I will make a bold claim: honest storytelling is a form of prayer. By this I mean that it seeks after God.

I will make a bolder claim: some storytellers seek after God by attacking Him.

I will make the boldest claim yet: God answers.

If you pay attention, you might even discover that He answers His accusers in their very own words.1

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” — Matthew 7:7-8

(The following contains major spoilers for the novella The Hedge Knight by George R. R. Martin. Spoilers also for the upcoming television series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, insofar as it adheres to the source material.)

Indulge me as I make a speculative attempt at understanding Martin’s mind.

(Liberties are taken. If the author himself will provide comment, I may be proven wrong.)

Irony Introduced

Above all, I think the quality Martin is attempting to evoke in his stories is irony. It is this sense of irony specifically that animates the drama with enjoyable absurdity; it plays with and confuses our expectations, knotting plots into nuts of seeming-wisdom meant to be cracked and puzzled over and savored; it lends to his stories an apparent weight of truth—more than that, it instills a kind of spiritual wonder undergirding the materialist veneer of his world. It is the deep magic of his fantasy.

Irony is, in Martin’s hands, a potent anti-apologetic. What is irony? It contains, in my dissection, two essential elements. There is an expectation, and there is a knowledge of apparent reality. The strength of the irony is dependent on both the expectation and the knowledge of apparent reality already being established and lying latent in the audience’s mind. A story does not inculcate either of these premises. It only calls them to mind.

Skillful irony is created when a story tells an apparent reality—either historical fact, or a plausible verisimilitude of reality—which skews closely enough to imply the expectation, to call it up in our minds without ever needing to directly state it. By calling it up in our minds, irony provokes a dissonant juxtaposition which forces us to confront our expectations. Ah! irony says, you had thought he would be a just king, because a king ought to be just. Or, You had thought the bride would be pure, and the match equitable, and the love between the two sincere. Or, You had thought that the knight would honor women, because isn’t that what it means to be a knight?

But we find our expectations reproved. Because shields and titles and vows don’t prevent bad men from mistreating women. Because not all young people practice chastity. Because idealistic rulers still need to implement tax policies. Because all too often it is the craftiest, and not the most virtuous, who obtain power. Because the system kills the just king.

And we reply yes, that is the way it really is. Because—all too often—we already know it to be true.

Otherwise, fiction would have no argumentative heft.

It should be obvious at this point why I have called irony an anti-apologetic. All of these archetypes to which Martin is doing violence are classically Christian icons. The king, the marriage, the knight, who is a model of Christian charity: all of them are images we hold in sanctity because (as the Church claims) they reflect and embody some aspect of the Divine.

“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” — Ephesians 5:32

When we recognize this fact, we see that the violence Martin is attempting with his iconoclasm takes on a sharp metaphysical dimension. He is not merely saying, this king is not a good king, or, that marriage fell short of the ultimate goodness a marriage was meant to embody. He is accusing the ideals themselves of being deceptive fallacies. He is saying, to borrow the incendiary eloquence of Donne, “Shall we for this vain bubble’s shadow pay?”2 He is attempting to deprive God Himself of the goodness, the justice, the purity, the love, and the authority which are imaged in these lesser things. By leveraging irony to attack our idealistic expectations, he is attacking God.3

And yet.

The Premise

Let us examine more closely Martin’s first novella in the Tales of Dunk and Egg series.

From a craft standpoint, Martin has earned my admiration. The Hedge Knight is a superbly constructed gem of a novella, intelligent, layered, finishing powerfully in a grounded and sobering dénouement. The writing is clever; the plot moves with focus and swift deliberation, and the escalating stakes are tautly managed. It is less obscene than the later installments in the Tales of Dunk and Egg series, and its irony strikes a note which is more earnest than ham-fisted. The figures we meet, from innkeeps to high lords, jump off the page with delightful animation, each with something to contribute to the thematic complex of the tale, some of them offering fine proverbial chestnuts to chew on.

“Knights are built the same as other men, and I never knew a joust to change the price of eggs.”

“Sweet lady,” said Florian, “all men are fools, and all men are knights, where women are concerned.”

We are introduced to Dunk, who is “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen years (nobody was quite certain which) who stood closer to seven feet than to six, and had only just begun to fill out his frame,” squire to an insignificant but thoughtful old knight, now burying his recently deceased master. With the old man’s horses, arms, and paltry quantity of coin falling to his possession, and knowing no life other than that of a wandering knight, Dunk sets out to make a name for himself at the tourney in Ashford Meadow. Along the way he will find himself pestered into accepting the help of an impertinent squire who may be more than he seems, and he will meet a cute puppeteer who happens to catch his fancy. If he succeeds in the lists, he may win enough coin to persist in the occupation of hedge knight, as well as attain the honor of being named a champion; if he is overcome, he forfeits horse and arms—essentially, all the wealth and livelihood he has.

