If you're so moved by fictional characters accomplishing things that are supposed to be great in fictional books and movies, what are you trying to accomplish in your life?
I was addressing whether people who hold a high view of fiction also hold a high view of life. Most of your response is about whether and how we should hold a high view of fiction. Those are different subjects.
There isn't much dispute about whether fiction can be good. Not many people deny that it can be good, and I don't deny it. Eating can be good, but a man who's overweight probably doesn't need to be told that. And it wouldn't make sense to act as if telling him about the potential goodness of eating is just as important as telling him about the problems with abusing food. The same principles are even more applicable to the abuse of fiction, partly because there's far more of a cultural consensus about the negative effects of abusing food than there is about the negative effects of abusing fiction. The danger of people thinking that fiction is inherently bad in a context like modern America is small. The dangers of people thinking too highly of fiction, too little of life, spending too much time on fiction, etc. are large. I've argued for these conclusions, with a lot of documentation, elsewhere (e.g., here, here, here).
Americans have spent a lot of time on fiction, doing things like watching the Tom Hanks movie you referred to. They think highly of fiction and the accomplishments of fictional characters, but they don't have a high view of life or attempt to accomplish much in their own lives. Evangelicals in contexts like America have been giving much of their lives (too much, I've argued) to fiction. Few of those Evangelicals are doing much in contexts like the ones discussed in the threads linked above.
I agree that fiction can be good, and I agree that Christians and others should improve what's being done in that field. But good fiction, like other good things, can be abused (as in my food analogy). People can spend an inordinate amount of time on good fiction, for example. The goodness of the fiction doesn't change the badness of the amount of time spent on it. And producing good fiction is different than consuming it. We need to keep in mind that the large majority of people involved in fiction are consuming far more than they're producing. It may make sense for an unusually good fiction writer to spend a certain amount of time on writing fiction, whereas it would be wasteful for a reader to spend that much time reading fictional works.
But, again, those are different issues than what this thread is about. Even if we assume that a fictional book, for example, is good and that it was worth producing and reading under the circumstances, the question remains of whether the reader is living a life consistent with what he values in that book. Our culture has a major problem with inconsistencies in that sort of context.
I've already addressed most of what you've brought up, in one form or another, elsewhere on this blog. I linked a few of the relevant threads earlier, and there are many more in the archives. I'll make some comments on issues I don't recall having discussed here before, or reiterate points I think are worth repeating, but I'm not going to repeat everything I've said on previous occasions.
Good fiction is going to be defined differently by different people, and it will range across a spectrum under each person's definition. If Pilgrim's Progress and the Tom Hanks movie you referred to (which I haven't seen) are both to be considered good fiction, that doesn't mean they're at the same place on the spectrum of good fiction or even close. One might barely qualify as good, whereas the other is much better.
And what's at stake in each situation in which we could be involved in fiction is going to range across a spectrum. Let's say your son was taught something in school today that's problematic. It's not a major problem, but it is moderately bad. You could talk to him about that situation or watch the Tom Hanks movie you referred to. The fact that nothing major is at stake in what decision you make doesn't change the fact that there's some significance to your decision and that you have to make a choice. We can't just draw a line at the fundamentals of the faith you referred to (which is itself a disputed standard). Even when something falls outside the most foundational issues of life (outside what you referred to as the fundamentals of the faith), Ephesians 5:16 and the other Biblical principles I've discussed (such as in the threads linked earlier) have to be applied.
Regarding the abuse of good fiction, one form it often takes is the sort of situation I just referred to. Parents don't address the issues they should address with their children, because they underestimate the significance of those issues, expect other people to do too much of the work (e.g., expecting too much from the church they attend), or whatever. I frequently hear from people who are looking for help with issues in theology, apologetics, ethics, or wherever else and refer to how nobody in their closest circles, whether parents or others, seems able and willing to provide that help. Yet, we live in a culture in which parents and others involved spend so much of their time on the sort of good fiction and other activities you've referred to. We have to prioritize, and good fiction ought to be on the chopping block far more often than it is.
Given how little significance there is in things like the Tom Hanks movie, watching Hamlet at a theater, and some of the other activities you've referred to, it wouldn't take much for something like that to be outweighed by another activity, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't always equal. Less significant activities are often acceptable, sometimes even preferable, because of other factors involved (the interests of other people, the need to make a quick decision, health problems, etc.). Even when people make bad judgments on these issues, there often are mitigating factors involved (e.g., the complexity of the situation, peer pressure, the potential for people to misunderstand and misrepresent a good judgment on the subject if you made one). I typically try to avoid naming names or singling out individuals in some other way on time management issues like these. I allow for a lot of unknown variables and mitigating factors, and I try to be gracious to individuals. I tend to give people more of a benefit of the doubt the more I see good things in their lives, even if the good things are accompanied by other things that seem bad or seem to have a lot of potential to be bad. And even if I think somebody is wrong about a matter of time management, I typically don't bring it up. However, the general principles involved in issues of time management, like the ones that have come up in this thread, need to be addressed, even if individuals aren't going to be singled out most of the time. These issues don't get discussed enough, and people don't care about them nearly as much as they should.
There's a lot more that can be said, and people can find other relevant discussions in the archives if they're interested. But I get the last word here. I typically delete off-topic posts. They disrupt discussions, require that the blog administrators take unplanned time to moderate those off-topic posts, waste other people's time (e.g., people going here to read about one topic only to find another one being discussed instead), give people an illegitimate platform at the expense of other people involved, and so on. Administrators can let off-topic posts remain up if they want to, but I usually don't. Your latest posts interact with the topic of this thread to a small extent, and I'll respond to that material below. You can reply to that post if you want to, but not to my latest comments on the off-topic issues.
Rob L. wrote the following, which is relevant to the topic of my original post:
"A Christian doesn't always need to live their life in consistency to what's valuable in the fictional work. They can simply enjoy the fictional work on its own terms. A fictional work doesn't need to be a means to an end; it can simply be an end in itself. A non-musician can simply appreciate and enjoy Vivaldi's The Four Seasons without feeling they are deficient in some way because they don't live a life consistent with the seasonal themes in the concerto."
There's a sense in which everything other than God needs to be considered beyond itself rather than as an end in itself (1 Corinthians 10:31). But even if we allowed some exceptions to what I referred to in my original post, it could still be generally true. Christians in general are called upon to run in such a way as to win (1 Corinthians 9:24), to walk in a manner worthy of the calling described in Ephesians 3 (Ephesians 4:1), etc. And we generally expect people to be consistent. Are you suggesting that there's nothing generally wrong with admiring greatness in fiction while not trying to accomplish anything great in life? The form of greatness we seek can't always be the same as what we admire (e.g., we can't have some of the great attributes of God, we're incapable of doing some of what's done by other people), but we can still try to accomplish great things in some form that's consistent with our admiration of greatness in fiction. I'd expect you to agree with that, even if you want to mention exceptions like the ones I just referred to in parentheses.
About trying to accomplish anything great in life, it depends what you mean by 'great' and what's 'great' can vary between individuals since we are not all born with the same talents, opportunities, or circumstances in life, but I do believe we should try to live lives where we decrease (humility is true 'greatness') and Christ increases (we glorify him). But why is admiring greatness in fiction always or generally supposed to result in attempting something great in life?
My original post assumes that a person has a pattern of admiring great accomplishments among fictional characters. We would need some relevant difference between contexts (between the fictional and the nonfictional) in order to not expect the pattern to continue from one context into the other. Nobody in this thread has demonstrated a relevant difference. Some of your comments in this thread suggest you expect continuity between people's views of fiction and their views of life, such as the comments in your first post referring to how you "strive to live like" characters in fictional contexts. How is fiction inspiring virtues in life if we shouldn't expect the sort of continuity I'm referring to?
