Children’s Literature in Education (2006) 37:325–334 DOI 10.1007/s10583-006-9022-4

‘A Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven’: His Dark Materials, Inverted Theology, and the End of Philip Pullman’s Authority Jonathan Padley Æ Kenneth Padley

Published online: 6 September 2006 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract This article argues that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials may be read as a series which attempts to assault the Christian doctrine of God. We believe that this demonstrably accords with Pullman’s personal views, and that, through his story, he seeks to foster such views in his readership. However, the accuracy of his attack falls short of its intended mark when it is examined alongside classical Christian theology. The Authority which Pullman’s narrative destroys is actually more akin to the Christian view of the devil than he is the divine, and the victories of Will and Lyra—as a new Adam and Eve—have strong resemblances to the victories which Christianity claims for Christ and Mary. Pullman’s narrative, therefore, becomes an inversion of his deicidal intention rather than an inverting and revolutionary destruction of theology. Keywords Northern Lights/The Golden Compass Æ The Subtle Knife Æ The Amber Spyglass Æ Devil Æ God Æ Christian theology

The authors were especially grateful when writing this essay for the readings and comments of Mr Glyn Pursglove and Revd Dr Stephen Hampton. Jonathan Padley has recently completed his PhD, on the interpretation of monstrosity in English children’s literature, at the University of Wales Swansea. His academic interests include Alfred Tennyson, Mary Shelley, genre study, and the dialogue between scientific, theological, and literary discourses. Jonathan is currently an English lecturer at Gorseinon College, Swansea. Kenneth Padley works as a clergyman in South Wales. When not frantically cycling around Swansea pursuing the interests of piety and pastoralia, he enjoys delving into Reformation history and theology, touching recently on the interrelationship of views about God, salvation, and political theology in late seventeenth century England. J. Padley (&) 32 Fernhill Close, Blackpill, Swansea SA3 5BX, UK e-mail: [email protected] K. Padley 28 Trawler Road, SA1 1XA, Marina, Swansea, UK

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In the final book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, God dies. ‘The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty’ (Pullman, 2000, p. 33) disappears as ‘a mystery dissolving in mystery’ (Pullman, 2000, p. 432). This essay will suggest that this deicide is one in which Pullman believes literally as well as literarily; that he regards it as true not only for the nominal figurehead of his own Magisterium but also for the God of Christianity (and, therefore, Christianity’s religious and faith frameworks). Moreover, Pullman wants the readership of His Dark Materials to believe in its truth as much as he does, because, contrary to his claim that he ‘[does not] write messages’ (Pullman in Snelson, n.d.), we will show that his series is crafted in a manner which actively promotes comparison between the written and the real. In this process, Pullman develops theological ideas which negatively represent Christianity by subtle reconstruction of traditional doctrines. The resultant comparison with the real world is every bit as pernicious as that which Pullman identifies so frequently in the works of others (especially C.S. Lewis) (Pullman in Parsons & Nicholson, 1999, p. 131). Against this background, this essay will examine the statements made about the nature of God in His Dark Materials. It will isolate the negative response to Christianity which Pullman, we argue, demonstrably aims to produce in his readers, before analysing what—in theological terms—the trilogy actually achieves. Prior to examining the metanarrative theological intentions of His Dark Materials, we must first remind ourselves of religion’s position in its story: Pullman’s preoccupation in the trilogy is nothing less than ‘‘man’s first disobedience and the fruit.’’ In his reprise of Paradise Lost, original sin is a lie, and God is an ancient fallen angel who has perpetrated a creationist con on the human race, wickedly exploited by a viciously inquisitorial church. As the trilogy develops, the central teenage character, Lyra, emerges as a second Eve. In a quest that takes in the literal death of ‘‘God,’’ who is no more than a wizened, foetus-like invalid, Lyra releases human beings from attachment to the afterlife. Meanwhile Will, the novel’s hero, who becomes Lyra’s companion, enables her to pursue her quest to its ultimate bittersweet consummation with the aid of a ‘‘subtle knife’’ (based on the laws of quantum physics), which allows him to cut windows into parallel worlds. The finale is the toppling of the kingdom of heaven and the establishment of a celestial atheistic republic on Earth. (Cornwell, 2004) In short, in the worlds of His Dark Materials, Christianity and the Church are bad. They are founded on falsehoods: according to the angel Balthamos, the Authority is no more the Creator than any of his celestial or worldly underlings (Pullman, 2000, pp. 33–34). They tacitly endorse child abuse: the Church-sponsored testing station run by the General Oblation Board at Bolvangar severs children from their dæmons, for the ostensibly noble but contextually horrific purpose of researching a way to free humanity from being subject to Dust and the trappings of Original Sin. They believe in murder without mercy: Father Gomez is sent by the Consistorial Board of Discipline to kill Lyra to prevent her participating in a second Fall (Pullman, 2000, p. 75). The Church, then, provides an evil in His Dark Materials against which the narrative’s variously motivated forces for good can unite. However, a significant problem arises with the way in which this is achieved. As David Gooderham has already gone some way towards pointing out, Pullman’s Magisterium draws parasitically upon the real lexis and imagery of Christianity to effect a ‘confusion of fantasy with actual

