Where have I been?!?! Well, I had finals: that was miserable. Working full time and taking ten credits will not work; I got a 3.0 average. After that, Jessica wanted me to read Harry Potter and I agreed. I got the first book in Ancient Greek, but it’s proving very hard and will take me a long time, I’m sure. So I plunged ahead and got all seven books in English. I read and read and listened to audio books and read and read but now I’m done! They’re really great books and J.K. Rowling is merciless to the end, killing off major characters left and right. When something approaches this level of greatness, however, I think my wife and I both start switching to the Biblical measure of excellence, and then the work of art nose-dives in our estimation. Harry was great when he was a metaphor or an allegory, but as soon as he was totally real and facing real death, he attitudes were shown to be ungodly and his ultimate hope to be in himself.
There proves to be a through-line that is consistent between Harry Potter, The Matrix, Babylon 5 and even Star Wars (if you dig far enough). Aside from all the mono-myth items, the ultimate struggle and solution in all of these is the same. Our hero (or party of heroes) is faced with two kinds of opponents. There are those who are for chaos, power, i.e. physis. Typically, the protagonist is against this force (not so in The Matrix). Then there are the forces of law and order, nomos. In the end, we are left to conclude that the overwhelming necessity is for a third option, typically self-determination or choice. Of all the aforementioned series, Babylon 5 puts it most succinctly, “We can find our own way between order and chaos . . . Now get the hell out of our galaxy!”
The trouble is, from one sense they’re right in that we must pick a third option, but in a larger sense they’re all wrong, because our choice must be for something categorically different from mere nomos vs physis. To come into theological terms, the possibilities are not limited to antinomianism and legalism. The truth is not some bastard child of these polar opposites, it is the most intellectually rigorous acceptance of both dialectal nodes to the fullest extent. The Law cannot save us, but God did give us the Law and call it good. On a higher plane than the simplistic debate, we say we are not saved by the Law, but once saved we love it and strive to obey it out of love for Him who saved us in order that we might be free.
I had this same debate with my mother, and she came at it from another angle: civics. Do we say that the law is ultimate or people? In simple societies, there is the Rule of the One or Few, monarchy or oligarchy. The greater civilizations have the Rule of Law, but corrupted by political maneuverings. A great society would have great laws that need no exceptions or judges. The inconceivability of such a land pushes us to the superlative Kingdom, where the Perfect Man rules and all laws are but expressions of His Will.
Aug 29