You referred to how people are born, but circumstances can and do change over time. A person who demonstrates certain qualities earlier in life will be given more opportunities later, for example. We often see reversals in life, as with Joseph and Daniel. There are prominent themes in scripture about how nothing is impossible with God, how the last in this life will be first in the next life, how we should hope in God "who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9), and so on. The circumstances we're born into have some relevance, but they don't refute the point I was making. Something like prayer or fasting can be an instrument to accomplish great things even in the lives of the people born into the worst of circumstances. History provides many examples of people who have had a great influence through ideas, prayer, persuading significant individuals, evangelism, or other means available to the population in general. And we're told to run in such a way as to win (1 Corinthians 9:24), to walk in a manner worthy of the high calling discussed in Ephesians 3 (Ephesians 4:1), to make the most of our time (Ephesians 5:16), to make the most of our opportunities (Colossians 4:5), etc. Given how little we know about the effect we'll have, how can we claim to know that we won't accomplish anything great (Esther 4:14)? Why not try? Even when people respond poorly to a great effort to accomplish something great, the effort remains great and can produce great effects in this life and the next (e.g., setting an example in the context of suffering), even if the primary effect that was sought wasn't accomplished.
But our circumstances are often of a much better nature than the worse circumstances I've addressed above. That's especially true of people living in a setting like modern America, where we have so many advantages (Luke 12:48). In that kind of setting, people should be attempting to accomplish more accordingly.
You wrote:
"A good can be both an instrumental good and an innate good."
Yes, you do grant it, as your comments that follow demonstrate. Your next sentence assumes "a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters", which is the assumption I was referring to. And it would make no sense for you to deny the assumption. On what basis would you deny it? That you somehow know that such people don't exist and that, therefore, I shouldn't have discussed such people? That you somehow know that it's probable that they don't exist? Or on some other basis? I can offer a counterargument to such objections, if you want to raise them, but you would first need to explain whether you have such an objection in mind and, if so, which one. But since you claimed to not be granting my assumption, only to go on to grant it in the next sentence, the ball is in your court at this point.
You wrote:
"I grant that a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters can take inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters. But I do not grant that a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters necessarily takes inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters (or should take inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters)."
My original post was about people who admire great accomplishments in fiction, yet don't live accordingly, so I obviously wasn't saying that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction always live accordingly. I wasn't saying that living in such a way necessarily follows in that sense. If you're using "necessarily" differently, in the sense that they should live that way, then that's a significantly different issue, and it would be better to use a term other than "necessarily" to convey it. It's unclear whether your second sentence quoted above is meant to address two different positions ("necessarily" and "should") or one.
And I provided an argument for my view that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction should live accordingly. You ignored it (i.e., the argument from a pattern that we have no reason to expect to cease when going from fiction to nonfiction).
"Also, if you agree a good can sometimes be an innate good as you say you do, then that favors what I have said against what you have said. If a person can admire The Pilgrim's Progress, Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, or other fictional works in their own right, as good works of fiction, and not as instruments by which to become more virtuous, then that would seem to settle the issue."
Saying that a good can be both an innate good and an instrumental one isn't equivalent to saying that the particular works you've cited are in that category, and the fact that they can be viewed that way doesn't tell us whether they should be, how they should be, or how many people view them that way. I cited 1 Corinthians 10:31 earlier. Food can be enjoyed for its taste, and it can be an instrument for glorifying God. But the way we enjoy food differs from the way we enjoy Pilgrim's Progress. There's a moral component to Pilgrim's Progress that food doesn't have. The fact that both can be thought of as innately good and instrumentally good in some sense doesn't change the fact that they're also different in other ways. The fact that there can be, say, an atheist who reads Pilgrim's Progress as good fiction without thinking it has any relevant moral components, for example, doesn't mean he should view the book that way or that it's even morally permissible to do so, nor does it give us reason to think the average person who admires attempts to accomplish great things in Pilgrim's Progress is admiring them the way that atheist does. The atheist could represent a small minority, and surely does in a context like this, so the fact that somebody can read the book in the wrong way he does is insignificant.
You wrote:
"Fiction is a very broad category."
My original post wasn't about fiction as a category. It was about a particular aspect of fiction, namely the accomplishing of great things by characters in fiction. And you said you agreed with my points about Biblical passages related to the accomplishment of great things. Those Biblical passages involve commandments, and there's a moral component to that. But even without that sort of moral dimension, there would be significance in asking why these fiction audiences are being inconsistent in the way I was addressing.
You wrote:
"Please yes of course you should have the last word."
I made my comments about having the last word on Wednesday, in response to your off-topic material. You're now, on Friday, referring back to those comments, after we had some on-topic discussion between those two points in time. Why would you wait until Friday to respond and write your response as if I had been addressing your on-topic comments?
"For the simple reason that I must have missed your comment that you wanted to have the last word. But I did reply to it when I saw it. Your comment changed the tone of our discussion and that is why I backed away. But if you want a continued discussion then I am willing to continue it, too."
I'm going to respond in a lot of detail about this subject, partly to document why I'm handling this exchange with you as I am and what sort of circumstances the administrators of this blog (and others in similar situations) have to sort through and why we do what we do.
I put up four posts in response to you on Wednesday. You're now suggesting that it wasn't until Friday that you realized you had "missed" the Wednesday comments in question. But your Thursday post only responded to what I said about your on-topic material, as if you had read the relevant Wednesday comments at that point on Thursday. And my comments about my having the last word were made in the second of four posts. You responded on Thursday to what I said in my third post. How did you miss the comments in the second post, yet notice my third post just below it (and maybe my first and fourth ones as well), then just happen to only respond to what I said about your on-topic material, even though you didn't yet know I had told you to do that? In other words, if it wasn't until Friday that you'd learned of my comments on how you need to only post on topic, why did you start doing it on Thursday (which involved not responding to three of four posts, the large majority of what I'd just written in response to you)? If you just happened to start abiding by what I told you to do on Wednesday, even though you had missed my Wednesday comments, that would be a highly unusual coincidence. Then, your Friday post saying you wouldn't respond to me any further came three minutes after a post in which you did respond to me. Did you scroll the screen up and notice some material from two days earlier that you had missed, think through the implications of that material, decide what to do in response, and compose and post the comment saying you wouldn't respond to me any further, all within three minutes? Or did you know about my Wednesday material before any of your Friday posts went up? If so, why did you put up your first Friday post? In either one of those scenarios, why didn't you delete your first Friday post instead of putting it up, then putting up another post three minutes later saying you weren't going to post any further in deference to what I'd said on Wednesday? And if your decision not to post further was based on my tone, as you now claim, why did you show so little concern about my tone the first few times I mentioned that your comments and ANNOYED PINOY's were off topic? I wouldn't have had to tell you that you weren't allowed to post any further off-topic material if you'd honored what I'd said about the subject those first few times (or hadn't gone off topic to begin with).
And the issue isn't whether I want a further discussion with you. Saying you could keep posting on-topic material if you wanted to isn't equivalent to saying I want you to do so. When a discussion is public, like this one is, I take factors into account that I wouldn't be considering in a different setting, like the potential to benefit a larger audience. I usually wouldn't continue having a private discussion with somebody who's behaving as you have. And even though there are advantages to continuing a public discussion like this one, it's a mixed situation. There are bad things involved along with the good. It takes time, attention, and other resources to keep responding to you, and I keep getting ridiculous behavior in response, like what's described in the paragraph above this one. Non-administrator posts automatically start going into moderation three days after a thread begins. The value of continuing to let your posts be published is diminishing rapidly. I'll make decisions about how much of your future material to publish on the basis of the circumstances at the time.
