The Great Divorce

A friend and I recently discussed universalism in Christian history. He suggested I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which addressed the topic. I just finished it.  Lewis meant to contrast this work to that of William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake told of a union of the two.

In this fantasy, the no-name narrator awakes in a bleak, lonely city. He eventually discovers it's hell. Though anyone can wish anything into existence, they keep wishing new houses further and further apart from each other because they can't stand each other.

He finds a bus stop, and gets in line. He discovers the bus takes you to the beautiful foothills of heaven (on sort of a holiday). There the passengers can move on to the high country of heaven (in which case hell becomes purgatory for them).
After they roam around some, shining ones come to meet them and urge them on to the high country. Each shining one is someone they knew in their past life who has chosen to come down from the high country to urge the passengers to repent and move up. The narrator gets to observe these interactions.

Usually, the passengers have clung to something they refuse to let go of which would enable them to move up. The interactions provide the most fascinating aspect of the book. Through the narrator, you hear just about all the excuses and justifications for sin and self-absorption that basically exists. Sadly, most of the passengers can't wait to get back to the bus and return to the bleak city (hell).

The shining one guide for the narrator, who explains what is going on, turns out to be George MacDonald (a 19th Cent. fiction author, poet, and Christian minister) whom Lewis considered his imagination mentor.  MacDonald promoted the possibility of universalism (God's love will save everyone). The book in part seems to be a way for Lewis to reconcile himself with some of MacDonald's views.

Many of the issues of heaven and hell, salvation, predestination and election take a different perspective as the guide attempts to put them in the perspective of eternity instead of our linear way of looking at time. In any event, the guide conveys the notion that those in the bleak town have chosen to live there, and will not likely want to give it up.

In the end, the narrator wakes up and realizes it was all a dream which reinforces what Lewis said in his preface that all this was a fantasy - a means of exploring these issues (not a theological essay - which some seem to confuse it with - Lewis always renounced any claims to being a theologian.)

The Silence

I watched "The Silence," (Tystnaden in Sweedish) a film by Ingman Bergman from 1963. It's the third film in what is known as Bergman's "Silence of God" trilogy, "Through a Glass Darkly," (1962) and "Winter Light" (1962). I haven't yet watched the first two films, but I understand that what is implied there is made very clear by the third film, there is no God in the world, and thus only silence remains from the cold, bleak universe.

The story focuses on two sisters, Ester (played by Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (played by Gunnel Lindblom). Ester represents the intellectual (who is dying), and Anna represents the sensual. Yet both are bereft and without hope in their own ways, and both resent each other.

It's unclear where they are, but wherever it is, it is bleak, cold, dark, and all out war is about to break out, though they stay in a largely vacant hotel, where the only other guests seems to be a troupe of performing dwarfs, who are much more alive than the two sisters, though the dwarfs are despised in the social order and only tolerated at the theater.

Anna's very young son, Johan (about 9), serves as the only connection between the two sisters, the dwarfs, and the rest of the oblique, yet plush, hotel. (The camera angles there give a sense of alienation.) He is the only basis for an irrational hope in an irrational world.

It's quite clear that in a silent, godless universe, there's no basis for morality, and many in a 1963 were shocked by some of what goes on in the film. There's also no love, only sex, except for love for Johan, who provides the only real connection left between the two sisters, again providing the irrational hope in an irrational world.

Most find the film deeply disturbing, which is exactly what Bergman hoped to convey, and mainly why it is considered a great film. Bergman wants to disturb complacency with a realistic view of a nihilistic universe. However, in providing a sympathetic, curious, and mostly innocent child, Bergman points to an existentialist hope for meaning, hope, and love, though it is in the area of non-reason. Bergman's later works expanded on this existentialist hope.

(I previously posted on another Bergman film, "Hour of the Wolf.")

The Confessions - Book X

Book X marks a major division in the Confessions, since Austine ends his autobiography in Book IX. Augustine begins a journey into the mind and the soul.

He journeys into the mind by exploring memory. Augustine wonders how the memory holds so much, and can recall things and events not before us with such vividness at times that we can almost feel, touch, smell, hear, and even see it. Augustine cannot grasp the vastness of this storehouse, which means his mind cannot fully know itself, and "I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am."

