The Writer’s Sanity and Taste

John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 201:

“Sanity in a writer is merely this: However stupid he may be in his private life, he never cheats in writing. He never forgets that his audience is, at least ideally, as noble, generous, and tolerant as he is himself (or more so), and never forgets that he is writing about people, so that to turn characters to cartoons, to treat his characters as innately inferior to himself, to forget their reasons for being as they are, to treat them as brutes, is bad art. Sanity in a writer also involves taste. The true writer has a great advantage over most other people: He knows the great tradition of literature, which has always been on the cutting edge of morality, religion, and politics, to say nothing of social reform. He knows what the greatest literary minds of the past are proud to do and what they will not stoop to, and his knowledge informs his practice. He fits himself to the company he most respects and enjoys: the company of Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, and so forth. Their standards become, in some measure, his own. Pettiness, vulgarity, bad taste fall away from him automatically, and when he reads bad writers he notices their lapses of taste at once. He sees that they dwell on things Shakespeare would not have dwelled on, at his best, not because Shakespeare failed to notice them but because he saw their triviality. (Except to examine new techniques, or because of personal friendship, no serious apprentice should ever study second-rate writers).
To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one’s work may be dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. . . every writer should be aware that he might be read by the desperate, by people who might be persuaded toward life or death.”

This Is How Biblical Intertextuality Works, Too

John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 192–93:

“It is this quality of the novel, its built-in need to return and repeat, that forms the physical basis of the novel’s chief glory, its resonant close. . . . What rings and resounds at the end of a novel is not just physical, however. What moves us is not just that characters, images, and events get some form of recapitulation or recall: We are moved by the increasing connectedness of things, ultimately a connectedness of values. Coleridge pointed out, stirred to the observation by his interest in Hartleian psychology, that increasingly complex systems of association can give a literary work some of its power. When we encounter two things in close association, Hartley noticed, we tend to recall one when we encounter the other. Thus, for example, if one is standing in a drugstore when one first reads Shelley, the next time one goes to a drugstore one may think of the poet, and the next time one encounters a poem by Shelley one may get a faint whiff of Dial and bathsalts. The same thing happens when we read fiction. If the first time our hero meets a given character it occurs in a graveyard, the character’s next appearance will carry with it some residue of the graveyard setting.
The effect can be roughly illustrated this way. Let a represent a pair of bloody shoes, first encountered at the foot of a willow tree, b; let c equal an orphan home, first encountered in a thunderstorm, d; and let e represent a woman’s kiss, experienced on a train, f. If a (the bloody shoes) is mentioned later in the story, it draws with it a memory of the willow (b . . .). In the same way c produces [d] as an echo, and e produces [f]. . . . Compared to what actually happens in fiction, this . . . is simple and crude in the extreme . . . Even at the end of a short story, the power of an organized return of images, events, and characters can be considerable. Think of Joyce’s “The Dead.” In the closing moments of a novel the effect can be overwhelming.”

My own opinion now: I think the best novelists are in many respects copying what the biblical authors have done.

85 Year Old Rafts Across the Atlantic

From MSNBC:

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten — An 85-year-old British sailor who dreamed of crossing the Atlantic on a raft as a young boy has completed the journey in 66 days with three friends.

….

The raft, named “An-Tiki” after Thor Heyerdahl’s famous Kon-Tiki raft, was loaded with food including oranges, avocados, potatoes, cabbages and a pumpkin. Once the store-bought bread was consumed, sailing master David Hildred began making it from scratch in a small oven.

….

The raft was built with four water supply pipes nearly 40 feet long, and 14 cross pipes.

Seven pipes held the crew’s fresh water supply.

….

Halfway across the Atlantic, Smith celebrated his 85th birthday with a chocolate cake that his doctor, Andrew Bainbridge, cooked on board.

Read the whole thing.

The Turn to Jerusalem

On Sunday, April 3, it was my privilege to preach Mark 8 at Kenwood Baptist Church, “The Turn to Jerusalem.” To this point in Mark Jesus has been ministering in Jerusalem (Mark 1–7), but after Peter’s confession here in Mark 8, he sets his face toward Jerusalem and teaches his disciples what it means to follow him through chapter 10. Then Jesus will be in Jerusalem throughout Mark 11–16.

