Christ in Literature: Symbolism (pt. 4)

In my last post of this series, I looked at two ways that the Lord wrote Christ in the Old Testament: historically and symbolically.  As for finding Christ historically in literature, it’s fairly simple.  It’s Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ or any other historical fiction that treats Christ’s personal works in history.  Today, I’ll look at how readers might find Christ in literature symbolically when He is not present historically.

How can readers find Christ symbolically in literature?  To set the stage, let’s begin with this quote from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Q. 8. How doth God execute his decrees?
A. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

What the Westminster divines here mean by “decrees” isn’t just what God says.  God’s decrees are his purpose for all reality.  (If you want their words, “The decrees of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.”)  And they claim that Scripture presents that purpose as being executed–as going forth and happening–in creation and providence.  My hope is to look at symbolism today in both these aspects.

Symbolism in Creation

The Christian hopes to find Christ or any meaning in literature first because the world is created to be meaningful.  Modern and postmodern men have no such assurance.  Having given in to the demands of evolution, they hold that the world is ultimately chaos, with an overlay of order, slight and transient, imposed upon it.  In such a case, any reading of the world (or a book) is as good as any other, because at bottom there are no boundaries.  There is no inherent meaning.

For the Christian, however, literature is meaningful because God has created it to be meaningful.  The chaos she sees is real and displayed in horrific suffering and death.  But death and chaos are not ultimate; they are rather interruptions of what remains a beautiful and essentially ordered world. And thus the Christian has a firm hope of finding meaning in the world and (sometimes) human creations.

What is that built-in meaning to the world, then?  I think most Christians realize the power and beauty of God displayed in Creation.  It’s pretty apparent not only when we look out at the world, but it’s also very clearly taught in Romans 1:20 and throughout Scripture.  What we don’t often stop to think about is that when God created the light, and the earth and the seas, and every beast of the air and of the field, et. al, he wasn’t just creating things.  No, He created an entire web of relationships, and those relationships have symbolic meanings as well as material functions.  (During the fall, many of those relationships changed and were damaged—animals and plants now exist in a food chain, each one preying on animals beneath them.  But much of God’s plan of Creation remains, and in it are types and shadows of Him and His character.)

Medieval theology made much of the symbolism of Creation and did so on a largely fantastic basis.  (See Peter Harrison’s The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science for more on this.)  But medieval excess aside, the Bible clearly teaches some very basic symbolic meanings of the Created order.  Here are a few:  1) marriage—in Ephesians 5:22-23, 2) fatherhood–Matthew 6:9, 2) bread—John 6:35, which I see as being less about bread and more about our dependence on God, and 3) water—John 7:38.

When God says that he is the bread of life, or the living water, or like a lion or a lamb, we tend to think of these as found objects.  We think God looks around our puny world and lowers Himself to human terms to help us understand Him.  But if God is truly our Creator, then to Him nothing is a found object.  God created us, He created water, and He created our need for water, for bread; he made lions and lambs—created them ex nihilo.  And anyone who has ever been walking around a zoo and heard a lion roar knows the chills that come up on your skin.  That isn’t something God expropriated from the natural world to tell us about himself.  He CREATED lions to tell us something about Him.  I definitely don’t want to go too far with this.  People have looked at the world as purely symbolic and missed the physical and material beauty and complexity.  But the symbolism is real and shouldn’t be dismissed.

When we read fiction, human authors inevitably set the stage with objects and relationships stolen from God’s set list.  A Christian can find plenty of devotional fodder and intellectual stimuli simply by paying attention to the background.  Mothers, fathers, marriages broken or unbroken, lions, lambs, bread and water–all the symbolic things and relationships of Creation permeate the stories we tell.  And while I would be hesitant to claim I could create an infallible dictionary as to what they mean, they are not just empty vessels either.  Some–like marriage–have been spelled out in Scripture very clearly as to their typological meaning.

One quick example: If this is true, if marriage is intended to tell us something of God’s love for His people, then when I read a book like Cinderella to my kids, I want them to know that.  I don’t have to undermine the point of the story to explain it.  I simply ask them, do you know why God made girls and boys to fall in love like Cinderella and Prince Charming?  To show us what Christ’s love for us is like.  Jesus loves you like Prince Charming loved Cinderella!

Symbolism in Providence

Part of God’s creation included time.  He didn’t just make static, Platonic ideals.  Or circular, repeating patterns of events.  History has a beginning, and it will have an end.  And over all that comes in between, He is creating again through His providence.  Perhaps “creating” isn’t the best word.  The Westminster fellows put it this way, “God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions.”

When an author creates a story, he puts a world in motion.  The plot will have an arc, an internal integrity as I talked about last week.  And I think the other main way of finding Christ is in the plot–the history or providence of the story. Characters have desires, and that desire is either met or thwarted in the climax.  If it is true that what man desires–the things of the flesh–are only symbols or types of God himself, if what we truly desire is God…then we ought to be able to find God, including Christ, in the climax of every story.

Of course, that step is often easier said than done.  But here’s what I’ve found helpful.  First, try to locate the climax of a story and then ask, what hope or desire is met or unmet?  In some stories, the protagonist may be seeking a home (Make Way for Ducklings) or restoration (The Secret Garden) or safety (Charlotte’s Web).  A non-Christian reads these as ends in themselves.  But the Christian, while he doesn’t need to belittle their material reality, ultimately sees these desires as something God created to point us to Him.  They are symbols.

If you’d like to see how I think this looks in practice, please see my review of True Grit and True Grace.  It’s probably the review I tried most explicitly to apply this idea.

We may also find Christ, of course, in the themes of a story, in particular characters or in parallels to the Biblical stories.  These might include the sacrificial death of Harry Potter or something as trivial as a character riding on a donkey that reminds us of the story of Christ’s Palm Sunday entrance to Jerusalem.  All of these might be interesting, and some would probably be more significant than others.  If I had more time and inclination, I would go through all of the ways Sidney Greidanius has shown that Christ may be preached from the Old Testament, showing how they might be applied to general literature. (But my kids wouldn’t appreciate it today…and perhaps neither would you!)

In summary, this is a huge topic that could take a lifetime to explore and adequately hedge.  But I will finish with this parting shot: consider the little phrase “for his glory” in the Wesminter Shorter Catechism above.  If the point of creation and providence is to display the glory of God, then our stories are also intended to glorify Him.  And although we don’t often think of interpreting literature this way, perhaps one significant role that redeemed readers can play is to discern what human authors hope to glorify in their works, and show how Christ fulfills that glory.  The exercise could not only strengthen a reader’s faith, but help believers and nonbelievers find Him in places that once seemed “worlds without God.”

To read this entire series, start with Christ in Literature, pt 1: Worlds Without God.  Or see Janie’s close reading of That Hideous Strength for more insights into seeking God in literature, as well as Emily’s spiritual autobiography in Behind the Bookcase.

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