So: right before Merlin appears, the whole house (except for the Jackdaw?) was sitting around the kitchen. Ivy Maggs was talking to Ransom about the ‘visitors’ he had been receiving in the Blue Room.
“Do you know”, said Ivy in a low voice, “that’s a thing I don’t quite understand. They’re so eerie, those ones that come to visit you. I wouldn’t go near that part of the house if I thought there was anything there, not if you paid me a hundred pounds. But I don’t feel like that about God. But He ought to be worse, if you see what I mean.”
“He was, once,” said the Director. “You are quite right about the Powers. Angels in general are not good company for men in general, even when they are good angels and good men. It’s all in St. Paul. But as for Maleldil Himself, all that has changed; it was changed by what happened at Bethlehem.”
I’m not at all sure that the Director was right about what happened at Bethlehem; he is implying that God the Father’s character was changed, from an eerie and overpowering Numinous to a more - what? - grandfatherly type of role? Easier to relate to? Whatever - my question being whether our Father had to change at all, or whether Bethlehem and what followed was the way He always was.
What do you think?