Maybe you’re familiar with the way Peter responded when Jesus predicted his death, but can you put yourself in Peter’s shoes? Raised on the hope that the promises to David in the Old Testament would be realized, that a king would arise from the line of David, that God would give him the victory, that he would reign from the river to the ends of the earth, that Israel would be delivered, Jerusalem exalted, nations streaming to Zion to learn Yahweh’s law, desert blooming like Eden, justice for the downtrodden, protection for the orphan and widow, those filthy Romans driven out of the holy land, and that imposter Herod receiving his due. Then not only are hopes realized as the line of David is seen to be intact, with a credible heir arising, this credible heir is a prophet and more: he knows the Torah, he communes with the Lord, he teaches with authority, the unclean spirits obey and flee, the sick are healed, and on top of all that, he starts blowing categories: first he commands the elements and they obey, calming a storm by the power of his voice, then he raises a little girl from the dead, feeds a multitude, and of all things, walks on water. You know he’s from the line of David. You’ve seen the mighty works. You are forced to conclude that even though the establishment is rejecting him, he has to be the Messiah.

How would you respond if he told you he was going to be killed.

You’ve seen the Romans kill people. It’s not the kind of thing people come back from. You’ve never seen anyone survive it. So yeah you heard him say he would rise from the dead, but do you have any precedent for that? Wouldn’t you be expecting triumph not defeat?

I know that you can put yourself in Peter’s shoes, because I know what we all expect to result from the gospel and our attempts to advance it. We expect people to understand that we’re bringing them good news. We expect people to see how reasonable the truth of what we believe is. We expect people to understand that we’re trying to do what’s good for them not what’s bad for them. We expect people to respond positively to us, and we expect success. We expect our churches to grow, our ministries to succeed, God’s name to be exalted in our lives, and people to be grateful for all the good that is coming about as a result of the gospel.

If you’d like to hear my attempt to exposit Mark 8, make these underlined words start talking.

Errors and Defects in Authors of Fiction

John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, discussing “Common Errors” authors make:

“Diction problems are usually symptomatic of defects in the character or education of the writer” (101).

“Let us now turn to three faults far graver than mere clumsiness–not faults of technique but faults of soul: sentimentality, frigidity, and mannerism. . . . Faults of soul, like faults of technique, can be corrected. In fact the main work a writing teacher does, and the main work the writer must do for himself, is bring about change in the writer’s basic character, helping to make him that ‘true Poet,’ as Milton said, without whom there can be no true Poem.

Sentimentality, in all its forms, is the attempt to get some effect without providing due cause. . . emotion or feeling that rings false, usually because achieved by some form of cheating or exaggeration. . . . no reader who’s experienced the power of real fiction will be pleased by it” (115–16).

“The fault Longinus identified as ‘frigidity’ occurs in fiction whenever the author reveals by some slip or self-regarding intrusion that he is less concerned about his characters than he ought to be–less concerned, that is, than any decent human being observing the situation would naturally be. . . . the writer has forgotten that his characters’ situation is serious; he’s responded to his own imagined scene with insufficient warmth, has allowed himself to get carried away . . ., and, momentarily forgetting the scene’s real interest . . . the writer snatches at (or settles for) a detail of, at best, trivial interest. . . The writer lacks the kind of passion all true artists possess. He lacks the nobility of spirit that enables a real writer to enter deeply into the feelings of imaginary characters (as he enters deeply into the feelings of real people). In a word, the writer is frigid” (117–18).

“Mannered writing is writing that continually distracts us from the fictional dream by stylistic tics that we cannot help associating, as we read, with the author’s wish to intrude himself, prove himself different from all other authors” (119).
“Whereas the frigid writer lacks strong feeling, and the sentimental writer applies feeling indiscriminately, the mannered writer feels more strongly about his own personality and ideas–his ego, which he therefore keeps before us by means of style–than he feels about any of his characters–in effect, all the rest of humanity” (120–21).

“Mannered writing, then–like sentimentality and frigidity–arises out of flawed character. In critical circles it is considered bad form to make connections between literary faults and bad character, but for the writing teacher such connections are impossible to miss, hence impossible to ignore. . . . To help the writer, since that is his job, the teacher must enable the writer to see–partly by showing him how the fiction betrays his distorted vision (as fiction, closely scrutinized, always will)–that his personal character is wanting” (121).