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organizations’ (Gooderham, 2003, p. 159). In fact, it merges actual Protestantism1 and Catholicism2 into a single megalomaniacal fantasy conglomerate. The difficulty in this melding is that, for Pullman, neither it nor the validity of his narrative assaults on it is fantastical. For him, Christianity and its multiple denominations are all genuinely legitimate targets for attack, because, as he comments in an interview with Bel Mooney: A large proportion of what the Christian Church has done has been intolerant, cruel, fanatical, whichever part of the spectrum you look at, whether it’s the Inquisition with the Catholics burning the heretics, or whether it’s the other end of the spectrum – the Puritans in New England, burning the witches or hanging the witches, rather. Wherever you look you see intolerance, cruelty, fanaticism, narrow-mindedness. It’s an ugly, ugly spectacle. (Pullman in Mooney, 2003, pp. 125–126) These are not simply traits which Pullman identifies in Christian history either, since he goes on in the same interview to note that ‘[the clerics] who have churches that are full—the evangelicals, the fundamentalists—are full of hell-fire and damnation and fury and vengeance on anyone who disagrees with them’ (Pullman in Mooney, 2003, p. 126). Clearly, he perceives Christianity and its churches as things which have been and continue to be centres of wickedness. In His Dark Materials, he writes what he perceives. So, in Pullman’s world the Church is bad, in His Dark Materials’ worlds the Church is bad, and, just as Pullman tries to persuade others by assertion of the Church’s badness in his interviews, so his fantasy trilogy attempts through its characters and narrative to do likewise. This is not quite to say that Pullman wholeheartedly dismisses the notion of religion as a thing which is necessarily a force for evil. On his website, he writes that ‘the religious impulse—which includes the sense of awe and mystery we feel when we look at the universe, the urge to find meaning and a purpose in our lives, our sense of moral kinship with other human beings—is part of being human, and I value it’ (Pullman, n.d.). Nevertheless, when individual religious impulses start to become organised into faith collectives, religion for Pullman swiftly goes downhill: All too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people’s lives in the name of some invisible god (and they’re all invisible, because they don’t exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it. (Pullman, n.d.) Here again, the likeness of His Dark Materials’ Magisterium can easily be traced in Pullman’s description of the undoubted grimness of religious history (and, indeed, religious present), but we can also detect a hint of the limitedness of his theological thinking. Gods do not exist, he claims, and thus we cannot see them. They are ‘invisible.’ This equation, which is made problematic by its inherent reflexivity, calls into question the existential validity of a number of other comparably invisible and intangible concepts. It is all the more interesting therefore that, in Pullman’s determination to ‘bang the drum for the primacy of the physical world’ (Pullman in Renton, 2005) in His 1 Pope John Calvin’s movement of the Papal base to Geneva (Pullman, 2001c, p. 31) merges historic Catholic and Reformed structures. 2

Pullman’s Magisterium is episcopal, hierarchical, and highly structured.

