How Dante Can Save Your Life - A Review

I have subjected my daughter to a “Great Conversations” curriculum for her high school homeschool. She is of the bookish sort, so the large volume of reading is really up her alley.

This year, at the beginning of the year, she is staring down Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Dante’s Divine Comedy at roughly the same time. Spenser is in her English literature curriculum, with Dante occupying a prime place (about 1/6th of the year) in her Great Conversations course. There is overlap between the courses, though Great Conversations tends to be as much about history and philosophy as literary value.

In any case with my dear daughter bowed under the weight of two classic, but challenging, texts, I felt compelled to find her some resources (besides my fervent assurance) that they volumes are very much worth the labor to read and understand them.

I have heard Rod Dreher’s 2015 book, How Dante Can Save Your Life recommended by some that know Dante well. Even some that find Dreher’s more recent work in The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies a bit too political and panicked have recommended the volume.

There is good reason for the recommendation. This is a good book. It’s not quite the commentary on Dante that I was looking for, but it tells a good story, it uses Dante’s Divine Comedy as a framework, and engages the mind and heart in the pursuit of truth.

Like most converts to anything, Dreher has strong opinions. The story he tells in How Dante Can Save Your Life has strong ties to Dreher’s opinions about the value of Roman Catholicism he left from his earlier Methodism, and the Orthodoxy that Dreher adopted after he became disgusted with the Catholic hierarchy after sitting under a liberal priest and reporting on the Roman Catholic sex scandals in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. There is a lot of veneration of icons, exorcisms, and ritualistic prayers in the book that will make those familiar with Scripture, especially the second commandment (or the 2nd half of the first commandment in the Catholic and Orthodox tradition) very uncomfortable. At the same time, there is a real discovery of grace and the ability to forgive that provides the climax of the book.

This is a story of homegoing. After the death of his sister––whose legacy Dreher memorialized in The Little Way of Ruthie Leming––Dreher and his family moved back to rural Louisiana. Dreher expected to be welcomed back, but found himself alienated from his family and depressed. The stress of his anger at his perceived mistreatment left him with a significant bout of chronic fatigue.

How Dante Can Save Your Life is a story of Dreher finding his way out of a pit of depression and learning to forgive his family. It involves regular counselling, ascetic spiritual practices, and a deep dive into Dante’s epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and finally on to Paradise.

As I have said, this is not primarily a commentary on Dante. However, as Dreher follows Dante on his journey, we see how a great work of literature can have a significant impact on the mind, body, and soul. Dreher’s telling of his own story maps well onto Dante’s journey of self-discovery. Although the story is more about Dreher than Dante, it is well-told and it does illuminate the power of the Divine Comedy many centuries after it was first penned.

This book is impressive because it was written to a broad audience. Dreher invites secular readers into a moral vision that points toward Christianity. It isn’t clearly stated, but the Dreher offers and invitation to the reader to be conformed to the moral order of the universe. Through his own story of discovering joy in chastity, even the atheist can see the value in the discipline of sexual restraint and seeking persistent love before conjugal relations.

Dreher provides some resolution to the tension of the story, but it is a powerful twist on the ending one might expect. If this were a sitcom, then Dreher would have been received with open arms by his family, everyone would apologize and the wrongs of previous years forgotten. As it stands, Dreher recounts his coming the point of being able to forgive despite not receiving many concessions from the family who held him at a distance. In this Dreher provides a picture of the most likely reality. We do not always get to live happily ever after, but we get many opportunities to choose to be as happy as we can be in a given circumstance.

This is Dreher’s book telling Dreher’s story. There are points at which one wonders if the narrator can be fully trusted. Although Dreher admits to some of his own failings, it is clear that he believes the fault is mainly on the other side. The reader is left wondering whether Dreher is entirely fair to the rest of his family. The downside of the book is that the reading of it feels a little voyeuristic. One wonders how the rest of the family feels about his publication of this volume.

