1. On my birthday last month, I picked up a sale copy of Bernard Cornwell's novel The Last Kingdom. This is a graphic and engaging account of a young boy, named Uhtred, who is captured by the Danes during the time of King Alfred the soon-to-be, but not quite yet Great. Uhtred despises Alfred's Christianity, but because of his own heritage and desire to reclaim his father's lands, he escapes from the Danes and fights for Alfred's side. In spite of the narrator's lack of Christian character, the book clearly pits the pagan worldview against the Christian culture that Alfred is supporting. This book does a fine job of portraying the nastiness of paganism and the brutality of Medieval warfare. I noticed the other day that the sequel, titled The Pale Horseman, is out. I don't know if I can wait until I find it on a sale table.
2. On that same sale table, I picked up a book called Happy Days are Here Again by Stephen Neal. This book covers the 1932 Democratic convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. His nomination was by no means certain. History is filled with contingencies and might-have-beens. Twentieth century political history is fascinating to me. The trivia is interesting and the way ideas and politics work is incredible. By the way, FDR's theme song was originally "Anchors Away," which harkened back to his days as assistant secretary of the navy. The song sounded too much like a dirge, so someone substituted the song "Happy Days are Here Again," which became the theme song of the Democratic party. And supporters of various Southern candidates in 1932 saw to it that "Dixie" was played at the convention.
3. In my rhetoric class I am teaching through Augustine's On Christian Teaching. This book is a gem. Augustine is far from being a totally reliable theologian and guide, for he often goes far astray in both interpretation of Scripture and application. But he hits enough homeruns to justify keeping him always on the starting lineup. For example, in book II of On Christian Teaching, he says, "A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities...."
4. I am also trudging through a new biography of Augustine by James J. O'Donnel. I am disconcerted by the author's insistence on referring to God as god and by other things in his style. This book will require quite a bit of patience.
5. I figure less patience will be needed to read Peter Ackroyd's biography of Chaucer. I started the book last night after having failed at reading it a few months ago. We are just starting to read The Canterbury Tales in my Humanities class, so I think I can stick with the Chaucer biography this time. We are using the Mark Wright translation of Chaucer in class, but I hope the class and I can take advantage of reading at least some of the Tales and "Prologue" in the original. I think all pastors and church leaders should read The Canterbury Tales in order to know what human nature is like. Then we can better understand the man in the pew and the man in the mirror.
6. I am about half-way through The Waters Under the Earth by Robert Siegel (published by Canon Press). This is a fine collection of modern poetry written by a Christian.
7. I have just begun a Sunday school class using Ralph Smith's book Trinity and Reality: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. The key strength of this book is its application of the doctrine of the Trinity to all of life. Usually we learn some verses proving the doctrine and then move on to other things. This book makes it clear that the Trinity is vital to all areas of Christian life and thought.
NEW ARRIVALS
1. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature by Erich Auerbach. This is no book to read while guffing down antihistamines. The copy I got is a new 50th anniversy edition of this work on literature. This hefty tome scares me.
2. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories by Christopher Booker. I am fascinated by the title and thesis of this book. On my classroom wall is a great quote by Willa Cather that says, "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before."
My teaching of literature and history and the Bible has confirmed in my mind the universality of the human experience.
3. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark. I could hardly wait for this book to arrive. I expect this book to lead to an old-fashioned revival camp meeting atmosphere in my mind. If it is anywhere nearly as good as the sub-title suggests, the secular world had better watch out.
4. A Place to Stand: The Word of God in the Life of Martin Luther by Gene Edward Veith. Dr. Veith is a great Christian thinker, and any book on Luther ought to be good. This book is one of the recent additions to the Cumberland House Leaders in Action series.
5. The latest in that same series is Glory and Honor: The Musical and Artistic Legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach by Gregory Wilbur. Gregory Wilbur's blog often contains his insights into music. This book promises to be most enjoyable and uplifting.
Now I need to get a pot of coffee brewing, kick off my shoes, and get to reading. Then again, I could tell about the books I am currently chomping at the bit to order, but not now.
The preacher of Ecclesiastes tells us, "Of the making of many books, there is no end." To which we add, "Of the buying and reading of many books, there is no end."
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The City of God
The famous beginning of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities says that it was the best of times and it was the worst of times. Centuries before that novel, Augustine wrote a tale of two cities that grew out of the worst of times.
The year 410 A.D. and the time following saw two terrible events occur. And these events occurred during a stage of the decline of the Roman Empire where bad news was common. For several centuries, the factors that would ultimately topple the empire were competing for future historical notice. Political instability was rampant; the violent death of an emperor was no longer newsworthy. Economic problems abounded. Roman currency was so debased that the Roman government would not accept it as tax revenues. Barbarian invasions had both destabilized the frontiers and had furnished the only new blood in the empire willing to man the armies. Paul had written of human depravity most graphically in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, in the first century. Confirming evidence of such depravity was to be found in the pre-conversion lives of the recipients of that letter. And apart from the Christian community, such behaviors still abounded.
Able emperors, such as Diocletian and Constantine, had found innovative ways to divide and rule the now unmanageable Roman world. Yet, as William Butler Yeats would write of a later era, the center could not hold. Officially Christian, but practically multicultural and pluralistic, Rome tottered and stumbled every step of the way to dissolution.
Then Alaric, a barbarian chieftain and leader of the Visigoths, showed up. Alaric and company represented the forces for cultural breakdown that plagued the empire. The Visigoths had broken through the eastern frontier over a century before. Romans found them inconvenient as invaders, but useful as purchasers of Roman commodities. When tensions developed in the Visigoth-held regions, Rome responded with its characteristic solution to political problems—it sent in its feared legions. Under the Emperor Valens, this Roman army stepped in and bystanders witnessed a military shellacking. Only this time, it was the Romans who were shellacked.
