Summer Reading

Summer plans are really shaping up. Looks like I’m in for lots of travel, meeting neat and famous people, seeing things I’ve never seen before, experiencing adventures, growing closer to God, navigating great waters, climbing high mountains, and even facing the hardships of warfare. Not much danger involved, for all of this is confined to my summer reading plans.

That ancient call to the reading chair can be heard from intriguing new books, classics, books calling for a reread, and titles quietly nudging me. Reading is the one thing that makes southern summers bearable, surpassing even air conditioning and sweet tea.

The greatest times to read in the summer are morning, afternoon, and night. Other reading times can be squeezed in at will. Great summer mornings always begin with coffee, a Bible, and a stack of books. Leave out any ingredient and the day is potentially ruined. Morning is the time to work through theology. After a bit of theology to jump-start the soul, I like to read from a weighty historical work.

Currently, I am very interested in atheism. Atheism offers some “great” answers to life’s questions. For example, consider the Holocaust and question why God allowed it. Then eliminate belief in God as so many atheists have done. Now you have the Holocaust, but no final judgment, no ultimate justice, no possible sufficient reason for it, reducing the Holocaust to a random meaningless event, along with everything else. That would certain make me quite comfortable, if I were an atheist. Let the reader understand, atheism is quite unbelievable.

I have already started reading The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by the brilliant historian Alister McGrath. The book chronicles the great heyday of atheism that began with the storming of the Bastille and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Revolutions were waged in the name of atheism; political ideologies were implemented on the foundation of atheism. From French Revolutionaries to Bolsheviks to Nihilists, atheists preached and practiced their faith.

A friend, Charles Johnson, highly recommended The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri De Lubac. This work analyzes the thought of many of the great apostles of unbelief: Nietzsche, Comte, Marx, and Feuerbach. But the dark powers of this book are overthrown by the arrival of a hero. De Lubac says, “Marx was not yet dead, and Nietzsche had not yet written his most searing books, when another man, another disturbing but more truly prophetic genius, announced the victory of God in the human soul, and his eternal resurrection.” De Lubac’s hero is also one of mine—the novelist Dostoevsky.

De Lubac’s book is an Ignatius Press publication as is another interesting summer possibility—Architects of the Culture of Death by Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker. This book focuses on those great humanist thinkers who brought such noble concepts into the world as abortion, genocide, and euthanasia.

Atheists must forever mourn the apostasy of two of their finest minds: G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. I still have much to read by Chesterton and several reads and rereads by Lewis. If I were stranded on an island with only a thousand books, Chesterton’s and Lewis’ works would have to be there for me to survive. Add to that some of the excellent books about Chesterton and Lewis. One useful book, recommended by George Grant, is Lepanto, edited by Dale Ahlquist, which includes Chesterton’s poem with historical and literary commentaries about the battle and the poem.

An exciting new book that includes much about Chesterton and his spiritual contemporaries is Joseph Pearce’s Literary Giants, Literary Catholics. Pearce is doing some outstanding literary biographical studies. He has written entire biographies on Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc, Tolkien, and Solzhenitsyn. His book Literary Converts is an outstanding study of British writers who came to religious faith during the 20th century. Pearce is fiercely Catholic and justly proud of the big literary guns in his church. This latest book parades the big names from Dante to Tolkien. It is an excellent testimony to the power of literary art as an apologetic of the Christian faith.

Alas, 20th century American produced some literary giants who were gifted by God, yet sadly far from Christian in their writings. My Humanities class recently explored some of the powerful writers who emerged in the decade following World War I. We read books by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Reading these three brilliant men has rekindled an old interest in their works. Jay Parini’s biography of Faulkner titled One Matchless Time is a useful introduction and interpretation of the great Mississippi author. Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship by Scott Donaldson looks to be an interesting study of those two. The loss of belief and the despair of these three American writers is a point of both curiosity and sadness on my part. Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms and Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby both demonstrated stylistic genius early in their careers.

