Colin Gunton in his book Enlightenment and Alienation (E & A)and also later in The One, the Three and the Many (The One) argues the enlightenment 'did have something to complain about' (E & A, 1985, 69), where the Christian tradition had defined God in terms of pure omnipotence or authority. He writes the Enlightenment's 'view of traditional Christianity as authoritarian and excessively other-worldly was not entirely a caricature' and 'human freedom was overridden by autocratic and unchristian ecclesiastical institutions' (E & A, 1). The Christian church went from 'persecuted minority into persecuting majority' (E & A, 106). Christendom created an alienated God (E & A, 153) and the church became authoritarian (E & A, 154). However, although Gunton argued the Enlightenment's quest for freedom was right, he believed 'it was looking in the wrong place for its answer' (E & A, 70). The right place to find the answer according to Gunton was a renewal of the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the Trinity: 'the modern critique must be understood as a recalling of theology to its own trinitarian roots' (The One, 1993, 39).
Before we go on, I think the description of Christianity, although partly caricature, that the Enlightenment rebelled against is the one we find in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (IDM). In IDM God is known as 'the Authority', the Magisterium, the church, is oppressive and authoritarian. The death of the Authority, of God is no bad thing, for he is not God. Pullman helps us rid ourselves of a god who is not God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
According to Gunton, a proper doctrine of creation and of the Trinity, enables us 'to conceive the utter ontological otherness of God and the world. It is one thing to be God, quite another to be the creation' (The One, 228). This 'generates' according to Gunton, 'a theology of free and open relations, [which] is not necessarily alienating. God's relation to the world is personal and free, and so also liberating' (The One, 229). The response to Pullman and His Dark Materials, whether it be the books, the stage play or the film is to recognise some of the truth of its description of the world, but to provide a different answer.
Rowan Williams in an article from the Guardian in 2004, puts it this way:
I read the books and the plays as a sort of thought experiment: this is, after all, an alternative world, or set of worlds. What would the Church look like, what would it inevitably be, if it believed only in a God who could be rendered powerless and killed, and needed unceasing protection? It would be a desperate, repressive tyranny. For Pullman, the Church evidently looks like this most of the time; it isn't surprising that the only God in view is the Authority.
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But this should not be read as a way of wriggling out of Pullman's challenges to institutional religion. I end where I started. If the Authority is not God, why has the historic Church so often behaved as if it did indeed exist to protect a mortal and finite God? What would a church life look like that actually expressed the reality of a divine freedom enabling human freedom?
A modern French Christian writer spoke about "purification by atheism" - meaning faith needed to be reminded regularly of the gods in which it should not believe. I think Pullman and Wright do this very effectively for the believer. I hope too that for the non-believing spectator, the question may somehow be raised of what exactly the God is in whom they don't believe.
I for one am looking forward to the imminent film of the first novel The Golden Compass (UK book title 'The Northern Lights'). See Kim Fabricius' article on 'Christians and the Golden Compass' here.
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