Category Archives: Books

Mark Driscoll on the atonement

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Mark Driscoll is a difficult figure for a lot of folks in the American church, for a lot of reasons, which mostly seem to boil down to him having a lot of difficulty keeping himself reined in in various ways; but for all that, I have a great deal of respect for him, because he’s been used of God to build a church and grow a lot of serious Christians on serious theology in a very, very difficult environment in which to do so. What’s more, in his writings, for all the complaints about his irreverence and his rough edge, he’s consistently made the case for Reformed theology in a context (the emergent and emergent-sympathetic church) which tends to slide in some very different directions.His latest book, Death by Love, looks like one I really need to get, going by Tim Challies’ review; it’s a book on the atonement that looks at the various different angles on our understanding of Christ’s work on the cross in their appropriate pastoral contexts. As Challies writes,

Following the model of the biblical epistles, Driscoll writes letters to his congregation—individuals who have come to him for pastoral counsel through the years of his ministry. He writes letters to address their issues in light of the gospel. “Our approach is an effort to show that there is no such thing as Christian community or Christian ministry apart from a rigorous theology of the cross that is practically applied to the lives of real people.”

This is an important thing to do, making biblical and systematic theology pastoral theology—giving counsel which is, to borrow Martin Marty’s phrase, “theologically practical.” I look forward to seeing what the Rev. Driscoll has done in applying this fundamental truth of the Christian faith to the fundamental realities of hurting people’s lives.HT: Justin Taylor

Jesus Brand Spirituality: Reclaiming the pilgrims’ path

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OK, so when I said, “I hope to get the post on the first chapter up in the next day or two,” I should have said “a week or two (or three)” . . . sorry about that. I’m too easily distracted, I guess. That’s too bad, because the first chapter of Jesus Brand Spirituality, “Reclaiming the Pilgrims’ Path,” sets out the book’s overall agenda and approach, and does so in admirable fashion.

I have only one significant objection, and I’ll begin with that, both in order to get it out of the way and because it deals with Ken Wilson’s very first page: I don’t agree with his statement of the problem. He starts off by saying,

Jesus wants his religion back. And he wants it back from the orthodox, the Bible-believing, and the defenders of faith as much as from anyone else. So it can be for the world again.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not objecting to that paragraph as I understand it. It’s strong, bracing language, calculated like a slap in the face or a bucket of cold water to shock the reader to attention, and I think that’s undoubtedly necessary for what the book is trying to accomplish. However, the caveat is important, because what this isn’t is precise language. What does it mean to say, “Jesus wants his religion back,” and why and in what respect does he want it back from his own followers?

In the next paragraph, the Rev. Wilson imagines what it might look like if he were a non-Christian beginning to be interested in Jesus; he writes,

How would I begin to pursue faith today? I’ll tell you what would put me off. I’d be repelled by the witch’s brew of politics, cultural conflict, moralism, and religious meanness that seems so closely connected with those who count themselves the special friends of Jesus. It’s a crowd that makes me nervous. Beneath all the talk of moral values and high principles, I don’t think I could get over the hissing sound.

I would be deterred by the impression that the more people organize their lives around Jesus, the more likely they are to become defensive, prickly, and dogmatic about their beliefs. I’d have to stuff my questions, curb my curiosity, and be willing to get with the program. I’d have to mindlessly accept some package deal agreed on by the gatekeepers of orthodoxy—virgin birth, heaven and hell, Jesus as the only way, the Bible as the unquestioned Word of God—where would it stop?

Methinks the Reverend doth concede too much. This is certainly the perception of the church among non-Christians (especially the intelligentsia), and it’s the perception of the conservative wing of the church in this country by its liberal wing; but is it fair? I know there are churches like this, but in my own experience (limited, but random enough not to be completely meaningless), I’ve never come across any; the churches I know fail in other ways and in other directions (many of them in efforts to address precisely this perception among non-Christians in their communities). The perception problem is obviously real and significant, but it seems to me that it might be more gracious not to assume that the perception is correct.

That said, where the Rev. Wilson goes from this point is excellent. I appreciate his use and defense of the word “religion,” a word which needs to be rescued from those who oppose it (negatively) to “spirituality”; indeed, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the chapter is the model of religion he lays out, which he takes from Dr. Phyllis Tickle, describing it as

a rope that . . . has three cords: spirituality, morality, and corporeality . . . held together by a casing, like the clear plastic casing that holds the strands of a rope together and keeps the water out. The casing of any religion is the story it tells about the way the world works. . . . Everything else about religion makes sense only in the context of the story it tells about the world.