If you can get over the feeling that there might be too much dirty laundry exposed in this volume, the book is well worth reading. I’m offering it as an auxiliary volume for the Great Conversations curriculum as a way to see the value of Dante. It also offers a thoughtful portrait of redemption and forgiveness. These are all things that deserved to be explored in greater detail by all of us, especially by those trying to figure out why the books consistently chosen for a Great Conversations curriculum belong there.

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

By Dreher, Rod

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Lost in Thought - A Review

For all the criticism that academic pursuits get for putting someone in “an ivory tower” there is an awful lot of rat race that goes on.

When I would comment on the chaos in our department or a major corporation, mostly due to the ineptitude of a former boss, I would frequently be told “that’s the nature of the business, this isn’t like a university.”

The thing is, if it ever was such a thing, universities are no longer places of quiet rest and contemplation. The pressure to publish and present or miss promotions and tenure is real for many young faculty. More experienced faculty often are still trying to find elbow room for their ideas, publishing opportunities, and respect. To read the stories of the life of C. S. Lewis and his own accounts in That Hideous Strength, I think the halcyon days of a peaceful, irenic university faculty life are more urban legend than real history.

What, then, is the value of the intellectual life? Is it really just another hyper-competitive sphere of life, without any different potential than the rest of the corporate grind?

In Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz explores the possibility that the intellectual life has potential for enjoyment on its own.

This is the sort of book that is good for young academics wondering if the mountain is worth climbing or for older faculty wondering what joy there can be in a community that is often polite in the midst of savagery.

What Hitz finds is that, while academia is not for everyone, there is a joy in the process of learning for its own sake. She argues that learning has inherent value. It is worth pursuing even if it does not result in greater riches and measurable wealth. It does, however, require the space of time and energy that come from leisure—exactly the reason why it is so hard to justify learning for its own sake in our harried and exhausted culture.

Even for those outside of the ivy shrouded walls of academia there is value in intellectual pursuits. They provide a refuge in a hostile world as we touch the minds of many who have gone before and lived fuller lives. Hitz explores ways that being a bookish sort of person can lead to relief and blessing in the midst of struggle and difficulty.

Learning, however, must be pursued for its own sake to have the full effect. If the point of learning becomes to climb a social ladder, to be cutting edge, or to win approval, then it is perverted and many of its benefits are reduced. She writes, “Intellectual life is artisanal toast for the mind.” The idea being that it must be enjoyed to be worth the cost.

More significantly, learning must not be pursued for the sake of politics. In that case, learning becomes about indoctrination. This is true whether the guiding lights of the institution lean right or left. Real learning is meaningful when it wrestles with the thorny thoughts of different perspectives to come out the other side with transformative power.

This is a book that is inspiring for those outside of academia who are inclined to continue learning and growing but struggle with the value of those efforts—heaven knows that has been my fate for several years. Lost in Thought provides reassurance that reading, writing, and seeking to grow intellectually have a purpose even if those efforts are not rewarded with academic titles, publishing contracts, sabbaticals, and the other trappings of the university.

Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

By Hitz, Zena

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The Courage to Be Happy

Not too long ago, in a quest to answer a question about lyrics in a Ben Rector song or find the end of the internet—whichever came first—I stumbled across a review of Rector’s latest album. The gist of the review was, His music seems pretty happy, which is surprising given the state of the world.

That sentiment is pretty common in popular culture. The review is in a relatively minor website, by no means a strong editorial force or significant cultural shaper. However, I think that is what a lot of people are thinking.

“How can I be happy when there is so much wrong with the world?”

There is war in Ukraine, abject poverty is horrible, it feels like the culture has gone crazy, my email inbox fills up faster than I can deal with it. The deficit is huge, there are issues with the environment, inflation is insane, the stock market it down.

Seriously, why can anyone be happy?

The Erasure of Distance

This sentiment of warranted unhappiness because of distant problems is a peculiarly modern issue.

