Over the Garden Wall

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014). It's one of the most unique and quirky series in recent memory.

There are a hodgepodge of influences. The setting is predominantly but not exclusively 18th-19th century New England or the Midwest. The specific season is Autumn; I suppose Halloween best suits. Aesthetically it elicits an old timey wimey Americana feel. Other influences I noticed: the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, gothic horror, Peter Rabbit, the Wind in the Willows, Betty Boop, Shirley Temple, Little Nemo, Studio Ghibli, even Disney (e.g. a songbird albeit a sarcastic one). Likewise I detected shades of Dante. For example, the opening chapter begins with the characters lost in a deep dark wood. Our protagonist is "midway" between childhood and adulthood. Also, Beatrice serves as a guide. And the ten shorts seem to roughly correspond to Dante's ten divisions in Inferno.

Story-wise, it's about a pair of brothers on a journey or pilgrimage to return home. One wonders if the story is allegory or reality. Is the pilgrimage in the similitude of a dream (cf. Bunyan) or is it meant to be real - a world between worlds, perhaps a limbo between life and death (cf. Dante)?

The characters are universal archetypes. Wirt is a Byronic hero. Greg is a knight of faith. It's interesting the two brothers are juxtaposed with one another like this - one the prototypical heathen, the other a kind of Christian. The Woodsman is a wild-eyed prophet in the wilderness. The Beast, in my view, is the personification of hopelessness: cue Dante's "abandon hope, all ye who enter here". Same with places and events. For instance, the Unknown seems to represent the afterlife or something like it. At the same time, there's a subversion of expectations in Over the Garden's archetypes (e.g. the big bad wolf is a tame pup).

Pilgrimage stories typically consummate in reaching a destination where the end is the narratival summum bonum. The Pilgrim's Progress' end is the celestial city where God and his people dwell. The Paradiso's end is the beatific vision: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle". Over the Garden Wall's end seems to be romantic love in the guise of a girl named Sara. If so, I'm afraid that's a bit of a letdown, for it would suggest (among other things) that even the best secular pilgrimage or journey stories like Over the Garden Wall haven't evolved much since Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus longs to return home to reunite with his beloved Penelope. Perhaps this is what adolescent or youthful love finds most grand, but then it'd better suit springtime rather than the autumnal themes which are what pervade the entire series. Perhaps this reflects the sad fact that our secular culture has no higher aim or ideal in life to live for than romantic love.

Christless Calvinism

An interesting take from John Ehrett on Stephen King's oeuvre: "The Dark Theology of Stephen King".

Grasping for the divine

"Grasping for the divine" (Esther O'Reilly)

Doublethink

From George Orwell's 1984:

The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak—was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

When Heaven invades Hell

Philosopher and philosophical theologian Josh Rasmussen and his wife Rachel just published a novelistic defense of universalism. Josh is a far better philosopher than theologian. I'm going to quote and comment on some representative passages from the novel. 

So, perhaps some forgiveness for some souls will come after an age of separation.”

Moses replies sharply, “But what about the unforgivable sin, Adam?”

Moses points down at the scroll. “Look! Here it is written, ‘whoever blasphemes against

the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’ The words are plain. Never means never. Are you going to tell me that never doesn’t mean never?”

Adam smiles. He asks, “Where does meaning come from, Moses? Does not your own experience create the meanings you associate with words?”

Adam then touches the text on the scroll and pulls his finger upward. Golden words appear above the scroll. The words are translated in your mind as follows:

‘Whoever may speak evil in regard to the Holy Spirit hath not forgiveness for an age, but is in danger of age-enduring judgment.’

Different people, depending on their experiences, will read the scroll according to different interpretations.

“So, what if the meaning in someone’s mind concerning what the scroll says is inconsistent with the meaning in someone else’s mind? Where will you find the truth then?”

Different people, depending on their experiences, will read the scroll according to different interpretations.

“So, what if the meaning in someone’s mind concerning what the scroll says is inconsistent with the meaning in someone else’s mind? Where will you find the truth then?”

