Friday 12 July 2024

Prophetic Dialogue

The prophetic tradition is the history of a dialogue between the Abrahamic/Mosaic deity and human beings, whether a "people" or particular persons: Jonah, Job, Joseph, Jesus etc. Why does God do what He does? - assuming that it is Him that does it, of course, although that is usually taken for granted in this tradition. In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, the prophetic dialogue is continued by Peter Berg, an enquiring Christian who must question God after two interconnected and devastating experiences, his encounter with the Ythrian New Faith and the death of his wife. 

Perhaps there is another kind of inner crisis, not recognised as such, when a "soul" (person) needs but blocks out contact with reality. When CS Lewis as fictional character involuntarily enters the mental landscape of a former student's fiancee, he hears a soft but heavy knocking and:

"...a voice at whose sound my bones turned to water, 'Child, child, let me in before the night comes.'"
-CS Lewis, "The Shoddy Lands" IN Lewis, The Dark Tower and other stories (London, 1983), p. 110.

The speaker wants to start a dialogue. This single sentence has affected me more than any other passage in Lewis' works. Lewis personified reality and wrote this story from within his own Christian belief.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I never did find the Ythrian New Faith very plausible, however. And, in strictly intellectual ways, we see more about what Ivanhoans thought about theological issues in "The Three-Cornered Wheel" and "The Season of Forgiveness." Compared to Ivanhoans the Ythrians struck me as rather shallow and superficial.

Ad astra! Sean