You wrote:
"No I do not grant it completely as my following comments explain. I explained how I grant it in one sense and I explained how I do not grant it in another sense. I will assume I gave a poor explanation and therefore I will try to explain it, again. You say your post was about 'people who admire great accomplishments in fiction, yet don't live accordingly.' But the problem is there is no necessary connection between people who admire great accomplishments in fiction AND how the same people live, whether or virtuously or not. It CAN happen, but it does not NEED to happen, not even generally speaking."
The assumption I was referring to is that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction are being addressed. In other words, my original post was talking about those people. For you to respond by saying that a majority of those people won't necessarily do X (whatever X may be) is irrelevant. Similarly, if I put up a post talking about atheists, and I say later that my post assumes that atheists are being discussed, it would be irrelevant for you to respond by saying that you only partly grant my assumption, since atheists don't necessarily do X.
And you're continuing to use the overly ambiguous language of what's "necessary" and "needed". I explained the problem with using that sort of language, but you keep using it without interacting with what I said.
"But the title of your post said these people have a 'high view' of fiction but a 'low view' of life. Therefore you are making a connection between reading 'high' fiction and the resulting 'low' behavior."
First of all, titles (for posts, books, movies, or whatever) are typically intended to be brief, and they often leave out qualifiers in order to have that brevity. Sometimes titles are deliberately ambiguous, perhaps because they involve an intended double meaning (or more than two meanings). If the text of a post that follows its title suggests that a particular aspect of fiction is in view, not fiction in general or high fiction in particular, then the title should be interpreted accordingly. It's clear that my post was about a particular portion of fiction and life, namely the accomplishing of great things. In other words, it's about a high view of fiction and a low view of life in a particular context. Even if you hadn't noticed that initially (you should have), there's no excuse for you to be appealing to the title of my post the way you are now, this far into the discussion.
Secondly, the title of my post mentions a high view of fiction, not high fiction.
Third, I didn't suggest that low behavior results from reading high fiction. The fact that a low view of life is present in a person who holds a high view of fiction doesn't suggest that the latter produced the former.
You wrote:
"Not all or even most fiction is meant to be morally instructive or morally exemplary."
The author's intentions (or the intentions of somebody making a movie, etc.) aren't all we take into account. An author may write about an evil character without intending to promote evil. But the audience's reaction to what the author wrote (and my first post in this thread discussed the audience's reaction) is a different matter. And even if an author doesn't intend something to be morally instructive or exemplary, it can have moral dimensions that an audience reacts to. Some topics are of an inherently moral nature. Or an author may not be aware of some moral assumptions he's making, he may not be aware of some moral issues, etc. There are many potential scenarios along these lines. I've argued that trying to accomplish great things in life is a moral issue. Even if an author doesn't agree with me about that subject, his disagreement doesn't change the fact that he's bringing up something that I consider morally significant.
"Therefore if a person reads or watches fiction that's just meant to be fun or refreshing, then I would not expect their lives to be morally changed by it, whether in good or bad ways. Their lives are morally the same before and after."
It's not that simple, for reasons I've explained in this thread and elsewhere.
And the evidence we have suggests that something worse than what you're referring to happens far more often, including among Evangelicals. We can look at polling data and other evidence to see what views people have of God, what they value most in life, how they spend their time, etc. The large majority of Americans, including most Evangelicals, say they find the most meaning in life from a non-religious source (family, etc.). Americans spend about five minutes a day on religious and spiritual activities and about five hours a day on leisure and sports. And so on. So, we should ask why people are finding certain things "fun or refreshing" and not finding other things to be so. We should take note of how little joy, excitement, enthusiasm, and such people have for God, defending the honor of God, speaking highly of him to other people, working to benefit other people, and so forth. Why is their "fun or refreshing" of such a frivolous nature, and why do they have such apathy and contempt for, or only a little of a positive response to, more substantial aspects of life, like what I referred to above? And as I've noted in previous discussions on issues like these, it's not as though something like reading a fictional book or watching a fictional movie is the only opportunity people get to rest, enjoy something easy, or whatever. We spend several hours a day sleeping, however long eating food, we frequently listen to music in various contexts, etc. To say we need more time to do such things, for things like the sort of "fun or refreshing" fiction you refer to, is something that needs to be more critically examined and treated with a lot of caution, especially in a cultural setting like ours. Even if spending time in the way you're referring to is justified in a certain situation, it needs to be handled with far more carefulness than the vast majority of people apply to the subject in our culture.
Then there's the issue of whether the fiction you're referring to is truly morally neutral. The issue here isn't just whether you can come up with a hypothetical or actual example. Rather, we should ask how often that sort of fiction is produced and whether that sort of fiction is what's actually involved in a context like modern America. How do you get through a 200-page book or a 2-hour movie without any moral content? Moral characteristics don't have to be explicit or widespread in order to be present to some extent.
"I grant that the pattern sometimes or even oftentimes exists, but not grant it exists in most cases or generally."
First of all, my post addresses cases in which such a pattern does exist, so your responding that you don't think it exists in most cases is a changing of the subject. If I write a post about atheists, what's the significance of responding by saying that atheists are a minority of the population? That doesn't change the fact that I was addressing atheists.
Secondly, are you saying you doubt that most people in fiction audiences admire great accomplishments in fiction?
You wrote:
"Because there is a general pattern of admiring greatness in sports or war movies about heroic men accomplishing heroic things does not mean there is the same general pattern of admiring greatness in futuristic or fantasy movies where the characters have abilities that no one in current nonfiction would have."
The fact that characters in futuristic and fantasy movies have abilities nobody in nonfiction has doesn't suggest there are no great accomplishments in any relevant way in those movies. A futuristic or fantasy movie character can still accomplish something great through courage, perseverance, or some other attribute present in current nonfiction. And even their great accomplishments obtained through attributes not present in current nonfiction are relevant, for a reason I explained earlier. Great accomplishments of type A aren't the same as great accomplishments of type B, but they do have some common ground. Individuals like Moses and Jesus had abilities we don't see in current nonfiction, but we still admire their great accomplishments, both the ones we can emulate and the ones we can't.
But why would there need to be the sort of pattern you refer to in the movies in question in order for my position to hold up? It's not necessary for my position. You keep bringing up irrelevant issues.
"And my argument wasn't based on statistics, but it was based on a principle, and you said you agreed with the principle."
Your argument depended on your concept of an innate good, and I've explained that there can be a moral dimension to what's innate. My point about statistics was that most people wouldn't see Pilgrim's Progress as innately nonmoral. That's relevant. The fact that somebody, such as an atheist, can see the book in nonmoral terms isn't sufficient to make your point. If the book is, objectively, of a moral nature and most people see it that way, then both of those facts are relevant responses to your comments about how the book can be seen.
You wrote:
"We can discuss this but I would not want to go off-topic against your wishes."
It's not off topic. I've argued that there's a moral component to accomplishing great things, but my original post doesn't depend on that view. I suspect many atheists would agree with my post, including ones who don't believe in objective morality. I would argue that there are problems in their reasoning leading up to my conclusion, but I think my conclusion is a somewhat common sentiment, including among some atheists. Given the Biblical evidence for my view, which I discussed earlier, we have reason to think God would lead people to the same sort of view through other means, such as conscience and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. I suspect that's part of the reason why it's so popular for people to object when children don't make good use of what their parents gave them, citizens don't make good use of the advantages of their citizenship, etc. And the more people have, the more we expect them to make of it. Jesus' sentiment in Luke 12:48 is widely accepted. But there's a major problem with people not applying it consistently, which is part of what I'm addressing in this thread. In contexts like those I just referred to (common sentiments about what people do with what their parents give them, Luke 12:48, etc.), not all of what happens is about trying to accomplish great things. But that's a portion of what's involved, and it's sometimes implied where people don't recognize the implication.