Releasing Today: Tim Challies’ “The Next Story”

Tim Challies can be counted on to shoot straight. His book reviews are valuable precisely because he’s not afraid to say that a book is terrible, and as he refuses to beat around the bush, he evaluates from a perspective of sound theology and biblical wisdom, loving discretion and insightful discernment. Tim’s first book, in fact, was on Discernment, and the one that released today is The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion. I’m grateful to have received an advanced reading copy, and I’m excited to commend this book to you. I need it. My family needs it. The people with whom I’m in covenant need it.

Do you need it? Consider these questions:

Do you catch yourself frittering moments away, distractedly clicking from one webpage tab to another, going from your email to your reader to other sites you frequent? Have you caught yourself compulsively checking email or twitter or facebook at every break in conversation or at the end of every paragraph you read? Have you felt a suspicion creeping around on the margin of your mind, warning you that new technologies are reshaping your daily life? Have you wondered what that implies about your friends and children? Do you feel a vague anxiety about whether to get the latest gadget? Is there something deeper, something under the surface, of which these questions are only symptoms? Or maybe you’ve concluded that all these newfangled developments are just evil, placing blame on technology rather than on the people who make use of it?

In The Next Story, Tim Challies serves all of us as we face these questions. This book applies the gospel to life in the digital age. Tim has read widely on what technology is, on how it affects us individually, and on how it has changed the water in our fishbowl. He’s not only done the research, he’s meditated on it in light of the Scriptures.

I’ve seen some claims that Tim does more describing than prescribing in this book, and while that is the case (he says so himself, in fact!), it does not mean that he offers no recommendations. In fact, it may be that the light touch with which he exposes idolatry strikes the mortal blow to it. By addressing the root issue. Tim’s tone isn’t that of the preacher shouting imperatives, but as he discusses the way that God’s good gift of technology is perverted when sinful hearts use it to worship money or sex or power or influence, as he explores the glory of un-mediated communion with God and other people, wisdom’s call can be heard in the street. Those with ears to hear are summoned to worship God and love the brethren, and they won’t need detailed prescriptions for applying wisdom and Christ-likeness to their own lives. They will be spurred to mortify the flesh, to renew their commitment to what matters and what is true, and to keep digital communication in its minor, supplemental role, a convenient tool but never a replacement for the face to face.

This book is theoretical, theological, and practical, and the fact that you’re reading this post proves that you live in the digital age. If you want to understand that reality, I know of no better book on the issue than The Next Story.

Is Fiction Christian? The English Language, Too?

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers:

“English, like most languages, is covertly male chauvinist. It is also, as the novelist Harold Brodkey points out, covertly Christian. Nearly all our most resonant words and images carry a trace of Neoplatonic Christianity. Even so innocent a word as ‘friend’ has overtones. in feudal times it meant one’s lord and protector; in Anglo-Saxon times it meant the opposite of ‘fiend.’ We can of course read a book about friends without ever consciously invoking the undercurrents of the word; but where the friendship grows intense, in this story we’re reading, we are almost sure to encounter images of light or warmth, flower or garden imagery, hunger, sacrifice, blood, and so on. The very form of the story, its orderly beginning, middle, and end, is likely to hint at a Christian metaphysic” (88).

And again:

“A novel is like a symphony in that its closing movement echoes and resounds with all that has gone before. . . . Toward the close of a novel, the writer brings back–directly or in the form of his characters’ recollections–images, characters, events, and intellectual motifs encountered earlier. Unexpected connections begin to surface; hidden causes become plain; life becomes, however briefly and unstably, organized; the universe reveals itself, if only for the moment, as inexorably moral; the outcome of the various characters’ actions is at last manifest; and we see the responsibility of free will. It is this closing orchestration that the novel exists for. If such a close does not come, for whatever theoretical reason, we shut the book with feelings of dissatisfaction, as if cheated. This is of course tantamount to saying that the novel, as a genre, has a built-in metaphysic. And so it does. The writer who does not accept the metaphysic can never write a novel; he can only play off it, as Beckett and Barthelme do, achieving his own effects by visibly subverting those traditional to the novel, working like the sculptor who makes sculptures that self-destruct or the composer who dynamites pianos. I am not saying, of course, that the artist ought to lie, only that in the long run the anti-novelist is probably doomed to at least relative failure because we do not believe him. We are not profoundly moved by Homer, Shakespeare, or Melville because we would like to believe the metaphysical assumptions their fictions embody–an orderly universe that imposes moral responsibility–but because we do believe those assumptions. . .” (184–85).