Adam shares his reasoning with Moses:

“Our experiences unlock our understanding of the Lord’s revelation. To have sight, we must have the Lord’s light. Where we do not have light, we do not have sight.

“Let me tell you, Moses, what I see most clearly. By the Lord’s light inside my heart, I see that love creates boundaries of protection. Joshua and Rachel Rasmussen, When Heaven Invades Hell (Great Legacy Books 2020), chap 5, 72-74.

i) This gets into complicated debates over the locus of meaning. Is meaning located in the text or the reader? In one sense, a text must have a recognizable meaning to the reader. So the reader brings something to the text. But there must be something in the text to recognize. So that's something the text brings to the reader. As a rule, authors write to be understood. They draw upon a cultural preunderstanding which the author and the target audience share in common. So even though there's a sense in which the reader must complete the process of communication, the reader is expected to interpret the text in a certain way. To recognize what the text means is not to determine what it means. Authors write with an ideal reader (the implied reader) in mind. 

ii) In folk theology, the Holy Spirit gives Christians the correct interoperation of Scripture. Josh seems to be making a similar claim. But the Bible doesn't promise that, and interpretive diversity among Christians belies that. Some unbelievers have a more accurate understanding of Scripture than many believers. For instance, a critical Bible commentator.

“We suffer by the sight of this beast’s suffering. But would our suffering end if this beast were no longer in our sight? It would not. We would still suffer, knowing that this beast is suffering somewhere separated from our presence. Even if the suffering of this beast were blocked from our sight—and removed from our memory—that would still not eliminate all suffering in heaven.

“Remember, the Lord also suffers as the beast suffers. Can the Lord, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth, choose not to see or even remember the suffering of this dark soul? It is written, ‘If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.’ Where could we possibly send a soul to escape the Lord’s sight? I tell you, the suffering of even one soul, even the darkest of souls, will be felt by the Lord.

“Children of the Most High, I present to you a mystery: how can heaven be fully heaven while there remains the pain of seeing someone in hell?”

The quiet whisper of the Lord replies, “My heart is large enough for all the cosmos to fit inside.” The Lion’s gaze then returns to the dark orb and the suffering beast.

The desire for the suffering in heaven to end builds. As it builds in size and power, something strange happens...Suddenly, a violent shock wave erupts from the singularity...Everyone watches in shock.

Lucifer is no longer in his cage of torment. The beast is now free, chap 8 (104).

“When I brought Lucifer, who was the Dark One, into heaven, I protected him inside an orb... chap. 10 (125).

The Lion walks close to the pitiful creature who is rolled up in a ball on the ground. Instead of towering over the creature, the Lion kneels on the ground beside him. Tears stream from the Lion’s glossy eyes, down his cheeks, and onto His mane. Emotions of love pour out of the Lion’s chest in the form of gentle waves. The waves flow from the Lion’s chest to the dark creature beside him...The multitude joins the Lion in expressing love toward the beast. Waves of love roll out of every being, chap 9 (105-6).

The Lion turns to Lucifer and speaks: “This first insight is about you, my beloved angel.

Lucifer, you have a great power to affect my emotions. I traveled through the caverns of darkness to reach you. But when I stood in your presence, you felt something inside of me. Do you remember what you felt? You said you sensed fear in me. You were right, Lucifer. I was afraid.

“You, my dear angel, didn’t understand my fear or your power. You had the power to make me tremble. I trembled at the thought of losing you...“All beings are connected. Every being affects me...“My love for Lucifer was so great that I would do anything to restore him to wholeness. If I could suffer the torments of hell a million times over in his place, I would do it... chap 10 (123-4).

i) Freewill theism ranges along a continuum. The view of God expressed in these passages represents what happens when that's taken to a logical extreme. Creatures wield power over God. He's an emotional hostage to our uncontrollable actions. Because he's afraid of losing us, we can pull his strings. It's like parent and child trading places. 

ii) In the acknowledgments, the authors thank Jerry Walls (among others) for his "inspiration and valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this book". That's a window into his own position. He recently published Does God Love Everyone?: The Heart of What's Wrong with Calvinism. For Jerry, the worst possible thing you can believe is to deny that God loves everybody. But the universalism in the novel represents the consistent alternative. Everyone including Satan will be saved. 

iii) Then there's the feminist angle, where Josh and Rachel make Eve a heavenly counselor, font of spiritual insight and wisdom.

iv) I wonder if part of the problem is due to the pernicious influence of C. S. Lewis. My immediate point isn't to bash Lewis, but the use people make of  him. For instance, it's striking how many professing Christians get their eschatology from The Great Divorce. The popularity of Lewis fosters a mentality in which many professing Christians begin with fiction as their source of theology. An inspirational fictional story. 

How to read the Bible's poetry

"Learning the Lyrics of God" (Leland Ryken).

Camus, The Plague, and God

http://wincorduan.bravejournal.com/?fbclid=IwAR1GxehodxIPB1KDFCTMEaIv3C5x8LqfsC1Ouh3XzhEZUxq2gqT3yw2gH7w

The Plague, by Camus

Camus wrote a novel about a plague. In the novel Camus poses a dilemma: if a plague is sent by God, is it impious to fight the plague? Are we fighting God by fighting a heaven-sent plague? 

Since the world is currently experiencing a pandemic, this is a good time to revisit the proposed dilemma. 

1. God sends adversity to change people. It can be designed to change them in different ways. 

Historically, for instance, plagues were an opportunity for Christians to practice sacrificial compassion. The pagan response to plagues was to cast the sick outside and leave them to fend for themselves. As a result, the fatality rate was extremely high for plagues, because in many cases, the sick would have been able to survive if someone cared for them and nursed them through the illness. 

By contrast, Christians, emboldened by the hope of heaven, practiced heroic compassion by taking in the sick and nursing them. Christians took the risk of contracting a fatal infection. Not only did this save many lives, but it was also a powerful witness to the pagan world. Todd Wood discussed this in a recent video:

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2020/04/neandertal-twine-and-covid-19.html

2. Sometimes God sends adversity for adversity to be overcome. Opposing the adversity isn't contrary God's will; to the contrary, the purpose of adversity, in such cases, is to pose a challenge to be surmounted. Take the cultivation of soul-building virtues. 

3. Sometimes God sends adversity to overcome us. For instance, God striking Nebuchadnezzar with lycanthropy to humble him.

4. What these examples of different kinds of change share in common is that God doesn't send adversity for us to do nothing in response. We're not to passively submit to adversity in the sense that we don't allow it to make any difference, but just sit there and take it without letting it have any effect on us. No, we're supposed to interact with the adversity. We're supposed to grapple with the adversity. So the dilemma posed by Camus is a false dilemma. 

Your vocation

The plot of the journey may be the most popular and fundamental plot in literature. Presumably, the metaphor of life as a journey is based on the human lifecycle. Were it not for human mortality, this might not be a universal metaphor and central literary plot.

By contrast, a neglected comparison is a plot based on a divine calling. This, of course, figures prominently in the Bible. Paradigm examples include Abraham, Moses, OT prophets, and the apostles.

You might say Jesus had a calling although it would be more accurate to say he had a mission. On the divine side he was an architect of his own vocation, so that's not a calling in the usual sense.

However, the larger point is that every human being has a calling. It's just that most men and women are unaware of their calling. They fulfill their vocation without knowing they have one.

That's because world history is like a drama in which everyone has a divinely assigned role to play. Unbelievers don't realize they are actors in God's drama, but nonetheless they play their part. Ironically, atheists have a divine vocation. Their calling is to play the foil and fall guy. 

Even bit players may have a deceptively significant role to play. No one remembers who Abraham's great-grandfather was. He's a long-forgotten nobody. Yet without him, Abraham would never exist. Little events in the past can become increasingly significant due to their long-range impact. 

Not only is everyone on a journey, everyone has a calling. Vocation and journey are conterminous. 

