1. Both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien unfold a system for writing poetry which fits English as a spoken language but differs from the more common iambic lines we’re probably more used to (see “On Translating Beowulf,” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien [London: HarperCollins, 2006, 49-71, and “The Alliterative Metre,” in C. S. Lewis: Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper [reprint; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013], 15-26).

    It can produce strong and shapely verse and (of interest to me) can mimic the parallel clauses of OT poetry. It thus exists as a potential vehicle to re-instantiate biblical verse in English.

    According to Tolkien and Lewis, here’s how you write alliterative verse:

    1. Each line has two clauses, and each clause has two lifts (accented syllables), with one or more dips (unaccented, whether a long vowel or short). This tends to produce clauses of 4-6 syllables (although that’s flexible). Rhyme is not necessary.

    2. A lift is defined as:

    1. A long vowel

    2. A vowel followed by two consonants (such as “punt” or “wind”)
    First exception: some vowels followed by two consonants are not accented strongly enough to count, e.g., “pretty” is short enough it’s not a lift. It depends not so much on spelling but sound.

    Lewis offers the following examples in explanation of vowels followed by two consonants; the first syllable in each column counts as a lift, while the second does not:

    fish-shop         bishop
    unnamed         unaimed
    solely              holy

    Second exception: sometimes whether a syllable counts as a lift or not depends on where it appears in the sentence—a sound might be quick and unemphasized enough early in a sentence to count as a dip, but when it occurs at the end of a sentence, before a pause, it does count as a lift. (Say it out loud and you’ll hear the difference.) Thus the sound “man” in the phrase “manifold and great mercies” does not count as a lift, but in the phrase “the invisible man,” it does.

    Basically, it all goes according to sound.

    3. Two syllables, the first short and accented, the second accented, count as one lift (e.g., “very” counts as a lift)

    3. There are basically five possibilities for an individual clause:

    A. Falling: lift-dip, lift-dip, e.g., “GREEN and GROWing”
    -Adding 1-2 dips before the first lift in the first line is fine, but produces a bad effect if you do it in the second clause

    B. Rising: dip-lift, dip-lift, e.g., “and NUMBed with NIGHT”
    -When occurring in the second clause, keep the number of dips low, ideally one

    C. Chiasm: dip-lift, lift-dip, e.g., “the MERRY MASTer”
    -In this pattern, the second lift can be one short unaccented syllable

    D. Half-fall: lift, lift-dip, e.g., “BRIGHT QUICKsilver”
    -In this pattern, the last dip is to be as short as possible

    E. Fall then rise: lift-dip-lift, e.g., “GLADiator GRIM”

    3. One or both of the lifts in the first clause of the line must alliterate with the first lift in the second clause but not the last. Thus, Lewis calls a “deformity” the following line:

    And walks by the waves    as winds warble

    But the first and third lift should alliterate, or second and third, or first, second, and third; but leave the fourth out of it. Basically every line much alliterate somewhere.

    It’s purely according to sound (e.g., “necessity” alliterates with an “s” later in a line) and an accented syllable in the middle of a word can be alliterated with the same sound at the beginning of a word.

    4. Beginning a line with two dips is acceptable, but never ending a line that way (in general, my sense is that the second clause is supposed to be briefer).

    5. Avoid over-reliance on type B (rising)—since it fits iambs so generally, overuse will produce a “flat” effect.

    6. You cannot violate the break between clauses, but you are allowed to let a thought run onto the next line:

    There stands a stone.                     Still’d is the Lady’s
    Peerless laughter.

    A Worked Example from Job 40
    Note: this turned out to be much harder than I expected and not every line succeeds. I expected the alliterative form to fit more easily with Hebrew, but it turns out Hebrew verse resists it. Well: even failures can be interesting. Comments welcome.
    (Also, for some reason, the formatting is imperfect below, even thought it worked fine in Word. Drat! Apologies for the irritation.)

    From the storm, the Savior             spoke with Job                       (B/E)
    From deep darkness,                      dense with thunder.                (C/A)
    Gird up your loins                          give reply                               (E/E)
    All that I ask                                   an answer you’ll make.          (E/B)
    Breaking my justice                        bringing to nought                 (E/E)
    How wisely I weave,                      wring glory                            (B/D)
    From your worst wrong,                 your wildest pain—               (B/C)
    Will you, Job?                                 Well I know                           (E/E)
    Your sharpest protest,                     most sinister thought—         (A/E)
    That hatred I have                           in my heart for you.               (B/B)
    Me you’ll condemn,                        malign with wrong,                (E/B)
    All to escape                                   that unanswerable fear?         (E/B)

    That arm divine                              Arrayed in might                    (B/B)
    To save those sheltering                 safe under my wings—          (B/E)
    Is that just joy yours?                     Judge for yourself:                 (C/E)
    Can you send succour                    surround with help                 (B/B)
    Those trusting helpless?                 Try if you will                        (B/E)
    To rip the sky,                                 roar with thunder.                   (B/A)
    Adorn yourself,                              deck with splendour,              (B/A)
    With highest, mighty                      majesty.                                  (A/E)
    Then overflow                                with outrage, spy                    (B/B)
    Each haughty rebel,                        humble each one.                   (A/E)
    The wicked tread down                  where they stand.                   (C/E)
    Deep down in dust                          in depths unknown                 (E/B)
    Bind their faces                               beneath the earth                    (A/B)
    In the hidden place.                         Praise Job! I’ll say,                (B/C)
    Acknowledge you,                          name you saviour.                  (B/C) 

    Behold now, Behemoth,                  beside you he stands,             (A/B)
    My greatest creature.                       All green of the earth             (B/B)
    He consumes unconstrained;           cavernous and dark                (B/E)
    Like death his throat,                       thrown open wide.                  (B/D)
    Strength in his hips,                         sinew of belly,                        (E/A)
    Tall like a cedar                               his tail he swings                    (A/B)
    In delight. Tight                               twists intertwined                   (?/E)
    Thread through his thighs,               thick barrels his bones            (E/B)
    Down to marrow                              metal unyielding.                    (A/A)
    First from my works—                    but fresh in my joy                 (E/B)
    I’ll bring near my sword,                 batter and slash,                      (B/E)
    Though his Maker,                           no mercy I’ll show,                (A/B)
    And scour from sky,                         from sea and earth                 (B/B)
    That chaos grim                                that crushed your life.            (B/B) 

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  2. It's the sun in February that you notice most
         and how it cleans the air
         that blows with bracing gusts the still-bare branches.

    It sparkles on the raindrops huddling on my window.
    It glistens in the spider's web.

    Sunlight fills my study. As I read, it sits with me.

    And as evening lingers, slanting through the brown of branches,
         dyling light warms leafless bark.
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  3. Seriously, what is so great about Victorian literature? What is it that still gives such pleasure, even when our culture has shifted so drastically? (Heck, Britain shifted pretty drastically away from the Victorians as early as the 1920s.) I read this because the kids were reading it for school and enjoyed it far more than I expected. Perhaps part of the reason is the sincerity of the author: Victorians are genuinely shocked and horrified by evil, whereas we tend to be merely entertained by it (and then struck dumb when we suffer it, unable to find words to bear it). There's something both honest and cleansing about 19th century English lit. Doubtless part of it is my own romanticization of London. But I was also surprised at what a craftsman Stevenson is. For example:

    "This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life."

    It's good, no? Oh, and, yes, that the story is eternally relevant, because we are all more than one person, and all of us have a self that utterly delights in evil, hyding within. That too. Almost forgot.

    So I was recommended this because a certain young man I care a lot about struggles at times with a paralyzing sense of shame, sometimes about things that are absolutely not his fault (just like this father does). I was also recommended Shame Interrupted, which was also very good, focusing more on applying the biblical story to the experience of shame. Thompson does this, and very well, but takes more into account brain function (what he calls "interpersonal neurobiology"). Some important ideas from this book:

    -Without denying that shame can sometimes be appropriate, the author understands shame to be a weapon which evil uses to destroy relationships and the proper use of our gifts and creativity to bless others. It is "both a source and result of evil's active assault on God's creation." (13)

    -Shame is that sense of (1) I am less than what I should be and (2) others can see it and (3) I will be shamed/abandoned because I am less than what I should be. It tells us to hide, but this only prompts more shame. Paradoxically, the only way out is to head right into shame, to be vulnerable with others about what we are most ashamed of, and to be accepted instead of being rejected.

    -Shame easily underlies many other feelings (when people get angry, scared, sad, that feeling of exposed inadequacy can be motivating it), is a powerful but easily unnoticed motivator in human behavior, and is telling a story about us to ourselves ("You must succeed at this job;" "She doesn't really love you;" "If you had tried harder, that wouldn't have happened"). Shame is a kind of narrative than needs to be interrupted.

    -Apparently shame literally degrades the way our brain works: neurons will not connect as well, making us less able to think clearly, connect with others, use our gifts, be creative. It can also easily get encoded into our brains, so that certain situations/words/whatever instantly evoke the sense that one must hide, because you're about to be exposed.

    -Shame offers isolation as a solution, as a way to keep the feeling of horrible exposure contained and controlled; but tragically, shame grows like crazy in isolation. The only way out is exposure in safe relationship (where your neurons can literally get re-wired). There is no other way to joy: exposure before an other, who sees *everything*, and does not reject you. This gives your brain a different story to tell. Being known in this way leads to greater connection, integration, creativity.

    -The story shame tells is sometimes solely about you: it's your fault, etc. But shame is entirely relational, from its inception to its healing.

    -In Jesus' nakedness in his crucifixion, he knows exactly what it is to be ashamed: to be exposed, unhidden, before the gaze of others, when he is most vulnerable, least able to defend himself, most ugly.

    With a title like this, how will I not read this book, right? Tinker argues that the scientific imperialism which compelled Lewis' fears and literary talents, in its aim to detach man from nature and perfect him scientifically, has returned in a different form - now as cultural Marxism, the philosophy coming from Marcusse and the Frankfurt school which aims at the "liberation" of human beings from the traditional structures of family and church (and the Christian cosmology implied by both) in favor of radical autonomy and polymorphous sexuality. The LGBTQ+ agenda is the new hideous strength, in other words. I think what animates the comparison for Tinker is both the "liberation" from nature and also the means by which converts are made, i.e., a ruling class manipulating education and de-forming language to effect a change in the populace at large. Tinker sharply calls the church to proclaim and embody traditional orthodoxy.

    I wanted to like this book more - what dampened my enthusiasm is the total lack of footnotes (I want to look this stuff up!) and the tendency to paint with a broad brush. Is the movement more diverse than he allows? E.g., a few gay rights activists are quoted about their explicit goal of the destruction of marriage, and this is taken to reflect the hidden agenda of the whole movement. Tinker also sees the church as the movement's sole opponents; but I sense that many people outside the church are totally out of sympathy with the LGBTQ's intellectual incoherence (why is gender fluid but not race?) and self-righteous intolerance. I expect the movement will sink itself before too long.

     I hated this book. Practically every newspaper in the country seems to be praising it as a ghost story - lots of accolades on front and back. And basically nothing happens for the first 2/3 of the story - only on pg. 140 (out of 200) does the narrator notice that a certain door in the huge mansion by the dreary sea which all the inhabitants are skeptical of - the door is always locked, and there's a noise coming from inside - but he gets up in the middle of the night ... AND THE DOOR IS OPEN. The door, itself, having been previously locked, is now, mysteriously, and for no known reason, in the middle of the night, open! And ... oh no ... oh horrors ... a light is shining inside!

    Seriously, this was published in 1983, but it would have been out of date even in the 19th century. The only thing it has going for it is plenty of atmosphere - which, in my book, counts for a lot. But it takes way too long to get going, doesn't have enough scary stuff, and then doesn't reflect enough on the scary stuff at the end - the sad, bad thing happens and the book ends, but we don't hear the narrator reflect on how he views life (and possibly the afterlife) differently because of his brush with the supernatural. Apparently the same tragedy could have happened for a perfectly mundane reason. (It would have been better for the ghost to show the narrator his son and tell him he can see his son again if he serves her.) Oh whoops spoilers but who cares you're not going to read this anyway.

    I've publicly maintained that my brother is among my very favorite theologians (theologicians? theologinisticators? theologizers? I forget the technical term) to read. Obviously he's not in the same ranks as Augustine and his beloved Anselm and Calvin and so on. But the amount of pleasure and interest I derive from him is ... well, OK, now I'm thinking about the Confessions, and that's in a separate category. But the amount of "this feels good on my brain" sense I get ... Gavin does it as much for me as anyone. I just flat-out enjoyed this book - the amount I learned from it, its sanity mixed with ambition and verve. There's a *wholeness* to it which is perhaps easiest for theologians to lack.

    As I'm sitting here, the "book review" part of my brain wants to start summarizing/analyzing - but I'm not going to, because this is one I'll come back to. Gavin's writing is to be savored. This post exists to remind myself about what I've read and why; but I don't need to for this book. It'll be with me for a long time, and I'll come back to it more than once. What's that you hear? Tolle et something?

    I was thinking about a quote from this book I like about the necessity of suffering (without which I simply will not take God seriously as God) and although I could just look it up online I thought Heck it's C. S. Lewis I mean Heck might as well read the thing. This, despite putting the book in the rank of "second-tier" Lewis, in my mind, anyway, and definitely behind A Grief Observed, which is far a better exploration of suffering (for me, at least). And, admittedly, he's only talking about the intellectual problem of pain, so that last comment is, in a sense, a statement of my own preference for the intensely personal Grief Observed and nothing more.

    But nope, it's first-tier Lewis. (The Allegory of Love is the only Lewis I've read that hasn't grabbed me - that, and the early, heavily philosophical part of Miracles.) Lewis leans far too heavily on the "free-will defense" (not that it's wrong, only that he leans on it far too much) and seems curiously vague with the whole idea of covenant headship in Adam and Christ. But otherwise ... what can I say about this that you don't already know or isn't boring? It's immediate and wildly wide-ranging - the texture of the words gives one the sense that Lewis is sitting next to you, speaking with you, while it's metaphysically ambitious as anything, all the while being totally convincing. The use of Scripture is much better than in Mere Christianity. And repeatedly, there's that sense of cleansing shock, of immediate internalization, that massive, dramatic truths and being given you. I guess my deepest response is gratitude.

