Working Out Some Thorny Theology: A Review of Charles Williams' "Chapel of the Thorn": Edited with an Introduction by Sørina Higgins

The Chapel of the Thorn by Charles Williams, ed. Sørina Higgins
Berkley, CA: Apocryphile Press, 2014.
ISBN 9781940671536
$16.95

And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head. - Mark 15.17


In his 1543 "Treatise on Relics," the reformer John Calvin complains that, "With regard to the crown of thorns, one must believe that the slips of which it was plaited had been planted, and had produced an abundaut growth, for otherwise it is impossible to understand how it could have increased so much." Of course, to Charles Williams, a writer whose church history omits the entire East/West split of the Catholic church, such historical details matter little. What counts is the test that a genuine hallow would set to those who encounter it.

In editing and publishing Williams' long-lost verse play, The Chapel of the Thorn, Sørina Higgins gives the world a very early work which bears witness to the consistency of Williams' more mature thought and themes, provides insights into his influence over his good friend C. S. Lewis, and, most importantly, delights and challenges the reader who may or may not care about the former matters.

The play contains the classic themes that readers will discover in Williams' later series of "spiritual thrillers," to use T. S. Eliot's term: a hyper-real object reveals the hearts of various characters by their reaction to it - characters who are more nearly roles than individuals. The plot unfolds simply: In an obscure chapel in pre-Arthurian England rests the original crown of thorns placed on the head of Christ at his crucifixion. Joachim, its hermit guardian, wishes to keep it there. Innocent, the powerful abbot of a local monastery, feels that the three rules of the relic business are location, location, and location, and wants to transport the artifact to his monastery for easier access and increased influence and revenue. Constantine, the nominally Christian king, wants to avoid trouble with Rome. Amael, the sole surviving priest of an ancient pagan cult, cares only about power and sees no point in a relic of defeat. Gregory, the headman of the village, only wants access to the chapel itself because the Christians built it over the legendary burial place of Druhild, a pagan porto-arthur figure whom the villagers believe will return to life one day.

So there it is: free-range mysticism, practical churchmanship, political opportunism, outright pagan opposition, and pragmatic syncretism. What the crown is matters less than what one wants, or does not want, to do with it. It is the untested touchstone that tests all other stones, as Christ is the uncut cornerstone that judges all other stones. Follow this patterning and be ready to read Williams anywhere with some comprehension.

One who comes to Williams, as so many do, by way of Lewis, will find much to savor. If Lewis' That Hideous Strength is "a Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis," The Chapel of the Thorn is Lewis' theology of the "good dreams" of paganism written by Charles Williams long before the two men met. When Gregory objects to Innocent that, "none among our fathers knew (Christ's) name," the abbot asks him if his people had "no tales for drinking time?" Then he declares,

     And therein was a torch lit, though it threw
     But red light, dime with smoke and blown with wind,
     Where the wise pagans lit their vestal lamps,
     Wherewith the candles on our altars burn.

But at bottom, "the play's the thing." Williams could find no takers for his drama in his own lifetime, and the work is obscure and at times unpolished, but it contains much that delights and even more that haunts. Those who adhere to a more apophatic and mystical Christianity will identify with Joachim, yet find that Williams gives the bureaucratic Innocent some very good arguments about the need for structure. Those who like to quote Paul's dictum to the Corinthians about "decently and in order" will feel affirmed until the abbot, after a heated exchange with his opponent, admits to his prior, "Knowest thou there goes a greater man than we?" Pastors who tend to lament the lack of fervor among their flocks might profitably spend a little time pondering Gregory's blunt catechism:

     But wheresoever we bow down or no,
     Yea, thought we bow don or we bow not down,
     Still are we hungered when the harvest fails,
     Thirsty with labour, sun-burn, chill with rain.
     God's change, and we: yet little is to change.

When Joachim rebukes Gregory for valuing the small things of this present life over eternity, the canny peasant responds,

     Small! it is that we know we have - a hut,
     Talk with our kinsmen, wife or chamber-maid
     To keep the hut, a sleeping-place, and foot.
     Small! it is that we have.

Pastoral ministry that scorns these things as unworthy of Christ's attention should instead learn to pay attention to them in the name of Christ. Even Amael, the pagan Bob Dylan of the piece, gets some good lines; in fact, his speeches contain more allusions to Scripture than either of the two priests. When he seeks to seduce Michael, Joachim's acolyte, with offers of worldly power and adventure set against the promised conquests of interior spirituality, the honest reader feels more than a tug of response.

But all of this is too much and too little. Journal articles and, entire books, and - one hopes - sermons will explore the depths of this drama at length and still leave much unsaid. One final word: Higgins' Introduction is worth the price of the volume, not only as a learned exposition of the play's history and themes, but as an introduction to Williams' entire oeuvre. With this brief essay she establishes herself as a voice which anyone interested in Williams must hear. Take, as a widow's two mites plucked from heaps of golden coins, these lines.

"In many of (Williams') books, resolution is achieved by the subordination of the person to the symbol, the piece to the pattern, and the soul to God." The thoughtful Christian who strives to find standing ground in the current debates on, say, Caitlyn Jenner, will find sufficient divinity here to be getting on with.

"The Thorn reveals each person's spiritual condition by their responses to it and their subsequent treatment of each other." Those who, to refer to the issue just named, believe they have found not only standing ground but shouting ground, would do well to ask whether the test of truth is in argument or in how it leads us to treat others.