His circumstances become more dire when a cadre of princes arrives for the tourney, bringing with them some of the best knights in the realm and the possibility of dangerous consequences should Dunk in his ineptitude or defiance happen to offend against royalty. Things take a turn for the worse when one of the princes objects to the perceived political subversion of the puppet show, and Dunk protects the puppeteer from brutal mistreatment by punching and kicking the prince. The penalty for this offense, naturally, is to be exacted at the removal of the offending hand and foot, unless Dunk can publicly prove his innocence in a trial by combat. The princes leverage their privilege by multiplying the size of the melee, knowing that it will be difficult or impossible for our isolated hero to rally enough champions to his cause.

And so the match is set. Seven against seven, if Dunk can find his men. Who will dare to stand against the fearsome Targaryen dynasty on behalf of a lowly hedge knight? Will privilege or justice prevail?

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A Divine Entreaty

The thematic irony in this story clusters around the pivotal plot device of the trial by combat. It is a simple premise:

“In any trial by combat, the accuser and the accused are asking the gods to decide the issue between them. The Andals believed that if seven champions fought on each side, the gods, being thus honored, would be more likely to take a hand and see that a just result was achieved.”

Let us unmask this device for what it really is. It is an entreaty, an appeal to God—not “the gods,” but God. We may lightly dispense with Martin’s quasi-trinitarian-polytheist obfuscation of “the Seven.” Such a construct gives no genuine grounds for an appeal. A localized divinity could not be blamed for an absence. One figure in a polytheistic system might well be overruled by another. A god who is not all-knowing cannot be expected always to intervene, or to intervene wisely if he does. It would be senseless to designate a trial by combat expecting the jurisprudence of a mysterious, frightful, and idiosyncratic Lovecraftian entity. A god who does not claim to be just cannot be blamed for the proliferation of injustice, nor can a god who does not claim to be Love Himself be blamed for a lapse of apparent goodness. It is only ever the God of the Bible who is on trial, because His are the only claims that demand our attention.

If God is sovereign, He can determine the outcome of a battle. If He is just, He is obligated to intervene to see that justice is enacted, and obligated moreso when He is directly entreated by the sacramental drama, the prayer, of a trial by combat. So, according to this conceit, a legal dilemma ought to be reducible to a battle in which God can be expected to grant victory to the just party.

It is not Ser Duncan the Tall who is on trial. Dunk is, Martin asserts, in the right. He has done the honorable thing and stood up for a mistreated woman. He is a knight who remembered his vows.4

It is not Ser Duncan the Tall who is on trial, but God.

It is a fearful thing to call upon the living God.

Let us suppose that we are George R. R. Martin and that we wish (on some conscious or unconscious level) to use irony to attack the claim of the God of the Bible. Having adopted a trial by combat as our central plot-device, a solution immediately suggests itself: bring about an unjust resolution, with a verisimilitude of reality, that disabuses us of all those misguided notions of a sovereign and just God.

I think that is something like how this story came about.

Suppose—speculating further—we consider how to construct the desired injustice. Let us weigh our options. The trial is decided by material tactics rather than divine intervention. A good beginning, but uninteresting. What is the decision? The trial results in exonerating the criminal and condemning the innocent. No, that is too flat, too one-note. It merely averts our idealistic expectations. The trial results in exonerating the innocent, but the exoneration comes at an unjustifiable cost. Now we have an idea—one which does not merely avert, but which takes our expectation of divine justice and perverts it. A direct attack. What cost? Another innocent will die. That is not enough. Let us apply a leverage of class, to highlight the injustice. Our innocent hedge knight will be acquitted, but a worthier man will die in his stead. Let us take this class divide to the most extreme degree in order to exacerbate the consequences. He must be the crown prince. Twist the knife. Make this crown prince a just man, a noble man who would have been a good ruler, so that all the realm shall suffer. Make him a heroic figure. He will fight on behalf of the accused. A model of selfless virtue. He will enter the arena of his own free will.

In a staggering turn of events, when our hero has failed to rally enough champions to his cause, at the very moment when all hope seems lost, the crown prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen himself takes Ser Duncan’s side and enters the arena to stand for justice against his own blood kin. In the ensuing melee, his presence will make the difference for his side to win the victory, but he will be killed by a careless mace-blow dealt by his own brother.5

And just like that, and apart from a few qualifying (and very telling) discrepancies, Martin has discovered the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.

