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Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Some More Introductory Character Development: The Fox
The Fox reminds me of Aristotle. He is inquisitive and bright-faced, and he seeks to learn everything about Glome—right down to the land’s flora and fauna. Aristotle, likewise, was a master of plants and animals and cataloged them his whole academic life.
Two of the Fox’s first lines, pithy little sayings he uses to cheer himself, are the following:
And
Now, I don’t remember the exact wording Aristotle uses, but he makes a point similar to the latter saying by explaining that there is a life which men should pursue because it is a truly human life, the only one worth living. Since we are different from animals in that we have reason, the life worth living must be a life devoted somehow to an intellectual development. As an educator, the Fox surely had this in mind for his educational charges, Orual and Redival.
He set about teaching philosophy, reading, and writing—though he would occasionally recite a line of poetry to Orual, who relished these moments. Often, the poetry would be followed by the line, “All folly, child.” The Fox was certainly attentive to reality, and tried to pry Orual away from all things mythical, poetic, and musical, except to sate her curiosity every so often. He wanted her to learn the “real” stuff of education.
As we’ll see later, however, this dis-emphasis on myth and deity might not be correct.
All is not folly.
-Chris
Two of the Fox’s first lines, pithy little sayings he uses to cheer himself, are the following:
No Man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.
And
Everything is as good or bad as our opinion makes it.
Now, I don’t remember the exact wording Aristotle uses, but he makes a point similar to the latter saying by explaining that there is a life which men should pursue because it is a truly human life, the only one worth living. Since we are different from animals in that we have reason, the life worth living must be a life devoted somehow to an intellectual development. As an educator, the Fox surely had this in mind for his educational charges, Orual and Redival.
He set about teaching philosophy, reading, and writing—though he would occasionally recite a line of poetry to Orual, who relished these moments. Often, the poetry would be followed by the line, “All folly, child.” The Fox was certainly attentive to reality, and tried to pry Orual away from all things mythical, poetic, and musical, except to sate her curiosity every so often. He wanted her to learn the “real” stuff of education.
As we’ll see later, however, this dis-emphasis on myth and deity might not be correct.
All is not folly.
-Chris
Sunday, December 28, 2008
An Opening Thought
In the opening paragraphs of Till We Have Faces, Orual, the narrator of the story, gives us her reasons for writing the tome. She burns with complaints against the gods of her land, and since her life is nearly over and her family secure, she feels she can finally voice these complaints. She writes her story, she says, “as if I were making my complaint of [the god on the Grey Mountain] before a judge.” She starts from the beginning and lays out the case against the local deity, for reasons we will presently see.
Orual refrains from writing in her native tongue, however. She had been taught Greek from a young age, so she writes the story in the hopes that a Greek speaker will bring her story to that land of free speech in the future.
As we read through this novel, my personal favorite of Lewis’, let us keep this plea in mind. The above quote is one of the opening lines of the novel, and it seems as if Lewis is asking us to do the same.
Is Orual justified in her anger? Have the gods wronged her family? Is she overreacting? Why is she so angry? What is the significance of the veil, of the idea of faces?
These are questions astute readers will ask. I have not read this in several years, so I will be dusting out the cobwebs, as well. I hope we can read this together and come to some intellectual stimulation and growth in the end.
Onward and upward!
-Chris
Orual refrains from writing in her native tongue, however. She had been taught Greek from a young age, so she writes the story in the hopes that a Greek speaker will bring her story to that land of free speech in the future.
Perhaps the wise men will know whether my complaint is right or whether the god could have defended himself if he had made an answer.
As we read through this novel, my personal favorite of Lewis’, let us keep this plea in mind. The above quote is one of the opening lines of the novel, and it seems as if Lewis is asking us to do the same.
Is Orual justified in her anger? Have the gods wronged her family? Is she overreacting? Why is she so angry? What is the significance of the veil, of the idea of faces?
