Journal

Philip Pullman on reading vs. theocracy

Posted on November 8th, 2004, in the evening

I came across this article on the Guardian website.

As always when reading Philip Pullman, I feel an almost unbearable tension between profound agreement and agonised frustration with the article. Everything he says is insightful: his identification of Twentieth Century Russian communism as equivalent to the model of 'theocracy' he outlines is well articulated, I like the difference he highlights between 'logos' and 'mythos' truth, his praise of imaginative reading is essential, and his concern over its suppression utterly justified.

But the frustration comes with his use of 'theocracy' as the umbrella term for the systems he is writing against. There is just no justification for this usage and it adds nothing to his overall argument. While I'll concede that a lot of theocracies have exhibited the features he describes, there is simply no need to bring belief in God or its absence in to the question at this level. Pullman includes in his definition a whole raft of doctrines for which 'theocracy' is a singularly inappropriate term (his own example being case in point), explaining the move with the claim:

You don't need a belief in God to have a theocracy.

I'm not going to resort to dictionary definitions, but this assertion stretches the term beyond reasonable limits, and is (I think it's worth repeating) completely unnecessary for the larger point he is making. Pullman's demonstration that Twentieth Century Russian communism is(was) analogous to a certain kind of theocratic power is vital, but it doesn't therefore follow that it was theocratic any more than an analogy between Granny Smiths and tangerines (both round, edible, grow on trees, contain seeds, etc.) makes Granny Smiths a kind of orange.

I couldn't agree more with his overall point, but my own appreciation of liberal arts (literature in particular, in fact) has come through a deepening love for the God who precisely values creativity as a beautiful end in itself and who is the initiator of and intimately involved in the most open story.

There is a different word ('fruit') to describe the set to which Granny Smiths and tangerines both belong. A different category name for the systems of power Pullman (rightly) criticises would surely also be more appropriate, and would free his important major point from the clumsy attempt to implicate belief in God in a very human lust for power, which needlessly limits the scope of the whole.

I love Philip Pullman's writings, but he sometimes comes across as being on a crusade against theism (and Christianity in particular) every bit as narrow and unsympathetic as he sees in the worst of historical Christianity itself.

Pullman's thinking is incredibly inspiring; most of what he says is out of my depth for thinking-I'm-clever criticism. It's for that reason that I wish so deeply that he would explore the depth of his own words:

It isn't belief in God that causes the problem.