A Review of The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Chesterton wrote that the Princess and the Goblin “remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life.” This influential literary master praises a book that he claims helped him to see things differently.
Chesterton’s synopsis is like a balm to my soul. I, too, am always eager to see things differently. I am delighted to see ideas and stories shaping people’s lives and helping them navigate their religious experiences and challenges. Stories are food for the soul of those who thirst for righteousness.
Timothy Larsen ponders the question in his introduction to the book: “What are you afraid of?” It is the question of fear that decorates this great classic. MacDonald wants to put fear at the forefront of little children. He wants them to grow in maturity, facing dragons and wild beasts.
Princess Irene and Fear
It’s the lovely and innocent Irene, who, as an eight-year-old Princess, has to navigate life in a half-castle because, MacDonald notes, her mother was not very strong. It appears she has died, and now the young princess must journey alone. Her maturity will come through her desire to see life anew, to live, as Chesterton paints it, “most life-like.”
Though her mother is not involved in her development, it is clear that she embraces the all-encompassing gravitas of a Father/King, who gallops with sophistication and speaks Solomonically. She is a daddy’s girl, and it is her father’s words she treasures in those rare moments of his appearance.
But Irene is not alone. She is guided by a relative who takes her by the hand by an invisible thread; invisible, that is, to others, but for Irene, it is the incarnation of love. It takes her back every time to the long-winding stairs of her abode and the embrace of her great-great-grandmother. This mysterious character appears in fantastical ways to bring Irene a sense of the magical. The “old lady” is not some imaginative figure but is very near to her and plays the role of comforter and rescuer throughout the narrative. She is a compass for the young and virtuous little Princess.
(more…)
5 Books to Understand Today
Here are 5 books I recommend to understand Today.
That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Read this to understand our times. Read it several times. Lewis lays out all the players on both sides of the war: tech gurus, a liberal pastor, lesbian police, shrewd politicians, mindless mystics, patient leaders, faithful professors, a band of rag tag friends, a friendly bear, and a young married couple.
Lewis reveals the spiritual dimension to the current battle. This is not just a battle of flesh and blood but also of principalities and powers. This deeper reality is something that 1984 and Brave New World completely ignore. Lewis also offers a path to victory in the battle: the faithful work of small, mundane tasks and waiting and praying.
Lewis lays out clearly the temptations for both men and women: men are afraid of being left out of the inner circle and women are afraid to submit. But the solution to both is Christian marriage. This book is the story of our time. And it rightly recognizes that a wedding is how it will all end.
Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen
(more…)
Postmodern Times: Book Review
Postmodern Times by Gene Edward Veith, 1994
This is an important book that demystifies Postmodernism. The book is thirty years old but still accurate for today’s world. When the book was written, the postmodernist project was a small seedling which made it hard to see all the parts. Today, the postmodernist project has grown up into a forest and all the parts are clearly visible right in front of us. This book is like a user’s manual for the world we live in today.
Here are three key reasons this book is important to read.
First, this book offers helpful definitions on many of the key terms that are around us all the time: postmodernism, social construct, queer theory, and intertextuality.
Here are some of the most important terms and definitions from the book.
Objectivist: those who believe that truth is objective and can be known (pg. 47)
Constructivist: those who believe that human beings make up their own realities (pg. 47)
Queer Theory: culture as suppression of homosexuals (pg. 53)
Intertextuality: culture is texts interacting with other texts (pg. 52)
Deconstruction: dismantle the paradigms of the past and bring the marginal to the center (pg. 57)
Social Construct: these paradigms are useful fictions, a matter of “telling stories” (pg. 57)
The second reason this book is important is that it clearly shows how the postmodernist project is ultimately aimed at destroying the individual self. That can seem like a strange claim to make given that our culture is so obsessed with identity. Let me explain.
(more…)
New Jonah Commentary AVAILABLE!
Our commentary on Jonah is now available for pre-order through Athanasius Press. Rumors are that the printed books should be available on December 6th, and furthermore, that there is a 30% discount on all pre-orders. Oh, and if you would like to buy 25+copies of it for a book study or for your congregation, there is a 50% discount.