In 410 Alaric led his horde to the Italian peninsula down to the very gates of Rome. What Hannibal had failed to do after fifteen years of trying, Alaric accomplished quite handily. Roman city officials met with Alaric and warned him in effect that their big brother could beat him up; meaning, there were armies en route to protect Rome. Alaric yawned. Then they asked him what it would take to buy him a one-way ticket away from Rome. Alaric presented a list of demands that included immense amounts of gold, silver, silk cloth, and almost every other kind of valuable. “But what will we have left?” the city officials asked. “Your lives.” Alaric answered.
The city officials refused Alaric’s demands and so he and his Visigoth army enjoyed three days of good old-fashioned barbarian pillaging, plundering, and raping. All the things the city fathers had refused him, he now took, with interest. Buildings were destroyed, people were killed, and chaos reigned. (Amazingly, the Visigoths did respect church buildings and those hiding there for the Visigoths were, like the empire itself, nominally Christian.)
The sack of Rome in 410 was earth-shaking news. Rome had not been sacked or invaded in 800 years. Despite the fact that the political and economic center of the empire had long since been relocated, Rome was still centrally and symbolically the heart of the empire. People of all walks of life were shaken by the events. We can identify in part because of the shock we felt on September 11, 2001. The theologian Jerome said, “Who could have believed that Rome, built by conquest of the world, would fall? Who would have believed that the mother of many nations has turned to her grave?”
As devastating as was the news of the sack of Rome, there was something even worse. As people asked why and how this happened, a certain interpretation arose concerning the attack on Rome. It was what we now call the analysis or spin on the event. And as is common today, the spin on the story was worse than the story itself.
In our own time, our country has conquered and occupied two enemy regimes across the world from us in record time and with a record low casualty count. Whether or not we should have done that is another matter, but the fact is that the conquest and occupation has been quite astounding—unless you follow the spin and the interpretation given so often in the major media.
Likewise, in 1968 during the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the ground fighting changed from being a guerrilla-type war based on raiding parties and it became a full fledged war with full armies engaged against full armies, and the result was an overwhelming American victory in the fields, but that was followed by an interpretation or spin that destroyed the American cause.
The liberal media have often proved to be better theological thinkers than Christians, for they have recognized the truthfulness of Cornelius Van Til’s oft-repeated saying that there are no brute facts. All facts are interpreted facts.
What was this interpretation of the sack of Rome that was so devastating? After the events of 410, pagans attributed the sack of Rome to its failure to adhere to its historic gods and myths. Although the empire had been tolerant of Christianity for almost a century and Christianity had been the official religion for a little over 30 years, paganism remained a strong force. “Why did this happen?” everyone asked. “Simple,” answered the pagans, “Rome abandoned her former gods and goddesses who had protected her. It is the fault of the Christian God and the Christian people.”
From our perspective, the Roman idolaters look pretty silly. But all defunct idolatries look silly. To imagine that Jupiter and Juno were miffed at being snubbed may not give us an apologetic challenge, but we have to repent of our own fear of idols before we can truly understand. The empire was in the midst of its own culture war. There were not red states and blue states; there were no referendums on gay marriage; but there were cultural battles being waged all around the Mediterranean Sea.
Christians were stunned by the charges. Family gatherings were tense where pagan mothers-in-law berated Christian sons-in-laws for abandoning the old ways. Nominal and weak believers woke up on Sunday mornings and questioned whether to go to the house church down the street or the temple to Diana across town. “See, I told you so” became the rebuke of pagans to Christian converts. The gates of hell may not have been on the offensive, but they seemed strong and secure.
By 413, a North African Christian political leader, Marcellinus, recognized that something had to be done. Christian refugees were arriving on the shores of North Africa daily. This was a genuine Christian retreat. The church militant was becoming the church defeatist. All that was needed to ice the pietistic retreatist cake was some clever team writing The Left Behind series.
Marcellinus appealed to the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa to refute the charges of heresy. That bishop, Aurelius Augustinius or as we know him, St. Augustine, got up from his sickbed, went to his study, and began dashing off a tract to answer the pagans.
Thirteen years later, the completed massive tome hit the shelves of the local Scrolls-a-Millions. Titled De Civitate Dei or The City of God, this book laid the vital foundations for subsequent centuries of Christian scholarship, philosophy, apologetics, and theology. It established clearly a Christian view of history, and like all historical paradigms, it provided a vision for future Christian civilization.
More than any other book of its time or since, The City of God signaled the end of the ancient world and the beginning of that new frontier era now known as the Medieval period. More than any other book, it made clear that the central meaning of history was to be found in the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of man, whether that man was in Rome or Paris or London or Washington. More than any other book, this book defined the difference in the only two ways that life exists here in this world: Life is either in covenant with the true and the living Triune God or it is in rebellion against that same God. More than any other book, this book showed the utter bankruptcy of the pagan worldview, which offered no happiness or blessings to people either in this world or the world to come. More than any other book, this book, showed the blessings of being the covenant people of God.
Augustine devoted the first ten books or portions of The City of God to a devastating and informed critique of pagan mythology and philosophy. Combing through the histories, the beliefs, and the fruits of paganism, Augustine traced the corruptions to their very sources. He studied and quoted extensively from the best historian on paganism, a man named Varro. He also went to the philosopher he considered the best of the lot, Plato. Like a young seminarian right out of a Van Tilian apologetic class, he turned his intellectual flamethrowers to the contradictions and incoherencies of the world of pagan thought.
Christians before and after Augustine have grappled with the question, “What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens?” However one answers that question, some like Paul in his day and Augustine in his, have to march right into the middle of Athens, right past the idols, and declare the idol-toppling truth. In his powerful critique of the enemy’s worldview, Augustine not only taught readers in his day to rest assured in the bankruptcy of Christianity’s opponents, he also taught future generations how to battle its own demons. G. K. Chesterton’s confidence in shrugging off Darwinism and other heresies echoes Augustine. C.S. Lewis’ certainty of the vindication of God in the dock reminds us of Augustine. Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is a 20th century application of Augustine’s methods. The critiques of modern philosophies and theologies found in the works of Rushdoony, Schaeffer, Van Til, and Schlossberg are updated versions of Augustine. Christopher Dawson simply applied Augustine’s historiography to European history. Gregg Singer applied Augustine’s precepts to American history. The works of Phillip Johnson and Nancy Pearcey, as well as the older works of Henry Morris, in answer to the Darwinian scientific worldview follow the model of Augustine.