Volume 2 in the Chiveis Trilogy by Bryan Litfin, The Gift

Last fall at ETS I picked up Bryan Litfin’s first novel, The Sword. I loved it, and interviewed Bryan on it here.

At that point he was just finishing the second novel, The Gift, and he asked me about endorsing it. I enthusiastically received the PDF, and here’s what I said in my endorsement:

I finished this book within 24 hours of receiving it! Thrilling action, sound theology woven into the narrative, church history set in the future, a damsel in distress rescued by a warrior-scholar–what more could you ask from a novel? But there is more: this is a book of cruciform hope. It is cruciform as both the hero and the heroine lay down their lives for each other–no greater love. And the book builds hope as time after time when the night seems darkest, light bursts from the eastern sky like resurrection from the dead. This book caused me to feel deeper love for my sweet wife, more gratitude for my children, and a renewed sense of God’s mercy in the gift of Christ, the Bible, the gospel, and a chance to hope and become like Christ in his death, that we too might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Enjoy!

I am so happy for you that The Gift releases this month, April, 2011. If you haven’t already done so, you should buy and read The Sword, which I’m confident will make you want to buy and read The Gift.

What Is God’s Glory?

Thomas R. Schreiner defines the glory of God in his essay in For the Fame of God’s Name as follows:

“I would define the glory of God as the beauty, majesty, and greatness of who he is; therefore, in all he does, whether in salvation or in judgment, the greatness of his being is demonstrated.”

Schreiner, “A Biblical Theology of the Glory of God,” in For the Fame of God’s Name, 216. HT: Mitch Chase

Personal Anecdote: when Schreiner was writing his essay “A Biblical Theology of the Glory of God” for the volume honoring Piper, he asked me if I had defined the glory of God in my book. I was really grateful for his email, because it made me realize that I hadn’t! So having thought about it a little, I wrote up a definition, added it to my introductory chapter, and sent it to him. Here’s my definition:

“What is the glory of God? I would suggest that the glory of God is the weight of the majestic goodness of who God is, and the resulting name, or reputation, that he gains from his revelation of himself as Creator, Sustainer, Judge, and Redeemer, perfect in justice and mercy, loving-kindness and truth.”

God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, 56.

I would observe that Schreiner mentions salvation and judgment, and I’m getting at the same things when I mention God’s justice and his mercy, his loving-kindness and truth.

We Pre-Ordered ‘The Monster In the Hollows’, Did You?

If you haven’t already done so, high thee to the Rabbit Room to reserve for thyself a signed copy of what promises to be a beautiful and funny, inspiring and exciting, surprising and hope-building narrative of no little silly seriousness.

Here’s the description:

The Monster in the Hollows

Sneakery. Betrayal. And the Deadly Secret of Chimney Hill.

Janner Wingfeather’s father was the High King of Anniera. But his father is gone. The kingdom has fallen. The royal family is on the run, and the Fang armies of Gnag the Nameless are close behind. Janner and his family hope to find refuge in the last safe place in the world: the Green Hollows—a land of warriors feared even by the Fangs of Dang. But there’s a big problem. Janner’s little brother—heir to the throne of Anniera—has grown a tail. And gray fur. Not to mention two pointed ears and long, dangerous fangs. To the suspicious folk of the Green Hollows he looks like a monster. But Janner knows better. His
brother isn’t as scary as he looks. He’s perfectly harmless.

Or is he?

Join the Wingfeathers on a new adventure filled with mystery, betrayal, and sneakery in a land of tasty fruits. There’s a monster in the Hollows and the truth lurks in the shadows.

Is There Truth in Fiction?