Though the Rev. Wilson focuses in this book on spirituality, he doesn’t elevate it above the other elements, but rather recognizes them as equally necessary and important, and I appreciate that. Indeed, he seems to recognize as well the ways in which these various components overlap and interpenetrate one another; I will be interested to see what he makes of that in future works, assuming God grants him the opportunity to write further.

This is particularly true because I think I see a parallel here that could be fruitful. When I first read the book The Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North Americaa decade ago at Regent, one of the things that struck me was in chapter 7, drafted by the Alan Roxburgh, on “Missional Leadership.” The Rev. Dr. Roxburgh describes the typical picture of the life of the individual church this way:

In this series of concentric circles, the inner circle A represents the committed core of a church community. . . . They seek to live out faithful lives but give most of their church time to providing services to those who only attend. . . . Circle A represents people with a genuine commitment to function as bearers of the gospel. But the gospel itself is reduced to the categories of our culture. . . .

The next circle (B), the congregation, includes the core (A). Circle B is composed largely of affiliates who expect services but have minimal ownership. It is a voluntary association of expressive individuals. Again, leadership spends a large part of its time responding to the expectations and needs of these people. . . .

The final circle (C) represents the context. The unchurched and the seekers reside here. Much of the activity in A and B is spent convincing unchurched people to connect with a particular brand of church. . . . The focal energy of leadership is directed toward getting people into the center, A, but the location where the leader expends most of his or her time and energy is in circles B and C. All of this assumes a reductionistic gospel of meeting personal, individualistic needs. This assumption is what generates vendor-type ecclesiologies.

Against this, the Rev. Dr. Roxburgh points us to the truth that the church is a “pilgrim people, moving in and toward the reign of God,” and that this is what is really “the center of the church’s life and identity”; he proposes therefore that rather than understanding the church as merely a bounded set defined by formal membership and formal roles, we need to understand ourselves as a centered set, with our center being “the gospel’s announcement of God’s reign that is forming a people as God’s new society.”

In our pluralistic context, where people search in multiple directions and struggle to understand the nature of Christian life, a centered-set model represents the church as a people on the way toward the fullness of God’s reign in Jesus Christ. People are constantly being invited to move toward and into a covenant, disciple community. This kind of centered-set church is open to all who may want to be on this journey. It has a permeability that is open to others since it seeks to draw others alongside and minister to people at every level on the way.

This, it seems to me, sounds quite a bit like the “thought experiment” the Rev. Wilson proposes:

Maybe it’s time to adjust some of the conventional assumptions about Christian faith. Maybe the starting point is as basic as people in motion, moving toward Jesus. . . .

Let’s imagine ourselves in relation to Jesus—all of us who feel drawn to Jesus in some way—as being neither on the outside of faith looking in, nor on the inside looking out, nor at one of the stages of a predetermined four-stage linear progression of belief.

Instead, let’s imagine ourselves at various points in relation to an imagined center, like pilgrims coming from the north, south, east and west and every point in between to a holy city. Only we aren’t pilgrims in search of a city so much as pilgrims in search of . . . Jesus of Nazareth. Some of us are here, others there. Some are running, walking, milling about, traveling in groups or singly, doubting or believing—but all of us are within range of his attractive pull. Because we come from different points of origin, we take many paths to our destination. The closer we get to the center, the more our paths converge. But for now, the only concern each of us shares is this: how can we take “one step closer to knowing,” one step closer to that center we’re longing for?

It strikes me, in comparing these passages, that perhaps Ken Wilson is trying to do the same thing with regard to the spirituality and spiritual theology of the church that Alan Roxburgh, Darrell Guder and the rest of that group were and are trying to do with the corporeal reality of its structures and programs. Certainly when the Rev. Wilson writes, “Jesus brand spirituality is a way of living that Jesus modeled as a fellow pilgrim,” it seems reasonable to describe that as a truly missional spirituality; we should be wary of defining his work in terms of someone else’s work or agenda, but there seem to me to be real affinities there. As such, those who are attracted by the missional-church movement and its understanding of who we’re called to be as the church and how we’re called to live, and who are grappling with trying to lead a congregation in that direction, may well find this book particularly valuable.

One further word on the first chapter would seem to be in order, to set up the discussion of the rest of the book: having set up his description of Jesus brand spirituality as a life of pilgrimage toward Jesus, the Rev. Wilson identifies four dimensions to this pilgrimage, four different aspects to the spiritual life.