After shredding the pagans for ten books, Augustine turned his attention to constructing a Christian view of God, the world, man, history, and reality. Well trained in rhetoric and philosophy, Augustine did not found his worldview on the fruits of his well-trained reason. Instead, Augustine takes the reader step-by-step through the Bible. In the Bible is found the precepts, the examples, and the mandates for a Christian culture. In those pivotal doctrines of creation, the fall, and redemptive history, the patterns for building an earthly city with eternal foundations are found. Like the great theologians who would follow in his footsteps, Augustine did theology by mining the text of Scripture.
Of course, Augustine stumbled over the currents and influences of his time. He could not transcend Greek philosophy or Latin culture. His theology is tainted at points by the retreatist and ascetic aspects of much of the early church. Hence, Augustine is not the man to go to for directions for intimacy in marriage. Sometimes, he made poor applications or weird interpretations of Scripture. But mistakes and missteps in theology are readily correctable if Scripture is the foundation for theology. It is a self-renewing, self-correcting epistemology. So even when Augustine was wrong, he was right, for he kept pointing to the Bible as the source of truth.
The fall of the Roman Empire is now the stuff of history and occasionally movies. The Roman religions and myths are long since reduced to trivial pursuit questions. The Visigoth threat to Europe is long gone. North Africa has long since ceased to be a center of Christian thinking. The crisis of 410 is forgotten, but Augustine’s City of God lives on. It is more relevant to our own culture wars than are the latest best sellers. It is both a model for us and instruction to us. A child saying, “Tolle lege” or "Take it and read it" prompted Augustine’s conversion. We can do no better than follow that advice with The City of God.
The year 410 A.D. and the time following saw two terrible events occur. And these events occurred during a stage of the decline of the Roman Empire where bad news was common. For several centuries, the factors that would ultimately topple the empire were competing for future historical notice. Political instability was rampant; the violent death of an emperor was no longer newsworthy. Economic problems abounded. Roman currency was so debased that the Roman government would not accept it as tax revenues. Barbarian invasions had both destabilized the frontiers and had furnished the only new blood in the empire willing to man the armies. Paul had written of human depravity most graphically in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, in the first century. Confirming evidence of such depravity was to be found in the pre-conversion lives of the recipients of that letter. And apart from the Christian community, such behaviors still abounded.
Able emperors, such as Diocletian and Constantine, had found innovative ways to divide and rule the now unmanageable Roman world. Yet, as William Butler Yeats would write of a later era, the center could not hold. Officially Christian, but practically multicultural and pluralistic, Rome tottered and stumbled every step of the way to dissolution.
Then Alaric, a barbarian chieftain and leader of the Visigoths, showed up. Alaric and company represented the forces for cultural breakdown that plagued the empire. The Visigoths had broken through the eastern frontier over a century before. Romans found them inconvenient as invaders, but useful as purchasers of Roman commodities. When tensions developed in the Visigoth-held regions, Rome responded with its characteristic solution to political problems—it sent in its feared legions. Under the Emperor Valens, this Roman army stepped in and bystanders witnessed a military shellacking. Only this time, it was the Romans who were shellacked.
In 410 Alaric led his horde to the Italian peninsula down to the very gates of Rome. What Hannibal had failed to do after fifteen years of trying, Alaric accomplished quite handily. Roman city officials met with Alaric and warned him in effect that their big brother could beat him up; meaning, there were armies en route to protect Rome. Alaric yawned. Then they asked him what it would take to buy him a one-way ticket away from Rome. Alaric presented a list of demands that included immense amounts of gold, silver, silk cloth, and almost every other kind of valuable. “But what will we have left?” the city officials asked. “Your lives.” Alaric answered.
The city officials refused Alaric’s demands and so he and his Visigoth army enjoyed three days of good old-fashioned barbarian pillaging, plundering, and raping. All the things the city fathers had refused him, he now took, with interest. Buildings were destroyed, people were killed, and chaos reigned. (Amazingly, the Visigoths did respect church buildings and those hiding there for the Visigoths were, like the empire itself, nominally Christian.)
The sack of Rome in 410 was earth-shaking news. Rome had not been sacked or invaded in 800 years. Despite the fact that the political and economic center of the empire had long since been relocated, Rome was still centrally and symbolically the heart of the empire. People of all walks of life were shaken by the events. We can identify in part because of the shock we felt on September 11, 2001. The theologian Jerome said, “Who could have believed that Rome, built by conquest of the world, would fall? Who would have believed that the mother of many nations has turned to her grave?”
As devastating as was the news of the sack of Rome, there was something even worse. As people asked why and how this happened, a certain interpretation arose concerning the attack on Rome. It was what we now call the analysis or spin on the event. And as is common today, the spin on the story was worse than the story itself.
In our own time, our country has conquered and occupied two enemy regimes across the world from us in record time and with a record low casualty count. Whether or not we should have done that is another matter, but the fact is that the conquest and occupation has been quite astounding—unless you follow the spin and the interpretation given so often in the major media.
Likewise, in 1968 during the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the ground fighting changed from being a guerrilla-type war based on raiding parties and it became a full fledged war with full armies engaged against full armies, and the result was an overwhelming American victory in the fields, but that was followed by an interpretation or spin that destroyed the American cause.
The liberal media have often proved to be better theological thinkers than Christians, for they have recognized the truthfulness of Cornelius Van Til’s oft-repeated saying that there are no brute facts. All facts are interpreted facts.
What was this interpretation of the sack of Rome that was so devastating? After the events of 410, pagans attributed the sack of Rome to its failure to adhere to its historic gods and myths. Although the empire had been tolerant of Christianity for almost a century and Christianity had been the official religion for a little over 30 years, paganism remained a strong force. “Why did this happen?” everyone asked. “Simple,” answered the pagans, “Rome abandoned her former gods and goddesses who had protected her. It is the fault of the Christian God and the Christian people.”
From our perspective, the Roman idolaters look pretty silly. But all defunct idolatries look silly. To imagine that Jupiter and Juno were miffed at being snubbed may not give us an apologetic challenge, but we have to repent of our own fear of idols before we can truly understand. The empire was in the midst of its own culture war. There were not red states and blue states; there were no referendums on gay marriage; but there were cultural battles being waged all around the Mediterranean Sea.
Christians were stunned by the charges. Family gatherings were tense where pagan mothers-in-law berated Christian sons-in-laws for abandoning the old ways. Nominal and weak believers woke up on Sunday mornings and questioned whether to go to the house church down the street or the temple to Diana across town. “See, I told you so” became the rebuke of pagans to Christian converts. The gates of hell may not have been on the offensive, but they seemed strong and secure.
By 413, a North African Christian political leader, Marcellinus, recognized that something had to be done. Christian refugees were arriving on the shores of North Africa daily. This was a genuine Christian retreat. The church militant was becoming the church defeatist. All that was needed to ice the pietistic retreatist cake was some clever team writing The Left Behind series.
Marcellinus appealed to the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa to refute the charges of heresy. That bishop, Aurelius Augustinius or as we know him, St. Augustine, got up from his sickbed, went to his study, and began dashing off a tract to answer the pagans.
Thirteen years later, the completed massive tome hit the shelves of the local Scrolls-a-Millions. Titled De Civitate Dei or The City of God, this book laid the vital foundations for subsequent centuries of Christian scholarship, philosophy, apologetics, and theology. It established clearly a Christian view of history, and like all historical paradigms, it provided a vision for future Christian civilization.
More than any other book of its time or since, The City of God signaled the end of the ancient world and the beginning of that new frontier era now known as the Medieval period. More than any other book, it made clear that the central meaning of history was to be found in the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of man, whether that man was in Rome or Paris or London or Washington. More than any other book, this book defined the difference in the only two ways that life exists here in this world: Life is either in covenant with the true and the living Triune God or it is in rebellion against that same God. More than any other book, this book showed the utter bankruptcy of the pagan worldview, which offered no happiness or blessings to people either in this world or the world to come. More than any other book, this book, showed the blessings of being the covenant people of God.
Augustine devoted the first ten books or portions of The City of God to a devastating and informed critique of pagan mythology and philosophy. Combing through the histories, the beliefs, and the fruits of paganism, Augustine traced the corruptions to their very sources. He studied and quoted extensively from the best historian on paganism, a man named Varro. He also went to the philosopher he considered the best of the lot, Plato. Like a young seminarian right out of a Van Tilian apologetic class, he turned his intellectual flamethrowers to the contradictions and incoherencies of the world of pagan thought.
Christians before and after Augustine have grappled with the question, “What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens?” However one answers that question, some like Paul in his day and Augustine in his, have to march right into the middle of Athens, right past the idols, and declare the idol-toppling truth. In his powerful critique of the enemy’s worldview, Augustine not only taught readers in his day to rest assured in the bankruptcy of Christianity’s opponents, he also taught future generations how to battle its own demons. G. K. Chesterton’s confidence in shrugging off Darwinism and other heresies echoes Augustine. C.S. Lewis’ certainty of the vindication of God in the dock reminds us of Augustine. Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is a 20th century application of Augustine’s methods. The critiques of modern philosophies and theologies found in the works of Rushdoony, Schaeffer, Van Til, and Schlossberg are updated versions of Augustine. Christopher Dawson simply applied Augustine’s historiography to European history. Gregg Singer applied Augustine’s precepts to American history. The works of Phillip Johnson and Nancy Pearcey, as well as the older works of Henry Morris, in answer to the Darwinian scientific worldview follow the model of Augustine.
After shredding the pagans for ten books, Augustine turned his attention to constructing a Christian view of God, the world, man, history, and reality. Well trained in rhetoric and philosophy, Augustine did not found his worldview on the fruits of his well-trained reason. Instead, Augustine takes the reader step-by-step through the Bible. In the Bible is found the precepts, the examples, and the mandates for a Christian culture. In those pivotal doctrines of creation, the fall, and redemptive history, the patterns for building an earthly city with eternal foundations are found. Like the great theologians who would follow in his footsteps, Augustine did theology by mining the text of Scripture.
Of course, Augustine stumbled over the currents and influences of his time. He could not transcend Greek philosophy or Latin culture. His theology is tainted at points by the retreatist and ascetic aspects of much of the early church. Hence, Augustine is not the man to go to for directions for intimacy in marriage. Sometimes, he made poor applications or weird interpretations of Scripture. But mistakes and missteps in theology are readily correctable if Scripture is the foundation for theology. It is a self-renewing, self-correcting epistemology. So even when Augustine was wrong, he was right, for he kept pointing to the Bible as the source of truth.
The fall of the Roman Empire is now the stuff of history and occasionally movies. The Roman religions and myths are long since reduced to trivial pursuit questions. The Visigoth threat to Europe is long gone. North Africa has long since ceased to be a center of Christian thinking. The crisis of 410 is forgotten, but Augustine’s City of God lives on. It is more relevant to our own culture wars than are the latest best sellers. It is both a model for us and instruction to us. A child saying, “Tolle lege” or "Take it and read it" prompted Augustine’s conversion. We can do no better than follow that advice with The City of God.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
General Robert E. Lee’s Last Years
Once great, now broken, stumbling, confused,
Raggedly crawling to Appomattox.
Bloodstained and shoeless, gnawing hunger pains,
Empty stares, broken ranks, and tattered flags:
Lee’s dying army of Northern Virginia.
Past victories, dim and buried with men
From the privates to generals, now ghosts
Who tell the living dead what lies ahead.
Who dreams now of the Cause that’s soaked in blood?
Supplies, guns, food–“Oh, for fresh corn”–new life–
All just ahead–“We’ll raise the Rebel yell!”
But no–Eden’s garden’s now full of snakes;
All here is Valley Forge, with no Yorktown.