The Book of Jonah has captured the imagination of God’s people for centuries, and its unique context and content provide one of the richest stories of God’s mercy to the Gentiles through a reluctant prophet.
This commentary is not like the others. While many commentaries on Jonah focus on the disobedience and woes of the prophet–arguing for a sort of prophetic impiety– this work argues for an overarching narrative that sees God’s mercy transcending the reluctance of the prophet and opening the gates to a missiological reformation. Indeed Jonah is a lovely introduction to the Advent season as hope begins to permeate the Old Testament texts awaiting for a greater prophet than Jonah who will come and proclaim justice and righteousness to all the nations of the earth.
On a personal note, this would make a wonderful Christmas gift as a theological and devotional introduction to one of the most read books of the Scriptures. I’d be really honored if you would share the link with your friends and family.
Pastor Lusk and I are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to make this short but meaningful commentary available to the public.
“I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”-Jonah
Bible-reading is more of an art than a science. The Bible is a story, not a lexicon of systematic theological definitions. With this in mind, the Through New Eyes Bible Commentary Series builds on the foundational Biblical-theology work of James B. Jordan and other like-minded scholars in bringing you a set of commentaries that will help you read, teach and preach through the Bible while picking up on the rich symphonic themes and the literary symbolism of the Scriptures. Because they are written for thoughtful Christians without being overly academic, these commentaries will serve as valuable resources for family worship, Sunday school or Bible studies.
Educational Methods: Indoctrination, Controversy and Journey
Guest Post by Carson Spratt
A car stitches its way down the highway that needles through the shimmering desert. No one but the inhabitants hears the brakes as it slows. It spits two children out in school uniform. “See you later!”
The car drives off, accelerating quickly into oblivion.
The
two kids look at each other. The sun begins to suck sweat out of them.
It is very hot in the wilderness today.
I would like to talk about three different ways of teaching.
The first is indoctrination. You’ve been told to hate it, but it resembles one part of true education just like a changeling resembles the baby the fae stole. Indoctrination drills a single lesson, a single position or idea, into the student’s head. This is the truth and there is no other.
Indoctrination creates blind humans. They cannot recognize other perspectives. They don’t even recognize other perspectives as perspectives. To the indoctrinated man, all other thoughts are insanity. They, and they alone, know the truth.
The second is teaching the controversy. As the idea of Darwinism gained bastion status in public schools, Intelligent Design proponents started a campaign begging public schools to “teach the controversy,” that is, include I.D. alongside Darwinism in public schools, teaching both sides as equal options. This was shot down, of course, but since then I’ve heard the phrase advocated in different education questions, whenever some controversy about some theory or knowledge comes along. Teach the controversy, maintain neutrality. Show both sides, and show that you aren’t biased. All existential and fundamental questions get answered with a shrug. Who’s to say?
Teaching the controversy is dropping your kids off in the wilderness, and expecting them to find their own way to civilization. It’s bad parenting, and it certainly isn’t education. But like indoctrination, there’s a warped resemblance to true learning in that heat mirage.
The third is the journey. All education is a journey from falsity to truth, from wickedness to wisdom, from the fear of everything or nothing to the fear of the Lord. Take your students on a journey, and show them how difficult the road to truth is, but for God’s sake don’t let them walk it alone. It is good for them to know how hard it is to walk through the wilderness. But show them that taking them with you through it, not by stranding them there.
One exercise I do with my class involves taking on the character of an atheist and arguing the problem of evil. I state it both logically and emotionally, as strongly as I can. I pull no punches. Then I end the class and tell them to come back tomorrow with an answer. They spend a few minutes in the wilderness. But the next day they come back, and after I hear their answers, I give them the logical and emotional answer to the problem of evil. Not everyone is able to walk the road, but I take them with me. By the end, they know how desolate that wilderness is, but they have also come out of the wilderness to the garden city.
So, yes, teach the controversy. But also teach the answer to the controversy. They must come through the welter of conflicting ideas to safety on the other side.