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Dark Materials, he uses his narrative to make concrete a significant number of abstract and insubstantial constructs. Gods, souls, ghosts, love, and hate are all made physical throughout the trilogy’s pages. The Authority is corporeal; a weak and broken-down shell who appears in the story merely to dissipate. Soul-like elements are revealed in dæmons, inasmuch as dæmons are in some inexpressible way essential to the being of their humans.3 Spectres stalk the worlds, seeking fixed-dæmon adults on whom to feed and leaving behind zombie-like automata (who subsequently behave with similar vacuity to the staff at Bolvangar and the mindless soldiers of the Magisterium who have undergone intercision to remove their dæmons).4 Love is embodied in Dust, the strange, normally invisible substance which eventually saturates Will and Lyra in their adoration of each other (Pullman, 2000, p. 497). Hate is made flesh in the Church, its mechanisms, and those who do its work. All of these components that we have identified thus far—Pullman’s detestation of the Church, his desire to persuade his audience to think like him (no matter the medium through which he communicates with it), and his narrative solidification of inherently fluid concepts—can be drawn together through consideration of one of his foremost principles as an author. ‘I’m a realist, in everything I write,’ he tells Karin Snelson (Pullman in Snelson, n.d.), and, with respect to His Dark Materials’ first book: Northern Lights is not a fantasy. It’s a work of stark realism.5 (Pullman in Parsons & Nicholson, 1999, p. 131) Irrespective, then, of the ongoing literary debate about the nature of fantasy, Pullman’s emphasis here is on his belief—his certainty—that His Dark Materials is a stark representation of reality. This work is no fantasy for him. It is the truth, or, at the very least, something extremely close to it. He even gives specific examples of this, telling Mooney that ‘I believe pretty well what I’ve described in the third book’ (Pullman in Mooney, 2003, p. 131) on the subject of the world of the dead and the afterlife. Therefore, to unmake in His Dark Materials the religion to which he is an affirmed enemy in reality (Pullman, n.d.), he first inhabits its lexis (to make it unremittingly evil) and second actualises its deity (with the intention of eventually killing him). The purpose of this process appears to be simultaneously self-aggrandising and, whatever Pullman claims to the contrary, propagandic. If, in His Dark Materials, he can make Christianity a universal enemy and explode the rock upon which it is founded, then it would fulfil in narrative one of his principal contentions about reality. The theologically informed reader, however, will be less inclined to reach the conclusion that Pullman achieves these aims in the pages of his trilogy, for the character he describes as the Authority bears no resemblance to the classical Christian expression of God. Some secondary writers have already begun to observe this (Schweizer, 2005, p. 165). Rather than being similar to God, Pullman’s Authority looks more sinister. How does Pullman describe God in His Dark Materials? Pullman’s worlds are like our own in that they contain a range of belief systems. Armoured bears have no gods at all (Pullman, 2000, p. 192), while witches enjoy a polytheistic pantheon (Pullman, 1998, 3

See Mooney (2003, p. 130), for a reflection by Pullman on the anthropological construction of characters in His Dark Materials.

4

See Pullman (1998, pp. 43–44, 133–139, 209, 305; 2001c, pp. 240, 257, 284).

5

This comment presumably describes Pullman’s perception of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass as well, even though only Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife were published at the time of Parsons and Nicholson’s interview.