I think fiction can be good and bad. Sometimes depending on the eye/mind of the reader. It's common for Christians to complain that the Bible isn't written with more propositional prose, but I've come to realize that much of the power of the Bible to influence one's heart, mind and worldview is its narrative flow. This is partly why Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible are so popular among non-Christians. Narrative, including fiction, can inspire people to attempt great things. Those articles say that and more better than I can. Spurgeon himself read The Pilgrim's Progress over 100 times. C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and the characters in it [e.g. the sword wielding noble mouse Reepicheep] have probably influenced more people than Mere Christianity in extending the Kingdom of God. More children and adults have probably read the Narnia books than children and adults Mere Christianity.
Nine months before his death Steve wrote this blog on why he personally wrote fiction:
//I was addressing whether people who hold a high view of fiction also hold a high view of life. Most of your response is about whether and how we should hold a high view of fiction.//
I suppose the difference is between a high view of fiction and an overly high view of fiction. I agree that people can spend too much time on fiction. What is excessive will depend on one's stage in life [young, adult or old/senior] and one's calling in life. C.S. Lewis apparently thought that fiction and apologetics went hand in hand. I think Steve did too. But not everyone can write fiction. I wish I could. If I had a choice between being a great Christian apologist or a great Christian fiction writer, I would probably choose the latter. I'd probably impact more people.
When it comes to a high view of life, I think that includes not only the afterlife, but this life too. When I was a young Christian, I was overly pietistic. Everything, absolutely everything, had to do with the salvation of souls. The SOLE purpose of any Christian remaining on earth after salvation was so that he could save souls. Nothing else really mattered. Not whether what I ate tasted good, whether I had a clean car, whether the clothes I wore looked nice etc. I'm still kind of like that, but I've mellowed and realized that Biblically, life is broader than that. Bringing glory to God isn't limited to saving souls. It includes enjoying (to some degree) the life God has given us now [1 Cor. 10:31]. Daily life even apart from evangelism and apologetics can bring glory to God. C.S. Lewis brings this out in his fictional book The Screwtape Letters, for example. I didn't really learn the lesson when I first read the book ~20 years ago, but a Reformed & Postmillennial vision of life and the future did. So, a high view of life that glorifies God also includes building families, shaping culture, contributing economically in business etc.
As a charismatic Calvinist, I find some of what's going on with the charismatic movement is converging with Reformed Postmillennialism.
For example, the alleged charismatic heresy of the Seven Mountains Mandate which seeks to influence the following 7 areas:
1) Education 2) Religion 3) Family 4) Business 5) Government/Military 6) Arts/Entertainment 7) Media
That's a great quote from Steve's autobiography. I read his autobiography the very day Triablogue announced he died. :´^(
I think the experimental novel he's referring to is Musica Mundana that's linked on this blog. I loved the book. I'm planning on reading it again. In a previous blog comment I wrote to Steve:
//Steve, I also really enjoyed your work Musica Mundana. It reminded me of all three books of C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, along with his Till We Have Faces, Umberto Eco's books Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Though, once or twice I got the feeling that a sentence or two was accidentally deleted. The minor typos didn't bother me, but I think it's such a good work of fiction that someone should proofread it. Also, the lack of quotation marks sometimes made it difficult to follow the story. I loved how it included philosophy, theology, psychology, prose, poetry, fantasy, science fiction, mythology, classic literature, the liturgical calendar, Greek, Latin et cetera, yet with a devotional/pastoral flavor.
It has everything I was looking for in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead but better and more. I still haven't finished Gilead. It's so plodding and theologically weak. I don't understand why Calvinists recommend the book. As I understand it, she's more of a liberal Calvinist. In its stead Calvinists should recommend your book Musica Mundana...//
//Some fictional stories and movies are a useful way to illustrate or express theology.
Also, some fictional stories and movies can form a bridge in evangelism. //
Yeah, we need more Calvinists writing fiction. I think I've heard Doug Wilson has written some fiction. I should go check them out.
If you intended to object to what I was saying, I don't see anything in your comments that refutes what I said in my original post. If you wanted to comment on other issues related to fiction, then your response is less relevant accordingly.
Much of what you've written is a repetition of some sentiments I responded to in one of our previous discussions (the comments section here).
What matters most in life is nonfictional. The large majority of life is nonfictional (spent on activities other than reading fictional books, watching movies, and such). The large majority of scripture is nonfictional. Nonfiction has a priority over fiction. But our culture is giving a highly inordinate amount of its attention to fiction and other less important contexts while neglecting what's more important. It's not as though the average American or the average Christian is spending an appropriate amount of time reading fictional works like Pilgrim's Progress and Chronicles Of Narnia. Rather, they're spending a highly inordinate amount of time reading fictional works of a much worse quality. And, to return to the point of this thread, even the people reading works like those of Bunyan and Lewis are making so little effort to live out what moves them so much when they read those books.
"I was compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own, and to weep for Biab dead, because she slew herself for love; while at the same time I brooked with dry eyes my wretched self dying far from Thee, in the midst of those things, O God, my life." (Augustine, Confessions, 1:13:20)
"It's true the Bible is more nonfiction than fiction. But I don't see how that implies that the Christian should read more nonfiction than fiction (even if I agree with the conclusion)."
The issue isn't just what we read. But as far as reading is concerned, reading the Bible involves more reading of nonfiction than reading of fiction.
With regard to your other comments, I don't deny that there are benefits to fiction. But both the upside and the downside of fiction have to be taken into account, and both aspects of nonfiction have to be taken into account as well. I'm addressing the overall balance. I'm not denying that there is good fiction, that it has various benefits even when it's abused, etc.
I'm trying to be brief here. See my comments above about off-topic material.
So this seems to be about why consumers of fiction and that too fiction involving larger than life themes and exemplifying noble virtues - demonstrate so little of those themes/virtues in their own life.
If say Hemingway's Nick Adams is a paragon of courage, and I read everything that Hemingway wrote that involves Nick Adams, then why is my life characterized by so much fear.
I think its simply laziness. There is no deep socio-cultural-psychological reason for this. Fiction is viewed more as entertainment and to think deeply about it is... not wanted. This would not have been the case a 100 years ago.
Camus' The Stranger should be disturbing to people. However in this entertainment culture of ours, you can read it and walk away, a moron. (The most amazing thing to me are Hollywood actors who play various roles of noble characters in movies with larger than life themes and philosophies, and yet when the production is over and the movie out, their lives are nothing but crass and philistine. It all comes down to laziness.)
Flip side: Fiction does have an impact though. C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy is what paved the way for philosopher, Peter van Inwagen to more seriously consider Christian apologetics works.
I think its simply that people do not want to do the spade work to dig deeper into how some literature read ought to be worked out in their lives.
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ReplyDeleteI was addressing whether people who hold a high view of fiction also hold a high view of life. Most of your response is about whether and how we should hold a high view of fiction. Those are different subjects.
DeleteThere isn't much dispute about whether fiction can be good. Not many people deny that it can be good, and I don't deny it. Eating can be good, but a man who's overweight probably doesn't need to be told that. And it wouldn't make sense to act as if telling him about the potential goodness of eating is just as important as telling him about the problems with abusing food. The same principles are even more applicable to the abuse of fiction, partly because there's far more of a cultural consensus about the negative effects of abusing food than there is about the negative effects of abusing fiction. The danger of people thinking that fiction is inherently bad in a context like modern America is small. The dangers of people thinking too highly of fiction, too little of life, spending too much time on fiction, etc. are large. I've argued for these conclusions, with a lot of documentation, elsewhere (e.g., here, here, here).
