The Theology of Mel's Passion

In a fascinating Zenit article, Romanus Cessario argues that Mel Gibson was working from a set of very technical theological assumptions when he made certain aesthetic decisions during the making of his blockbuster film, The Passion of the Christ. Cessario, a Dominican Monk who teaches at St. John's Catholic Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts, makes the case that the director's presuppositional Thomism colors virtually every aspect of the epic portrayal of Christ's suffering and sacrifice. Very helpful insights.

The Stalwarts

Of all the distortions Modernity has wrought in our culture, the Gnostic transformation of the Liberal Arts into the Social Sciences is perhaps the most emblematic. It epitomizes the tragic reduction of Moral Philosophy to mechanical presumption that so marks our time. Thankfully, a small number of modern historians bucked that trend and fought for a more Christian, and thus, a more human dimension in our comprehension of our world. Three recent biographies portray the immensity of the task that such stalwarts faced.

Cosmos in the Chaos (Eerdmans) is a biography of the pioneer church historian, Philip Schaff. Author Stephen Graham has vividly captured the great man’s soaring intellect, his unswerving spiritual integrity, and his resolute resistance to the smothering humanistic ideologies of both liberal and conservative sectarianism. He also vividly portrays at what cost such a character is maintained. Though Philip Schaff’s contribution to the discipline of church history is undeniable—his works included the translation and editing of all the Nicene, Ante-Nicene, and Post-Nicene church fathers as well as seminal works on the creeds and confessions through the ages. But, his life was hardly a picture of ivory tower ease—his suffering for the sake of truth is equally undeniable. Mr. Graham has made this lonely prophet’s saga come to life for a whole new generation.

A Historian and His World (Transaction) is a biography of the conservative English scholar Christopher Dawson. Written by his daughter, Christina Scott, the book details the tensions between great minds and small agendas, between advocates of truth and advocates of conformity, and between moral righteousness and political correctness. Like Philip Schaff, Christopher Dawson was a brilliant historian who paid a great price for his insistence on spiritual, cultural, and intellectual integrity. His best-known works, including The Dynamics of World History, The Dividing of Christendom, and The Making of Europe, were informed by a rich acquaintance with the classical Christian legacy and were marked by an erudite facility in English prose. Carrying on the tradition of his beloved Distributivist mentors G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, he was a model of the Christian academic aesthetic. We can all be grateful for the glimpse of such a worldview—and its rare practitioner—Mrs. Scott has afforded us.

J. Evetts Haley: A True Texas Legend by Bill Modisett (Staked Plains) details the life and career of one of the most remarkable men of our time. Perhaps best known for his blockbuster political polemics—such as the bestselling exposé of Lyndon Johnson, A Texan Looks at Lyndon—J. Evetts Haley was also the author of several highly acclaimed historical works—including Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman and The XIT Ranch of Texas. In addition, he was a rancher, a publisher, a teacher, a politician, a librarian and archivist, a community activist, an art aficionado, and a museum curator. He was a kind of renaissance man—Texas-style (he once told me that the only thing better than a really good book was a really good barbeque brisket sandwich, to which I joyously replied, "Amen"). Like Dawson and Schaff, he stood against the tide of systemic institutionalism in the arts by refusing to reduce his pursuit of truth to the Gnostic exigencies of either patronizing reductionism or conforming pragmatism. Thus, Mr. Modisett has reminded us once again that the cost of virtue is often high—but is always worth the price.

Bach and Mozart for the Uninitiated

As a child of the Fifties and Sixties, my appreciation of music was rather stunted early on by a steady diet of Herman’s Hermits, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Dave Clark Five. My only introduction to Western Civilization’s great musical legacy was the background score to the Mighty Mouse cartoons which followed Clutch Cargo and Sky King on Saturday mornings. Thankfully, I have gradually come to appreciate the rich legacy of classical music--though I must confess that my appreciation is still shrouded by a rather dense pop-culture fog of artistic illiteracy. You can imagine then my glee when I discovered a recently rereleased series of multi-media publications from HarperCollins aimed at long-deprived boomer-types like me.

More than a book, more than a recording, and more than both together, each Play-by-Play title is a kind of musical travel guide for listeners who want to do more than simply appreciate the classics--they are for those who actually want to understand them. The texts briefly chronicle the life, times, and work of each composer and then offer movement-by-movement and moment-by-moment commentaries of pivotal pieces. Those commentaries are then linked directly to recordings of the pieces by a unique digital indexing system embedded in the compact disks. The performances are top-flight, the accompanying discographies indicate appropriate avenues for further investigation, and the crystal clear glossaries help map out any unfamiliar terrain.

In Bach Play-by-Play, the analysis and commentary by the renowned classical critic Alan Rich is informative, comprehensive, and sufficiently technical while remaining very entertaining and surprisingly free of unexplained jargon. The performances by Joshua Rifkin’s famed Bach Ensemble are of sterling quality--and the selections are very apropos. Cantata No. 147 is among the best-loved Bach choral works. Atop a gentle dance-like orchestral outpouring, the familiar movement known as Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring rides confidently and exultantly. Add to that Cantata No. 80, Bach’s great Reformation Day treatment of A Mighty Fortress, and you have a marvelous introduction to this Baroque master’s rich repertory.

In Mozart Play-by-Play, the analysis and commentary by Mr. Rich is once again substantive but accessible. And the performances are magnificent. Alfred Brendel’s virtuoso work is highlighted in the Piano Concerto No. 20, one of my all-time favorites with its melding of the symphonic sonata form and the vocal cadenza form. The Piano Concerto No. 21 features a majestic call-and-response encounter between a bassoon march and a piano lilt. Thankfully though, every step of the way through Mozart’s soaring score, the textual guide heightens the listener’s enjoyment and understanding of the piece. Again, the editors have afforded us with a fine introduction to the prolific work of this great eighteenth century prodigy.

With additional titles profiling Beethoven and Tchaikovsky--and hopefully, many more to come--the volumes of the Play-by-Play series comprise a helpful mini-course in music history, theory, appreciation, and composition. Thank goodness. This is one area where I for one, can use all the help I can get.

April Fools

Since at least the fifteenth century this day has been observed with practical jokes and spurious news. It was one of a series of what the Medievals called the “Dismal Days” or alternatively, the “Egyptians’ Woes.” Such days were associated with the plagues of Egypt and thus were seen as seasons of woe and mourning. The word “days” in the phrase was actually an etymological tautology since the word “dismal” was actually just the English form of the Latin dies mali or “evil days.” Thus at first, “dismal” was used as a noun; only later did it become an adjective. Observed soberly and somberly, this occasion was intended to be a reminder of the consequences of rejecting the gracious beckoning of God. Mark Twain commented in his Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, “This is the one day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”

An April Fools Novel

The number of truly masterful American writers can probably be numbered on a single hand: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and of course Herman Melville. Each of these authors achieved great success during their lifetimes and were mourned at their deaths--all except Melville. He died in his New York City home just over a hundred years ago at the age of seventy-two in utter obscurity--his brilliant career and voluminous writings by then, long-forgotten.

A short obituary appearing the day afterward in the New York Press recalled, "Melville had once been one of the most popular writers in the United States," but added, "The later years of his life had been so quiet that probably even his own generation has long thought him dead." Another paper in the city, the Daily Tribune, noted, "The deceased had won considerable fame as an author by the publication of a book entitled Typee, which was the account of his experience while a captive in the hands of the savages of the Marquesas Islands. This was his first and best work although he later wrote a number of other stories, which were published more for private than public circulation."

The obituaries demonstrate one of the most remarkable ironies in the history of American letters--aside from some early renown as an adventure writer, Melville was a publishing failure. During the eleven short years of his literary activity, he was either misunderstood and miscast or castigated and ignored. Even so, some of the best fiction ever produced in the English language flowed from his pen including Moby Dick, Billy Budd, Pierre, Redburn, The Piazza Tales,White-Jacket, and Omoo. By the time he had reached forty though, he had abandoned his writing in order to provide for his family.

It was not until some thirty years after his demise that academics rediscovered his genius. They marveled at the richness of his prose, the depth of his characterizations, the complexity of his symbiology, and the passion of his theology. Moby Dick in particular, was widely heralded as a genuine masterpiece, while several of his other works were made the subjects of serious critical acclaim. Soon Melville was deservedly enshrined in the pantheon of literary greatness.

Amazingly though his finest work has yet to attract the attention it deserves. The Confidence Man is a multi-layered novel of subtle intrigue and stunning mystery. Like much of his writing, the story is constructed as a kind of literary and theological puzzle. But this surprising and scintillating double-coded labyrinth--which seems to follow the thematic structure of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion--never obstructs the pace or the sense of the story. Powerful scenic images and a rip-roaring series of illusions, cons, ploys, and deceptions give the book a page-turning quality generally unknown in serious literary works. It is, in short, brilliantly conceived and passionately executed.

Taking up the great themes of the pioneer West, the story is part satire, part allegory, and part hoax, against which Melville explores the essence of America and American values. A motley cast of characters including gamblers, pilgrims, farmers, Indians, and east coast dandies, become foils for a slippery metaphysical comedy set on April Fool's Day aboard a Mississippi riverboat. It is the kind of book that haunts you for days afterwards--sudden insights will shed a new light on obscure passages at the oddest moments. The story just won't let you go.

Born in 1819, the son of a struggling merchant, Melville had an adventurous youth—serving on whaling vessels and trading ships throughout the Pacific and across the Atlantic. His literary career, such as it was, grew out of a desire to tell of those experiences. His maturity as a writer blossomed quickly and he was drawn into the high-brow literary circle that included Longfellow and Hawthorne. But his unwillingness to compromise either his style or his content to suit popular tastes doomed his commercial appeal. When he quit writing altogether in 1857, he asserted that he'd rather lay down his pen than lower his standards: "What I feel most moved to write will not pay. Yet write the other way, I cannot."

Sadly, what was true then is even more so today--as any serious writer will quickly attest. Thus, with the force of an unerring moral capunction, he put away his parchments and went to work as a customs inspector at the busy New York harbor.

That kind of uncompromising ethical conviction, readily apparent in Moby Dick, is even more evident in The Confidence Man--particularly in Stephen Matterson's painstakingly edited Penguin Classics edition. The book is an unrestrained expression of originality and verve. But it is also a forceful exertion of will against all odds erupting upon the intellectual stage with a lusty obsession for truth and resolution: "Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill. Give me Vesuvius's crater for an inkstand."

He wrote of leviathans. Indeed, he was himself a leviathan.

The Chernobyl Dead Zone

Recently, a Russian nuclear researcher, Elena Korievko, took a solo tour through the famed Chernobyl "dead zone." It is a ghostly swath of land stretching from Russia, through the Ukraine, and into Belarus where one can literally drive for hours and not see a single soul. Very sobering. Very spooky. Now Ms. Korievko has documented her trip and her research on a fascinating web site. It takes some time to navigate through the entire site--and at times her English is a bit rough--but I think you'll find that her photos alone make it worth the effort.

Shore Family Update

Bannockburn student, Amy Shore, has created a blog site to keep folks updated on her family's progress in life and faith. Her father, Joe, just underwent a liver transplant after suffering from Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) for nearly two decades. This remarkable family's testimony of grace is a genuine inspiration.

The Fragrance of Oppression

Earlier this morning I was speaking to a local pastor about the remarkable work of the Gospel in Northern Iraq. Even amidst great turmoil--or perhaps because of it--the Good New is going forth with power and unction. My pastor friend was a bit surprised when I told him the following story--and he encouraged me to reprint it here despite its earlier distribution through Table Talk magazine:

The assailant fired off nearly thirty rounds. He shouted, “Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar! God is great!” He turned on his heel and left the taxi driver to die. And thus, on February 17, 2003, the Iraqi church had yet another martyr. Ziwar Muhammad Isma'il, a believer from the city of Zakho, not only left behind a wife and five children, he left behind a remarkable legacy of faithfulness in the midst of adversity, discrimination, oppression, harassment, and persecution.

