the Present Age

This book (available for free online from that link) by Søren Kierkegaard is a short but hella punchy treatise about the political and psychogical malaise that European modernism has left us in. The passion & activity of antiquity is gone, replaced by a blandly "democratic"* equilibrium roiling about in the seas of reflective intersubjectivity - the boons of education and understanding and the free press have left us all deeply well-informed, yet the sheer glut herein has left us existentially paralyzed when it comes to actually putting those informed understandings into action. He writes, "every one knows a great deal, we all know which way we ought to go and all the different ways we can go, but nobody is willing to move." Rebellion in such a culture is essentially unthinkable. Readers familiar with old Søren won't be surprised to hear that he concludes that the only way for individuality and society to healthily balance each other out in any meaningful sense is the rediscovery of true religion.

   This is by far and away the most accessible Kierkegaard text I've read to date - it's not technical philosophy and should be easily readable by anyone with an above-your-average-American vocabulary. A final thought - though written in the seemingly alien atmosphere of mid-19th-century Copenhagen, this prophetic text speaks to the cultural, political and psychological snafus of 2025's dim/bright crazy/inevitable future presents with sparklingly uncanny accuracy & profundity. And did I mention it's very short and is online for free? Go read it.

* Kierkegaard's polemic here has left me considerably more favourable in my view of C. S. Lewis's takes on democratic equality, which as I've said left a lot to be desired when I read them in their own context.

Miracles

This book by C.S. Lewis is a pull-no-punches logical apologetic about, as the title suggests, miracles. Often claimed by the non-religious as the most egregiously unbelievable aspect of religion, miracles are a philosophical sticking-point for many explorers of faiths that involve them. However - as Lewis argues - this is a misapprehension, applying assumptions of natural science to phenomena that are essentially supernatural. This is the crux of his argument throughout the book, the discontinuity between nature and "supernature", which having defined he goes on to explore and prod the logical interrelations between these two levels of reality for how knowable, probable, and believable they are. I won't do a full chapter-by-chapter breakdown for this book - simply conclude by saying that here is a book that is dazzlingly well-argued and difficult to refute without relying on unproveable assumptions that have nothing to do with science and everything to do with metaphysical faith. A great enlightening read for Christians who want to robustify their intellectual flexibility, and surely a challenging thought-provoker for those readers of no religion.

the Problem of Pain

This book by C.S. Lewis is a short but punchy apologetic for that ever-irksome question to the Christian - you know the one I mean, the theodicy, that is: "if God is perfectly good and totally powerful, why is there suffering?" His method of argument here is not theological in any meaningful sense; in fact he draws on existing Christian thought very little throughout, relying instead on rigorous resolute logical application and dissection of the concepts themselves as the appear at face value. This makes his points dazzlingly original, divorced as they are from the aggregated accumulation of two millennia of Christian philosophizing, and thoroughly compelling, as his arguments stand on their own two feet without dependence on a reader's acceptance or rejection of any particular orthodoxy (not to say that the theological implications of this book aren't in line with orthodox theology, but that simply isn't the line of argument taken).

   The first two chapters deal, in turn, with divine omnipotence and divine goodness; as stated there is very little here that could be described as serious or systematic theology, but Lewis's grasp of the logical implications around these concepts is on full display as he makes the case that neither of these presumed facts about God necessarily demand or even imply the total absence of suffering in said God's creation. In the following two chapters he discusses human wickedness (as a logically necessary possibility in a created order in which we assume human freedom, and as the source of much suffering) and the fallen nature of humankind (this is probably the most theological chapter of the book as it relies on The Fall as an existing theological framework - however, much to my surprise, this chapter also devotes considerable attention to the question of humanity's evolutionary history, and what a pre-Fall prehistoric homo sapiens may have been like in its relation to itself, God, and nature more widely). Then there is a pair of chapters about human pain (which largely consists of pretty basic logical inductions from the previous chapters) and the pain of animals (which I wasn't expecting much from given my critique of its related essay in this collection, but I take back my assumptions from that post that this probably wouldn't be a very strong chapter as I have to admit Lewis does actually have a nuanced and well-developed model of animal nature). This leads us up to a concluding pair of chapters in which we consider the eternal dimensions that lend either meaninglessness or meaningfulness to whatever degree of experienced pain the human life serves up - that is, Heaven and Hell. The Hell chapter walked territory that was very familiar to the concepts of Christianity that I've grown up with (much moreso than the universalism angled towards in Moltmann's theological system, even if I prefer that now) with a few key fresh insights - most especially, the notion that Hell is not imposed but chosen: its doors, Lewis states flatly, are locked from the inside. The Heaven chapter is reasonably speculative, as it is bound to have to be, but the picture he paints of eternal communion between God and His redeemed human creatures is devastatingly beautiful: the glorification of the Holy Trinity and the fulness of expressed and embodied freedom of people are one and the same thing, every unique individual who has ever lived and been brought into God's Kingdom finding their deepest and most everlasting joy in expressing their personal relationship to God in a way that only they could ever precisely manage, thus involving to the ultimate realness the diversity and unity of personhood. Finally there is an appendix wherein we are given a brief scientific overview of what physical and mental pain is understood to be; this adds virtually nothing to the arguments Lewis has been making, but it's nice to have for the possible reader who has, like the pre-enlightened Buddha, never experienced meaningful suffering.

   Overall this is an eminently readable and powerful intellectual-yet-accessible book about one of the thorniest issues in all of religion. Christian readers will find their faith sharpened and their apologetic capacities given a major leg-up; and non-Christians who rely on the issue of suffering to bolster their own rejection of the faith should find in here, if not absolutely guaranteed-to-be-convincing points, at least much challenging food for thought that should give even the most ardent atheist some humbling pause.

