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God and Ian Fleming
This thread I am starting spawned from a thread that took a side road: http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/6369/did-ian-fleming-ever-give-his-views-on-bull-fighting/p1
From the information I have, I do not think Ian Fleming was a very devout Christian, if Christian at all otherwise than culturally. Did he believe in God and/or an afterlife at all I have no idea. That said, there are some mentions of God, Satan and religion in the Bond novels and I thought it would be interesting to draw an overall analysis of them.
And before we begin a word of warning: this is NOT a debate about the existence or non existence of God or about how good or bad you think the Christian faith is. I am an atheist and I have my opinions on all this. but this thread is about literature, not theology.
From the information I have, I do not think Ian Fleming was a very devout Christian, if Christian at all otherwise than culturally. Did he believe in God and/or an afterlife at all I have no idea. That said, there are some mentions of God, Satan and religion in the Bond novels and I thought it would be interesting to draw an overall analysis of them.
And before we begin a word of warning: this is NOT a debate about the existence or non existence of God or about how good or bad you think the Christian faith is. I am an atheist and I have my opinions on all this. but this thread is about literature, not theology.
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Comments
Yes he doubtless had to endure it at school like many of us but that is a cultural thing and in all the accounts of Fleming I've ever read it was never a feature of his life - especially in comparison to women, gambling, golf, cars, cigarettes, food & drink, travel, writing and espionage.
The only mentions in the Bond novels I recall are only ever in passing and are the references we all have from being brought up in a Christian country, irrelevant of belief or not.
The one passage where Bond does muse on going to heaven (as he comes round after The Pressure Room in GF) sees Bond, when he thinks he is dead and on his way to heaven, musing not on whether he led a good and moral life or whether he was on his way to heaven or hell but on which old girlfriends he might run into and how pulling birds worked in heaven! I dont think that is the attitude of a character (or a writer) who takes religion particularly seriously.
Agreed. That is the one moment when Bond thinks of afterlife, and while he does not dismiss it entirely he thinks about it in very frivolous terms. Another interesting thing: he does not pray to God when he is in a tight corner, or when the situation is desperate, for instance when he gets tortured by Le Chiffre. Something a theist would instinctively do. He also mentions in CR that Satan is the underdog. When he asks to Draco if Tracy is a Catholic in OHMSS, he is wondering about her psychology, not about her faith.
And of course, his views on adultery are very liberal and very opposed to the Christian one.
Very good points. Not once does he ever even think about praying, let alone actually do it. No matter how bleak the situation he prefers to rely on his own wits which for me betrays the fact that he doesnt believe in the slightest and he only has two options - sit in a corner and die or keep on fighting no matter how painful or how little the hope of success.
Actually, I reread the conversation Bond and Mathis have about good and evil, and and Bond states that God and the Devil were manufactured by men to be images of good and evil. He mention that what we know of the Devil are from fairies stories told by parents and schoolmasters. This is is all very dismissive of Christianity as a faith, although he does not seem to disregard it completely as a moral book. But even if he did consider it a moral book, he does not seem to consider it holding any kind of spiritual or theological veracity. Mathis's depiction of good and evil is very secular.
Something that always bothered me.
In High Time to Kill, Bond refuses to summit Kangchenjunga because it is "sacred".
He also forbids other characters from doing so.
Bond gets very self-righteous about this.
As though Bond would care?
Unless he is a spiritual man...
I would need to check the context in TMWTGG. Believing in fate, or horoscope, does not make one a theist. And Red Grant being influenced by the moon can easily be explained by mental illness and I don't think for a minute Fleming wanted the reader to believe that it had supernatural causes. If you think so, please provide a quote from the novel.
Fleming might have believed in God, he might even have believed in the Christian god, however the novels are not very Christian in ideology.
That's not Fleming though.
That's what I thought. It is irrelevant to the topic.
Fleming might've been a Christian but he was probably just born one like lots of people. I don't think he was very religious.
As are all of his posts.
Also--I believe it was in Goldfinger, or perhaps Moonraker--Bond speculates on the chain of coincidence and causation that led him to bowl out the villain and prevent a potential holocaust. He then asks, whose chain of coincidence was it. The question was rhetorical and implied strongly the existence of God.
Relatedly, Fleming was clearly fascinated with the paranormal and the supernatural. The voodoo in LALD and the nodding statues in YOLT, among other examples, testify to that.
Loosen up.
Precisely. Thank you :)
And what of the gypsy fortune teller in FRWL who tells Bond to beware a man controlled by the moon and predicts Kerim's death?
Fleming was a big believer in hocus pocus.
Don't try to make Bond an atheist just because YOU are.
How does gypsy fortune telling and being controlled by the moon correlate to a belief in God?
Fleming had an interest in 'hocus pocus' as you put it but I never get the sense it goes beyond an anthropological interest in different cultures and beliefs.
There is no evidence that Bond believes in God in the books. Thats not the same as stating hes an atheist - which is something I never did. I merely said he and Fleming show very little interest in the subject, compared to say the minutiae of sprinkling pepper in vodka to take the fusel oil to the bottom.
But I can see I really should be using IFM where you are concerned rather than rising to your incoherent arguments.