“The world made no sense when a great prince died so a hedge knight might live.”

God answered.

Perhaps I am mistaken about the order of events. Perhaps Martin has instead worked backward from the claim of the Gospels, deliberately posing the fate of Prince Baelor Breakspear as a criticism of the doctrine in the vein of those who slander it as “divine child abuse.” It is true that Martin has some familiarity with the doctrines of the Church, identifying himself as a lapsed Catholic.6 But I think this intention is unlikely. I do not think the Christological parallel in this tale was accomplished entirely by conscious design. Furthermore, I do not think Martin has fully understood the claim of the Gospels to begin with. If he had, he would have found a clear answer to the sobering conundrum with which Dunk is left at the end of his stint at Ashford. And he would have realized that irony is not the skeptic’s ally.

To reiterate: the Creator of the Universe has condescended to reveal Himself within George R. R. Martin’s deliberately constructed fictional attack.

I contend that there is no true story apart from the Gospel. Every story is satisfactory insofar as it reflects or illuminates, however dimly, some portion of God’s Story. Even Martin cannot escape it.

Two Discrepancies, and an Answer

At the end of the disastrous ordeal, Dunk is left sitting under an elm tree, staring at his foot, wondering if it was all worth it. The image is one of nihilistic cynicism, which Martin appears to be presenting as the concluding thesis of his anti-apologetic, with the bitter Prince Maekar Targaryen serving as his mouthpiece, the enlightened cynic opposed to the disillusioned fundamentalist in Dunk.

Dunk could see the truth in that. “If I had not fought, you would have had my hand off. And my foot. Sometimes I sit under that tree there and look at my feet and ask if I couldn’t have spared one. How could my foot be worth a prince’s life?”

[…]

“And what answer does your tree give you?”

“None that I can hear. But the old man, Ser Arlan, every day at evenfall he’d say, ‘I wonder what the morrow will bring.’ He never knew, no more than we do. Well, mighten it be that some morrow will come when I’ll have need of that foot? When the realm will need that foot, even more than a prince’s life?”

Maekar chewed on that a time, mouth clenched beneath the silvery-pale beard that made his face seem so square. “It’s not bloody likely,” he said harshly. “The realm has as many hedge knights as hedges, and all of them have feet.”

“If Your Grace has a better answer, I’d want to hear it.”

Maekar frowned. “It may be that the gods have a taste for cruel japes. Or perhaps there are no gods. Perhaps none of this had any meaning. I’d ask the High Septon, but the last time I went to him he told me that no man can truly understand the workings of the gods. Perhaps he should try sleeping under a tree.”

Here is the thesis, nihilism.7 Looking a little more closely at this thesis, we discover that it is dependent on the denial of two fundamental Christian doctrines, both of which the story on its surface seems to deny, but both of which are actually layered into the ironies of the story on a deeper level.

Let us consider these doctrines, and perhaps we shall find them to be illuminating. Perhaps, unlike the lovably dull Dunk, we shall even discover that we can make sense of the world after all.

A Monstrous Lie: The Doctrine of Depravity

The first apparent point of departure from Christian doctrine is the surface-story assumption that Ser Duncan the Tall is innocent. This is not presented as the story of a justly accused sinner, atoned for, but of a well-meaning (if naïve) hero who ostensibly did nothing wrong.

This is telling. On the surface, Martin’s story exists rather in the worldview of individualistic Stoicism than Christianity—Dunk is not posed as a redeemed sinner but as a figure of independent, self-defining virtue. I point this out to emphasize that I do not think Martin was consciously responding to the claim of the Gospel. The offense of the Gospel is the claim that we are not sufficient in ourselves. We are desperately sinful, so hideously helplessly corrupt that we cannot comprehend the depths of our sin until we can see by faith the ugliness of the Cross. Apart from God’s grace, there is no health in us.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” — Isaiah 53:4-5

I point this out to underscore that, even with all his panoramic depiction of human depravity, this surface-story appears to be the work of a man who is in denial of his own personal need for a savior.

Which explains one piece of Dunk’s irreconcilable and nihilistic confusion at the end of the story. He did not accept in the first place that a spiritual debt ever needed to be paid on his behalf.

Except, he is not innocent.