So, yes, tell them that what you believe is the truth, is the truth. But show them how you get there, remembering that you too can take wrong turns away from the well-lit path of the Word.
If you do teach them the controversy, then your students are not indoctrinated – they have seen the wilderness. They will know how to recognize the tempter who lives there. But you must also bring them out again to the city, or they will be vacant, lost souls, swept clean and ready to be possessed by the schizophrenia of relativism.
Do you not wonder why so many children are medicated? Why so many mental issues and therapists and irrational and insane people? Why has the world gone mad? Because we weaken our children’s mental immune system through indoctrination, making it incapable of dealing with a new idea; or make it comfortable with holding contradictory ideas – a functional insanity. They either do not know any other city besides the indoctrination they live in, or, if they do make it to the wilderness of controversy, they stay there, wandering. If my teacher didn’t even care enough to show me the answer to the contradiction, does it really matter? They shrug their shoulders and decide that they should just believe whatever they want to believe, since smart people disagree and there seems to be no way out of the controversy. If everything is wilderness, why not call it home?
Let your students get dirt on their boots. But don’t make them walk on their own in the wilderness. From the walls of the city of truth, you can see the slums of indoctrination, and the wilderness of controversy alike – both burning in their own way. Show them how far you have come and they will love the city that you have brought them to – and it is that love of truth that makes them truly educated, that prevents them from letting the city become another slum. Someday your children will issue forth from the city as warriors, and take the city to the wilderness. But that’s a journey for another time.
Carson Spratt is a Rhetoric and Humanities teacher at Logos Online School. He lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife of seven years, Ellie, without whom life would be inconceivable.
Episode 89 of Kuyperian Commentary, On Writing
Another lovely informal chat with Dr. Dustin Messer about writing habits and the role writing plays in popularizing ideas.
Kill Goliath and Save his Skull
Last week, our church hosted a Vacation Bible School that included the story of “David and Goliath” as one of the Bible stories. I was responsible for the “Bible story station” that introduced the characters, the meaning behind the story, and its application. Groups would spend twenty minutes with me and then return later in the day for ten minutes of reflection and prayer.
Our VBS theme’s package included scripted lessons that a leader could simply read with sample questions and ideas for applications for various age groups. Our materials were produced by the Methodist publisher Cokesbury and generally faithful to the Biblical story. They were also insightful about how to manage the attention of younger students, but like all modern children’s curricula – do not expect much from the child.
On Bite-Sized Lessons
Exercises like this always cause me to question how much of Sunday’s sermon is actually understood by my youngest congregants. The VBS curriculums seem to assume that children need everything delivered in such easily digested, bite-sized pieces. Perhaps this level of VBS is meant for children who may have never been to a church. But not even two minutes into my introduction of David and Goliath it was obvious that my group of eight and nine-year-olds were already very familiar with the details of the story—down to the number of stones that David collects. The study guide wanted me to focus on “facing bullies” and “overcoming adversity” but the kids had heard it all before.
Caught off guard, I went into “Rev. Clowney Mode” and thought I would pivot into teaching how Goliath’s downfall points to Christ. Now completely off script, I asked the students, “So what happened to Goliath next?” A few hands went up. One young man was so excited to share that I decided to ignore his impatient “I know! I know!” and call on him anyway. “David cut his head off!” For some strange reason, this scene wasn’t included in the coloring sheets and didn’t make it into any of the suggested drama skits for the day. Go figure.
And, “and then what happened?” I asked. The students looked at each other, shrugged, and back to me. Here I explained that King David eventually took the giant’s skull to Jerusalem, to be buried just outside of the Holy City of Jerusalem.
I asked them to consider Goliath a type of serpent, reminding them that “coat of mail” that we see described as his armor in 1 Samuel 17 is more akin to a breastplate of snake scales. I then asked them to remember the Garden of Eden and to consider the promises made to Adam and Eve after their expulsion, chiefly that a descendent of theirs was to crush the head of the serpent. I pointed out that in our Scripture reading, David’s stone “sunk” into Goliath’s head. David was Adam’s great-great (times thirty-five generations) grandson and he was well aware of the promises to his family’s line. He and all future generations would remember David as the son of Adam who had crushed the serpent with a stone to the head.