Ziwar, a Kurd, came to saving faith seven years ago. “Since then he has been faithful to, and open, about his faith. Many times he was threatened and twice arrested, though never charged,” reported his pastor. Though practically illiterate, he had memorized large portions of the Scriptures and served as a deacon in the fledgling Evangelical church. Thus said his pastor, “he was always very well aware, as are all of us in the church here, of the fact that at some point, martyrdom is all too likely. He accepted this without reservation.”

I confess that when I received the e-mail reporting Ziwar’s death, I was shocked. But, I know I shouldn’t have been. Long ago the Apostle Paul asserted, “All those who desire to live godly lives will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). There is no way around it. No amount of compromise can divert it. Persecution is inevitable.

Jesus explained this fact to His disciples saying, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the Word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My Word, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18-20).

Ziwar understood, perhaps better than most of the rest of us, the ever-present danger of Christian profession in the midst of this poor fallen world.

Everyone loves a winner. The sweet smell of success draws nearly all of us like moths to a candle flame. Popularity, celebrity, prominence, and fame are not only the hallmarks of our age, they are just about the only credentials we require for adulation or leadership.

As a result, we are generally not too terribly fond of the peculiar, the obscure, or the unpopular. At best we reserve pity for losers. In fact, we view with suspicion anyone who somehow fails to garner kudos from the world at large. If they have fallen prey to vilification, defamation, or humiliation we simply assume that they must somehow be at fault.

There was a time when martyrdom was among the church's highest callings and greatest honors. Early on, Christians embraced the truth that "all those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Timothy 3:12). The heroes of the faith have always been those who actually sacrificed their lives, fortunes, and reputations for the sake of the Gospel.
But no longer. There is almost a kind of shame that we attach to those who suffer persecution or isolation or oppression. If their cause does not meet with quick success, we are only too hasty to abandon them. Maybe they didn't try hard enough. Maybe they just made a couple of dumb mistakes. Maybe they had faulty theology. Maybe they just failed to marshal effective public relations techniques. But however they got into the mess they're in, we are all but certain that they are not the kind of models we ought to follow.

E.M. Bounds, the great nineteenth century pastor and evangelist who penned several classic books on prayer, asserted it was "all too often the case" that "when the church prospers it loses sight of the very virtues from whence its prosperity has sprung." According to Bounds those virtues "invariably have sprung out of either the suffering of believers or their response to the suffering of others."

Throughout the history of the church, believers have suffered both fierce persecution and enforced obscurity. They have been beaten, ridiculed, defrocked, and defamed. They have suffered poverty, isolation, betrayal, and disgrace. They have been hounded, harassed, and murdered. Through it all though, they bore testimony to the fact that they found solace in the realization of genuine hope—a hope that did not depend on the confirmation of worldly notions of success; a hope that did not need to adjust to the ever-shifting tides of situation or circumstance. They were somehow able to comprehend that the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of the faithful are the seeds of real success and that our diligent, unflagging efforts on behalf of the despised and rejected are our most potent caveats to the worldly-wise.

Though that may be an alien notion to us today, it has been the common experience of virtually all those who have gone before us in faith: apostles, prophets, martyrs, confessors, pastors, evangelists, missionaries, reformers, and witnesses. They tasted the bittersweet truth that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to "those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness" (Matthew 5:10) and that great "blessings" and "rewards" eventually await those who have been "insulted," "slandered," and "sore vexed" who nevertheless persevere in their high callings (Matthew 5:12-13).

And so, though they often suffered the slanging ridicule and irate torments of the world, they remained steadfast, continued their course, and walked in grace. Like Ziwar, they were willing to risk everything for the sake of truth.

The fact is, our response to the "fragrance of oppression," as historian Herbert Schlossberg has dubbed the persecutions and sufferings of our world, is perhaps the single most significant indicator of the health and vitality of the church. It is in "afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, sleeplessness, and hunger" (2 Corinthians 6:4-5) that our mettle is proven.

E.M. Bounds said it well, “The easy smile, the temperate deportment, and the contented visage of a successful and prosperous Christians can but impress few, but the determined faithfulness, the long-suffering fellowship, and the stalwart compassion of yokefellows in hardship is certain to convey the hope of grace to many.”

Everyone loves a winner. That's not all bad--as long as our understanding of who the real winners are conforms to Biblical standards. But then that's the rub, isn't it?