A nuclear ambiguity lies at the heart of the story’s thematic question, what does it mean to be a knight? Throughout the tale, it is heavily implied that Ser Arlan of Pennytree, Dunk’s old master, never actually knighted Dunk before he died. Dunk can’t name witnesses for the knighting, nor does he seem to remember the actual words of the vows. His compunction prevents him when he is asked to bestow knighthood upon another squire (which is something only a knight can do), and he dodges the situation. Dunk is telling everyone he is a knight without ever having taken the vows, thinking he can simply fake it until he makes it. In order to present himself as eligible for entry into the lists at Ashford, he has constructed a falsehood.

“He knew what it was like to want something so badly that you would tell a monstrous lie just to get near it.”

Did Martin introduce this element to argue that a man can live a virtuous life without ever making a formal, binding, sacramental commitment to any lord but himself?

If he did (consciously?), he has masterfully followed through (unconsciously?) with the consequences of this sin, both on Dunk’s conscience and in the real world—in the loss of life. Although Dunk is on the right side of the particular quarrel over which he is tried, his entire reality at Ashford is built on a lie. The recognition of this truth completely reframes the carnage of the trial. Instead of an anti-theodicy, it becomes a staggering disaster of just consequences spiraling out from a single seemingly-innocuous but almost pervasively corrupting lie.

This is a story of the sobering reality of sin—of a man who allowed himself to believe a lie in his pride, and of how that lie corrupted the entirety of his existence, putting him in a situation where he had no hope of overcoming his accusers except by the death of an innocent savior in his place.

Martin’s story testifies to the doctrine of depravity.8

A Dead Man Standing: The Doctrine of the Resurrection

The second point of departure from Christian doctrine is the surface-story assumption that there is no resurrection of the dead. This, necessarily, is the lynchpin of Martin’s anti-apologetic.

“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” — I Corinthians 15:14

If there is no resurrection of the dead, a just God would be obligated to enact His complete justice in this life. If we have no hope of a resurrection of the dead in this unjust life, what hope can we possibly have?

But suppose we allow, for the sake of argument, the Biblical claim as our premise—suppose we do believe there is a resurrection, and a final judgment, and an ultimate reality beyond what we can see. Then, Martin’s implied expectation that God would directly intervene here and now and bring about this specific desired result in an earthly trial by combat becomes preposterous. God has made no such promise; He has appointed the day. He has declared exactly how He is going to enact His perfect judgment, and in the meantime He forbears from destroying evil in order to demonstrate His mercy (Matthew 5:45; II Peter 3:9). Perhaps, rather than rashly demanding it, we ought to have a healthy trepidation of the justice of God, lest we ourselves be found among the reprehensible when His wrath is poured out.

Which explains the other piece of Dunk’s confusion. He does not have faith to see a beautiful thing beyond death, and therefore death has to him become meaningless.

Except, an ironically “resurrected” savior appears.

After the trial by combat, which is a kind of symbolic death through which Dunk has passed, when he is suffering from a grievous wound in his chest, Baelor Breakspear makes a haunting last appearance. He is more apparition than man, mortally wounded by a crushing blow to the skull although he does not yet realize it. In this strangely undead state he accomplishes two notable things. First, he saves Dunk’s life a second time by commanding his chest wound be treated with boiling wine. Second, in response to Dunk’s expression of personal dedication, he identifies Dunk as one of his own.

“Your Grace,” Dunk said, “I am your man. Please. Your man.”

“My man.” The black knight put a hand on Raymun’s shoulder to steady himself. “I need good men, Ser Duncan. The realm…”9 His voice sounded oddly slurred. Perhaps he’d bit his tongue.

Dunk was very tired. It was hard to stay awake. “Your man,” he murmured once more.

So instead of the quasi-baptismal institutional formula of knightly vows (“In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave… In the name of the Father I charge you to be just… In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent… In the name of the Maiden I charge you to protect all women…”), Dunk’s knighthood is validated by direct, personal dedication to, and acceptance by, his savior. And not only do we have an image of a resurrected savior, but this savior’s caring love is expressed by the administration of the Eucharist?

And then, the great knight gruesomely collapses dead. When Dunk is healed, the memory stays with him.

“He could not see the wound without thinking of Baelor.10 He saved me once with his sword, and once with a word even though he was a dead man standing.”

Martin’s story testifies to the doctrine of the resurrection.

Despite all this, Dunk appears to be tragically oblivious to the meaning of what has happened to him.11 But the answer is staring him in the face.

The Tree Answers

“And what answer does your tree give you?”

It is a question worth considering.

From his first arrival at Ashford, Dunk is set apart from the other knights whose lavish pavilions are made of rich and brightly-colored fabrics. Dunk, being a lowly hedge knight of meager means, instead sleeps in a secluded streamside glade, underneath an elm tree.