By “dimensions” I mean aspects of reality . . . the four dimensions I’ve selected to describe Jesus brand spirituality are active, contemplative, biblical, andcommunal. . . .

These four dimensions of spirituality are as interdependent as the four space-time dimensions. We separate them to examine them, but as soon as we’re done, they reconnect. We must resist the temptation to force-fit these into a preordered path: “First, we take the active step, then the contemplative,” and so on. It doesn’t work like that. Depending on where we find ourselves on this pilgrimage, we may be drawn to one dimension or the other first or next. But as we move forward into one dimension . . . our understanding of all the others will be affected because they are four dimensions of one reality.

Why these particular dimensions? Because they are integral. Each is an essential part of spirituality—distinguishable in representing a discrete aspect, yet interdependent in affecting and being affected by the others. They also emerge naturally from the spiritual path of Jesus himself.

There is, it seems to me, a lot of wisdom there, though I would add that all of us are probably temperamentally tilted in one direction or another; I’ll be interested to see how the Rev. Wilson develops this model and fleshes it out in subsequent chapters.

 

Jesus Brand Spirituality: Introduction

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A number of weeks ago, I wrote a post highlighting an extremely positive review of a book called Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. In response, I received a friendly communication from the author, Ken Wilson, the senior pastor of the Ann Arbor Vineyard, asking me if I wanted a copy. That was an easy one (of course I did), and in return for his generosity I promised to review the book once I’d finished it.

Unfortunately, various circumstances delayed me in starting the book, which I was only able to begin reading this past weekend, so I have not yet been able to redeem my word to the Rev. Wilson. I have, however, greatly appreciated the book so far, and am eager to do so. However, never having written a true review essay, I’m a bit dubious of my ability to do it justice by reading the whole book and writing on it all at once; what’s more, doing so properly would produce a very long piece which might not be well-suited to the medium of a blog. So, what I’ve decided to do is to comment on the book a chapter at a time, and then once I’ve finished, write a concluding post with final commentary. I realize that this has its drawbacks, but I think it’s probably the best way to do it. It’s also the quickest way to get started, which factors into my thinking as well.

I hope to get the post on the first chapter up in the next day or two—unfortunately, it isn’t finished yet, but those who follow this blog will be aware that I’ve had one or two other minor matters occupying a lot of my attention here. For now, I’ll close with one of Phyllis Tickle’s encomia from her foreword:

This . . . is a book that contains niches and corridors and apses of beauty that catch my thorax and make me feel the salt and burn of beauty rising.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP

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“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”—Aleksandr SolzhenitsynThe world lost one of its giants today: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead of a stroke at the age of 89. Novelist, historian, poet, Soviet dissident, cultural critic . . . to try to sum up the meaning and significance of this towering modern-day prophet, one of the deepest thinkers and most powerful bearers of Christian witness of our age, is beyond the scope of anything so brief as a blog post, though John Piper took a good shot (thanks to Jared for the link); I’ve linked a few articles below in an effort to do what my words cannot do. For me, the least I can do is to say that our world would be vastly poorer had he never lived. Requiescat in pace, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; you have earned your rest as much as anyone can.The Last ProphetTraducing SolzhenitsynSolzhenitsyn and Modern LiteratureAleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from IdeologyPaul Weyrich: A Tribute to Alexander Solzhenitsyn25 YearsLions

Considering the practice of the Jesus way

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In the latest issue of Perspectives, I was interested to run across a review of a recent book called Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. With a title like that, I would have expected “just another critique of the shallowness of evangelical certitudes or the meanness of some of the Religious Right or yet another call to be open and in conversation as we emerge into new ideas”; according to the glowing review by Byron Borger of Hearts & Minds Books, however, it’s nothing of the sort. In fact, the book’s author, Ken Wilson, isn’t a liberal at all, but rather a Vineyard pastor, and according to Borgan,

Wilson has written a thoughtful, mature, and deeply engaging study of the ways in which we can approach Jesus, how to make sense of life in light of his ways. It talks about how the best of four streams within Christianity can unite to help create a passionate, faithful and yet grace-filled, life-giving spirituality. (Wilson’s four dimensions, by the way, are the active, the contemplative, the biblical, and the communal.) . . .

Jesus Brand Spirituality is ideal for mainline Protestants who want to make sure their liberal theology doesn’t go off the tracks, who want to stay close to Jesus and the earliest biblical truths, even if they are not quite where more traditionalist conservatives stand. It is equally helpful for anyone committed to historic Christian orthodoxy but who may sense that the recent cultural conflict, dogmatism, moralism, and overlays of the evangelical subculture may have obscured some of the clearest elements of the faith. And—please don’t miss this—it is also a fabulous read for anyone who is a skeptic or seeker; at times, it seems like it is written precisely for those who just are willing to get “one step closer to knowing.” . . .

No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, or with which denomination or tradition you stand, I am confident this book will challenge, stretch, inspire, and bless you.

That sounds promising. Interestingly, it fits in quite well with the other review in this issue, by David Smith, of Craig Dykstra’s Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices.In that review, Smith writes,

“Practices” is, in this context, a pregnant term, used in a way that reaches beyond its everyday meaning. Dykstra’s usage draws upon the widely discussed account of social practices found in the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre (particularly in After Virtue). Roughly speaking, for MacIntyre a practice involves a complex and coherent social activity pursued with other people because of goods that inhere in the activity itself—like playing a sport for the satisfaction of a well matched game rather than with the aim of getting one’s name in the paper. Such practices have their own standards of excellence to which the practitioner must submit, and they provide a matrix within which our own pursuit—and perception—of excellence can evolve. Such matrices, MacIntyre argues, are where virtue grows: not through having moral rules explained, but through submitting to the discipline of socially established practices. . . .

What if being and growing as a Christian is not well characterized in terms, say, of assent to doctrines but requires a pattern of Christian practices within which Christian beliefs are at home? What if faith development has as much to do with being enfolded in and submitting to such practices as hospitality to the stranger, worship, community, forgiveness, healing, and testimony as with grasping increasingly complex articulations of doctrine?

This, too, I think is a book I want to read, and in part for the same reason: to consider how Christian belief and Christian practice are interwoven, neither making sense without the other—indeed, neither truly existing without the other. Christian belief is belief which is lived out, and Christian practice is an expression of belief—they aren’t separable; and at their core, they’re all about becoming, living, walking, being, like Jesus, living life in his footsteps.

Story

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I don’t know how many people have ever heard of Robert McKee; I imagine all true cinephiles and cineasts have, but I hadn’t. For those as ignorant as me, here’s some of the dust-jacket copy from his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (which describes him as “the world’s premier screenwriting teacher”):

For more than thirteen years, Robert McKee’s students have been taking Hollywood’s top honors. His Story Structure seminar is the ultimate class for screenwriters and filmmakers, playing to packed auditoriums across the world and boasting more than 25,000 graduates. . . .Unlike other popular approaches to screenwriting, Story is about form, not formula.

I have to say, I’m honestly impressed. McKee shares my belief in the importance and power of story (if anything, he takes it too far; I get the sense that story has taken the place of religion for him), he’s all about teaching people to write good stories, and he has a lot of helpful advice and examples. (I had originally been thinking to quote a passage or two, but there’s too many good ones.) I don’t think he gets all the examples right, but most of them, he does—he really understands what he’s talking about; and while his book is focused strictly on screenwriting, so far, I think everything he says applies to anyone writing fiction in any form.I should note that one of the reasons I appreciate McKee’s work is that he doesn’t buy the pretensions of the artistes. Here’s what he has to say about the “art film”:

The avant-garde notion of writing outside the genres is naive. No one writes in a vacuum. After thousands of years of storytelling no story is so different that it has no similarity to anything else ever written. The ART FILM has become a traditional genre, divisible into two subgenres, Minimalism and Antistructure, each with its own complex of formal conventions of structure and cosmology. Like Historical Drama, the ART FILM is a supra-genre that embraces other basic genres: Love Story, Political Drama, and the like.

Being more of a novel guy than a film guy, I tend to run into this more with the art film’s prose cousin, literary fiction, where I’m regularly irritated by the pretensions of its practitioners and fans that lit fic isn’t a genre and is therefore superior to “genre fiction.” McKee’s right, this is naive; unfortunately, as B. R. Myers has pointed out in his “Reader’s Manifesto,” it’s a naivete that has led to some real distortions in people’s understanding and appreciation of literature. It’s good to have someone come out and say, “You know what? This kind of thing’s a genre just like any other, with its own conventions and expectations, and some of it’s good and some of it isn’t, just like any other genre.”Anyway, coming back to the book: it’s a very good book about writing stories, and I recommend it—especially to fellow aspiring writers, but not only.

On the power of stories to teach, part II

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I’ve been meaning for several days now to get back over to Dr. Stackhouse’s blog, having gotten a couple weeks behind on reading his posts; I was interested to find there a four-post consideration and defense of the novel The Shack, which has generated quite a bit of interest and comment, both positive and negative. I haven’t yet read the book, and given the events that drive the book’s plot, I’m not at all sure I’m going to read it, either, at least in full; but given the responses it’s generated (both positive and negative), I definitely want to know as much about it as I can from reviewers who are both fair and perceptive. That’s why I appreciated his four posts addressing the book’s genre, some theological concerns, and some praiseworthy aspects of the book.In light of my post this past Sunday, I was also interested in the first of those posts for another reason. Dr. Stackhouse writes,

It seems to me important that authors of fiction defend art as needing no justification on some other grounds. From a Christian point of view, a well-rendered novel—or short story, or poem, or song lyric—needs only to be good in and of itself. It does not have to explicitly praise God or testify to Jesus or draw people closer to the gospel or attract people to Christianity—although the paradox is, I suggest, that inasmuch as it is authentic and true to both the artist and to reality, such fictional writing does indeed do all those things implicitly. Still, art needs no justification, as H. R. Rookmaaker’s book title reminds us, and it is good that art is free from the obligation to perform some other service.To assert that principle, however, is not to assert the corollary that art must not ever serve more than one purpose, and in particular must not “preach,” as Atwood says. One can defend art “for art’s sake,” as Wilde put it, without restricting oneself to aestheticism in which art is only for art’s sake. . . .So, yes, if you want to preach, write a sermon—which is a truism, in fact. But if you want to depict your concerns in a fictional way you hope will render them plausible, even cogent, to a reader, then the weight of western civilization is on your side.

Lest anyone think this is a Christian defense of propaganda, here’s the late Dr. Isaac Asimov saying something very similar:

But in every worthwhile story, however long, there is a point. The writer may not consciously put it there, but it will be there. The reader may not consciously search for it, but he’ll miss it if it isn’t there. If the point is obtuse, blunt, trivial, or non-existent, the story suffers and the reader will react with a deadly, “So what?”

The danger of propagandizing is very real, of course, for the writer who consciously desires to communicate their understanding of truth through stories, through fiction; the question of when one has crossed the line is very real. Dr. Stackhouse argues that that point comes

when the fictive art is compromised for the sake of the ideological message. When dialogue becomes stilted, when characters become inconsistent, when events become implausible, when a deus ex machina saves the day—in sum, when “what would happen” is sacrificed to “what should happen.”

Or, to put it another way, it comes when we as sub-creators cease to be thinking “primarily about what is best for this thing we are making” and let the good of our agenda trump the good of the creation; it’s when “what’s best for us or what we want to do” becomes the primary consideration.

Firefly, Tolkien, and narrative theology

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The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, from “Mythopoeia”It has been my custom, while using my rowing machine, to watch episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, which I consider one of the two greatest television shows I’ve ever seen. (I don’t believe TV as a medium has produced much true art, or many truly great stories, but I do believe both are possible.) Lately, however, I’ve been watching other things while I row, and this week, I started in on the other greatest series I’ve ever seen: Firefly. It’s the first time I’ve watched any of the episodes since the movie came out; what Joss Whedon did with the movie hit me too hard. That’s also why I haven’t posted about being a Browncoat, or linked to fan sites like “Whoa. Good Myth.” Rather like being a Mariners fan these days, it’s just been easier not to stress about it too much.Now, this might seem like an odd and pointless thing to get worked up about—so a TV show was canceled after fourteen episodes—so what? It’s still a TV show, after all. So Fox handled it badly, gave the show no real chance, and canceled it unfairly soon; is it really that big a deal? Well, it was that big a deal for all the folks who worked on the show, for one thing. Beyond that, we all have our reasons, and I’m sure mine aren’t the same as everyone else’s; but for me, it’s the story, or rather, the stories, which were untimely cut off, and the lives of the characters in those stories. Whedon, Tim Minear, and their crew of writers had a great world and a great set of characters and stories going, both enjoyable and deep; to have that brought to an untimely end is a great loss.That’s why I rejoiced when the movie deal went forward; which meant that what Whedon did with Serenity really hit me hard. I think he put his own ideas of what is artistic ahead of what was best for his creation—not only the story and the characters, but also the communities he had created, most importantly the actors, writers, and crew, and also all of us who call ourselves Browncoats. Tolkien speaks of us as sub-creators, people who create what he calls “Secondary Worlds,” creations which are real within their own laws, to the best of our ability to make them real; we create in reflection (or, perhaps better, as refractions) of the great Creator who made us, because we were made like him. The desire to be gods ourselves may have been what led us into sin, but it was not perhaps a wholly wrong one, properly channeled—for when we create, we are in a sense small gods to our creation. If we take Tolkien’s point of view, however (as I believe we should), this has a significant implication for our creative activity: we have the responsibility to be, as best as we can, good gods to our creation. Our work has to be primarily about what is best for this thing we are making, whatever it might be, not merely about what’s best for us or what we want to do. On my read, from the things he’s said, Joss Whedon violated that with Firefly/Serenity; he was a bad god to his creation.Still, though, you might say: does this matter? Wasn’t it, after all, still just a TV show? Yes, of course it was a TV show, but no, it wasn’t just a TV show. Nothing is ever just anything—especially not people; and thus, especially not stories, to the extent that they’re true stories about people. By that I don’t necessarily mean factual; there are biographies and histories which are factual but aren’t really true, because they miss the heart of the matter, while many historical fictions, though they depart from the facts, are far truer because they give us real understanding of people and events. Indeed, many novels about things that never happened and people who never lived are nevertheless true stories in that they broaden our awareness of ourselves and of others, open our eyes and minds to things we have not before seen or realized, and deepen our knowledge of what it means to be human.Stories are powerful things. It’s one thing to express an opinion, or to set forth a proposition about how the world works; it’s quite another thing to bring that opinion or proposition to life in a story. People who might reject, or at least argue with, your position if it were plainly stated may find themselves influenced by it, if your story is powerful enough and sufficiently well-crafted; and those who wouldn’t understand it intellectually in a propositional form may well get it intuitively and affectively if you bring it to life in a story. That’s what stories do with our ideas: they bring them to life, incarnating them in the lives of the characters we create, making them not merely intellectual realities, but human realities.This is one reason why the greatest of all Christian theologians is not Paul, but Jesus himself. (There are others, of course, such as the fact that Jesus was original, while Paul was derivative of Jesus.) This is something too often missed, as Dr. Kenneth Bailey points out (and as Jared Wilson has also said, though his emphasis is a little different), because we tend to see Jesus as a nice moral teacher telling quaint stories; we don’t really believe that those stories can be theologically profound and powerful. In fact, though, they can, and they are; the more overtly “theological” works in the New Testament, profound as they are, are simply developments, explications, and applications in propositional form of the truths already communicated incarnationally through the parables of Jesus, and also through the broader narratives of the Gospels, Acts, and the Old Testament. God doesn’t give us a three-point outline, he gives us a story—from which to learn, and in which to live.Of course, it’s possible to take this too far; there are those who would overbalance the other way, exalting the biblical narratives to the extent of diminishing or even discounting the NT epistles (and other non-narrative portions of the Bible—but the epistles, and particularly Paul, usually seem to be the main target). That’s not right either. What we need to remember is that the epistles, though not themselves narrative texts, are nevertheless part of a narrative; their context is a story. They were written for particular reasons to particular human beings in particular situations dealing with particular things, even if we don’t know all those particularities (in some cases, we have a pretty good idea; in others, we can only speculate); and when we read them, we read them in the middle of our own story as God speaking to us in our particular situations and issues. We need to understand them accordingly—and we need to understand that that fact is the reason why they matter.Stories matter. They matter because they’re the stuff of our life, of our reality and our nature, and the expression of the creative ability we’ve been given by (and in the image of) the one who made us—and we matter. They matter because they affect us, moving our emotions and shaping our view of the world, both for good and for ill. And as a Christian, I affirm that they matter because everything we do matters, because the best of what we do will endure forever. And if they matter, then we need to take them seriously, both as readers and, for those of us so called, as writers—for our sake, and for everyone’s.

National Geographic‘s thirty pieces of silver

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Remember the big media story a while back about the Gospel of Judas? Remember the stories about how Judas was really a good guy? It appears now that the text (which is in any case a late Gnostic text, and thus not as significant as some people wanted to make it) was seriously misrepresented—and that National Geographic is in large part to blame. It’s clear they wanted to make use of Judas for their own purposes, and that one of those purposes was to make their thirty pieces of silver off him. They wanted the media splash, they wanted headlines like “Ancient Text Says Jesus Asked Judas to Hand Him to the Romans” (that one courtesy of the Arizona Republic), and they wanted the profits that came with that, courtesy of the high-profile documentary, the DVD sales, and the book sales. And if proper scholarly procedures, and with them proper scholarly standards, went by the wayside as a result—taking a proper scholarly concern for accuracy and truth with them—then so be it.

Prince Caspian

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Last night, my wife and I went out to see Prince Caspian—it was our first movie date in years (it’s nice to be able to go to the movies again)—and we loved it. I know there’s been a lot of back-and-forth about the movie vs. the book; Frederica Mathewes-Green was actually so bold as to say the movie tops the book, while other voices have, much more predictably, argued the opposite. Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ stepson and the movie’s co-producer, said in an interview with CT that the movie “portrays probably even more strongly than the book the essential message of Prince Caspian,” even as he concedes that the book itself isn’t all that strong. I wouldn’t go as far as Mathewes-Green, who calls it “a dud”—I think she needs to read Michael Ward’s book Planet Narnia, which I’m looking forward to reading (soon, I hope)—but I do think it’s the weakest of the books; in reading it to my older girls recently, I really felt the force of the anticlimax.In light of that, while I don’t want to wade into the fray over comparing the book and the movie (in part because I don’t want to take the time to write a fully coherent review essay, just the movie-review equivalent of a notes column), I do want to offer observations in praise and support of the movie. Warning: spoilers ahead (I will pull no punches); don’t click “Read More . . .” if you haven’t seen the movie.First observation: I thought the filmmakers took the Pevensies’ dislocation and its effects far more seriously, and thought about its effects a good deal more, than Lewis did. Kudos to them on that. The introduction of the Pevensies, with Susan very much feeling a misfit and Peter getting into a fistfight because he can’t adjust back to being a kid under (often-capricious, unjust) authority after spending however many years as High King, is spot-on, and lays the groundwork for much of what follows. Going from being adults and sovereigns in Narnia back in a moment to being English schoolchildren must have been like throwing the car into reverse at freeway speed; if you understand the Pevensies as actual human beings going through that experience rather than as figures in an allegory, that would be a traumatic moment that must have had noticeable long-term effects. (To put it mildly.) I appreciate the filmmakers noticing.I especially appreciated the way they used it in character development, and especially with Peter and Susan. Peter has been struggling to adjust to not being High King, the general and warrior and statesman who is above all others under the law; for him, getting back to Narnia is, more than anything, about being back in charge, back on top. He’s not willing to defer to anyone, or even to treat anyone as an equal (including Caspian, even though Caspian knows the situation far, far better than he himself does), and he’s not willing to wait for Aslan, since to do so would be to acknowledge that even in Narnia, he is a man under authority. He doesn’t see Aslan when Lucy does because he doesn’t want to—he wants to do it himself; Lucy’s right, he has indeed forgotten who really defeated the White Witch, and he’s done so deliberately, out of pride. This drives him to put his faith in himself and his own judgment rather than in Aslan, with terrible consequences. He must be humbled, and have his faith properly oriented once again, before he can triumph; thus the capstone to his work is his surrender of his sword to Caspian, the final acknowledgement that it’s Caspian who now rules in Narnia. In that, he has learned what he needed to learn, and returns to England a second time actually ready to transition back to living there.Susan, by contrast—and by explicit, conscious (or semi-conscious) reaction against Peter—holds herself aloof from Narnia; she too, as Lucy tells her, doesn’t see Aslan until the end because she doesn’t want to. In her case, however, it’s not because she doesn’t want to submit to him, but rather because she doesn’t want to surrender to him; she’ll enjoy being in Narnia “while it lasts,” but she knows it isn’t going to and she’s guarding her heart against it. In this, I think, the filmmakers are laying the groundwork for her defection from the friends of Narnia which is revealed in The Last Battle—groundwork which is, I think, implicit in the book, but which is shown more clearly in the movie. (I might add, by the way, that I’ve never felt “Oh, wasn’t it fun when we used to pretend” was at all reasonable to have Susan say; her decision to turn her back on Narnia made sense to me, but not that she would actually forget, or come to believe it had never been real.) She refuses to fully yield to the reality of Narnia, choosing to protect herself by holding back from it; as a consequence, where Peter moves through their dislocation and comes out the other side, she pulls back from it. Where Peter has learned all Narnia can teach him, she has merely learned all she can learn.Second observation: I’ve seen complaints that the spiritual meaning of the book is lost in the movie. Now, I’m just a simple country preacher, so maybe I’m just not smart enough, but I’ve never been all that sure what the overarching spiritual meaning of the book is. It’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to reading Planet Narnia, in hopes of seeing more in Caspian than I have to this point. As far as the book’s message about faith goes, though, I think it’s actually strengthened in the movie, because Peter and Susan’s character arcs