• Apologetics , Poems , Poets
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Don September 10th, 2009

LXXVIII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

Cassandra was a character from Greek legend, a prophetess who carried the curse that she would always tell the truth but never be believed.  As what was once a Christian civilization slips back toward barbarism with seeming inevitability, one cannot help but identify with her.  What would she say if she were with us today?

 Epistle from the Limbo of the Righteous Pagans

(Cassandra Speaks)

We were very ignorant, but there were some things we knew.

We knew that life is a narrow Bridge of time,

That both ends lie beyond the sight of men,

And the fathomless abyss lies before, and behind, and beneath.

The rails on the Bridge are Morality and Custom,

And they are all that stand between us and Chaos.

Freedom is found only on the Bridge,

For there is no freedom in chaos and destruction.

We also tried to find the thing that you call freedom.

On the other side of the rails there is Nothing.

Would you also be free from earth, and sea, and sky?     

Would you walk without the earth beneath your feet,

Breathe without air, swim without water?

Breath apart from air is suffocation:

Such is freedom from morality and custom.

So I say to you, get married and have children,

And teach them that doing right is the only thing that matters,

But that all the right they do will be insufficient

To cover all the wrong.  This is why

The sacrificial blood must always flow.

We did not know from Whom it had to flow,

But the blood that splashed our altars was far wiser in its way

Than your sky-topping prayer-towers of glass and steel and concrete

Dedicated to the praise of perfectible Man.

Raise your children, then, and teach them,

Carefully and painfully,

By precept and example that freedom cannot be found

Elsewhere than in the man who does his duty,

Who is faithful unto death, though it be hard,

And then that even this is insufficient.

That was all the freedom we knew how to find.

I will not say that there is nothing better than this

(You perhaps have heard strange stories of a Hope we did not have),

But we tried also all the gods that you are looking to

And found them nothing, Nothing, dust

And ashes,

Dust and ashes.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

• Apologetics , Poetry , Theology
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Don August 20th, 2009

 REVIEW:

“The Passion of the Christ”

Directed by Mel Gibson

This review appeared on ChronWatch, March 26, 2005. URL is http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=13698; rpt. in Free Republic, March 27, 2005, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1371955/posts.

“I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Jesus of Nazareth

            It is one of the chief ironies of history that the person who taught us to turn the other cheek and to return good for evil has been one of the most divisive characters we have ever seen.  That he remains so to this day is clearly shown by many of the reactions to Mel Gibson’s controversial portrait of his suffering and death, “The Passion of the Christ,” recently released on DVD.  Apart from the polarizing impact of the person of Christ himself, it is hard to understand the intensity of those reactions, both positive and negative. It is especially hard to understand the attacks on Gibson and on the film, and the passion with which they have been pursued.

            The two main raps against the movie are that it is anti-semitic and that it presents a skewed and unbalanced portrait of Christ marked by gratuitous violence.  It requires an astounding level of inattention both to the story and to Gibson’s treatment of it to maintain either thesis.  The outcry on both points has to be explained by something other than the merits or even plausibility of the complaints themselves.

            The film is allegedly anti-Semitic because it shows Jewish religious leaders finagling, and a mob of the Jewish people clamoring, for the execution of an innocent man.  One wonders how this particular bit of history is to be portrayed at all apart from the recognition that this was exactly what happened.  The incident in fact took place in the first-century Roman province of Judea.  Who else was there to do these things?   

Only the regrettable history of persecution of Jews by so-called Christians taking advantage of these facts can explain the level of denial in those elements of the Jewish community who object to any recognition of what actually happened.  It is almost like a kind of reverse Holocaust Denial.  For in the film as in the Gospels, Jews are portrayed as both good and evil.  Gibson even goes out of his way to emphasize this balanced portrait.  Bracketing Jesus himself (a Jew) for the moment, the most admired people in the film are Mary and Mary Magdalene (Jews).  And Gibson adds to the Gospel accounts a scene in which Simon of Cyrene (a Jew) risks his own life to take a stand against the cruelty of the Roman soldiers on the Via Dolorosa.  The most selfless act of nobility in the film aside from the passion itself comes from . . . a Jew.  And the most despicable characters in the film are surely neither Caiaphas the devotee of realpolitik, nor the clueless mob, but rather the Roman soldiers below the rank of centurion who enjoy the brutality of their job for its own sake.

            The film itself simply refuses to cooperate with the theory that it is anti-semitic.  And Gibson’s own statements in interviews have been equally telling. Asked point-blank by Diane Sawyer who killed Christ, Gibson’s reply—delivered with apparently spontaneous and heartfelt emotion—was, “I did.”  We all did.  It was our sins.  And he joined a long confessional tradition in Christian art of expressing that sentiment that goes back to Michelangelo and Rembrandt, who portrayed themselves participating in the crucifixion, when his own hand was shown driving the nail.  One finally gets the impression that it does not matter what Gibson says or what he puts in his movie.  Certain people are going to use it as an excuse to advance their own agenda regardless of what the evidence shows. 