I loved Ziwar before. But now, he is my role model.

Virgil’s Place in Letters

Rehearsing the litany of woes that has afflicted modern academia has, to be sure, grown to be an all too repetitive and wearisome task. Nevertheless, when introducing a figure of such significance as Virgil, a bit of hand wringing may be necessary just to put his legacy in proper perspective. The fact is, though almost altogether unread today, Virgil’s influence on the literature of Western Civilization has been immeasurable. His writing—along with the works of Augustine, Aristotle, Plato, and Homer—gave substantial shape to Western ideas about art, music, poetry, prose, rhetoric, drama, narrative, and history.

In the days when, according to Middlebury Emeritus Professor William Harris, a minimum of eight years study of Latin was expected for graduation with a collegiate Batchelor’s degree, it might have been reasonable to assume familiarity with the entire twelve books of Virgil’s literary masterpiece, Aeneid, the ten books of his pastoral poems, known as Eclogues or Bucolics, and his treatise on the four aspects of farm-life, tillage, horticulture, cattle-breeding, and bee-keeping, known as the Georgics—from which all of us farmer-folk Christened “George” inherited our name. Alas, those days are long gone. Now Augustine, Aristotle, Plato, and Homer have been replaced in the standard curriculum by such piffle, drivel, and swill as Norman Mailer, Judy Blume, Kurt Vonnegut, and Germaine Greer.

Publius Vergilius Maro was born October 15, 70 B.C. at Andes, near Mantua, in Cisalpine Gaul. He died 51 years later on September 21, 19 B.C. at Brundisium, possibly as the result of sunstroke. He was thought to have been sickly, slow of speech, and of a countrified appearance. His writing was sometimes criticized for its rusticity, too—but he was hardly ill-educated. He studied law, medicine, mathematics, and probably some Epicurean philosophy. As a result, his attachment to agrarian ideals, communitarian values, and domestic pleasures were all an outgrowth of his serious attempts to do social criticism with his art.

The Emperor Augustus commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid to glorify Rome and the Roman people by means of a Homeric epic about the adventures of Aeneas, ancestor of Romulus—the fabled founder of Rome—and ultimately the Julian line—of which Augustus was, of course, the scion. Thus, the real subject of the Aeneid was not Aeneas, rather it was Rome and her imperial dominions. It’s history was not that of the post-bellum world of the Mediterranean, rather it was of that romantic land of imagination.

After working on his magnum opus for more than eleven years, Virgil succumbed to his many ailments, leaving the Aeneid unfinished. Virgil had requested that the manuscript be burned, not published, should he die before it was finished, but Augustus countermanded these instructions—one of the rare instances in history where tyranny proved advantageous to the future of civilization.

As a result, the work lived on to achieve a kind of literary immortality. Augustine believed Virgil was the greatest of all the pagan poets—indeed, he portrayed him as a kind of proto-Christian figure. Dante looked to Virgil as his guide in traversing the dangerous terrain of The Divine Comedy. Petrarch modeled his Africa on Aeneid. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Theseid in the classical form of twelve books and in precisely the same number of lines as Aeneid—indeed, he is said to have started its composition sitting in Virgil's tomb. Geoffrey Chaucer summarized the Aeneid in The House of Fame and The Legend of Dido. It comes as little surprise that critics have found more than twice as many allusions, nods, feints, and references to Virgil in the works of Shakespeare than to any other author. John Keats created a prose translation of the entire Aeneid by age fourteen—saying later it was the single most significant influence in the shaping of his aesthetic sensibilities. Likewise, Victor Hugo translated Virgil at sight at age nine in the entrance exam for his school. Matthew Arnold and Alfred Lord Tennyson were also supremely influenced by Virgil—crediting his verse style with establishing an aesthetic standard against which all the rest of the Western Canon ought to be measured.

Though it might be difficult to raise Virgil so high within the pantheon of literary greatness, nevertheless, the current mood of neglect says far more about our lack of sense and sensibility—to say nothing of our pride and prejudice—than it does about the applicability of his work to the modern world.

Virgil or Vergil?

The academically correct spelling of Publius Vergilius Maro’s name really ought to be Vergil rather than Virgil. According to Gilbert Highet in the misspelling began early, possibly as the result of the poet’s nickname Parthenias which was based on the poet's sexual restraint. In the Medieval age, his name was thought to refer to the poet’s magical powers—as in the virga magic wand. But however mistaken, modern popular usage demands that we refer to him as Virgil—if for no other reason than the fact that it drives the tenured academic lint pickers at the university absolutely crazy.

A Modern Fairy Tale

Today he is hardly considered a major figure in the annals of American letters. In his own day, however novelist and poet Stephen Crane was recognized as a literary prodigy. Indeed, he was among the brightest orbs in the starry American literary constellation. He was frequently compared with Tolstoy, Zola, and Kipling. Mark Twain praised him as “an undeniable master of the literary crafts.” Buchan, Tolkien, and Lewis each acknowledged his “stunning evocative abilities.” Chesterton ranked him “before Meredith, Alcott, and the Bronte sisters” and “perhaps only behind Scott, Austen, Stevenson, and Dickens” among the great Victorian novelists. Conrad dubbed him “non-comparable as an artist.” And Howells inscribed his name “among the brightest of the sons of genius.” He helped to launch the Naturalist Movement through his use of detached narration, great attention to detail, and characters from lower social classes.

Early on, Crane evidenced extraordinary gifts. He began to compose stories, satires, and verses at the age of fourteen. When his mother, an impoverished widow, secured a college scholarship for him, he turned his hand to political essays, elegies, criticism, and social commentary.

Alas, even the greatest gifts, the best advantages, and the finest opportunities can be easily squandered. He plunged into a life of wastrel bohemianism and concupiscence. He ventured into the rough and tumble literary world at the turn of the century. He frequented the theaters, dressed fashionably, and drank profligately. He boldly rejected the faith of his childhood and embraced a life of defiant worldliness.

He continued to write prodigiously as well—often in dissipated all-night binges. He managed to create an arresting style from a unique conflation of his reading and his own invention, that offered readers an eerie sense of eye witness authenticity—though it was entirely speculative and romantic.

As Crane became more and more adept at manufacturing his fantasies—fantasies of stark realism—his excesses became even more pronounced. Though his piddling advances and royalties were quickly squandered, he actually intensified his dissolute lifestyle. Going without food or sleep for days on end, he wrote ceaselessly with a tortured passion unequaled in American journalism letters. Then he would indulge in drinking sprees, carousings, and fierce street brawls.

His greatest work, The Red Badge of Courage, was published in the autumn of 1895. It quickly went through two editions before the end of the year. By the next summer the novel was an international bookseller list and had gone through fourteen printings; remarkably enough, Red Badge has never been out of print since. Though Crane achieved almost overnight celebrity, unremunerative contracts with the publishers and a general lack of good business sense kept Crane insolvent throughout his life while his debauched lifestyle seriously eroded his health. As quickly as his star had risen, it suddenly fell. Within four years of his first publishing triumph, he was dead at the age of twenty-eight.

In Red Badge, Crane traces the effects of war on a single Union soldier, Henry Fleming, from his dreams of soldiering, to his actual enlistment, and through several battles of the Civil War. Unhappy with his dull, quiet, and boring life at home on the farm, Fleming yearns to somehow earn glory and renown for his heroic achievements in battle. After he enlists however, he discovers that a soldier’s life consists of two parts futility, one part confusion, and one part terror. Set at the Civil War battle of Chancellorsville (though it actually remains unnamed in the story), the young idealistic soldier is forced by the dumb certainties of experience to become a hardened realistic veteran. And in the process, he comes to the difficult realization that boring is actually a virtue not a vice.

The reality is that boring is what most people are actually yearning for—they just don’t know it. Boring is having no people to see, no tasks to accomplish, no expectations to meet, no pressures to deal with—it is the ideal adventure. People go halfway around the world to find a secluded beach or a remote cabin or a mountain chalet, just so they can do nothing. It is dull people who have to be stimulated constantly. Something has always got to be going on.

