“Let the dead bury their dead, and the dead teach their dead; for me I will try to wake them.”
In his introduction to Waking the Dead, Dean Hardy sets forth several ambitious goals:
“[T]he first and foremost focus of this book will be sifting through MacDonald’s religious, cultural, and philosophical influences and how these had a direct effect on his personal spirituality and thus, his subsequent writings. Secondarily, the study will focus on establishing MacDonald’s philosophical moorings and how these affected his mysticism. Lastly, an emphasis will be placed on modern apologetics and how it contrasts with MacDonald’s strategy, as well as an analysis of how MacDonald’s approach could be used to influence the new generation of apologists.”
As one who has been roused to life by George MacDonald, I was eagerly awaiting this book, and am happy to report the author delivers on each of his promises, and in fine style. The last few years have seen a number of critical assessments of MacDonald’s work, each written with a slightly different focus, and Waking the Dead is one of the best.
To give you a feel for the book, I’ll discuss one of my favorite chapters, “Epistemology and Attainment of Knowledge.” Hardy sets the stage by describing one of the great spiritual dilemmas of the Victorian era:
“[T]he minds of the populace swirled with unsettled questions on the topic of empirical grounding and divine revelation….They had relied on rationalistic arguments, but when seemingly stronger empirical arguments came along, their faith faltered…In the case of [MacDonald’s friend] John Ruskin, as well as in many other Victorian evangelicals, the empirical shift ended in a process which Ruskin called ‘unconversion..’”
“MacDonald’s epistemology is a fairly contested issue,” writes Hardy, and he concisely summarizes how other scholars have viewed the issue. At one extreme, there are those who think MacDonald’s response to the “problem of doubt in the face of scientific discovery” was “simply to dismiss science as an irrelevance.” Throughout Waking the Dead, Hardy finds the perfect passages from MacDonald’s fiction and non-fiction to make his points, and here he provides extended quotes from Unspoken Sermons and Hope of the Gospel that make clear the Scotsman’s disdain for the man of science who is merely a “materialistic atheist.” Who can forget George Bascombe of Thomas Wingfold! But Hardy also demonstrates how, to MacDonald, “the fault of scientific study is not its attempt to gain some knowledge via the senses, or rather, its empirical nature, but rather MacDonald condemned it due to the man of science’s lack of interest in divine wisdom.” “While he does undercut science,” writes Hardy, “MacDonald argues that the study of nature can be of high value to the true man, the man who seeks out God.”
Hardy next turns to MacDonald’s view of the role of reason in Christian faith, also a matter of dispute among scholars. Some have seen MacDonald as a romantic whose favoring of “feeling and intuition” over reason as a determinant of faith is in marked contrast with C.S. Lewis. Hardy provides a balanced perspective, noting “MacDonald considered reason as something to be cherished and encouraged.” He then gets to what I would consider the heart of the matter: MacDonald’s disdain for rational arguments for God’s existence “should be always tempered with the understanding that [he] did not define faith as intellectual assent, but rather, as a dependent relationship of creature to created and the willingness of the creature to do God’s will.” Indeed, for the Scotsman, obedience to the Lord is faith.
“The question that MacDonald wished his readers to consider,” writes Hardy, “was what was the purpose of arguing intellectual proofs?” As always, he finds the perfect passage to illustrate his point—in this case, from a sermon many readers may not be familiar with. And Hardy also documents MacDonald’s argument that, while “twist[ing] the arms of his listeners using logic was ineffective…if the listener himself was seeking, there is a potential to help one see and find Christ.”
It has long been my theory that MacDonald was inspired to write the sequel to Thomas Wingfold, Paul Faber, because he realized that Wingfold’s George Bascombe was too much of a straw-man for atheistic materialism. The eponymous Faber makes for a more complex, interesting debate partner. Hardy uses a wonderful passage from that book (his choice of quotes alone are worth the price of Waking the Dead!) to illustrate MacDonald’s belief that “intellectual, rational proof could be a detriment to faith. It can drive one away, toward rational independence, when instead the Father seeks the realization we are utterly dependent on his being, presence, love, and radiance…there is a deeper way of knowing [God], even more mutltifaceted than our relationship with other human counterparts.”
How do we attain to knowledge of the divine? Hardy writes that MacDonald’s “epistemology was essentially rooted in morality, but the foliage of his epistemological tree was spritual experience…The truth is that MacDonald was much less concerned with the public justification of ‘true belief’ than his Victorian counterparts. Empty rationality must be replaced by what MacDonald termed “spritual logic.” Hardy has subtitled this section “A Moral Epistemology,” and here he makes it clear what that means: “[F]or MacDonald, virtue is the first step on the path to knowledge. He puts it succinctly, ‘Obedience is the soul of knowledge.’ To know, one must first seek, then do the will of God.”
For MacDonald, “God is the ultimate being worthy of knowing, and in knowing HIm, it casts light on all other things known.” Hardy uses Hugh from David Elginbrod and Curdie from the Princess books to illustrate the concept of “epistemological evolution.” These characters are able to use spiritual logic to see the world as it truly is “because of [their] obedience to the duty God placed before [them]…In both of these instances…there was no instantaneous change, but rather a progression of slow growth that came through experience and obedience.”
I could go on, but instead I’ll simply say: buy the book. And join me in congratulating author Dean Hardy and publisher Robert Trexler (Winged Lion Press) for this superb contribution to the body of literature on George MacDonald.