[one final thing I will say, that has nothing to do with the text of this book in itself - if you're going to read this, I would strongly recommend trying to find a physical version, as the Kindle version that I read it through (and that is linked above) is quite poorly formatted, with certain sections where there seem to be chunks missing, and them being missing means there could only have been a few words or perhaps whole pages that I didn't get included in the edition I read; it still held together as a book, but it would have been nice, having bought a book, to get the whole text]

the Reason for God

This book by Tim Keller is a reasonably accessibly-written but thoroughly intellectually-robust apologetic for the Christian faith. I recently read Francis Spufford's marvellous effort at proposing an entirely irrational apologetic, so I thought I'd balance it out with something that appeals more to the head than the gut - and this did not disappoint. I have read this book before, the summer before I started this blog, so retained a sense of its general gist, but it was truly a pleasure to revisit the concrete arguments.

   Keller splits the book into two sections of seven chapters each.* After a brief introduction exploring the helpfulness and limits of doubt in our contemporary skeptical culture, the first half digs into some of the biggest obstacles in the way of people coming into meaningful contact with the Christian faith, and for each shows how all of these hurdles are actually based on unprovable "faith" assumptions in themselves. These issues are:

1. the problem of Christianity's exclusivity when there are so many other competing religions
2. the problem of suffering, which exists despite God being supposedly purely good & all-powerful
3. the restrictive limitations following Christianity places upon a human life
4. the historical injustices & present hypocrisies of the Church
5. the thorny issue of Hell - surely a good God wouldn't be so extreme as to condemn people to an eternity of suffering?
6. the challenge supposedly posed by science, which many consider to have disproved religion for good
7. the logical and ethical snafus entailed in taking the Bible literally
   
   Having dealt with some of the strongest and commonest arguments against Christianity, we then have a short intermission chapter which considers the subjective nature of rationality itself. Then we head into the second set of seven chapters, which pose some of the strongest reasons for Christian belief.
   
   
8. the orderliness (and indeed existence) of the universe & meaningfulness
9. the innate sense of moral standards that seems essentially universal to humankind
10. the existential hole that sin leaves in the human heart, which we try to fill with idols but can only be satisfied by God
11. the radically distinctive nature of the Christian gospel as compared to other religions
12. the rationally revolting but emotionally intuitive core of Christianity - the incarnate God crucified for our sake
13. the resurrection of Jesus & the explosive emergence of the early Church being the simplest & best historical explanations for each other
14. God's Trinitarian nature providing a cogent & appealing explanation for the natures of creation & humankind

   Having dismantled some of the strongest arguments against and illumined some of the clearest arguments for Christianity, the concluding chapter is a gentle but confident prod for the reader of what to do if they feel themselves approaching a faith that they can truly call their own. After the philosophical and theological weight of the chief portion of the book this provides a comforting pastoral cool-down, though for non-Christian readers this may well be the most challenging part of the whole text.

   Overall I think this is a great book for making the case for Christianity in as best reasoned a way as possible. Keller never lands on absolute proof, but his earlier chapters show that nor do critiques of faith; and his points throughout cohere to short-circuit "absolute rationality" into a more pragmatic reasonability to which I think Christian belief is well-suited. A highly recommended book for Christians who want to supplement their own skillset in arguing for the Kingdom, and moreso a must-read for those whose curiosity about Christian faith is drowned out by overwhelming presumption that the case against it is too strong.

* Summarising the arguments Keller makes in each of these chapters is beyond the scope of this post, so you'll just have to take my word for it that his treatment of all matters discussed is intellectually humble but compellingly-put. And hey, I am a completely fallible blogger so if you don't want to take my word for it, you'll have to read the book and decide for yourself.

Unapologetic

This book by Francis Spufford is, despite his claims that it isn't an apologetic as it makes zero effort to engage with classic philosophical arguments for or against any particular theological claims, by far and away the best Christian apologetic I've ever read. I've literally just read the whole book in a single sitting* it's that good. The subtitle proclaims it as an exploration of "why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense" - and to say it achieves the goal of making a case for this with aplomb would be a grand disservice to the word aplomb. It runs its course over eight perfectly-structured chapters:

1. a general introduction; statement of intent for the book
2. the existential experience of sin, or as he translates it the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up
3. the frustrating ineffability of God in light of people's recurrent sense of needing, if not Him, then something to fill that gap
4. the confounding problem of suffering
5. the personality, teachings, mission and passion of one Yeshua from Nazareth
6. the historically improbable paradoxes surrounding the emergence of Christianity as a coherent religion
7. the complicated legacy and situational state of the Church
8. the subjective feeling entailed in having faith that one is forgiven, and the challenges and opportunity implied herein

   It's deeply insightfully clever without being scholarly**, bewilderingly matter-of-fact in what it says and completely down-to-earth in how it says it, balancing common-sense public presumption with personal but universally recognisable experiences and dazzlingly original points that lead him into compelling conclusions without ever making anything that so much as looks like a rational argument. Spufford not only doesn't avoid the prickly areas of conversation around Christianity in its contemporary context but actively leans into them and tries to give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and somehow still manages to wrangle cogent and meaningful ways of sidestepping or outright neutering them. He writes with a disarming simplicity and a refreshing honesty that if such style was wider emulated by Christian authors (and indeed everyday evangelising believers) I hazard to expect that we would see a great many more folks showing interest in the faith.