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p. 47; 2001c, p. 314). Also, there is at least one pantheistic Tartar tribe who worship tigers (Pullman, 1998, p. 51). All these, however, are asides to the main theological figure in His Dark Materials; the Authority, whom Thorold, Lord Asriel’s servant, terms ‘the God of the church’ (Pullman, 1998, p. 47). Inferences to the nature and activity of the Authority and human beliefs about him are scattered throughout His Dark Materials, but, in The Amber Spyglass, the reader is treated to three substantial passages which allow detailed theological analysis. In the first, the angels Baruch and Balthamos share their knowledge of the heavenly powers with Will and Lyra (Pullman, 2000, p. 32ff). The next is the discussion between Mrs Coulter and the African king Ogunwe in Lord Asriel’s fortress (Pullman, 2000, p. 221ff). Finally, the third is the description of the dissipation of the Authority during the great battle between Lord Asriel’s forces and those of Metatron (Pullman, 2000, p. 430ff). What do these passages and the rest of His Dark Materials reveal about the Authority? As has already been stated, the most notable quality of the Authority is that he has a body. The reader first encounters his physical presence through the eyes and ears of Mrs Coulter (Pullman, 2000, p. 430ff). Although not easy to see, because he is surrounded in crystal, the Authority is clearly corporeal, being carried on a litter. His body includes a head: Mrs Coulter seeing a terrifyingly aged face ‘sunken in wrinkles’ with a ‘mumbling mouth and rheumy eyes.’ The Authority also has ‘trembling hands’ which are used to ‘gesture shakily.’ A second sensory encounter with the Authority occurs shortly afterwards when, having rescued his litter from Cliff-ghasts, Will and Lyra meet a frightened, cowering, and crying figure, who is—once again—clearly in possession of face and hands (Pullman, 2000, p. 431ff). Here is the first and most fundamental difference between Pullman’s Authority and the God of classical theism. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are united in rejecting the idea that God is a physical being. ‘God is spirit,’6 states Jesus in the Gospel of John (4:24), a line which the great medieval Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas picks up on in his rejection of the thesis that God might have a body (Aquinas, 1981, pp. 14–15; [1.3.1]). Aquinas presents three philosophical arguments against God’s corporeality, all of which ultimately derive from God’s primacy. Aquinas holds all bodies must be put into motion by a prior mover. There cannot be a prior mover of God because God is the First Mover of everything else. Second, and related to this, is Aquinas’ belief that God, as First Being, is ‘in act.’ He is, always and everywhere, simply what he is. Bodies, however, have the potential to be something other than they presently are, ergo God cannot have a body. Third, Aquinas holds that nothing can be nobler than God and that souls are nobler than bodies, and that therefore God cannot have a body. Aquinas goes on to explain that any dimensionality, figure, corporeal parts, bodily actions and locative presence attributed to God in the Bible is metaphor. ‘Holy Writ puts before us spiritual and divine things under the comparison of corporeal things’ (Aquinas, 1981, p. 15; [1.3.1]). There is a ‘certain parallel’ between the two and not a direct identification. Aquinas’ doctrine of divine incorporeality tips over here into another related area that is important for students of Pullman: the nature of religious language and how it might be applied. Aquinas holds that some religious language is ‘pure perfection terms’ (Aquinas, 1981, p. 62; [1.13.3]) which are applied to God ‘literally’ (e.g., ‘goodness’). Other religious language, however, is only used metaphorically (e.g., ‘stone’). Aquinas holds that even literal language is deployed of God proportionally (‘analogically’). ‘For in analogies the idea is not, as it is in univocals, one and the same, yet it is not totally 6

All Biblical references throughout this essay are made to the Revised Standard Version.

