Charles Williams, The Image of the City and Other Essays; War in Heaven

The Image of the City and Other Essays, Reprint: The Aporcyphile Press, 2007; Oxford University Press, 1958, 199 pgs.

War in Heaven, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982, 256 pgs.

Summary: The philosophical, theological, and poetic musings of a moderately brilliant poet who wrote histories, popular journal articles, fiction novels (War in Heaven), and gave lectures to the developing middle class on art and culture to pay the bills. Williams apparently wandered in and then out of genteel British occult (The Image, xxiii) practice and decided to stick with an eccentric but mostly orthodox Anglicanism.  He was a member of the Inklings.

As a poet his imagery is more powerful than his ability for the nuanced logic necessary for theological and philosophical reflection. The reader gets the feeling that the argument is more the mental aroma, or perhaps the colors in the shades of the word pictures. Williams might be right in the end, but the difference between the smell of burnt banana peels and dirty socks is too fine a distinction for most readers to live by or to organize a church around.

His theology is framed by creedal orthodoxy, but he brings interesting quirks to bear; he’s radically neo-Platonic and a hyper-something. I’d like to say he’s hyper-Calvinist, but that would be unfair to Calvin and Duns Scotus (The Image, 76) and Julian of Norwich (War, 239). Perhaps, it would be best to say that he’s neo-Platonic with a heady stream of mysticism as channeled through polite English literary society by a fellow who got schorched playing with “white magic.”

My sense is that he believes the Platonic form of man is the Son of God incarnate. (Apparently, Duns Scotus taught this or something like it.) Thus even fallen man draws his formal existence from the Son incarnate in a way similar to Plato’s scheme. To will in conformity with one’s formal nature is to unify the self with Christ and to act against the form is to move away from unity. All humanity is to a greater or lesser degree in Christ, based on their agreement with the form. Those that are traveling towards unity with Christ can then “share each other burdens” (Gal. 6:2) in a literal sense just as “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (Matt. 8:17), because they are participating in the unity of the Son of God form. Because the Son of God incarnate was in the mind of God prior to the Fall as the form of Adam or perhaps the Son was incarnate prior to the Fall in history, the essence of physical and spiritual man is drawn from the Son.

Williams’ ideas leads to all sorts of interesting theological shards, but the reader is never told what will be created if all these pieces were assembled into a coherent system rather than word pictures and protestations that the glittering fragment fits into orthodoxy. It’s not clear to me that his theology is coherent or if made coherent would be orthodox.

Exemplar quotes:

“The name of the City is Union: the operation of the Infamy is by outrage on that union. The process of that union is by the method of free exchange. The methods of that exchange range from childbirth to the Eucharist—the two primal activities of the earth and the Church. There is, in the first case, a mutual willingness between the father and mother which results in the transference of seed. That it is so common does not lessen the trust implied; that one should abandon his seed to another, that one should receive the seed of another, is an exhibition of trust; it is almost the chief natural exhibition of that supernatural quality known as ‘faith’. . .” (The Image, 102).

“The Mother of God was not an apostle, yet the apostles were—only apostles. Do you suppose she and they wrangled over equality?” (Ibid., 129).

“‘But,’ [the Satanist] said doubtfully, ‘had Judas himself no delight? There is an old story that there is rapture in the worship of treachery and malice and cruelty and sin.’ ‘Pooh,’ Lionel said contemptuously; ‘it is the ordinary religion disguised; it is the church-going clerk’s religion. Satanism is the clerk at the brothel. Audacious little middle-class cock-sparrow.’” (War, 168).

Benefits/Detriments: An incredibly helpful resource for understanding Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew and the space trilogy. Likely, a good source for pastors to grapple with the experience of those coming out of the occult, as long as the pastor has read and understood the esoteric teaching of C. S. Lewis’s fiction canon. But if a little wine is good for the stomach, Williams is literary whiskey. Physical, spiritual, and mental sobriety is commanded by Scripture (1 Thes. 5:5-8). There is much good to take from Williams, but much that might mislead, confuse and drunken, and I suspect he’s more tipsy then exuberant.