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 79:

Fiction seeks out truth. Granted, it seeks a poetic kind of truth, universals not easily translatable into moral codes. But part of our interest as we read is in learning how the world works; how the conflicts we share with the writer and all other human beings can be resolved, if at all; what values we can affirm and, in general, what the moral risks are. . . . Some bad men write good books, admittedly, but the reason is that when they’re writing they’re better men than when they beat their wives and children.”

Are Your Doubts Consistent?

My friend Greg Sykes sent me this quote from Tim Keller in response to some of the comments on “Why I Believe the Bible“:

“The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reason you have for believing it. It would be inconsistent to require more justification for Christian belief than you do your own.”

Amen.

Trevin Wax Interviews Mitch Chase

Head on over to Kingdom People for this interview with Mitch Chase on his book The Gospel Is for Christians.

Endorsements for the book:

“Mitch Chase joins a growing group of leaders on mission to help the church rediscover the truth that the gospel isn’t just the power of God to save us; it’s the power of God to grow us once we’re saved.” — Tullian Tchividjian, Author of Surprised by Grace

“Getting the gospel right is an absolute imperative for Christ’s church. Understanding how the gospel applies to every dimension of life is one of the ongoing challenges and joys for every believer. Mitch Chase brings great wisdom and clarity for this challenge as he writes The Gospel is for Christians. Read it for the sound counsel and good news you will find here.” – Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The gospel is not just for unbelievers. The gospel is not just a kind of good news key that allows people to unlock the doors to heaven. The gospel is life. The gospel saves and it sustains. Mitch Chase loves this gospel and in this book he faithfully proclaims it. Written in an engaging, winsome way, his book will challenge and shape you. It will tell you why you need to believe the gospel to have eternal life and why you need to dwell upon this gospel, love it, feed upon it, depend upon it every day. The gospel is for Christians and so too is this book. I highly recommend it to you.” –Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, Sexual Detox: A Guide For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn, and The Next Story

Authors of Fiction Exercise Meticulous Sovereign Control

“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so in fiction every element has an effect on every other, so that to change a character’s name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.”

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (46).

Why I Believe the Bible

A friend of mine–I’m not sure he shares my views–asked me why I believe that the Bible is God’s revelation. Having typed up my answer, I decided to post it here as well:

I grew up with believing parents, and we went to believing churches. Unfortunately, the Bible was held up as authoritative more than taught or studied. In AP English my senior year of High School I was confronted with people who lived what they believed perhaps more radically than anyone I had ever met: the existentialists. Many of them were so certain that we are bubbles of nothingness on a sea of emptiness that they took their own lives. I had professed faith and been baptized when I was 7 or 8, but for the first time, I think, I was face to face with people who weren’t just hypocrites; they weren’t just flirting around with sin, either, they were rejecting the big story of the Bible and living out the implications of their rejection.

I didn’t know what to think or believe for about 2 weeks. The Lord brought me through, and I distinctly remember the day behind the high school when I prayed something like this: “God, if you don’t exist, there is no reason to live; life is just pain, and it might as well end. I can’t live without you. I need you. I want to trust you, to believe in you, to know you.” The Lord answered my prayer. I know he did: I felt a joy I could not explain, a joy whose only source could have been the Lord. And it was like a heavy cloud lifted, the sun broke through, and I felt joy and peace fuller than I’d known before.

I implicitly trusted the Bible. I had read it cover to cover my junior year of high school, and when the prophets said “Thus saith the Lord,” I believed them. The Bible formed in me, without me realizing it, the view of the Bible I still hold today. For instance, when Moses reads what he has so far to the people in Exod 24:7, the people recognize that though Moses has read this to them, it’s the Lord who spoke, and it’s authoritative: “. . . he . . . read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient'” (Exod 24:7). Gobs of texts like this one convinced me that when I read the Bible, I was reading God’s word.

I think the same thing that happened to the Israelites listening to Moses happened to me. They recognized that God had spoken, and the Spirit of God confirmed that recognition. They recognized that God was to be obeyed. I saw the same things they saw, even if I couldn’t have explained it at the time.

So going into college, the Bible had taught me what I was to think about it. I didn’t have the words or theological categories to explain it this way then, but I know I believed the Bible was God’s word. And I know that it wasn’t a result of indoctrination. It was from my reading of the Bible.

