Category: Confessions of a Bibliophile

Just received the new biography of William Wilberforce, written by William Hague, who previously wrote the very good biography of William Pitt. What’s with all the William names? Having seen the film Amazing Grace, and read the John Pollock biography when it came out nearly 30 years ago, I’m looking forward to reading another account of what by any reckoning was a life of remarkable achievement. The early Evangelicals are too easily assumed to be pietistic, otherworldly and self-concerned about individual salvation, and it’s good to have an account of Wilberforce that takes his religious commitment seriously without allowing it to distort the story. He was BOTH compassionate by temperament and evangelical by commitment; evangelism and emancipation were not alternatives but complements; and the limitations in his vision and strategy, are too easily judged by hindsight and exaggerated by anachronistic applications of today’s standards. He was, in the most important senses, a good man.

Later this year Christology and Scripture, edited by A. T. Lincoln, will come out in affordable paperback. Meanwhile I have a library copy of the hardback. I am deeply persuaded of the Christological nature of a Christian hermeneutic of Scripture. "The sole and absolute authority in all matters of faith and practice is our Lord Jesus Christ, as revealed in Scripture" is one of the key principles of our Baptist Declaration of Principle. Later this year I have an essay in a forthcoming book on Baptist Spiritualities that explores the implications for Baptist Spirituality of a Christological hermeneutic. These interdisciplinary essays will force me to think through further the dogmatic, critical and practical implications of taking seriously the relations between Christology and Scripture.

One of the best titles I’ve come across for a while,(and I mean I like the evocative ring to it as well as the contents) Singing the Ethos of God. Brian brock from Aberdeen University explores several areas that are of personal interest to me. Psalms, Christian Ethics, Bonhoeffer, and the historically definitive psalms sermons and commentaries of Augustine and Luther which are important examples of why pre-critical exegesis is not to be dismissed by later practitioners of the historical critical approach. What’s more the book is written with verve and a sense of the importance of Scripture as reource not only for ethical reflection but for moral persuasion and personal transformation. I’m going to blog on this book in August when holidays are passed.

So my ‘Waiting Patiently to be Read’ shelf is now re-stocked. These three are now on the list of books I’m aiming to read at all costs in the coming year.  What about youz yinz – what are the ones you’re going to read no matter what?

I spent the morning with the good people of Hillhead Baptist Church. They were exploring options and possibilities for the future ministry of this significant  and strategic fellowship, located in Glasgow’s West End. As a friend of the congregation I was offering what wisdom and help I could as they plan for their future. Finished by just after 12.00 noon. I casually mentioned that I was now probably going to sin in the Oxfam Bookshop on Byres Road. Remember I previously bought my Poems for Refugees book there in February and blogged about it several times. Well my sympathetic and pastorally alert friend immediately reassured me:

‘But if you are buying in the Oxfam shop that wouldn’t be sin, that would be a good thing to do.’

And I sinned by the sheer alacrity with which I grabbed hold of this much more positive perspective on my book buying urges and floated in self congratulatory virtue down the street to the Oxfam shop. And yes, I did indeed buy a book – not an expensive one you realise, but enough to consider it a donation rather than a piece of self-indulgence.

More seriously it is a book of sermons – boring huh? By a Victorian Free Church minister who was the leading OT scholar in Scotland for a couple of decades, (1870’s to 1890’s) the venerable A. B. Davidson. Not everyone’s taste – but now and then I dive into the sonorous prose and leisurely syntax of the Victorian age, and find there the extended descriptive responses of another generation to the truth of God – and I find their voices persuasive, their words moving, and the faith that underlies their ruminative theology an antidote to the Devotions for Dummies approach of much contemporary ‘devotional’ writing.

Here is A B Davidson, on the experience of Job and the text ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth…’

The sufferer’s ideas may not be complete, and he may not see the way clearly to that which his faith demands. His expressions are exclamatory and disjointed; but this is his assurance, , that though he die in darkness, as he will, though the riddle of God’s dealing with him remain unsolved here, though God’s face be resolutely hidden from him till, under the ravage of his disease, his flesh be consumed and his bodily frame dissolved, yet that shall not be the end of all. He shall not be dissolved, and God cannot be dissolved; and this darkness is not an eternal darkness. On this night of estrangement and mystery, however long it may be, a morn shall break at last; and through the clouds there will shine out a face, a reconciled face, that I shall see for myself; and mine eyes shall behold and not another’s….

What Job craved, and what his faith enabled him to say he knew, was that the unseen God should become visible; that God whose dwelling is in heaven amid clouds and darkness, should descend and stand upon the earth; that the great problem between God and man, and between men and men, should be unravelled by God in human form, and in human speech; that the riddle of the painful earth, the mystery, misery, the wrong, the bitter wrestlings of mind with mind, should be removed forever and composed and that all those who clung to God amidst the darkness and misconceptions of men, or of their own, should pass out of darkness into an unclouded light, in which their eyes should see God.

No – they don’t write them like that anymore. Taking our human frailty along with God’s redeeming purposeful love, with utter seriousness, and a hopeful trust. These are words that respect life’s tragic turns, puzzling perplexities, and faithful questionings.

June is the month I review what I’ve read in the past year, and write myself a wee essay on why certain books were important and worth the investment of time and energy

This year, several make the list of ‘Glad I Read You.’

Stanley Hauerwas, Mathhew. A Theological Commentary. The first book I blogged on – and persuaded some people to buy – hope no one was disappointed. A readable commentary is no fair achievement – readable and specific to both the text and its contemporary meaning makes it refreshingly sharp. Compared to other anodyne ‘application’ commentaries, this is astringent salt that stings and heals.

John Swinton, Raging with Compassion. An immensely helpful approach to evil and suffering, not as problems to be solved, but as human experiences to which we respond with strategies of resistance. This is theology made practical, pastoral practice made theologically secure.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church. An honest, spiritually alert and pastorally gentle account of this Episcopal priest and renowned preacher, following God’s call out of church and into seminary.

David Hempton, Methodism. Empire of the Spirit. The best analysis of denominational growth and decline I’ve read, and the social and contextual pressures that influence such patterns. Hugely important as an example of historical analysis clarifying the ecclesia-babble and exposing the self-concerned survivalism of  contemporary strategies for growth in North Atlantic America and Europe.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. Third reading of this (for class seminars), and although I’m not prepared to sell out completely to the social model of the Trinity, Moltmann shows why it is an attractive and essential emphasis in a contemporary understanding of the Christian doctrine of God. In class we listened to Moltmann’s testimony in a lecture he gave several years ago – I was deeply moved by his debt to Ayrshire miners who welcomed a young German soldier while he was building roads near Cumnock – the place where I spent my first 10 years of life. Maybe I walked on a road Moltmann laid – theologically I’ve enjoyed walking along some of the theological paths he has laid since.

Hans Kung, My Struggle for Freedom. Ever since reading his On Being a Christian, I’ve followed Kung’s developing thought and writing. Nothing has ever bettered that book – but this volume one of his autobiography describes the formation of a brilliant mind, and gives remarkable insight into the machinations of Vatican II ( from Kung’s perspective of course). As in many autobiographies, Kung can’t avoid making himself the hero – and others the villains, which preserves a theological autobiography from tedium.

This is also the time of the year when I make a modest list of the books I intend to get through before next June – if the Lord don’t come and the creek don’t rise. The list isn’t started yet – except in my head. Any suggestions?

Not often that the publisher’s blurb is worth quoting as a good working theological definition. How about this from the blurb on a new book on holiness and ecclesiology? As a definition of what the church is for, and Who it is for, it is as succinctly to the point as any other I know.

‘…..to stimulate churches to imagine anew what it might mean to be a publicly identifiable people who embody God’s very character in their particular social setting.’

The book is announced by Eerdmans in their Fall catalogue – which has far too many good books forthcoming. I feel waves of temptation which are going to have to be resisted…..mostly.

Tomorrow I will post some further reflections on the community theologian’s role in a theological community.

When it comes to devotional books, the Victorians knew a thing or two about sentimental feelings, emotionally loaded poetry and idealised botany! Amongst the books I recently rescued from threatened oblivion in Voltaire and Rousseau’s, is just such a devotional book.(V&R are the kind of second-hand booksellers, near Glasgow University, where there are heaps of books arranged in heaps- that teeter on the brink of avalanche – making a bookshop browse into a kind of outward bound course for booklovers). The book in question is called ‘Songs from Life’s Journey’; it’s a combination of well known Sankey type hymns, illustrated with scrapbook impossibly arranged flowers, thick gilt edged paper and all arranged in a highly stylised coffee-table format.

The front page announces the publisher as Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster Row, London, one of the publishers of quality productions from early in the 19th century. The picture I scanned shows the cover page, and gives an idea of the extravagant use of images on sepia paper, suggesting an impression of colourful profusion. It’s cheesy – ( but by the way, how will folk a hundred years from now judge our taste in praise songs, purpose driven paperbacks, and lack of emotional rootedness in vital doctrinally informed religious experience)? Hmmmmm.

