This book review by Professor Merle Meeter of Dordt College is admittedly beyond the length of those ordinarily appearing in THE OUTLOOK. It also requires some extra effort for the reader to understand it throughout. However, Professor Meeter’s statement: “This is probably the most significant book on Christianity and literature to come out in the last decade or score of years,” is an added incentive for a careful reading of it.
IMAGINATION AND THE SPIRIT: ESSAYS IN LITERATURE AND TIlE CHRISTIAN FAITH PRESENTED TO CLYDE S. KILBY, edited by Charles A. Hutlar, Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1971, 400 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by Merle Meeter, Associate Professor of English at Dordt College.
Charles Huttar, Chairman of the English Department at Hope College, has assembled an important collection of nineteen essays for this Festschrift volume in honor of his former teacher at Wheaton College, Clyde S. Kilby. Dr. Kilby is probably the best-known C. S. Lewis scholar writing today. This volume concludes with a seven-page listing of Kilby’s writings. It is a book as significant for today’s Christian literary criticism as Henry Zylstra’s Testament of Vision was a little more than a decade ago.
The Foreword by poet-critic Chad Walsh of Beloit College recommends the collection for its “open-ended quality” (several of these essays, however, one notes with pleasure, are more definitively Biblical-Christian than Walsh’s designation implies). Dr. Walsh hopes to discover “a model . . . of the relation between the religious and the aesthetic” (but is not a man’s religion all-encompassing?) and then asks the better question: “How does aesthetic activity (both production and consumption) fit into the total scheme of things established by God?” It seems to me that Walsh becomes speculative and abstract, however, in suggesting the approach of analogy, such as that which Dorothy Sayers defines in The Mind of the Maker when she conjectures from the Trinity to a presumably analogous three-fold activity of the writer—which turns out to be a fancifully elaborated Platonic-romantic notion dressed up in terms from Christian theology.
Charles Huttar generalizes on the contents of the collection in his Introduction as follows: “Like God’s other gifts to men, imagination descends alike upon the just and the unjust. Thus the present collection by design is not limited to examining Christian authors. Meaning is one; through the centuries and across cultural lines the ultimate Source of illumination is one.” Dr. Huttar seems to take little account of the spiritual antithesis between Christ-believers and Christ-deniers, a contrast profoundly evident also in literature, for “Out of the heart are the issues of life” and “No man can serve two masters.” For example, such terms as “Source” for the Sovereign God of the Scriptures and the word “Spirit” in the title Imagination and the Spirit appear designedly equivocal, so that the latter, for instance, could mean the Holy Spirit, the human spirit (regenerated by the imagination?), or some transcendent Cosmic Spirit, as in “The divine Spirit hovers, ready to reveal images of truth.” That characterization sounds more like Coleridgean romanticism than Scriptural reality. Dr. Huttar—and a number of the other contributors—should reflect on the meaning also for imaginative literature of I John 4:1–6 and II Corinthians 6:14–18.
Section I, Art and Philosophy, includes these three essays: “Language, Symbol, and Truth” by Arthur F. Holmes; “Either: Or” by Owen Barfield; and “Mimesis and Incarnation” by Thomas Howard. Professor Holmes points out that “the scientific model applied universally and exclusively by certain philosophies of language produces a reductionistie scientism”; for in this approach (e.g., logical positivism), “There is no room in cognition for the symbolism of literature and art and religion, nor for the abstractions of metaphysics.” Holmes himself prefers what he calls “the humanistic model,” which recognizes the humanities—notably literature and philosophy—as valid ways of responding to truth. The concept of truth as defined by Holmes, however, appears to be more metaphysical than Biblical: there is too much quoted Socrates and Kirkegaard, Heidelgger and Tillich, muddling up what he presents as the Scriptural teaching on truth (which coheres in Jesus Christ, the Creative and Incarnate Word).
In “Mimesis and Incarnation,” Thomas Howard of Gordon College affirms the value of art from “the Incarnational view,” that is, on the basis of our Lord Christ’s assuming human flesh: “The Christian vision affirms the significance of the mimetic act. It docs so because it sees here the human echo of activity connate with the origin of things, and because its own understanding of the world is one that involves the notion of the Incarnate Word . . . . And the Incarnate, called Logos, embraced the limitations of this world and proclaimed authenticity and freedom and glory to us not, as many prophets have done, via escape into the ether, but via participation in the actualities of human existence.” Also, says Howard, “This view would look with suspicion on mimetic activity involving esoteric doctrine or the tendency toward solipsism.” This creational-incarnational approach to art is valid, I would add, however, only if it is complemented by the history-shaping, life-transforming realities of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ for the justification and salvation of repentant sinners. those elect of God who believe and obey Him, by grace, as both Redeemer and King.
Section II, Writers in the Christian Tradition, includes essays by David L. Jeffrey on the Middle English Lyric, Dean Ebner on Chaucer’s Knight. Charles Huttar on “Samson’s Identity Crisis and Milton’s.” and Robert H. Siegel on Coleridgo’s poem “Christahel.” Hultar’s essay on Samson Agonistes, especially, is a work of keen insight and enlightening scholarship. But, at times, Biblical truths seem more important in Dr. Huttar’s argument for their poetic, metaphorical, symbolic, analogical (or “paradigmatic”) value than for themselves—for example: “The cry ‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ is an essential part of Christ’s paradigmatic experience.” However, the stark truth is -for literature as well as the rest of life-that “Christ’s paradigmatic experience” is nothing but a pretty (but empty) phrase, whereas man’s eternal redemption is only by the voluntary suffering and death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, on that God-forsaken Cross. The Savior’s Sacrificial Death was absolutely unique!
Also, Huttar seems to approve of Milton’s humanistic (man-centered) emphasis in Samson Agonistes—though the God-centered motif is also present in Milton’s Creek-Hebrew dramatic poem. Dr. Huttar concludes by asserting that “Reinstatement of the unique identity of the person, fulfilling in their [sic] highest and purest form the self’s abandoned claims and hopes—fulfilling the self, one may say—must follow.” But such self-fulfillment is the individualistic, existentialistic theme of contemporary God-repudiating playwrights and fictionists via the classical heroic ideal as further subjectivized and divinized by romanticism.
“Forms of Spirituality in the Middle English Lyric” by David Jeffrey employs the Christocentric approach to literature that the Reformed Protestant literary community has long been too timid to venture. Says Jeffrey, for example: “The Franciscan poet’s motivation is uncompromisingly evangelical, emphasizing the gravity of man’s sin, his need of penance [here Jeffrey fails to critique Christianly, for although penitence is Biblical, penance is not; Christ paid the whole price for sin], and the avenue provided by Christ through which repentance may become efficacious . . . It is not possible to dismiss the Middle English religious lyrics as either trite or merely polemic. True, they were often intended to teach in the most strictly didactic sense the lesson of penance and the propriety of response to Christ, but the form in which the lesson came was contrived to produce through words and music an aesthetic and emotional response that would etch the message on the total personality. Some individual lyrics, indeed, are as poetically powerful as the best of their kind in later English verse.” What the Middle English lyric lacked, it should be noted, is the added content that Jesus Christ is now Lord and King over every vocation and detail of life, that all life is religion, and that the Lordship of Christ must be variously articulated and clearly, winningly, proclaimed by all H is servant-disciples as they call men to repentance and obedience through the Good News.
Section IV, Inklings and Ancestors, offcrs essays on C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Charles Williams by Daniel Kuhn, Glenn Sadler, Alice Hadfield, Marjorie Wright, Corbin Carnell, and Walter Hopper (Lewis’ personal secretary). It seems to me that Kuhn tric.~ too hard to found Lewis’ metaphysics in the romantic intuitionalism and vitalism of Henri Berson; moreover, Kuhn essays to Christianize Wordsworth by identifying that romantic poet’s pantheistic “transcendental cosmic Spirit” with the One True and Triune God of the Scriptures. This literary-philosophical attempt to demonstrate “the central position of the unconditional Spirit in the metaphysical thought of both Wordsworth and Lewis” is jargon-ridden and unconvincing; here is an essay that underlines the ambiguity of the second term in the title Imagination and the Spirit.
Alice Mary Hadfield examines Charles Williams’ literary concept of “coinherence, substitution, and exchange,” a congeries of abstractions that uses the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ primarily (if not exclusively) as an eminent metaphor on which to found his “theology of romantic love.” Approvingly, Hadfield refers to Williams’ aesthetically reduced religious approach 10 literature, a vague and sympathetic “Christianity” subject to the demands of his romantic profession; “But C. W. was no man of religion, and did not press a creed, He was 11 man of i<leas, and a poet. [Does a “man of ideas” have no creed?] Insofnr as he was a poet he was acceptable to people who could tolerate no religious creed.” Question: Is the Substitutionary Atonement of Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit regeneration the foundation of man’s salvation, or is its basis humanitarian compassion and romantic love? (Actually, the latter are only among the fruits of Christ’s redeeming work.)
“Past Watchful Dragons” by Walter Hooper is an entrancing, eloquent account of C. S. Lewis, his character, his philosophy or literary art, especially as these features arc evinced in The Narnia Chronicles. Lewis often said that his novels began with pictures, not with ideas or themes, but that the thematic (Christian) meanings developed spontaneously, naturally, as he wrote. Perhaps this is the way it should be, but, alas, not all Bible-believing writers arc as maturely, self-consciously, whole-heartedly Christian as was Lewis when he wrote his Narnia fictions. (Some of his earlier prose writings, in fact, even after his conversion to Christ, are seriously flawed by both rationalism and romanticism.) Therefore, the neophyte Christian author should not be told to “Just let it all spill out! You’re a Christian, aren’t you?” The resultant grotesque realism, obscene naturalism, anguished existentialism, and revolting nihilism have warped and perverted many once.promising young Christian writers. Tile weeds of the world are insidious and have deep roots. Their eradication demands thoughtful, prayerful, Biblically directed, diligent determination: sanctification, even in our literary interpretations of life, is by no means simplistic or spontaneous.
Did C S. Lewis, then, write only to entertain, without concern about the message, the life-view presented in his fiction? Hooper answers with this quotation by Asian the Lion [who represents the Christ] from The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”; “There I have another name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there: That, by the by [continues Mr. Hooper], is as frank a statement as Lewis makes anywhere about his evangelistic purpose in writing the Narnia Chronicles.” As Lewis aptly proves with the pudding, the Christian author need not, may not, be ashamed of his message; further, he must present that Good News in Christ both artfully and clearly in whatever human context, for He, indeed, is the Healer of all our diseases.
Aspects of tile Contemporary Scene, Section IV, includes an essay by Wheaton’s Melvin Lorentzen—entitled “A Good Writer Is Hard to Find”—on the novels and short stories of Flannery O’Connor. This contribution is the best example in the volume of consistent, distinctively Biblical—Christian literary criticism, in both principles and practice. Lorentzen concludes his exciting and perspicacious essay as follows: “Can a Christian who is thoroughly committed to orthodoxy write, in times like these, imaginative fiction of first quality that bears witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Flannery O’Connor was a ‘Christian writer’ (not just a Christian who wrote) whose viewing of everything in life in the singular light of the Redemption by Christ inspired her to produce ‘Christian stories’ in which her storytelling genius made the very materials of fiction serve to reveal the mystery or God’s grace.” (My only half-chagrined criticism of this fine essay is that Dr. Lorenl1:en makes the element of saving grace so much more evident than Miss O’Connor usually did; nevertheless, he has convinced me that the Truth is there for those who will look for Him.)
The last essay in this unit, “The Writer That Is to Be,” is an interesting formal study of five requisites for imaginative writing by Ward S. Miller. Then Paul Bechtel, Chairman of the Wheaton College English Department, appropriately caps the volume with a personable portrait entitled “Clyde S. Kilby: A Sketch,” That Kilby has not wholly divested himself of the romanticism that he so much admires in Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien is evident in this quotation that Dr. Bechtel takes from Kilby’s The Christian World of C. S. Lewis: “‘The glory of the Morning Star is somehow not enough glory for us. We want much more, and it is at this point that poetry and mythology come to our aid.’ Under the spell of the romantic imagination, Dr. Kilby here unwittingly endorses the proud and sinful propensity of the human heart which finds the Redeemer-King insufficient (unless “Morning Star” is merely a figure for God’s natural revelation). For, surely, any “aid” from poetry and mythology that tends to out· shine the Christ is an idolism of the creature and of the imaginations of men. And have the Scriptures no glory?
Much better and less hieratic is this quotation by Dr. Kilby on the God-glorifying function of imaginative literature: “‘I believe that one of Lewis’ greatest contributions to orthodox Christianity is his demonstration that a sanctified imagination is a legitimate tool for any Christian apologist.’” In conclusion, our thanks to Dr. Huttar for his effort and dedication in editing this volume of important essays toward a Biblical-Christian literary aesthetics and critique of literature. Also, our sincere gratitude to Eerdmans for making this worthwhile collection available.
THE BIBLE ON THE LIFE HEREAFTER, William Hendriksen, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 222 Pages. 1971. $2.95. Reviewed by Rev. Arthur Besteman, pastor of the North St. Christian Reformed Church of Zeeland, Michigan.
This book by the well-known and highly respected New Testament scholar, Dr. William Hendriksen, has already enjoyed widespread acclaim and use. In fifty concise, penetrating chapters the author raises questions concerning both individual and general eschatology. Each question receives an answer based on a comprehensive study of the Bible. A list of questions for further discussion is supplied at the conclusion of each chapter. All who use this book for either personal or group study will be greatly enriched through an increased knowledge and understanding of the Bible’s teaching on this vital subject. Tile publisher is to be commended for making this significant book available in a paper-cover edition.
IMAGINATION AND THE SPIRIT: ESSAYS IN LITERATURE AND TIlE CHRISTIAN FAITH PRESENTED TO CLYDE S. KILBY, edited by Charles A. Hutlar, Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1971, 400 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by Merle Meeter, Associate Professor of English at Dordt College.
Charles Huttar, Chairman of the English Department at Hope College, has assembled an important collection of nineteen essays for this Festschrift volume in honor of his former teacher at Wheaton College, Clyde S. Kilby. Dr. Kilby is probably the best-known C. S. Lewis scholar writing today. This volume concludes with a seven-page listing of Kilby’s writings. It is a book as significant for today’s Christian literary criticism as Henry Zylstra’s Testament of Vision was a little more than a decade ago.
The Foreword by poet-critic Chad Walsh of Beloit College recommends the collection for its “open-ended quality” (several of these essays, however, one notes with pleasure, are more definitively Biblical-Christian than Walsh’s designation implies). Dr. Walsh hopes to discover “a model . . . of the relation between the religious and the aesthetic” (but is not a man’s religion all-encompassing?) and then asks the better question: “How does aesthetic activity (both production and consumption) fit into the total scheme of things established by God?” It seems to me that Walsh becomes speculative and abstract, however, in suggesting the approach of analogy, such as that which Dorothy Sayers defines in The Mind of the Maker when she conjectures from the Trinity to a presumably analogous three-fold activity of the writer—which turns out to be a fancifully elaborated Platonic-romantic notion dressed up in terms from Christian theology.
