To: Muser44
From: Hudson hermit
Re: Sipping from the Cup of Hope, Part III

The Fall and Saruman the Wise

I left off with Christ and Samwise in my last part. There, I stressed the importance of myth and fairy tales. It would be a mistake to assume that faerie or any mythological realm has no evil (and I've no reason to assume that anyone reading this would do so; just the same, I include the statement). There is no reason to state the case for hope if the reasons for despair don't exist. There certainly are enough arguments against hope. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge them.

I've acknowledged Christ, and by extension, I acknowledge the Fall. It makes no sense to have a Redeemer without a Fall. But that's a bit backward. It's because of the Fall that we have a Redeemer. The Fall is by far the most obvious. This is a Truth explained by Genesis, and it is proven every day by looking out my window or by turning on my television. Man rejected God's authority and command, and we've Christ to help us home.

We've still free will. We improperly exercised our prerogative at the Fall, and we continue to do so today. We can choose between right and wrong or to do right and wrong. There is an orthodoxy, or as C.S. Lewis put it, a Tao, that guides us in making these decisions. This orthodoxy, this Tao, demands that we look outside ourselves; there is something beyond the self and there are times when the self should be sacrificed. Some will reject this, in part or in whole. Some will place themselves above the Law, and preserve those parts of the Law that give them an advantage. Others put themselves outside the Law; they refuse to acknowledge it and make a law onto themselves.

In this age, the charmers -- as brother Rafa would put it, it seems to be his favorite word -- are in ascendance. In the Lord of the Rings, that charmer is Saruman, one of the Wise. He came to Middle Earth to help defeat Sauron who was a former lieutenant of Morgoth (the name of Satan in this fantasy). It's obvious that Sauron is evil. He cannot create, so he perverts and destroys. This is not so for Saruman. It was not immediately obvious to the good people of Middle Earth, because Saruman first came to oppose evil.(*) Because he was the most expert in ring lore, he was chosen to head the White Council over Gandalf who came at the same time. In the paperbound version of LOTR, it is speculated that perhaps he delved too deeply in his studies. For whatever reason, he became wedded to the material world, and acted as we expect the materialist kind to act. He desired power over others, and respected nothing outside of himself. Gandalf reveals Saruman's open treachery to council of Elrond (the council which decides the quest of the Ring):

"The Elder Days are gone. The Middle Days are passing. The Younger Days are beginning. The time of Elves is over, but our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see."

Saruman is proclaiming a New Age. Perhaps a more modern rendering of the tale would have him singing "Aquarius." Saruman continues:

"I said we, for we it may be, if you will join with me. A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Numenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need no be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."

This is the utilitarian argument. This charmer recognizes evil, yet points out the traditional ways are dying, weak and ineffective. What else to do but bend to the inevitable? I've seen this argument before, and so did Gandalf. The words could have come from Mordor, the land of Sauron.

In another story, in C.S. Lewis's Perelandra (the second book of the space trilogy), Weston tried to teach Ransom a higher and more advanced (progressive) philosophy: "Can you understand nothing? Will you always try to press everything back into the miserable framework of your old jargon about self and self-sacrifice? That is the old accursed dualism in another form. There is no possible distinction in concrete thought between me and the universe."

This is the modernist argument with some ancient Gnosticism resurrected. Knowledge has progressed so far that we can no longer distinguish between good and evil (isn't there a book called Beyond Good and Evil? Of course there is). Indeed, some go further; we have become as gods. It's a New Age. And it's the Fall all over again.

Trent Lott and Bernard Law lost themselves in the material world. They became wedded to the trappings of power and influence. At one point, I thought it was actually possible that Trent Lott would see the GOP destroyed before he would release his grip on power. In some ways he was appeased in this, since he was allowed to keep the perks of a majority leader.

But for Bernard Law, I can see two "excuses." He so loved his position of authority so much that he refused to rock his own boat. Rather than admit that there were problems and weather the bad publicity, he chose to cover up and hide the flaws. He saw the evil, but choose not to face it. On the other hand, he may not have recognized evil. He was spiritually blind. I know that some people will object, but I find the latter reason to be very plausible.

Before Christmas, I visited an old friend. He's an atheist who was brought up as an Episcopalian. I have my doubts about his sincere adherence to that faith (that there is no God). Sometimes he seems agnostic, but most of the time I can get him to acknowledge Evil, and his beliefs in luck and fortune are positively pagan.

I knew his father well. We used to debate the differences between the Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church. We used to argue politics; I was the conservative, and he was the New Deal Democrat (he served in World War II). If he failed to pass on his faith to his son, at least he was successful in passing on his values.

Seeing my friend as a pagan is not in contradiction with seeing my friend with basic values. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans were of noble character. My friend holds dear to the notions of family, patriotism, and discipline. In my observation of the two generations, I could see Lewis's description of a Roman father telling his son that it is sweet and seemly to die for his country.

And so my friend and I head downstairs to his bar. With a mug of beer in properly in our hands, the master of the house asks "what's new" as any polite host should. We exchange social news, but inevitably our discussion turns to religion and politics. Earlier that week, I sent an e-mail to Jonah Goldberg and left a comment at Mark Shea's blog after they got into a bit of a disagreement about the Lord of the Rings being about the triumph of good over evil. To my friend, I bemoaned the loss of the ability to convey certain ideas in our language. I had told both Shea and Goldberg that the word triumph is a perfectly good word to use in discussing the LOTR. Both Goldberg and Shea did not reply to me (I read nothing in this; they've limited time to reply to their fans). In conversation I told my friend about this snippet from my message to them:

In _The Abolition of Man_, C.S. Lewis discusses the example (given in another book, "The Green Book") of Coleridge and two tourists at a waterfall. Coleridge endorsed the comments of the tourist who described the waterfall as sublime, but was disgusted with the comment of the other tourist who described the waterfall as pretty.

I'm trying to get my arms around the whole thing. C.S. Lewis is attacking "The Green Book" because the book is attacking feelings in order to develop rational men from boys (men without chests). The significance of Coleridge's story is that the use of the word 'sublime' is saying that the waterfall merits that description, whereas the word 'pretty' merely expresses an opinion.

And my friend replies, "so what?" It wasn't exactly that quote in so many words. He empathized with my meaning, but he wasn't attaching the amount of significance that I thought proper. I worry that we are losing the ability to communicate. I worry that words will get so fuzzy that words lose meaning. How do we identify or describe things with meaningless words? So I moved to another example. In that same week, I addressed Rod Dreher in Mark Shea's comment box (again, no response). It was about Bernard Law, and Rod Dreher argued that a culture which celebrates Britney Spears is not responsible for the failings of Cardinal Law or any other American bishop. That misses the point I wrote back:

Of course her shaking money maker did not create the atmosphere where the cardinals could act as weather vanes. The point is not whether Britney Spears is symbol of a decadent culture, but whether a culture is capable of identifying right or wrong. A culture, which highly values tolerance, and which pooh-poohs any comments that suggest Spears' shaking money maker is harmful (however slightly) to our culture, is one that creates leaders who are Sergeant Shultz clones. No, the tocsin is not Britney Spears' money maker, but Alison Hornstein's ability to identify evil.

Alison Hornstein, a student at Yale, wrote a column published in Newsweek in their Dec. 17, 2001 issue. Michael Kelly did a terrific column on it. Kelly celebrated the fact that Ms. Hornstein was able to identify 9-11 as a result of an evil act. But Kelly wanted more. He asked Ms. Hornstein to objectively identify the act as evil.

And then my friend interjects that 9-11 can't be objectively defined as evil. He was willing to admit that we in the good ol' US of A might see it that way, but from Osama bin Laden's point of view it's not. All my arguments about universal truths went to naught (perhaps the beer dulled my wits and his). Look, I said, this thinking is eventually going to render the word 'evil' meaningless. The central point of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man was that there was an orthodoxy, a Tao, which is universally recognized. I asked if there was anything or anyone that could be universally described as evil. Well, there's Hitler, he offered.

That's true. If there's anyone who's just about universally acknowledged as evil in the America, it's Hitler. Jonah Goldberg has commented that Hitler is almost a deified evil. That's a good point. Ordinary evil or lesser evils such as Saddam Hussein won't be recognized as evil unless we can prove that they're as bad as the demigod or half-demon himself (I would say that people think he's the anti-Christ, but that would be attaching a religion that many don't have).

Well, I told my friend, by your own reasoning Hitler can't be universally acknowledged as evil either. Just as Osama and his henchmen don't believe they are doing evil, Hitler and his Nazis didn't find it so evil to carry out their agenda. He replied: fine, there is no evil. My jaw dropped. I can only pray this was the beer talking.

I have the idea that there is large part of our culture that takes a cynical attitude to all this. Evil is something created to justify an enemy. There are no knights on white horses, just as there are no fire breathing dragons. That this is an overblown chivalry, that there really is nothing worth dying for, the very idea of it is silly. Or that any training of such sort is propaganda. It is largely a waste of time to engage in an intellectual argument with someone doesn't share some basic values, what Lewis called the Tao. It is like trying to prove a theory to someone who doesn't accept your premises.

But it is more likely that my friend had problems with the word 'evil' because of the moral and religious association to the word. His atheism springs from a distaste of religion. Specifically, he dislikes religious authority. To paraphrase Chesterton in Orthodoxy, his attack on religion is like an attack on police without considering that there are burglars. He has "attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it."

Continually rubbing his lucky rabbit's foot (a plentiful backup supply, in case one is lost), he fashions himself to be a rational man, and to him evolution has disproved religion. I'll use Chesterton to point out this mistake: "Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism."

I see this as pride. Whether it's a pride that refuses help, or a pride that places Man equal to or better than God, the result is the same. Tradition has it that it was Lucifer's pride that precipitated the chain of events that brought about the temptation of Man and his Fall.

"The Battle of Malden" is a poem written by someone whose name is lost to history. The poem is written in Old English and it has a mythic quality to it. It is the sort of story that stirs men's souls. It's about a clash between the English and Vikings in 991. The leader of the English was Beorhtnoth, an earl with an overblown sense of chivalry. The English held a causeway, and were doing a great job of holding back the Vikings. The Vikings complained that this wasn't fair (!), and asked that they have an even battle on open ground. Beorhtnoth agreed. Big mistake. The English shield wall broke, and the earl fell. Some of the English began to flee. Doom: a judgment was pronounced, a disaster was in the making. Not surprisingly, the poet was critical of Beorhtnoth's decision, and most translators have used 'overbold' to describe the earl. Professor Tolkien disagreed with this translation. He believed that 'overbold' does not capture the severity of the poet's criticism. He noted that the original word is only used twice in the verse: once for Beorhtnoth, once for Lucifer.

The battle of Malden continues in my next post.

Peace be with you,
a hermit from Hudson

(*) The movies tread lightly on this. I suppose they must do this in order to keep a long movie no longer than necessary. However, they concentrate on his magic. For instance, King Théoden is possessed by Saruman's magic. In the book, Saruman's foremost ability is his voice. King Théoden's prime minister is Wormtongue, a secret servant of Saruman. King Théoden is "charmed" into his inactivity and despair. It is the voice of reason spoken by Gandalf that breaks the spell, not the exorcism given in the movie.