These things were confirmed as I studied and memorized the Bible in college. I remember standing in the office of one of my English profs who was incredulous that I actually believed the Bible. He said to me, “All of modern science is against you.” I responded in the language of the Bible: “If God is for me, who can be against me.” Reflecting on that since, I think the biblical authors are far more trustworthy than the modern scientists with all their scandals and sleights of hand.

At DTS we were exposed to unbelieving scholarship, but we were also exposed to believing scholarship. I get the impression that at many liberal schools, you only hear the liberal (unbelieving) side of things, and no one even bothers with the conservative (believing) scholars.

I think that my belief that the Bible is the word of God was probably most strongly challenged during the PhD program. It wasn’t challenged, though, by arguments so much as by the “peer pressure” of the academic guild. That is, the initiates in the guild weren’t producing evidence, logic, and an overwhelming case against the Bible. It was more like an unspoken entrance requirement: if you want to join the ranks of the real scholars, you can’t believe that the Bible is inerrant, and you can’t hold that the attributions of authorship are accurate. Those ideas aren’t allowed here. I actually had an editor of a semi-evangelical journal tell me that I needed to become a real scholar and stop betraying so many evangelical assumptions about the Bible in my writing.

Never, mind you, was any of this actually argued. The strongest pull seems to come from things so deeply entrenched that they don’t need to be argued.

I was disgusted by the “peer pressure” from the esteemed guild to reject the Bible. I was also enormously helped by Tom Schreiner, whose candor about these things, confidence in the Bible, and willingness to bear the reproach of the cross that attaches to believing the Bible made him a rock through the storm.

Helped through the storm by the Schreiner-rock, I began to look more closely at what I thought were the hardest cases. I was not at all impressed with the actual argument against the historical accuracy and reliability of the Bible. In fact, I think you would have to know far more than any human being could ever know to be in position to declare definitively that the Bible is in error. Would it be harsh to summarize the argument against the Bible as the whining of rebels?

So I think that too often the rejection of inerrancy is both un-historical and un-critical. It’s un-historical because it imposes on the primary sources foreign assumptions that prevent those sources from being properly understood, and it’s un-critical because the argument is so insulated by the unbelieving claque that the merits of the case aren’t ever really heard. So you have a one-sided, un-critical, un-historical, bad argument against the Bible, and this bad argument often winds up evaluating the morality of the Bible by some foreign ethic. Where did this foreign ethic get its authority? Or if it’s not ethical, it’s some “law of history”–where did that law of history get its authority?–those who reject the Bible have their own Sinai experience, it seems. And if it’s not ethics or history, it’s archeology, in which I have very little confidence. But somehow the tenuous conclusions of the archeologists with their fragmentary remains become so definitively authoritative that the Bible can be condemned as in error. I’m not buying it.

One final thought: I remember Dr. Danny Akin telling a story about how he was once asked why he believes what he believes about the Bible. I resonate with the answer Dr. Akin gave. He said that he had trusted in Jesus as his Lord and Savior and sought to be a disciple of Jesus, so it made sense to him to believe about the Bible what Jesus believed about the Bible. Jesus said God’s word is truth. He said not a jot or tittle would pass away, and that heaven and earth will pass away but his own words won’t.

The word of the Lord will stand forever.

Ghandi Was a Good Person?

Somebody knows this? For certain?

See this article, which begins like this:

“Joseph Lelyveld has written a ­generally admiring book about ­Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet ‘Great Soul’ also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive ­intellectual, professing his love for ­mankind as a concept while actually ­despising people as individuals.”

HT: JT

What Makes Fiction Interesting?

“. . . nothing can be made to be of interest to the reader that was not first of vital concern to the writer. . . we care about what we know and might possibly lose (or have already lost), dislike that which threatens what we care about, and feel indifferent toward that which has no visible bearing on our safety or the safety of the people and things we love. . . . the moment we stop caring where the story will go next, the writer has failed, and we stop reading.”

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 42, 55.

Review of Beale, We Become What We Worship

G. K. Beale. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2008. 341 pp. $26.00. Paper. Published in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 14.4 (2010): 121–22.