Anyway, I love the way the Victorians were unembarassed about cheesiness – and there is something quite poignant about a book that who knows who, took trouble to buy, and use or give to someone – and for what occasion? Wedding? Bereavement? Conversion?

Don’t know – but enjoy one of the pages with its hymn, its pictures, and its connection with some unknown Christian from a hundred and something years ago. And if the hymn strikes you as sentimental – good – the sentiments of the hymn are timeless – and timely.

I’ve bought more books. Not from Amazon – from those second-hand places where books are piled precariously and the one you want is at the bottom, and to get it you have to risk the whole Babel tower of them landing on your head like a judgement from heaven. One of the books I saw, seized and rapidly paid for, was by Richard Baxter the Puritan – not a killjoy, not a censorious policeman of others’ behaviour, not as someone once defined Puritans, a person who lives with the constant worry that someone somewhere is enjoying themselves.

It was an edited version of his Autobiography, an account of the Civil War, his pastoral labours in Kidderminster, and the trivia of domestic gossip that makes an autobiography of a human being interesting. So, keeping in mind I had to remove it from the bottom of a perilously leaning pile of miscellaneous literary curiosities, here’s his take on why we should believe God watches over us bibliophiles, to keep us safe when we walk through valleys of deepest darkness, and books precariously heaped around us:

Another time as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books broke down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down on every side of me, and not one of them hit me save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight and the greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, one of the shelves right over my head having the six volumes of Dr Walton’s Oriental Bible, and all Augustine’s works, and the Bibliotheca Patrum and Marlorate etc.

I love that picture of Baxter lost in writing the  several million words he wrote with a quill and ink, late into the night burning the midnight candle, and getting the fright of his life as his 17th century IKEA bookshelves collapsed and nearly brained him! As a pastor he is legendary for thoroughness and psychological precision in spiritual direction; as a controversialist he feared no argument if it was about the freedom of the Gospel and the independence of the church; as a writer and a fellow bibliophile he wrote exhaustively.

And when asked to assess the worth of his writings as he lay dying he said, ‘I was but a pen in God’s hand, and what credit is due to a pen?’

Such great spirits are undeservedly neglected today. It was Baxter who gave C S Lewis the title of his bestseller, Mere Christianity. The same C S Lewis in one of his best essays, urged contemporary Christians to read old books at least as often as we do new books, otherwise said Lewis, we are guilty of chronological snobbery, a phrase he might have offered as a definition of overstated postmodern prejudice against premodern wisdom.

This collection of essays on books which authors read early in life, and later re-read, is a fascinating study of how we grow and mature and change. We develop new values, broader perspectives, are less taken in by the sense of our own importance, and become more self-consciously critical of what we used to absorb with joyful and liberal imagination. Some of these essays are therefore about adult disillusion, or at least, disappointment. These essayists discover that a book which is remembered as formative, delightful, exciting, or perspective changing, on being re-read decades later is discovered to be shallow, narrow, tedious perhaps even harmful.

Others re-visit their chosen book and discover that the intervening years have given them deeper appreciation of what they earlier sensed, and wonder how they could have missed so much in their first reading. Perhaps all this is because we read what we read at a particular time and in life’s circumstances as they are given to us, and by the time we re-visit the book years later we are no longer the same person. We are more mature, worldly wise, more questioning – whereas we used to be children, naive, more trusting; the world was different and so were we, and we are remembering it from a different world too.

I had the same kind of experience when I revisited a couple of the places where I grew up as a child. The burn wasn’t deep and dark and exciting to cross on the stepping stones, it was really a jumped up ditch; the trees I climbed weren’t of amazon rain forest proportions, they were – well, just wee trees. The wood of fir trees that was a half day’s trek away when I was 10 could be reached in fifteen minutes by car. The school (pictured here, one of 14 schools I attended) had become engineering offices. What changed – not the places, at least not only the places, but the person visiting. Reading this book called Rereadings, set off a related but different train of thought – about the books I have re-read, and what I gained in the re-reading. It’s a truism that as we get older we do less new reading and some more re-reading – perhaps so.

Here in no order or categories, are some books I have read more than once – and may read again, and even again. Some are by authors whose other books I’ve also read. They wouldn’t be the same for any of us – and I’d be interested in what others think worth reading more than once. Or does no-one else re-read?

Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, W H Vanstone

My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

The Outline of Literature, John Drinkwater

The Interpretation of the New Testament, Stephen Neil and Tom Wright

The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, Jurgen Moltmann

The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen

Selected Letters of Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, (ed) B. Holland.

An Equal Music, Vikram Seth

Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer