"The End is Near" - C. S. Lewis

You know the cartoon with the guy in the robe holding a placard that says "The End is Near"? You can view a selection of cartoons of this type here.

Well, here is a quote from C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man in which he sounds just like the guy in the cartoon.

"The practical result of the education in the spirit of "The Green Book"
must be the destruction of the society which accepts it."
(C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p. 27)

Yes, you read that right: C. S. Lewis is saying that any society which educates its young people by debunking the notion of objective value will thereby destroy itself. Lewis argues in this prophetic book that there is such a thing as value (goodness, truth, beauty) in objects themselves totally apart from our subjective evaluations of those objects. What he calls "The Green Book" is a high school English textbook that teaches relativism in the course of teaching English composition. He actually thinks that such books are destroying our culture.

But then, he is an Augustinian who accepts the Platonist-Christian synthesis that dominated the church for well over a millennium until the decline in realist metaphysics and the rise of nominalism in the later part of the high middle ages (Christendom) prepared the way for the rise of Modernity. He believes that the Divine Logos which created the world left the imprint of his rationality upon it and, since we bear the Divine image, we can rationally understand some of the truth about reality and we can discern the good and the beautiful, despite our having fallen into nature and the consequent loss of some of our rational capacity.

Lewis believed that value is not merely subjective. In The Abolition of Man he talked about the Tao, the common core of moral value held in common by Plato, Aristotle, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. The lectures published in this book were delivered to a secular audience so he avoided excessive reliance on terms usually associated with one religious tradition. But he is clearly talking about what the Western tradition has referred to as "natural law." Lewis ends chapter 2 by raising the question as to whether or not traditional morality can be retained by a society that rejects all supernatural bases for it.

Lewis does not answer this question due to the context of his lectures but it is clear that he thinks it cannot - at least not in Europe. Europe has been Christian for two millennia and it has no other soul or religion. It is either Christianity or secularism for Europe and Lewis argues that the relativistic, subjectivist secularism of mid-twentieth century Britain is an insufficient basis for traditional morality.

But to say it is an "insufficient basis" is not strong enough. Lewis is literally predicting the fall of Western civilization if it does not regain its soul, that is, if it does not experience a widespread and profoundly deep revival of the Christian religion in the near future. One senses without difficulty that the hour is much later than when he wrote these words in 1944 and that his prediction is coming true rapidly. A widespread and sincere acceptance of relativism spells the doom of the society that sinks to this state.

When a mild-mannered, Oxford don pulls on the burlap and digs out his "The End is Near" sign, it might be time to sit up and take notice.

The Relationship of the Legal to the Ontological: Matthew Lee Anderson on Universalism

NOTE:
This post has been altered since I put it up. By "altered" I mean I corrected an embarrassing mistake on my part. I misread Matthew Lee Anderson's sentence as if it meant the exact opposite of what he meant and a reader kindly called my attention to it. I have changed the paragraph below after the quote from Matthew: "The Great Divorce isn’t necessarily incompatible with a doctrine of hell that is grounded in penal substitution." I read it as a single negative instead of a double negative as if the "in" in "incompatible" were not there. Sorry Matthew. It isn't Matthew who has trouble reconciling penal substitution with Lewis' Augustinian view of hell, it is a broad swath of Evangelicalism in general. My point is valid except that it does not apply to Matthew.
____________

Matthew Lee Anderson is a very good thinker and in his post on Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, he has a paragraph (actually two paragraphs) that jumped out at me as especially insightful and, at the same time, especially revealing. He has both stated and illustrated what seems to me to be the single most important and also most profound problem in contemporary Evangelical theology. Here are the two paragraphs:

• One of Protestant theology’s central tasks in the 21st century is to articulate the relationship between the legal and the ontological. Focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter–which Protestants wary of Lewis’ doctrine of hell are always in danger of doing–will lead to an attenuated understanding of the ways in which our doctrines of heaven and hell play out in our lives.The Great Divorce isn’t necessarily incompatible with a doctrine of hell that is grounded in penal substitution. And Protestants interested in the latter would do well to work out the ontology.
• Because fundamentally, Bell–er, Lewis, Dante, Augustine–are all right that God will give us what we want. Of course, none of us want the good nearly as much as we might claim.

Let me comment on this passage sentence by sentence. I really think there is a great deal of substance here.