He takes shelter under a tree.

Through the tree, he is able to see the heavens, and he glimpses a falling star.

“A falling star brings luck to him who sees it, Dunk thought. But the rest of them are all in their pavilions by now, staring up at silk instead of sky. So the luck is mine alone.”

This is not insignificant nor accidental, nor is the reference to the tree in the dialogue with Maekar (above) merely a joke superfluous to the story’s thematic argument. This tree, along with the falling star, will appear as the emblem of Dunk’s shield. In Martin’s world of Westeros, whereas the faith of the Seven is coded as medieval Catholicism, trees are associated with religious sensibilities more coded toward pre-Christian paganism. Martin seems to be implying that, if there is a spiritual meaning to the world, it is found in the cycles and energies of the natural world, the life-and-death-and-rebirth ritual of paganism rather than the oppressive and shallowly moralizing institution of Christianity.

But has Martin considered how the Bible defines the symbolic meaning of a tree?

All the old intimations of meaning in the pagan world, whatever true observations it made about the nature of things, despite being confused by superstition, were to be grounded and answered in the coming of Christ. For Christians, the Christ of the Cross is the true sheltering tree, and Christ is referenced by a host of arboreal metaphors (Psalm 1:3; Isaiah 11:1; Zechariah 6:12; John 15:5; Romans 11:24 to name a few). Like Dunk’s elm, a shelter in his earthly poverty, the Cross is shelter for those who are spiritually impoverished. Like Dunk’s elm, the Cross is our window to look into the Heavens12—where we see the love of God demonstrated and discover the stars of ultimate hope. And the Cross does give an answer—an explanation for suffering, if only we will believe it.

A beautiful thing happens when we take the Biblical argument on faith. What had appeared to be injustice now becomes the gracious love of God. He is the One who ordains all things. He is the One who dignifies suffering with sanctifying purpose. He is the One who calls a just man to lay down his life, that another may live. He is the One who set the example by sending His own Son to pay the ultimate price for our redemption. And each shall be rewarded according to his works (Romans 2:6; II Corinthians 5:10).

In the face of the apparent nihilism of an indifferent universe, the Cross testifies that we are extravagantly loved.

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” — Romans 5:8

In summary, Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall, has found himself befuddled by nothing other than the Christian Gospel. Baelor’s death for him was the gracious love of God. But he does not recognize it for what it is. Just like Tanselle Too-Tall the puppeteer, the one who was not too tall for him, the beautiful thing has escaped him.

Christus Victor

Having discovered Martin’s nihilist thesis to be dependent on the two false premises, namely, a rejection of the doctrines of human depravity and the resurrection of the dead, both of which are undercut within the context of the story itself, let us return to the subject of irony.

Has Martin considered the Biblical use of irony?

If you pay attention, you will notice irony to be a pervasive theme throughout Scripture. What is more, the closer you approach to the Cross, the louder the irony becomes. Betrayal by a kiss. Pilate washing his hands. The Creator, Love Himself, the King of the Jews, dying the miserable death of crucifixion. All of it is irony.

Why?

Is Scripture afraid that irony will disprove the existence of God? On the contrary.

Recall, if you will, that I argued irony is dependent upon an innate knowledge.

“Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” — Romans 1:25

Do you hear it?

You knew all along what you ought to have been worshipping.

Scripture defines sin as irony from the first cascading disaster of Eden onward. The blame games. The fig leaves. The attempt to hide from an all-seeing, all-knowing God. It is all irony, and the fact that we recognize the irony makes the condemnation absolute. Yes, Scripture testifies, the world is full of irony. Evil prevails for a time. The system kills the just king. But the very fact that you recognize the story as irony demonstrates the reality of a higher truth.

You would not have found these things ironic, had you not already conceived of a better thing against which to compare them. This better thing is a higher standard of behavior, of which we have fallen short, and against which we shall be judged. The icons I earlier introduced—the king, the knight, the marriage—these are not static abstractions, but roles, standards of Christlike behavior which all of us are invited to actively embrace, by grace, or else which we must actively despise.

“They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” — Romans 2:15-16

What shall we answer for ourselves? We cannot hide, for the sense of irony confronts us not only with its testimony that sin is wrong, but also with its more frightful testimony that all along we knew enough to be held fully responsible.

