A Bewildering History of England

I should like G. K. Chesterton.  C. S. Lewis liked him.  He graces Wheaton College's wonderful Wade Center along with Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and James MacDonald.  But despite his reputation as a brilliant writer and a great public intellectual (neither one of which I am actually challenging) I just don't think I care for his writing.

Or at least his writing in A Short History of England, the first book I read on my new Kindle Touch (thanks mom and dad!).  He does say some very good things.  For example:

We must put ourselves in the posture of men who thought that almost every good thing came from outside--like good news. . . . I do not, in my private capacity, believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking his soul, and denying its dependence on God or other good things.  I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. (38)

In modern romances this is treated as a mere hypocrisy; but the man who treats every human inconsistency as a hypocrisy is himself a hypocrite about his own inconsistencies. (85)

Christianity is not a creed for good men, but for men. (85)

A dogma of equal duties implies that of equal rights. (121)

But as far as actually teaching me something about English history (a subject of some personal interest) it's not so helpful.  It's more of an idiosyncratic analysis of English history, a moral lesson of some sort.  But what annoys me the most is how nearly every sentence contains some paradox, some double meaning, some clever reference to something too obscure for me to know what in the name of Her Majesty Elizabeth II he's talking about.  This sentence is fairly typical:

And he remains the incarnation of a spirit in the English that is purely poetic; so poetic that it fancies itself a thousand things, and sometimes even fancies itself prosaic. (121)

The meaning of this sentence is beyond me, as was much of the book.  I may return to Chesterton in the future, but (if I can summon my inner Chesterton) we make of the future in the present only what we make of the present in the future.

I don't know what that sentence means either.

A test of endurance

Finally, after two years of sporadic reading, I have finished Augustine's The City of God.  I'm actually more satisfied at having completed the book than I am with any benefit from reading it.  Maybe that's why I shouldn't have kept reading it, as Alan Jacobs would say.

Still, it's a remarkable book, even if much of it isn't accessible as, say, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Augustine states his theme right away:

The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, suggested, and which is due to you by my promise.  I have undertaken its defense against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city -- a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits for, expecting until 'righteousness shall return unto judgment,' and it obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace.

There isn't much he doesn't cover.  One of the tricky things about Augustine is that there's so much good (the Protestant Reformers appealed to him again and again in their polemics against the Roman Catholics), yet there's still plenty that we can't quite go along with.  His theology of the sacraments comes to mind in this latter regard.

But if it wasn't for him people like Luther and Calvin would have had so much more work to do to reclaim the gospel.  We all stand on the shoulder of giants to see more clearly than they did.  Augustine was one such giant, maybe the most gigantic of all.

Young Adults in Post-Apocalyptic America

Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy has hit on something.  People really like reading about teenagers sticking it to the man in a future America that is no longer America.  In a Barnes and Noble the other day a whole booth was dedicated to the Hunger Games.  With the first movie coming out in a few months who can blame them?  One of the items was a journal with "Down with the Capitol!" on the front.  I have to say it was kind of cool, if journals can be cool.

Now it seems Collins has spawned a veritable sub-genre of science fiction dystopian young adult fiction.  I've never coined a term before, so I coin it SFDYAF (pronounced "Sphid-yaf").  I'm almost positive it will catch on.

Anyway, more books are popping up in the SFDYAF category.  As I write my wife is reading Marie Lu's Legend.  I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I did recently finish Veronica Roth's Divergent.  I can't say that I enjoyed it as much as The Hunger Games, nor was it as crisply and economically written.  But I still enjoyed it.

Here's the premise:  It's Chicago, sometime in the future.  There is no United States, and the city (which is largely abandoned and falling apart) is surrounded by a fence, though it is unclear what the fence is actually for.  But this is but one detail that I'm sure will be resolved further in the trilogy.  Yes, it appears that SFDYAF books come in threes.  The city is divided into five factions, each of which are united around a specific virtue they believe is necessary for peace.  These five factions are Amity, Erudite, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless.

When Beatrice, our heroine, comes of age and must choose her faction for life she leaves Abnegation, her family's faction, for Dauntless.  But before I give too much away of the plot, I merely note two central points.  First, Beatrice doesn't exactly fit into any faction, which she finds is quite a sticky place to find oneself.  Second, things aren't as peaceful between the factions as they seem.

I hope Chicago doesn't turn into the city of Divergent (though the zip line from the top of the Hancock Tower would be cool), but I am looking forward to the next book in the series.  Unless, that is, SFDYAF prophecies turn true and I have to fight off monsters and totalitarian governments in the mean time.

Top Ten of 2011

Here are my favorite books of 2011.  Two qualifications:  (1) I've not included perennial favorites that I've already read; (2) these are listed in the order that I read them rather than the order that I enjoyed them.

1.  Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy.  Technically three books, but whatever.  Dark, violent, compelling, and relentlessly intense.

2.  D. A. Carson, The God Who is There:  Finding Your Place in God's Story.  Great overview of the Bible's central story line with a view to a biblically illiterate audience.

3.  Richard Russo, Straight Man.  Very funny.  Not my favorite Russo but still enjoyable.

4.  P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Tie That Binds.  Brilliant and hilarious.  The first Wodehouse I've read.  I'll read more.

5.  Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed:  At Peleliu and Okinawa.  A first-hand account of the American assault on two Japanese-held islands.  While war may be necessary at times, there is no glory in it.

6.  Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring:  Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant.  A collection of essays from a great essayist.

7.  Mike McKinley, Church Planting is for Wimps:  How God Uses Messed-Up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things.  Very encouraging book on church planting and church revitalization.

8.  David Dickson, The Elder and His Work.  A 19th century book on the elder's pastoral work.  It's brevity is a plus.

9.  Michael Korda, Hero:  The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.  Great biography of a fascinating man.

10.  Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  Jacob's second mention on this list.  A book for people who love books.

Honorable mention:  Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Two-thirds through at the moment.  Otherwise probably would have made it on the list.

Reading Update

I've let too many full book reviews pass by, and it's too late to catch up.  You'll have to make do with these short summaries.

Michael Korda, Hero:  The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.  T. E. Lawrence was the type of renaissance man that I find fascinating.  He was brilliant at everything he put his hand to:  historical research on medieval fortifications, archaeology, writing, diplomacy, and (I know I'm forgetting something . . . Oh, yeah) uniting the Arab tribes and leading them in military revolt against the Turks in World War I.  Korda's well-written biography shows how so much of his life--his discovery that he was illegitimate, his distant relationship with his mother, his perpetual collection of father figures, his almost fanatical asceticism, and his desire to do something great in the world--prepared him to become a hero.  And by "hero" Korda means in the classical sense rather than in the modern, sentimental sense.  I especially enjoyed Korda's take on Lawrence's immensely complicated personality as well as three events in Lawrence's warfare experience that would have surely made many men lose their minds:  personally executing one of his men (to forestall an inner-tribal vendetta), his rape and torture as a prisoner of war by his Turkish captives, and witnessing the immediate aftermath of a hideous massacre of an Arab village by fleeing Turkish troops.  Korda has made produced a literary work worthy of its subject.  If you enjoy biographies you'll enjoy this one.

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday:  A Nightmare.  A very strange book about an undercover cop infiltrating an anarchist group who discovers that all the members of the anarchist group are all undercover cops.  I enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I got it.

Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  Jacobs is one of my favorite authors, and once again he did not disappoint.  His latest book is all about embracing reading for fun rather than reading for duty or personal betterment (contra the likes of How to Read a Book and other advocates of "must read" books or "great book" lists).  Jacobs has convinced me to abandon my goal to read one "classic" book per quarter (not like I was making much progress anyway).  Book snobs should stay away from this one.

For my next post I'll have my top ten reads of 2011.

The C. S. Lewis Code

C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia are simple, fun, and theologically instructive.  Millions of children and adults adore them.  I'm suspicious of people who don't like them, like people who don't enjoy the Cosby Show.  Who doesn't like the Cosby Show?  People you shouldn't trust, I'm sure.

The allegory (or is it allegory?) is straight-forward and powerful:  Aslan, the allegorical Christ, the great lion who dies for another's sin and is raised from the dead by "a deeper magic from before the dawn of time."  And there is the "conversion" of Eustace, a mean little boy with the personality like a dragon.  When he actually is turned into a dragon he discovers that can't heal himself; he can only by restored by the terrible grace of Aslan's ripping claws.

And, symbolism aside, there is that beautiful, oft-quoted final sentence of the series which never fails to move me:

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page:  now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has ever read:  which goes on for ever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.

But what if there was a unifying theme to the entire series that Lewis managed to keep hidden for over fifty years?  Michael Ward's Planet Narnia:  The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis makes this bold claim.  Ward argues (convincingly in my opinion) that each book in the series corresponds to one of the seven heavens or planets in the Medieval cosmology.  Think of Dante's seven heavens in Paradiso.  Here is the breakdown:

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe = Jupiter
2. Prince Caspian = Mars
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader = Sun
4. The Silver Chair = Moon
5. The Horse and His Boy = Mercury
6. The Magician's Nephew = Venus
7. The Last Battle = Saturn

Ward makes his case methodically.  He begins by looking at Lewis' own research and views on Medieval cosmology.  Lewis was a professor of Medieval literature, and his scholarly research into the field was quite extensive, as Ward thoroughly quotes and references.  He then moves to Lewis' poetry and fiction prior to Chronicles in which the seven heavens come to prominence.  Anyone who has read his space trilogy should recall that the seven planets (who are angelic personalities rather than balls of rocks and gas) are quite explicit at the end of That Hideous Strength.

Once he has established that Lewis was quite interested in the seven heavens and had already explored them in his own poetry and fiction, Ward then moves to make his case for their hidden presence in The Chronicles of Narnia.  Sometimes this presence is extraordinarily subtle.  In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for instance, the characters frequently say "By Jove."  Over and over again in The Silver Chair we see water and wetness, since water is associated with the Lunar idea.  The Horse and His Boy, the book corresponding to Mercury, is filled with scenes of speed and speech-making, (Mercury was the messenger god after all).  

Other times it's more overt (but not so overt that anyone noticed before now).  Prince Caspian, the "martial" book, is all about war.  When Aslan arrives to redeem Narnia from the White Witch in the first book the unending winter finally ends and spring returns.  It is no coincidence that Jupiter is associated with spring and rebirth.  And so it goes with each book.

After showing the hidden presence of these themes in each of the books Ward then makes some judgments as to what the themes are saying theologically.  This is where Planet Narnia was most difficult for me.  Side note:  it was published by Oxford University Press; this is a serious work of literary criticism.  I can't remember all the theological nuances of each book, but Ward argues nonetheless that they are there, and I think he's pretty much right.

So why did Lewis have this secret unifying theme?  Once again, Ward has done his homework.  He shows that Lewis believed that good writing shouldn't expose all it has to offer at first glance.  In this case he hid it so well that no one noticed for a half century after Lewis' death.  Lewis fans should take Ward's case seriously, and go back with renewed joy to Lewis' seven wonderful books.

The Archer and the Arrow

Phillip Jensen and Paul Grimmond have written a very helpful little book on preaching called The Archer and Arrow:  Preaching the Very Words of God.  Two bits of clarification:

First, as explained in the preface, Paul Grimmond did the actual writing, but all the ideas are basically Jensen's (a seasoned preacher).  Second, the "archer" of the title refers to the preacher, and the "arrow" refers to the sermon.

It would probably be tedious to summarize everything Jensen and Grimmond say.  I'd rather share a few of my favorite quotes and a very helpful illustration.

On the ministry of all believers (which the Sydney evangelicals emphasize a lot):

For all of God's people, everywhere, the challenge is to speak to each other as those who speak the very truths of God and nothing less.  Whether we speak one to another over a meal or one to a thousand from the pulpit on Sunday morning, the aim for all Christians is to speak God's truth in order that we might all be encouraged to live for the glory of Christ as we await his return. (14)

 On the essence of preaching:

What, then, is the essence of preaching?  It is not related to the number of people we speak to, nor is it related to our ability to communicate.  The essence of preaching is passing on the message as we have received it--that is what it means to speak the very oracles of God. (14)

The preacher's mission statement:

My aim is to preach the gospel by faithfully expounding the Bible to the people God has given me to love. (22)

On the preacher's motivations:

If we are preaching for the sake of God's honour, then we will long for our hearers to say, "Jesus is a great saviour" not "He is a great preacher". (92)

I found the arrow illustration very helpful.  An arrow is composed of three sections:  the arrowhead, the shaft, and the feathers.  The arrowhead corresponds to the gospel.  The preacher should preach the gospel in every sermon (though he should not feel obligated to preach every component of the gospel in every sermon), and thus he tries to pierce the heart of his people with the gospel.  The shaft corresponds to the exegesis of the particular text being preached.  The better the exegesis/shaft and deeper the gospel/arrowhead will pierce the heart.  The feathers correspond to the biblical and systematic theology (and other broader disciplines) the keep the arrow/sermon flying straight rather than veering off into heresy or error because of our bad exegesis.  It's a simple illustration, but I found it helpful.

I discovered many other gems in The Archer and the Arrow.  Any preacher or preacher-in-training would be wise to read it.