DLWheel's Blog

Erich Auerbach Mimesis, 14-15 writes that the intent of biblical stories:“is not to bewitch the senses, and if nevertheless they produce lively sensory effects, it is only because the moral, religious, and psychological phenomena which are their sole concern are made concrete in the sensible matter of life. But their religious intent involves an absolute claim to historical truth. . . . Without believing in Abraham’s sacrifice, it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it was written. . . . The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy . . . The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”

My children have heard a lot of stories. Some have been made up on the fly The Wilson Kid Adventures, some have involved hobbits, some apostles, some dwarves, and some have involved men caught up in horrible wars their great grandfathers. My kids have heard stories about B-17 squadrons, and destroyers hitting mines, and their great grandmother’s dear friend, Corrie Ten Boom. They have heard stories about boys and about girls, about men and about women who faced the darkness armed with Light. They have heard true stories from history, and they have heard true stories that we call fiction. And I have been blessed to watch their young eyes sparkle with joy, and their young souls swell and grow with story food. Stories are more than amusement.

Do not fear those who can destroy the body — lions, armies, giants, kings, Balrogs, Caesars, large rats, or neighborhood bullies.

A Mistrust of Magic?

Bible-believing Christians frequently have a deep mistrust of fiction. In particular, they have a deep mistrust of, ahem, magic. This is impossible for me to understand, partly because I was weaned on C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but more profoundly because I was marinated in Scripture at a very young age by my parents. And Scripture is full of . . . stories. More than that, Scripture is full of the miraculous and the amazing. “Throw water on the altar,” Elijah says. “Fire will still fall from Heaven.” A famous shepherd boy takes down an infamous six-fingered giant. Don’t let the long-haired man near a jawbone. Collect the animals and build a boat. Whatever you do, don’t listen to that serpent.

Bible pop-quiz: Did Pharaoh’s magicians really turn staffs into snakes? Hint: yes.

Christians serve the Man who walked on water. We serve the Man who could not be kept in the belly of the great fish, the Man who shattered the grave, and all alone, ripped the city gates off a place called Death.

Loathe the Darkness and Love the Light

Christians believe that this world is so much more than a mechanical soulless machine. And yet, we tend to tell our children stories that we hope will only speak to their intellects. We want to give them a list of facts to tick off, like we’re trying to communicate a party platform to new recruits, like they’re nothing but brains ready for programming. We feed their souls sawdust and are surprised when they drift away to other cooks with different tales about reality.Kids and adults don’t just need the truth in their heads — they need it in their bones. They need to know what courage looks like and tastes like and smells like before they ever have to show it themselves. They need to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly — heroes and villains can show them why. They need to loathe the darkness and love the Light.

Feed Your Children

Feed your children stories that will keep their eyes wide with wonder when they look out their front windows or wander their yards. Feed them stories of joy and hardship and courage and tragedy and triumph. Give them heroes, real and imagined. Give them a taste for goodness, for truth, for beauty.

Yes, I’m prejudiced. I write fiction yay, verily, even fantasy. But I’m not trying to provide the mechanical children of a mechanical universe with a much needed false daydream. I work to imitate this world; I hunt through the jungles of history and mythology looking for spices; I dig through the stories of the prophets looking for meat. I hope to write the fantasy of here, for the future heroes of here. I do what I can, hoping to feed souls.

N. D. Wilson is a best-selling novelist, screenwriter and essayist. His newest novel, released to critical acclaim, is Ashtown Burials I: The Dragons Tooth Random House, the first installment in a childrens adventure/fantasy series. He can be found online at ndwilson.com or on Twitter @ndwilsonmutters.

Bavinck says, in defense of the necessity of anthropomorphism, that “We simply must acknowledge that even thought our finite understanding of God is limited, it is no less true!  We possess exhaustive knowledge of very little; all reality, including the visible and physical, remains something of a mystery to us.  Our talk of spiritual matters, including those of our own souls, is necessarily metaphorical, figurative, poetic.  But this does not mean that what we say is untrue and incorrect.  On the contrary, real poetry is truth, for it is based on the resemblance, similarity and kinship that exist between different groups of phenomena.  All language participates in this rich interpenetration of visible and invisible.  if speaking figuratively were untrue, all our thought and knowledge would be an illusion and speech itself impossible.”

Man’s maker was made man,

that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;

that the Bread might hunger,

the Fountain thirst,

the Light sleep,

the Way be tired on its journey;

that the Truth might be accused of false witness,

the Teacher be beaten with whips,

the Foundation be suspended on wood;

that Strength might grow weak;

that the Healer might be wounded;

that Life might die.

via Proclaiming Truth Beautifully : Kingdom People.

I was asked this week, by a prospective student, if we had a “policy” about the New Perspective on Paul on campus. The answer is no. Wright’s works are studied and discussed to be sure, both in and out of class. For myself, it seems to me that the Scriptures are astonishingly coherent and clear about forensic justification. I also think, as Udo Schnelle points out in this interview, that Lutheranism has sometimes been caricatured. An even bigger gap, as I see it, is the failure of students of Paul to come to grips with Paul’s historical milieu — a point that Wright often makes. Kingdom ministry embraces sanctification, good works, and healing. It also has a strong communal element to it. All well and good. But wherever the Gospel is preached, and wherever the church is truly carrying out the work of the kingdom, there is an inner logic that places “repentance from dead works and faith toward God” (Heb. 6:1) at the forefront. In a word, personal, individual repentance and commitment to the King is required of all of us, Jew or Greek. In Christianity we have a new Law for a new people by a new Moses. And it is all by faith, from beginning to end (Rom. 1:17).

Paul’s use of skubala (also noted by Schnelle in his interview) is a most evocative image. In Phil 3:7-9 Paul writes:

As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault. But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ’s sake …. For His sake I have thrown all that away and consider it all as mere skubala (garbage, rubbish, dung, unspeakable filth) so that I may gain Christ and be completely united with Him, no longer having a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the Law, but the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ (and indeed, by His faithfulness on my behalf) — the righteousness that comes from God and is based on faith.

As Jesus put it, you cannot enter the Kingdom of the Righteous One without a righteousness even greater than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Neither Jesus nor Paul had a quarrel with the Law and the Prophets. In fact, they validated them. But they were totally against the barrier of externalism that the scribes and the Pharisees had erected — “scribal righteousness” it has been called. The Great Commission calls for personal faith in Christ (Mark 16:15), but a faith that eventually issues in a kingdom lifestyle and obedience to everything Christ requires of us (Matt. 28:19). To follow Jesus demands a completely different way of living; it requires values and ambitions that are radically new and radically kingdom-oriented. And the good news is that this obedience, this kingdom way of living, is as much enabled as it is required. As Paul writes in Rom. 8:3-4 (verses I wish every Christian would commit to memory):

For what the Law could not do, weakened as it was by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to do away with sin. God did this so that the righteous requirements of the Law might be fulfilled in us who live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.

Yes, God’s righteousness is imputed to us — thanks be to God! — but it is also to be imparted; and we are to desire the whole thing, complete righteousness, not just a part of it.

via Paul on Justification.

John Wesley on Biblical LanguagesPosted on May 11, 2011 by Henry Neufeld:

Do I understand Greek and Hebrew? Otherwise, how can I undertake, as every Minister does, not only to explain books which are written therein but to defend them against all opponents? Am I not at the mercy of everyone who does understand, or even pretends to understand, the original? For which way can I confute his pretense? Do I understand the language of the Old Testament? critically? at all? Can I read into English one of David’s Psalms, or even the first chapter of Genesis? Do I understand the language of the New Testament? Am I a critical master of it? Have I enough of it even to read into English the first chapter of St. Luke? If not, how many years did I spend at school? How many at the University? And what was I doing all those years? Ought not shame to cover my face?”

John Wesley, “An Address to the Clergy,” in Works X:491. HT: The Biblical World

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“When I have a little money, I buy books. If any is left over, I buy food and clothes.”  ~ Erasmus

Have you heard the ballad of the hoped for hero? Ancient prophecies foretell his coming. Not altogether clear, shrouded in mystery, but enough to kindle hopes and keep the flickering flame alive. Everything depends on his coming. In fact, if these prophecies aren’t realized, there is no final defense against evil. No ultimate hope. No redemption. No restoration. Curiously, some think that the veiled and wispy nature of the intimations that he will arise amount to nothing at all. If they are correct, is there any basis for the claims that the prophecies have in fact been fulfilled?

