A MUST READ: American Babylon. Notes of a Christian Exile
May 21st, 2009
Father Richard John Neuhaus has left us a remarkable book. Looking through it to prepare a review, I saw that I had highlighted almost the entire book!
To whet your appetite, let me quote the conclusion at length, so that you might hurry off to get a copy
“Through the preceding chapters, these notes from exile have addressed various tasks of hope while living in Babylon. The life of faith has been depicted as a prolepsis of the promised New Jerusalem, the City of God in final tranquility. We examined the distinctively American understandings of life in exile, and the distinctively American ways of deluding ourselves that we have arrived home already. We celebrated progress, and we noted its sobering limits in the realm of morality.
“We tried to engage the atheists among our fellow-exiles in this foreign city whose provisional peace we together seek. And also those who, like Richard Rorty, would distance themselves from hope’s grief by means of liberal irony. In “Salvation Is from the Jews,” we underscored the ways in which our pilgrim path and “the story of the world” are uniquely and inextricably entangled with the people of Israel. Then we explored the politics by which we alien citizens can ameliorate some wrongs and advance a provisional measure of the common good, even in Babylon. Finally, in this last chapter, we considered the impossibility of hopelessness and why it is that to live is to live in hope….
“As Christians and as Americans, in this our awkward duality of citizenship, we seek to be faithful in a time not of our choosing but of our testing. We resist the hubris of presuming that it is the definitive time and place of historical promise or tragedy, but it is our time and place. It is a time of many times: a time for dancing, even if to the songs of Zion in a foreign land; a time for walking together, unintimidated when we seem to be a small and beleaguered band; a time for rejoicing in momentary triumphs, and for defiance in momentary defeats; a time for persistence in reasoned argument, never tiring in proposing to the world a more excellent way; a time for generosity toward those who would make us their enemy; and, finally, a time for happy surrender to brother death—but not before, through our laughter and tears, we see and hail from afar the New Jerusalem and know that it is all time toward home.”
Cinevangelism: A Christian Introduction to the Movies
May 21st, 2009
There are some Christians who avoid seeing movies because they fear polluting their souls. Other Christians see every movie, convinced that nothing can harm them. If you know either of these types, The Message Behind the Movie. How to Engage with a Film without Disengaging Your Faith by Douglas M. Beaumont is for you. Read the rest of this entry »
John D’Elia on George Eldon Ladd
February 24th, 2009
John A. D’Elia’s biography of George Eldon Ladd has rightly been hailed as the definitive look on the American theologian who brought evangelical Christian scholarship to “a place at the table” of the world’s great theologians of his day. Ladd’s books are not only required reading in most seminaries but are also sold in local church bookstores. He was a thinker whose mind attracts all Christians, regardless of the stage of their journey into the Kingdom of God. For once and for all George Eldon Ladd clarified what Jesus meant when he proclaimed that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
So powerful and compelling was Ladd’s insight that his theological position has taken shorthand form through out the world – the Kingdom of God is “already/not yet.”
But in A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America, Mr. D’Elia reveals the personal struggles behind the great mind:
“All of [Ladd’s personal problems] – the family issues, the excessive drinking, and the failure to achieve the academic success he craved-did little to alter Ladd’s theological position.” (165)
The biographies of many important men show the opposite – their personal lives playing a pivotal role in shaping ideas and actions. How could George Eldon Ladd’s life acquire so different a character?
The author was generous in answering my questions.
The Dark Knight: A Tale of Two Stories
December 30th, 2008
While watching The Dark Knight with my son and wife, I found myself, at one point, saying aloud: “That’s just like A Tale of Two Cities!” Stefan had been reading the novel for school and I had reread it with him. And, as I finished Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, I found him noting that the climactic substitution in A Tale of Two Cities was just like Jesus’ action on our behalf. So maybe The Dark Knight proclaims the Good News as a twenty-first century metaphor, as A Tale of Two Cities did in a nineteenth century idiom.
Time and Surprise at Christmas
December 14th, 2008
The second installment of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord, The Road to Cana, climaxes with important discussions of time and surprise, appropriate for consideration at this time of the year.
Night and Thanksgiving
November 27th, 2008
To read Eli Wiesel’s Night on Thanksgiving is to enter into a world for which no gratitude is thinkable. No more proof that the fullness of the Kingdom of God is Not Yet can be found than in this personal testament of Job-like suffering and despair. No story could better reveal either the Evil of the Present Age or the dominance of Satan. Evil is winning. Good is losing The demonic is in control. Where is God? How can St. Paul’s admonition “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” apply? After reading this story how can we “know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him”?
Jesus the Vampire Slayer
November 25th, 2008
The inside flap promised “the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic… mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force–a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.” With Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice created a worldwide fascination with the myth of the vampire.
Now with Called Out of Darkness, Anne Rice confesses her spiritual deliverance from the world of the Enemy into the Kingdom of God. It is hypnotic, shocking only to non-Christians, a chronicle of mesmerizing beauty of the astonishing force of a breakthrough of the Kingdom of God. It is the author’s personal story of danger and return, of love and redemption, of suspense and reconciliation, and of the extraordinary power of God.
Bell Ringer for the Kingdom
September 6th, 2008
My son’s high school reading has again provided an opportunity for God to reveal more about the nature of His Kingdom. Stefan was assigned The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I discovered the novel’s actual title to be Notre – Dame de Paris. And that makes a kingdom of a difference.
Questions to Take Back to School
August 30th, 2008
To make the most of our educations, whether formal or “continuing”, as they say, we should come with questions needing answers, not just wait for others to pose questions to us. In The Reason for God, Tim Keller gives us a good list with which to begin:
