The Parables and Proselytizing of George MacDonald

https://anchor.fm/voyagepodcast/episodes/The-Voyage-Blog-cast-The-Parables-and-Proselytizing-of-George-MacDonald-e2b52r0

The power of storytelling ignites something deep within us. A primordial spark rising like the morning star in our hearts that awakens our intellects and emotions and leads us to ponder the things that matter, those things that can bring us joy, and the things that make us who we are. Fine works of art and literature, that strike us to the core, often carry with them subtle notes of Divine Providence.

Our creativity points back to our Creator, the one true God who revealed Himself as Yahweh, “I AM,” to Moses and the Israelites of old. As sub-creators, we are allowed via our human nature (endowed with intellect and imagination) to share in a small way in God’s own creativity. Probably the noblest use for our reasoning and imagination is to point back to God, to truly reflect His works and His message.

19^th-century pastor and author George MacDonald agreed. While many days, especially early in his career, saw the Protestant theologian preaching or otherwise tending his flock, he became best known for his fairy tale and fantasy writing.

The Importance of Imagination

In his poetry and prose, MacDonald let philosophy and theology add their unique flavors to his written works: substantial works which went on to influence other renowned Christian fiction writers. In his essay The Imagination: Its Function and Its Culture, the author lays much of the groundwork for his conception of human creativity. Our imagination, he says, has the twofold purpose of “following and finding out the divine imagination in whose image it was made” and of “putting thought into form.”¹ As MacDonald further points out, everything the human imagination can sense and utilize, every thought and image, is first discovered in Nature, those creatures that are “what the Hebrew poets call the works of His hands.”

The human artist then is completely indebted to God for the very substance and forms which appear in his work – whether it be visual, musical, or literary. MacDonald is not alone among the faithful to place such a significant emphasis on the imagination. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our hearts, and strengthen our will to follow Christ.²

In the spiritual life, meditative prayer is kept alive by the imagination. In reciting the Rosary, for example, our minds are meant to rise and consider the numerous facets of the complex situation occurring in each of the mysteries. In each decade of beads, we consider the intersection of things temporal and eternal. Yes, we are told in Scripture what Jesus did at each of these junctures. But in what manner was it done? Why? For whom? How did St. Joseph feel when the Christ-Child went missing? What went through the Apostles’ heads at the Institution of the Holy Eucharist? What anguish did Jesus feel while praying in the Garden of Olives? What anguish did the Blessed Virgin Mary experience at the foot of the Cross? These aspects can be colored in by the well-formed imagination. In such meditation, we take after and seek after the divine Imagination, in whose image we were formed – just as MacDonald observed. As humans, we have a built-in desire to use the imagination: to tell stories as well as to listen to them. People’s imaginations are absolutely crucial then for meditating on God and sharing His Word with those around us.

Though a Protestant, there’s much that MacDonald contributed – in both literary theory (as something evangelistic) and high fantasy – that has shaped more orthodox Christians in their methods of creativity and of spreading the two-thousand-year-old Gospel. For instance, his works influenced such storytelling colossuses as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who have themselves inspired countless readers.

From this arch-principle of imagination’s chief functions, MacDonald came to find a unique niche in literature that was at once religious as much as fantastic, a niche which he filled perfectly. Like our Lord Jesus, MacDonald thought he could reach people very effectively by sharing his faith through stories.

Allegory and Christian Symbolism

Since God desires to save all those whom He creates (so much so that He willed to die for us), the imagination of man can contemplate nothing better than the salvation imagined for us by God. With a zeal for that message, MacDonald mixed prose and proselytizing into a single art form, using the gifts of language and of literary images and devices to present the same, age-old Gospel message in new, brilliant apparel. In short, he breathed a bit of beauty into the Good Book’s old story of salvation; he strived to share the same Gospel truth through a new medium. Instead of being wholly realistic, like the parables of Jesus, MacDonald’s tales ventured toward the fantastic, often guiding the reader through countries brimming with fairy friends and foes. MacDonald’s prose was escapism, but escapism with a dash of evangelization.

The practicing Christian easily connects the dots in MacDonald’s tales, extracting from direct narration or from allegory embedded in the story itself the significance of serving God, living the Christian life well, and of obtaining salvation. This can be seen from just a handful of examples among George MacDonald’s better-known works.

In his inaugural novel Phantastes, which would later influence C.S. Lewis on a deeply personal level, the writer presents the protagonist Anodo as one who has recently bloomed into the fullness of manhood. The character, however, has much growing to make up for in the way of true and selfless love. Anodo, plunged into a series of adventures through Fairyland, must learn to feel for others and to cultivate agape (or selfless) love: the kind of love that puts others’ needs and concerns before one’s own interests. Thus, the summation of the Christian life is realized in the virtue learned along the way.

In Lilith, there is a story which makes visible a fight between the forces of Good and evil. The titular villain – a demon who was supposedly Adam’s first wife^* – looms dark and foreboding in the vicinity where a band of children dwells, who maybe represent innocence as much as they display it. However, if only Lilith didn’t confiscate the world’s water, they could drink heartily and “would be able to grow to full spiritual and physical maturity.”³ This is reminiscent of baptism – the normal means by which a believer enters into the Christian faith – a personal and living relationship with God. This isn’t the only place where MacDonald seems to project baptismal qualities onto water. Water in the land of fairies is, after all, rather extraordinary.

In one of his best short stories, The Golden Key, MacDonald describes a scene in which one of the child-protagonists, Mossy, takes a bath with the assistance of the Old Man of the Sea. Mossy’s gray hairs and wrinkles – the marks resulting from a long and wearisome journey – are removed, his youthfulness restored. The Old Man describes the bath’s gift as a taste of death that instills “more life.” Likewise, we are restored to the fullness of grace in baptism, our souls renewed and given new life. The daily existence of a Christian is meant to be a death to self in order to find life – a process of dying and rising with Christ as St. Paul would have it.⁴

Lewis held that MacDonald’s literary works, particularly Phantastes, contributed to a baptism of the imagination, that his words had been impactful in persuading the atheistic scholar to convert to Christianity. MacDonald’s life and body of work show the power of storytelling. Such stories can enliven and stir within the heart a vivid and vibrant faith. That is the power of the Christian imagination – of the human imagination meditating on the Imagination in which it lives and moves and has its being.