Americans have spent a lot of time on fiction, doing things like watching the Tom Hanks movie you referred to. They think highly of fiction and the accomplishments of fictional characters, but they don't have a high view of life or attempt to accomplish much in their own lives. Evangelicals in contexts like America have been giving much of their lives (too much, I've argued) to fiction. Few of those Evangelicals are doing much in contexts like the ones discussed in the threads linked above.
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DeleteI agree that fiction can be good, and I agree that Christians and others should improve what's being done in that field. But good fiction, like other good things, can be abused (as in my food analogy). People can spend an inordinate amount of time on good fiction, for example. The goodness of the fiction doesn't change the badness of the amount of time spent on it. And producing good fiction is different than consuming it. We need to keep in mind that the large majority of people involved in fiction are consuming far more than they're producing. It may make sense for an unusually good fiction writer to spend a certain amount of time on writing fiction, whereas it would be wasteful for a reader to spend that much time reading fictional works.
DeleteBut, again, those are different issues than what this thread is about. Even if we assume that a fictional book, for example, is good and that it was worth producing and reading under the circumstances, the question remains of whether the reader is living a life consistent with what he values in that book. Our culture has a major problem with inconsistencies in that sort of context.
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DeleteI've already addressed most of what you've brought up, in one form or another, elsewhere on this blog. I linked a few of the relevant threads earlier, and there are many more in the archives. I'll make some comments on issues I don't recall having discussed here before, or reiterate points I think are worth repeating, but I'm not going to repeat everything I've said on previous occasions.
DeleteGood fiction is going to be defined differently by different people, and it will range across a spectrum under each person's definition. If Pilgrim's Progress and the Tom Hanks movie you referred to (which I haven't seen) are both to be considered good fiction, that doesn't mean they're at the same place on the spectrum of good fiction or even close. One might barely qualify as good, whereas the other is much better.
And what's at stake in each situation in which we could be involved in fiction is going to range across a spectrum. Let's say your son was taught something in school today that's problematic. It's not a major problem, but it is moderately bad. You could talk to him about that situation or watch the Tom Hanks movie you referred to. The fact that nothing major is at stake in what decision you make doesn't change the fact that there's some significance to your decision and that you have to make a choice. We can't just draw a line at the fundamentals of the faith you referred to (which is itself a disputed standard). Even when something falls outside the most foundational issues of life (outside what you referred to as the fundamentals of the faith), Ephesians 5:16 and the other Biblical principles I've discussed (such as in the threads linked earlier) have to be applied.
Regarding the abuse of good fiction, one form it often takes is the sort of situation I just referred to. Parents don't address the issues they should address with their children, because they underestimate the significance of those issues, expect other people to do too much of the work (e.g., expecting too much from the church they attend), or whatever. I frequently hear from people who are looking for help with issues in theology, apologetics, ethics, or wherever else and refer to how nobody in their closest circles, whether parents or others, seems able and willing to provide that help. Yet, we live in a culture in which parents and others involved spend so much of their time on the sort of good fiction and other activities you've referred to. We have to prioritize, and good fiction ought to be on the chopping block far more often than it is.
Given how little significance there is in things like the Tom Hanks movie, watching Hamlet at a theater, and some of the other activities you've referred to, it wouldn't take much for something like that to be outweighed by another activity, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't always equal. Less significant activities are often acceptable, sometimes even preferable, because of other factors involved (the interests of other people, the need to make a quick decision, health problems, etc.). Even when people make bad judgments on these issues, there often are mitigating factors involved (e.g., the complexity of the situation, peer pressure, the potential for people to misunderstand and misrepresent a good judgment on the subject if you made one). I typically try to avoid naming names or singling out individuals in some other way on time management issues like these. I allow for a lot of unknown variables and mitigating factors, and I try to be gracious to individuals. I tend to give people more of a benefit of the doubt the more I see good things in their lives, even if the good things are accompanied by other things that seem bad or seem to have a lot of potential to be bad. And even if I think somebody is wrong about a matter of time management, I typically don't bring it up. However, the general principles involved in issues of time management, like the ones that have come up in this thread, need to be addressed, even if individuals aren't going to be singled out most of the time. These issues don't get discussed enough, and people don't care about them nearly as much as they should.
DeleteThere's a lot more that can be said, and people can find other relevant discussions in the archives if they're interested. But I get the last word here. I typically delete off-topic posts. They disrupt discussions, require that the blog administrators take unplanned time to moderate those off-topic posts, waste other people's time (e.g., people going here to read about one topic only to find another one being discussed instead), give people an illegitimate platform at the expense of other people involved, and so on. Administrators can let off-topic posts remain up if they want to, but I usually don't. Your latest posts interact with the topic of this thread to a small extent, and I'll respond to that material below. You can reply to that post if you want to, but not to my latest comments on the off-topic issues.
Rob L. wrote the following, which is relevant to the topic of my original post:
Delete"A Christian doesn't always need to live their life in consistency to what's valuable in the fictional work. They can simply enjoy the fictional work on its own terms. A fictional work doesn't need to be a means to an end; it can simply be an end in itself. A non-musician can simply appreciate and enjoy Vivaldi's The Four Seasons without feeling they are deficient in some way because they don't live a life consistent with the seasonal themes in the concerto."
There's a sense in which everything other than God needs to be considered beyond itself rather than as an end in itself (1 Corinthians 10:31). But even if we allowed some exceptions to what I referred to in my original post, it could still be generally true. Christians in general are called upon to run in such a way as to win (1 Corinthians 9:24), to walk in a manner worthy of the calling described in Ephesians 3 (Ephesians 4:1), etc. And we generally expect people to be consistent. Are you suggesting that there's nothing generally wrong with admiring greatness in fiction while not trying to accomplish anything great in life? The form of greatness we seek can't always be the same as what we admire (e.g., we can't have some of the great attributes of God, we're incapable of doing some of what's done by other people), but we can still try to accomplish great things in some form that's consistent with our admiration of greatness in fiction. I'd expect you to agree with that, even if you want to mention exceptions like the ones I just referred to in parentheses.
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DeleteRob L. wrote:
DeleteAbout trying to accomplish anything great in life, it depends what you mean by 'great' and what's 'great' can vary between individuals since we are not all born with the same talents, opportunities, or circumstances in life, but I do believe we should try to live lives where we decrease (humility is true 'greatness') and Christ increases (we glorify him). But why is admiring greatness in fiction always or generally supposed to result in attempting something great in life?
My original post assumes that a person has a pattern of admiring great accomplishments among fictional characters. We would need some relevant difference between contexts (between the fictional and the nonfictional) in order to not expect the pattern to continue from one context into the other. Nobody in this thread has demonstrated a relevant difference. Some of your comments in this thread suggest you expect continuity between people's views of fiction and their views of life, such as the comments in your first post referring to how you "strive to live like" characters in fictional contexts. How is fiction inspiring virtues in life if we shouldn't expect the sort of continuity I'm referring to?
You referred to how people are born, but circumstances can and do change over time. A person who demonstrates certain qualities earlier in life will be given more opportunities later, for example. We often see reversals in life, as with Joseph and Daniel. There are prominent themes in scripture about how nothing is impossible with God, how the last in this life will be first in the next life, how we should hope in God "who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9), and so on. The circumstances we're born into have some relevance, but they don't refute the point I was making. Something like prayer or fasting can be an instrument to accomplish great things even in the lives of the people born into the worst of circumstances. History provides many examples of people who have had a great influence through ideas, prayer, persuading significant individuals, evangelism, or other means available to the population in general. And we're told to run in such a way as to win (1 Corinthians 9:24), to walk in a manner worthy of the high calling discussed in Ephesians 3 (Ephesians 4:1), to make the most of our time (Ephesians 5:16), to make the most of our opportunities (Colossians 4:5), etc. Given how little we know about the effect we'll have, how can we claim to know that we won't accomplish anything great (Esther 4:14)? Why not try? Even when people respond poorly to a great effort to accomplish something great, the effort remains great and can produce great effects in this life and the next (e.g., setting an example in the context of suffering), even if the primary effect that was sought wasn't accomplished.