Winter April in the night of noonday;
Smoldering Richmond fading to the East;
To the West, the Valley of life, now dead.
The South widowed, orphaned, dead and buried.
Slowly, a horse–white or pale?–walking slow–
The rider, our Moses, arms hanging down,
(Joshua, dead, from wounds at Chancellorsville)
A pillar of gray, the broken voice speaks,
“It is over.” Stunned men stare in silence,
Then one shouts aloud, “Give us one more fight!”
The warrior captain has offered his sword,
The cavalry will plow, homes be restored.
Some without arms, legs, but born-again souls,
Will journey home past time and land ruined
To tearful wives, mothers, children unknown
To a life of battle dreams, day labors,
Memories of the dead–silent stares.
But what of Lee? Where will the leader go?
Arlington, captured, defiled, no home;
Mary, crippled, confined, hands pulling thread,
A daughter dead, soldier sons still living.
A heart defeated, dying, full of pain
Yearning for the grave yet five years away--
Where shall the old, defeated soldier go?
Shall northern chains bind him their captive prize?
Citizenship lost, country lost, hope lost,
The humble and proud Lee looks to his God
Whose slow providence has stricken him down.
Patiently God gives another army,
Some young, some veterans, empty-sleeved,
Armed with books, formed in ranks in classrooms.
A chapel here for prayer, not brush arbor.
Once again General Lee is in command,
Till commanded to abandon this earth,
To “strike the tent,” bow the knee, sing with praise,
Join the main force gathered around the throne,
Not confederacy, but monarchy,
Of the glorious sovereign heavenly king.
A general once, then defeated, then
A teacher–for year after year and more–
Today, we, his students, who now living–
Wanting to be like him, failing the test,
But striving, so that someday, at some point,
Charging across another field, we’ll break,
Crumpling and folding, some blue union line.
Raggedly crawling to Appomattox.
Bloodstained and shoeless, gnawing hunger pains,
Empty stares, broken ranks, and tattered flags:
Lee’s dying army of Northern Virginia.
Past victories, dim and buried with men
From the privates to generals, now ghosts
Who tell the living dead what lies ahead.
Who dreams now of the Cause that’s soaked in blood?
Supplies, guns, food–“Oh, for fresh corn”–new life–
All just ahead–“We’ll raise the Rebel yell!”
But no–Eden’s garden’s now full of snakes;
All here is Valley Forge, with no Yorktown.
Winter April in the night of noonday;
Smoldering Richmond fading to the East;
To the West, the Valley of life, now dead.
The South widowed, orphaned, dead and buried.
Slowly, a horse–white or pale?–walking slow–
The rider, our Moses, arms hanging down,
(Joshua, dead, from wounds at Chancellorsville)
A pillar of gray, the broken voice speaks,
“It is over.” Stunned men stare in silence,
Then one shouts aloud, “Give us one more fight!”
The warrior captain has offered his sword,
The cavalry will plow, homes be restored.
Some without arms, legs, but born-again souls,
Will journey home past time and land ruined
To tearful wives, mothers, children unknown
To a life of battle dreams, day labors,
Memories of the dead–silent stares.
But what of Lee? Where will the leader go?
Arlington, captured, defiled, no home;
Mary, crippled, confined, hands pulling thread,
A daughter dead, soldier sons still living.
A heart defeated, dying, full of pain
Yearning for the grave yet five years away--
Where shall the old, defeated soldier go?
Shall northern chains bind him their captive prize?
Citizenship lost, country lost, hope lost,
The humble and proud Lee looks to his God
Whose slow providence has stricken him down.
Patiently God gives another army,
Some young, some veterans, empty-sleeved,
Armed with books, formed in ranks in classrooms.
A chapel here for prayer, not brush arbor.
Once again General Lee is in command,
Till commanded to abandon this earth,
To “strike the tent,” bow the knee, sing with praise,
Join the main force gathered around the throne,
Not confederacy, but monarchy,
Of the glorious sovereign heavenly king.
A general once, then defeated, then
A teacher–for year after year and more–
Today, we, his students, who now living–
Wanting to be like him, failing the test,
But striving, so that someday, at some point,
Charging across another field, we’ll break,
Crumpling and folding, some blue union line.
Monday, January 02, 2006
BEST BOOKS OF 2005!
At the end of each year, I look back over the past year’s readings and pick my top ten books. Such a list is autobiographical. It says more about me than about the books. Each book we read meets us at a particular juncture in life. Our past experiences, our current circumstances, and our circle of friends enhance and interpret the reading experience. For this reason, really good books can be reread with each experience bringing new insight into and away from the book.
The book itself does not change, but the reader changes. For the Christian, this is part of his sanctification. Sanctification, or growing in grace, should have these two aspects: Increase of love of God in the heart and increase of love of God in the mind. The first part is especially nurtured by our Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, and worship. Reading books of a practical theological nature supplement it. The broader Evangelical world has recognized this in its voracious appetite for such books as The Purpose Driven Life. The Reformed world has more traditionally found such nourishment in reading the Puritans and their many heirs.
Loving God with our minds can take the reader quite a few different directions. C.S. Lewis describes his own lack of devotion arising from books of devotion; instead of being uplifted by such books, he put himself with those who “find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.” Minus the pipe, I can identify with Lewis’ experience. But I have also found the imprint of God while reading history and literature. All of history is but systematic theology illustrated. At times, the lesson of history is how man inescapably reflects the image of God; far too often, history illustrates man’s sinfulness; always, it illustrates God’s providence. Literature is an avenue to Christian apologetics and aesthetics. Poetry and fiction either show forth Christian truths or show the hollowed out, hopeless despair of life separated from God.
This year I had a difficult time ranking my choices. As always, lots of good books I read did not get chosen. In some cases, the flaw was likely found in the reader. No one book stood out as the paradigm-shifting, worldview altering, mega-read. Many of the books read took me down somewhat familiar roads and showed me things I had missed. As Robert Frost once said, “They would not find me changed from him they knew, only more sure of all I thought was true.” So having now personally passed the half century mark, I walk the path ahead even more confirmed than ever before.