"One of Protestant theology’s central tasks in the 21st century is to articulate the relationship between the legal and the ontological." This is exactly right, although one wants to add that this has been true through out the history of Christian theology. In the middle of the last century the Biblical Theology Movement fell apart because of a misguided attempt to differentiate between the "Hebrew Mind" and the "Greek Mind" and this distinction soon degenerated into a reprise of Harnack's Hellenization thesis with the implicit justification of the Liberal Protestant reduction of theology to ethics and the immanentizing of the eschaton. The 20th century rejection of metaphysics took many forms - from the "functional Christology" my NT professor, Richard Longenecker, was always refuting, to the Nietzschean, postmodern program of deconstruction, to the attempt by Liberation Theology to ride the horse of history until it dropped of exhaustion.

"Focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter–which Protestants wary of Lewis’ doctrine of hell are always in danger of doing–will lead to an attenuated understanding of the ways in which our doctrines of heaven and hell play out in our lives." Protestants have lived for a century in reaction against the de-ontologizing of the Christian Faith by Liberals and there is nothing wrong with being a right-wing reactionary that a little historical perspective can't fix. The problem is our lacking of historical awareness; we have not done historical theology seriously enough. So we end up unconsciously assuming the anti-metaphysical (or better anti-sacramental) stance of late modernity without realizing what we are doing. We are suspicious of Lewis because we are used to liberals trying to deny sin, guilt, justification and salvation as forgiveness of sin. But because we start from a modern, non-sacramental metaphysical position, we cannot integrate the legal and the ontological, which makes us suspicious of any account of salvation that is not first and foremost juridical.

"The Great Divorce isn’t necessarily incompatible with a doctrine of hell that is grounded in penal substitution." The reason Anderson has to say this is because many Evangelicals think of the doctrine of hell solely in terms of moral punishment for sin and not in terms of ontological deprivation. We should not be suspicious that an Augustinian account of eternal punishment will vitiate a strong doctrine of penal substitution because the ontological and the moral are not separate, unrelated silos. Rather, they are affected by one another. [The preceding paragraph is different from the original post. See the note at the top.]

"And Protestants interested in the latter would do well to work out the ontology." I heartily agree with this statement. But when the ontology is worked out, the final result will not be the rejection of penal substitution or even the demotion of penal substitution to a marginal position in the overall doctrine of the atonement; rather, I think its ontological significance will be recovered. Within a sacramental ontology, I think, there is a need for an account of how goodness and justice meet each other in the nature of God and in the creation that reflects His glory. Hans Boersma's recent book, Heavenly Participation: the Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry, is a step in the right direction. I hope the book I am currently writing will make a modest contribution to the same goal. Very little work has been done on the question of re-thinking the doctrine of the atonement in the light of a recovered sacramental ontology. One thinks of T. F. Torrance as the exception that proves the rule, but his theology has not been engaged with sufficient vigor by Evangelicals yet.

"Because fundamentally, Bell–er, Lewis, Dante, Augustine–are all right that God will give us what we want. Of course, none of us want the good nearly as much as we might claim." Exactly. The problem of disordered desires requires not merely a re-ordering of desires, which is after all an ontological problem, it also requires forgiveness for sins done in the past and until the desires of our sinful hearts are completely healed and made perfect it requires on-going forgiveness. So the legal and the ontological work together and may even have some secret, inward connection. Is it possible that we become good by being loved? Is it possible that our weak desires are enflamed by the the seductive, attractive eros of God for His fallen creatures? Is irresistible grace at least partly the means of sanctification, not just justification? Is not forgiveness transformative?

Here all I can do is throw out a few cryptic remarks and hints. But I think Matthew Lee Anderson is talking about the important issues, as usual.

Magic in Harry Potter versus Magic in Lewis and Tolkien

One of the arguments for Christians accepting the Harry Potter (HP) books as fine for Christian children to read is that, even though there is an emphasis on magic and witchcraft, which are condemned by Scripture, are not magic and witchcraft to be found in stories everyone accepts as good, namely, The Chronicles of Narnia? This is a powerful argument on the surface and anyone who wishes to rule out Harry Potter as good, children's literature must come to grips with it.

Throwing out The Chronicles of Narnia (CN) and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) would be absurd for many good reasons. But if we are to criticize the one and praise the other, we must be able to specify the difference between magic in Rowling's work versus magic in the work of Lewis and Tolkien.

Fortunately, Michael O'Brien is up for the task. He argues that magic in the HP books is very different from magic and witchcraft in Lewis and Tolkien. Let me summarize his argument briefly with some thoughts of my own thrown in. (For those who wish to get their O'Brien pure and unfiltered, see his essay: "The War for Our Children's Souls" in Remembrance of the Future: Reflections on Our Times (Justin Press, 2009), which is a collection of his essays and shorter writings over the past 30 years or so.)

