Scotch College

Whose Golden Compass?Chaplain’s Reflection

It’s over two years since I wrote about the Phillip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials. I was aware then that this vivid and exciting tale was profoundly and specifically anti-Christian. I said to several people that when it was made a movie we should have to watch for it. Well its here! This month sees the arrival in Australian cinemas of this movie. It’s called The Golden Compass.

If your son sees the movie these holidays be sure to discuss it with him. He may already have read the book and that is more explicitly anti-Christian than the film. You could enjoy the film too, but be aware of the story line.

Pullman took his Trilogy’s title from John Milton’s great poem Paradise Lost. In an Amazon interview with Kerry Fried called Darkness Visible, Pullman states “I found the phrase from Paradise Lost which gives me the title for the whole trilogy: ‘Unless the almighty maker them ordain / His dark materials to create more worlds.’ That seemed to fit exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, so I leapt on it.”

In Paradise Lost Milton states his purpose in Book I (l.26). It is "to justify the ways of God to men" and make clear the conflict between God's eternal purpose and free will. According to the Wikipedia entry “Pullman's stated intention was to invert Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell”.

This inversion of the story has resulted in Pullman being accused of sugarcoating atheism. He denies that he is preaching a message – preferring to see himself as merely a teller of stories. However, he does explicitly say of His Dark Materials ‘I think it's the piece of work in which I have said most clearly what I most deeply wanted to say.’

For Pullman, as for us, the early chapters of Genesis are pivotal to understanding humanity. But to him the act of disobedience is the pre-eminent and defining feature of humanity.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the temptation of the serpent is for me the central myth of what it means to be a human being. So it was clear to me from the beginning that this was what His Dark Materials would have to be about as well. It would have to lead up to a garden in which something similar took place, or something analogous, anyway.

Speaking of his use of dust as a symbol he comments

And the idea that Dust should be in some sense emblematic of consciousness and original sin--what the churches traditionally used to understand by sin, namely disobedience, the thing that made us human in the first place--seemed too tempting to ignore, so I put them together...

It appears that what Pullman has missed is the way the Genesis narrative first anchors our humanity in God’s likeness, not in disobedience. Human waywardness is real, but our true value, dignity and glory as human beings existed prior the advent of our disobedience and the darkness. Unsurprisingly, Pullman dislikes C S Lewis’ Narnia tales (with whom he is sometimes compared) and is openly critical of them.

The Christian contention is that Christ shows us God’s likeness restored in a human being, and to bring that restoration into the experience of a renewed humanity. He reveals the true glory of humanity. John tells us that “this Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to the people” (John 1:5, 6).

Whether you see the film or not, let the image of God made visible by Jesus be your Christmas light.

Graham Bradbeer