The sprawling, ramshackle narrative of the Old Testament is the one true hero story on which all the others are based. Oh sure, it may not always seem that the texts are concerned with the hoped for hero, but these books can only be understood in light of the back story that informs them. The hero is the driving force of that narrative undercurrent, so even when we are not reading prophecies about him or statements of hope that he will come, we nevertheless read authors who portray a world and a people whose future depends on the promised champion.

The true story of the world is the prototypical work of art that has been imitated by all myth-makers and storytellers. Did you read of Heracles slaying the Hydra? The mighty deliverer achieved expiation by smiting the snake. Then there’s Odysseus coming in wrath at the end of the Odyssey to rescue his bride. It’s positively apocalyptic. We could go on and on with such examples. If a myth is an archetypal story that explains the world and provides hope, this hero story is the world’s one true myth. Justin Martyr said that the demons had salted the world’s religions with tidbits of the true story to inoculate people against the world’s one cure. And in stories influenced by Christianity you have imitations and approximations of it: Beowulf slaying first the one who descends from Cain, Grendel, and then the dragon. St. George, too, kills a dragon. These are but reflections and refractions of the light of the world, the ancient hope for the prince of life who comes to crush the head of that ancient serpent, the dragon, who is the Devil and Satan.

When we consider the Messiah in the Old Testament, our minds are confronted with the answer to the world’s questions, the fulfillment of all yearnings, the satisfaction of the universal desire for beauty and joy and peace and, and well, everything. You could say it’s Hitchcock’s McGuffin—something everyone wants, needs, and looks for at all costs—but the McGuffin may not be profound enough to capture the weight of this, the real thing. Jesu joy of man’s desiring. Indeed. Jesus is the ultimate object of C. S. Lewis’s Sehnsucht—he is the one who fulfills the inconsolable longing for we know not what.

Swathed in cryptic hints and echoes from the distant past, hidden in shadows and faintly perceived from whispers subtly woven through the Old Testament. Soft impressions seen through a glass darkly, the trace of an outline, the kind of thing that almost has to be pointed out before you see it clearly, but then once you’ve seen it, you can’t see anything else. You don’t want to see anything else.

The promises of the coming seed of the woman all partake of a haunting, hopeful melody, to which the Old Testament’s composer returns again and again. The delay between these prophecies only increases the pathos, adds to the beauty so pure it’s painful. The next oracle almost sneaks up on us, and at points we only recognize it after it has passed us by. Suddenly the words ignite and we read and re-read the promise of a seed who is a lion who wields a scepter who will be a son to the Most High. Each hook and loop in the interweaving of prophecy and pattern comes like a familiar rhythm, or a restrained suggestion, hearkening us back to something earlier in the music. The artist who orchestrates the living production in real time threads the line of promise lightly—but thoroughly—through the whole symphonic poem of the Bible.

Those with eyes to see and ears to hear are ravished by a beauty better than all else they might desire. They lean in close, straining to hear and see, longing, yearning, hoping, as they earnestly attend to past promise, and watch for what they hope will be reiterations and expositions of it. The shadows may be long and the clouds thick, but a conviction has seized them that the heavens will be rolled back when the star shines out of Judah.

Then come the “experts.” They huff and snort that there is no theme that has been resumed. They deny that this rhythm sounds like that one. They insist that when these notes in this melody are taken apart, they bear no relation to one another. They explain that this beat cannot possibly be related to that one, and that the meaning some heard in that first syncopation was never there in the first place.

But we’ve heard the music, and for all the seeming intelligence of their explanations, we know what the music does to us. Those notes may be nothing in isolation, but in aggregate they form a song more lovely than the lectures of learned scoffers. We know this melody is meant to evoke earlier ones, and as soon as we hear the music again, the denials of the little men behind the microphones lose all power to compel. The strains of hope and longing that we have heard awaken faith and conviction and boldness, even as the academics drone on in their boring refusal to enjoy the music.

The one who wrote the music and conducted the orchestra came, and still people refused to hear his song. They did not recognize the one who was foretold, whose pattern was prefigured, whose destiny it was to unlock the door to life, lay the foundation for faith, design the theater for God’s glory, and build the temple of the Holy Spirit, but the hoped for hero really has come. And he’s coming back. He came the first time as a man of sorrows to be acquainted with grief. When he comes again his robe will be sprinkled with the blood of his enemies who lie trampled beneath his feet. He will accomplish God’s purpose and fill the lands with God’s glory like water fills the seas.