   Overall, this is a more-or-less perfect example of communicating Christianity effectively in a postmodern culture. If we are presumed by the world around us to be irrational, then give up on trying to convince people by reason - and talk about what it feels like to have one's messy spiritual life wrapped up in what never has been and never will be scientifically verifiable but is indisputably salient in its psychological cohesion to those who try to believe it. If you're a Christian, read this and be inspired to draw on your own emotional experience to communicate your own faith more fluidly, with less intellectual trumps and more confounding expressivity. If you're not a Christian - this book won't convince you to become one, but it may very well provoke you to give it a bloody good consideration.

* With minor breaks only to piss, smoke, and make more coffee.

** Spufford humbly boasts in a note at the end of the book that aside from checking to ensure the accuracy of certain factual claims and quotations used, he conducted exactly no research whatsoever throughout his writing process.

Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro & Crito

This collection of texts attributed to Plato are perhaps some of the most significant blobs of words in the history of western philosophy. Honestly - having never actually read anything by Plato before, when working my way through these (which only actually took a couple of days as I found them so gripping) I was seized with a sense of spiritual reverence that I have never felt in reading anything but holy texts. There is a specialness in these ancient dialogues.

   In reverse order then:

• Crito: this is a dialogue with Socrates, having been condemned and now languishing in prison, debating with someone attempting to release him what exactly is the proper relationship between an individual and the state in the moral order.
• Euthyphro: this is a dialogue between Socrates and a young aristocrat about what is the proper obligation of a human being to the gods; where morality comes from, whether we could ever owe it to the gods to do something evil, or if they would be gods were they to demand such a thing.
• Defence of Socrates: in here Socrates, accused of atheism and corrupting the youth of Athens, stands trial amongst his peers, and has to offer a coherent rational defence of his thinking, behaviours, ideas and their impacts on wider society - he knows he will be put to death should this trial not go his way, but he is not concerned with self-defence so much as he is with pursuit of absolute truth.

   I know these summaries are barely scratching the surface. If the Socrates that Plato sketches in these texts is half as wise as the real man they were based on then I must agree he was probably the wisest man in history. Anyway. So that's the book. Exactly who determined that these three should be collated together I do not know - certainly not Socrates, and probably not Plato, but it cannot be denied there is a pure and sheer brilliance of deep overlap between the ideas herein. If you like philosophy and you've not read these, you must. If you don't like philosophy but you wonder why philosophers think you should - you should read these.

the Screwtape Letters

This book by Clive Staples Lewis is an indisputable classic of modern popular theology. It's comprised of a series of thirty-one letters* written from Screwtape to his nephew, named Wormwood - both being eternally employed in the demonic art of tempting humans into sinful states (seemingly an industrial effort concerned with harvesting souls for tortuous consumption by those same demons).

   All these letters comprise advice and criticism on Wormwood's work (he being a junior tempter) on the life a particular English everyman during the Second World War - Screwtape's advice, being the intentions of an efficient devil, reads with a topsy-turviness that is consistently disorienting yet refreshing in its clarity of perspective on human nature and weakness; it is as clever a book as it is simple, as funny as serious, and even through the backwardsness of this choice of voice Lewis's insight into spiritual-moral efforts in people's lives rings loud, warmly darkly and sharply challenging to the reader as the letter's contents penetrate so incisively the contours of the general conscience.

   I cannot recommend this book enough.** For Christian readers it will be an entertaining, humblingly realistic and intellectually playful reflection on the life of a disciple; for those of other faiths (or none) its meditations on the subtleties of influence and growth in personal harmony will still probably to a considerable degree still ring true, exposing the absurdities and dangers of leaving ourselves on auto-pilot.

* Plus final text of a speech Screwtape makes to a dinner party audience of fellow senior tempters; an elaborate toast to the capacities of human tendencies to make their work so much easier than it could be.

** Quite literally, it seems.
   This is the third time I've read this book (previously when aged fifteen and nineteen) but the fourth copy of it I've owned - it's one of those which I recommend with such enthusiasm, and which other people have heard is worth reading so much, that they keep getting lended and forgottenly kept. Fortunately copies are commonly attainable from the second-hand section of Christian bookshops for £2 or less, which makes this process of occasional informal spiritual resource dissemination actually pretty viable on the whole.

the Gospel According to the Son

This book by Norman Mailer is a novel, and yet carries a persistent acuteness of tone and perspective as it walks through the first-person narrative of Jesus, told by Norman Mailer's version of Himself; I'm not going to say a great deal about it because otherwise I'll end up writing an enormous post peeling apart speculative layers of Exactly Just What Is Heresy and Where Does Art Stand In Relation To This, and basically I would like to skip that (as it's quite late and I'm writing this actually a few weeks after I've actually finished the book so a combination of wanting-to-get-off-my-screen-based-appliance-before-bed and it-was-that-long-ago-most-of-my-juicer-ruminations-have-dissipated-anyway is in effect) and just affirm that while this book does embellish upon the Biblical Gospels, it does so in the self-conscious medium of a novel, a literary format designed to embroil its lone audiences in worlds of empathy and imagination and brokenness and nuance - much like the world Jesus inhabited in ways far messier than word-for-word portrayed in the formal accounts. Any theological liberties it takes it does so with an careful caution which maintain the religious integrity of its main character, while by taking those liberties in the context of a (superbly written) novel allows Mailer to powerfully and poignantly explore what can only be speculated as to the inner life of someone who thinks God is trying to tell him summat uniquely important. As an exercise in literary practice for those who already believe that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, this twist - subjective narration of the most well-known story in history - makes for excellent and thought-provoking reading, and I am quite confident agnostic readers may also enjoy the fresh retelling of familiar scenes in ways altogether 'less preachy' than perhaps generally perceived to be accessible.