1. HP and the Occult:
He points out first that, unlike the CN or the LOTR, the HP books have sparked an interest among children in the occult and psychic phenomena. Citing research from the Barna Group in 2001, he shows that children who read HP are more likely to show an interest in occult and psychic phenomena such as seances, casting spells, mixing potions, fortune telling etc.

This is the weakest of O'Brien's points simply because interest in magic and witchcraft is higher today than two generations ago and HP may simply reflect the age, rather than being a cause. Still, it would make sense that HP is part of the "mainstreaming" of the occult much like Playboy was the mainstream of porn. So, while the exact relationship of cause and effect is hazy, the HP books are part of the growth of neo-paganism in our culture.

2. Magic and Witchcraft are Always Evil in Lewis and Tolkien:
The second point refers to the upsetting of the Christian symbolic universe in HP by making magic and witchcraft neutral in themselves and arguing that they can be used for either good or evil. In the Narnia books the White Witch is a traditionally evil figure and Aslan's powers are supernatural, but Divine in origin. Aslan aids the humans in the war against evil, but the humans do not wield "white magic." In fact, the fact that the witch is a "White Witch" may be symbolically very significant.

In LOTR, Gandalf is called a wizzard by others, but he is clearly stated to be one of the Istari, an order of beings between the angels and men. Basically, he is one of a lower class of angels. He is like a Guardian Angel and a guide to morality. His function is to elicit faith and goodness from elves, hobbits and men. He uses his powers sparingly and not to replace the moral effort of mortals.

Magic in Lewis and Tolkien always corrupts mortals when they try to wield it and the supreme example of this is the One Ring, which Boromir and his father wish to use against the Dark Lord, but which only corrupts any who try to use it. The only solution is to destroy it. Frodo's adventures in using it always turn out badly and he never really recovers from his wound on Weathertop when he put the ring on and was stabbed by the Witch-King of Angmar.

3. The Cosmos is Ultimately Impersonal and Ammoral in HP:
What I mean by this is that the universe of HP is basically a materialist one with no God and no Devil. Magic in HP is similar to technology in our world; it is a power wielded by a scientifically trained elite that taps into "natural" forces which seem "magical" to the uninitiated. There is a force or power in the universe that humans can access, according to HP, and it can be used for good or evil. The universe is ultimately impersonal.

Contrast this to the Christian metaphysics in which the universe is ultimately personal because God the Creator is personal. Good and evil derive from God and the Devil and so supernatural powers can never be neutral because they ultimately derive from either God or the Devil. Thus miracles done by Divine power working through human instruments are good while magic, which is a seizing of power illegitimately, is a gift of the Devil who works in fallen creatures to use them and ultimately to possess them. Therefore, the prohibition of magic and witchcraft in Scripture is ultimately rooted in the personal and moral nature of the cosmos. It is instructive that disaster befalls Narnia when a person in London dabbling in the occult causes a door to open between the worlds. In the Providence of God, Aslan uses the Pevensee children to repair the evil that results from the use of magic by mortals.

Conclusion:
The difference between the HP books and the Lewis/Tolkien books is that the latter are written within a Christian worldview and are meant to nourish that worldview imaginatively and hopefully in their readers. The HP books, by contrast, only challenge the worldview of modernity on the surface. In actuality, they reflect the materialistic worldview of modernity in which humans may safely grasp impersonal forces to use to impress their will on nature and other human beings. Ultimately this is because the HP books reflect a world without God.

The Subversive Conservatism of "The Lord of the Rings"

I spent the weekend watching the special extended edition of Peter Jackson's stunningly beautiful achievement. Can any good come out of Hollywood? In this case the answer is overwhelmingly "yes." I've collected 7 books on Lewis and Tolkien to read this summer on vactaion - along with my annual reading of their primary works - and this was just a warm-up. (I cheated by re-reading Lewis' space trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia this past winter.)

I believe that Tolkien's body of work - The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - is one of the greatest artistic achievements of the Christian Western despite coming so late in the history of this civilization; in fact, coming at a time when the West is in decline. The Silmarillion is an invented mythology for a culture that is deeply Christian. The Hobbit is a moving and loving tribute to the way of life that characterized the English countryside for a millennium prior to the Industrial Revolution. The Lord of the Rings is a morally and theologically profound meditation on good and evil, providence, the virtues (especially that of friendship) and personal moral responsibility. It is anti-revolutionary (in the Kuyperian sense) and conservative in the deepest sense of the word.

