Old Ideas, New Visions

By Paul Schilling

 When I first read C. S. Lewis’ trilogy consisting of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength I was furious with the third book.  Not because he wrote about Christianity, which I took for granted from Lewis, but because Merlin showed up.

            Wait, this was advertised as a science fiction trilogy, the first two books could pass as science fiction, and now someone is doing magic! 

Magic belongs in fantasy novels, not science fiction.  I felt betrayed. Merlin was also apparently Christian in the novel, which was annoying but not nearly as much since any magical system should logically be aligned with the divinity that wrote the rules.

 That was years ago, before I read either theology (mostly Paul Tillich and Hans Küng) or tried my hand at writing fiction about God.  This work led me to the conclusion that Lewis did exactly what he had to do; he did what the ideas themselves demanded.  Using fantasy tropes to get across certain ideas about God is natural.

This contrasts with Orson Scott Card’s introduction to Cruel Miracles, where he wrote that “Fantasy can hardly deal seriously with gods, because gods are common motifs, like magic swords and unicorns.  Readers aren’t expected to believe in them . . . But because science fiction specifically excludes supernatural gods as characters in stories, it is possible for science fiction to explore the purpose of life deeply and thoroughly without being distracted by existing theologies.”

Science fiction has plenty to say about life and precludes miracles.  On the other hand, purpose implies decisions, which implies a mind.  Saying life has a purpose is anthropomorphizing. Life itself doesn’t have a purpose, even if individuals can find or create purpose in their own individual lives.  The only way for “Life” to have purpose is if a mind (God) gave it one.  Since God is outside science, science fiction can’t address this issue.

Card’s assumption that gods would be characters brings to my mind gods like Zeus or Odin, not modern ideas about God.  Here I would like to say that when I use the word ‘God’ I am using the Christian word in a Christian society.  If I was writing this to a Chinese audience, I would write about the Tao, and I would use Taoist examples from literature.

Discovering and preaching about infinity also poses challenges to finite human minds, like the difficulties of telling other people about it.  Jesus told parables.  Zen Buddhists have koans illustrating the limitations of reason.  Taoists say the underpinnings of the universe are a formlessness giving rise to yin and yang and chi.  The Hindus throw up their arms and say all is illusionary.

What all these theologies have in common is symbolic logic.  Thomas Aquinas could talk about The Bible as metaphor and no one blinked.  Jesus’ ideas were filled with symbolism and both he and his listeners knew it.  Serious theologians never read The Bible literally, they understand they are reading a symbolic text dealing with a subject beyond the understanding of any one mind.  Needless to say (but it is fun to say it) theologians tend to be a little more open to disagreement than TV preachers.  What has thrown a lot of Americans off balance intellectually is the historically recent and mostly fundamentalist invention of reading The Bible or other religious texts literally, but for all their noise they represent only one out of twenty Christians world-wide.

In the Middle Ages, magic was believed in as readily as God, so much so that Albert the Great and Aquinas integrated magic into theology. They divided knowledge by the method it was attained (experiments, revelation, or reason) and the source (divine, demonic, and nature).  They considered symbolism so powerful it was a law of how the universe functioned.  Communion was symbolic, so was the Cross. So were astrology, magical runes, and tarot cards.

Of course, a lot of people cheat, interpreting religious text literally when they agree with it, and symbolically when they disagree and are looking for a work around.  The Greeks might have invented symbolic theology when they realized the moral inferiority of their own pantheon. Some scholars do this when reading Nietzche, hoping he is being sarcastic or ironic when he wrote something disagreeable.  In his private letters, Nietzche bragged about writing as he did to spark eternal debate. 

Science is different from theology; it uses literal logic.  A is A, not some vaguely A+ thing.  The sky is blue because of the interaction between light and atmosphere. Scientists do experiments, make observations, and come to reasonable conclusions.  Science can be harder to understand than other forms of knowledge because our minds work symbolically (via language) and scientists are running against the grain, trying to create precision in minds that evolved messily to handle a messy life.  I’m not saying this is bad, it just takes more work.

In theology, A is understood to represent (not be) A+, something with greater meaning.  Whether this makes theology a wonderful ocean to be sailed or a meaningless quagmire is beyond the scope of this article.   If A is understood to be A+, then we’re talking about magic and miracles.

If theology uses symbolic logic and science uses literal logic, this has implications for the author who wants to write fiction about God: theological fiction.  By theological fiction I do not mean what Card called “inspirational” literature (illustrations of dogma) nor what he called “religious” literature.  Religious literature is ultimately about people and their relationship to God; theological literature is about God.  They work well together, and I can’t think of an example of theological literature without people in it, but they are different. 

So science fiction uses science and gives rise to spaceships, aliens, and other science fiction motifs, implicitly accepting literal logic as its basic premise.  Since theology uses symbolic logic, the crossover is difficult, but not impossible.

Fiction is symbolic in nature, and the tension between the symbolic logic of literature and the literal logic of science can give science fiction a heavy punch in the hands of talented writers and serious readers or a slip on the ice by incautious minds.

Math is symbolic logic, but the transition from math and the more abstract sciences like quantum mechanics to God is tenuous and often mind boggling. I think Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Series was trying something like this, and it was not easy, requiring so many multiple layers of thought that it was easy to lose track of the steps behind me as I read the series.  Great science fiction uses symbols all the time as literary devices, and what different parts of the deeper works of our genre mean generate discussion as interesting as any concerning ‘literary’ works. 

 Yet fantasy is inherently symbolic. It contains symbols of evil versus good, chaos versus order, and, yes, gods.  Archetypes are symbolic of the inner workings of our imagination.  Fantasy and theology are speaking the same grammar.  Many of our fantasy motifs come from religion to begin with: gods, demons, powerful objects, and prophecy.  The extent of Lancelot’s treason cannot be understood except in the context of his being a paladin, for he not only betrayed his king and friend, but God. The argument has been made that Merlin was a druid, and even Gandalf was theologically aware, something generally missing from the imitations.  The only reason fantasy is not religious literature is because we’ve been steadily taking the religion out.

G.R.R. Martin seemed determined to put it back in with his Song of Ice and Fire series. It makes sense to, since there has never been a culture without a religion, but since magic and miracles function in fantasy novels, any author should tread carefully. In deliberately Christian fiction, God’s Plan over rides individual decisions. Any author who assumes gods play an active role in their imaginary worlds must explain why the gods don’t just solve problems by snapping their fingers. The excuses usually seem rather lame to me, but that’s another essay.

So what about Lewis’ trilogy?  It started off as science fiction with a trip to Mars, but ended with Merlin and magical/miraculous summonings.  I submit as any plot comes closer to an underlying infinite spiritual reality, symbolic logic will gradually take over and the feel of the book will be nudged from science fiction towards fantasy. Yet Lewis wrote that God does not cheat, so anything God does that seems like a miracle to us is really just science we don’t know about yet, a parallel to Clarke’s assertion that any technology sufficiently advanced would seem like magic.  What is for us is literally “A” but is symbolically “A+” is, in theological fiction, literally “A+,” we just don’t see the “+” yet.

Symbolism inspires emotions and perceptions difficult to put into words because they are so foundational they remain intuitions. We ought to be able to write more about our true religious feelings, but it’s hard to do so without making people defensive, so just as “Star Trek” dealt with race relationships by having a character who was white on the right side in battle with a character who was black on the right side stand in for our attitudes about race, fantasy writers can write about gods and faith from an angle that might get people to think again.