Yet David was only fulfilling part of that promise. David’s battle with Goliath was looking forward to when the Messiah would destroy the true serpent and undo mankind’s death curse. David anticipated this when he brought Goliath’s skull back to Jerusalem as a covenant sign of God’s future faithfulness. For the very place that David buries Goliath’s skull is to become the very same spot that Jesus is to be crucified: Golgotha.
As James B. Jordan points out:
“Golgotha is just a contraction of Goliath of Gath (Hebrew: Goliath-Gath). 1 Samuel 17:54 says that David took the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, but since Jerusalem was to be a holy city, this dead corpse would not have been set up inside the city, but someplace outside. The Mount of Olives was right in front of the city (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:13), and a place of ready access. Jesus was crucified at the place where Goliath’s head had been exhibited. Even as His foot was bruised, He was crushing the giant’s head!”
Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 84: Christ in the Holy of Holies The Meaning of the Mount of Olives by James B. Jordan (April, 1996)
I had gone way off course from the VBS script. I was talking about burying a giant’s skull and Christ crucified, where the script had this as its closing reflection: “If you wonder how you can face challenges that might seem bigger than you, remember that with God you can find what you need to help you meet your challenges.”
At reflection time they returned eager for more juicy details about David’s bloodlust, only for me to remind them of Christ’s present promises to conquer sin and that perhaps us miserable sinners are more like Goliath than David in the story. We deserve a stone to the head for our life of war against God. And like Goliath’s lifeless skull outside of Jerusalem, our only hope was the blood dripping down from the saviour on the cross.
On Practical, Relevant Preaching
The need for a “practical application” and the lure of relevance or accessibility has detached the Christian meaning of David versus Goliath from its place in the story of the Gospel. King David as a historical figure with a natural and spiritual lineage leading to Jesus is of no real consequence in the VBS version. While I have no doubt that this story also presents a great opportunity for character building in giving us examples of overcoming adversity, let’s not limit David to the realm of mere fable.
After all, popular authors have done much better than pastors with this self-help approach. For example, Malcom Gladwell parlayed the underdog notion of David and Goliath into a New York Times Bestseller back in 2015 when he connected this story to all sorts of character applications. Everything from the religious sacrifices of the French Huguenots to the jumbled but noble struggle of dyslexics. In Gladwell’s applications, the whole idea of the story was simple: what we saw as disadvantages in the small-statured shepherd boy, were actually his secret weapons against the Philistine giant. David had it in him the whole time, everyone else just couldn’t see it. Is this the message of Christ?
We must contend that the Holy Spirit did not include the battle with Goliath to add a Hebrew hero to the Aesopica. David’s battle must be more than a story for inspiring courage and spurring on self-development. We have not faithfully taught any passage of Scripture without connecting it to the story of Christ’s redemption. Or as Rev. Edmund Clowney put it, “Preachers who ignore the history of redemption in the preaching are ignoring the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus in all the Scriptures.”
Esoteric Speculations
Grounding our teaching in the story of Christ also prevents the fetishizing of obscure details in the Hebrew text. I was recently asked to lead a book study through Michael S. Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm. While leading the study, I quickly learned that the generation of men taught under “relevant preaching” styles had missed out on the necessary theological framework to hang the Old Testament narratives. They craved the order and structure The Unseen Realm offers. Unfortunately, Heiser’s book reads like he has just recently unlocked a secret code to understand the Bible through special ancient symbols and obscure language clues.
Speculations about Nephilim, angels, and giants creep in and have the power to wedge an artificial gap between our historical theology and our new pet passages. Men like Othmar Keel, Meredith Kline, and Gregory Beale have been offering us similar approaches to Biblical symbolism while staying within Nicene orthodoxy and the historic church. And of course, James Jordan offered a very accessible compendium of Biblical symbolism in his book Through New Eyes.