    This is a very learned book and sets the context for thinking about the theory of evolution and its history in ways which both de-stabilize and clarify. To wit:

    1. Birkett ably demonstrates the difference between how Darwinism is talked about in polemical contexts in suspiciously absolutist terms, either as obviously and unqualifiedly true and the key to understanding life and the most elegant insight into humans beings anyone's ever had, or as absolutely false, stupid, evil, whatever--the difference between that and how it's talked about in scientific context, in which one sees it is not a theory but a collection of theories, which continue to be debated. An interesting disagreement between Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould is recorded concerning whether the central mechanism in evolution is genetic mutation (Dawkins says yes, but Gould is skeptical and thinks other factors are involved, justly asking whether the survival of mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs was purely due to their genetics [were other factors involved?]). It's helpful to see Darwinism as a collection of theories, with rival interpretations, different emphases, sometimes flat-out disagreement. Consensus doesn't exist; there are "almost as many descriptions of Darwinism as there are evolutionary scientists" (pg. 15). It's also revealing to see Dawkins as dismissive of his scientific colleagues as his religious ones.

    2. It's helpful to see evidence for and against evolution laid out clearly. And there is evidence in favor: for example, species in an isolated island like Australia show more divergence from other places, which would be expected if they adapt to fit their environment. Also, for species that fossilize (like vertebrates), the further one goes back, the greater difference one sees between fossilized species and living ones - which again is expected. But there is evidence against it, too. Apparently environments change much more frequently than genetic patterns, which is unexpected within an evolutionary framework (i.e., is the only impact on genetic change survival in different environments? are other factors involved?). Furthermore, there's no explanation for the evolution of a cell, which apparently requires every part of it to function (i.e., it can't evolve slowly without ceasing to function). This doesn't mean there is no explanation, only that we haven't found one yet.

    3. It's helpful to see the social history of Darwinism. The theory has never not been involved in polemical and non-scientific ways, especially in the century of its origin, when it was taken up by those in Britain who wanted to see deeper levels of social change and reform (and better lives for the miserable working classes), against more conservative forces. This was also mixed up in a sea-change in religious belief. The Church of England came to be associated with the conservative end of things, but the fact that it latched onto Paley's argument from natural design, which evolution neatly dismantles, did not help them. My impression is Darwin, who had given up religious belief, was no polemicist and generally kept his skepticism to himself. But from its inception, the theory was used as part of an argument about what kind of country Britain would be - in manifestly non-scientific ways. The particular emotional charge which the theory of evolution has, in other words, in relation to religious belief is arbitrary, a result of a history which easily could have played out differently. The contradictory ways modern biologists relate science and religion bears this out.

    4. Finally, Birkett ends her book by asking a question which should be more obvious to more people: why has evolution been so contested, gotten involved in so many non-scientific arguments? Because religious neutrality is a myth, Birkett says - and because, deny it howsoever we will, human beings are special and relate to their environment in unique ways. We simply cannot be detached and totally objective about our origins - they matter to us too much (pg. 118). We go about trying to explain, understand, inhabit the universe in ways no other species does, even when we shares 97% identical DNA to them (as we do to chimpanzees). As a result, the truth of evolution is less important to Birkett; there is evidence for it and against, and the theories will doubtless continue to evolve. The more important fact is that human beings are created, a truth atheists witness to even in their denials.

    Santiago is a fisherman and was born to be one and loves it, even though, in a way, it is killing him. He is dirt poor and sleeps on a mattress covered with newspapers and when he sleeps he dreams of lions on a seashore in Africa. The wife who is dead he he does not think about at all. He goes out to fish every day in a tiny skiff and puts down four pieces of bait at different depths. He catches something and it pulls; the man puts a sack on his back and wraps the line around his back so he can keep the right amount of tension on it to tire the fish without the line breaking.

    It pulls the old man all night, and long in to the next day.

    He cannot let go, because he has gone 85 days without catching anything.

    He holds on until the pain in his back settles into the horizon, holds on even though both hands are cut and in agony, even though it is perilous work just to get a drink of water as he holds on, or secure the oars so they drag against the fish, even though the old man has to fight against the dizziness and dark spots in his vision to remind himself he must eat part of the dolphin he caught to keep his strength. The fish is longer than his boat, and even if he catches it, how will he get it back without sharks devouring it? And why not stay closer to shore and fish for easier prey? Because he is a fisherman and he loves it and was born for it, and even though he worries killing the fish might be a sin, and even though fishing is killing him, he hunts the fish and will not stop.

    A man can be destroyed and not defeated, the old man thinks, as he talks to himself. He loves the fish and calls it his brother. "You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who."

    (Forgive me the bad Hemingway impersonation here, but I think it communicates the quality of his writing and his philosophy as well as direct statement could; and even if I do not believe Hemingway's philosophy, I admire it and respond to it artistically, and I think he gives the old man and the sea [for that is not a title only, but a statement of the book's heart, because the old man does not exist without the sea, nor it he] the perfect ending of pyrrhic victory, and final dreams of an African shore.)

    So I'd always intended to go back to Browning and pulled this off the shelf on a whim one day and it didn't seem to want to go back. I don't think Browning will ever be in my top tier favorite authors, but I made progress. "Childe Roland" is still as harrowing and mysterious as ever, and "Meeting at Night" still as affecting; but I made progress elsewhere. The way art helps you see things for the first time in "Fra Lippo Lippi" I finally understood ("This world's no blot for us/Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good/To find its meaning is my meat and drink). And there's a wonderfully affecting passage in "By the Fire-Side," starting at canto 21, where he speaks to his wife, and how he seems to see himself in her as he surveys his past. "Bishop Ploughman's Apology" kind of ... "disgusted" is too strong a word; what's a reaction that makes you go "Pfffft"? It's a dramatic monologue between faith and unbelief, but operates on the assumption that you shouldn't believe something if you just can't (which makes me suspicious) and that the choice between faith and unbelief is man's choice. Which I don't believe at all. And "Rabbi Ben Ezra" far too easily and comfortably lives within life's disappointments and ambiguities. It left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth - I think Browning is too comfortable with wavering between doubt and faith, with making peace with life's disappointments, than he should be. As a poet, he's dazzling; but I remain unconvinced otherwise.

    Australian novelist Peter Carey travels to Japan with his son. Both like anime and manga and although I don't remember it being explicitly said so, I think Peter wants to get closer to his teenage son as much as he wants to touch Real Japan. (Carey is a famous novelist and can set up interviews with big-time anime directors.) I think he succeeds more at the former than the latter; but if "failure" is the right word with his attempt to understand Japan, it's a very interesting and enlightening failure. (Before I forget, his depiction of his son is flawless; you can see perfectly the easily-aroused-grouchiness of a teenager mixed with the delight in certain things which a teenager tries to hide and cannot; the easy way he connects with Takashi, a Japanese teenager his son met online; how bored his son is through four hours of Kabuki.)

