Abstract
A central theme in modern literature is the extent to which we can responsibly, in the words of Rowan Williams, ‘go on saying “God”’. As Harries points out in his new book, this is as much a moral problem as it is a metaphysical and epistemological one. Through a survey of many of the great modern English-language writers, Harries charts the contours of this dilemma and critiques the ease with which theological and religious themes are often dubiously subsumed under the reductive paradigms of psychology and sociology (p. 193). Refusing the temptations and easy generalities of reductivism, Harries presents a convincing reading of modern English-language writers as actively engaging with theology – and, through their creative writing, doing theology.
While Dostoevsky is one of two writers in this collection for whom the English tongue was foreign (Shusaku Endo being the other), it is undeniable that, in their own way, all these writers have taken up the task Dostoevsky set forth in his inimitable chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, ‘The Grand Inquisitor’, and so it would appear that Ivan and Alyosha are still having it out. Harries' exploration of each writer’s theological sense presents creative literature as providing an appealing imaginative space in which the moral and existential dilemmas of classical Christian theology can be constructively engaged. Representative of his project is the penultimate chapter, which pits the competing myths of C. S. Lewis and Philip Pullman against each other. By highlighting the areas in which Lewis and Pullman unexpectedly coincide, Harries shows that taking up the conversation between Ivan and Alyosha is part and parcel of what it means to be Christian in the modern world.
Haunted by Christ makes clear that the Christian conception of reality, while lending itself to a certain kind of pessimism towards this life – as in the cases of Edward and R. S. Thomas, Stevie Smith and William Golding – is in fact richly infected with a more serious sense of joy capable of finding good and beauty in the most fleeting moments. God, Christ and Christianity are present in some form or another in all these writers, and particularly in Samuel Beckett and Pullman, among others, whose art, Harries suggests, is as much defined by the absence of God as it is by their refusal that God should appear in any positive sense.
Scholars working at the intersection of theology and literature, as well as general readers, will find this volume deeply engaging and will discover that the greatest moral dilemmas of the faith often come from within Christianity. Haunted by Christ provides an engaging account of the dilemma that Chesterton diagnosed a century ago in Orthodoxy: ‘Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.’