TheLionRampant.net

[cross-posted from Intellectuelle]

In an interesting review essay called, ‘God of the Latte’, Lauren Winner looks at two books which:

ask what a spirituality of suburbia, a spirituality for people who drive mini-vans and tend manicured lawns (or pay someone else to tend them), might look like.

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I found such an idea fascinating and am looking forward to getting to read these books. In another review article, Jason Biersma writes about Eric Jacobsen’s Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, thus:

He delicately but firmly makes the case that the New Urbanism movement, with its advocacy of public spaces and variety in neighborhoods, is of urgent importance to the Church and needs its support.

Biersma continues:

Jacobsen anticipates the question of why Christians should care about sidewalks when we’re supposed to worry about salvation. To begin with, the characteristics of our urban environments determine how we are able to spread the gospel; it’s easier to reach out to pedestrians in public places than to car-bound citizens cruising from their gated community to a Costco.

The ministry of Christ thrived, Jacobsen says, on “incidental contact”—such as the healing of the woman who bumped into Christ in a crowd and touched his robe. Today Christ couldn’t stride alongside the two men on the road to Emmaus—he would have to materialize in the backseat of their SUV while they sped along the interstate. More subtly, shared public space shapes how we learn the virtues of civility, hospitality, and authenticity—and lack of the former tends to translate into a lack of the latter.

However, it isn’t as if the city provides the answers while the suburbs are looked down upon as Biersma personally reflects:

The city can, in fact, be a lonely place, as my wife and I have discovered upon moving to our downtown Chicago high-rise. We were eager to leave behind the provincialism of our hometown and gratify the kind of cosmopolitanism Isaiah’s urban vision arouses. But we underestimated the anonymity of the city—the fact that people come here to mind their own business and hope others follow suit. It’s not just SUVs and strip malls that keep people from interacting.

In short, I’m wondering if what our readers think of the city mouse versus the country mouse; what Christianity looks like in the suburbs and in the cities and how the gospel is applicable to both.

Does living out the gospel in each place look different? How do we go about being counter-cultural wherever we are placed?

We’re always told not to judge a book by its cover, but the fact is, you can learn a lot about a book before you ever crack the binding. Who is the author, how is the book being marketed, who is recommending it and why? These are all important things to know before diving into a book. My first thought after scanning the cover of The Deliberate Church was, “It will never live up”. It has glowing endorsements from several big name evangelicals, including D.A. Carson, Ligon Duncan, and Philip Ryken. The endorsements are good—too good, I thought. Greg Waybright says, “The is the most biblically directed and practically helpful discussion of ‘applied theology’ that I have ever read.” Quite frankly, I was sceptical. There are tons of books on ministry, each promoting a different 5 or 10 steps to building a healthy church (read: replicate the model employed by the book’s author). How could this book really be that different?

Well, quite simply, it does away with the principles, steps and diagrams, and focuses instead on the biblical data that drives ministry. (more…)

This is my last review of Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. Here are the first, second, third and fourth reviews. Be sure to check out Amanda’s and Laura’s reviews as well.

*****

Wow, what a book. I think a lot of it made me ponder that alter ego of mine I wrote out in my entry for the Intellectuelle blog (which didn’t make the cut, but nevertheless was a good writing exercise for me). You can read it here if you’re interested.

But back to the novel.

I don’t want to ruin the plot, so I’ll just give you a little peek. John Ames learns about the loneliness of his namesake, Jack Ames Boughton, and forgives him in a moment where he blesses him, ‘to the limit of [his] powers, whatever they are, repeating the benediction from Numbers of course — “The Lord make His face to sine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”‘ He surmises ‘Nothing could be more beautiful than that, or more expressive of my feelings, certainly or more sufficient, for that matter’ (275). This is beautiful, not just because we have a scriptural benediction in a prize-winning novel, but also because scripture IS sufficient for all situations, for our whole selves and our whole lives.

I’m just going to leave you with a few beautiful passages to think on. Nothing I could say could properly sum up the novel but I hope this will give you a feel for melancholic beauty of the writing, the narrator and the place he lived, Gilead, Iowa.

When reminiscing about meeting his wife: ‘At this point I began to suspect, as I have from time to time, that grace has a grand laughter in it. She confided to this unworthy old swain with perfume in his hair tha tshe came to me seeking baptism’ (236).

When telling Boughton goodbye from his soon, Jack: ‘There he was yesterday evening, sleeping on his right side as he always did, in the embrace of the Lord, I have no doubt, though I knew if I woke him up he’d be back in Gethsemene. So I said to him in his sleep, I blessed that boy of yours for you. I still feel the weight of his brow on my hand. I said, I love him as much as you meant me to. So certain of your prayers are finally answered, old fellow. And mine too, mine too. We had to wait a long time, didn’t we?’ (279).

‘It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance — for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is mroe constant and far more extravagent than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration’ (279-80).

‘What have I to leave you but ruin of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well,l as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame agian’ (281).

And my favourite — the ending of the nove:
‘To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a llittle, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love — I to will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.

I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep’ (281-2).

This is the fourth of five reviews on Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. Here are the first, second and third reviews. Be sure to check out Amanda’s and Laura’s reviews as well.

*****

In this section of the novel, John Ames continues to weaken and yet poignantly holds on to life — and this late in the novel, he isn’t so concerned with the beauty of life that surrounds him but with the loneliness and sadness that is too a part of the life he will be sad to see go. Ames himself realises how much his own narrative strays from his intended purpose to show the best part of himself to his son, whom Ames will not live to see grow up, a son with whom he can’t wait to relate to in heaven as brothers, neither of them old men, but full of strength and vigour — only multiplied by at least two as Ames’ Presbyterian minister friend imagines. The narrative principally concerns itself with the present and the presence of Jack Boughton coming back to Gilead.

This section also more deeply concerns itself with Jack Boughton, John Ames’ namesake and the underlying causes of disquietitude on Ames’ part and the sly pranksterness (I’ve made up a word) of Jack. What partly pains Ames is the liveliness of Jack (in contrast to Ames’ own age) and his friendliness with Ames’ young wife; but Ames only allows himself moments of jealousy and above all sees the loneliness in Jack’s childhood and his present middle-age. This section traces the many ways in which Jack has messed up — stealing a car, blowing up Ames’ mailbox, swiping momentos from Ames, getting a girl pregnant and refusing to alleviate or to own up to the situation. Through Jack and Ames’ history together, they finally have a talk in Ames’ church, where Jack confesses he’s never believed the words of his father (Boughton, Ame’s friend and a Presbyterian minister) and then proceeds to harp on the intellectual impediments to belief, asking how it could be right if ‘capital-T Truth [can]not be communicable?’ and that ‘there should be no common language between us’ (194).

Ames is pained at the impasse their conversation results in, where Ames ends up crying; when reflecting to his son he writes,

‘And I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone’ (197).

He realises that when the church ‘is full of silence and prayer’ that is more profound than intellectual argument; that is, where worship is found there is the Church. Ames then gives his reflective advice to his son:

‘don’t look for proofs [for the faith]. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little imperinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. [...] “Let your works so shine before men,” etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment’ (204)

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All good fiction teaches us something; as Horace said the purpose of literature is both to instruct and to delight. Ames, on the whole, has lived a life filled with grace and his reflection on Jack has both (although perhaps only marginally) taught Jack he is safe (even to the point of riducule) and his response also has something to teach us. John Ames is in part a presuppositionalist. Arguments and evidence are never going to win people to Christ — only the Holy Spirit can. This isn’t to say we don’t have an informed faith, nor that we don’t doubt or question, but ultimately graphs, charts, and numbers about the Bible and Christianity aren’t going to convince anyone, especially ourselves. It is a changed life that most models grace to the Jacks of the world. But the passage is more than just didactic, although teaching his son, of course, is its intended purpose. The final sentence is wonderful. It is conversational and seems real, like we’re talking with Ames. What make it delightful is not just its mimetic quality — that it resembles real life — but also the way in which it is said, particularly the metaphor that questions become ‘mustaches’ and ‘walking sticks’; that they become fashionable, mere appendages that change with time and are easily shaved off or discarded as they lose their flavour.

Gilead is a superb novel full of quiet truths and well-wrought sentences that seamlessly flows in and out of past and present to create a type of memoir cum instruction book; it’s sort of like the book of Proverbs with the narrative quality of 1 or 2 Samuel and a syntactical style similar to Paul in many ways. I do wonder how a book so obviously Christian won the Pultizer Prize. However, it is my guess that what is usually considered “Christian art” is not quite art at all while Robinson’s book most certainly is; she won the Prize for the novel’s capacity to delight. For Christians, there is something to teach us as well.

Every fortnight Manders, Laura and I will be reviewing a section from Marilynne Robinson’s second and Pultizer Prize winning novel, Gilead, which you can buy here. Here is my first review and here is the second.
*****

This section of the novel tends to deal more with John Ames’ own father and grandfather as well as his namesake, the son of another minister, John Ames (Jack) Boughton. For the Christian there are some wonderful reminders in this section of the novel. Jack Boughton, the epitome of the unrepentant wayward son, is a sort of thorn in the flesh of our narrator; Ames passes on some valuable information to his son that has been passed down from his father and in turn, his grandfather:

‘When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. [...] He [the emissary] would probably laugh at the thought that hte Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it’ (141).

[First I would think that 'participating in the grace that saved me' is a response to this grace that saved me, rather than an actual participation in salvific grace. If Robinson means the latter, than I'd take that up with her on theological grounds.] Robinson so clearly captures the instances of grace and our own fallen attempts at carrying it out that, often, we frankly, lean towards the ‘first impulse’ rather than ‘demonstrat[ing] [...] faithfulness’. Such small instances of grace — and indeed the failures of following in that grace — that John Ames is so ready to tell his son, illustrate the continuing sanctification of our narrator (if fictional sanctification is even able to be written about). For he doesn’t have it all figured out and his appeal to his reader (both fictional and actual) are these moments of realisation of his innate sinfulness — that he is entirely human; but one who, through grace alone, has the potential to transcend the petty insult.

John Ames returns to several images that stick with the reader — ones to note are the pulling down of the Baptist church struck by lightning (he recalls that he once though ‘the purpose of steeples was to attract lightning [...] to protect all the other houses and buildings, and that seemed very gallant to me’ [130]) and receiving an ash-covered piece of bread from his father, which the narrator compares to partaking of the sacrament of the Lord’s table. Another image is the prevalence of light, which like the church, provides a unifying motif throughout the novel as it morphs and is re-expressed in new situations and with new language. Inbetween paragraphs analysing Jack Boughton is placed these two lovely paragraphs:

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.

It seems to me to be a metaphor of the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I’ll try to remember to use this. I believe I see a place for it in my thoughts on Hagar and Ishmael. Their time in the wilderness seems like a specific moment of divine Providence within the whole providential regime of Creation’ (136).

What I particularly like about this stream-of-consciousness (in the best sense) bit of reflection is first the detail of his observation and secondly the language with which it opens, ‘light within light’. Written by a woman steeped in Scripture and the Christian faith, the phrase immediately resonates with the language of the Nicene Creed when describing Jesus: ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God’. I also appreciate that this passage looks at one simple image — the light of the moon in the warm evening light — and extrapolates truths by extension about Jesus, about language, about life, about the narrator’s sermon on Hagar and Ishmael, and about the whole providence of God (which earlier he says he needs to remember that ‘Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord’s’ [135]). The moonlight becomes so much more than cliche, it becomes the metaphoric vehicle to enter in to thoughts about the very stuff of life that makes his own life worth living; the physical presence of the moon, becomes the vehicle whereby grace is experienced. This image, like the ash-covered biscuit Ames’ father gave him, like his father’s trek to find his own father’s grave, like his grandfather’s bloody shirts were to him, are tangible symbols of remembrance, of meaning, and ultimately of grace as each sought to be faithful to his calling as a minister, but most of all, to his calling to live out faithfully what it means to be human.

As a reminder, every fortnight Manders, Laura and I will be reviewing a section from Marilynne Robinson’s second and Pultizer Prize winning novel, Gilead, which you can buy here. Here is my first review.
*****

There is a peaceful melancholy tone about Gilead, one which flows out of a narrator who is so unlike so many earlier protagonistics — angsty, confused, and lost. John Ames’ voice is full of wonder and yet tinged with sadness; for instance he writes of his ‘dark time’ (like which in any story we might tell we refer and circle around to things our reader might not fully know) and the way ‘in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing’ (63); he writes to his son of going to church in the middle of the night to pray for people, where the floorboards would give under his weight rather than creaking. But he ends these reflections with: ‘I know they’re planning to pul it [the church] down. They’re waiting me out, which is kind of them’ (80). It is peacefully melancholy because he is, I’d wager, one of the few contemporary protagonists who although he is quite sad to think about giving up his humanity, he is satisfied in it as well.