No other authority has such a clear-eyed view of the ugliness of our present fallen reality as Scripture. But Scripture claims the ultimate irony, the death of Christ—and turns it into a resurrection victory. For those who put their trust in Him, who belong to Him, irony is not nihilism. It is an echo of sky-shattering joy. All the disappointments of this world exalt the truth that, beyond death, a better thing is coming. So the irony does not disprove the ideals of the just king, the beautiful marriage, or the self-sacrificial knight. On the contrary, it establishes them.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”— Romans 11:33-36

What grounds have we to believe in the reality of this hope?

Look again at the fictional narrative in question. There is a charming simplicity to Martin’s story, when it is pared down to its essential elements: it is, somewhat despite itself, a rollicking tale of a plain old-fashioned hero, disastrously faulty but lovably well-meaning, who, despite facing fearsome opposition, finds himself vindicated in the end. Interestingly, the vindication is achieved not by his own victory, but by his sharing in the victory of a greater sacrificial hero. Baelor Breakspear is victorious, although he dies, and Dunk partakes of the benefits of his victory, not because of any sufficiency in himself to overcome the power of his accusers or the magnitude of his own lie, but because he has chosen, in his own small way, to do one right thing, standing up for an innocent.13 By this single choice he has shown himself to be aligned with a royal heir and a man of true nobility, a man whose actions are, in this respect at least, characterized by selfless love. And it is this single choice on which Dunk is to be ultimately judged. The analogy is plain.

“And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” — Matthew 25:40

Innocence and righteousness are proven victorious, and we rejoice. We love stories like this. They resonate with us, because they echo an eternal truth. They testify to an inward longing we have for all to be put right, an assurance and hope that though evil may prevail for a time, yet it shall be defeated. They point to the ultimate righteous Hero who vanquished sin and death itself, and who invites us to share in His victory and in His heavenly inheritance if only we will name Him as Lord. They resonate, because there is a resurrection. Martin’s story is a story about the resurrection.

“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” — Psalm 30:5b

So in the end, the story does testify to both our need for a savior and our hope for the resurrection, even as the cynical argument on its surface seems opposed to these doctrines. An attempted perversion has become an astounding demonstration of Gospel truth.

“For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness.’” — I Corinthians 3:19

Will you believe it? Or will the beautiful thing escape you, too?

Recall that I stated it was not Ser Duncan the Tall who was on trial in The Hedge Knight, but God. And yet God is not mocked. He is the Rule of all goodness, righteousness, justice, and love. He is not the one to be judged. When He enters into the world, and the world puts Him on trial, it is the world which is weighed and found wanting.

Jesus Himself has stepped directly into Martin’s story in a startling depiction of vicarious atonement and victory through sacrificial love, and Martin has no counterargument to present apart from his own blindness. The answer is not nihilism. The answer is love.

Current mood: G. K. Chesterton

How Machinery Becomes Music

Composed in Spain somewhere around the twelfth century and lost in the archives of the Toledo Cathedral until the eighteenth, the Nativity play Auto de los Reyes Magos is one of the oldest written records of vernacular Castilian (Old Spanish). Although the orthography is somewhat variable and intermediate between Latin and Spanish (to take one example, note in the above image that Latin stella has become ſtrela; it will continue to evolve into Spanish estrella), the striking thing about it—immediately recognizable and still germane to the Castilian tongue—is the cadence.

When I think of Latin, my impression is of a cumbersomely methodical language: statements of plodding, ponderous grandeur like “Regni Minimi Regis et Basilei mira facinora et mirabilis exortus.”1 It is the language of domination, the instrument of a civilized people meticulously assimilating the barbarian world into their vocabulary. Latin descriptions grapple ideas with the Cartesian precision of a robotic arm. Treatises with Latin titles sound magisterial, self-important. Speculum astronomiae. De proprietatibus rerum. De vulgare eloquentia. You don’t even need to translate them. Just accept that they know what they’re talking about.

But when the Roman Empire collapsed, and the esteemed art of Rhetoric declined, and formal Latin receded into the silent palimpsests of cloistered scholars and monks, or into sublime and impenetrable chant, across the fragmenting petty fiefdoms of Western Europe the ordinary people still had to make a living, and to do that they had to communicate with one another on their own terms. Haggling, bickering, casual banter, explaining to their children the things they held for truth, they did it with words they owned themselves. So the colloquial tongue fractured from the learned. With the decline of literacy, words became unfixed. But the language lived on, and as it lived, it mutated.

There is a magic that happens when words pass through a thousand years of democracy.

You saw off the sharp edges, honing down syllables until they roll off the tongue. Cultures clash and resettle into mixed equilibrium, and you learn to get along. You borrow from the Arabic of Al-Andalus when you need a name for something new: سَاقِيَة, sāqiya → acequia, ditch. You help the flow by adding vowels before initial consonant clusters: scriptum → escrito, a writing. You soften the tiresome sense of always talking with a stopped nose, and the universal language begins to take on the terroir of your homeland. Somewhere along the way, the plodding march of Latin gets transformed into rhythm—into music.

ds̃ criador qual marauila.