Augustine goes on to examine the different kinds of memories, how they were formed from our senses, and ponders how our mind knows the external world through our senses, and then process those experiences and stores them in our memory. Part of this goes into epistemology - that part of philosophy that explores the basis for knowledge (how we know we know). Augustine wonders how we know about things we forgot about, as well as how we recognize things we haven't yet experiened. This delves into a-priori knowledge (knowledge before experience). Most importantly, Augustine explores how we know or recognize God before or without sensory experience.

It's questions and explorations like this that makes Augustine so read by so many, Christians and non-Christians alike.

From here, Augustine goes on to relate his search for God, and an examination of himself before God, a journey into his soul. He carefully considers what John broadly describes as the three main sins that encompases everything in the world, "the lust of the flesh. and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (KJV - see other translations for alternative )." As Augustine carefully examines each area in his life, he confesses he is full of sin, especially in the pride of life, since he often seeks the praises of others, and places that above seeking the approval of God.

Augustine concludes that he can find no safe place for his soul except in God.

Onto Book XI

Back to Book IX

The Shack

A friend recommended The Shack to me, not because he agreed with it, but because he found it thought provoking. I had heard about it from others, and some of what I heard was a bit discomforting, though they often highly praised it. I decided to read it for myself, especially upon hearing it had sold somewhere between 10 and 15 million copies.

William Paul Young (who goes by Paul) wrote The Shack, his first published book, as a fiction. However, those who told me something about it tended to treat it as something between a theological work or a true story. Though the sales figures show many love this book, many have attacked it as heretical, again treating it as a theological work rather than as a fiction.

Paul grew up as a missionary kid in West Papua New Guinea. There he suffered sexual abuse at school by members of the New Guinea tribe they lived among. His father verbally abused him, and he was emotionally distant from both his parents. Throughout his life, close friends and relatives died unexpectedly, often young. He later cheated on his wife, Kim. To remedy the adultery, Kim said he had to face every awful thing in his life.

Young initially wrote The Shack for his six children as a way to explain his understanding about God and how God helped heal his inner hurts. He gave some extra copies to friends who urged him to get it published. Two friends, Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, both writers, collaborated with him to rewrite the book. They sent it to many publishers who all rejected it, so they formed a new company, Windblown Media, and self-published it.

In the story, Mack, the central character, goes, at God's invitation, back to the place of his deepest hurt, the shack where a serial child killer murdered his 6 year old daughter, Missy. When he arrives, he finds that God the Father appears to him as an African-American woman (Papa), God the Son appears to him as a Middle Eastern man (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit appears to him as an Asian woman (Sarayu). Papa clarifies he chose this appearance for now to get beyond Mack's stereotypical pictures of him (he later takes the appearance of a man). They spend a weekend (or do they?) in discussion with Mack, sometimes all together - and sometimes one on one, sometimes in the Shack and sometimes outside near the Shack (one evening, Mack lays with Jesus on a dock staring up at the stars talking away). During that time, they explain to Mack who they are, what they want, but most importantly, they help Mack with the hurt and anger about Missy's murder, especially with his anger at God about it.

In a fiction, you can explore what ifs - it doesn't have to be true. You can explore something like, "what if the Trinity appeared to me in a shack - how would they appear to me?" You can explore different theological positions - they don't have to be true. You can even advance a message (usually called a theme in literature). However, good fiction usually advances the theme by relating the actions of characters rather than primarily by dialogue. And good fiction usually avoids making a character into a mere mouthpiece for the author.

A problem I have with The Shack is that the Trinity seems to mostly become a mouthpiece for expressing Paul Young's theology. While I thought some of it was spot on (especially about God's love and His desire to heal us), other aspects unabashedly contradict answers to the same questions orthodox Christianity carefully developed from Scripture to the same questions over two millennia. This is likely why Young has come under fire from many Christians. At the same time, many love his book, since many identify with the hurt place he is writing from, and the way he portrays God responding to that hurt.

Young expresses a definite theology. He attended Canadian Bible College and graduated from Warner Pacific College with a degree in religion. He attended (but did not complete) seminary, and pastored a church for a time. His favorite author is Jacque Ellul, who was heavily influenced by Karl Barth - a prominent neo-orthodox theologian. He made it clear in interviews that he has given up on the church, his seminary training, and what he would view as traditional Christianity. Most disturbing, Young often had the Trinity put the views they expressed above what the Scripture said.

Yet in many ways, I enjoyed reading The Shack, even if I didn't always agree with the theological views Young expressed through his Trinity characters. Because the book reflected the very real process Paul went through to seek healing from all his hurts, and because he initially wrote to communicate this to his children, there are many parts of the book that come across as deeply personal and very touching.