    What I liked most was the points in the book where ... it's not a dizzying feeling, exactly, but I've had it before, a feeling of profound disconnected mixed with intimacy when I realize I am completely misunderstanding Japan, that I am touching something utterly foreign, that all my associations and instincts are wrong. Like, the giant robots the protagonists of anime sometimes pilot are associated not with power or mastery but the womb; wells, with entrances with entrances to the spirit world. Carey has an interview with a famous otaku (the definition of which, even after several pages, remains slightly out-of-reach) who basically answers every question by very politely saying, "That's not really correct and you're misunderstanding;" Carey doesn't even bother summarizing the interview with the author of Blood: the Last Vampire because every dart he throws at the board misses. A final meeting with Hideaki Miyazaki (if you need to look up who that is, this book might not be for you) is the most special because they have no Japanese and Miyazaki-san has very limited English; he communicates simply, most directly, and that is perhaps where they meet Real Japan. It only bothers me a little that Carey made up some parts of the book without at all hinting this would be so - even though the fictionalized parts are utterly believable and insightful, it felt a little bit like a violation of genre.

    Oh look what a shock Ortlund is talking about Lewis again. And this is only a compendium of other things he wrote and Ortlund has already read a lot of it already and seriously, man, find another author.

    Well, OK. But I still liked this Christmas present:

    "Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality.... [I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.... I transcend myself; and me never more myself than when I do."

    And explaining why forbidding fairy tales to children because they might be scary is stupid:

    "Since it is so likely that they [i.e., young readers] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."

    And his lovely reflecting that good fantasy, instead of counting as an escape from reality, allows us to return to real life sharpened and fortified (and that "realistic" fiction about, I dunno, spies or adventure or love affairs are what counts as "fantasy" in the Freudian sense, i.e., a compensation for life's disappointments, which leaves us only stuck within ourselves more deeply). So find me someone else who can express beautiful things so beautifully and I'll quote him.

    Henry V. Read this with other Oak Hill peeps; we got to maybe Act 3 and called it a night and I finished it this morning. The final scene of Henry wooing the French princess Kate is touching in Henry's disarming modesty (even if he's a lion on the battlefield, the beauty opposite him quite undoes him); and even if it bothered me a tiny bit that she never says "yes," Henry isn't forcing himself on her, but genuinely wants a mutual relationship. Henry V isn't history, but Henry's nobility, fierceness, courage, and fairness, is so admirable I find myself wanting to imitate him. It's interesting to see the contrast with the French, who talk big but can't match his character, and the contrast with Henry's troops (some of which are criminal, some merely stupid - but if the noble Henry had perfectly noble troops, the effect would spoil). The play is true to life and adorns virtues everyone will need. And it has some great lines, and not just the St. Crispin's day speech, which I think Branaugh makes overly-sweet - this is a speech made by an exhausted man to exhausted men.
    And also this one: "Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt!" (see 2:35)


    OK yes I know I sound like a broken record and I should probably find other people to read and read about, but I just couldn't help myself. Found a series of CSL biographies to take for free and I pulled it off the shelf over Christmas and couldn't put it down. I think part of what's so refreshing is to see how miserable Lewis' life was at different stages, without it affecting the quality of his books: getting passed over for a full professorship at Oxford; getting worked to exhaustion at home and at work and being hospitalized as a result in 1951; his miserable bad health after his wife died and the painful absence of his alcoholic brother, whom he loves. And yet the books he wrote! It's oddly comforting.







    Got about halfway through this and put it down and haven't picked it up again. It's a poignant and moving account of the great suffering Prague (and all of eastern Europe) suffered under communism, and how communism came to take on so much power. There are little human touches all the way through, e.g., as communism strengthens its grip, various party members are arrested at home - and go to be interrogated willingly, certain their sincere belief in party ideals will mean they'll be home in an hour, only to be tortured in prison for years ... it lingers in the mind as a deeply human tragedy, without bathos or any sense of the meretricious. Or how communism was able to portray itself as the opposite of Nazism - everyone would be equal! - only to engage in the same barbarities, and even use the same facilities. Or how, at least under the Nazis, you could tell who the enemies were by their red armbands - but not under communism. Anyone might be an informant, even a family member. It demoralized and destroyed the culture in a way that Nazism failed to.

    If I finish this, I'll try to write more about it. It's moving and eye-opening, to say the least.


    So I read somewhere that "Samson Agonistes" was an important theodicy text so I thought I should probably read it. In this, would it be permissible to say about one of the greatest English poets ever that I wasn't quite satisfied? That the poem doesn't seem to me to explore questions of theodicy as much as assert them? Samson's final victory against the Philistines is taken as proof that God's ways are best in the end, whatever Samson suffers.

    But the way in which this victory is portrayed made it less satisfying to me. Samson and his father are both far better theologians than the book of Judges allows; they both say the only reason they allowed the marriage to a Philistine is because both are fully aware God will use it to liberate Israel from their enemy (Samson's lust and lack of self-control don't seem to be factors!); Samson is certain God will not allow the dominance of Dagon to last for long; when he's led to the Philistine feast of Dagon, he's certain God will do something big through him. In other words, Samson is certain of God all the way through the poem - he doesn't change at all, he's only liberated from his humiliation. Which, to me, made the poem less interesting; if Samson had started by doubting God and changed his mind by the end, the poem could have explored the justice of God's ways more effectively.

    One thing the poem does superbly is lead us into Samson's agony. Early on, he says:

    O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
    Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
    Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
    Light, the prime work of God to me is extinct,
    And all the various objects of delight
    Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased,
    Inferior to the vilest now become
    Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
    They creep, yet see; I dark in light exposed
    To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
    Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
    In power of others, never in my own;
    Scare half I seem to lie, dead more than half.
    O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
    Irrevocably dark, total eclipse
    Without all hope of day! (ll. 67-83)

    Or again:

    Thoughts my tormentors armed with deadly stings
    Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,
    Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise
    Dire inflammation which no cooling herb
    Or med'cinal liquor can assuage ...
    Sleep hath forsook and giv'n me o'er
    To death's benumbing opium as my only cure.
    Thence faintings, swoonings of despair,
    And sense of heav'ns desertion. (ll. 623-32)

    Ouch! 

    (Oh, and one juncture in which Milton says that women are basically inferior - it's really odious. Deliliah comes to apologize, to offer to take care of him, or at least to touch his hand; Samson says he forgives her, but doesn't trust her an inch - she'll just betray him again. She leaves, saying she'll compensate herself by being a Philistine; the Chorus tells Samson he kind of dodged a bullet there [that within Delilah's offer was a scorpion sting], and Samson says women are beautiful externally but lacking on the inside, so men should engage in "despotic rule" over women, and not let up for one hour. Yeah. Even though it's just an aside in the poem, it's pretty terrible. They both assume Delilah is still lying, even though the words Milton gives her could be taken as totally sincere.)

    I'll get on to Paradise Regained tomorrow, but this was officially supposed to be reading until the end of the calendar year, so I'll leave this for another post.

    God bless and thanks for reading.

    And if you're still reading, the reason I'm keeping a kind of public reading journal is (1) so I have a record of what I've read which I can easily access (I find myself thinking, "Where did that quote come from? What was the main idea there?") (2) to raise the bar in terms of Christians reading widely and (one hopes) wisely and (3) honestly compels me - I'm showing off a bit. Always, always, I have mixed motives. This is mixed with a sense of shame over how little I read. But oh well. Here it is, for whatever it's worth.
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  4. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry;
    hold not your peace at my tears.
    For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.
    Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more. (Ps 39:12-13)

    Would you ever tell someone to pray this way? If there's one book that Christians can directly pray, it's surely the Psalms. But is it ever appropriate to ask God to turn his attention away from you? Especially when the psalms so often beg for God not to hide his face from them (e.g., Ps 13:1)? And the blessing of God is directly tied to the light of his face (Num 6:24-26)? Isn't this like asking God to undo his blessing and presence and attention on those who trust him?

    I think the answer is: sometimes. That is, God wants us to have the experience of Ps 39 sometimes, but not all the time. He didn't make us able to stay in those truths permanently.

    Very briefly on the psalm itself: it's difficult to understand because we have to fill in some of the pieces, but Peter Craigie (in the WBC series) helpfully says that everything "clicks" if you assume in the first half that David is struggling with the prosperity of the wicked. People around David defy God and have awesome lives. David resolves not to say anything about this or complain--he's going to muzzle his tongue in the presence of the wicked--because doing so would sin against a just God or discourage other saints (vv. 1-2). But the problem won't go away (v. 3); David cannot simply ignore this, cannot say it's just a mystery or defer it to the eschaton.

    David gets an answer: he turns to the shortness of human life (vv. 4-6). It's not uncommon for the psalmists to do this; Asaph turns to God's soon-approaching judgment of the happy wicked in Ps 73. But the main thing in Ps 39 is, the solution to one problem raises a bigger problem, which David is unable to resolve within the bounds of the psalm. You'll notice vv. 4-6 have nothing specifically to do with the wicked--I'm reading in a bit, filling in the pieces, as is necessary with this poem. David rather focuses on how brief, how insubstantial his own life is in relation to God's eternity. The wicked quickly fall away--they're not the problem any more. But in applying this solution, David naturally is under the same conditions, even if he's not of the same moral quality. His life is fleeting (v. 4), as nothing, a breath (v. 5), a shadow (v. 6); and David says all this not merely in himself, but always and only in relation to God ("you have made ... before you ..." v. 5). Notice as well that David doesn't just say, "All human beings go to the grave and judgment soon enough, so it's fine." He asks God himself, who has made David this way, to make him to know the shortness of his own life (v. 4)--as if David cannot quite take it in himself. He cannot make the knowledge of his own smallness real to himself without God's help. And although it's not quite explicit, I wonder if it's the contrast with God's unchanging eternality which made David feel so small, so insubstantial.

    So much for the wicked: they're no more insubstantial than David. But the resolution to one problem leads to another, which David cannot resolve. He seems wracked, overwhelmed, unable to make peace with his new perspective of ephemerality before God. He cannot bear it, and the psalm ends unresolved, with David asking God to turn away, so that he can return to normalicy; so that the knowledge of his own utter insubstantiality won't press on him with such totality.

    (It's already significant to me that our prayers don't have to end nicely and satisfyingly to be pleasing to God. That seems significant.)

    I suppose we've all have the experience of walking by a graveyard or seeing a funeral or a hearse and thinking, "Sooner or later, that'll be me." It's healthy and helpful to look in the mirror at least one and touch your arms and chest and tell yourself, "It's a matter of time until this body will be a corpse, and then a skeleton." Dust to dust and all that.

    Or, have your existential crisis by looking up into the night sky and thinking, "Millions and millions of light years, billions of stars and galaxies, and I am a speck of dust on a speck of dust orbiting a relatively small star, and the entire planet could blip out of existence and the universe would grind on, regardless."

    But we can't stay there. There's something about human beings, such that it's as bad never to have these thoughts as it is to have them all the time. It's appropriate to pray Ps 39:4--we need God's help to really recognize, to know in a more than theoretical sense, how soon we'll be gone. But we can't stay in that perspective forever or we go crazy.

    Ecclesiastes helps here, and you were probably wondering how long it would take to get a book with such similar preoccuptions into the discussion. In 5:20, Qohelet says man will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with interesting work. But then in 12:1, we're commanded to remember the person who made us before death comes--and vv. 1-7 do their darndest to make death, our death, vividly real. So which is it? Remember or not remember? I think Qohelet means us to oscillate between the two: happy absorption in ordinary life as a gift under God's hand, mixed with times of remembering where all this is going (right into the grave).

    This is the whole paradox of being human: we're very images of God, able to do things no other species can (remember Eccl 2), but also dust (see also this review of Ernst Becker). At different times, we inhabit one side of the spectrum.

    All this is to say that in Ps 39, David oscillates toward the "remembering" side of the spectrum very intensely, so much so he can't stay there. I understand the final prayer to be a request to move back to the Eccl 5:20 side of things--to just go back to being an ordinary human. David's sense of himself is so God-soaked--he simply does not know how to articulate himself to himself without invoking his Creator--that this involves asking God to look away, to turn down the dial on the self-knowledge God's presence is giving him. I don't think David is asking for less of God's presence and blessing; but it is a very human, normal, not-sinful reaction, to stare into the abyss, and then to ask to forget about it for a while. I think God is fine to answer both kinds of prayers.
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  5. Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”

    What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”

    -From Luther's "The Estate of Marriage" (1522); see original here. Thanks to Charles Reid for the quote.
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  6. When Joy Comes
    The wind that blows
    and stings and moans;
    the cold that settles in your clothes
    and follows you inside
    and settles into cloth and bone:
    when pain comes, it makes a home.

    The clouds that stand
    horizon-full and flat
    and do not move, but stand and hang
    and block the sun.
    Remembering that sun, smiling like an older brother,
    hanging just above your shoulder,
    Lively in his warmth.
    You try and hold it in your mind.
    When grief comes, it dulls the eye.

    The morning raw
    in frost and cold.
    Nothing stirs. No-one yet awake, except for you.
    Nothing much to do
    except to stare into long hours that come and will not leave.
    When loss comes, it lasts an age.

    But when joy comes
    when joy comes -
    The sun which whips the wind to sing
    with racing clouds;
    Fresh morning growing green up from the ground.
    A fluttering thing which settles on your palm
    and speaks of your horizon, and beyond.
    The heart grows world-size when joy comes.


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  7. My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contendedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.

    And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.

    But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulations is only too clear. God has had me but for forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over - I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.
    -C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
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  8. When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some 'disinterested,' because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor that care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes. It is certainly a burden not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments, beyond our desiring.
    -C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
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  9. My title is deliberately provocative: of course evangelism is possible, both because it happens every day, and also because God graciously underwrites his people's halting, faulty attempts to speak about him. But what I have in mind is: when the average Brit has zero categories for understanding the basic ideas in the gospel, how successful can we expect to be?

    I think it's unwise to underestimate this problem. It was once said that 50 years ago, if you were an atheist, you were a "Christian" atheist, i.e., the God you didn't believe in was the Christian God. But of course all that has changed: even the word "God" has become so variously defined that we can't at all assume the person you're talking to is thinking the same thing you mean when you say, "God loves you." Every word in that sentence is up for debate: is the "you" your friend has in mind the same thing that you mean by "you"? Do you have the same view of the self? And whenever someone asks, "If God is loving, why would he get so angry at sin?" already has a certain definition of "love" is operative which is very far away from the biblical one is (and which is also unrealistic: as Tim Keller says, the opposite of love is not anger, but silence and contempt; the presence of anger does not indicate a lack of love - often the opposite).

    In fact, most of the major categories the Bible uses to communicate have no purchase, no reality in our culture: the temple, impurity vs. sanctity, blood sacrifice, atonement, the divine/the gods, sonship, judgment, and so on. But the strange thing this is that most cultures around the world would have had *some* idea of what these words mean. Even if idolatry had twisted or distorted things, they would have had some sense of the divine, that some kind of propitiation needs to be made that is costly and bloody, that forgiveness is necessary and desirable. Maybe they invent ludicrous stories about their gods sleep with/raping mortal women (as the Greeks did); maybe they invent hundreds of spells for warding off evil spirits and predicting the future in ridiculous ways (as the Mesopotamians did, e.g., if a black dog pees on someone's leg, the kind will have a son [I'm not making that up]); maybe they leave little food offerings in the forest for the wood-spirits (I don't know who did this, but I'm sure it happened somewhere). But there is some kind of recognition that there's a bigger reality out there that I need to align with - that I'm not adequate before, that's holy, and it needs gifts/sacrifices.

    Which is fertile ground for the gospel - to talk about real Holiness providing the sacrifice for you. In fact, the ways ancient Egyptians talk about the divine son and judgment in the afterlife, it's like they're practically begging to be told about Messiah. But this is not true of us. We somehow find ourselves in a culture in which there is no greater reality beyond the self: I owe my allegiance to nothing beyond self-actualization. The only duty we feel is to ourselves.

    Leaving aside the question of how long a culture can endure which has no greater story to tell about itself, no greater cause to sacrifice for and give yourself to (and leaving aside questions of whether this implicit view of the self as "individual" is even realistic, and to what extent our culture's obsession with self-actualization actually leaves us vulnerable to ugly ideologies that do meet that inherent need for sacrifice to a larger cause), I ask again: for people who haven't had the pre-education of paganism in the things of the spirit, how will the gospel make any sense at all? Is evangelizing such a people group even possible? How can we talk about the sacrifice which the Son made to cleanse our sins and restore us to God when practically all the nouns and verbs in that sentence have no purchase for your average secular Westerner? How can they gain a sense of what's at stake? Or, put differently: if God gives us another Billy Graham, could they have the same level of success in a culture that has shifted so drastically?

    (Not that I think personal autonomy is bad, mind you: I don't want to tell others how to live, and I want to have space to live my life as I see best. It's just when it's worshipped as inherently redemptive that we get problems.)

    I suppose we could negotiate this question in different ways, e.g., modern Westerners are still in the image of God, so there's still some foothold to talk about the biblical story there; or: our culture is closer to traditional/pagan/hierarchical cultures than we think (i.e., we're not successful in our individualism because it's impossible, we claim to be an individual-guilt culture but still practice communal shaming, etc.). (Maybe I should title this post, Is Enlightenment Even Possible?) But I think there are two answers to my question.

    And by the way, this is not a theoretical question for me. If you don't care about the people around you hearing the gospel in a deep way, about them at least understanding what's at stake in the gospel and then making up their own minds, then holy cow, do you even care? I can't rest easy in my grave if I'm not bringing people to heaven with me. So how to evangelize sub-pagans is very important to me.

    Anyway: two answers.

    (1) God is able immediately and gloriously to open the hearer's heart and mind to the gospel even if they don't have the categories for it. The weirdness and ugliness and shallowness of modern Western culture doesn't in any way stop him; so we should keep begging him for the Spirit's power and speak boldly.

    (2) God tends to work through means, and human culture and the plausibility structures it creates is one of those means. A major way God's people accomplish their mission is through founding universities with different departments (and all of Britian's ancientest colleges were founded by the church), and supporting Handel as he writes music that is beautiful and glorifies God, and art, and architecture, and social reform, etc. So the church should be doing everything it possibly can in culture-making in such a way that embodies the gospel, helps it connect, tells an alternate story about reality and the human self, renders a sacred view of reality possible, in such a way that helps clear the ground for the gospel story to gain traction and connect - whether people decide to believe it or not. (I'm trying to emphasize that people's response is entirely out of our power, and should be. Nothing is more powerful in evangelism than Spirit-filled boldness; nothing uglier than pressure, badgering, manipulation.)

    Which means: we should be both persistent and bold in talking about the gospel whether we're understood or not. And also, we should be wise to our role as culture-makers in God's image, and not assume God might automatically bless an implicit denial of this, a lazy attempt to bypass it and get "easy" conversions that fail to meet with and engage the Westerner at every level, intellectual, moral, emotional, imaginative, physical (in the sense of being embodied). And our churches should be leveraging resources to support this.

    Response: I'm not totally dissatisfied with this answer but not happy with it either; it feels like it relies on Christians "taking over" culture and becoming the dominant cultural force. Which seems very unlikely in the West right now, and is it even desirable? Wouldn't that create equal opportunities for the gospel to be squelched - if we created a "Christian" culture? So perhaps a wiser answer is for smaller, context-specific, local counter-cultures to be created where the gospel can be embodied? Prolly that's a better answer.

    But I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts: how can a large-scale revival happen again? To what extent does that necessitate doing pre-evangelism? Help me out here.
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  10. (Sorry for the font change halfway through - I wrote this in Word and something got fouled up in the transfer and I can't figure it out. Sorry.)

    (Also, this is non-academic reading for the summer. I did so much [mostly boring] reading on Job last summer that I didn't want to read too much on the OT this summer, except for an excellent book on shame in the OT by Dan Wu.)

    A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking.  I wish I understood physics better. I really do. The snippets I get sound absolutely amazing. I guess this book helped a little, but (due to the total denseness and narrowness of intellect on the part of the present author) not as much as I hoped. I get that time is relative, not absolute: the faster you move through space, the slower time moves (this is apparently called time dilation, and Einstein figured it out taking a train home from work one day). So the speed of time is different for different people. I’m still not sure why physicists refer to space-time, however, as if it is one thing, not two. I only made it about 2/3 of the way through the book and understood even less.

    One thing that sticks with me: the two major physics theories of the last century, relativity and quantum mechanics, contradict each other. This is because the former stipulates that nothing can travel faster than light, but in the latter, information between particles seems to do just that: if two particles become entangled and then separated by however far a distance as you like, when you determine the spin of one, the spin of the other will instantaneously be opposite – even if they’re million of miles apart, with the particles “communicating” seemingly faster than the speed of light. So at the heart of modern physics is a well-established contradiction.

    I should probably say something about the double-slit experiment as well in which electrons seems to behave both as waves and particles … and behave differently according to whether you’re watching them … and photons also seem to be in two places at once. But I’ll leave well enough alone by saying that Hawking is a gifted communicator and has a light touch. He shows none of that hatred of theology which some “new atheists” think science requires. I’ve always wished that more atheists read atheist philosophers (like Lucretius and Nietzsche); this book made me wish they read more physics, as well. The discoveries of the last century have been so bizarre: who could have ever imagined physical reality is so strange! And surely future discoveries will reveal even weirder secrets? But if that is the case, surely the present state of scientific knowledge can’t be used dogmatically against theology? I was talking to a student with a background in engineering who said popular exponents of science don’t communicate how tentative all this is. He said a more sober presentation of all this would be something like, “The math tends to work out best when we assume such and such.” Humility, humility.

    The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth, Mike Cosper. The subtitle says it all: broken images ever return to the biblical story, even if only in broken ways. Cosper ranges over familiar biblical themes like paradise and the fall, sin and possible atonement, love and romance and its fulfilment, and superheroes/Christ figures; he’s always insightful without going too far or becoming unconvincing. The sections on sin/the fall in “Mad Men” and Ecclesiastes and frustration in “The Wire” are especially good (oh, and it has a section on why the ending of Lost sucked, and if that doesn’t convince you to read, nothing will). Cosper is doctrinally informed and always charitable in his readings without every compromising. His pastoral heart is evident. This is a superb book and I hope it’s read widely, and many more are written like it, especially because of the final few pages which urge Christian filmmakers to make movies that are not just true but *good movies,* and good not just by trumpeting the expected messages, but by reflecting God’s truth, even if in only subtle ways.

    Plugged In: Connecting your Faith with what you Watch, Read, and Play, Dan Strange. This book is in the same genre as Cosper’s but better, both in its intentional theological depth as a background/framework for cultural analysis and the breadth of the analysis (not just tv and movies, but all kinds of cultural artefacts, like birdwatching or zombie walks, are included). There’s a deceptive amount of theological heavy lifting in this book—deceptive in that it reads extremely easily; only as I reflected on the book did it occur to me how much work has gone into the background. Another good quality is that the book makes cultural analysis and evangelism very practical by giving a four-step process based on Acts 17: enter (listening to the story being told), explore (look for genuine reflections of God’s grace and distortions of it in idolatry), expose (try to expose the hollow promises of idolatry), evangelize (talk about the good news of a God who can really deliver what the idol only promises).

    “Subversive fulfilment” is the big idea here, a strategy meant to keep us from simply compromising with the culture on the one hand or only condemning everything as bad on the other: the gospel perfectly fulfils the desires our culture expresses for meaning, identity, significant work, fulfilment as created beings—but always subversively, by exposing and undermining the idols which broken images constantly set up for themselves. But there’s so much else to enjoy as well: Christians must engage with culture because we are a part of culture whether we like it or not; culture includes all significant “storied” activity humanity does as God’s image as we “mirror our speaking and making God” and shape the world around us; while sinners in God’s image create idolatrous, truth-suppressing culture, sinners graced in Jesus get our old job back as culture-makers; both kinds of culture making are possible only against the background of God’s meaningful activity in creation—i.e., humans only create culture parasitically echoing God’s creative activity, non-Christians in ways that suppress and distort (but still witness to the truth), Christians in ways that glorify the real Creator; human culture is thus always fragile, partial, incomplete, unable to answer our deep longing within—thus the possibility (and necessity) of evangelism. This book was fun to read and felt good on my brain. Tolle et lege.

    Ultimate Grace, a true story of Frisbee and faith in Japan, Levi booth. Levi describes his conversion, his calling to work in Japan, and how and why he settled on ultimate frisbee as a way to engage with his Japanese friends. The book can be read in one sitting and is simple, direct, and surprisingly moving; I liked “hearing” Levi’s straightforward, gentle voice throughout. I only wish I learned more about Japan in the process.






    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. The first delight of this book is the flawless imitation of Victorian prose style—from the spelling, to a slightly over-explanatory style, to the very gentle exaggeration and understatement in depiction of character, one feels one is walking in Victorian England, and it’s lovely. At only a very few points, one feels the narrator is saying something of more interest to a 21st century writer than a 19th, thus disrupting the illusion; but this happens only rarely and faintly. The other delight is the magic itself—the descriptions of spells, magical persons, and the places they live perfectly evokes a world simultaneously beautiful, gossamer-thin, fascinating, and dangerous. At a thousand pages, the book hardly ever lags; and even with a style that could hardly be called brief, one doesn’t feel fatigued by the reading. The only disappointment (for me) was the lack of sustained conflict between the two magicians: I was hoping for magical battles of subtle intelligence and drama, but Strange and Norrell spend most of their time annoying each other. The ending made up for this somewhat, however, and I found myself suitable intrigued by the book’s greatest magician, who appears only once, but makes his presence everywhere felt.

    The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, Michael Heisner.
    The subtitle explains it: Heisner is worried modern Christians have unconsciously bought into a rationalistic framework in which we screen out a lot of the supernatural framework of the Bible, especially with regard to the divine council where the King meets out decisions with his heavenly ministers. Forty-two short chapters range over the whole of the OT, with constant reference to its ancient Middle Eastern context, exploring how the world that the Bible portrays is very different from how modern people think. You get all the familiar topics (divine servants and plurality in the godhead, the holy mountain, etc.). The book is really helpful and I hope it's read widely, because I think Heisner's right that there is a whole "unseen realm" Christians in my context can just miss.(Heisner's own journey was started by being unable to ignore the "gods" of Ps 82 - an important text!) But I wasn't completely happy with the way Heisner framed his exploration: he sets the unseen world of the Bible in tension with the accumulated layers of creeds and church history, such that we need to get underneath them to recover how the ancient Semites who wrote the OT really thought. But a lot of the creeds and a good deal of church history would have been written in roughly the same conceptual worldview as the Bible--definitely not in a modern, rationalistic framework. Perhaps Heisner's discoveries could have been framed as supplementing, rather than overturning, modern Western readings of Scripture? It was also weird that he relied so heavily on a libertarian version of free will in his discussions after complaining about later dogmatic impositions which screen things out of the text--since "free will" is itself a Greek concept, not a Semitic one. But this is still a very nice exploration

    The Gospel Comes with a Housekey, Rosaria Butterfield. This book is two halves. The first is a completely helpful, biblical, and appropriate exploration of hospitality and what it means theologically as practiced by Christians. The other half is a series of narratives about how Mrs. Butterfield and her husband actually practice hospitality in their neighbourhood and as part of their church. You learn about Hank, the quiet wounded man Rosaria finally made friends with as they walked their dogs together, and how he was arrested for running a meth lab right down the street from them, and how the neighbours reacted in shock and fury, and what Rosaria and her husband Kent did next. You read about Rosaria trying to minister to her impossible, nightmarish mother when she lives with them at the end of her life. You read about the family Rosaria grew up in, the violence surrounding her father, the alcoholism; about her memories of spending time in a gay bar founded by a stepbrother when she was a child and what she saw there. I struggle to find strong enough words to describe this second half; “hypnotic” and “prophetic” come to mind, but I worry how even that won’t communicate how absolutely glued to my seat I was as I read. I expect you will be too. The only hesitation I have is that there’s only a hint that some Christians might need to moderate their hospitality from the absolutely breakneck pace at which the author and her husband have people into their home. I don’t think I could do what Rosaria does, but even though there’s a nod toward different personalities and energy levels, the impression the book gives is not only that every Christian needs to show hospitality (uncontroversial), but that we need to be doing it at the level and intensity that the Butterfields do. It’s discouraging and intimidating. But I’d guess if the Butterfields were here, they’d give us a completely wise and gracious answer.

    Shutting out the Sun: How Japan Created its own Lost Generation, Michael Zielenziger. So, short story here is: Japan responded to losing WWII by turning itself into an economic powerhouse in a way that’s genuinely amazing, which few countries could imitate; the book goes into more detail than I can remember about how the authoritarian climate and incredible work ethic of the Japanese managed a top-down capitalism which gave the country economic success in return for a loss of empire. It also goes into more detail than I found interesting why the economy has failed (and continued to struggle) after a highpoint in the 1980’s. Zielenziger’s pessimism about any quick recovery (seconded by some prominent Japanese experts whom he interviews) reveals some fascinating aspects of Japanese thinking and culture: Japanese modernized so quickly in the Meiji era, but only on the surface, without experiencing its own Enlightenment, such that the worldview changes which could sustain a modern global economy never took root there. While initiative at an individual level, risk-taking, and flexibility have helped some companies (and countries) keep up with a global economy, all these traits are severely discouraged and even socially punished in Japan. Which means the country is likely to keep struggling. Another aspect of all this is what I might call an “anti-essentialist” aspect of the Japanese mind: inner causes or reasons are not attended to as long as something works (Z. reports how when America lost a space shuttle in [I think] 2004, Japanese were impressed with the US government’s thorough search for the root causes behind the disaster; if it had happened in Japan, the government would have issued a general apology and just moved on). Taken together with a strongly authoritarian bent, a tendency to keep doing what you’ve always done, and immense social pressure to fit in, this mindset makes it easy for the country to keep lumbering on without pulling back, taking stock, and asking what could be done differently. Shikata ga nai, “it can’t be helped,” “that’s just the way it goes.”

    The most revealing aspect of this book was the analysis of hikikimori (which I have misspelled in this blog before, missing a ki) as a kind of rational social protest against Japanese culture which doesn’t quite recognize itself as protest. That is, there’s huge emphasis on contributing to the group in Japan (and terrible social pressure to do so); Z. is not the first author I’ve read to trace this back to Japan’s agrarian days when rice was *the* way the country survived economically—and everyone had to contribute to planting and harvest, and in basically identical ways. In other words, the Japanese self is perceived as flexible to the needs of the situation and whatever tribe/company you’re in. But some people refuse to sacrifice their individuality to work in the tribe: the hermits Z. interviews use violent language for how the individual self has to be “killed” or “murdered” if you want to get along in Japan and have a successful career. (Did you know that introductions in Japan put your employer first, i.e., I would introduce myself as, “I am Oak Hill College’s Eric Ortlund?” That says a lot.) More and more Japanese men (and some women) are just saying no to all this, and even asking why—why bother working so hard and being successful? What’s it all for? But the “why” question doesn’t have an answer in Japan. The tragedy is that, in a country that doesn’t value social protest or breaking the mould, people like this tend to get banished to their bedrooms. Friends won’t even ask the parents of a hermit how they’re doing for fear of causing shame. Hikikimori tend to be entirely intelligent, perceptive people—and interestingly, this is a phenomenon which apparently only happens in Japan. But the country apparently doesn’t have a category for these people who could probably contribute a lot.

    I learned a great deal about Japanese culture from this book. Did you know that when American and Japanese students were asked to take photos of their best friends, the former consistently took close-ups (the individual filling the entire frame) and the latter consistently stood further back, showing the individual in a larger context? Or that, when shown an aquarium with a lot of fish, Americans could more easily remember individual fish, while Japanese better remembered the background against which the fish swam? (Individual vs. larger context.)

    Z. is very pessimistic about Japan’s future. I think there are enough beautiful aspects to the country … maybe there are ways for it to remain Japanese and still survive? But whether the country will adapt (or for the need to adapt to even register) is a different question. The book was like discovering some very unattractive aspects of a girl you’ve had a crush on and are rather getting to like: I found myself simultaneously saddened on behalf of bullied Japanese people and also still wanting to find reasons to love the country. Perhaps God has some great mercy waiting for Japan in all of this.

    Gilead, Marilynne Robinson. Pastor John Ames, who has just received news he doesn’t have long to live writes a long, rambling, reflective letter in 1950’s Iowa to his son. He talks about aspects of pastoral ministry that don’t get a lot of attention. He talks about going with his father to find his grandfather, gone to Kansas on a preaching crusade; it takes weeks and they come home famished and exhausted after setting up a little grave for him, and being unable to persuade the single woman running a farm nearest where their grandfather died who fed them multiple times and was clearly starved for human contact to come home with them. His grandfather looms large in the book as a formidable and holy (and overbearing) presence. Conflict ensues when the prodigal son of a best friend returns to town and makes friends with Ames’ wife and son. Will he corrupt his family after Ames dies?  

    This book is really something. The narrator (and the author, of course) attend to the world very deeply. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind: attention. Literature states in concrete detail what philosophy gives as grand abstractions; the latter generalizes, while the former crystallizes big truths in everyday interactions or objects, and that’s what Ames does, page after page. I get the sense Ames feels remarkably glad to have been alive and a pastor; there’s a happiness and wonder sparkling in his words.

    When I first started reading, I felt like the story was “all surface;” deeper motives or dimensions of meaning are suggested but not expressed as Ames reflects on his life for the benefit of his young son whom he loves but will not be able to see grow up. I found myself wanting to psycho-analyze why Ames does/says certain things, e.g., a quote from Feuerbach about the suitability of water in religious rituals precedes the narration of Feuerbach’s role in his older brother’s conversion to atheism (naturally a trauma to this deeply religious family). Why is Ames quoting Feuerbach, then? As revenge on his brother? As a way of showing you can read great atheists without losing your faith? As a way of expressing covert sympathy with his brother without totally agreeing with him? I don’t know, and I think trying to figure that out is the wrong way to read the novel. Just let Ames open a window on attending to his pastoral duties in an America long gone. I found myself growing ever more attentive as the story deepened.

    I also started From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity, by Kyle Harper, but my motivation and my brain power was pretty much gone. It’s a very interesting book about how public sexual morality changed drastically in Rome from the second to fourth centuries AD because of Christianity – and changed for the better for women and slaves (forced prostitution was made illegal; Roman rape culture was broken; slaves had legal recourse when forced into sex by masters). I should read it but I’m going to get back to stuff I enjoy.

    More later. Hope your summer is going well. Thanks for stopping by.
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About Me
About Me
I'm a happily married father of two and a professor of Old Testament at Briercrest Seminary in Saskatchewan, Canada. I am a Christian - with regard to grace, Augustinian; with regard to faith and the manner of one's union with Christ, Kierkegaardian; with regard to ecclesiology, very interested in Anglicanism; with regard to biblical interpretation, typological; "postmodern" in philosophical accent.
My two wonderful children
My two wonderful children
My two wonderful children
My dear family
My dear family
My dear family
Influences . . .
Influences . . .
  • Augustine; Calvin; John Owen; Jonathan Edwards; Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heiddegger; surrealism; myth theory; and of course the Bible, especially the Psalms, Isaiah, and Hebrews
Interests . . .
Interests . . .
  • Hiking in the mountains, martial arts, creative writing (slipstream/contemporary fantasy), video games, all things Semitic, tickling my kids, watching the Saskatchewan sky, and anything that sparks that heightened sense of heavenly reality (think how you felt the first time you read your first Narnia book) - anything that produces that
Favorite reading
Favorite reading
  • George MacDonald, Tolkein, and Lewis (Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces); Gene Wolfe; G. M. Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot; Dostoyevski, Flannery O'Connor
Favorite Listening
Favorite Listening
  • J. S. Bach; Mahler (Symphonies 1-6, 9-10); Vaugh Williams; Bruce Cockburn, Sam Phillips, Trent Reznor, Bob Dylan, and especially John Darnielle
Good links
Good links
Blog Archive
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