1st Place: Indirectly first place goes to Francis Schaeffer. Directly it goes to Total Truth—Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey. Mrs. Pearcey is among that vast throng of Christian writers and thinkers who either trekked to Europe and studied under the Schaeffer’s at L’Abri or experienced the same transformation back here in the states. (She was actually at L’Abri.) This book has three main points: 1. Most Christians are not trained to think theologically. 2. Darwinism is a pervasive, all-encompassing anti-Christian philosophy. 3. American evangelicalism stopped thinking theologically due to the Great Awakenings, leaving the intellectual world to be easily captured by Darwinism. This is a brilliant, yet most readable book. For those of us who cut our theological teeth on Schaeffer, Van Til, and Rushdoony, this is the book we now need to teach the younger generations. I hope to introduce this book into both classroom and Sunday school settings.
2nd Place: Each summer for the past several years, I tackle a fat Russian novel. This past June I began Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Summer activities and other books stalled the progress in Tolstoy. By August I had reached about page 300 and had finally sorted out the legion of major characters, their patronymics, and their titles. I was now reading more out of determination than interest. Then everything changed. I would pick up the hefty tome late at night and read at least a chapter to find out what Napoleon was plotting, if and when war was resuming, and who was marrying whom. Most of the chapters were five or less pages. I begin reading more and more until Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow was more dominating than household chores and homework from school. At long last, in October I finished the book. Why is this unwieldy anthology of war scenes and romances, interlaced with philosophical discourses, so great? Perhaps it is because the emotions, ideas, experiences, failures, and the like are common to all—whether one sees it in the Russian nobility of the early 1800s or of Americans in the early 21st century. All of life is a mysterious combination of providential circumstances and human choices. War and Peace is not as great as Anna Karenina, but it certainly a worthwhile read.
3rd Place: Some reading experiences are thoroughly enjoyable. But sometimes the experience is that mentioned in Ecclesiastes—knowledge leading to sorrow. From Darwin to Hitler—Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Richard Weikart is one of those books that produces sorrow. For some readers, this book produced anger, for the Darwinian faith is strongly entrenched in academia. To say that Hitler’s Third Reich was a result of Darwin’s scientific inquiries is quite controversial. To establish the claim, Dr. Weikart’s book is weighted down with documentation. No doubt many Darwinists cited in this book would have denounced Hitler’s Final Solution at all stages, but just as DNA can establish paternity, so can the consequences be traced to their paternal ideas. In this grim and depressing work, a joyful conclusion can yet be reached: The only hope for mankind is a Christian view of God and man.
4th Place: The Twilight of Atheism—The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath is a worthy companion volume to the book listed above. It is also a brilliant historical survey of atheism in Western Civilization. McGrath neatly juxtaposes atheism as the major philosophy in the time period between the French Revolution in 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. Now there were certainly atheists before and after those events, but it is during that period of a little over two centuries that an atheistic worldview gained dominance in modern thought. Key atheist thinkers like Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Percy Shelly, George Eliot, and Friedrich Nietzsche are discussed. Dr. McGrath also discusses his own pilgrimage from atheism to Christianity. As G. K. Chesterton so aptly pointed out, unbelief is simply unbelievable. A useful companion volume to this is The Drama of Atheistic Humanism by Henri DeLubac. This book is an older and more difficult work, but it too is especially helpful for understanding key European atheist philosophers, and it is especially useful for its discussion of Dostoevsky’s Christian answer to atheism.
5th Place: Sometimes in picking my top ten books, I cheat and put two books together. It really makes sense in this case. Fifth place goes to two great reads about President Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s War—The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism by Peter Schwiezer and Reagan’s Revolution—The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All by Craig Shirley cover two great triumphs of Ronald Reagan. Shirley’s book deals with Reagan’s failed attempt in 1976 to take the Republican Presidential nomination from incumbent President Gerald Ford. This book is a detailed narrative of political tidbits from that great spring and summer which I remember quite well. Reagan lost the nomination, but this campaign laid the groundwork for Reagan conservatives to take hold of the party. Without Reagan’s defeat in 1976, the Reagan Revolution that began in 1980 would likely not have happened. And without Reagan, the Cold War could easily have gone south in one of several directions. In short, the story continues to be told piece-by-piece of how brilliant Ronald Reagan was.
6th Place: The Roads to Modernity—The British, French, and American Enlightenment by Gertrude Himmelfarb is a brilliant book by a brilliant thinker. Now if you have a name like Gertrude Himmelfarb, you really need to be brilliant, and she is. The Enlightenment made the modern world. Since so much of Enlightenment thought was bad, it is easy to blame any and all modern ills on some aspect of Enlightenment thinking. But the same movement that produced Voltaire and Rousseau produced Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. And these same intellectual forces produced Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Witherspoon and the Founding Fathers of America. And this same movement produced Alexis de Tocqueville and the Wesleyan Revival. Dr. Himmelfarb credits America with accumulating the best components of the Enlightenment and blames France for accepting the world elements. This book paints with a broad brush, but the picture is quite well done.
7th Place: To End All Wars by Ernest Gordon is a most inspiring book about the faith and perseverance of British prisoners of war in World War II. Gordon, a Scotsman, was taken prisoner by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942. He and other soldiers were sent to work on the famous bridge over the River Kwai. Pierre Boulle’s novel The Bridge over the River Kwai and the classic movie by the same title give a powerful fictional account of what the prisoners endured. Gordon’s book gives the truer account. Again, it was the triumph of the Christian faith more than just British stiff upper lips that enabled the men to survive. The movie inspired by Gordon’s book, also called To End All Wars, is one of the best Christian movies ever made. Christian movie critic and author Brian Godawa did the screenplay for the movie. Read both books and watch both movies.