Faulkner’s style and genius is another story. As Parini points out, one cannot simply read Faulkner; he must reread him. The reader often wonders just what Faulkner was drinking to produce his rambling, perplexing, yet seductive narratives. Our class read The Unvanquished, which is usually considered the best book to begin reading among Faulkner’s works, both for its chronological entryway into his mythical Yoknapatawpha County and for its easy style. Critics usually regard it as a lesser work of Faulkner’s, but I think it was among his best. Among these three writers listed here, I believe that Faulkner will be the most enduring and ultimately brilliant of them all. I have little hope for his nominal faith, but his Southern cultural heritage and his Christian hangover (unlike the other kind) give much of his work universal timeliness.

Far more encouraging than 20th century Americans were the 19th century Russian novelists. Summer time calls for a fat Russian novel. Literary journeys to Russia during past summers have included readings of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamozov and The Idiot and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. So it is high time to tackle the really big one—Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It usually takes some workouts just to be able to lift the heavy Russian volumes. The first one hundred pages or so are like traveling through the seemingly cold and endless steppes of Russia (the harsh winters are reason enough to wait until summer to read Russian works). At some point, the landscape engulfs me. When I get to such a point in War and Peace, I’ll try to send you a card (“Having a great time. Wish you were here.”)

I have anywhere from three to a hundred different pulls on my attention when it comes to upcoming readings in history. I am a gadfly, not a true scholar. A book on one era leads to a book on a totally different era. The biography of a church father is followed by a battle account of World War II. If I could have ever disciplined my mind and studied one single topic, like tariff policies in the Colonial Virginia, I could have been the premier scholar on the topic. In a way, I am like the Athenians of Acts 17. I can easily spend my time in nothing else but going to the history section of the bookstore looking for something new.

A book that is bigger than my summer plans and yet one that must be dipped into is The Annals of the World by Bishop James Usher. This massive literary classic is in print for the first time in 300 years and has been translated from Latin to English for the first time ever. The volume is beautiful and daunting. Bishop Usher is one of the great Christian historians of all time and this work promises to be fruitful.

A modern Christian historian, Dr. Carl Richard, has written Twelve Greeks and Romans Who Changed the World as a modern counterpart to Plutarch’s classic. Along with the key figures in ancient Greece and Rome, Dr. Richard includes studies of Christians, like Paul and Augustine. In another book by Dr. Richard, The Battle for the American Mind, he surveys the worldviews that have predominantly impacted American history—Theism, Humanism, and Skepticism. Some years ago, I stumbled across his book The Founders and the Classics. That book definitively proved the value of classical education of the sort our Founding Fathers received. Dr. Richard is an e-friend of mine (we have not met, but have corresponded via e-mails) and he is a friend of classical and Christian education.

Upon the recommendation of Andrew Sandlin, I bought a copy of Communism: A History by Richard Pipes, a survey of about 170 pages. I have several volumes by Dr. Pipes and have admired his work ever since I read Russia Under the Old Regime back in the early 80s. I also picked up a copy of Pipes’ autobiography—Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger. Pipes was a Harvard professor and an advisor to President Reagan. In part, I want to read his book because historians and teachers are such incredibly interesting people.

I have already started reading Armageddon by Max Hastings. No, it does not identify the anti-Christ or link missile systems to the WMDs of terrorist nations. The book is subtitled The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945. Here America’s greatest generation joined Britain in its finest hour to form a coalition with Stalin’s Evil Empire. The good news is that they rid the world of Nazism, but the bad news was that it put Eastern Europe under Communism for a time. Concentration camps became Gulags and swastikas were exchanged for the hammer and sickle. Yet none of this diminishes the epic warfare waged by the Allied soldiers.

I have a review copy of A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. Having taught through Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People, I am looking forward to seeing yet another conservative and freedom oriented American history. When I was in college in the 1970s, conservative books were about as common as llamas in Arkansas. Now we have a wide range of books written from free market, patriotic, conservative, and Christian perspectives. Reviewing this book is one of my more enjoyable assignments for the summer.