Charles Huttar generalizes on the contents of the collection in his Introduction as follows: “Like God’s other gifts to men, imagination descends alike upon the just and the unjust. Thus the present collection by design is not limited to examining Christian authors. Meaning is one; through the centuries and across cultural lines the ultimate Source of illumination is one.” Dr. Huttar seems to take little account of the spiritual antithesis between Christ-believers and Christ-deniers, a contrast profoundly evident also in literature, for “Out of the heart are the issues of life” and “No man can serve two masters.” For example, such terms as “Source” for the Sovereign God of the Scriptures and the word “Spirit” in the title Imagination and the Spirit appear designedly equivocal, so that the latter, for instance, could mean the Holy Spirit, the human spirit (regenerated by the imagination?), or some transcendent Cosmic Spirit, as in “The divine Spirit hovers, ready to reveal images of truth.” That characterization sounds more like Coleridgean romanticism than Scriptural reality. Dr. Huttar—and a number of the other contributors—should reflect on the meaning also for imaginative literature of I John 4:1–6 and II Corinthians 6:14–18.
Section I, Art and Philosophy, includes these three essays: “Language, Symbol, and Truth” by Arthur F. Holmes; “Either: Or” by Owen Barfield; and “Mimesis and Incarnation” by Thomas Howard. Professor Holmes points out that “the scientific model applied universally and exclusively by certain philosophies of language produces a reductionistie scientism”; for in this approach (e.g., logical positivism), “There is no room in cognition for the symbolism of literature and art and religion, nor for the abstractions of metaphysics.” Holmes himself prefers what he calls “the humanistic model,” which recognizes the humanities—notably literature and philosophy—as valid ways of responding to truth. The concept of truth as defined by Holmes, however, appears to be more metaphysical than Biblical: there is too much quoted Socrates and Kirkegaard, Heidelgger and Tillich, muddling up what he presents as the Scriptural teaching on truth (which coheres in Jesus Christ, the Creative and Incarnate Word).
In “Mimesis and Incarnation,” Thomas Howard of Gordon College affirms the value of art from “the Incarnational view,” that is, on the basis of our Lord Christ’s assuming human flesh: “The Christian vision affirms the significance of the mimetic act. It docs so because it sees here the human echo of activity connate with the origin of things, and because its own understanding of the world is one that involves the notion of the Incarnate Word . . . . And the Incarnate, called Logos, embraced the limitations of this world and proclaimed authenticity and freedom and glory to us not, as many prophets have done, via escape into the ether, but via participation in the actualities of human existence.” Also, says Howard, “This view would look with suspicion on mimetic activity involving esoteric doctrine or the tendency toward solipsism.” This creational-incarnational approach to art is valid, I would add, however, only if it is complemented by the history-shaping, life-transforming realities of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ for the justification and salvation of repentant sinners. those elect of God who believe and obey Him, by grace, as both Redeemer and King.
Section II, Writers in the Christian Tradition, includes essays by David L. Jeffrey on the Middle English Lyric, Dean Ebner on Chaucer’s Knight. Charles Huttar on “Samson’s Identity Crisis and Milton’s.” and Robert H. Siegel on Coleridgo’s poem “Christahel.” Hultar’s essay on Samson Agonistes, especially, is a work of keen insight and enlightening scholarship. But, at times, Biblical truths seem more important in Dr. Huttar’s argument for their poetic, metaphorical, symbolic, analogical (or “paradigmatic”) value than for themselves—for example: “The cry ‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ is an essential part of Christ’s paradigmatic experience.” However, the stark truth is -for literature as well as the rest of life-that “Christ’s paradigmatic experience” is nothing but a pretty (but empty) phrase, whereas man’s eternal redemption is only by the voluntary suffering and death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, on that God-forsaken Cross. The Savior’s Sacrificial Death was absolutely unique!
Also, Huttar seems to approve of Milton’s humanistic (man-centered) emphasis in Samson Agonistes—though the God-centered motif is also present in Milton’s Creek-Hebrew dramatic poem. Dr. Huttar concludes by asserting that “Reinstatement of the unique identity of the person, fulfilling in their [sic] highest and purest form the self’s abandoned claims and hopes—fulfilling the self, one may say—must follow.” But such self-fulfillment is the individualistic, existentialistic theme of contemporary God-repudiating playwrights and fictionists via the classical heroic ideal as further subjectivized and divinized by romanticism.
“Forms of Spirituality in the Middle English Lyric” by David Jeffrey employs the Christocentric approach to literature that the Reformed Protestant literary community has long been too timid to venture. Says Jeffrey, for example: “The Franciscan poet’s motivation is uncompromisingly evangelical, emphasizing the gravity of man’s sin, his need of penance [here Jeffrey fails to critique Christianly, for although penitence is Biblical, penance is not; Christ paid the whole price for sin], and the avenue provided by Christ through which repentance may become efficacious . . . It is not possible to dismiss the Middle English religious lyrics as either trite or merely polemic. True, they were often intended to teach in the most strictly didactic sense the lesson of penance and the propriety of response to Christ, but the form in which the lesson came was contrived to produce through words and music an aesthetic and emotional response that would etch the message on the total personality. Some individual lyrics, indeed, are as poetically powerful as the best of their kind in later English verse.” What the Middle English lyric lacked, it should be noted, is the added content that Jesus Christ is now Lord and King over every vocation and detail of life, that all life is religion, and that the Lordship of Christ must be variously articulated and clearly, winningly, proclaimed by all H is servant-disciples as they call men to repentance and obedience through the Good News.
Section IV, Inklings and Ancestors, offcrs essays on C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Charles Williams by Daniel Kuhn, Glenn Sadler, Alice Hadfield, Marjorie Wright, Corbin Carnell, and Walter Hopper (Lewis’ personal secretary). It seems to me that Kuhn tric.~ too hard to found Lewis’ metaphysics in the romantic intuitionalism and vitalism of Henri Berson; moreover, Kuhn essays to Christianize Wordsworth by identifying that romantic poet’s pantheistic “transcendental cosmic Spirit” with the One True and Triune God of the Scriptures. This literary-philosophical attempt to demonstrate “the central position of the unconditional Spirit in the metaphysical thought of both Wordsworth and Lewis” is jargon-ridden and unconvincing; here is an essay that underlines the ambiguity of the second term in the title Imagination and the Spirit.
Alice Mary Hadfield examines Charles Williams’ literary concept of “coinherence, substitution, and exchange,” a congeries of abstractions that uses the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ primarily (if not exclusively) as an eminent metaphor on which to found his “theology of romantic love.” Approvingly, Hadfield refers to Williams’ aesthetically reduced religious approach 10 literature, a vague and sympathetic “Christianity” subject to the demands of his romantic profession; “But C. W. was no man of religion, and did not press a creed, He was 11 man of i<leas, and a poet. [Does a “man of ideas” have no creed?] Insofnr as he was a poet he was acceptable to people who could tolerate no religious creed.” Question: Is the Substitutionary Atonement of Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit regeneration the foundation of man’s salvation, or is its basis humanitarian compassion and romantic love? (Actually, the latter are only among the fruits of Christ’s redeeming work.)
“Past Watchful Dragons” by Walter Hooper is an entrancing, eloquent account of C. S. Lewis, his character, his philosophy or literary art, especially as these features arc evinced in The Narnia Chronicles. Lewis often said that his novels began with pictures, not with ideas or themes, but that the thematic (Christian) meanings developed spontaneously, naturally, as he wrote. Perhaps this is the way it should be, but, alas, not all Bible-believing writers arc as maturely, self-consciously, whole-heartedly Christian as was Lewis when he wrote his Narnia fictions. (Some of his earlier prose writings, in fact, even after his conversion to Christ, are seriously flawed by both rationalism and romanticism.) Therefore, the neophyte Christian author should not be told to “Just let it all spill out! You’re a Christian, aren’t you?” The resultant grotesque realism, obscene naturalism, anguished existentialism, and revolting nihilism have warped and perverted many once.promising young Christian writers. Tile weeds of the world are insidious and have deep roots. Their eradication demands thoughtful, prayerful, Biblically directed, diligent determination: sanctification, even in our literary interpretations of life, is by no means simplistic or spontaneous.
Did C S. Lewis, then, write only to entertain, without concern about the message, the life-view presented in his fiction? Hooper answers with this quotation by Asian the Lion [who represents the Christ] from The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”; “There I have another name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there: That, by the by [continues Mr. Hooper], is as frank a statement as Lewis makes anywhere about his evangelistic purpose in writing the Narnia Chronicles.” As Lewis aptly proves with the pudding, the Christian author need not, may not, be ashamed of his message; further, he must present that Good News in Christ both artfully and clearly in whatever human context, for He, indeed, is the Healer of all our diseases.
Aspects of tile Contemporary Scene, Section IV, includes an essay by Wheaton’s Melvin Lorentzen—entitled “A Good Writer Is Hard to Find”—on the novels and short stories of Flannery O’Connor. This contribution is the best example in the volume of consistent, distinctively Biblical—Christian literary criticism, in both principles and practice. Lorentzen concludes his exciting and perspicacious essay as follows: “Can a Christian who is thoroughly committed to orthodoxy write, in times like these, imaginative fiction of first quality that bears witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Flannery O’Connor was a ‘Christian writer’ (not just a Christian who wrote) whose viewing of everything in life in the singular light of the Redemption by Christ inspired her to produce ‘Christian stories’ in which her storytelling genius made the very materials of fiction serve to reveal the mystery or God’s grace.” (My only half-chagrined criticism of this fine essay is that Dr. Lorenl1:en makes the element of saving grace so much more evident than Miss O’Connor usually did; nevertheless, he has convinced me that the Truth is there for those who will look for Him.)
The last essay in this unit, “The Writer That Is to Be,” is an interesting formal study of five requisites for imaginative writing by Ward S. Miller. Then Paul Bechtel, Chairman of the Wheaton College English Department, appropriately caps the volume with a personable portrait entitled “Clyde S. Kilby: A Sketch,” That Kilby has not wholly divested himself of the romanticism that he so much admires in Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien is evident in this quotation that Dr. Bechtel takes from Kilby’s The Christian World of C. S. Lewis: “‘The glory of the Morning Star is somehow not enough glory for us. We want much more, and it is at this point that poetry and mythology come to our aid.’ Under the spell of the romantic imagination, Dr. Kilby here unwittingly endorses the proud and sinful propensity of the human heart which finds the Redeemer-King insufficient (unless “Morning Star” is merely a figure for God’s natural revelation). For, surely, any “aid” from poetry and mythology that tends to out· shine the Christ is an idolism of the creature and of the imaginations of men. And have the Scriptures no glory?
Much better and less hieratic is this quotation by Dr. Kilby on the God-glorifying function of imaginative literature: “‘I believe that one of Lewis’ greatest contributions to orthodox Christianity is his demonstration that a sanctified imagination is a legitimate tool for any Christian apologist.’” In conclusion, our thanks to Dr. Huttar for his effort and dedication in editing this volume of important essays toward a Biblical-Christian literary aesthetics and critique of literature. Also, our sincere gratitude to Eerdmans for making this worthwhile collection available.
THE BIBLE ON THE LIFE HEREAFTER, William Hendriksen, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 222 Pages. 1971. $2.95. Reviewed by Rev. Arthur Besteman, pastor of the North St. Christian Reformed Church of Zeeland, Michigan.
This book by the well-known and highly respected New Testament scholar, Dr. William Hendriksen, has already enjoyed widespread acclaim and use. In fifty concise, penetrating chapters the author raises questions concerning both individual and general eschatology. Each question receives an answer based on a comprehensive study of the Bible. A list of questions for further discussion is supplied at the conclusion of each chapter. All who use this book for either personal or group study will be greatly enriched through an increased knowledge and understanding of the Bible’s teaching on this vital subject. Tile publisher is to be commended for making this significant book available in a paper-cover edition.