Yet as John Ames circles around his past in order to narrate it in the form of a letter to his young son — Ames calls the project, quite biblically, his son’s ‘begats’ — he inevitably moves back and forth between his current life and the miraculous in it (his own childhood wonder in his 70s at his hands and feet each morning and the miracle his wife and child in his old age are to him) to his own childhood, particularly returning again to his father and his grandfather, also two ministers, with quite different political views. Ames, by opening up his own life, by not afraid to tell his young son of his own foolishness, seeks to prevent some of the relational scarring that is as much a part of his son’s ‘begats’ as the actual genealogy. For the remainder of this review, I’d like to simply look at one passage as that which encapsulates much of this triangle of fathers and sons. Ames writes:

So I was predisposed to believe that my grandfather had done something pretty terrible and my father was concealing the evidence and I was in on the secret, too — implicated without knowing what I was implicated in. Well, that’s the human condition, I suppose. I believe I was implicated and am, and would have been if I had never seen that pistol. It has been my experience that guilt can urst through the smallest breach and cover the landscape, and abide in it in pools and danknesses, just as native as water. I believe my faither was trying to cover up for Cain, more or less. The things that happened in Kansas lay behind it alll, as I knew at the time (93).

Ames’ grandfather, travelled from Maine to Kansas in efforts to make the state, upon entrance into the Union, free rather than slave and ‘preached men into the Civil War’, while Ames’ father, was an ardent pacifist. Ames’ father had opened his father’s bundle of army blankets containing his weather-beaten sermons and letters, tattered and bloody shirts and a pistol used when he was a chaplain in the Civil War. This pistol, probably symbolising all that disconnected father and son, was buried twice and finally thrown into the river.

Yet, rather than focus on the immediacy of the father-son relationship, rather than didactically explaining his father and grandfather all in one go, Ames, like Jesus in his parables, tells a story — a glimpse that exposes the human condition, that we are all in fact trying to cover up for Cain. It is not just that Ames’ grandfather has killed as Cain had committed the first shedding of blood, but also that we are both condemned for our guilt and simultaneoulsy work to try to cover it up. Guilt — and sin generally — hides in the landscape, ‘just as native as water’. Earlier Ames had reflected on water being formed primarily for blessing — not just for sacramental purposes but for the blessing he observed in a young couple laughing under the cloud of raindrops fallen from a tree. The landscape — whether it’s Gilead, Iowa or the heat of Kansas — inhabits the blessing and the curse of creation in the ‘pools and danknesses’ and blessings of water.

But Robinson’s language is never forced; preceding this paragraph excerpted above, he speaks of seeing a photograph of his grandfather: ‘a wild-haired, one-eyed, scrawny old fellow’ (93), and follows the paragraph with a return to an earlier story about childhood fear about an unknown murderer. Thought follows thought in a meandering reflective, but not quite nostalgic, looking backwards. It is as sure as a list of ‘begats’. Ames’ narration is consistently humble, elegant and truthful; he is simply trying to open up his life — both the incidents and the style — to his son who will only remember him as alternately a father and an old man. Gilead has little treasures all the way through, pieces on which to reflect, savour, smile at and realise the import of only after you take time to pause and soak in a life that is embedded in the ‘pools and danknesseses’ as much as it is in the laughter elicited by blessing. Ames, in theological language, is simultaneously a saint and sinner; in fictional language, he is our reliable narrator.

I just finished reading Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible’s Accuracy, Authority, and Authenticity, by James R. White. As the title implies, it is a book which seeks to explain and defend the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. White focuses primary on the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, which he defines as follows:

The Scriptures are not in need of any supplement; their authority comes from their nature as God-breathed revelation; their authority is not dependent upon man, church, or council. The Scriptures are self-consistent, self-interpreting, and self-authenticating. The Christian church looks to the Scriptures as the only infallible and sufficient rule of faith, and the church is always subject to the Word, and is constantly reformed thereby. (28)

The length of this definition shows that there are several areas involved in the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture, and White tackles them well.