But what is the deepest sense of this poor misused and ill-treated word "conservative"? What struck me as I watched Peter Jackson's wonderful movies this past weekend was just how "medieval" Tolkien's world was in every conceivable way. Could "medieval" be the deepest meaning of the word "conservative"? If so, does this mean that we conservatives are merely nostalgic? Well, it all depends.

To be nostalgic, it seems to me, may be a good thing or a bad thing. It is a bad thing to have a romantic longing for a past that never was; in this sense nostalgia constitutes a refusal to live in the real world and is therefore essentially gnostic. It is an impulse to flee the world of space and time in which we are embodied and to aspire to the angelic world of pure spirit where we could be free of the burdens and limitations of the flesh. This sort of nostalgia is rightly criticized as anti-Jewish and anti-Biblical.

But if we have nostalgia because of a lament for a past that once was but has now been lost, then the above criticisms do not apply. In fact they can be turned back on those who make them because if the point is to live in reality, then what is - and was - real is the hinge upon everything turns. Was there a past golden age from which we have fallen or not?

The Christian doctrine of creation and sin affirms that there was and so constitutes a sign of contradiction in a modern age that has created a new mythology of evolution for the new civilization it desires to build. Evolution flatters us by telling us that we - we who live today - are the peak and summit of history and, indeed, cosmology. It is a rather clever way of reinstating man at the top. Having been demoted from the center by heliocentrism, man regains his lost prestige by by placing himself at the top of the evolutionary ladder. Sin is simply evolutionary hold-overs which can be shed through further and more intelligently directed evolution, by which is meant social engineering (the project of Mordor). Man can create himself by taking control of the evolutionary process, which is what the frantic investigation into reproductive technologies and the stubbornly persistent clinging to eugenic fantasies ultimately mean.

In the old cosmology - the medieval one - man is at the center of the universe by virtue of God's creation of man in His own image. In the new cosmology - the modern one - man is at the center of the universe by virtue of his own grasping of the mantle of "creator" so as to fashion future generations in the image of the conditioners.

In the evolutionary myth there is no past golden age, merely a story of progression from inorganic to organic to animal to human to scientific human. The golden age is in the future in a corruption and bowdlerizing of the Christian doctrine of creation. Specifically, what was censored out was the doctrine of the fall into sin. There can be no "fall" in an evolutionary myth: only progress upward or regress backward or a static lack of progress.

In the medieval worldview, there really was a past golden age in the Garden of Eden, which was a functioning myth in that culture, unlike in the modern one. Since human history is the story of decline from an ideal, rather than progress up from animality, in the medieval worldview it is possible that past ages might have been more noble than our own. This is not necessarily the case in every instance for history has it vicissitudes - there is both original sin and common grace, both evil and a restraint on evil - and so each instance must be investigated with an open mind because nostalgia in the bad sense is always a real possibility. But it is not a necessity.

The medieval worldview may be imperfect and subject to correction at certain points and yet be truer and better than our own. And that is the liminal possibility raised by The Lord of the Rings, which may account for the surprising fascination it exhibits for people in the modern world. It challenges the taken-for-granted assumption that this is the best of all possible ages. It casts doubt on the sacred cow of evolutionary progress by portraying an era that was less technologically advanced than our own, characterized by more physical toil and hardship that we know, beset by more dangers than we face and yet precisely for these reasons more open to the attraction of love, honor and fealty. It challenges us to wonder if we have made good trades in these matters. Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder and The Lord of the Rings causes us to wonder in both of the main senses of that word: to be in awe (which was Aristotle's intended meaning) and also to question our common assumptions (which is certainly in keeping with Aristotelian method).

The Lord of the Rings is a cracking good story, but it also raises questions that normally are kept submerged by our hedonistic, noisy, shallow, consumerist culture. In that sense it is subversive as well as conservative for the genuinely conservative must necessarily appear subversive in an age of perpetual revolution. The Lord of the Rings is conservative in the sense of being medieval and to long for the medieval world it portrays is not necessarily nostalgic in the bad sense. It all depends on whether that old myth in Genesis actually is truer to the space-time reality we inhabit than the modern myth of evolution.

Is a Heaven-Centered Piety Wrong?

I preached on heaven last Sunday and it was the culmination of a year of thinking through what I actually believe about this important doctrine.