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diverse as in equivocals; but a term which is used in a multiple sense signifies various proportions to some one thing’ (Aquinas, 1981, p. 64; [1.13.5]). Aquinas’ detailed scholastic argument is a refinement of the general theistic maxim that anthropomorphic language in the Bible is to be read sensitively as an attempt to explain the abstract in terms that readers can comprehend. Pullman shows no appreciation of these nuances. He wishes to predicate terms of God only in a literal and univocal fashion. In an interview with Ilene Cooper, he says: The Bible depicts God as growing older. In the Book of Genesis, God walks around with Adam and Eve; they can see him. But then he gradually withdraws, until by the Book of Daniel, he’s called the ‘‘Ancient of Days’’. He’s shown as growing older, so I’m on fairly solid ground there.7 (Pullman in Cooper, 2000, p. 355) Sadly not, a point on which the Bible is very firm. ‘I the Lord do not change,’ says God in Malachi 3:6, and the letter of James 1:17 proclaims that there is ‘no variation or shadow due to change’ in the Father of lights. The weight of the Biblical evidence has been read by most Christian commentators that God is a being outside time and not subject to the ravages of it (Aquinas, 1981, p. 41; [1.10.2]). As in Aquinas, any bodily actions or shapes predicated of God are metaphorical not literal. Embodiment and mutability in God are not the only ideas towards which Pullman’s understanding of religious language presses him. Since the Authority has a locative presence, Pullman contradicts the classic theistic principle of God’s omnipresence. Neither does the Authority possess omnipotence, for he has become the victim of a coup by Metatron who effectively keeps him in his thrall (Pullman, 2000, pp. 393, 398). This impotence is completed in the Authority’s physical dissipation from the battlefield of The Amber Spyglass, as if he were already almost one of Pullman’s ghosts. Here, ‘as light as paper,’ he can be lifted out of the litter by Lyra and Will, ‘and he would have followed them anywhere, having no will of his own’8 (Pullman, 2000, p. 432—our italics). Since the Authority clearly has only limited power and presence, it is not surprising to find him implicitly also devoid of omniscience, seemingly unaware of all but his most immediate surroundings. Given his many limitations, what role is the Authority meant to play in His Dark Materials? Characters dispute whether he is the creator or not. Ruta Skadi—despite being a witch with apparent adherence to other gods—clearly thinks the Authority is the creator (Pullman, 1998, p. 286). This notion is not upheld by Balthamos who tells Will and Lyra that the Authority is the oldest piece of self-comprehending matter. ‘He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself’ (Pullman, 2000, p. 33). Balthamos’ view is reinforced later by Ogunwe. ‘It shocked some of us too to learn that the Authority is not the creator,’ he says: There may have been a creator, or there may not: we don’t know. All we know is that at some point the Authority took charge... (Pullman, 2000, pp. 221–222)

7

This idea is imported into His Dark Materials on the lips of Mrs Coulter (Pullman, 2000, pp. 344–

345). 8

See also Butler et al. (2004).

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In other words, although Pullman applies to the Authority the many titles that Christianity uses for the extra-temporal creator of all [such as ‘the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty’ (Pullman, 2000, p. 33)], the figure in His Dark Materials is nothing of the sort. Why Pullman’s world came to exist is simply not explained, and, when reflecting on this theme from outside his text, Pullman’s opinion of His Dark Materials’ cosmology confusingly oscillates. In one interview, he echoes Ogunwe’s ambilvance: Maybe there was no creator. Maybe everything just was. (Pullman in Mooney, 2003, p. 128) This expression of agnosticism does not wholly close the door on a creator’s existence. It just implies Pullman doesn’t know either way. On another occasion, however, he forecloses the possibility: ‘the notion is that there never was a Creator, instead there was matter, and this matter gradually became conscious of itself and developed Dust’9 (Pullman in Butler et al. (2004). Having established that Pullman’s Authority bears no relation to the ‘classical’ view of God shared by the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), except through titular misappropriation, can we find any character from Christian mythology which bears closer identification? Given that the Authority is an old and once powerful creature, a fallen angel and power-crazed liar, who is understood by Lord Asriel to be ‘sinful’ (Pullman, 2001c, p. 373) (and who is far from being the almighty and benevolent maker of all), Pullman has created a figure akin to traditional depictions of the devil. The devilish Authority bears particular resemblance to the Satan of Paradise Lost, when, for instance, the assistance of the Authority by Metatron in His Dark Materials is paralleled by Milton’s Satan and the ‘one next himself in power, and next in crime,/long after known in Palestine, and named/Beelzebub’ (Milton, 1909, p. 11). The influence of Paradise Lost on Pullman is stated explicitly at the beginning of Northern Lights and at the end of The Amber Spyglass, and is well documented in secondary literature on the trilogy. Pullman’s interpretation of Paradise Lost sets him alongside Blake, Shelley and Byron in the Romantic belief that Milton saw Satan as the true hero of his epic. Pullman quotes and joins Blake in claiming membership ‘of the devil’s party’10 and there would appear to be at least some mileage in this: Milton sought a republic in 17th century England, which is the political arrangement desired by the demons of Milton’s Pandemonium for heaven, and by Pullman for the world today. The narrative role of the Authority as Satan is reinforced when one considers the interpretative meaning which Pullman places on the Authority’s overthrow. The conquering of the Authority in His Dark Materials has remarkable parallels to the defeat of the devil by Christ on the cross. The Authority’s death is presaged by the opening of the world of the dead and the dispersal of the ghosts from within it. When Will earlier suggests such a course of action to the tiny Gallivespian warriors, he is met with looks of astonishment. Tialys states that This will undo everything. It’s the greatest blow you could strike. The Authority will be powerless after this. (Pullman, 2000, p. 326) 9