How much did Goliath’s armor weigh? Were his ancestors fallen angels? Did the giants survive the flood? Does new Philistine DNA evidence prove the existence of bronze-age giants? The depths of the Biblical text are inexhaustible, or as D.A. Carson put it in his book The Gospel as Center, “The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain…” but wild speculations detached from the story of salvation are not equal to seeing Christ in every passage of Scripture. To see Christ in every God-breathed passage is to drink from the living stream, while a desire for obscurity inevitably leads to the brackish waters of pseudo-scholarship based in the mysteries of pseudepigraphon and cliches of post-modern religious studies.
Teach Christ
There’s nothing foolish, redundant, or mediocre about Christ-centered preaching. Those who love the Lord will never tire of hearing how Christ is present on every page. Those who are far from him desperately need to hear him speak to every area of life. Let us never grow weary in taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)
Singing as Pastoral Theology in Bonhoeffer
Reading Bonhoeffer’s pastoral heart during my dissertation writing was a sweet sound to my soul. His prison letters led me down a path of admiration and excavation to my own heart. I read almost 1,000 pages’ worth, and I left with a sense of passion for the holy. Among the many glorious things gleaned from Bonhoeffer, in particular, I was drawn to the musical component of this astute and brave Lutheran scholar. His engagement of congregational singing with young seminarians and his particular thoughts on singing in the community has largely inspired my mission for my local body and the role I see sacred music play in parish life.
For Bonhoeffer, singing is a relational tool. If there is one thing quite clear in his writing is that there is a special bond created when people sing together. Life together does not just happen; it is cultivated. The young seminarians were not immune to temptations; in fact, it is precisely their singing together that alleviated some of those natural temptations to pursue sin. Singing is and ought to be a tool of healing and reconciliation. We can engage in spectacularly contradictory forms of protests today with our yard signs and vocal cords, or we can engage in spectacularly harmony-driven singing that cultivates relationality.
As Bonhoeffer notes:
“Music … will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”
A few years ago, I was invited to visit one of my parishioner’s grandmother on hospice care. She asked me to minister to her family, whom I had never met. By the time I arrived, her grandmother was no longer responsive. It was just a matter of hours before she died. I walked in there and saw that dear woman and the first reaction I had was to sing: so, I did. We all gathered, and I asked them permission to sing. I sang Psalm 23 and prayed. I was a stranger to all these people, but suddenly that old Irish melody brought everybody together. It was a mystical moment, if I can use that term.
For Bonhoeffer, one of the great pastoral means to deal with pain and death is singing. Paul says to encourage one another with psalms and hymns and Spirit-songs, which is to say, singing as a church invites the church to enter each other’s stories and narratives. Singing allows pastoral theology to come alive.
A New Cry Against the Nihilists
“‘Are these the Nazis, Walter?’ ‘No, Donnie, these men are nihilists. There’s nothing to be afraid of.'” Moments before Donnie’s tragic death,a Walter assures Donnie that the nihilists won’t hurt them: “No, Donnie, these men are cowards.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, on the other hand, took the threat of nihilism more seriously than The Big Lebowski’s Walter. Perhaps that was, in part, because he was once a nihilist himself. Before his exile in Siberia, Dostoevsky was part of a group of young radicals. His activity with the progressive Petrashevsky Circle led to their arrest and a death sentence that was commuted at the last moment. His time in exile proved transformative. Enduring suffering with his copy of the New Testament as his only comfort, he emerged from exile a devout Orthodox Christian and Russian conservative.
Since this past Summer, the United States has witnessed nihilism run amok on our streets. Literal mobs bent on destruction have been allowed to have their way with American cities. Of course this didn’t come out of nowhere; this movement has been fomenting and picking up steam for some time now, but this year it seems to have maintained energy in a new way.
Our Dostoevskian Moment
Back in July, Rod Dreher, drawing from an article by Daniel Mahoney, described what we are seeing now as “America’s Dostoevskian Moment”. We are facing in our day the same kind of destructive fervor, the same kind of nihilism, that Dostoevsky predicted in his novel Demons would lead to the death of 100 million Russians if the revolutionaries come to power. History has proved that he knew what he was talking about.
