Subcreator

I've had a little more time this afternoon since Archbishop Bohan's conference than I did yesterday night, due to the time it takes my computer to turn on, and to email my parents about important stuff, so I've also had a little more time for his words to fade a bit from my mind--or to phrase that in a more flattering way, for the truly important parts to come clear.

Mostly, the Archbishop focused this afternoon on the "second creation" account in Genesis. Having come across a document in the Archives this summer that argued very passionately in what I consider to be the "Catholic fundamentalist" tradition, against the "two Creation accounts" thought regarding Genesis, I don't know how much credence I want to give either way to that idea... I certainly find myself put off by fundamentalist-Catholics, but on the other hand I'm wary of the "four sources" mentality that puts forward the "two Creation accounts" in the first place... so I'll go with a more spiritual middle ground and say God put forward them both with different purposes in mind.

Anyway, the compositional origins of the text are unimportant to what the Archbishop was saying...

Basically, distilled to its finest, His Grace was focusing on the relationship of God and humanity (perhaps the ongoing theme, if one recalls my last post), and how it was originally extremely intimate, familial--God and His created shared "one breath." He also focused on Man's creation "in the image and likeness of God" and this beautiful gift as, likewise, the source of our sins and woes ever since.

In essence, the Archbishop's words hit home, bouncing off the big red button labelled "that is so true!" Our desire to be like God, to be free from God, and in this modern, secular society to be free from any authority at all; is directly rooted in our nature "in the image and likeness of God." As the Archbishop pointed out, however, we tend to forget that we are NOT God, and go crazy with wanting to not only be in His image, but to be completely free of Him as well.

We can't do that. The created cannot freed itself from its reliance on the Creator. That is, if nothing else, completely embedded in Thomistic metaphysics, and the contrary opinion is behind all the self-destructive trends, past and present. In particular, though, I was definitely nodding away and hitting that big red button with regards to Archbishop Bohan's mentions of the western society we live in. We really do, as a culture, refuse to accept the boundaries laid down by authority. Certainly, this is endemic with regards to Divine Authority, as a glance at the issues of homosexual "marriage" and regular Church attendance--to say nothing of adherence to the teachings of the Church on other issues like contraception--will show without fail. However, this attitude is also prevalent in issues outside of the Church, but is true of society in general. We question the government's authority, we refuse to obey its laws (speeding...), we rebel against our parents, our teachers, and the institutions, such as the military, that emphasize discipline and authority are facing troubles recruiting.

It occurred to me, however, that this same disordered desire to "be like God" must, in fact, be a corruption of something good, if I want to adhere to the philosophical position put forward by Augustine, that evil, if it exists, must be the corruption of something good, since existence itself is good. It also occurred to me, moments later, that Tolkien had placed a great deal of time and effort into the idea of "subcreation." (I should mention, in the interests of full disclosure, that I have not been reading any great, theological literature so far this retreat, so much as I've been reading Tolkien. In my defence, I think there's no lack of applicable material in that particular field, however.)

Tolkien's idea of art as subcreation, however, also struck me immediately as ordered to a completely different end than the selfish desire to "be like God." To begin with, the very prefix "sub-" reminds us that Tolkien realised the place of subcreation as subsidiary to that of God's primary creation. Furthermore, although Tolkien continually repudiates the idea that his works have any allegorical meaning, and attempts to drive home the idea that they are stories told for the sake of the story, it seems nonetheless clear to me that Tolkien is not writing "art for art's sake."

This is borne out clearly in the "applicability vs. allegory" issue, since Tolkien goes to great lengths to show that, although not allegorical, and faithful firstly to its own inner consistency, the best story would be one that could be applied to any universal human situation. This is the "truth" that he speaks of in "On Fairy-Stories" as being contained in said stories. It is not a truth of "this is what actually happened" but a truth of "this is true of life."

By being "true to life," although Tolkien's subcreation is internally coherent first and not allegorical, it lacks any real kinship with the idea of "art for art's sake," which taken to its extremes divorces the artistic product from any representation of reality. Tolkien's work is stylised, but it remains a mirror for reality, whereas the grossest of modern art is so far removed from its origins it no longer represents anything, but has purpose only in the act of creation--and an act of creation is pointless and disordered if it has no purpose beyond itself.

And so we come to the end of my intertwined Tolkien and retreat train of thought... there was a great deal more in what the Archbishop said that I would have liked to have recalled, but I did not take notes--I should have, though, since he kept saying stuff that set off all checkmarks across the board.

It's at times like this, though, that I'm glad I have this extra blog. I don't want to get all preachy to people, and while I hope I've avoided "preachiness," I am definitely treading in the waters thereabouts... and in this philosophic mindset, I begin to wonder if maybe I shouldn't be a little "preachier."

Then I think about fundamentalist-Catholics....