See also Pullman (2000, p. 464), for Mary Malone’s expression of outright atheism within Pullman’s novels. 10 Hatlen (2005, pp. 86–92), Robinson (2004, p. 15) and Cooper (2000, p. 355). See also Pullman’s acknowledgement of Blake’s especial influence on his work, alongside Paradise Lost and an essay by

Heinrich von Kleist (Pullman, 2000, p. 550).

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In short, the release of the dead from their prison is associated with the end of the dictator that overawes them, an idea strongly resonating with the conception that the resurrected Christ ‘harrows hell.’ This powerful iconographic tradition depicts the raised Christ trampling down the gates of Hades and lifting Adam out of the clutches of Satan and into the joys of Paradise. The motifs underlying the harrowing imagery date back to the days of the New Testament where the First Letter of Peter tells of the dead Christ preaching to ‘the spirits in prison’ (3:19) and Matthew’s gospel depicts saints leaving their tombs and bearing witness in Jerusalem after Jesus’ death (27:52–53). Furthermore, Will and Lyra, who perform the harrowing in His Dark Materials, are revealed, as The Amber Spyglass reaches its climax, to be a new Adam and Eve. They are the ones who restore balance in the created order by stemming the flood of Dust that is leaving the worlds. The ‘living gold’ of the Dust which clings to their bodies makes them seem ‘the true image of what human beings always could be, once they had come into their inheritance’11 (Pullman, 2000, p. 497—our italics). This is Pullman’s restoration of human perfection, an echo of the paradisial creation of man by God in his image (Genesis 1:26–27). The restoration of the balance of creation through a new Adam and Eve has roots in Christian symbolism going back to its very earliest days. St Paul makes several references to Christ as the new Adam, the one whose faithfulness undoes the flaws of his forefather, for ‘as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’ (I Corinthians 15:22).12 Adamology is picked up and expanded by a significant early Church thinker, Bishop Irenæus of Lyons in his Against Heresies (ca. 180 AD). Irenæus’ text is similar to Pullman’s narrative because he believed not only that Christ recapitulated Adam, but that Mary recapitulated Eve. Mary’s acceptance of God’s gracious invitation to bear his Son undid the treachery of the first woman, ‘[f]or what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith’13 (Irenæus, 2004, pp. 454–455). The Irenæan doctrine of recapitulation ( amaje/akaixri1 in Greek) is particularly significant because Irenæus deploys it against the gnostics, a group in which Pullman shows particular interest. In an article in Horn Book Magazine, Pullman promotes the gnostic idea of divine sparks hidden in individuals and liberated by knowledge as speaking to the sense of alienation felt in the world today. He incorporates gnostic views into His Dark Materials, particularly in the idea that knowledge is liberating (which inverts the traditionally negative assessment of Eve’s apple consumption). All knowledge for Pullman is good and is part of growing up.14 This upended view of Eden was notably shared by one gnostic sect called the Ophites: ‘they magnify the serpent to such a degree, that they prefer him even to Christ himself; for it was he, they say, who gave us the origin of the knowledge of good and of evil’15 (Roberts & Donaldson, 2004, p. 650). There are limits to Pullman’s adaptation of gnosticism, however. The problem for him with the gnostic myth is that ‘it has the terrible defect of libelling... the physical

11

See also Pullman (1998, p. 328; 2000, pp. 324–325, 536ff).