The Shack

This book by William Paul Young is a powerful theological novel (a quote on the front claims it has the capacity to do for our times what John Bunyan did for his with Pilgrim's Progress) about suffering, forgiveness, sadness, and trust, wrapped around an exploratory picture of our relationship with God. I've just breezed through it in a few days because though I have read it before (years ago) my friend Charlotte and my little brother Ryan have both mentioned they're currently reading it, and I decided to revisit one of the more poignant stick-in-your-memory stories I've read. The book itself, in terms of the (non-God) characters, the plot, the writing, etc - to be completely honest is pretty contrived and average. Were it not for the fact that the bulk of the book comprises its main character (typical, if jaded, American everyman called Mack who has recently lost a daughter to a random kidnapper-murderer) basically just hanging out with corporeal embodiments of the three members of the Trinitarian Godhead* then I would find very little compelling about this book - but oh boy, the way he writes the character of the trinity is just kind of under-the-skin-tingles familiar and brimming with wisdom and truth. Loads of respectable theologians complained about this book's portrayal of the Trinity as three distinct persons as committing this heresy or that - but ultimately I don't really think it's meant to be taken as a speculative attempt at realistic imagination, more a leap into 'what if God wanted to do this, what would it look like, how could we observe the members of the Trinity interacting in ways that were recognisable to everyday human life?' - and this, I think, it does very well. Mack and God eat together, run across a lake, do some gardening and digging, and have several chapters-worth of extremely poignant gospel-infused conversation about his pain, his faith, the complex nature of right and wrong in a broken world and the God who is right there around him who he refuses to humbly and lovingly accept. These conversations are where the book comes alive and is where the meat of its being worth reading occurs: W. P. Young has wide and deep experience with worldly loss but also knows the character of God well, and this comes across in his writing - ultimately it's a book about how Christians can learn to practice living in joyful awareness of and sensitivity to the presence of God, regardless of how much confusion or trauma they feel separates them from that same grace and love. Many are the lines in this book that I think have a particular, soft-spoken but powerful straightforwardness in making a point rooted in biblical thought that speaks of our relationship with God, and couched in the (arguably heretical but artistically allowable?) interpersonal manifestations of these characters' conversational responses to human questions often deep truths will bubble to the surface and you will think, 'oh, I'd never thought of it like that before,' and you may be prompted to revisit your own attitudes and find them growing in humility and joy. And frankly, what more can one reasonably expect as a good outcome from reading a Christian novel?

* Jesus is portrayed with historical-ethnic accuracy, which is refreshing. God the Father is a motherly Afro-American woman who goes by the name of Elousia. The Holy Spirit takes the form of an ethereal Asian lady who calls herself Sarayu.

Good Omens

This book, a novel co-written by none other than two of the biggest cleverest funniest most inventive authors in modern British pop-fantasy comedy - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - is, if you know who they are, exactly as good (if not better) as you'd expect such a collaborative work to be. It's a decently-long novel but I steamed through it in three days (of evening reading, as daytime-reading is still given over to dissertation non-fiction, as you may have gathered from the fact that this blog has basically become just about Kurdistan lately) because it's just so flipping excellent.
   To sum up what it's about - the end of the world is nigh, but the Antichrist becomes misplaced, and so an angel called Aziraphale, a demon called Crowley, the last living descendant of Agnes Nutter (a witch who predicted very nice-and-accurately all the things that would happen in the runup to all of this) and the last living descendant of the witch-finder who burned Agnes Nutter at the stake, all find themselves trying to prevent a cockup of literally apocalyptic dimensions. To say this novel is irreverent would be both completely technically true and a gross misjudgement of the value of being able to laugh at stuff - literally using the eschatological framework of the Biblical account from the prophesy of Revelation, adapted by Gaiman-Pratchett imagination to real-world workings that are as hilarious as they are commonsense and as thought-provoking as they are almost throwaway; this novel is just jam-packed with incredibly clever and incredibly funny characters, plot elements, turns of phrase, and just generally ridiculously well-concocted fictional happenings set against the backdrop of Christian world-endingness.
   I don't really have any strong thoughts or reactions to it - apart from that it's brilliant and you would probably love it, given a particular sense of humour. Like, if the idea that the apocalyptic horseman Famine would have spent most of the later-twentieth century developing middle-class hyper-health-conscious diet schemes and supplements to stave off boredom while waiting for the show to begin strikes you as funny, then this is the book for you.



Edit [August 16th]: I don't flipping believe it. I literally finished this book, that's been out for over a quarter of a century, less than a fortnight ago, and then something incredible like this happens... hopefully it will be a better screen-adaptation than Neverwhere.

[edit - July 2019]: I just had to sign up for a free Amazon Prime account to be able to see this, which much like the book I binged in a sitting or two. They did it justice. Still not as good as the book as these things almost never are but it comes closer than most.

Paradoxology

This book by Krish Kandiah is one of the best books in Christian apologetics I've ever read. Through scrutinising biblical figures and stories in context, with immense theological and philosophical rigour, Krish tackles head-on some of the biggest and most problematic question-problems posed to Christian faith - those that are seemingly irreconcilable, as scripture seems to imply, or allow the possibility of, opposite truths existing in paradox (hence the title). He covers the following aspects of God:*

• needs nothing but asks for everything (through Abraham)
• is far away, but so close (Moses)
• terribly compassionate (Joshua)
• actively inactive (Job)
• faithful to the unfaithful (Hosea)
• consistently unpredictable (Habakkuk)
• indiscriminately selective (Jonah)
• speaks silently (Esther)
• is divinely human (Jesus)
• determines our free will (Judas)
• wins as he 'loses' (the cross)
• effectively ineffective (the Romans)
• fails to disappoint (the Corinthians)

   Alongside these brilliant chapters, Krish includes in the book a short introduction, mid-way reflection, and epilogue, about the nature of paradoxical understanding and how we can live with it. His pragmatic and intellectually humble approach to the complexities and enormities of transcendentally infinite divine realities, and how human understanding can, if not at least grasp them, then grasp what is meant by the apparent contradictions, leads to some profound insights into the depth and mystery of God's truth and character. I would strongly recommend this book to any Christian who has been waging the ever-present inner wrestle with doubt in perplexity; this book strikes right to the core of the biggest and most common of these niggling doubts and uncertainties, and though they cannot be perfectly resolved in neat explanation (as is the nature of paradox), thorough examination of them certainly helps us understand how contradictory doctrines may both hold true, and strengthen the reader's heart and mind in faith along the way.