Christians must realize that their own history of persecuting the Jewish community is partly to blame for helping to create the blind emotions that now seem to some Jews to justify this reverse Holocaust Denial.  And for this, Christians must be profoundly sorry.  But that history does not excuse the character assassination to which Gibson has been subject on this issue.   Nor does it excuse a refusal to deal with facts, the facts about Gibson’s film or the full facts about Christian history. Not all Christians can validly be implicated in the truly evil actions of some of their ancestors.  Nor can those ancestors be fairly portrayed as ever having been legitimately speaking for the Christian faith.  It is quite true that the Jews in the mob asked for Jesus’ blood to be held against them and their descendants.  It is also true that those Jews did not have the last word on the subject.  The last word on that subject belongs to Christ himself:  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Anyone who claims Jesus as Lord must adopt the same attitude on the subject of Jewish guilt for the crucifixion that He did.  And no one who does not adopt that attitude can claim to be speaking for Christ, no matter what ecclesiastical organization he represents. 

The second criticism tends to come from liberal Christians in mainline denominations:  that Gibson presents a skewed and unbalanced portrait of Christ marked by gratuitous violence and thus perpetuates a naïve and unsophisticated view of Christian faith.  This criticism has a bit more credibility than the charge of anti-semitism, for the film does indeed immerse us relentlessly in the full brutality of a Roman crucifixion.  It is at times hard to watch, even for people raised on the graphic violence of much modern cinema.  But this criticism also ultimately fails to convince, mainly because again of its inattention to the actual details of the film itself.  It breaks the most basic rule of interpretation, which was given to us by Alexander Pope long ago:  “A perfect judge will read each work of wit / In that same spirit that its author writ.”   For this movie does not attempt nor claim to attempt a balanced portrait of the life of Christ.  It is not about the life of Christ; it is about his passion, his sacrificial death to atone for human sin.  Its stated purpose in Gibson’s own words is to reveal to us the “enormity” of that sacrifice.  These critics are guilty of one of the worst and most common sins of critics, whether of movies or of books.  They say nothing about how well the work succeeds at what it is trying to do, which they have never bothered to try to understand, but rather criticize it for not being the treatment they would have preferred to attempt.  It is no valid criticism to say that an artist or a work of art fails at doing something which was never its purpose in the first place.

Only two questions are really pertinent:  is the work’s purpose worth attempting, and, if so, does it do a good job of achieving it?  For Christian believers, gaining a deeper understanding of the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf is central to their very concept of the purpose of life.  And even for non-Christians, being given an opportunity to understand what lies at the emotional heart of so many people’s faith can hardly be considered an unworthy goal. 

Gibson’s purpose, then, is a worthy one.  Does he succeed at it?  I think that, for most people who are open to that purpose, the answer is a resounding yes.  There is room for some discussion about the issue of gratuitous violence, not from those who have ruled out blood sacrifice in advance as being potentially relevant to Christian faith through a kind of theological question-begging, but from those who are willing to admit the necessity of some accurate presentation of the cruelty of Jesus’ death as essential to Gibson’s purpose.  For some, the film may present more reality than they can bear.  The question of whether the film might have benefited from some application of the “less is more” principle is worth pursuing.  But ultimately I think we will have to conclude that the violence is not gratuitous per se.  Even in the most controversial scene, the flogging, the camera often pulls back from the actual blows to record the reactions of those standing around.  The film audience is protected, as the actual audience was not, from the full reality.  But we definitely get enough of it to get the point.

And what is the point that we get?  I think it is often exactly the one Gibson wanted us to get.  This film is about Jesus’ passion–and it is about how that passion relates to us.  Jim Caviezel is the first actor ever to convince me that Christ might actually have looked—and behaved—like he does.  And I have yet to meet anyone who came out of the film hating Jews.  The most common reactions I have heard are either utter bewilderment or, more often, a profound emotional bonding with the character of Christ.  “Oh!  He did that for me?  How can I not love him?”

Others can talk about Gibson’s masterful use of cinematic technique.  My purpose here has mainly been to remove the stumbling blocks which unsympathetic critics have tried to put in the way of our appreciation of this film.  When those stumbling blocks are removed and the criteria of worthy purpose and powerful fulfillment remain, I must conclude that even if I were not a Christian I would have to give this film an A+.           

 Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in the hills of Northeast Georgia.    

• Apologetics , Theology
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