These are questions astute readers will ask. I have not read this in several years, so I will be dusting out the cobwebs, as well. I hope we can read this together and come to some intellectual stimulation and growth in the end.
Onward and upward!
-Chris
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Evil & the Problem of the Fractured Body
The problem of evil is a problem. Anyone who doubts this should consider the wrenchingly haunting protests of Fyodor Dostoevesky's Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. Reading it again today, I was struck by the reasonableness of it all. He accepts as just the sufferings of "grown-up people," for they have eaten of the apple and have the knowledge of good and evil. And of course there's the promise that the wrongs will be righted, that the lion will lie down with the lamb, that there will be no more tears or pain. But, Ivan protests, "If all must suffer to pay for eternal harmony, what have children to do with it...?"
He shares a couple ghastly stories to bolster his point. There's the Turkish soldiers throwing babies up in the air and catching the baby on the bayonet--all in front of the mother. Or the five year old child whose parents beat her for no reason, smearing her face and filling her mouth with excrement, and leaving her alone in the night to her groanings and misery. How does the meaningless suffering of even just that one child justify the creation of a world where sin abounds?
Listen to Ivan's protest: "Do you understand why this infamy must be permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs him so much?" And, "It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for...if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price."
Ivan accepts God. He accepts that God could have created the world, given us free will, and allowed suffering and evil as a necessary condition for free will to truly exist. But it's too high a price, he insists. "And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket...It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket."
Those are haunting images accompanied with a haunting conclusion: most respectfully return Him the ticket. His protest demands the Christian's full engagement. But here is the curious and perplexing further problem: just where the Christian is confronted with so massive a problem, the Christian community has at least two responses with different premises. I am, of course, thinking of the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists response to Ivan. Thus, the problem of evil is compounded by the Christian community's own unique problem: just where a unified, coherent response is most needed, it has church divisions; just where the church should be a witness to God's shalom, it demonstrates conflict.
Whatever the case, the piquancy of Ivan's protest shows why the debate between Calvinists and non-Calvinists (what exactly are we to call them?) is so often heated and contentious. The beauty and truth of our Christian witness is at stake. Dostoevesky's response to Ivan's protest is not an intellectual argument (as important as that is), but the incarnational, Christ-like living of Father Zossima and Alyosha. And this is why the real problem right now may well be the problem of the fractured Body.
- Posted by David Lapp
He shares a couple ghastly stories to bolster his point. There's the Turkish soldiers throwing babies up in the air and catching the baby on the bayonet--all in front of the mother. Or the five year old child whose parents beat her for no reason, smearing her face and filling her mouth with excrement, and leaving her alone in the night to her groanings and misery. How does the meaningless suffering of even just that one child justify the creation of a world where sin abounds?
Listen to Ivan's protest: "Do you understand why this infamy must be permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs him so much?" And, "It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for...if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price."
Ivan accepts God. He accepts that God could have created the world, given us free will, and allowed suffering and evil as a necessary condition for free will to truly exist. But it's too high a price, he insists. "And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket...It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket."
Those are haunting images accompanied with a haunting conclusion: most respectfully return Him the ticket. His protest demands the Christian's full engagement. But here is the curious and perplexing further problem: just where the Christian is confronted with so massive a problem, the Christian community has at least two responses with different premises. I am, of course, thinking of the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists response to Ivan. Thus, the problem of evil is compounded by the Christian community's own unique problem: just where a unified, coherent response is most needed, it has church divisions; just where the church should be a witness to God's shalom, it demonstrates conflict.
Whatever the case, the piquancy of Ivan's protest shows why the debate between Calvinists and non-Calvinists (what exactly are we to call them?) is so often heated and contentious. The beauty and truth of our Christian witness is at stake. Dostoevesky's response to Ivan's protest is not an intellectual argument (as important as that is), but the incarnational, Christ-like living of Father Zossima and Alyosha. And this is why the real problem right now may well be the problem of the fractured Body.
- Posted by David Lapp
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