One of the blessings of modern telecommunication is that it erases distance.

I can call someone on the other side of the world in a second and have a clear communication with them. I can also talk to the person sitting in the cube next to me using the same tool. In fact, I can hold a teleconference and have a discussion with half a dozen people that are thousands of miles away. Grandparents can speak to their grandchildren live, with video, and even watch in real time distant family events like baptisms, plays, birthdays, etc. This would seem miraculous just a few decades ago.

But the erasure of distance is also one of the curses of modernity.

Every problem in the world is now an immediate concern. I can get live pictures of people bleeding out in the street in Ukraine. I can see children starving to death on another continent. Flooding a world away pops up in my news feed with a higher frequency and realism than the family next door who just got a cancer diagnosis.

There is no separation. There is no local community. Every global problem is blasted into my pocket begging me to do something about it.

I don’t believe there is any more evil in the world than there was a hundred years ago. However, we can be much more aware of all sorts of evil, with vivid depictions, and demands for immediate action.

The Feeling of Futility

The demand for action is what makes the experience the most miserable.

When there is a car crash and we are the first on the scene we can provide first aid, call the ambulance, and hold someone’s hand as they weep over their lost child.

When there is a flood in the next county over, we can go and muck out someone’s living room, provide a bed for a neighbor, or get meals ready for disaster relief workers.

Truly local problems provide real ways that we can do something. We can take a casserole to the family who just lost a loved one or whose matriarch had surgery. There is something meaningful.

All we can do when we see the horrors of the world while scrolling through our phones is send a small donation, repost something to “raise awareness,” and feel a little bad by proxy.

The inability to really fix the big problems of the world leads to a feeling of futility.

The feeling of futility can lead to a sense of despair, which causes people to wonder why anyone can be happy when there is so much misery in the world.

The Courage to Be Happy

It takes courage to be happy in the face of the constant deluge of negative information we receive. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is the motto of all forms of news media. We have to find ways of coping with the overwhelming flood of information.

One way of responding to persistent negativity is what comedian Bill Bailey humorously demonstrates through the “Not Too Bad” approach, with the additional caveat, “All Things Considered.” As he describes it, this is the process of dialing down expectations to a reasonable level so that things are really not as bad as they could be.

Frankly, that’s the way I generally approach the issue. First, I try to limit my consumption of bad news. Second, I dial down expectations and try to remember that things aren’t really as bad as they could be. Living in the Midwest, I am frequently reminded that I am not alone in my approach.

But that’s not a particularly good way to live life. This sort of pessimism leaves one consistently expecting the other shoe to drop. It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head. Things will probably be worse in a few weeks, so enjoy the moderate misery of the day.

It takes courage to be happy. It takes internal strength to shut off the flood of sadness from the world and say “Thank you” to the God of the universe who created everything from nothing, instilled the created order with wonder, and gives us breath every single moment. It takes stubborn, persistent, relentless effort to remember that things are not only “not too bad,” but that they are, really, pretty darn good most of the time.

Sometimes its good to take a moment to count your blessings, push off the negativity, and take a moment just to be grateful for the inherent goodness of the world. Given my own sin and depravity, things are much better than they ought to be. Most of the time, if I’m really honest, things are pretty darn good.

The Satisfaction of Good Stories

I recently took an entire week off work. It was mainly to finish my book for B&H Academic, tentatively called From Futility to Hope: A Theology for Creation Care. I also tried to unravel the knots of stress and encroaching burnout I was feeling from months of busy work, teaching Sunday School, trying to finish the book, with the only break since the New Year having been invested in the not-so-restful travel to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

To set the mood for what I hoped would be a creative and productive week of editing, I kicked the week off by reading a completely fluffy book: Lee Child’s first novel, Reacher: Killing Floor. It was a recommendation from a friend. It sounded interesting because I was looking for some relatively mindless reading that I could consume without too much effort.

Reacher met the mark. It was largely predictable and cliché. It was filled with the nearly-super hero who went to “the Point,” which is what Naval Academy graduates call their second choice. There were cultural inconsistencies, a really odd career timeline for Reacher (which Child acknowledges), and attractive women who were suddenly attracted to the rugged protagonist. Aside from the lack of sharks, the book is prime beach reading.

The story had few redeeming qualities, other than being quite engaging and thoroughly entertaining.

Sneaky Serious Content

The introduction, however, was a sneak attack on the person looking for brain candy. There are some nuggets worth considering that Childs tossed into his introduction, added fifteen years after the book was first published.

When mulling the genre of this novel, Childs assesses why his books were widely popular. It was because he was writing for the audience, but he wasn’t writing down to the audience, which results in cheesy, overdone fiction. Instead, he notes, “Along the way, I discovered I was the audience.” He quotes Chesterton on Dickens, “Dickens didn’t write what people wanted. Dickens wanted what people wanted.” Thus, he’s writing lowbrow fiction in exactly the fashion he would like to receive it.

There’s a secret there, I think. C. S. Lewis, in his essay, On Three Ways of Writing for Children, describes (1) writing down to children, (2) writing for particular children, and (3) “writing a children’s story because a children’s story is the best art-form for something you have to say.” Lewis affirms the second and participates in the third way of writing to children. The first he describes as being “generally a bad way,” which is pretty severe criticism in the vernacular of the British Isles.

Childs’ assessment is fair. It is obvious in Reacher that the writer is enjoying the little plot twists too coincidental to be believable, the overdone perfection of the main character’s ability and perceptions, and inevitability that the hero will ride off into the sunset to his next adventure.

The book—and I presume the series––rely on Reacher as the prime mover and only focus for the story. There isn’t so much a plot as performance art by the ex-Army MP. Childs admits that storyline and plot are secondary elements for his writing: “Character is king. . . . So, my lead character to carry the whole weight.” And he does.

A Western Connection

The result is a fairy story for adult males. Childs claims to have modeled it after stories of knights errant. I tend to agree with other readers who, as Childs notes, “classify the series as a set of modern-day Westerns.” Though he does not fully agree, he notes this Western-Reacher connection “is convincing in terms of feel and structure.” Childs claims not to be a fan of Westerns, but he has noted that “Westerns too have strong roots in the medieval knight-errant sagas.”

I read the introduction after I read the rest of the book—remember, I was trying to veg out. But I had already pegged this is a Louis L’Amour (Childs references Zane Grey) with more sex and more graphic descriptions of violence. Childs is on the right track here.

This is a knight-errant story. It is a modern Western. It is exactly what many readers want to read.

The Reacher Series has been successful because it provides a good guy––without doubt about his moral compass––who is trying to unself-consciously punch the big guy in the face and set wrongs to right. This is a book about a character who knows which way he is headed and won’t bend to polls or shifts in public opinion.

The Power of Stories

So many contemporary stories–-movies and books––fall short because, to quote Harry Flugelman from The Three Amigos, they “strayed from the formula, and [they] paid the price.”

This is why the recent sequel to Top Gun has had ridiculous box office success and staying power. Maverick is predictable, it is cliché, and it is thoroughly enjoyable. The same is true of Louis L’Amour and the Lee Childs novels.

What do the people want? They want someone to look up to who isn’t really just a villain in disguise. They want to be treated as if goodness, honesty, and self-confidence are admirable traits. They want the hero to win and the bad guy to lose, but not just on a technicality.

The fact that people want that—even people who think the metanarrative of Scripture is a new Facebook feature––is an indication of the eternity that is written on the hearts of all humans. (cf. Eccl 3:11) It can be a foothold for the gospel, if we are willing to tell the old, old story well.

That desire for wrong to be set right and for a hero who is a good guy can point straight to the greatest story ever told. I think that is what makes Reacher: Killing Floor such an engaging story. And that makes me question how we Christians are telling stories and telling the story.