Can you hear it, the wonderment?

¡Dios criador, cuál maravila!

It’s unmistakably Spanish. Nine centuries later I can immediately hear it spoken with the gusto of northern New Mexico, the way they speak in Sangre de Cristo mountains where old dialects still persist. I’ve always thought Tolkien’s description of Rohirric would suit that speech quite well: “It is like to this land itself; rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains.”2 But Tolkien goes on to describe Rohirric as melancholy, and that’s wrong. Spanish isn’t melancholy. It’s a joyful language and a language fit for prayer.

This is a prayer.

It’s the outcry of a wise king, learned in the lore of the stars, confounded. Befuddled. He has beheld a new light in the heavens, one which he cannot comprehend—the Star of Bethlehem. The astronomical fluke has disrupted his charts and predictions. He can’t categorize it into a treatise; it has thrown his carefully balanced model of circling celestial globes, his Ptolemaic universe, entirely out of whack.3

For our twelfth century reenactor, vernacular Spanish says something that Latin couldn’t. His response to this radiant revelation is the proper one, and it comes from the heart: awe of the Father of Lights. It’s an expression of authentic astonishment. Of adoration. Doxology.

Cuál maravila! What a marvel!

Can we learn to approach God on these grounds? To see His hand at work in the world? To credit Him for the beauty in everything beautiful, and praise Him even if we don’t understand?

Governing Principles

Hi. I’m Graham. I hail from a mythical place called the Land of Enchantment (or, more prosaically, New Mexico). I write stories, read notable books, traipse across the wilderness, and sometimes tinker with car engines. I’m fascinated by endemic wildflowers. I confess Christ before men (Matthew 10:32).

This is a place for my musings, meanderings, and tidbits of my creative projects as they become ready to share. It’s a place for whatever strikes my fancy. A place for general reflections on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (with a disproportionate emphasis on J. R. R. Tolkien). And maybe for proselytizing all you anonymous web-surfers into the recognition of underappreciated poetry (with… you guessed it… a disproportionate emphasis on J. R. R. Tolkien).

It’s also a place that might organically grow into something I don’t anticipate.

I think it’s helpful to lay out a doctrine at the outset, so with that in mind here are a few distinguishing marks of what I’d like this place to become:

• Ecumenical Christianity

If you want to recognize the redeeming and renewing work of God in this world, you need to know who He is. If you want to glorify His Name, you must fix on the only Name by which men may be saved (Acts 4:12). I will be writing from a perspective of orthodox, catholic, Trinitarian, evangelical, historically informed and Biblically measured faith. I will be writing for the whole church. Jesus prayed that the Church would be one in Him, united in love and distinct from the world (John 17; I Corinthians 11:17-19). It is time for us to receive one another as brothers and sisters—those of us who strive to follow Him not only in word, but in deed and truth (I John 3:18)—that our wounds may be mended.

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” — John 13:35

• Artistic Excellence

Against the plague of AI-generated slop, I defiantly maintain the worthiness of the artistic endeavor. Sub-creation is a work of the heart; it is an essential participation in our Imago Dei, and when it is performed with excellence it becomes an expression of Jesus’ mandate to love one another (John 13:34; 15:12). Christian art is a journey of discipleship and daily crucifixion. I approach imperfect works with discernment, seeing everywhere the muddled tracks of sin walking side by side with grace common or grace particular. I disdain lazy work and self-assured rebellion against the Truth. I value beauty and goodness wherever I find them, even if the maker of the artwork was blind to the One who revealed Himself within it. I give God the glory.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” — Luke 9:23b

• Peace over Chaos

Against the sensationalized, sensualized, disaster-churning, disaster-profiting freakazoid typhoon of modern media, I aspire for this to be a haven of tranquility. Irenic. I don’t plan to follow a rigorous posting schedule, but I’ll put things up as I come to regard them as worthwhile. I won’t crowd your inbox with unnecessary fluff just to fill space.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” — John 14:27

• Doxology

You know this one. The lyrics say it better than I will.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” — Romans 11:36

Appendix: Caspar’s Opening Monologue from the Auto de los Reyes Magos

Transcription from the Manuscript Source:4

ds̃ criador qual marauila. noſe qual eſ acheſta ſtrela. agora p̃mas la e ueida. poco timpo a: que eſ nacida. Nacido eſ el criador? que eſ de la genteſ Senior. non eſ uerdad. ñ ſe que digo. todo eſto non uale uno figo. Otra nocte me lo catare. Si eſ uertad bine lo ſabre᠅ bine eſ uertad loque io digo? en todo en todo lo prohio. ñ pudet leer otra ſẽnal? acheſto eſ i nõ eſ al. Nacido eſ ds̃ por uer de fembra, in acheſt meſ: de december. a la ire. o que fure aoralo e. por ds̃ de todos lo terne.♱

An emended verse:5

¡Dios criador, cuál maravila,
no sé cuál es aquesta strela!
Agora primas la he veída;
poco tiempo ha que es nacida.
¿Nacido es el Criador
que es de la[s] gentes Senior?
Non es verdad, no sé que digo;
todo esto non vale un figo.
Otra nocte me lo cataré,
si es verdad bine lo sabré. 

¿Bine es verdad lo que yo digo?
En todo, en todo, lo prohío.
¿Non pudet seer otra sennal?
Aquesto es i non es ál;
nacido es Dios; por ver, de fembra
in aquest mes de december.
Alá iré; ó que fure, aoralo he;
por Dios de todos lo terné.

A rendering in English:6

God, Creator, lo what a marvel--
I know not what to name this star!
Just now, my friends, I've glimpsed it;
a little while ago it was born.
Born is the Creator,
who is of all kindreds the Lord?
No, it's not truth, I know not what I speak.
All of this nonsense is not worth a fig.
Some other night, if it catches my glance,
I'll be sure it's the truth, not chance.

Perchance is it sure, this truth I claim?
All things considered, indeed, I maintain it.
Or might not this signify ills?
This is it, it is naught else:
Born is God, in truth, of a woman,
in this dismal month of December.
I'll go there, seek anywhere, adore Him I shall;
I'll have Him, by God over all.

Born is the Creator [Nacido es el Criador]: The ordering of this phrase reminds one of the jubilant proclamation of a familiar Christmas carol. There is a wonderful familiarity of language and sentiment with our own contemporary festivities. Noël, noël, born is the King of Israel!

I’ve glimpsed it [la he veída]: The pronoun la, denoting the noun strela, is grammatically feminine despite referencing an inanimate object, due to linguistic convention. I’d be inclined for reasons of poetical taste and clarity of phrase to render this as “her” rather than “it,” e.g. “Just now, my friends, I’ve glimpsed her; / a little while ago she was born” to more clearly delineate the pivot in the following line from talking about the star (feminine) to the Creator (masculine). But this reading is not meant to be so overt, which is made evident by the fact that Caspar later denotes the star using a masculine / neuter pronoun (lo in “me lo cataré”).

Perchance is it sure, this truth [¿Bine es verdad…]: The author exhibits his cleverness by turning the phrase on repeated words with altered meanings, a sort of chiastic pivot. This first shows up in lines 4-5, “nacida / Nacido,” pivoting from the star’s birth to the Creator’s, with a deft use of grammatical gender to signal the change (see above). It shows up again with the repeated bine (halfway between Latin bene and modern Spanish bien) linking the two stanzas, where the meaning shifts from a truth that is known well to a truth that is itself assuredly good. This subtle turn of wordplay is difficult to render in translation.

Born is God [Nacido es Dios]: See above. Caspar repeats it like the refrain of a carol, but this time it’s not a question. His faith has, for the moment, overcome his doubts, and he is rejoicing in the miraculous Nativity.

I’ll go there [Alá iré]: See above concerning grammatical gender. This could also be fancifully rendered as “I’ll go to her” (i.e., to the Virgin Mary), but I think this reading is unlikely since the opening monologues of Baltasar and Melchior both culminate in similar statements without mention of Jesus’ mother.

Adore Him [aoralo he]: In sonorous loveliness, the penultimate line carries us to the seeker’s hope of worshipping the Christ. The Old Spanish here would be modernized as “lo adoraré.” Once again, we see that our stock language for Christmastide spans language barriers and millennia. O come let us adore Him!

By God over all [por Dios de todos]: This last line could also be understood as a acknowledgment of the Christ Child’s divine nature, as Stebbins reads it (e.g. “I’ll hold [recognize] Him for the God over all”). I think it is more accurately rendered as an oath, despite its irreverence, for dramatic effect. The fact that Melchior ends his first speech with a similar interjection (“por caridad” / “for charity”) makes this interpretation plausible.

Respect the Third Commandment.7 But also…

Need Jesus like twelfth century Caspar.

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