Yes, that's another good example.
In CR when tortured he does not pray. He might have pondered about the existence of God or a higher power, but to which extend we can imply he believed in one is another thing entirely. I would need that quote. Bond is, in any case, pretty much frivolous about Christian myths, considering them as such.
I agree that Fleming had an interest in the paranormal/supernatural, but although in LALD he does not rationalize it, its potential manifestations are at best ambiguous. He leaves the reader wondering (many supernatural writers do the same).
Please stop feeding the troll.
I said nothing about the torture sequence in CR.
As to Bond's supplication, if I come across it, I'll post it. But it certainly does exist, whether I post it or not.
Speaking of quotes, I would like to see some where Bond is "frivolous" about Christian so-called "myths."
''We know nothing about him (the Devil)but fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters.''
Obviously, Bond's opinion may have changed since CR, but these words are not the one of a Christian, not a practicing one anyway. A deist, maybe, but saying that God and Satan as they are understood are manufactured and mentioning that what we know of the devil are fairy stories spoken by parents and schoolmasters, Fairy stories are obviously not factual, hence I said he considered them myths (and rightly so, I might add). I would say that Bond here does not take very seriously any claim of his existence, or of any literal veracity of the bible. I am not saying he is an atheist, but he is obviously not very religious. The way he spoke of God would certainly be considered frivolous by a devout Christian. Say to a priest you think God was crafted by men to represent pure goodness.
That said, Bond does not seem to dismiss the Bible as a moral book, however one cannot say he gives much, if any credit to any claim of spiritual truth in it.
I think the most one can say in either respect is that Bond is pretty much neutral on the subject.
He has the basic grounding in all the tales and myths that anyone who is brought up in a Christian country has but he does not seem to need it in any way or take it very seriously.
On the other hand there is no evidence to suggest he is an atheist, although we can never know for sure as back in the 50's no one would have the bottle to challenge the church in the way a Dawkins has. Its possible Fleming thought it all a load of hogwash but putting it in his books would be far too controversial.
With the points Ludovico makes about GF above it seems more likely that he would be an atheist than a believer, but given the lack of evidence its impossible to say.
Of course I could just claim that I have 'faith' that Bond and Fleming were atheists and that would be enough proof wouldnt it? (sorry believers - couldnt resist!)
http://www.thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/musings-on-james-bond-and-religion.html
I agree with your findings on Bonds likely religion in that it would mirror Flemings and be along the lines of some sort of Scots Protestant denomination.
I'm not sure I'm in accordance with your interpretation of Flemings letter to the clergyman though. His words seem to indicate to me a rather tongue in cheek approach that he merely wanted to refute the criticism of a provincial cleric who merely chose Bond as his bete noir for the week in the same way he may have picked on rock n roll or Teddy boys another week.
That said I dont think Fleming ever went out to deliberately offend in any way (the 'sex, sadism and snobbery' critiques were laughable even at the time) so there may be some truth in the idea that he felt a moral responsibility. However I dont think he'd have lost any sleep about annoying Mary Whitehouse types, which is the likely congregation this guy was preaching to.
The bible quote in The Property of a Lady I dismiss as simply the product of being well read. The quote could just as easily have been from Shakespeare and I dont think it should be given any particular symbolic significance. There are proverbs and sayings we all quote on a daily basis that have their origin in the bible but it doesnt mean that anyone that utters them is a religious believer, its just that as a Christian country for 2000 years its inevitable that sayings from the bible have been absorbed into the tapestry of our everyday language.
And naturally, much as I enjoy a lot of Gardners Bond books, I completely refute them along with Benson as being an authority on the character of Bond. That can come from Fleming only.
An entertaining little read though Sir as always. Also liked your Bond film list. 7 of my own top 10 in yours too, although I'm a bit bemused how you can feature TMWTGG so high? But thats another debate.
Bond says the images are manufactured, not God and Satan themselves. Huge difference.
But I do agree that Bond is not very religious. Whether he's a believer or perhaps an impious Christian (like myself), we cannot say based upon Fleming's texts.
"Dope" in this context simply means information, not nonsense or foolishness. But at any rate, this sequence actually provides further evidence that Bond is, in some sense, a believer. No atheist in that situation would instantaneously believe he was in heaven.
I don't read it like that, he says that man created images called God and the Devil, hence that they are images. It would indicate that God as he is worshiped is just that, an image, in Bond's mind. That does not mean obviously that he does not believe in God. he might be like you said an impious Christian.
Oh I don't think Bond is an atheist. I don't think he is very religious and his vision of religion and the afterlife seems to be limited to some naive, simplistic catechism. The allusion to St Peter might indicate that he had some sort of Catholic upbringing.
That is plainly NOT what he said. In clear English, Bond states that the images are manufactured. And there is plenty of other contextualizing evidence, some of which has been mentioned, demonstrating that Bond believes in a higher power of some sort, and I don't mean M.
In plain English, he said that the manufactured images are named God and the Devil and that they represent abstract concepts. Not that mankind named two images after real beings, not that said images represent anything else than human abstractions, not that they borrowed the names of real beings. Bond might believe in a higher power, But he does not show much devotion here.