I find the complaints about that name astonishing, coming, as apparently they were, from Christian reviewers. Don’t you know your own lore, faithful sons of Abraham? Metratron, according to Christian and Jewish tradition, is the name of the highest of the Seraphim, the only created being allowed to be seated in the throneroom of God. An earlier tradition says this archangel of fire is the scribe of the court of heaven, and, as all scribes in the ancient world, he sat at the foot of the throne, stylus in hand and tablet in his lap, writing down the words of the sovereign. In other words, Metratron is the potentate who inscribes the Book of Life.
A Christian might object that angels and men are separate creations, and humans don’t actually, despite what you see in sit-coms or ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE, turn into angels at death. Maybe not, but even here Mr. Pullman has his lore right, for in some traditions, Metratron is alleged to be the prophet Enoch, transformed after he ascended to heaven alive into an angel with 36 pairs of wings and numberless eyes. This is the very angel who led the Hebrews through the wilderness as a pillar of fire, the one who wrestled Jacob, and so on.
If God were going to be incapacitated from His monarchic duties, this angel is the perfect one for any author to select as His regent. It looks like Pullman did his homework and knows more about the Christian mythology than the Christians criticizing him. So, major point for him.
On the other hand, Mr. Pullman makes one mistake. In his book he calls Enoch the “third from Adam.” This is a mistake. Enoch the son of Cain, who built the first city in the world, and started the writing systems magicians still call “Enochian” was an antediluvian. He and all his children were wiped out in the flood. Enoch the prophet was from the line of Seth, not of Cain, and was the seventh generation after Adam. So, minor point against.
Christian mythology, angel lore, hagiography of saints and so on, is as rich as anything invented by classical poets, northern bards, Eastern sages, or the tellers of tales of tribal peoples around the world. If you are going to use Christian mythology in a story, O story-tellers, study your sources.
I won’t even mention the reviewers (also, I assume, Christians) who say that Mr. Pullman’s “Church of the Authority” could not have been the Catholic Church from our world,because it was called “The Magisterium.” Allow me a moment to roll my eyes. The word Magisterium refers to the episcopate of the Church in her role as a teaching body. It is another word for the Catholic Church, sort of like using the phrase “in the service” for the word “army.” (Our side should not make errors like this. Onward, Christian Scholars! Read your books! Isn’t our whole religion based on a Book?)
I will however mention and recommend this fine article from FIRST THINGS on a related topic.
The writer, Miss Hinlicky here makes the argument that the “magic goes away” motif is one innate to the genre of high fantasy, and that Mr. Pullman cannot escape its magnetic pull even if his world view does not necessitate such a thing. For readers like me who were surprised (and puzzled and disappointed) with the arbitrarily sad ending of AMBER SPYGLASS, which decreed the Subtle Knife be destroyed, the underage lovers parted, and all adventures cease, should be reassured that this was nothing more than the same ending we saw in Tolkien, when the last ship sailed from the Gray Havens; in Lloyd Alexander, when the Sons of Don returned across the sea to the Summerlands; and in Susan Cooper, when the Light is hidden once more.
My own opinion here is that Tolkien does correctly when Pullman does incorrectly: as a matter of writing craft, Tolkien the Writer establishes his theme in chapter one of LORD OF THE RINGS when Sam mentions the departure of the elves, and sets up the tensions involved in the scene of the temptation of Galadriel. As a matter of theology, the Christian renunciation of power is a theme deeply embedded in Tolkien the Believer’s religion: the central god-man figure of Christianity is a condemned criminal, our sign is a Roman execution device used only on traitors and slaves. Tolkien the Man saw the ancient regime in England pass away, the horse replaced by the motorcar, all his close friends slain in the Great War, the countryside industrialized, the rights of British subjects replaced by postwar socialist bureaucracy. The magic did indeed go away.
I cannot speak to Pullman the Man, but nothing in the materialist, atheist world-view in general requires we Brights to break apart and throw away the products of our learning and our industry once victory is come. Speaking only for myself as a science fiction guy, if the angels evolved out of dust told me my Subtle Knife which creates specters whenever used to transmit matter through inter dimensional portals to parallel worlds, I would dedicate myself to finding a safe way to use the tech: surely some parallel world out there has a specter-killer? Maybe the knife itself can cut them? Or maybe a slightly blunter knife, or one made differently, can accomplish the task of opening Widows without this specter side-effect. Maybe I can make a deal with the Spectres: they get our condemned criminals, and, in return, we continue to use the knife which is, after all, their method of reproduction. What if I make the Window in outer space, does this merely strand the specter in orbit, unable to find the Earth and do mischief there? Opening a Window also lowers the rate at which Dust, necessary for atheist happiness, is generated. Even so: How is the Dust generated? Maybe the science in one of infinite parallel worlds can learn to make it artificially.
A young friend of mine once had a similar un-mystical and impious reaction to the end of the Third Age in Tolkien. His idea: if the elves had magic, they could make more rings again! Fade away and pass to the West?? Forget that! If I were an immortal magic being, I would have stayed in Middle-Earth and kicked the butts of the human beings!
If all that sounds too proud and too optimistic, well, welcome to the world-view of the confident atheist: if atheists bow to mystical warning and omens, what is the point of being atheist? Atheismis great for science fiction, and for the optimism of science fiction. For the twilight melancholy of elfish fantasy however, it strikes a false note.
