Guest Blog: Charles Williams (excerpt)

[alanajoli]

There are some fun, original new guest blogs coming up soon, but today, I was drawn back to my collection of the writings of Charles Williams, which I studied for my course on the Inklings in college. I've not read them in some time, and it looks as though I argued quite a bit with Williams in the margins! But his philosophy of co-inherence continues to intrigue me. (It played a large role in the game I co-ran on the England trip -- this is the trip that also made me giggle every time the word "dirigibles" has been used since, but that might be a story for another day.)

So, here is a short excerpt from Charles Williams: Essential Writings in Spirituality and Theology, which in turn is excerpted from The Descent of the Dove.

--

At the beginning of life in the natural order is an act of substitution and co-inherence. A man can have no child unless his seed is received and carried by a woman; a woman can have no child unless she receives and carries the seed of a man--literally bearing the burden. It is not only a mutual act; it is a mutual act of substitution. The child itself for nine months literally co-inheres in its mother; there is no human creature that has not sprung from such a period of such an interior growth.

...

It has been the habit of the church to baptize it, as soon as it has emerged, by the formula of the Trinity-in-Unity. As it passes from the most material co-inherence it is received into the supernatural; an it is received by a deliberate act. ... The faith into which he is received has declared that principle to be the root and the pattern of the supernatural as of the natural world. And the faith is the only body to have done so. It has proclaimed that this is due to the deliberate choice and operation of the divine Word. Had he willed, he could presumably have raised for his Incarnation a body in some other way than he chose. But he preferred to shape himself within the womb, to become hereditary, to owe to humanity the flesh he divinitized by the same principle--"not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God." By an act of substitution he reconciled the natural world with the world of the kingdom of heaven, sensuality with substance. He restored substitution and co-inherence everywhere; up and down the ladder of that great substitution all our lesser substitutions run; within that sublime co-inherence all our lesser co-inherences inhere. And when the Christian church desired to define the nature of the Alone, she found no other term; It mutually co-inheres by Its own nature. The triune formula by which the child is baptized is precisely the incomprehensible formula of this.

It is supernatural, but also it is natural. ... The denunciation of individualism means this or it means nothing. The praise of individualism must allow for this or it is mere impossible anarchy.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The time the baby's in the womb is a lovely time. I love that during that time, just by living, by doing nothing other than eating and sleeping and going about daily business, you are nourishing, sheltering, and growing somebody. It's the ultimate intimacy.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

The instructor of our "dancing through pregnancy" class runs us through a meditation focused on our breathing, and she always reminds us that we are breathing for ourselves and for our baby. The first time she said that, I almost cried, the image was so strong. :)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I really need to reread Williams. I tried too young, then didn't for far too many decades.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I've enjoyed his fiction more than his nonfiction -- which I didn't remember, as it's been years since I've tried his straight philosophical texts. The novels are fresher in my mind, and remain enhanced by the classroom discussion. Then again, much of the philosophy we read in excerpts, and I suspect it would be better if it were read in its whole context. (I felt that way about Barfield -- I was confused by the excerpts from our Barfield Reader, and all became clearer when I read Saving the Appearances as a whole.)