* The nature of the subject matter makes these chapters hard to summarise, so I'm literally just using the subtitles from the contents page... sorry. Hey, if it piques your interest, read the book!

the Prophet

This book, an exquisite masterpiece by Kahlil Gibran, is ostensibly poetry,* but reads like some variety of holy scripture - which is sort of the point. It opens with (you guessed it) a prophet, Almustafa, who has been living in the city of Orphalese for twelve years - but it is his time to leave, a ship is coming to return him to his birthplace. He dithers slightly on the way to the harbour, reflecting upon the time he has spent here and the pain of departure, and as he does so, the people of the town see him going and rush out to both say farewell and implore him to stay.

   Of course, he cannot stay, but the crowds stir Almustafa's heart to allow him to linger long enough to impart some of the wisdom he has (found? realised? built?) while living among them. Thus lays out the bulk of the book, two-or-three-page chapters in which a citizen of Orphalese asks him to speak on a particular topic,** which he then does - expounding in concisely enormous, universally everyday, ambiguously particular, incisively encouragingly challengingly wise terms upon that topic. Gibran's writing here is sublime - the choice of words, structure of phrasing, even layout of the whole book, emulates something akin to the Q'ran (at least English translations of it which I have read parts of) or the Judeo-Christian wisdom books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes - and yet the content of this wisdom does not seem clearly derived from any one specific religion, but seems to draw on all of their overlaps, as well as their overlaps with earthly wisdom and the highest orders of philosophy and ethics, to develop a point of view for the prophet that reads like something truly transcendent and fundamental. And yet, beautifully, it is not difficult to read! His poetic imagery is at times dense, and as I said earlier, regularly ambiguous - but far from impenetrable, as the actual text is grounded very much in common social experience. Anyway, the prophet does a shortish super-deep spiel about the twenty-six topics listed (see **) below, then gives a longer farewell speech which digs up some stirring reminders to both his crowd and the reader of the importance of wisdom, of heeding it, of remembering it, of the ease with which it is forgotten and the brokenness that often ensues when it is; he then gets on his boat and goes home.

   This is a book I wager almost anyone could read and feel both deeply affirmed and challenged by - and is that not the point of wisdom?*** All in all, this is an utterly astounding little book: the pages become papyrus as you turn them, such is its ancient sagacity - all the more incredible when you realise it was written in New York in the early 20th century. (Whatever floats your own boat, but if you're going to read this I'd strongly recommend doing so in a single sitting under a tree in nice weather - I mean, that's a great way to read most things, but particularly this.)

* Weirdly, I acquired this in the same manner, and from the same person, albeit from a different bookshop and about a year later, as the last poetry book I read. I've asked them to stop doing this as it's becoming a bizarre habit, as amusing and meaningless a symbolic gesture as it may be.

** In order: love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

*** [Christian-blogger-footnote]: well... no. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", and while quests in search of a universal truth may well often take us there, it is not the same thing from a human perspective. If fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not its conclusion or outcome, that implies that any genuine wisdom cannot be attained or anchored without first fearing the Lord - certainly the wisdom of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Jesus take us to this point. (It is interesting to note that Kahlil Gibran was himself a Christian.) But human wisdoms have developed in the surrounding social, cultural and historical spaces as Lord-wisdom, and because Lord-wisdom, being the God-defined nature of life and reality, holds its water as wisdom, we tend to find that many human derivatives of wisdom, from Buddhist philosophy to complex secular constructivist ethics, share a fair amount of surface content. This is unsurprising, if God exists then he defines what is good, and obviously people prefer what is good, so he forms a gravitational centre to those ideas (see Robert M. Adams on this) - but a human seeking of 'goodness' in an abstracted form that does not have an intentional and humble pursuit of God at its core seems, frankly, flimsy. Yes, it may well make people wiser, happier, more moral, but without a personal God of love as its foundation and centre (alongside a worked-out understanding of theology surrounding one's relationship to that God and to a reasonable degree the nature of that God's love), this wisdom, however much it may seem to be approaching universal truth, is like an incredibly beautiful chair that you can never sit it because it can't hold the weight of a person.

Works of Love

This book, a series of in-depth philosophical-theological-social-ethical meditations on the nature of Christian love by the great Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard, is one of the most rewarding, challenging, and uplifting books I've ever read. I started reading it way back in October 2014 as it was one of the recommended readings for a philosophy module I was doing - I used it as one of the foundations of my mini-dissertation but never actually finished it, despite finding it thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating. This was probably because it's very long and very dense, and I prefer reading shortish easyish books so I can finish more sooner so my blog racks up more posts (only half-jesting here): but in the last months of 2015, given a particular prolonged mindset that came over me, I returned to Søren's work and it has genuinely helped me keep my mind and heart oriented in joy toward God who is love. The blurb of my copy proclaims boldly how 'LIFE CHANGING' a 'SEMINAL WORK' this is, and it is, but like Emily Dickinson (another writer whose work in recent months helped me continue to know God, love and joy), Kierkegaard's life is not as fondly celebrated as his works, because it was also often characterised by loneliness, illness, and sadness.* What I find brilliant about these two, American poet and Danish philosopher, is that their work does tell of this misery - but refuses to let it define it (or them) by being the ending: both resolutely turn to God, to love, to joy, and adroitly display what a complete comfort that is. So yes, for a struggling Christian, this book probably would be life-changing, for the depth, breadth and persistence of its complaints, rebukes and encouragements.

   I should probably discuss the book's content a bit.

   This is easier said than done: Kierkegaard is a highly analytical but far from a systematic philosopher, and the subject matter lends itself to deep idiosyncratic meditations on a particular aspect, angle, or argument. It's not just random reflections bundled into chapters though: coherent structures to his thought are evident throughout, and every point he makes or conclusion he reaches is, with some thought (or, thankfully, more often, his own continued explanation) consistent with the overarching pictures he paints about what love is and how it works. I won't really go into these, as they run very broad and deep. The first half of the book tackles the meta-nature of love: how Christians understand God as being love, how God's eminence as the primary and defining being therefore makes love the primary and defining force and essence of all reality and how this should upend everything we think we know about goodness, since human ideas about 'love' are minute, immature, corrupt and skewed compared to the actuality of God-as-love. He also explores the notion of commanded love, how there is no contradiction in love being a compulsory facet of human activity, questions of who our neighbours are (hint: everyone) and why human nature's relationship to God's nature compels the loving-each-other-as-ourselves core of Christian ethics.

   The second half of the book is applications of this radical conception of Christian love to various active aspects of life: encouraging people, trusting people, being hopeful, seeking others' good, forgiving and forgetting, remaining loving, being merciful, winning over the unloving to the cause of love, mourning the dead, and praising love itself. Kierkegaard examines each of these facets of how we live in love, building from the conceptual base of the first part. One point that he frequently restates I will mention because it's a brilliant realisation: if God is love, then in any functional relationship between humans, all feelings and actions between those humans is irrelevant, as a functional relationship is a loving one, which necessarily includes God as a third element in that relationship, and God in perfection necessarily flattens all non-perfectly-loving elements of each of the two persons as they are no longer just relating to each other but to God. This holds for any two persons, be they friends, enemies, you and some homeless guy you'd really rather not feel compelled to buy a sandwich. Of course, such relationships, in our broken and sinful world, do not de facto occur, but by the grace of God and the uplifting work of his loving Spirit, we can (should) strive to emulate them.

   If I've made it sound complicated please forgive/disregard me (or leave an angry comment if you're so inclined, goodness knows it'll be nice to at least know that I've got readers). Søren is a philosopher but this is not a philosophy book: he's not developing complex theoretical structures or proposing grand intricate maps of reality: he's a Christian, using his ability as a philosopher to walk the reader in wisdom through his many thoughts about the most important thing a Christian thinks there is - God-as-love. And yes, these thoughts are extremely deep at points, yes, at points he goes into a lot of detail to argue for a particular point and so the prose becomes difficult and dense, but stick with these passages, because he uses them to connect thoughts that bring you to a realisation of some truly beautiful things, some intensely challenging things, some immeasurably encouraging works of love.
   For a Christian reader, this book is now one of the first I would ever recommend someone read - it is supremely uplifting, and you genuinely feel you are discovering more about how to know, serve and emulate God. Non-Christian readers might also enjoy it but I would expect they'd find it confusing: the active reality of Christian love is so counter-intuitive, so against the grain of our modern cultural sensible individualism, that Kierkegaard's conclusions would just come across as mad. And in a way they are - I certainly felt that - but that's why it's such a refreshing challenge, because humans are built to know God, to know love, but we are so distant from its reality that hearing extensive in-depth truths about what it is and how it works and how we fit into it doesn't immediately feel like good news. But, of course, it is. [I was going to find a quote from the book to lend this concluding sentence a bit more oomph, but there's just too many good ones, and I can't be bothered to comb back through the whole thing. Anyway; absolutely worth a read.]

* A fact that is better reflected in his other philosophical works, most of which are about irony, despair, godlessness, and so on. Also, this hasn't got much to do with anything I've mentioned in this post but I want to include a link to it anyway because it's hilarious: follow this twitter account for a superb feed of Kierkegaardian thinking combined with the everyday lifestyle reflections of Kim Kardashian. You're welcome.

The World We All Want

This book, a short introduction to Christianity written by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, is a great resource for doing its job, something it does with aplomb and regularity in church circles I'm used to. (It probably helps that both of its authors are both of the founding leaders of my church but it's caught on elsewhere too.) 'TWWAW' (pronounced 'idk') for short, rather than the kind of book you can give to a non-christian and expect them to engage well with it (they might, but only if they've already got a vague familiarity with what Christian-ness: a better resource for letting someone read as an introduction would be 3-2-1), it's designed as seven studies, observing a passage of scripture and running some investigative questions, best worked through in small group discussions. I've just finished going through it with a handful of seekers, as I was one of the supporting facilitators in the studies - not that it needed much, as if led by someone who knows Christianity well, TWWAW pretty much drives all the sessions itself. It's structured around the whole biblical narrative, from creation to fall to redemption to new creation, tracing how Jesus succeeded the various transitional steps required to complete this progress that Israel failed at. It's well biblically grounded but doesn't go into a huge amount of theological depth, which makes it very accessible, but it does have the potential for the sheer massiveness of the story presented and the well-poised questions invoking responses from seeker readers to prompt questions that do go into considerable depth (which is why it's probably advisable to have a pretty experienced Christian leading this study, rather than just giving the books out). Anyway - as a resource that I've seen many a time over the last decade prove its effectiveness in communicating the gospel and linking it well to individual concerns about God and sin and such, I wholeheartedly recommend TWWAW for any Christians to use in study groups with friends who are seeking, and pray that in any such efforts God uses these well-structured little studies to bring people closer to the truth.

