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littlemanpoet · 05-18-2002, 01:05 PM

Okay. I've made it all the way through this thread. I had avoided it for the first three or so months because I expected ALL of it to be precisely what page 1 was, effusive and over-generalized appropriation of LotR as a Christians' book. Just to make perfectly clear, I do follow Christ. I will even go so far as to name myself a Christian, albeit with much trepidation at all the inferences the word now carries.

Estel, I read your mammoth post with mental defensiveness firmly in place, and discovered I had no need of it. You reminded me of some aspects of my faith that I had been forgetting of late in an effort to free my mind of certain pharisaical tendencies I was brought up to believe a priori. Enough of the quite personal stuff, and my apologies for any wincings I have caused by it.

You raised one point, Estel, that I would like to pick up on regarding Lewis' use of Merlin in That Hideous Strength and its differences as compared to Tolkien's use of magic. As any of you who have read a certain "Serious Fantasy" thread may know, I have been writing my own piece for about fifteen years now; one of the initial "energies" behind it was an attempt to work in Lewis's assertion in THS that the naturalistic type of magic that Merlin used was no longer neutral because of the advent of Christianity. I wanted to work the implications of that in terms of a spiritual thriller after the manner of Charles Williams, while partaking of Tolkien's spirit of Faerie. Suffice it to say that it was an insurmountable task, precisely because the three "streams" seem to be mutually exclusive. Lewis, in THS, writes Faerie out of modern reality while Williams, in his spiritual thrillers, appropriates sorcery and witchcraft into Christianity in a way that would make many American Protestants absolutely shudder or worse; I can't imagine Tolkien agreeing with either Lewis' or Williams' assertions as I have presented them (I think correctly).

I'm not exactly sure why I felt it necessary or useful to present this, but I'll hazard a few guesses. We have here three different Christian approaches to Faerie and magic. It may be argued that one is truer to reality or Christianity than the others, or makes better fantasy than the others. It also points, possibly, to different tendencies within Christianity that fall along lines of historic schism (that is, Catholic/Protestant), as to "how we ought to think about things like Faerie". Perhaps it is safe to say, for example, that JKRowling follows a Charles Williams approach to Faerie.

I fear I may be venturing onto areas that are deemed cause to close this thread; if so, please ignore my effusions and continue with the themes as they are presented so far.

Nevertheless, I am curious as to any of your thoughts as to the possible connections between the writings of the authors I named above and the "how we ought to think abour Faerie" question. As you may have guessed, I don't necessarily know what I'm asking but I just wanted to open this can of worms/pandora's box/take a bite of this forbidden fruit [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] just to see what it produces by way of your responses.

05-18-2002, 01:05 PM	#186
littlemanpoet Itinerant Songster Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: The Edge of Faerie Posts: 7,066	Okay. I've made it all the way through this thread. I had avoided it for the first three or so months because I expected ALL of it to be precisely what page 1 was, effusive and over-generalized appropriation of LotR as a Christians' book. Just to make perfectly clear, I do follow Christ. I will even go so far as to name myself a Christian, albeit with much trepidation at all the inferences the word now carries. Estel, I read your mammoth post with mental defensiveness firmly in place, and discovered I had no need of it. You reminded me of some aspects of my faith that I had been forgetting of late in an effort to free my mind of certain pharisaical tendencies I was brought up to believe a priori. Enough of the quite personal stuff, and my apologies for any wincings I have caused by it. You raised one point, Estel, that I would like to pick up on regarding Lewis' use of Merlin in That Hideous Strength and its differences as compared to Tolkien's use of magic. As any of you who have read a certain "Serious Fantasy" thread may know, I have been writing my own piece for about fifteen years now; one of the initial "energies" behind it was an attempt to work in Lewis's assertion in THS that the naturalistic type of magic that Merlin used was no longer neutral because of the advent of Christianity. I wanted to work the implications of that in terms of a spiritual thriller after the manner of Charles Williams, while partaking of Tolkien's spirit of Faerie. Suffice it to say that it was an insurmountable task, precisely because the three "streams" seem to be mutually exclusive. Lewis, in THS, writes Faerie out of modern reality while Williams, in his spiritual thrillers, appropriates sorcery and witchcraft into Christianity in a way that would make many American Protestants absolutely shudder or worse; I can't imagine Tolkien agreeing with either Lewis' or Williams' assertions as I have presented them (I think correctly). I'm not exactly sure why I felt it necessary or useful to present this, but I'll hazard a few guesses. We have here three different Christian approaches to Faerie and magic. It may be argued that one is truer to reality or Christianity than the others, or makes better fantasy than the others. It also points, possibly, to different tendencies within Christianity that fall along lines of historic schism (that is, Catholic/Protestant), as to "how we ought to think about things like Faerie". Perhaps it is safe to say, for example, that JKRowling follows a Charles Williams approach to Faerie. I fear I may be venturing onto areas that are deemed cause to close this thread; if so, please ignore my effusions and continue with the themes as they are presented so far. Nevertheless, I am curious as to any of your thoughts as to the possible connections between the writings of the authors I named above and the "how we ought to think abour Faerie" question. As you may have guessed, I don't necessarily know what I'm asking but I just wanted to open this can of worms/pandora's box/take a bite of this forbidden fruit [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] just to see what it produces by way of your responses.