After a degree in physics and a career in audio engineering, John de Jong studied philosophy and religious studies at the Open University before gaining a PhD in theology and literature from King's College London. Also a musician and lyricist, his work explores the relationship between theology, sociology, and the arts.

An exposition of George MacDonald's theology in its Victorian context, with implications for the pursuit of religious innocence today.

Preface ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: The Context of George MacDonald's Work 11
Theology and Literature 12
The Reluctant Congregationalist 15
George MacDonald's Theology - Key Ideas and Influences 18
The Influence of Romanticism 22
The Victorian Backdrop - A Divided Evangelical World 27
Chapter 2: The Victorian Child - Social and Theological Attitudes 41
Sin and Innocence 41
Early- and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Childhood 43
Post-Darwin and Fin de Siècle Attitudes to Childhood 54
The Nineteenth-Century Child 59
Chapter 3: George MacDonald's Contribution to Childhood 60
Childhood Sins, Adult Sinners - A Tractarian Perspective 61
A Reading of At the Back of the North Wind 65
Chapter 4: The Child in MacDonald's Realist Fiction 97
Approaching MacDonald's Realist Fiction 97
The Innocent Child 100
The Abused and Disturbed Child 109
A Realist Fairyland 123
Chapter 5: An Overview of George MacDonald's Theology 125
MacDonald's Approach to Cognition and Epistemology 125
Doctrine of God 132
Cosmology 146
Anthropology 152
The Problem of Evil 158
Soteriology 165
Chapter 6: The View of Evangelicalism from Fairyland 174
George MacDonald's Via Media 174
Evangelical Views of Evil 175
"A Little World of His Own" -The View from Fairyland 181
Learning to See Again - Fairy Vision 187
Chapter 7: The Child Against the Vampire - A Reading of Lilith 192
Lilith - Making Strange Theology 192
Lilith - Anti-Child and Antichrist 198
The Landscape and Action in Lilith 200
The Tactic of Defamiliarization 205
The Battle in (and for) the Mind 206
Satan-The Great Shadow 209
Chapter 8: Lilith - A Summary of George MacDonald's Theology 217
A Realist Fantasy 217
An Alternative Epistemology - Shape-Shifting Truth 219
The Child Against the Vampire 223
Key Theological Proposals that Emerge from Lilith 229
Chapter 9: The Implications of George MacDonald's Theology 236
"Death Has Come Through Our Windows" 236
"A Problematic Attitude to the World" 238
"If We Are Not Little Ones of a Perfect Love, I Can See No Sense in Things" 251
"His Quarrel Is with All Churches at Home and Abroad" 255
"The Idea of the Universe" 265
Bibliography 271