C. S. Lewis, the Inklings, & Others

The Descent of the Dove - A Short History of the Holy Spirit
in the Church
By Charles Williams
Regent College Publishing, 1987
(256 pages, $24.95, paperback)

reviewed by S.N.D.

Enigmatic, elusive, cryptic, obscure, dense, visionary, unique, original. These words are used often to describe the writings of Charles Williams, the next best-known member of the Inklings after Lewis and Tolkien. Just the first paragraph of Williams’ The Descent of the Dove – A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church certainly earns many of these adjectives:

The beginning of Christendom is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metaphysical trigonometry finds it among the spiritual Secrets, at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement, the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind, is, in effect, theology.

How’s that for a dense and obscure, but unique and visionary, definition of the Church’s birth and of Christian theology? Nearly every paragraph that follows conveys a similarly strange and cryptic, but always intriguing, vision of the major eras and events in “the history of the Holy Spirit in the Church.” That subtitle illuminates Williams’ aim. He seeks the transcendent, spiritual meaning within the mundane.

With all the current widespread stupidity swirling about The DaVinci Code, I couldn’t pass up quoting Williams’ simple but incisive contrast of Gnosticism and orthodox Christianity:

See, understand, enjoy¸ said the Gnostic; repent, believe, love, said the Church, and if you see anything by the way, say so.

That sentence burned itself into my memory thirty years ago. And ever since I have known that in temperament I am much more of a Gnostic than a Christian. In me, even orthodox faith resides too much in the head, and not nearly enough in heart and hands. So, in that regard, I am as guilty of ingrained gnosticism as Dan Brown’s gullible devotees.

Charles Williams constantly puzzles, occasionally disturbs, but frequently enlightens. Grappling with The Descent of the Dove will deepen, and perhaps alter a little, the reader’s understanding of what the Holy Spirit has been up to since that mysterious “point out of time.”