Maybe telling the great story of Scripture is more powerful than reasoning people to Christ. And we may find it helps that our great hero story also happens to be true.

A New Look into the Crisis of Epistemology - Untrustworthy - A Review

How do we know what we know? What criteria do we use to determine what is true? When sources of information conflict, how do we come to a resolution?

Epistemology––the way that we know things––is among greatest challenges of our day.

There is no question that humanity’s greatest need is the gospel, but epistemology is a significant barrier to communicating the gospel and for others to receive the gospel message.

The epistemological crisis is not an “out there” problem in the world, as we were told for years with postmodernism. We have an epistemology crisis in the church. And not just “those liberals” who deny the resurrection, affirm sexual revisionism, or whatever. The crisis provides different symptoms on the left, the right, and in the center (doctrinally speaking), but it is no less severe.

Bonnie Kristian is a journalist who writes for The Week, a news digest magazine that summarizes current events from around the world. She has also been a columnist for Christianity Today.

In her recent book, Untrustworthy, Kristian tackles the crisis on knowledge in US Christianity. She begins by outlining the problem, digs into its various instantiations, and concludes by proposing some basic steps to begin to iron out solutions. This is an introductory volume with plenty of illustrations to keep the reader engaged in a discussion about an important topic.

The first step to dealing with any problem is to recognize there is a problem. When epistemology is the issue, it is difficult for people to identify for themselves. As David Foster Wallace pointed out in his well-known commencement address, “This is Water,” we make a million assumptions about the world and usually cannot see our own weaknesses and failures.

For cultural progressives, who tend to congregate on the political left, the epistemological flaws may include basic assumptions about truth—that truth is dependent upon one’s experience and identity. (Chapter 7) It may include conspiracy theories that a cabal of old, rich, white men have rigged the economy against a whole host of oppressed minorities. It includes assumptions that anyone who does not affirm the appropriate culturally progressive theories of humanity––even ones that would have earned a horse laugh a decade ago––without question is somehow a knuckle-dragging neanderthal.

For those on the political right––I will not call them conservatives, because they usually are not––there are insidious conspiracy theories about the “deep state,” child trafficking rings, and pending arrest of specific political figures. Even those that have not fallen into the deep well of QAnon nonsense have probably seen, heard, or been impacted by adjacent conspiracy theories. The mantra “Do your own research” has been used to invalidate any perspective that does not accord with the starting opinions of the “independent thinking” individual who is generally getting his or her research threaded together by a Reddit poster or a YouTuber. (Chapter 5)

The epistemological crisis is not a problem that was caused by people minding their own business.  It hasn’t even really been caused by social media or the traditional media, per se. (Chapter 2) Twenty-four-hour cable news has certainly accelerated the problem. Ideological isolation of many individuals—especially journalists and experts—has contributed to the epistemological crisis. Decades of intentional erosion of a belief in an external, objective truth (even if we can’t perfectly describe it) has added fuel to the fire. This is a whole culture problem that has many contributors. Anyone who tries to blame just one group or medium of communication is probably selling something.

Kristian’s analysis does not cover every possible contributing factor to the epistemological crisis. She tends to focus on non-academic elements of epistemology. This is understandable, because there is a lot of navel gazing that goes on among philosophers about what it takes to form justified true beliefs (see Alvin Plantinga’s book, Knowledge and Christian Belief for a reasonably accessible intro). She also does not propose simple solutions, which is good, because there are no simple solutions. However, Kristian’s Untrustworthy does provide a reasonable introduction to the philosophy of knowledge for someone for whom “epistemology” might as well be a term for a vestigial gland in New Zealand marsupials.