Last Fall I read N. T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church (Harper, 2008). He put the case for what I have basically accepted for the past two decades and I found myself surprised by how disquieted I was by his argument. Having been raised in a conservative Baptist denomination and having, as an adult, come to the conviction that the Church should be more concerned about social justice issues through reading the likes of Ron Sider, Francis Schaeffer and John Howard Yoder, I nevertheless found myself resisting the attack Wright makes in this book upon traditional piety centered on the hope of heaven after death. And I found that the transparent motivation for those attacks displayed in his forthright argument in Part III that the Church should become more involved in social action and politics made me very uncomfortable.

I was uncomfortable because I knew that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the movements of higher criticism, Darwinist materialism, and the Social Gospel came into North American Evangelicalism from Germany in particular and resulted in major divisions in Protestantism between the Fundamentalists and the Liberals. Theological liberalism downplays or denies the supernatural, personal sin and salvation, and heaven and hell and replaces the "otherworldly focus" with a focus on social justice in this world. Aligning itself with secular, progressive politics, liberal Protestantism stoped trying to convert people to saving faith in Jesus Christ and started throwing its weight behind a multitude of social causes. What has followed has been the harrowing destruction of biblical faith in wide swaths of the formerly mainline, (now increasingly sideline), Protestant denominations and in large sections of Western Roman Catholicism (though the hierarchy has not capitulated).

N. T. Wright has a reputation as a moderate Evangelical whose theology of salvation is controversial. Evangelicals have a tendency to over-rate any mainstream scholar who takes a vigourous stand in favor of the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ (eg. Pannenberg) and this probably accounts for Wright's widespread popularity in Evangelical circles despite the many questions relating to justification and related topics. So he probably wasn't the best person for me to be hearing the down-playing of the emphasis on a personal hope of heaven after death, even if it was in favor of greater emphasis on the resurrection.

But I had to sort out why I was feeling uneasy with Wright saying what I have myself held for the past 20 years. I picked up a book at AAR by Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Catholic University of America Press, 2nd ed. 1988). Now here is where it gets wierd. I found that Ratzinger in this book basically re-affirmed, in a philosophically much more sophisticated manner, the traditional heaven-centered piety of my conservative Baptist youth.

His treatment of the Intermediate State was the best I have ever read and much more substantive and satisfying that Wright's rather thin gruel. His answer to the question of why the Synoptic Gospels focus on the kingdom of God, while John and Paul focus instead on Christology, is the simplest and most profound I have ever encountered. It is that Jesus Christ is the Kingdom. The Kingdom came in his person, so in the kerygma the only way to preach the same Gospel the incarnate Jesus preached was for the Church to make Jesus Christ himself the center of the message. This totally undercuts the liberal attempt to make Evangelicals feel guilty for not preaching the same message as Jesus did (eg. Brian McLaren and Jim Wallis).

Over the past year, I have also been reading a lot of Tolkein and Lewis. I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia (for the first time in years) and also The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillian (which I read annually in addition to watching the movies annually as well!). I also read Tolkein's Letters, which I found extremely interesting, especially his letters to his son about faith. In addition, I read Lewis's, The Discarded Image and Tolkein's Tree and Leaf. Repeatedly, I found myself pondering the remark by the Lord Digory in next to last chapter of The Last Battle:

"Listen Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia, you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or a waking life is from a dream." His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath, "It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden.

What does Lewis mean by "It's all in Plato?" He obviously means the metaphysics he has just described. The relationship between this world and heaven is like that of shadowlands and the real thing. N. T. Wright does not think much of Plato and makes all sorts of disparaging remarks about Plato in his book, which is a pity. He is a great biblical scholar but not so great a philosopher; for example, he can't seem to keep straight in his head the crucial distinctions between Plato, 2nd century AD Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. They are not all the same thing.

At the root of Wright's confusion (and he is far from alone in this - rather typical of Evangelicals, I'm afraid) is that he thinks that the Platonic concept of the ideas as enunciated by Lord Digory above makes this world unreal and unimportant. And he seems to think that it must mean that heaven will be a non-physical form of existence completely unrelated to this creation. But Digory (Lewis) is careful to say that all of Narnia that mattered had been drawn into heaven; would that critics of Lewis' (and the Great Tradition's) "Platonism" would remember that point. This earth is not as real as heaven, but it is not unrelated to it.