8th Place: Rallying the Really Human Things—The Moral Imagination in Politics, Literature, and Everyday Life by Vigen Guroian is a surprise choice to me. Guroian had several useful essays on Flannery O’Connor and G.K. Chesterton that I read in the early fall. In time, I began reading other portions of the book and became convinced that Guroian is a thinker and Christian theologian worthy of attention. Among the wide range of topics covered in this book are essays on John Chrysostom, Huxley’s Brave New World, Russell Kirk, fairy tales, nationalism, human rights, Christian marriage, college campus moral depravity, and the need for businessmen to read great literature. Guroian’s Orthodox Christianity and Armenian background provides some fresh perspectives on key issues. Just sample this one quote: “Every time the church baptizes a human being, a new ecclesial person is born in Christ’s likeness with the eternal marks of the church—wholeness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity—sealed in that person by the Spirit, inaugurating the kingdom anew.”
9th Place: The Cube and the Cathedral—Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel is a fairly short, but brilliant analysis of the cultural threat of our civilization today. Weigel is a Catholic thinker, best known for his biography of the late Pope John Paul II. Basically, Europe is post-Christian. The historic churches are too often empty; the nominal members are apostate. Having no historic creedal faith, they have no future expectations; hence, the European population is in decline. Never fear for numbers, however, for Muslims are migrating to Europe. America is in a different position. Weigel says that the U.S. is neither Christophobic or post-Christian. While we do have a blue state/red state cultural chasm, windows of opportunity remain open for us. So we Christians have lots to do here, and we need to pray for Europe.
10th Place: The events of 1776 stir my heart both as a Christian and an American. David McCullough’s book 1776 is a fine treatment of the year that began with the British evacuation of Boston, which was then followed by a long year largely consisting of American defeats and retreats. The Declaration of Independence defined the war’s objectives in the summer of 1776, but it was late December before such independence became a possibility. In late December, Washington crossed of the Delaware River and went on to sack the Hessian army at Trenton. Washington’s perseverance helped define his success as a military leader more than any other trait. McCullough is one of the best narrative historians of our time. I hope he completes more books.
More extensive book reviews are available on numbers 3, 6, and 10. I grappled with where to place yet another useful book—The City of God by a Christian theologian by the name of Augustine. It surpasses every book listed above in both influence, duration, and relevancy. Since November, my Humanities class and I have read and discussed the book. Augustine does not need my commendations; he is above and beyond this listing. In fact, most of the books listed above are the long-range indirect results of Augustine’s City of God. I plan in future essays to write about both Augustine and other worthwhile books that did not make this list.
The book itself does not change, but the reader changes. For the Christian, this is part of his sanctification. Sanctification, or growing in grace, should have these two aspects: Increase of love of God in the heart and increase of love of God in the mind. The first part is especially nurtured by our Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, and worship. Reading books of a practical theological nature supplement it. The broader Evangelical world has recognized this in its voracious appetite for such books as The Purpose Driven Life. The Reformed world has more traditionally found such nourishment in reading the Puritans and their many heirs.
Loving God with our minds can take the reader quite a few different directions. C.S. Lewis describes his own lack of devotion arising from books of devotion; instead of being uplifted by such books, he put himself with those who “find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.” Minus the pipe, I can identify with Lewis’ experience. But I have also found the imprint of God while reading history and literature. All of history is but systematic theology illustrated. At times, the lesson of history is how man inescapably reflects the image of God; far too often, history illustrates man’s sinfulness; always, it illustrates God’s providence. Literature is an avenue to Christian apologetics and aesthetics. Poetry and fiction either show forth Christian truths or show the hollowed out, hopeless despair of life separated from God.
This year I had a difficult time ranking my choices. As always, lots of good books I read did not get chosen. In some cases, the flaw was likely found in the reader. No one book stood out as the paradigm-shifting, worldview altering, mega-read. Many of the books read took me down somewhat familiar roads and showed me things I had missed. As Robert Frost once said, “They would not find me changed from him they knew, only more sure of all I thought was true.” So having now personally passed the half century mark, I walk the path ahead even more confirmed than ever before.
1st Place: Indirectly first place goes to Francis Schaeffer. Directly it goes to Total Truth—Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey. Mrs. Pearcey is among that vast throng of Christian writers and thinkers who either trekked to Europe and studied under the Schaeffer’s at L’Abri or experienced the same transformation back here in the states. (She was actually at L’Abri.) This book has three main points: 1. Most Christians are not trained to think theologically. 2. Darwinism is a pervasive, all-encompassing anti-Christian philosophy. 3. American evangelicalism stopped thinking theologically due to the Great Awakenings, leaving the intellectual world to be easily captured by Darwinism. This is a brilliant, yet most readable book. For those of us who cut our theological teeth on Schaeffer, Van Til, and Rushdoony, this is the book we now need to teach the younger generations. I hope to introduce this book into both classroom and Sunday school settings.
2nd Place: Each summer for the past several years, I tackle a fat Russian novel. This past June I began Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Summer activities and other books stalled the progress in Tolstoy. By August I had reached about page 300 and had finally sorted out the legion of major characters, their patronymics, and their titles. I was now reading more out of determination than interest. Then everything changed. I would pick up the hefty tome late at night and read at least a chapter to find out what Napoleon was plotting, if and when war was resuming, and who was marrying whom. Most of the chapters were five or less pages. I begin reading more and more until Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow was more dominating than household chores and homework from school. At long last, in October I finished the book. Why is this unwieldy anthology of war scenes and romances, interlaced with philosophical discourses, so great? Perhaps it is because the emotions, ideas, experiences, failures, and the like are common to all—whether one sees it in the Russian nobility of the early 1800s or of Americans in the early 21st century. All of life is a mysterious combination of providential circumstances and human choices. War and Peace is not as great as Anna Karenina, but it certainly a worthwhile read.
3rd Place: Some reading experiences are thoroughly enjoyable. But sometimes the experience is that mentioned in Ecclesiastes—knowledge leading to sorrow. From Darwin to Hitler—Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Richard Weikart is one of those books that produces sorrow. For some readers, this book produced anger, for the Darwinian faith is strongly entrenched in academia. To say that Hitler’s Third Reich was a result of Darwin’s scientific inquiries is quite controversial. To establish the claim, Dr. Weikart’s book is weighted down with documentation. No doubt many Darwinists cited in this book would have denounced Hitler’s Final Solution at all stages, but just as DNA can establish paternity, so can the consequences be traced to their paternal ideas. In this grim and depressing work, a joyful conclusion can yet be reached: The only hope for mankind is a Christian view of God and man.
