Jack and Piranesi
Marilynne Robinson, Susanna Clarke and their new novels
Two of our favourite novelists here at Three Things released major works in the past month. Both are women with unique talents who share Christian moorings – and both received in-depth profiles from The New Yorker this September.
Casey Cep, author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, profiles Marilynne Robinson whose novel Jack is the fourth instalment in the Gilead series, “an intergenerational saga of race, religion, family, and forgiveness centered on a small Iowa town.”
Jack, son of a Presbyterian minister, is a prodigal, and his return home in Gilead was both judgment and blessing on the small town. In this new novel, Robinson moves in reverse to the time before Jack’s return to Gilead, focusing on his relationship with Della Miles, a minister’s daughter. Their interracial romance occurs in a fraught era. Cep writes,
Della, too, knows the danger she is in—whether walking down the street with her lover, eating with him in public, or entering his boarding house. And that is without even considering the troubles brought specifically by Jack, who trails trouble everywhere. “I have never heard of a white man who got so little good out of being a white man,” Della says. Newly released from prison—for once, he has been convicted of a crime he didn’t commit—Jack has resolved not only to stay sober but to accomplish something even harder: to do no harm.
Neil Gaiman hailed Susanna Clarke’s 2004 debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell as “the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years.” Clarke is back with Piranesi, a novel of confinement tailor-made for an era of isolation. Its world bears similarities to Charn in C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, “a landscape full of grand palaces but devoid of people.” Laura Miller writes,
Clarke told me that the environment she created for her protagonist was alluring to her, too: “On the one hand, people have died there, and it’s quite a harsh and dangerous environment. But with the statues, and this classical, ordered world, and these vistas going on forever—like Piranesi, I find that quite beautiful.” The House reflects her lifelong attraction to vast, grand, deserted places like Lewis’s Charn. But as she came closer to finishing the novel she felt uneasy about the fact that she was “contained in a shell of illness, almost protected.” She explained, “Illness becomes a sort of protection against the world after a while.” By finishing the book, she said, “there was the danger that that shell would crack, and I would have to go out into the world.”
Read or listen to "Marilynne Robinson’s Essential American Stories" and "Susanna Clarke's Fantasy World of Interiors" at The New Yorker.
Good News: Tomorrow We Die
Todd Billings on how our mortality frees us to live
You're probably familiar with the gospel of prosperity: “God will grant good health and relief from sickness to believers who have enough faith."
Many Christians find it easy to brush aside these claims, but Todd Billings insists that we're often enthralled by a softer version of this gospel. It goes like this: "If I’m seeking to obey God and live in faith, I should expect a long life of earthly flourishing and relative comfort."
Is this really what God promises? Diagnosed with incurable cancer at age 39, Billings has ample reason to ask. Since his diagnosis, Billings has written eloquently on why Christians need to embrace the practice of lament. In The End of the Christian Life, he now turns to the benefits of keeping our mortality in view.
In this extract from the book, Billings explores how the Bible does two remarkable things at once: it cuts through our illusions about mortality and furnishes us with resurrection hope. Both are essential.
Whether or not we have sight or mobility, whether we live 5 or 40 or 90 years, our bodies belong to the Lord, and the process of outwardly wasting away can be a testimony to the humble love of our Savior. Amazingly, the Spirit enfolds bodily failings into his work in the world. As we are witnesses to Christ, the very crumbling of our bodies makes it “clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” ([2 Corinthians 4] v. 7, NRSV). In this way, the anchor of our hope is not deliverance from the process of decay but union with the crucified and risen Christ.
Read "Good News: Tomorrow We Die" at Christianity Today and "How Death Enables Us to Live" at Credo. You can also listen to The End of the Christian Life Podcast for interviews with pastors, therapists, undertakers, and scholars on what it means to be mortal before an everlasting God.
A Theology of Faces
Joshua Farris on the costs of masking
"Wear a mask, love your neighbor." Of course. But what are the costs of our new normal? We sometimes hear about health costs and social costs, but this article by Joshua Farris examines the theological costs.
Farris points out that little theologising about faces has been done outside of Roman Catholicism, so he pulls from Catholic theologians and mines the Scriptures for some notes on this neglected aspect of our humanity. A key text comes from 2 Corinthians:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The final purpose of humanity is beholding the face of God in Jesus Christ. "But to hide the face is considered in Scripture to be a form of disguise after the Fall," Farris writes. "It undermines the purpose of which faces are intended."
Read "A Theology of Faces: Notes on the Costs of Masking" at Mere Orthodoxy. For more from Joshua Farris, check out this review of his new book on what it means to be human.
Featured Book
The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor Kaitlyn Schiess
If there’s anything that American Evangelicals need more of, it might be creativity. We are so often constrained in our political thinking and decision making by forces that trick us into thinking that our options are severely limited and the consequences for working outside them are great. We need our political imaginations enlarged to help us think outside of the constraints of pragmatism, our own historical moment, and dominating stories of our earthly political communities.
So writes Kaitlyn Schiess toward the end of The Liturgy of Politics. This thoughtful recent book looks for the myriad ways that under-examined involvement in American politics has unintentionally formed us as creatures who don’t just think about policies and platforms, but whose loves and loyalties have been captured by parties and politicians.
Taking her cue from thinkers like James K.A. Smith and Stanley Hauerwas, Schiess offers a “liturgical” audit of our political life, as well as a “political” consideration of our liturgical life in the church — showing how the sacraments, the liturgical calendar and our reading of all of scripture problematize a naive coupling of the Christian faith with any one political party.
The book is primarily addressed to her fellow evangelicals, yet Schiess does not back away from offering difficult words to her own ecclesial tribe. She has commendably integrated the work of theologians and historians who are critical of her own tradition. Her chapter on how the “false gospels” of Prosperity, Patriotism, Security and Supremacy have infiltrated evangelicalism is spot on. Her treatment of Augustine was also worth the cover price for me.
That said, I was hoping to read more on why liturgies, which have the power to form us for a faithful politic, have so often failed to do just that. I also found the middle chapters of the book where Schiess highlighted the political nature of our liturgical practices to be somewhat predicable.
On the whole, however, this is a needed antidote to many narrowly written, policy focused books on faith and politics. If you, like me, are at all concerned about the ways evangelicals have construed political involvement, Schiess has much to teach us.
– Joshua Chestnut
Andy
Andy has been listening to the Heaven and Earth class on BibleProject's new online classroom. That, combined with a recent discovery of Tim Mackie's Bible reading list has prompted a flurry of new thoughts about the Bible (and books about the Bible).
Reading: Andy has been going through the Psalms with a Journaling Bible, taking notes on imagery with the help of Seeing the Psalms by William P. Brown.
Listening: Bear's Den and Leif Vollebekk have been on repeat lately on this playlist.
Phillip
Phillip and family have safely arrived in the UK and finished their 14-day mandatory quarantine. Now, they simply need a house and car! Everything in its time.
Books: Just finished Christopher Watkin's critical study of Michel Foucault, which places the French thinker's ideas in dialogue with the Bible. Foucault has shaped your thinking more than you know, and Watkin is a brilliant guide. (He's got lectures too.) On to Piranesi.
Listening: Spotify's Jazz-Classical Crossings playlist has livened up quarantine. The new Fleet Foxes is also getting lots of play.
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