the Abolition of Man

This book, a small primer against relativism by that intellectual giant of 20th-century Christendom, yes, none other than Clive Staples Lewis, wasn't as good as I'd expected. An interesting but entirely supererogatory pair of facts about the particular copy I read are that it (a) is 60 years old and (b) belongs to Portrush Presbyterian Church: my friend Dave accidentally stole it, brought it back from Northern Ireland to Sheffield where he goes to uni with me, read it, lent it to me, and now presumably intends to return it quietly to its rightful place across the narrow sea.

   The book itself is more academic and targeted than Lewis's usual nonfiction; rather than writing an uplifting and convincing Christian message to a general audience, here he seeks to resolutely sort out an important argument for a more educated audience. While he was without a doubt a formidable intellectual, I don't think this is his forté - especially given the subject matter. At the height of modernism which gave rise to post-modernism and the explosion of critical sociocultural theories that make winning arguments so much the harder, here we see him writing about the dangers of subjectivism in a compelling, but nowhere near tight enough, little mess of three essays.

   His first essay concerns education, and how values of subjectivism secretly embedded in texts will yield a nefariously relativistic pull on the consciences and judgements of the educated in years to come. His second essay considers how, through the modernistic reduction of things with values to mere things for scrutiny, such a relativistic hegemony could grow and win; he frames such a process as the continuation of man's dominance over nature into man's dominance over metaphysics. His third essay laments this predicted victory, as the prevalence of relativism as an intellectual and moral habit for human thinkers would, he sees it, be 'the abolition of man', as by separating from absolute value (a set of fundamental moral truths that he refers to, interestingly, as the Tao) our own capacity for decision and analysis, we're effectively surrendering to a free-for-all, a constructivist postmodern landscape in which anything goes, which means nothing goes. In an appendix, he leaves us with a compilation of snippets of wisdom* from a variety of civilisatons round the world, that he considers to contain something of the Tao: these universal values underpinning human moral agency, thinks Lewis, are something that have been noted and prized by almost every society, and that is reflected in their great wisdom texts.

   It's worth pointing out that largely, I agree with him. Objective truth does exist, modernism did seek in its quest for progress and human flourishing to prod questioningly at it, and this was reflected strongly in educational and intellectual developments. However, the breadth and simplicity of the points Lewis makes in this book reveal that he is actually just quite weak at doing analytical philosophy and very weak at writing about critical theory, so we can't expect his attempt to bring down major trends in both of them from within to be a resounding success. Even though a lot of it seems to make intuitive sense, his arguments are sloppy and even his framing and understanding of the philosophical and theoretical trends he's lambasting not nuanced enough to take seriously as a full critique. His style, which strives for openness and clarity while at the same time verging on metaphorical phrasing and depending too much on imagery and convention, doesn't help here at all. Subjectivism (not to mention its myriad offspring schools-of-thought) isn't, I don't think, the correct or best broad view we should have about morality or any sociocultural issue, but rejecting all critical and postmodernistic theories out of hand because they smell of it simply isn't an option. Reality, especially in this kind of normative realm, is incredibly horribly multifariously complex, and we need subjective viewpoints, we need a wide array of theories and responses, not only just to try to work out answers to these kinds of issues but to understand them in a helpful way at all.**

   So, this is a pretty interesting read, but I'm not sure what for. For a defense of objectivism, especially regarding morality, there are others that far better engage with the real intellectual climate and may even be easier-going. For a critical discussion of modern theoretical developments in the general field, there are literally thousands of better books. Christian readers might appreciate it as an often-unseen philosophical facet of the brilliant accessible apologist, though be warned, this is nowhere near as brilliant and nowhere near as accessible as his Christian writings. I'm not sure if it's even in print anymore, but here's a link to the full text online if you want to have a read:

https://archive.org/stream/TheAbolitionOfMan_229/C.s.Lewis-TheAbolitionOfMan_djvu.txt

* Some of the implied 'wisdom' here I find a bit suspect, but that's not a new surprise: C.S. Lewis's thinking has a few tendencies that I, were he alive and predisposed to converse with 21-year-old Yorkshiremen who think they're cleverer than they are and far less intellectually intimidating, would press him on. His writings reflect a patriarchal, militaristic, patriotic tendency that sit quite at odds with my effeminate cosmopolitan pacifism. Most of the 'wisdom' he's picked seems pretty legit though, and I do appreciate his sourcing it from more places than just Leviticus and Locke.

** I was a philosophy student, can you tell?

God's Call

This book, compiled from three lectures on moral theology from John Hare, was another in the large pile of stuff I'm having to blast through for research for a philosophy essay. Most of them I'm only reading sections but this one was shortish and the whole book was quite relevant so I dedicated a day in the library to it and here we are, I have to write a post about it now.