Just this week I picked up a copy of David McCullough’s latest book 1776. His last book, John Adams, was a best seller, in part because it portrayed a Founding Father with character. This new book begins with a quote from General George Washington: “Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”
Before I can read 1776, I must finish a book about 1976, titled Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign that Started It All by Craig Shirley. Today, liberals as well as conservatives, Democrats as well as Republicans, are quick to praise the memory of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan could never have used his rhetorical skills and leadership to change the world had he not first changed the Republican Party. Had it not been for Reagan’s failed bid for the nomination in 1976, the Blue State philosophy of the last election would stretch from shore to shore.

Let the readings begin.

A Farewell to Arts

I’m jealous. I love literature and I love Reformed theology. Sad to say, but literary greats and Reformed theologians live in separate worlds. We have produced lots of theologians and preachers, but few poets and almost no novelists. The Anglicans lay claim to lots of writers ranging from C.S. Lewis to T.S. Eliot. The Russian Orthodox Church gave us Dostevsky. The pantheon of great Catholic writers is seemingly endless, and includes everyone from Chaucer and Dante to Tolkien and Flannery O’Connor. All too many great American writers were apostate, angry sons of Puritans and Calvinists.

But I discovered a tale of a Presbyterian who wrote a novel. This tale may explain why the literary arts and the precision and orthodoxy of Calvinists rarely meet, almost never marry, and even more rarely produce offspring.

Herman Wilville departed from his preaching and teaching duties for a season and wrote a novel. Titled, "The Reformed Comedy" and written in three parts ("Conversio," "Seminario," and "Pastorio," it covered the lives of three men who went from unbelief to faith. With its powerful opening line—“Call me Isaac”—people realized that this work was a literary masterpiece. The novel reached a length of some four hundred pages and was initially greeted with much praise and favorable comment.

For a time it reached the top of the Reformed Theological Society’s Best Seller list, offsetting Leopold Van Humsteders’ 672 page (plus two appendices of 38 and 61 pages) evangelistic tract Barthian Soteriology Reexamined in the Light of Amyraldian Ecclesiology. Wilville’s novel did so well that it began making an impact even on the more broadly evangelical community. (An evangelical publisher offered to break it up into three separate volumes and broaden its market appeal.)

A presbytery, quite orthodox and serious, became concerned at this point. The presbytery appointed a committee which appointed a subcommittee to examine the novel.

At the same time, a theologian and disciple of the famed logician Dr. Clerk began his own examination of the novel. Editors of two separate journals, very separate stemming from the all-wheat organic flour for unleavened bread vs. commercial flour for leavened bread controversy, each picked up copies of the novel to catch up on the hubbub. Even more amazing, at a conference, a young student overheard a quote from an elderly gentleman who heard it from a lecture given by a relative of Wilville made a decade before, and from that tidbit, constructed a whole systematic theology, supposedly based on the novel, which he did not have time to read due to his dissertation answering the critics of Humsteder’s tract (mentioned above).

Was it the committee or one of the journal editors? I don’t remember which, but someone realized that one of the conversion scenes in the book happened in this way. A character fell in love with a Christian girl. In order to please her and only to please her, he got baptized. “Shaking the water off his head,” Wilville wrote, “James realized that his life would never be the same again.” Certainly, after this passage was noticed, Wilville’s life was never the same again. A well-written critique linked the novel to the Socianians, the Saracens, the Jackson Five, and more deviations before settling on the fact that Wilville was teaching a false view of the sacraments.

That roar had barely subsided when it was noticed that another character, William, had been ‘converted’ in yet another unorthodox way. “William listened to the choir sing ‘Just as I Am.’ He found himself praying that they would stop! But they sang another verse, and then yet another. Unable to sit any longer, he burst from his seat and went to the front of the church.” The blatant Arminianism was too much to bear. After this passage was excerpted and reprinted throughout the Reformed communities (I’m not sure if this happened before or after the days of the internet), Wilville received numerous copies of Humsteder’s prequel, Heretical Synergism Examined in the Light of Pelagian and Arminian Scatalogical Hermeneutics (a mere 479 pages with only a 23 page appendix).

Admittedly, Wilville’s response was lame. He offered the notes and tapes from 47 different series that he had preached on the Five Points of Calvinism, but he refused to amend the passage in the novel. His slippage from orthodoxy to heterodoxy to the even more scandalous “H” word was now clear.

Errors in the novel continued to crop up like dandelions in a southern meadow. A quote from the Living Bible on page 241, a phrase from the "Book of Common Prayer" on page 402, a reference to a Catholic as a ‘dear Christian friend’ on page 53, and much to the chagrin of a few of the few, a scene where one of the converts longs for a can of beer after mowing the yard. Like the body of that poor dead concubine in the Book of Judges, Wilville’s novel was cut up into parts and sent throughout the kingdom and it aroused quite a bit of fury.

It seemed that at one point, the subcommittee examining the novel had hit upon a useful literary technique for properly critiquing the novel. Each page of the novel was placed side by side with the "Confession of Faith." Every phrase or word not found in the "Confession" was marked in red. For example, when Isaac, the main character, fell off the roof and uttered a mild oath, it was ruled that such a saying did not accord with Chapter XXII, “Of Lawful Oaths and Vows.” And the subcommittee was determined to be faithful to the "Confession" above all else.

One good thing about the novel is that it did spur the writing of several book length critiques and responses. These works were theology, not fiction, so they were of a higher standard than Wilville’s fabrication. Among the best known were "Reformed Comedy or Tragedy? A Reformed Examination of a Unreformed Heresy and Wilville—Prophet of Darkness and Error and Falsehood." Even the ever-resourceful Prof. Leopold Van Humsteder contributed a chapter titled “Wilville, Barth, and Servetus Compared” in a festschrift dedicated to a most orthodox gentleman. In seventy three pages, he got to the heart of the book—somewhere.

Wilville left his pulpit and presbytery under a cloud. He forsook his literary career and his preaching calling. For years, he seemed to have disappeared off the map. The last known reference to him was as follows: In a small community, a quiet man was having lunch with the pastor of the community church. The quiet man confessed to having changed his name years ago from Wilville to Illwill. “Wilville?” the pastor said, “Hmm. When I was in college, I read a novel written by a man with that name. It led to my conversion to Christ. That’s why I became a preacher.”

The Reformation—RIP?

The power of the courts is an ongoing topic of controversy and interest. All sides agree that great issues are at stake. Mark Levin’s recent book Men in Black is subtitled “How the Supreme Court is Destroying America.” Liberal Democrats, while not agreeing with Levin’s book, certainly see President Bush’s judicial nominees as threats to their vision of America. In fact, they are willing to shut down the government rather than bring these nominations to a vote. (Liberals willing to shut down the government?)

There is much historical and constitutional debate over the power of the courts. But beyond the issue of power is the issue of influence. Even more important is the unintended influence of the courts. In the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, the Supreme Court overturned centuries of legal prohibitions against the abortion of infants. It may be that Roe v. Wade will mark the ending of the Protestant Reformation that began in 1517.

For Protestant and Reformed Christians, the Reformation is a glorious time of Christian history. The boldness and convictions of Martin Luther continue to inspire the faithful. I love both the 1953 movie titled “Luther” and the more recent 2004 film version. Here I Stand by Roland Bainton remains one of my all time favorite books. Luther’s words, courage, and convictions continue to inspire many believers. And Luther was not alone. The age with brimming with theological geniuses, like John Calvin, Martin Bucer, John Knox, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer. These men not only changed Europe in the 16th century, but they shaped the theology of both America’s early history and my own spiritual awakening.

Roman Catholicism throughout the Middle Ages was rich and complex in its transformation of European culture. But by the 1500s, indulgences, relics, the sale of church offices, and the corruption of the clergy were wrecking the Faith. In spite of the great works and writings of theologians, poets, and scholars, the drift of much church practice by Luther’s time was sharply downward. Internal reforms were inadequate: Erasmus is the prime example of a brilliant man who pointed out the abuses, but was powerless to effect internal reformation. Luther initially sought to cleanse the church through academic debate and parish preaching. He hoped his talking points—posted on the church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517—would lead to productive debates within the scholarly community. From there, perhaps, the process of enlightenment and theological purification would seep throughout the church. But God used Luther as a catalyst that divided Christendom and put the Scriptural doctrines of grace at the forefront of the times. God turned an academician into a warrior.

Calvin, even more than Luther, sought the quiet life of the scholar. From his studies of the ancient thinkers like Seneca, he turned to the study of theology. Instead of granting him a quiet nook in a library, God placed him right in the middle of a culture war in the thriving city of Geneva, Switzerland. The Catholic establishment had been overturned, but rival factions pitted a Biblical Christian commonwealth against a libertine ‘blue state’ mindset. Only the intellectual and spiritual force of Calvin was able to tilt the battle firmly toward the Christian side. In England, theologians and scholars grappled with having to weave reformational theology into the political pragmatism and marital roller coaster of Henry VIII. In Scotland, more political and theological issues converged in the efforts of John Knox and others to remove or control a despotic Catholic queen, Mary Stuart.

In time, these issues continued to roil all of Europe, but especially in the northern countries. The theological upheavals of Europe during the 1500s provided much of the motivation for the new world migrations of the 1600s. Reformed Christians formed the bulk of the population that settled the shores of the English colonies in North America. Theological studies led to ecclesiastical and political convictions that were largely theoretical in the European setting. The newly cleared settlements in North America proved an ample proving ground for the ideas of the Reformation that animated and inspired the early colonists. David Hall’s magisterial book, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding, amply documents this story.

The city on a hill that became America was strongly Protestant and Calvinistic. In time, the vision broadened to allow for greater freedom for Catholics and others to practice their beliefs. Still, Protestant and Catholic hostilities and suspicions remained in the history of American. Governor Al Smith of New York not only lost the presidency in 1928, but also lost portions of the traditionally Democrat solid South in that election due to his Catholicism. In 1960, John F. Kennedy eased the concerns of Protestants only after he promised a gathering of Baptists in Texas that his Catholic faith would not intrude upon his political activities. (Unfortunately, this campaign promise was fulfilled completely.)

Efforts have been made between Protestants and Catholics to mend or overlook differences. The ecumenical movement sought unity at the expense of doctrinal differences, but the movement cast aside all vital doctrines in favor of unity. Neither Protestants of conviction or devout Catholics could tolerate that. Every effort to say that there are no real differences between the Catholic and Protestant theology, worship, and worldviews betrays convictions on both sides. Attempts have been made to promise not to proselytize each other’s congregations, but again that expectation for people who believe that truth exists is unrealistic.

Two things have become clear over time. The religious wars of the 1600s that convulsed Europe were not exactly the greatest witness to Christian virtues of love and longsuffering, and any theological latitudarianism that blurs or denies the Reformation impulses is unacceptable. And then out of nowhere, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in start ending the rift.

Much of the conflict of the Reformation hinged on the importance of the body of Christ. The term, the body of Christ, can be used to mean the actual body of Christ or His church. The Reformation battled over both. Was the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper the literal body of Christ offered up again and again as signified in the Roman Mass? Or was it a memorial and means of grace pointing to the once-for-all-time complete work of Christ as emphasized by the Protestants? (This is an over-simplification, since Protestants began the process of infinite divisions over doctrine in their disputes over the sacraments.) Likewise, was the body of Christ, meaning the church, that organization represented by the pope as Christ’s representative on earth? Or was the body of Christ truly represented by assemblies of believers who faithfully ministered the Word, sacraments, and discipline?