But our circumstances are often of a much better nature than the worse circumstances I've addressed above. That's especially true of people living in a setting like modern America, where we have so many advantages (Luke 12:48). In that kind of setting, people should be attempting to accomplish more accordingly.
You wrote:
"A good can be both an instrumental good and an innate good."
I agree.
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DeleteRob L. wrote:
Delete"I do not grant the assumption."
Yes, you do grant it, as your comments that follow demonstrate. Your next sentence assumes "a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters", which is the assumption I was referring to. And it would make no sense for you to deny the assumption. On what basis would you deny it? That you somehow know that such people don't exist and that, therefore, I shouldn't have discussed such people? That you somehow know that it's probable that they don't exist? Or on some other basis? I can offer a counterargument to such objections, if you want to raise them, but you would first need to explain whether you have such an objection in mind and, if so, which one. But since you claimed to not be granting my assumption, only to go on to grant it in the next sentence, the ball is in your court at this point.
You wrote:
"I grant that a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters can take inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters. But I do not grant that a person who admires great accomplishments among fictional characters necessarily takes inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters (or should take inspiration to live virtuously from fictional characters)."
My original post was about people who admire great accomplishments in fiction, yet don't live accordingly, so I obviously wasn't saying that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction always live accordingly. I wasn't saying that living in such a way necessarily follows in that sense. If you're using "necessarily" differently, in the sense that they should live that way, then that's a significantly different issue, and it would be better to use a term other than "necessarily" to convey it. It's unclear whether your second sentence quoted above is meant to address two different positions ("necessarily" and "should") or one.
And I provided an argument for my view that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction should live accordingly. You ignored it (i.e., the argument from a pattern that we have no reason to expect to cease when going from fiction to nonfiction).
You wrote:
Delete"Also, if you agree a good can sometimes be an innate good as you say you do, then that favors what I have said against what you have said. If a person can admire The Pilgrim's Progress, Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, or other fictional works in their own right, as good works of fiction, and not as instruments by which to become more virtuous, then that would seem to settle the issue."
Saying that a good can be both an innate good and an instrumental one isn't equivalent to saying that the particular works you've cited are in that category, and the fact that they can be viewed that way doesn't tell us whether they should be, how they should be, or how many people view them that way. I cited 1 Corinthians 10:31 earlier. Food can be enjoyed for its taste, and it can be an instrument for glorifying God. But the way we enjoy food differs from the way we enjoy Pilgrim's Progress. There's a moral component to Pilgrim's Progress that food doesn't have. The fact that both can be thought of as innately good and instrumentally good in some sense doesn't change the fact that they're also different in other ways. The fact that there can be, say, an atheist who reads Pilgrim's Progress as good fiction without thinking it has any relevant moral components, for example, doesn't mean he should view the book that way or that it's even morally permissible to do so, nor does it give us reason to think the average person who admires attempts to accomplish great things in Pilgrim's Progress is admiring them the way that atheist does. The atheist could represent a small minority, and surely does in a context like this, so the fact that somebody can read the book in the wrong way he does is insignificant.
You wrote:
"Fiction is a very broad category."
My original post wasn't about fiction as a category. It was about a particular aspect of fiction, namely the accomplishing of great things by characters in fiction. And you said you agreed with my points about Biblical passages related to the accomplishment of great things. Those Biblical passages involve commandments, and there's a moral component to that. But even without that sort of moral dimension, there would be significance in asking why these fiction audiences are being inconsistent in the way I was addressing.
You wrote:
"Please yes of course you should have the last word."
I made my comments about having the last word on Wednesday, in response to your off-topic material. You're now, on Friday, referring back to those comments, after we had some on-topic discussion between those two points in time. Why would you wait until Friday to respond and write your response as if I had been addressing your on-topic comments?
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DeleteRob L. wrote:
Delete"For the simple reason that I must have missed your comment that you wanted to have the last word. But I did reply to it when I saw it. Your comment changed the tone of our discussion and that is why I backed away. But if you want a continued discussion then I am willing to continue it, too."
I'm going to respond in a lot of detail about this subject, partly to document why I'm handling this exchange with you as I am and what sort of circumstances the administrators of this blog (and others in similar situations) have to sort through and why we do what we do.
I put up four posts in response to you on Wednesday. You're now suggesting that it wasn't until Friday that you realized you had "missed" the Wednesday comments in question. But your Thursday post only responded to what I said about your on-topic material, as if you had read the relevant Wednesday comments at that point on Thursday. And my comments about my having the last word were made in the second of four posts. You responded on Thursday to what I said in my third post. How did you miss the comments in the second post, yet notice my third post just below it (and maybe my first and fourth ones as well), then just happen to only respond to what I said about your on-topic material, even though you didn't yet know I had told you to do that? In other words, if it wasn't until Friday that you'd learned of my comments on how you need to only post on topic, why did you start doing it on Thursday (which involved not responding to three of four posts, the large majority of what I'd just written in response to you)? If you just happened to start abiding by what I told you to do on Wednesday, even though you had missed my Wednesday comments, that would be a highly unusual coincidence. Then, your Friday post saying you wouldn't respond to me any further came three minutes after a post in which you did respond to me. Did you scroll the screen up and notice some material from two days earlier that you had missed, think through the implications of that material, decide what to do in response, and compose and post the comment saying you wouldn't respond to me any further, all within three minutes? Or did you know about my Wednesday material before any of your Friday posts went up? If so, why did you put up your first Friday post? In either one of those scenarios, why didn't you delete your first Friday post instead of putting it up, then putting up another post three minutes later saying you weren't going to post any further in deference to what I'd said on Wednesday? And if your decision not to post further was based on my tone, as you now claim, why did you show so little concern about my tone the first few times I mentioned that your comments and ANNOYED PINOY's were off topic? I wouldn't have had to tell you that you weren't allowed to post any further off-topic material if you'd honored what I'd said about the subject those first few times (or hadn't gone off topic to begin with).
And the issue isn't whether I want a further discussion with you. Saying you could keep posting on-topic material if you wanted to isn't equivalent to saying I want you to do so. When a discussion is public, like this one is, I take factors into account that I wouldn't be considering in a different setting, like the potential to benefit a larger audience. I usually wouldn't continue having a private discussion with somebody who's behaving as you have. And even though there are advantages to continuing a public discussion like this one, it's a mixed situation. There are bad things involved along with the good. It takes time, attention, and other resources to keep responding to you, and I keep getting ridiculous behavior in response, like what's described in the paragraph above this one. Non-administrator posts automatically start going into moderation three days after a thread begins. The value of continuing to let your posts be published is diminishing rapidly. I'll make decisions about how much of your future material to publish on the basis of the circumstances at the time.
DeleteYou wrote:
"No I do not grant it completely as my following comments explain. I explained how I grant it in one sense and I explained how I do not grant it in another sense. I will assume I gave a poor explanation and therefore I will try to explain it, again. You say your post was about 'people who admire great accomplishments in fiction, yet don't live accordingly.' But the problem is there is no necessary connection between people who admire great accomplishments in fiction AND how the same people live, whether or virtuously or not. It CAN happen, but it does not NEED to happen, not even generally speaking."