Mahoney makes a compelling argument, and I encourage the reader to visit his article. We face an election coming on Tuesday, the results of which are sure to be hotly contested, in an already heated political climate. Whichever way the election goes, our contemporary nihilists are set on violence and destruction. We have learned that we cannot count on civic leaders to protect property or lives. What are we to do?
That this is the case seems beyond dispute. My purpose in writing is to consider Dostoevsky’s alternative to nihilism in the narrative of Demons, and how that might inform us as we face similar forces in our day.
A New Cry
In his typical style, Dostoevsky does not mount a formal argument against nihilism. Rather he embeds his argument in the narrative. One of my favorite passages in Dosoevsky centers on Shatov, a character in Demons who has turned away from his former revolutionary ideals and embraced Christ. He accepts suffering as he is singled out to be a scapegoat by his former associates. In this passage, his estranged wife, Marie, returns to him, pregnant by another man, ready to give birth. Shatov fetches Arina Prokhorovna, a local midwife. Waiting outside the room while Marie labors, he then hears “a new cry”:
And then, finally, there came a cry, a new cry, at which Shatov gave a start and jumped up from his knees, the cry of an infant, weak, cracked. He crossed himself and rushed into the room. In Arina Prokhorovna’s hands a small, red, wrinkled being was crying and waving its tiny arms and legs, a terribly helpless being, like a speck of dust at the mercy of the first puff of wind, yet crying and proclaiming itself, as if it, too, somehow had the fullest right to life…
‘Pah, what a look!’ the triumphant Arina Prokhorovna laughed merrily, peeking into Shatov’s face. ‘Just see the face on him!’…
‘What’s this great joy of yours?’ Arina Prokhorovna was amusing herself, while bustling about, tidying up, and working like a galley slave.
‘The mystery of the appearance of a new being, a great mystery and an inexplicable one, Arina Prokhorovna, and what a shame you don’t understand it!’…
‘There were two, and suddenly there’s a third human being, a new spirit, whole, finished, such as doesn’t come from human hands; a new thought and a new love, it’s even frightening… And there’s nothing higher in the world!'” b
This new cry of life, Shatov’s exuberance over this new being, is Dostoevsky’s contrast to the destructive ideals of the nihilists. This new life is the light in the darkness of the narrative of Demons. And new life, New Creation, must be the light we shine in the face of our nihilistic mob, in what feel like dark days in our own culture.
On one level, the way we do this is simply by valuing precisely what Shatov rejoices over: the new life of the most weak and vulnerable, infant life crying out, proclaiming itself. Simply opposing the slaughter of the unborn incites the mobs against us, as is clearly being played out in Poland now.
The Risen Christ is the light that breaks the darkness, new life liberating those held captive under the bonds of death. As St. Paul says in His “Christ Hymn” to the Colossians,
And He is the head of the body, the Church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
That in everything He might be preeminent…c
He is the firstborn, and we, the Church, follow in His new creation life. We bring the reality of Christ’s reign, of His new creation, to bear on the world. Dostoevsky believed we best do this by joyfully suffering in Christ. St. Paul would agree: just as Christ “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the Cross,” so we are to follow Him, taking up our cross, participating in Christ’s suffering, so that we may “shine as lights” in the midst of our “crooked and twisted generation.”d Suffering with joy, living lives of gratitude, of feasting, of abundant hospitality: this abundant resurrection life is how we confront our culture’s nihilistic love for death and destruction. So stop wringing your hands about the plight of our nation, and start get to work forming deeply joyful communities in your church life, family, and neighborhood.
Try to vote in the guy you think will do the most to defend life, preserve peace, punish the wicked, defend freedom. Work for God-honoring public policy. Engage in debates, make the case for the Faith. But our ultimate “strategy” must be the way of the Cross. Christ and Him crucified is the light that breaks the darkness, shining through the lives of His saints. That is how the Church turns the world upside down.
