When Fiction and Theology Intersect

history, fiction, books

The study group I am a part of began a tour through Dante’s “Divine Comedy” this week. This tour has led me to think about the intersection between fiction and theology.

When I was young and flippant, I would sometimes say it took C. S. Lewis to make the idea of Heaven palatable to me. Now I realize I was only being slightly clever and it was not really an original thing to say.

Mark Twain gave Huckleberry Finn a similar attitude:

Sometimes the Widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow’s if he wanted me, though I couldn’t make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.”

As Huck found out there are some people who can make Heaven sound unpalatable.  At the same time there are others who make it seem like the blissful, desirable destination it surely must be.

Regardless, the nature of Heaven does not change according to the person describing it.  It is the perception of Heaven in the understanding of the person giving the explanation that changes. This is an example of the importance of picking the right teacher.  And this is a lesson too many people learn too late, or worse, never learn at all!

Do We Know What Heaven Is Really Like?

We have more than a few accounts of Heaven from Saints and others. Most of them feel metaphorical, allegorical, and/or figurative on some level. The more detailed the account, the greater the sense of metaphor and allegory.

The most general descriptions of Heaven involve being directly in the presence of God and experiencing the Beatific Vision. Since God is infinite in every way, it is only to be expected that attempts to communicate the direct experience of His presence would be limited.  They are incomplete both because of the limitations of language and our mortal perceptions.

At the same time, some – even much – of what we have from saints and mystics is stirring and enlivening, as this set of excerpts show. But some of what we have is abstract and it is usually difficult to relate that which is abstract.

All the descriptions, however, promise continually renewing happiness and joy, untrammeled by the limitations of our mortal perceptions and understanding.

What Fiction Offers

Fiction, on the other hand, offers us the freedom to focus on a single element of the heavenly.  An author of fiction can focus on, for instance, reuniting with those who have passed on before us.  Reunions can be simplified and explored as one of many sources of Heaven’s happy bliss.

The reunions depicted in C. S. Lewis’s “The Last Battle” are particularly strong in this respect.  They include first time meetings between characters from different stories in the series.

Following this initial picture of bliss, the new residents of Heaven in “The Last Battle” experience some of the surprises Heaven may hold.  They also experience an eventual call to move “higher up and further in.” Accompanying the call is the stunning ease and speed of their movement in their response to that call.

But people do not (or at least should not) expect fiction to be literally true.  It is a genre that allows both the reader and the writer to unleash imagination in a controlled way.  While somewhat free of the limitations of mortal perceptions, however, it is still constrained by people’s understanding of what is right and true.

Techniques

One of the more powerful techniques of fiction is to report the result of an event or encounter without having to completely describe the event or encounter. This is a story-telling technique that is especially useful in both fantasy fiction and in horror tales.  The author simply describes the effect of an encounter with the fantastic or the horrific on one of the characters.  This relieves the author of the daunting task of actually describing the fantastic or horrific thing.

For instance, suppose there is something in a horror novel that is so dreadful, frightening, and wicked that even a glimpse of it can lead to insanity. The paradoxical weakness of this kind of story element is immediately clear.  If the author tries to describe it he will probably fail, leaving his readers sane but disappointed.

This is an unsatisfying prospect from the perspective of the story teller.  But it is still better than the consequences of succeeding.  No author would want to create a story that drives readers insane.  And this does not even take into account of the problems involved in editing and typesetting such a story!

So showing the reactions of someone exposed to ‘a horror’ is, in some ways, more powerful than any actual description. People’s fears differ, but they can easily imagine something that might scare them as badly as the characters described in the story.  People’s fears are limited only by their imaginations and their instincts for self-preservation.  Novelist Stephen King has been particularly skillful with this technique in many of his novels and stories.

It is generally more difficult to use this suggestion technique to create delight and buoyant happiness in a story.  It has been done however, and Lewis’s Narnia books are, again, a prime example.

Sometimes the Details Are the Point

Harkening back to Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” sometimes the gory details are the whole point of the written piece. Being a vicarious witness to the punishment of one’s enemies has some appeal, as Dante knew.  Many of those identified in the Inferno are also political enemies of Dante or his party the Guelfs (later the White Guelfs).  And some of those undergoing purification in Purgatory also had attachments to someone who was not among Dante’s favorite people.

The “Divine Comedy” is a work of fiction that is a polemic.  It presents a strong Christian view of good and evil, grace and judgement, heaven and hell.  Other works of Christian fiction such as “The Great Divorce” by C. S. Lewis, as well as works by G. K. Chesterton and Charles Williams are also polemics.  But there are also authors who write polemics with opposing views.  So one must be discerning when reading works of fiction.

There is also another danger in mixing theology and fiction.  There is a risk of mistaking one’s own personal preferences with those things that might legitimately form a basis for final judgment.

We have been thoroughly warned in the Gospels about the danger of judgment.  We should never be more concerned with the splinter in another’s eye than with the beam in our own (Mathew 7:1-5). It is never a good idea to let the exhilaration of a polemic attack overwhelm our call to be charitable and our need to maintain proportion.

Illuminating or Obscuring?

In the end, any time we read fiction we need to be discerning.  We must be ready to ask ourselves if what we are reading properly illuminates moral and theological truths or if it obscures them.

The devil has many tools in his arsenal. Confusing us by trying to get us to substitute plausible, emotionally satisfying fiction for less pleasing truth is by no means the least of the weapons deployed against us.

Discernment and the advice of mature, wise friends and acquaintances can be helpful here.  It can lead us toward fiction that illuminates truth, and away from fiction that distorts and destroys it.

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4 thoughts on “When Fiction and Theology Intersect”

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  4. The fruit of the Spirit that we are supposed to have while we are still on this earth sounds a bit like renewing happiness and joy, untrammeled by the limitations of our mortal perceptions and understanding (cf. Galatians 5:22-23).

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