One potential weakness of Untrustworthy is that it seems to punch right more than it punches left. This makes sense, for a least two reasons. First, Kristian has joined an Anabaptist sect (she says because of their pacifism), which tend to be more doctrinally conservative. Therefore, Kristian is more concerned about the problems on the “Right” side of the Christian spectrum. Second, the epistemological crisis among evangelicals and fundamentalists comes to the cocktail party in overalls, while the progressives bring their epistemological distortions in tuxedos laced with hallucinogens. Twisted metaphor aside, it is often much easier to identify the problems of QAnon and adjacent theories than it is the slippery arguments for progressive relativism. (The fact that many can’t seem to differentiate between trying to not be overtly racist and actual Critical Race Theory tends to support that fact.)

What Kristian makes clear is that the epistemological crisis of our day is not just due to “liberals” or “progressives” that can’t tell the difference between a biological male and female. The world has become liquid for those that identify as conservatives and progressives. Some of the people who have ardently argued against postmodern epistemology have fallen into the snare of it. Kristian’s book helps to show the reader immersed in the river of Western culture what water is. Perhaps by recognizing the problem we can begin to take steps to shore up the foundations of knowledge and rebuild a stronger society.

Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

By Kristian, Bonnie

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NOTE: I was provided an advanced reader copy of this volume by the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Stop Reading the News - A Review

There are thousands of companies and people that have you on their mind right now.

Maybe not you in particular, but they are thinking about a category of people that you belong to. They want your attention. They want to have you read their article see the advertisements on their pages and get hooked on their product.

Sometimes we act as if manufacturing drama for the news is a recent phenomenon. Jeffrey Bilbro helps debunk that in his book, Reading the Times. He goes back to Henry David Thoreau’s concern that newspapers of that day were exaggerating claims, inflaming situations for the sake of sales, and disrupting people’s ability to see the integrity of the world. The issue, though, goes back before that to pamphleteering after the invention of moveable type for the printing press, which drastically lowered the entry cost for authors and publishers. It’s a long-term problem, but it remains a real one.

Rolf Dobelli recognizes the way most people take in media as a significant problem and recommends that, as the title of his little book suggests, we Stop Reading the News. This book is, as the subtitle claims, “A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life.”

Dobelli is a popular author of airport books, like The Art of Thinking Clearly. His aim is not to draw people into some mysterious appreciation for only high-brow literature and a contemplative way of life. Rather, he is someone who has likely benefited significantly from attention in various forms of media (especially for the sales of his books), but understands that the way we process the news is bad for our minds.

The ironic setup for this volume is significant to its message and humorous. Dobelli opens the book describing his taking the opportunity to speak to a room full of journalists at the Guardian in 2013 about another book. However, he had also just written a blog post about avoiding consuming the news. In the room filled with people whose livelihood depended on people consuming the news, he was asked to further explain his position. He did. The newspaper employees found something worthwhile in his explanation, subsequently publishing some of his comments. This, in turn, led to the book, Stop Reading the News.

Summary

According to Dobelli, he has nearly entirely avoided consuming the news since 2010. One of the most significant exceptions was when he briefly got infatuated with American presidential politics around 2016. However, he quickly realized that it was a trap and returned to his more careful media consumption habits.

Despite what the media publishers may tell you, it is entirely possible to go through life without reading or watching their content. Dobelli estimates that the average person likely encounters about 20,000 items of “news” per year. He encourages a thought experiment: How many of those news articles have led to meaningful decision in your life that you would not have otherwise have made?

Looking back over the past year, I have to argue that Dobelli is largely correct. The news has not changed my mind, caused me to do something radically different, or really improved my life in any significant way. I may have encountered a few books that I otherwise would not have, but there has been little of significance. For Dobelli, the most significant difference the news could have made is when he would have known his flight was cancelled due to the Icelandic volcano eruption had he read the news. That would have saved a few hours of his life.

The news is largely irrelevant. Not just irrelevant to our daily lives, but actually totally insignificant. Dobelli points out the none of the daily newspapers in the world covered the invention of the first internet browser, which is arguably one of the most significant inventions since the plane. There were other stories of human and political interest on that day, but none of those items were really as significant in a historical sense as the web browser.