12

See also I Corinthians 15:45 and Romans 5:14.

13

Earlier observations on Adamology and harrowing in Pullman can be found in Gooderham (2003, p. 160ff) and Robinson (2004, pp. 7–13).

14

Pullman (2001a, p. 656ff; 2001c, pp. 371–372) and Pullman in Mooney (2003, p. 129).

15

From the second chapter of an early Christian text, Against Heresies, falsely attributed to the late second century North African, Tertullian. See also Irenæus (2004, p. 356).

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universe’16 (Pullman, 2001a, p. 657). Pullman’s theme of building the republic of heaven ‘where we are’ runs counter to gnostic anti-materialism. But this antagonism was precisely why Irenæus rejected the gnostics and why he advocated the doctrine of amaje/akaixri1 in the first place. In rejecting materiality, many gnostics struggled with the anthropomorphic images of God in the Old Testament. In stressing that the New Testament recapitulated the Old, Irenæus was outlining his belief that God worked through both the old and new covenants. The heavenly being of Genesis 1–3 who busied himself in the work of creation was not some emanation from God (who—as the gnostics believed—was at the necessary physical and moral distance from true divinity to engage in creation) but was actually God himself. Matter mattered for Irenæus: God had made it and so it was to be valued and not rejected. Here, then, is the third irony in the way that Pullman consciously or unintentionally distorts and inverts traditional Christian theology in the construction of his narrative: his ally against anti-materialism, through the deployment of Adamological recapitulation, is Irenæus, the orthodox Christian. And yet, because Pullman is convinced the Church regards matter as bad, he is compelled to forge an unusual and uncomfortable amalgam of Christian and gnostic themes. We are aware of the limitations of our overall argument in two particular respects. First, there are many areas where precise ideas in His Dark Materials vary very significantly from traditional Christian doctrines, especially in Pullman’s conceptions of salvation; of what people are being saved from and into. Second, the characteristics and actions of single biblical characters are sometimes carved up between several figures in His Dark Materials. Thus, Lyra, Mrs Coulter, and Mary all bear some Eve values;17 Mary, Asriel, and the Authority all carry some Satan imagery; and Asriel, the Authority, and Metatron all have some—albeit minor—corollaries with God. Much has been written, not least by Pullman himself, about Pullman’s deconstruction and refabrication of Christian motifs in the production of His Dark Materials. The depths of confusion within this refabrication, however, have not hitherto been fully exposed. The figure to which Pullman applies divine titles bears theological resemblance not to God but to Satan. Hence, the defeat of this figure recollects the Christian story of the devil’s overthrow through the cross. Also, Pullman’s use of new Adam imagery to create a pro-material denouement to his overtly anti-Christian tale is a (probably unconscious) repolishing of ideas used by the pro-matter Christian Irenæus against the gnostics. The doctrine of God and Christology in His Dark Materials thus does the diametric opposite of what Pullman intends. In his description of the Authority and the Authority’s overthrow, the devil’s partisan has comprehensively betrayed the Betrayer.

References Aquinas, T. (1981). Summa Theologica, 5 vols (vol. 1). Fathers of the English Dominican Province (tr.). Allen, Texas: Christian Classics. Butler, R., Williams, R., & Pullman, P. (2004). The Dark Materials debate: Life, God, the universe... In The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/03/17/bodark17.xml. 16

See also Odean (2000) and Cooper (2000) for expressions of Pullman’s belief that the Church overly denigrates the physical universe.

17

See Russell (2005).

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