We are addicted to the razzle-dazzle. We want wow. And we want it now. Our whole culture, from popular entertainment to corporate management, is predicated on the idea that our lives ought to be defined by a frenetic go-go-go sense of busyness. There is no time to reflect. No time to think. No time to do anything at all except be busy.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Somehow, Stephen Crane realized a century ago what we are still struggling to come to terms with. He realized it too late to wrench his life away from the precipitous decline of debauchery—though his novel remains a morality tale, a steadfast warning for us.

Red Badge is a novel of spectacular descriptions—vivid scenes which would satisfy a growing consumer society’s desire for thrilling spectacle. Written in a post-photographic age, the novel discards contemporaneous conventions of battlefield prose for a discontinuous succession of flashing images that yield photographic revelations. Crane limited the novel’s point of view and fragmented its narrative in order to focus the impact of each of his battle pictures. He wanted to somehow make his readers see the truth of his descriptions.

He focused the narrative on the physical, emotional, and intellectual responses of people under extreme pressure, nature’s indifference to humanity’s fate, and the consequent need for compassionate collective action. He explored the effect of colors on the human mind, the harsh realities of war and fighting on the social fabric, the lasting impact of father-son relationships on community life, the interlacing themes of sin and virtue on the cultural consensus. The result was nothing short of riveting.

The English critic Sydney Brooks, totally convinced by Crane's depictions of combat in Red Badge, assumed that Crane had fought in the Civil War. If Red Badge were “altogether a work of the imagination, unbased on personal experience,” Brooks asserted, “its realism would be nothing short of a miracle.”

In fact though, Crane was not born until nearly a decade after the conflicts depicted in the novel took place. When he wrote those scenes, he had not seen any form of warfare at all. Indeed, though informed by a certain amount of research, the book was entirely the work of a fantastic imagination. His realism was completely made up. In that sense, he was a romantic of the basest sort.

In writing about the life and legacy of King Alfred the Great, G.K. Chesterton quipped, “King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him.” Chesterton recognized that sometimes that which appears to be most realistic is actually most fantastic and that which appears to be most fantastic is actually most realistic. In the case of Stephen Crane, we have a remarkable writer known for his authenticity, but whose realism was in fact just a romance.

Modern critics have assumed that Crane produced a new thing—a kind of fictionalized journalism. In fact, what he produced in Red Badge was a fairy tale with a moral.

Agreeing to Disagree

"The surest signs of a healthy society are open and free debates. We must be able to agree to disagree. In a democracy protecting the rights of our adversaries is as important as protecting the rights of our advocates." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"A man who knows that the earth is round but lives among men who believe it to be flat ought to hammer in his doctrine of the earth’s roundness up to the point of arrest, imprisonment, or even death. Reality will confirm him, and he performs that greatest of all services in a free society: debate." Hilaire Belloc (1871-1953)

"We come back to that sharp and shining point which the modern world is perpetually trying to avoid. We must have a creed, even in order to be comprehensive. Anyone setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute." G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"It is far easier to agree on what we are against than it is to agree on what we are for. Opposition movements are a potent force for social change until it comes time to actually make the necessary changes. We all know what not to do. But knowing what we ought to do is another matter altogether. The negative is no replacement for the positive." Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

"Our true friends will stretch us intellectually, will understand our deepest longings and fondest dreams, and will encourage us to embrace the future in dynamic and constructive ways. In difficult times they are most assuredly there for us—and we are there for them—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Likewise, in times of blessing our fellowship is sweet, sure, and secure. They even disagree with us at just the moments when we need such challenges and thus perform a service far greater than those who perpetually tell us what we want to hear." John Buchan (1875-1940)

"Friendship can take different turns—it can run like a river, quietly and sustainingly through life; it can erupt like a geyser, forcefully and intermittently at times; or it can explode like a meteor, altering the atmosphere so that nothing ever looks, feels, or functions the same again." Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