Books and pamphlets poured forth on all sides of the issues. Kings raised banners and called together armies to enforce conformity and ward off heretics. Parliaments debated theology. Merchants packed religious tracts in shipments of fish and beer. Bible verses were quoted; church fathers were cited; and swords were brandished. It was of such grandeur and strife of the Reformation that one can apply W.B. Yeats’ phrase “and a terrible beauty was born.” Nearly five hundred years later, it is hard for a Bible totin’ Calvinist to minimize the price paid for our theological heritage. But between 1517 and 1973, a lot of things changed.

Catholics and Protestants believed the body of Christ was important—in whatever sense the term was used. Then in the 1800s, a secular humanist worldview emerged out of the darker forces of the Enlightenment and became manifest with the advent of Darwinian naturalism. Every ideology it spawned, whether nihilism, communism, or higher critical theology, shared a hatred and an antithesis toward historic Christianity. Modernity rejected the Protestant affirmation of the authority of Scripture, but it also rejected the Catholic affirmation of the authority of the church. Creedal Christianity, absolute truth, doctrinal standards, and the like were all rejected by the spirit of the modern age. God was, in the paradigms of the moderns, either dead or irrelevant or unknowable or as much a product of chance and change as we were. As has been frequently said, philosophers rejected belief in God in the 19th century and then rejected belief in man in the 20th. On both counts, the modern unbelieving mindset rejected the incarnate God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. The formulations of Nicea and Chalcedon were the mythological equivalents of the rulings of Zeus and the pantheon of Greek gods on Mount Olympus.

The modern age moved from rejecting belief in God to rejecting the historic Jesus to rejecting the infant in the womb. The old philosophical question of the meaning of life was suddenly answered: Life begins when the Supreme Court says it begins and it exists at the whim and fancy of the court. So the safety and inviolability of the womb was violated. A mother-to-be became an arbiter of life or death. Personal convenience replaced motherly obligations. “I’m going to be a mother” was replaced with “My freedom is threatened.” Less often noticed was the destruction of the father’s role. The traditional leader and defender of the family had no say in the destruction of his offspring before birth. In time, even grandparents were removed when parental notification of a girl’s abortion was denied.

From fighting over the body of Christ to fighting for the bodies of infants, Catholics and Protestants have been reminded of common beliefs. The world changed when a baby was born in Bethlehem. If Jesus was both God and man, then issues of human life and of truth and morality must all be referenced around His revelation in Word and deed. If He were simply man, then our philosophy classes can resume the question of whether our lives have any meaning or not. But if He is God, then both Catholic and Protestant is obliged to hear and follow Him. Despite a host of differences on other issues, Catholics and Bible-believing Protestants stand together on the doctrine of the Incarnation. Hence, Jesus called upon His followers in 1973 to stand together for the truth.

Already the Left is redefining the late Pope John Paul II, just as the Left redefined the late President Reagan. Liberals study history not to learn what happened in the past, but as a tool for promoting a future agenda. Dogmatism with a congenial personality and a winning smile may not win your enemies over while you are alive, but those characteristics will enable them to redefine you after you are gone. If only, we are told, Joseph Ratzinger could be as open to the times as was John Paul II; if only, President Bush could be a statesman like Reagan; if only Paul could echo the true spirit of Jesus.

The humanists, the relativists, the merchants of death, the haters of tradition, and the enemies of Christ all have need to worry. Fragmentation has been the miserable hallmark of Protestantism. We Calvinists are often the worst promoters of ‘divide instead of conquer.’ Indifference and unbelief have captured vast segments of the Catholic Church. Revival in both camps is still needed and true reformation of both theologies is ever to prayed for. Real substantial doctrinal issues will divide us for the morning hours each Sunday. But the times seem to point to greater unity on common social issues. All this bodes ill for the city of man and revives hope for the City of God. We might have a bit of a cause for some cautious, long-term optimism.