Why "The Golden Compass" fails to kill God (and misses the target altogether)

Philip Pullman has reportedly said that the "His Dark Materials" trilogy were about killing God. The Magisterium in the film of "The Golden Compass" is noticeably a more overtly religious organisation than is apparent in the first of Philip Pullman's books, "Northern Lights". But whilst the film makes it more clear that it is directed against the control of religious organisations, anything more than casual reflection simply highlights the fact that Pullman has missed his target.

"All truth but its own"
The Magisterium wishes to repress the truth about the nature of the universe and the authority. In our world, there is no single entity that is in a position to assert its own ideas across the whole world. There are countries where religions are trying to do this. But the countries which have been by far the most successful at "thought control" have been those built upon a humanistic worldview.

Furthermore, in the postmodern Western world of today, with its marketplace of ideas, a strong case can be made that it is secular humanism that is the most intolerant of alternatives. In the US, all religious discourse within public institutions is opposed not on the basis of its truth or otherwise, but supposedly on the basis of the constitutional requirement to separate church and state. That wasn't the intention of the First Amendment - it wasn't supposed to eliminate the possibility of such discourse: it was simply to protect the rights of minority religions, by granting none an established position. That is a laudable aim. Now the opposite is happening. Minority worldviews are being excluded from the public arena because the established position is humanism. Yes, I know that the majority of people in the US are Christians - but the fact is that the constitution is being used to shout "We don't do God" far more loudly than the spin doctors in the UK.

Again, at the moment, there is no worldview that has the ability to overrule. But from where have come the calls to bar dissenting undergraduates from university? From where have come the assertions that you must be a fool to have beliefs that contradict the mainstream? From where have come the calls to prevent people with particular worldviews teaching children?

And, like the Magisterium, most times we are told that humanism thinks this "for the good of the children" - and those people who are so ignorant that they must be told what to think. "In a nice way," of course ....

"Connecting them all is dust"
The Magisterium and the Authority are regarded as contingent parts of Pullman's multiverse. Dust is regarded as the absolute which links all consciousness.

Now I'm not sure about this - even having read all the books, it's not entirely clear. But I think I'm right in saying that dust somehow knows the truth - it is linked with the alethiometer. Dust is the agency through which prophesies about Lyra are made. Dust is the context in which the human virtues - loyalty, friendship, compassion - make sense. The Authority is weak, and the Magisterium is solely concerned with its own survival.

So most of what Christians identify as being expressions of divine nature are viewed by Pullman as being the product of dust, rather than the product of his Authority. There is still such things as absolute truth, virtues - but their source isn't in what has hitherto been called God - it is in some transcendent, all-knowing, omni-present, virtue-filled entity.

Well, that sounds to me remarkably like ... God. Perhaps the real problem is that the thing that Pullman thought of as God in the first place wasn't actually God at all.

And that turns out to be the case. If you read this interview in "Third Way", you will discover about how Pullman learnt about what he calls "God" -

My grandfather was a clergyman and so every Sunday I went to Sunday school and church. I was confirmed, I was a member of the choir, all that sort of stuff.

We still had the Authorised Version of the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern – all those old forms of worship that had given comfort and joy to generations were still there for me to enjoy. Nowadays it’s all been swept away, and if ever I go into a church and look at the dreadful, barren language that disfigures the forms of service they have now, I am very thankful that I grew up at a time when it was possible for me to go to Matins and sing the Psalms in the old versions.

That ineffectual, traditional religious upbringing has little in common with the life-transforming agency which changed the life of heroes like Martin Luther, or Martin Luther King.

When you read Pullman's books, or see the film, it isn't the Authority in which divinity can be seen. It is dust. Pullman can't get away without the transcendent, absolute other - he knows it is there. It's just he doesn't realise that this is actually the God he is looking for.

His Dark Materials - first reaction

I'm only a little way into Pullman's "The Subtle Knife" (book 2), so the real force of the anti-God message hasn't yet struck. However, I wanted to write a few things on what I think so far.

To conceive of a whole alternative universe - in fact, more than one - demonstrates the imagination of a real master of storytelling. Also, to explore these universes not only on the level of language but the level of their science is brave, and he has done it very well. It is this creativity which makes the stories so captivating. There are limits to my appreciation. Although I like Lyra as a character, I'm not convinced that she would have had the intuition and empathy required of her in the books, and from a narrative point of view, I think that they are weakened by the fact that they follow the perspective of different characters - I think I am becoming a bit of a narrative snob in that regard!

In terms of the critique of theism, I've already commented (see below) about Pullman's perception of the nature of God and the church. If God were a being who simply expected creatures to wait on him, and was indifferent to their concerns, I would stand alongside Pullman throwing stones at him. But the Christian message is that this isn't what God is like. God is so concerned that he has intervened in history as a real person - and in fact, he allowed himself to be killed for the sake of his creatures. The church ought to be demonstrating the servant nature shown us in the life of Jesus - and again, I am happy to stand alongside Pullman in his criticism of a church that is authoritarian and denies what God has said.

I obviously don't know where the account is going, yet, but there is a more interesting philosophical point I'd like to make about what I have read so far.

In the book of Job, a godly man called Job finds himself suffering in circumstances that he doesn't understand. He bears this for a long time, but eventually pours out his frustration in a series of discourses. In one of these, he says:

Oh, that I had someone to hear me!
I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me;
let my accuser put his indictment in writing.

Surely I would wear it on my shoulder,
I would put it on like a crown.

I would give him an account of my every step;
like a prince I would approach him.

Job 31:35-37 (NIV)

What he is asking for is a higher court. He says: God is accusing me, I can defend myself, and what I need is somebody higher than God who could judge between us.

Later on, God speaks directly to Job, and at the end of that, Job's attitude has completely changed:

I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.

You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.'

My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.

Job 42:2-6 (NIV)

It's not the case that God has in some way "beaten" Job, for Job to end up like that. In actual fact, God doesn't even say that Job has done anything wrong - although he insists that Job's friends (who insisted that Job must have been getting what he deserved) have said what is wrong, and need forgiveness. What has happened is that, having truly understood God, Job was able to see that he was far from being "like a prince" - God's equal, who could demand a response from God.

The interesting thing is that Job thinks there ought to be a higher court, at which God's actions can be weighed. But God makes clear to him that he is the highest court. He made everything for his own reasons; a person's whole idea of justice is in fact derived from God's nature.

What does this have to do with Philip Pullman? Well, he obviously thinks it is reasonable for him to call God to account in some way. But what is interesting to me, on the basis of what I read so far, is that there are certain things that he places "above" God. One of these is truth. I may, of course, be going wrong here, since I haven't read all of the books, but the alethiometer (the golden compass) seems to transcend all the universes and provide answers to questions almost beyond the capability of any god. Another seems to be destiny - Lyra is the child of prophecies, and the prophecies seem to transcend the Magisterium of her universe.

But from within the perspective of orthodox Christian theology, truth and destiny are only meaningful concepts given the existence of God. The first of these is the epistemological necessity, which I've already discussed many times on my blog. There does seem to be such a thing as absolute truth (the postmodern epistemology is wrong) but we have no reason to believe starting from our own perspective as subjective observers that we are able to apprehend such truth (the modernist epistemology is wrong). I have found no better explanation for the idea of truth - the truth that we all recognise, and upon which we all base myriad decisions every day - than that there is an external, personal absolute in whom and to whom truth is necessity, and from whom we derive our own nature.

So if Pullman suggests (as he seems to) that the idea of truth is something that "is bigger" than the Christian idea of God, and something that one can therefore use to judge God with, where does his idea of truth derive from? An epistemology is required.

The same applies to destiny. Again, the orthodox Christian idea of destiny relates to the fact that God has a purpose for the whole universe, which was why it was brought into being. No destiny can be superimposed on this that can overthrow God's purpose - in fact, the most determined act of rebellion against this purpose (killing God, no less! - that idea of Pullman's is not original) was the act which achieved the destiny that God had planned.

If Pullman wishes to use these ideas to critique God, he needs to first of all demonstrate that a satisfactory foundation of these ideas can be found outside God.

The "Golden Compass" Conspiracy?

The film "The Golden Compass" is the first of three films that are to tie in with Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Philip Pullman is a noted atheist - he is to children's literature what Richard Dawkins is to science writing. Various groups are up in arms, and are muttering about conspiracies.

The conspiracy theory goes like this. The film is being run over Christmas to encourage people to buy children the Pullman books, which is a means of using the holiday season for getting atheistic propaganda into the hands of children.

I am sceptical. Many family films are launched in the run-up to holidays. This is - unsurprisingly - so that families can go and see them. Not many studios would be silly enough to launch a film targeted at families at the start of the school term - it's a way of guaranteeing box office figures that are patchy at best. It's not a conspiracy - just an irony (that an anti-Christian message should be promoted at Christmas).

Pullman's major grievance seems to be with established monotheistic religion:

You’re not really giving us any clues to the source of the extreme antipathy to the Church in your books.

Well, all right, it comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches – and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban.

Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don’t accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It’s still going on.

Here is how he describes his upbringing:

The conventional middle-class [values] of the time. My grandfather was a clergyman and so every Sunday I went to Sunday school and church. I was confirmed, I was a member of the choir, all that sort of stuff.

We still had the Authorised Version of the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern – all those old forms of worship that had given comfort and joy to generations were still there for me to enjoy. Nowadays it’s all been swept away, and if ever I go into a church and look at the dreadful, barren language that disfigures the forms of service they have now, I am very thankful that I grew up at a time when it was possible for me to go to Matins and sing the Psalms in the old versions.

I guess it's quite likely that if you have that traditional an idea of what the church is, and that level of certainty that this is the proper structure, you are unlikely to realise that in actual fact, Christianity isn't simply another "monotheistic religion", which requires its adherents to follow a set pattern of behaviour. Although I go to church every Sunday, my experience of Christianity is almost completely different from what Pullman describes, and my religious forebears (the anabaptists) are more noted for radical pacifism than burning anybody.

From my point of view, I think there's much to be said for challenging established religions, especially where the leadership of those religions is happy to hide itself away and live off the labour of the followers. This is also the exact opposite of the Christian gospel - where God was so concerned to do something for the people that he loved that he came to earth to live and die for people who were unable to help themselves. That is the model Christians are called to follow - not the institutional charade that most people think of as as Christianity. It's interesting that the most vocal criticism of Pullman's books should be coming from organisations like the Catholic League - if the hat fits ....

Incidentally, here is a link to the interview from which the quotes from Pullman were selected - between him and Third Way, a thought-provoking Christian magazine.