He takes an interesting approach in the book. Much of the book contains argument and explanation, as would be expected. But perhaps a quarter of the book is comprised of dialogues between two people. While the dialogues are fictional, they are based on White’s extensive experience debating issues of Christian theology with people of other faiths. The dialogues not only contain sound teaching, but also give the reader an idea of how the doctrinal issues the book deals with might play out in every day life. They do, however, present a somewhat unrealistic illustration. The Christian in the dialogue always has the perfect response and the right quote, whether from Scripture or the Church Fathers. While it is hard to imagine how White could write it any differently, this is not always an accurate picture of real dialogue.

White manages to cover quite a bit of material in just over 200 pages, giving a clear survey of issues surrounding the formation of the Canon, allegations of corruption and internal contradictions of the Bible, and the relationship between Scripture and the church/tradition. Two chapter deserve particular mention. Chapter 3, “Forever Settled: The Nature of God’s Holy Word”, covers the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture. White discusses the standard passages on these important topics, and clearly brings out B.B. Warfield’s classic teaching on the “God-breathed” nature of Scripture. What is perhaps unique about White’s explanation here is how well he shows the connection between the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture to the sufficiency of Scripture. He points out that Paul wrote his last epistle, 2 Timothy, to his young protege Timothy, instructing him how to carry on the work of the gospel in the post-Apostolic period. Considering this context,

If Paul believed we should look to the papacy, or to some Spirit-led prophet, or to some group of leaders, or to some new source of revelation, this would be the place to delineate this all-important source of aid for his beloved Timothy. What he does instead is perfectly in line with the teaching of Moses, the prophets, the Psalter, and, most important, the Lord Jesus Christ: He directs Timothy to the God-breathed Scriptures as the never-changing, always sufficient source of truth. (46-47)

Chapter 10, “The Lord Spoke to Me, Saying…” is perhaps worth the price of the book by itself. The entire chapter is a dialogue between two Christians, beginning with these words:

It was just fantastic, Josh. I really hadn’t known what to do, so I opened my Bible to the Psalms and started reading. And right then, God spoke to me. He told me to buy the Deep Spirit Study Bible in teal and genuine leather! It cost an arm and a leg, but I’m sure the Lord will provide.

Through the course of this conversation White communicates several crucial ideas. God speaks through Scripture, not apart from it. The teaching of those who claim “the Lord spoke to me” must be tested against Scripture, and quite often these claims simply don’t stand up. The Spirit of God does indeed speak to Christians today, but he does so in concert with the Word. Claiming that “the Lord spoke to me” effectively puts us on par with Scripture, for this is the formula the Old Testament prophets used to introduce their message from God. Such claims call into question the sufficiency of God’s Word, even when they are spoken by people who (at least in theory) affirm that Scripture is totally sufficient.

My biggest disappointment with Scripture Alone is that White focuses much of his argument against various Roman Catholic teachings. While the historic debate over Sola Scriptura is certainly between Protestants and Rome, the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is under attack today from several other quarters, many from within evangelicalism itself. White’s experience debating and otherwise responding to the claims of Roman Catholics surely influenced his focus here; I wish, however, he would have spent more time on other challenges to the sufficiency of Scripture which are more pressing today. The interface of science and Scripture, for example, is not addressed in this book at all, and yet topics of this nature are in the national headlines constantly.

As a whole, White’s book is a good contribution to the discussion of the sufficiency of Scripture. He is clear and convincing on the issues he addresses, and does the reader a great service by pointing to other resources for further reading on several topics. White notes in several places that the doctrine of Scripture is of primary importance: “every attack upon the Christian faith includes, in some form or another, a denial of sola scriptura” (25). “Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group’s view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God’s truth” (43); and “Almost every denial of biblical sufficiency finds its root in a misunderstanding of, or more likely, a direct rejection of, the true nature of Scripture (44). The issues addressed in this book are not of only “academic” importance, nor should they be of importance only to scholars. Every Christians has a vested interest in the doctrine of Scripture, its inspiration, inerrancy, and sufficiency. This book helps bring these issues to Christians of every stripe.