   I'll be brief because it is academic philosophy and I don't want to effectively rewrite portions of my essay, or indeed an abstract. The book explores a new attempt at interpreting divine command theory, with specific focuses on the fact that God communicates with humans in a way subjective to them, and therefore how objective moral realism is reconcilable with human autonomy in following theistic commands. The points were argued well, with a thorough overview of the history of 20th-century ethics and how John Hare believes shortcomings in developing theories of meta-ethics throughout having various reconsiderations and revisions, culminating in his own view which he calls "prescriptive realism". This is strongly compatible, though not dependent, on theism; and so he goes on to discuss the divine command theories of Duns Scotus, an influential medieval thinker, linking prescriptive realism with a coherent moral system and also with christian theology. He then finishes the book with a chapter on Kant, re-reading the great philosopher's work on meta-ethics with a conscious awareness of its originator's sincere christian beliefs, and in taking them seriously thus shows that they are not at all incompatible with divine command theories, as most modern writers in ethics would say Kant is. For a short book, John Hare presents some big ideas, and in his approach through the history of philosophy he does great justice to them in many ways, but one does wish a longer, more thorough, more systematic exposition and explanation of his ideas and their implications were given.

   I've already made loads of notes on my responses to the ideas of the book and my thoughts on them, but they're handwritten in my essay binder in my bag which is on the other side of the room, so I can't be bothered to go through all the motions necessary to recount them here, especially since I also need to get on with other essay reading. Most of the remaining books I only have to skim or read sections of, which is fortunate as it keeps resultant blogposts to a minimum.

   Anyway, it was great help for my essay, and I enjoyed reading it. Anyone who's interested in theism, ethics, the history of philosophy, and the boundaries between these three, should consider checking the book out.

Finite and Infinite Goods

This book, an incredible work of philosophy/theology by Robert Merrihew Adams, has been the core of my educational reading for the last month. I'm writing a philosophy essay on the christian concept of love and how it links to the meta-ethics of motivation in a variety of theories of moral obligation (yeh it's a genuinely fun topic), and this has been my bulk inspiration book. I've been struggling to get it finished over the last couple of weeks because it's christmas-season and I've moved home, hence my reading of several less strenuous materials (see every other post this December), but have been thoroughly enjoyed it with interest nonetheless. I don't say this about many academic sources, but it's awesome.
   Adams has attempted to construct a framework for ethics centred around the Platonic concept of a transcendent Good and our relation to it. Strongly compatible with theism, especially christian belief systems, Adams takes this Good to be God. As the transcendent Good, all "good" things in the world can therefore be said to in some way resemble God in their intrinsic properties (which he calls "excellences") and are therefore appealing to a rational well-oriented human mind, because the universe was made by God in his nature as Good and so goodness is a naturally-diffuse characteristic of recognisable creation; that aspect specifically which lends value and rightness to it by affirming its unity and coherence. All excellences, especially morality, are good in that they are God-like and are to be encouraged, enjoyed, exercised, treasured. Evil then is not an equatable opposite power, simply an absence of or opposition to the Good.
   I am far too unskilled a philosophy-abstractioner to do justice in summarising Adams' book properly here, particularly because I myself so deeply enjoyed and agreed with it. I've ended up with several thousand pages of wrist-crampingly handwritten notes on it which at some point, bugger everything as a I now realise, I will have to transcribe onto a computer are they to have any use for my essay. However I hope the rough overview I've just given has made it sound interesting. If it hasn't, here's a very brief description of the topic of each chapter:

1. God as the Good - why is the metaphysical/theological person of a God the best fit for his central concept of transcendent Good?
2. the Transcendence of the Good - what are the implications of this Good's being better and definitive of other goods?
3. Well-being and Excellence - how are we to judge good outcomes in human lives?
4. the Sacred and the Bad - what significance does the Good lend to this that do (or don't) resemble it, and what does this imply for right attitudes towards them?
5. Eros - how does God (and do we) love things for their own sake?
6. Grace - how does God (and do we) love things for the Good's sake?
7. Devotion - how do/should we organise our motivational structures in making decisions involving goodness?
8. Idolatry - what happens what the Good is not the centre of the motivational structures discussed in the previous chapter?
9. Symbolic Value - is there a place in relating to the Good for acts that proclaim but do not effectively serve it?
10. Obligation - given systematic social use of guilt as a structure for obligating certain behaviours, how does this apply here?
11. Divine Commands - how do social-style obligations work when it is the Good (i.e. God) themselves that obligates certain behaviours?
12. Abraham's Dilemma - are the obliged commands of the Good always good?
13. Vocation - are there particular decisions or behaviours specific to individuals that we can take to be obligatory goods but not universals?
14. Politics and the Good - what are the implications of everything discussed so far for how we approach political systems and concepts?
15. Revelation of the Good - how do we even find out what goodness is in the first place, or relate it to a Good?
16. Moral Faith - is a certain trusting leap required to accept any system of morality, including this one?

   What struck me hard from the book is how coherent his system of ideas is, though drawing so deeply on academic philosophy and on sets of ideas completely alien to it. Adams has refashioned the divine command theory of moral obligation (hardly a popular theory anyway) in a way that is bold, efficient, edifying, and makes a lot of sense; it doesn't depend upon assuming but fits perfectly well with vast chunks of theist thinking, mostly christian theology, especially given the primacy of love as an importance in our relation to the Good.
   Robert Merrihew Adams, to me, has gone from being being a name on the module's recommended reading list (when I first heard of him) to being a world-famous eminent philosopher on theological ethics and metaphysics (when I googled him later) to being a supremely agreeable and intelligent man with whom I find immense common ground and cannot commend for his excellences enough (when I finished his book). This book meshed with and enhanced my own thinking really well: so much of what I have always vaguely felt but never articulated philosophically about ethics he outlines with casual accuracy; so much of what I have given much intense thought to about theology, politics, metaphysics and faith he adroitly encompasses in a cogent intelligible system that helps justify and unify my own thinking about these things.
   Anyone who is interested in ethics, anyone who is a thinking christian, and especially anyone who is both, I wholeheartedly exhort you to put this, my last book of 2014, on your reading lists for next year.