The assumption I was referring to is that people who admire great accomplishments in fiction are being addressed. In other words, my original post was talking about those people. For you to respond by saying that a majority of those people won't necessarily do X (whatever X may be) is irrelevant. Similarly, if I put up a post talking about atheists, and I say later that my post assumes that atheists are being discussed, it would be irrelevant for you to respond by saying that you only partly grant my assumption, since atheists don't necessarily do X.
And you're continuing to use the overly ambiguous language of what's "necessary" and "needed". I explained the problem with using that sort of language, but you keep using it without interacting with what I said.
You wrote:
Delete"But the title of your post said these people have a 'high view' of fiction but a 'low view' of life. Therefore you are making a connection between reading 'high' fiction and the resulting 'low' behavior."
First of all, titles (for posts, books, movies, or whatever) are typically intended to be brief, and they often leave out qualifiers in order to have that brevity. Sometimes titles are deliberately ambiguous, perhaps because they involve an intended double meaning (or more than two meanings). If the text of a post that follows its title suggests that a particular aspect of fiction is in view, not fiction in general or high fiction in particular, then the title should be interpreted accordingly. It's clear that my post was about a particular portion of fiction and life, namely the accomplishing of great things. In other words, it's about a high view of fiction and a low view of life in a particular context. Even if you hadn't noticed that initially (you should have), there's no excuse for you to be appealing to the title of my post the way you are now, this far into the discussion.
Secondly, the title of my post mentions a high view of fiction, not high fiction.
Third, I didn't suggest that low behavior results from reading high fiction. The fact that a low view of life is present in a person who holds a high view of fiction doesn't suggest that the latter produced the former.
You wrote:
"Not all or even most fiction is meant to be morally instructive or morally exemplary."
The author's intentions (or the intentions of somebody making a movie, etc.) aren't all we take into account. An author may write about an evil character without intending to promote evil. But the audience's reaction to what the author wrote (and my first post in this thread discussed the audience's reaction) is a different matter. And even if an author doesn't intend something to be morally instructive or exemplary, it can have moral dimensions that an audience reacts to. Some topics are of an inherently moral nature. Or an author may not be aware of some moral assumptions he's making, he may not be aware of some moral issues, etc. There are many potential scenarios along these lines. I've argued that trying to accomplish great things in life is a moral issue. Even if an author doesn't agree with me about that subject, his disagreement doesn't change the fact that he's bringing up something that I consider morally significant.
You wrote:
Delete"Therefore if a person reads or watches fiction that's just meant to be fun or refreshing, then I would not expect their lives to be morally changed by it, whether in good or bad ways. Their lives are morally the same before and after."
It's not that simple, for reasons I've explained in this thread and elsewhere.
And the evidence we have suggests that something worse than what you're referring to happens far more often, including among Evangelicals. We can look at polling data and other evidence to see what views people have of God, what they value most in life, how they spend their time, etc. The large majority of Americans, including most Evangelicals, say they find the most meaning in life from a non-religious source (family, etc.). Americans spend about five minutes a day on religious and spiritual activities and about five hours a day on leisure and sports. And so on. So, we should ask why people are finding certain things "fun or refreshing" and not finding other things to be so. We should take note of how little joy, excitement, enthusiasm, and such people have for God, defending the honor of God, speaking highly of him to other people, working to benefit other people, and so forth. Why is their "fun or refreshing" of such a frivolous nature, and why do they have such apathy and contempt for, or only a little of a positive response to, more substantial aspects of life, like what I referred to above? And as I've noted in previous discussions on issues like these, it's not as though something like reading a fictional book or watching a fictional movie is the only opportunity people get to rest, enjoy something easy, or whatever. We spend several hours a day sleeping, however long eating food, we frequently listen to music in various contexts, etc. To say we need more time to do such things, for things like the sort of "fun or refreshing" fiction you refer to, is something that needs to be more critically examined and treated with a lot of caution, especially in a cultural setting like ours. Even if spending time in the way you're referring to is justified in a certain situation, it needs to be handled with far more carefulness than the vast majority of people apply to the subject in our culture.
Then there's the issue of whether the fiction you're referring to is truly morally neutral. The issue here isn't just whether you can come up with a hypothetical or actual example. Rather, we should ask how often that sort of fiction is produced and whether that sort of fiction is what's actually involved in a context like modern America. How do you get through a 200-page book or a 2-hour movie without any moral content? Moral characteristics don't have to be explicit or widespread in order to be present to some extent.
You wrote:
Delete"I grant that the pattern sometimes or even oftentimes exists, but not grant it exists in most cases or generally."
First of all, my post addresses cases in which such a pattern does exist, so your responding that you don't think it exists in most cases is a changing of the subject. If I write a post about atheists, what's the significance of responding by saying that atheists are a minority of the population? That doesn't change the fact that I was addressing atheists.
Secondly, are you saying you doubt that most people in fiction audiences admire great accomplishments in fiction?
You wrote:
"Because there is a general pattern of admiring greatness in sports or war movies about heroic men accomplishing heroic things does not mean there is the same general pattern of admiring greatness in futuristic or fantasy movies where the characters have abilities that no one in current nonfiction would have."
The fact that characters in futuristic and fantasy movies have abilities nobody in nonfiction has doesn't suggest there are no great accomplishments in any relevant way in those movies. A futuristic or fantasy movie character can still accomplish something great through courage, perseverance, or some other attribute present in current nonfiction. And even their great accomplishments obtained through attributes not present in current nonfiction are relevant, for a reason I explained earlier. Great accomplishments of type A aren't the same as great accomplishments of type B, but they do have some common ground. Individuals like Moses and Jesus had abilities we don't see in current nonfiction, but we still admire their great accomplishments, both the ones we can emulate and the ones we can't.
But why would there need to be the sort of pattern you refer to in the movies in question in order for my position to hold up? It's not necessary for my position. You keep bringing up irrelevant issues.
You wrote:
Delete"And my argument wasn't based on statistics, but it was based on a principle, and you said you agreed with the principle."
Your argument depended on your concept of an innate good, and I've explained that there can be a moral dimension to what's innate. My point about statistics was that most people wouldn't see Pilgrim's Progress as innately nonmoral. That's relevant. The fact that somebody, such as an atheist, can see the book in nonmoral terms isn't sufficient to make your point. If the book is, objectively, of a moral nature and most people see it that way, then both of those facts are relevant responses to your comments about how the book can be seen.
You wrote:
"We can discuss this but I would not want to go off-topic against your wishes."
It's not off topic. I've argued that there's a moral component to accomplishing great things, but my original post doesn't depend on that view. I suspect many atheists would agree with my post, including ones who don't believe in objective morality. I would argue that there are problems in their reasoning leading up to my conclusion, but I think my conclusion is a somewhat common sentiment, including among some atheists. Given the Biblical evidence for my view, which I discussed earlier, we have reason to think God would lead people to the same sort of view through other means, such as conscience and the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. I suspect that's part of the reason why it's so popular for people to object when children don't make good use of what their parents gave them, citizens don't make good use of the advantages of their citizenship, etc. And the more people have, the more we expect them to make of it. Jesus' sentiment in Luke 12:48 is widely accepted. But there's a major problem with people not applying it consistently, which is part of what I'm addressing in this thread. In contexts like those I just referred to (common sentiments about what people do with what their parents give them, Luke 12:48, etc.), not all of what happens is about trying to accomplish great things. But that's a portion of what's involved, and it's sometimes implied where people don't recognize the implication.