G. K. Beale is well known for significant contributions to biblical scholarship in general and biblical theology in particular. His commentary on Revelation, his work on the Old Testament in the New, and his recent The Temple and the Church’s Mission are now complemented by the volume under review here. Beale states his thesis clearly and argues it convincingly: “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration” (16, italics removed). After an introductory chapter, Beale establishes his thesis in Isaiah 6, then broadens out to show it from the rest of the OT. He narrows the lens again in chapter four to focus on the origin of idolatry in the OT, before tracing the thesis through the “intertestamental bridge” of the literature from early Judaism. Beale then examines the theme in the Gospels, giving particular attention to the use of Isaiah 6 in all four gospels. He proceeds through the book of Acts and the Pauline epistles, concluding the direct examination of the Bible with a chapter on the book of Revelation. The volume is rounded out with two chapters: the first examines the reversal of the process of idolaters becoming like their idols as they worship the true and living God, and in the conclusion Beale pastorally applies his findings to contemporary culture.

In the introduction Beale explains, “we will proceed primarily by tracing the development of earlier biblical passages dealing with this theme and how later portions of Scripture interpret and develop these passages (what is today referred to as ‘intertextuality’ or ‘inner-biblical allusion’)” (16). As he elaborates on his interpretive perspective, Beale affirms both the divine inspiration of the Scriptures and the accessibility of the divine author’s intentions communicated through the human authors of the biblical texts. He seeks to combine grammatical-historical exegesis with canonical-contextual exegesis, relying on the criteria for validating allusions to earlier texts in later ones set forth by Richard B. Hays. Against those who are opposed to allowing the meaning of later texts to influence the interpretation of earlier ones, Beale writes, “If the presupposition that God ultimately has authored the canon is correct, the later parts of Scripture unpack the ‘thick description’ of earlier parts. . . . My view is that if a later text is truly unpacking the idea of an earlier text, then the meaning developed by the later text was originally included in the ‘thick meaning’ of the earlier text” (26). The idea is that later biblical authors correctly understood earlier biblical texts and commented upon them. This obliges interpreters “‘to recover unstated or suppressed correspondences between the two texts’ (quoting Hays). . . . part of this task is to discern such interpretive links that are not verbally stated by the writer making the quotation or allusion” (28). Beale explains that he is “trying to forge a newer way of doing biblical theology in the English-speaking world,” wherein he attempts “to focus on and interpret those Old Testament texts that [are] repeatedly alluded to and quoted in subsequent Scripture, both later in the Old Testament and in the New Testament” (27).

This is important and helpful work. Beale writes, “I would characterize my biblical-theological approach to be canonical, genetic-progressive (or organically developmental), and intertextual” (34). He convincingly demonstrates his thesis with meticulous (and at times painstaking) detail. It would be hard to overturn Beale’s thesis, given that it is explicitly stated in Psalm 115:4–8, and again in 135:15–18. The connections that Beale makes between texts are always stimulating, even if some are more convincing than others.

This book deserves a wide reading, especially among those who seek demonstrable ways to understand the unified theology of the whole Bible. I have a minor quibble about an interpretive matter here and there, none of which impinge on the book’s main thesis, and I think that at points the thesis was pursued in ways that might eclipse other important aspects of the texts under discussion. But no book can do or say everything, and everything that Beale sets out to do in this book he does very, very well. This book is exemplary, setting high standards for methodological precision, control of primary and secondary sources, and bringing out the wealth of meaning these texts contain. Here’s a warning: if you read this book, you will begin to see the thesis Beale establishes all over the Bible. You’ll also be spurred to return to the texts, to ask questions about how earlier texts are being interpreted, and to establish the connections between texts with criteria that can be examined and understood. I join Beale in the prayer with which he closes the volume: “I pray that all who read this book will revere the Lord in his Word and resemble him for restoration and redemption. May God be with us as the true, new people of God” (311).

What Is the Value of Fiction?

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, 31:

“. . . the value of great fiction . . . is not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it broadens our knowledge of people and places, but also that it helps us to know what we believe, reinforces those qualities that are noblest in us, leads us to feel uneasy about our faults and limitations.
. . . the ultimate value of fiction is its morality . . .”

Caveat: Great fiction will be most enjoyed by those with a thorough knowledge of the Bible and a strong theological backbone. The Bible is the best place to go to find out what to believe . . . this quote remains helpful.