Fighting Fair

Of all men, Christians should be able to disagree nobly and graciously. Sadly, that is rarely the case. Karen and I are currently in South Florida, enjoying the sunshine, the seafood, and the pool while we do a bit of studying and writing. One of the books I am slowly working through is the new Knox Seminary Colloquium on the Federal Vision theological controversy. Last summer advocates of the Federal Vision theology, John Barach, Peter Leithart, Rich Lusk, Steve Schlissel, Tom Trouwborst, Steve Wilkins, Doug Wilson (nearly all of whom are dear friends) and their critics, Christopher Hutchinson, George Knight, Richard Phillips, Joey Pipa, Carl Robbins, Morton Smith, and Fowler White (many of whom are also dear friends) exchanged papers (and barbs) in Fort Lauderdale in an effort to clarify positions and hopefully mollify tempers over what had recently become a major brouhaha within the Reformed world. By all evidences in the book, The Auburn Avenue Theology, the participants somewhat succeeded in the former but failed altogether in the latter, alas.

Edited by Cal Beisner (also a long-time friend and my supervisor in a D.Min. program I have been working on the last few years), the book gathers together the various papers and the responses. Reading them has been both invigorating and depressing. The invigorating part is due to the fact that I have had to exercise brain muscles I haven’t used in far too long—these are brilliant articulate men dealing with marvelous doctrines of grace. The depressing part is due to the fact that the papers often talk past one another—major questions are left unanswered and bravado, hubris, and antipathy often substitute for dialog, discourse, and interchange.

I had assumed that what I would discover was that this controversy was essentially much ado about nothing; that it was likely more about personality than about substance; that at its root, it was more about logomachies than heterodoxies; that it might be whilst one side was defending the Biblical doctrine of justification of faith, the other was merely explaining propitiation or sanctification, or redemption or some other aspect of Christ’s finished work. Having carefully read more than half of the book, I still have yet to be convinced that this is not the case. More than anything though, I have come to the sad realization that even when we attempt to fight fair, charitably, and graciously (that after all was the stated aim of the colloquium), we tend to descend to a default mode of sloganeering and bombast. And the result is that “the name of God is blasphemed” because of us (Romans 2:24).

Bad Reviews

From time to time folks will write or call me to ask why I only do positive book reviews. Why don’t I do genuine criticism? Why don’t I lambaste all the piffle, drivel, and swill that seems to subsume so much of the publishing industry these days? There are two simple reasons.

First, I don’t have time to read bad books. There are still too many classics that I have yet had a chance to read. I don’t have any inclination to waste precious time plowing through boring, or wicked, or sentimental, or lurid works. If I discover that a book is not worth reading after a couple of chapters, I stop reading it. And if I wouldn’t waste my time reading something, I figure I shouldn’t waste your time telling you as much. How much better to profile the myriads of volumes that are really worth reading--and thus, are really worth writing about.

The fiercest criticism I can offer a bad book is to ignore it.

Secondly, my whole purpose in writing articles, columns, blogs, and newsletters about books is not merely to write articles, columns, blogs, and newsletters about books. I don’t need the space, the PR, or the extra job. I make no pretense of being a journalist or a professional critic of belles lettres. I am a reader who happens to enjoy sharing my favorite discoveries with others. I try not to be promiscuous in my praise. But I have no intention of masking my enthusiasms either.

Now, if a Mein Kampf were to come along, I suppose I’d likely be obligated to point out its gross malignancy. That would most assuredly be a noble task worth undertaking. To be sure we need to be alert to the dangers around us. We can’t afford to be incognizant of the dark forces that threaten to topple our culture. We mustn’t stick our heads in the sand. Lord knows, I’ve spent much of my writing career lampooning the enemies of justice, mercy, and humility before God. So I’m certainly not saying that we need to shy away from condemning the prejudice, perversity, and intellectual dishonesty that are the hallmarks of modern inhuman humanism. But the fact is, most bad books--like bad movies, bad music, and bad art--aren’t all that important. They will ultimately collapse under the weight of their own absurdity and generally do not warrant our frenzied concern.

At a time when most people are only too well aware of the smothering mediocrity of American pop culture, why not direct attentions to those works of encouragement, edification, erudition, and enlightenment? That's what I am aiming at when I recommend a book.

Indeed, the Apostle Paul reminds us to keep things in proper perspective--to major on the majors and minor on the minors: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be anything praiseworthy, think on these things” (Philippians 4:8).