4th Place: The Twilight of Atheism—The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath is a worthy companion volume to the book listed above. It is also a brilliant historical survey of atheism in Western Civilization. McGrath neatly juxtaposes atheism as the major philosophy in the time period between the French Revolution in 1789 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. Now there were certainly atheists before and after those events, but it is during that period of a little over two centuries that an atheistic worldview gained dominance in modern thought. Key atheist thinkers like Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Percy Shelly, George Eliot, and Friedrich Nietzsche are discussed. Dr. McGrath also discusses his own pilgrimage from atheism to Christianity. As G. K. Chesterton so aptly pointed out, unbelief is simply unbelievable. A useful companion volume to this is The Drama of Atheistic Humanism by Henri DeLubac. This book is an older and more difficult work, but it too is especially helpful for understanding key European atheist philosophers, and it is especially useful for its discussion of Dostoevsky’s Christian answer to atheism.
5th Place: Sometimes in picking my top ten books, I cheat and put two books together. It really makes sense in this case. Fifth place goes to two great reads about President Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s War—The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism by Peter Schwiezer and Reagan’s Revolution—The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All by Craig Shirley cover two great triumphs of Ronald Reagan. Shirley’s book deals with Reagan’s failed attempt in 1976 to take the Republican Presidential nomination from incumbent President Gerald Ford. This book is a detailed narrative of political tidbits from that great spring and summer which I remember quite well. Reagan lost the nomination, but this campaign laid the groundwork for Reagan conservatives to take hold of the party. Without Reagan’s defeat in 1976, the Reagan Revolution that began in 1980 would likely not have happened. And without Reagan, the Cold War could easily have gone south in one of several directions. In short, the story continues to be told piece-by-piece of how brilliant Ronald Reagan was.
6th Place: The Roads to Modernity—The British, French, and American Enlightenment by Gertrude Himmelfarb is a brilliant book by a brilliant thinker. Now if you have a name like Gertrude Himmelfarb, you really need to be brilliant, and she is. The Enlightenment made the modern world. Since so much of Enlightenment thought was bad, it is easy to blame any and all modern ills on some aspect of Enlightenment thinking. But the same movement that produced Voltaire and Rousseau produced Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. And these same intellectual forces produced Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Witherspoon and the Founding Fathers of America. And this same movement produced Alexis de Tocqueville and the Wesleyan Revival. Dr. Himmelfarb credits America with accumulating the best components of the Enlightenment and blames France for accepting the world elements. This book paints with a broad brush, but the picture is quite well done.
7th Place: To End All Wars by Ernest Gordon is a most inspiring book about the faith and perseverance of British prisoners of war in World War II. Gordon, a Scotsman, was taken prisoner by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942. He and other soldiers were sent to work on the famous bridge over the River Kwai. Pierre Boulle’s novel The Bridge over the River Kwai and the classic movie by the same title give a powerful fictional account of what the prisoners endured. Gordon’s book gives the truer account. Again, it was the triumph of the Christian faith more than just British stiff upper lips that enabled the men to survive. The movie inspired by Gordon’s book, also called To End All Wars, is one of the best Christian movies ever made. Christian movie critic and author Brian Godawa did the screenplay for the movie. Read both books and watch both movies.
8th Place: Rallying the Really Human Things—The Moral Imagination in Politics, Literature, and Everyday Life by Vigen Guroian is a surprise choice to me. Guroian had several useful essays on Flannery O’Connor and G.K. Chesterton that I read in the early fall. In time, I began reading other portions of the book and became convinced that Guroian is a thinker and Christian theologian worthy of attention. Among the wide range of topics covered in this book are essays on John Chrysostom, Huxley’s Brave New World, Russell Kirk, fairy tales, nationalism, human rights, Christian marriage, college campus moral depravity, and the need for businessmen to read great literature. Guroian’s Orthodox Christianity and Armenian background provides some fresh perspectives on key issues. Just sample this one quote: “Every time the church baptizes a human being, a new ecclesial person is born in Christ’s likeness with the eternal marks of the church—wholeness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity—sealed in that person by the Spirit, inaugurating the kingdom anew.”
9th Place: The Cube and the Cathedral—Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel is a fairly short, but brilliant analysis of the cultural threat of our civilization today. Weigel is a Catholic thinker, best known for his biography of the late Pope John Paul II. Basically, Europe is post-Christian. The historic churches are too often empty; the nominal members are apostate. Having no historic creedal faith, they have no future expectations; hence, the European population is in decline. Never fear for numbers, however, for Muslims are migrating to Europe. America is in a different position. Weigel says that the U.S. is neither Christophobic or post-Christian. While we do have a blue state/red state cultural chasm, windows of opportunity remain open for us. So we Christians have lots to do here, and we need to pray for Europe.
10th Place: The events of 1776 stir my heart both as a Christian and an American. David McCullough’s book 1776 is a fine treatment of the year that began with the British evacuation of Boston, which was then followed by a long year largely consisting of American defeats and retreats. The Declaration of Independence defined the war’s objectives in the summer of 1776, but it was late December before such independence became a possibility. In late December, Washington crossed of the Delaware River and went on to sack the Hessian army at Trenton. Washington’s perseverance helped define his success as a military leader more than any other trait. McCullough is one of the best narrative historians of our time. I hope he completes more books.
More extensive book reviews are available on numbers 3, 6, and 10. I grappled with where to place yet another useful book—The City of God by a Christian theologian by the name of Augustine. It surpasses every book listed above in both influence, duration, and relevancy. Since November, my Humanities class and I have read and discussed the book. Augustine does not need my commendations; he is above and beyond this listing. In fact, most of the books listed above are the long-range indirect results of Augustine’s City of God. I plan in future essays to write about both Augustine and other worthwhile books that did not make this list.
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