Chinese Christian fiction

From a 2004 article. It would be interested to see an up-to-date list:

Among writers in China, whose Marxist grand narrative has also stuttered to a stop, many contemporary novelists have identified openly with religious story, now not only Confucian or Buddhist but also the Christian grand narrative. (Among the prominent Christian novelists are Lao She, Xu Dishan, Bing Xing, and Mu Dan.) There is even a new literary style called sheng jing ti ("biblical"), whose characteristics are described as "objective, truthful, terse" (Aikman 254).
https://www.christianityandliterature.com/David-Jeffrey

Tolkien and the Film Adaptations

I prefer Lewis to Tolkien as a fiction writer, but this is insightful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfktLVP4Qr0&list=PLKjwFyELc2Snqt4O6X4VhCm2Pk1k2pXUx&index=19

Till We Have Faces

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uk-ukf7iaA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCipem2XoG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMffwQPp2FM&t=1s

Many critics deem this to be Lewis's best novel. It isn't fair to judge a book I haven't read, but at the same time there's a reason I never read it. Watching the lecture is a nice of a cheating. Giving me insight as a substitute for reading the book. I think a lot of Lewis fans haven't read it because:

i) It isn't Christian. It's a reversion to Lewis's lifelong fascination with Greek mythology. So the pagan setting is off-putting, and unlike the Greco-pagan elements in The Chronicles of Narnia, this isn't diluted.

ii) The main characters are women, it's written from a female perspective (insofar as Lewis can get inside a woman's mind), and it seems to have a female slant in terms of all the psychologizing and relational dynamics. This may reflect the influence of his wife reading the drafts. He's not merely adopting a feminine voice or viewing but taking his clues from her critical feedback. 

That's less appealing to the stereotypical male reader than some of his other fiction, with their more externalized focus on exploration and exotic landscape. 

iii) Whether or not I read a fictional book depends on a snap judgment from reading a plot synopsis. If the plot doesn't interest me I don't read the book. Same thing with movies and TV dramas. 

The Death of Ivan Ilych

One of the supreme works of Christian fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfIM-L6TzHo&t=690s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c6ODLAgGoE

The value of fiction

1. Human beings have an insatiable appetite for fictional stories. That includes short stories, novels, plays, and epic poems. More recently, that includes movies and TV dramas, as well as interactive video game stories. 

2. Is there any Christian justification for the consumption of fictional stories, especially in such massive quantities? No doubt many people have a skewed sense of priorities. They consume too much fiction to the neglect of Bible study, apologetics, and the practice of the Christian faith. That said:

3. Human beings are prone to boredom. Cultivating the life of the imagination is a form of intellectual playtime and recreation. 

4. Fiction takes us to other times and places. Before we were born. Where we never lived. Fiction exposes us to the imagination of other human beings. So it vastly broadens our mental horizon. We're not confined to our personal, firsthand experience of the world. It creates a collective imagination (not in the Jungian sense). 

5. Fiction is a vehicle Christians can use to filter their own experience. To provide a theological interpretation of their own life and the world round them. A fictional setting is more flexible than individual reality. A way to illustratively think through the practical implications of a Christian worldview. 

6. From the standpoint of Christian metaphysics, there's the question of whether one man's fictional story may be another man's lived reality. When we write a story, God thought of that story before we did. Every story originates in God's imagination. Our fictional stories are just a tiny finite sample drawn from the infinite library of God's illimitable imagination.

7. Between divine omniscience and divine omnipotence, it's possible that some of our fictional stories are true stories. They are fictional in relation to the world history of our particular universe, but from what I can tell, there's no presumption that God only created one timeline. If I write a fictional story, I may unwittingly write about real people in a real time and place. It's fictional in relation to the world history of the universe God put me in, but it may have a realistic counterpart in parallel universe with an alternate world history.

Of course, that's speculation, but it's no less speculative to deny it. Given all the interesting, worthwhile ways in which things might turn out differently, it seems like an arbitrary coin toss if there's only one world history–to the neglect of so many other significant forks in the road. I can't prove that conjecture, so it's not a point of Christian orthodoxy, but conjecture is unavoidable on both sides of the question. 

The style of Bible translation

I want to piggyback off Steve's post "The art of Bible translation":

1. To my knowledge, Bible translators attempt to balance accuracy, clarity, and naturalness in translation. I've sometimes seen other elements, but these seem to be the main ones. However, I don't know where things like style, tone, or voice would slot under. Perhaps naturalness?