Posted today, August 10, 2021, on DesiringGod.org
ReplyDeleteIn Defense of Fiction CHRISTIAN LOVE FOR GREAT LITERATURE by Leland Ryken
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/in-defense-of-fiction
Why J. I. Packer Reads Mystery Novels (Or, In Defense of Light Reading) by Justin Taylor posted NOVEMBER 28, 2018 on thegospelcoalition.org
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/j-packer-reads-mystery-novels-defense-light-reading/
Explain what relevance you think those links have to my post.
DeleteI think fiction can be good and bad. Sometimes depending on the eye/mind of the reader. It's common for Christians to complain that the Bible isn't written with more propositional prose, but I've come to realize that much of the power of the Bible to influence one's heart, mind and worldview is its narrative flow. This is partly why Jordan Peterson's lectures on the Bible are so popular among non-Christians. Narrative, including fiction, can inspire people to attempt great things. Those articles say that and more better than I can. Spurgeon himself read The Pilgrim's Progress over 100 times. C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and the characters in it [e.g. the sword wielding noble mouse Reepicheep] have probably influenced more people than Mere Christianity in extending the Kingdom of God. More children and adults have probably read the Narnia books than children and adults Mere Christianity.
DeleteNine months before his death Steve wrote this blog on why he personally wrote fiction:
Why write fiction?
https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/why-write-fiction.html
//I was addressing whether people who hold a high view of fiction also hold a high view of life. Most of your response is about whether and how we should hold a high view of fiction.//
DeleteI suppose the difference is between a high view of fiction and an overly high view of fiction. I agree that people can spend too much time on fiction. What is excessive will depend on one's stage in life [young, adult or old/senior] and one's calling in life. C.S. Lewis apparently thought that fiction and apologetics went hand in hand. I think Steve did too. But not everyone can write fiction. I wish I could. If I had a choice between being a great Christian apologist or a great Christian fiction writer, I would probably choose the latter. I'd probably impact more people.
When it comes to a high view of life, I think that includes not only the afterlife, but this life too. When I was a young Christian, I was overly pietistic. Everything, absolutely everything, had to do with the salvation of souls. The SOLE purpose of any Christian remaining on earth after salvation was so that he could save souls. Nothing else really mattered. Not whether what I ate tasted good, whether I had a clean car, whether the clothes I wore looked nice etc. I'm still kind of like that, but I've mellowed and realized that Biblically, life is broader than that. Bringing glory to God isn't limited to saving souls. It includes enjoying (to some degree) the life God has given us now [1 Cor. 10:31]. Daily life even apart from evangelism and apologetics can bring glory to God. C.S. Lewis brings this out in his fictional book The Screwtape Letters, for example. I didn't really learn the lesson when I first read the book ~20 years ago, but a Reformed & Postmillennial vision of life and the future did. So, a high view of life that glorifies God also includes building families, shaping culture, contributing economically in business etc.
DeleteAs a charismatic Calvinist, I find some of what's going on with the charismatic movement is converging with Reformed Postmillennialism.
For example, the alleged charismatic heresy of the Seven Mountains Mandate which seeks to influence the following 7 areas:
1) Education
2) Religion
3) Family
4) Business
5) Government/Military
6) Arts/Entertainment
7) Media
Here's a critique of the alleged "heresy":
https://www.gotquestions.org/seven-mountain-mandate.html
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DeleteThat's a great quote from Steve's autobiography. I read his autobiography the very day Triablogue announced he died. :´^(
DeleteI think the experimental novel he's referring to is Musica Mundana that's linked on this blog. I loved the book. I'm planning on reading it again. In a previous blog comment I wrote to Steve:
//Steve, I also really enjoyed your work Musica Mundana. It reminded me of all three books of C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, along with his Till We Have Faces, Umberto Eco's books Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Though, once or twice I got the feeling that a sentence or two was accidentally deleted. The minor typos didn't bother me, but I think it's such a good work of fiction that someone should proofread it. Also, the lack of quotation marks sometimes made it difficult to follow the story. I loved how it included philosophy, theology, psychology, prose, poetry, fantasy, science fiction, mythology, classic literature, the liturgical calendar, Greek, Latin et cetera, yet with a devotional/pastoral flavor.
It has everything I was looking for in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead but better and more. I still haven't finished Gilead. It's so plodding and theologically weak. I don't understand why Calvinists recommend the book. As I understand it, she's more of a liberal Calvinist. In its stead Calvinists should recommend your book Musica Mundana...//
//Some fictional stories and movies are a useful way to illustrate or express theology.
Also, some fictional stories and movies can form a bridge in evangelism. //
Yeah, we need more Calvinists writing fiction. I think I've heard Doug Wilson has written some fiction. I should go check them out.
ANNOYED PINOY,
DeleteIf you intended to object to what I was saying, I don't see anything in your comments that refutes what I said in my original post. If you wanted to comment on other issues related to fiction, then your response is less relevant accordingly.
Much of what you've written is a repetition of some sentiments I responded to in one of our previous discussions (the comments section here).
What matters most in life is nonfictional. The large majority of life is nonfictional (spent on activities other than reading fictional books, watching movies, and such). The large majority of scripture is nonfictional. Nonfiction has a priority over fiction. But our culture is giving a highly inordinate amount of its attention to fiction and other less important contexts while neglecting what's more important. It's not as though the average American or the average Christian is spending an appropriate amount of time reading fictional works like Pilgrim's Progress and Chronicles Of Narnia. Rather, they're spending a highly inordinate amount of time reading fictional works of a much worse quality. And, to return to the point of this thread, even the people reading works like those of Bunyan and Lewis are making so little effort to live out what moves them so much when they read those books.
"I was compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain Aeneas, oblivious of my own, and to weep for Biab dead, because she slew herself for love; while at the same time I brooked with dry eyes my wretched self dying far from Thee, in the midst of those things, O God, my life." (Augustine, Confessions, 1:13:20)
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DeleteRob L. wrote:
Delete"It's true the Bible is more nonfiction than fiction. But I don't see how that implies that the Christian should read more nonfiction than fiction (even if I agree with the conclusion)."
The issue isn't just what we read. But as far as reading is concerned, reading the Bible involves more reading of nonfiction than reading of fiction.
With regard to your other comments, I don't deny that there are benefits to fiction. But both the upside and the downside of fiction have to be taken into account, and both aspects of nonfiction have to be taken into account as well. I'm addressing the overall balance. I'm not denying that there is good fiction, that it has various benefits even when it's abused, etc.
I'm trying to be brief here. See my comments above about off-topic material.
I know this is something of a plug, but I discuss Jason's approach to time management here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxEf-loRi8Y
So this seems to be about why consumers of fiction and that too fiction involving larger than life themes and exemplifying noble virtues - demonstrate so little of those themes/virtues in their own life.
ReplyDeleteIf say Hemingway's Nick Adams is a paragon of courage, and I read everything that Hemingway wrote that involves Nick Adams, then why is my life characterized by so much fear.
I think its simply laziness. There is no deep socio-cultural-psychological reason for this. Fiction is viewed more as entertainment and to think deeply about it is... not wanted. This would not have been the case a 100 years ago.
Camus' The Stranger should be disturbing to people. However in this entertainment culture of ours, you can read it and walk away, a moron. (The most amazing thing to me are Hollywood actors who play various roles of noble characters in movies with larger than life themes and philosophies, and yet when the production is over and the movie out, their lives are nothing but crass and philistine. It all comes down to laziness.)
Flip side: Fiction does have an impact though. C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy is what paved the way for philosopher, Peter van Inwagen to more seriously consider Christian apologetics works.
I think its simply that people do not want to do the spade work to dig deeper into how some literature read ought to be worked out in their lives.
Laziness is a big factor.
DeleteI ran across a story celebrating a 90 year old man "religiously" (their word choice) playing Skyrim for ten years.
ReplyDelete