And it would be helpful if Plato's harsh and importunate critics would stop to reflect on the fact that Platonic influence on Christianity did not begin in the post-apostolic period, but in the period of Second Temple Judaism with the Wisdom literature and that what Digory says about the relationship between Earth and Heaven is basically the same as what the letter to the Hebrews says in chapters 8-10. Surely the biblical wisdom literature and Hebrews are neither Gnostic nor in the grip of a vicious anti-mater dualism?

The Bible goes much further than Plato; he only grasped a part of the truth. And the main point at which the Bible goes further is in the last two chapters of Revelation where Heaven comes down to Earth as the Heavenly City descends to Earth and Heaven is re-joined to Earth. I think that this description of what is in the Heavenly City says exactly what Digory says in his statement that nothing of value in the present world will be lost in the New Heavens and New Earth.

The four points of my sermon were:

1. Heaven is Where God Is - Gen. 1-3
- more precisely it is where God's presence is unmediated and that describes the Garden of Eden or Paradise

2. Heaven is Where God's Will is Perfectly Done (Matt. 6:10)
- no sin can enter there and so when man fell, he was exiled from Eden

3. Heaven is Where Christians Go When They Die (II Cor. 5:1-10)
- to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord

4. Heaven is Coming to Earth (Rev. 21-22)
- Earth is where there is sin and rebellion but when Christ finishes conquoring every enemy (I Cor. 15:20-28) he will hand over the kingdom to the Father and God will be all in all

Heaven exists now but it is separated from us by the metaphysical catastrophe called the Fall. It is still there, but we can't get to it except through the One who said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Tolkein's description in The Silmarillian of how the Undying Lands are now shrouded in mist because the world has been broken and how mortals are prevented from getting there by the Powers (his Angels) has helped me understand why heaven is described in such materialistic terms even though it is not part of this space-time universe. It exists, but access is temporarily cut off to us children of Adam and Eve. Plato had no idea of how the separation occurred, nor any clear concept of the split ever being repaired. The great hope of Rev. 21-22, which Plato never knew and which Tolkein's pre-Christian mythology does not describe except in the vaguest hints and hopes, is that some day that which has been divided by sin will be healed and re-united. That is the hope of heaven.

Answering Questions About Angels and Demons

Here is a terrific website set up by Westminster Theological Seminary, The Truth About Angels and Demons, to help you with answering questions asked by spiritual seekers or debunkers of Christianity who have read Dan Brown's novel or seen the movie.

Here is a good column by Ross Douthat in the New York Times on Dan Brown entitled "Dan Brown's America." He is right on in claiming that Dan Brown should be regarded as an evangelist for an anti-Christian religious position, rather than as a simple thriller writer/entertainer. He has a number of interesting links in his article as well.

The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons should be seen as an attempt to teach as well as to entertain and, as such, they constitute a reminder that the best teaching incorporates some features of entertainment. Think of the good accomplished by The Chronicles of Narnia: both good fun and great spiritual enlightenment.

Debunking Brown is necessary. But he will be defeated ultimately only by better Christian literature - better in every way, not merely less false in its teaching, but better as literature.

C. S. Lewis and Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins

Alan Jacobs has a short piece on Dawkins called "Sir Richard Rides Forth to Slay Another Dragon" that treats Dawkins and his anti-fairy tale crusade with just precisely the degree of seriousness it deserves.
http://theamericanscene.com/2008/10/29/sir-richard-rides-forth-to-slay-another-dragon

As I was reading the piece by Dawkins the other day, the thought occurred to me that perhaps C. S. Lewis prophecied the coming of Dawkins in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This evening, I looked it up. Lewis began his book as follows:

"There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. . . . He didn't call his father and mother "Father and "Mother," but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open." (1)

Apparently, Dawkins regrets not growing up in such a home as this. He laments the fact that his parents actually allowed him to read fairy tales and wonders if it might have "damaged" him. He concludes that it is a subject for "research." Lewis again:

"Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." (1)

It is interesting how Lewis' description fits our earnest scientest so well. Maybe that is because Dawkins' viewpoints are not at all "up-to-date," but rather the same old "modern" stuff we have been hearing about ever since the 18th century. It says something disturbing about our society that all you have to do is put a white lab coat on a guy and people think he is a great prophet and oracle of wisdom - when he wouldn't even recognize a dragon upon meeting one.

"At the bottom of the cliff a little on his left hand was a low, dark hole - the entrance to a cave perhaps. And out of this two think wasps of smoke were coming. . . . Something was crawling. Worse still, something was coming out. Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized it at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books. . . " (68)

What a pity. He had read none of the right books. A pity indeed.