In the beginning was the word count

In what feels like a 21st-century update of Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, a six-year-old child in Scotland was tasked by her teacher with writing a letter to God, asking how he was invented. The girl’s father – who happens to be the journalist Alex Renton – forwarded the letter to a number of religious leaders, including Rowan Williams, the prophetically beardy, Incredible-String-Band-digging Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr Williams’s reply imagined the Almighty’s response, which in his version ended thus:

Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!

Now, I’m not sure how this chimes with orthodox Anglican theology, but it sounds to me like a textbook example of metafiction, the literary device by which the author persistently draws attention to the fictional nature of the text itself. Examples range from the works of Laurence Sterne, Luigi Pirandello and Italo Calvino to that bit in Trading Places where Eddie Murphy looks straight into the camera. So there’s a respectable precedent; but it does rather suggest that while he was busy inspiring the Bible, God would occasionally break off to say “You do know this is just a story, right?”

Happy Easter, everyone!