2. In any case, I would think the main aim of a translation into its receptor language would be to reflect the fullness of the original as much as possible. For instance, if a text is elegant, then its translation should be elegant too. If a text is vulgar, then its translation should be vulgar too. All things equal, this seems to better reflect the original than (say) slavishly translating word-for-word, then flattening the entire translation into a uniform style.

3. On this note, I think one problem with Bible translators is that they may be fine biblical scholars, but (forgive me) usually they're not very literary or poetic. I'm sure there are exceptions.

4. Of course, the Bible translation committee or team could bring in a stylist(s). However, at least to my knowledge, it seems the stylist is typically brought in after the fact. That is, after the biblical scholars have translated a book of the Bible, it's the stylist's turn to make it sound stylish in the receptor language. Maybe I'm mistaken and it doesn't work like this. However, if it does work like this, then I don't know if that's necessarily the best approach.

5. In addition, not all stylists necessarily have a style that fits every book of the Bible. One person's style may be better suited for some books of the Bible than others. For instance, I imagine Cormac McCarthy's brutal, spare style might be suited to the book of Judges, and even certain parts of Revelation, but his style might be ill-suited for Rev 21. By contrast, C. S. Lewis might be able to do justice to a translation of Rev 21, judging by the sublime passages in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Perelandra. (It might be fun to try to match various styles of past or present literary figures with various passages or books of the Bible to see who might be the best stylist for a given biblical text.)

6. If the scholar and stylist can't be the same person, then I would think it might be better to have the scholar and stylist work together on the translation. The one informs the other as both translate the text. Maybe that's already how it works in Bible translation efforts.

7. As I'm sure all good translators know (and far better than I do), translation shouldn't be strictly about translating words, but translation should also be about finding the right tone or voice for the work that's being translated. Moreover, it's about grasping the mood or atmosphere in the original work and evoking it in translation. In other words, unless we're translating something mundane like a shopping list or how-to manual, there's typically something above and beyond the words themselves that likewise needs to be "translated" as well. That strikes me as more difficult to capture well than (say) syntax. One needs an ear attuned to hear the music, as it were, then the skill to render it into song.

8. Consider translations of Dante's Divine Comedy. How best to translate Dante? Free verse, blank verse, terza rima, iambic pentameter? A mixture? Perhaps even (gasp!) prose?

John Ciardi's translation has been called the poet's Dante. Ciardi often sings in a way other translations don't. One sometimes even has a better sense of Dante's voice in Ciardi than in other translations. However, many scholars don't like Ciardi because he takes too much license in translation whereas scholars want to see more fidelity to the original text. Ciardi isn't always accurate to Dante's Italian. As such, scholars might prefer Allen Mandelbaum or Robert & Jean Hollander despite the fact that the latter two come across a bit more stiff or wooden and stilted at times.

In this respect, Ciardi is not unlike Seamus Heaney's beautiful translation of Beowulf which many scholars nevertheless sniff at and deride as "Heaneywulf" since the poet's mark is so distinctly stamped on the translation. Perhaps they would say Heaneywulf threatens to drown out Beowulf. Yet Heaney captures something significant that more formal translations fail to do, even as it lacks other qualities. So there's a tradeoff.

9. Thankfully, as Steve points out in his post, we don't have to choose between Bible translations. The English language has been blessed with scores of translations. What's more, people who can read other languages might do well to consult Bible translations in other languages (e.g. Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese).

With this in mind, I think there are at least four different types of translations: interlinear, formal, functional, and paraphrase. It might do well to have a different English translation in each of these categories, depending on one's goals (e.g. Bible study, devotional reading, public reading).

The Silver Chair

This may have been my least favorite of the Narnia stories, but Dr. Masson provides a lot of useful background and analysis which shows the unsuspected depth of the storytelling, including the lunar symbolism and Odyssean motifs:

The Last Battle

Philip Pullman: siding with Satan

https://michaelnazirali.com/articles/app/archive/10-2019/title/philip-pullman-siding-with-satan

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Magician's Nephew