through the movie play into that. Peter’s journey is especially relevant, because he starts off explicitly putting his faith in himself rather than in Aslan, and it blows up in his face; it’s as he shifts to trusting and serving Aslan rather than himself and his own ego that things start to get better.The climax of the movie, I think, is the summoning of the White Witch. Caspian has the wits, when she actually appears, to resist taking the last step to set her loose, and then the appearance of the Pevensies brings the whole plot crashing down—except that Peter allows himself to be half-seduced by the Witch. She’s cunning enough to offer help, to present herself as an ally who would follow him, and despite the fact that he ought to know better, he’s tempted. He still doesn’t want to let go, he still wants to defeat Miraz’ army himself and take the credit, and he’s actually willing to consider allying himself with the Witch to do it (even if it means lying to himself that he can trust her). Fortunately, Edmund isn’t going to make that mistake twice, and saves the day; and at that point, Peter seems to stop, take a good look at himself and how he’s acting, and realize that he’s been putting his faith in the wrong place. From that point on, he lets Lucy have the key role, and dedicates himself to buying the time for her mission to succeed.Third observation: as Philip noted over at The Thinklings, the filmmakers do a lot more with Edmund, and give him a lot more scope to act, than Lewis did. His decisive action to save his brother (and all Narnia) from the White Witch is the high point, and I think adds another dimension to the Christian message of the story. In the Pevensies’ first visit to Narnia, after all, Peter was the golden boy, while Edmund fell to temptation as the White Witch appealed to his pride; but that very success makes Peter vulnerable this time, to the point that he nearly falls to the same temptation that ensnared his brother, while Edmund is humbler and therefore wiser. This really underscores the story’s argument for faith, I think, making it clear that pride and faith in ourselves is a false path, while humility and faith in the true God is the only real way forward. It’s telling that in the last charge, the battle cry is no longer “For Narnia!”: it’s “For Aslan!” And though it’s Peter who leads the way, and Lucy who makes the way, it’s Edmund who shows the way; and, of course, it’s Aslan who is the way.Fourth observation: I have to differ with Renaissance Guy’s complaint that “the characters just do their own thing and don’t work together much or discuss their problems to determine cooperative solutions, which definitely departs from the story Lewis wrote.” That is indeed a problem when Peter shows up and takes over—and the result is a terrible defeat. As Peter is humbled, that changes; we don’t see the discussion that produces the plan that wipes out the Telmarine cavalry at the Battle of Aslan’s How, but it’s a fairly complicated plan that depends on considerable coordinated effort and mutual trust. The fact that failure to cooperate produces disaster, while working and planning together and trusting one another produces success, is very much in line with the story Lewis wrote; and that arc is a lot more realistic, to boot. After all, trust doesn’t usually come all that easily; it has to be built up, and we have to learn (and re-learn) our need to trust one another.Fifth observation: I think the movie gives us a much better and more believeable Caspian than the book. Having him older, right on the cusp of his majority, is not only better for the plausibility of Dawn Treader (as Gresham notes in the interview), it’s better for this story as well. I’m not sure I buy Doctor Cornelius having taught him so much less about the Narnians, but it’s clear that he’s much more prepared to be king, and this is good for the story. In the book, Caspian is a fairly passive figure, taken all in all, and really too young to be what the time demands that he be; that’s why the summoning of the Pevensies is necessary. They essentially return to re-establish their own reign, serving as a sort of rightful king by proxy, then pass it on to Caspian. In the movie, Caspian is already on his own two feet, raising the Narnians as an army against the usurper; he may be a king in exile, but he is very much a king. The Pevensies are needed for the benefit of their experience (mixed blessing though that is) and of their relationship with Aslan (which in the movie is to say, primarily, Lucy’s relationship); their blessing is valuable to give Caspian and his dynasty full legitimacy in the eyes of the Old Narnians, but it isn’t necessary to make him what he already is. Indeed, Peter’s surrender of his sword at the end probably does more for Peter, enabling him to let go of being High King (after all, his reign ended abruptly; one could say he needed more closure than that), than it does for Caspian.Sixth observation: not a major point, but there are a lot more Telmarines in the movie than in the book, as there ought to be after all that time. The book gives us perhaps the smallest-scale coup I’ve ever heard tell of; in the movie, the sheer size of the task set before Caspian can be clearly seen, as it should be.That’s just a few observations; I may have more to post later, but that’s enough to be going on with now. Taken all in all, though, I have no compunction in saying that, while no doubt the filmmakers could have done better, I think we can and should be happy with the job they’ve done.