Supernatural Naturalism, Gnosticism & His Dark Materials Trilogy: A Book Review by Viola Larson

The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman


“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil,” the psalmist wrote. Why? Because “You [God] are with me; your rod and staff, they comfort me.”

“What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” the Heidelberg Catechism begins. The answer given, “That I belong—body and soul, in life and death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ …”

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul the apostle asks. And then he writes that beautiful biblical assurance that includes:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the Love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39).”

Philip Pullman, a creative and imaginative writer, has written a fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, which contradicts all of the promises of God. In the three books, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, his fictional children, Lyra and Will, travel through worlds filled with fantastical creatures and people, experience incredible adventures but are never touched by what is truly other. That is, the stories are placed in a supernatural setting which is forever grounded in materialism. Nothing transcendent ever reaches into their worlds.

Furthermore, the whole story is based on a blatant gnosticism which is also grounded in supernatural naturalism. Pullman, an atheist, is at the same time, it would seem, a voracious reader; but one who apparently consumes some of his reading texts backwards. He attributes some of his ideas to such authors as John Milton (Paradise Lost) and William Blake who did not view the world in the same materialistic manner as Pullman.

I will first look at his supernatural naturalism and then at his use of Gnosticism. And thirdly at how these two concepts affect the creative tale he has told. Finally I want to explore how his worldview tends to affect the reader.

There is a type of literature and even worldview that is referred to as supernatural naturalism. Adherents of such a worldview, or authors who create such stories, do not discount strange and seemingly supernatural events, but they believe that at some point in time they can be explained using empirical evidence grounded in the natural world. Often, evolution is seen as the most basic mechanism for such a view.

Surprisingly, many pagans and New Age advocates hold this worldview. For instance some members of Wicca, (witches) although they form circles and perform rites meant to raise a cone of power they understand that power to be connected to the mechanisms of the natural world much like electrical energy. And in their case, as in the story, humanity is both the producer of, as well as the manipulator of the energy.

In Pullman’s stories this is so. Leaning heavily on the idea that human consciousness is a part of the material world and that it is itself evolving the author creates his underlying theme. The most basic particles of the universe, called in the story dust, dark matter, sraf, etc. are conscious.

The author does not really explain whether the particles were at first conscious of them selves and so they caused human consciousnesses or if the consciousness of humanity caused the dark matter to be conscious. But no matter, everything that happens supernaturally in these books is explained by an understanding of the particles which are conscious material needing nurture in order to multiply and grow.

This sets the stage for Gnosticism. The god of Pullman’s fantasy world is like the ancient Gnostics’ god, a caricature of the God of the Bible. In The Amber Spyglass the last book in the series, Will asks the angel, Balthamos, who the Authority is, “Is he God?” Balthamos answers:

The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty—those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more Dust is formed. The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he had created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found the truth, so he banished her. We serve her still. (28)

Several Gnostic texts including The Apocryphon of John, which I have explained in another essay, picture the Biblical God in a way similar to Pullman’s fake god.1 The basic idea pushed by both Pullman and the Gnostics is that the Biblical God is the false god who is either ignorant of his own creation or lies. And several Gnostic texts as well as Pullman write of a female who knows the truth and is wiser than the one the Bible proclaims as Lord. Although Pullman does not name the one who the “fallen” angels serve, several Gnostic texts call her Sophia.

Combining this idea of a false, old, weak and lying god with his picture of the “Land of the Dead,” and what it means to overcome death, Pullman lifts up his atheism as a measure of hope. Lyra and Will are the ones who lead the dead ghosts out of the dreadful place. The millions who are entrapped there are thankful because now they can dissolve apart and become a part of every living thing. Lyra tells the ghosts:

‘When you go out of here, all the articles that make you up will loosen and float apart . . . All the atoms that were them, [their dæmons: souls that live outside of their people in Lyra’s world] they’ve gone into the living things. They’ll never vanish. They’re just part of everything. And that’s exactly what’ll happen to you. … You’ll drift apart, it’s true, but you’ll be out in the open, part of everything alive again. (The Amber Spyglass 286)

So seeing already that supernatural naturalism and Gnosticism, hold no hope for a personal nor bodily life after death, how does it affect the creativity of the author and how does it shape his characters?

Well, first of all one should look at how J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, defines good fairy stories (fantasy tales). In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien writes of the “consolation’ of fairy stories which he refers to as “the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires.” This according to Tolkien gives the story its final and greatest inner consistency and sense of reality. And important to notice he also calls such ancient desires, “the happy ending.” Tolkien explains the happy ending as “the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.”

Tolkien goes on to look at the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the one true fairy story. The story whose inner consistency is so full of joy and consolation that above all other stories it has such reality that it must be true. After affirming this with more insights, Tolkien writes:

Because this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium [the good news] has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the ‘happy ending.’2

Pullman’s stories are warped by his atheism. In the midst of his creativity his agenda, to overcome the Christian storyteller, removes both the joy and the humanness of his work. Lyra and Will, barely grown beyond young childhood, find their greatest joy in making love, and when they fear they will be forever parted attempt to dream of an afterlife that is tangible, personal, eternal and bound up with their only joy. Lyra speaks:

‘I’ll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you … We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams … And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight …’ (The Amber Spyglass 445)

And not only does Pullman’s story lose its consolation it loses its humanity. Like the criticism, Melissa McHenry-Tregalgis uses in her critique of the movie The Lord of the Rings, when she explains that Peter Jackson tailors the movie “to fit a modern appetite,” and gives the example of “the increase in violence and the decrease of quieter scenes from the story used in the film,” so Pullman in the books has few restful scenes. Although the main plot in this story is the battle meant to preserve that quality which makes humanity, human, Pullman manages to lose the human quality of his story.

The reader will of course bring their own story to these three stories. But, it must be said, their own stories may either shatter and break against the story or some great wall of safety will already be there holding off the putrid waters that every so often churn up in Pullman’s tales.

I found myself, as I walked through the land of the dead with the children, affirming the resurrection of Jesus Christ and praising God for his life and presence. As I read the scenes of lovemaking between the two children I found myself grieving over other real children who have sought for real love and found only a physical relationship.

Here and there in the stories are scenes of peace and happiness. For instance, Mary Malone among the Mulefa discovering them as a real community of creatures; there one longs for the author to know the ultimate consolation. But other places hold the author’s hatred. For instance, the only time a god is pictured in the story he is an old and dying angel.

The old one was uttering a wordless groaning whimper that went on and on, and grinding his teeth, and compulsively plucking at himself with his free hand; but as Lyra reached in, too, to help him out, he tried to smile, and to bow, and his ancient eyes deep in their wrinkles blinked at her with innocent wonder.

…But in the open air there was nothing to stop the wind from damaging him, and to their dismay his form began to loosen and dissolve. Only a few moments later he had vanished completely … (The Golden Spyglass 367)

And then one prays for grace and that the ultimate Story Teller will walk heavy in to the life of Philip Pullman and all the others like him, not only breaking apart their stories, but making them new creations with new stories to tell.

This story [the life , death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ] begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. . . . To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. . . . Because this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men-and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.
"On Fairy-Stories" by J.R.R. Tolkien

1 The Apocryphon of John, trans, Federik Wisse, from James M. Robinson, Ed The Nag Hammadi Library, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990, [www.gnosis.org/naghamm//apocjn.html], also see: Viola Larson, “Troubling the Church gnosticism Old and New” at Voices of Orthodox Women.
2 J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C.S. Lewis, reprint (Oxford University 1947, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing 1978) 84.