The news also encourages us to worry beyond our sphere of influence. It is tragic that there is genocide going on in a distant place, but our understanding every detail of the ongoing drama does not benefit me or the victims of unrest. In fact, when all is said and done, it is highly likely that much of the information distributed as “news” will be determined to be incorrect. Additionally, the news lacks the ability to accurately explain why things are happening, which is, in large part, what people who follow the news faithfully are not experts on issues they have not studied through longer articles and books (despite their confidence on social media). The net result of following the news closely is a false confidence in one’s own expertise and a more unsettled mind.

Another significant point that Dobelli makes is that the average person spends about 90 minutes a day reading this news. This means that about 1 month of the year is invested in reading or watching material that really won’t matter. Avoiding the news opens up worlds of possibility for deeper engagement through books, better conversations, and simply being a better observer of the world around. Imagine adding a month back into every year for rest or more productive purposes.

Conclusion

Stop Reading the News is a short book, about 146 pages long in a gift-sized format. It is about the right size to read on a medium length flight. It is filled with arguments for avoiding the news and ways to get by without reading the news. Dobelli’s point is not that we should be oblivious to the world, but that other media are a better way to really understand what is happening. He also notes that most stories of real import will be brought to your attention in daily conversation, even if you avoid the rapid-fire approach to the news.

This is not a must-read book, but Dobelli’s approach is compelling and the book is an easy read. This is the sort of volume that would be useful in a high school or college course on media literacy as a companion to the course. It is the sort of book that might be worth conveniently leaving at the home of a relative who is consumed by the news and has been transformed by the tone of the news. Personal application of the avoidance of news (and likely social media) might be a beneficial practice that would be worth experimenting with for many of us.

Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life

By Dobelli, Rolf

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The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis - A Review

For some people, another book about C. S. Lewis leaves them scratching their head wondering what else there is to say. For other people, new analysis of Lewis’ grocery shopping habits would be a must read.

I can say that I am much closer to being in the second camp than the first, though I have reached the point in my studies that the mere presence of Lewis’ portrait on the cover or his name in the title of a book are no longer enough to get me excited.

I am, however, excited to have read the recent book on Lewis by Jason Baxter, The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. It is a relatively brief volume and it takes up questions that have been explored in other volumes, but it also explores them in ways that I have not encountered in my research in the secondary literature on C. S. Lewis.

Allow me to begin by explaining a few reasons why this book is worth your time and money.

First, it is a concise volume at just over 160 pages. Too many books are about twenty-five percent too long these days. They make their case and then they continue to do so well after their point has been well expressed. Baxter avoids that, leaving the reader interested by the end, which is a gift to the serial reader.

Second, Baxter makes Lewis the main subject of the book not his own research. When writing on a subject has reached a certain critical mass it becomes possible to read a book that claims to be about a topic, but it is really about the author’s interactions with books and articles about the topic instead of the topic itself. The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis interacts with significant segments of the secondary literature, but the majority of the sources are Lewis’ works and the main thrust of the book’s arguments is an interaction with and exposition of C. S. Lewis. This is a volume that leads the reader to Lewis and beyond the author’s own mind.

Third, The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis explores a major aspect of Lewis’ work that is well-deserving of attention. Lewis described himself as a dinosaur, by which he meant that he was really a man of an earlier age, specifically the medieval age. This has been explored to some degree in several biographies of Lewis. It was also the thrust of Chris Armstrong’s book, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians. Baxter’s book is distinct from these earlier volumes because it explores some of Lewis’ lesser known works, like Allegory of Love and Discarded Image, while tying those resources to the books that Lewis read, interacted with, and in some cases helped maintain some interest in among contemporary scholars.

The end result is a volume that is a pleasure to read, deepens the readers understanding of Lewis and medieval thought, and connects to some lesser explored aspects of Lewis scholarship.

This is the sort of volume that has significant explanatory power. It helps to explain why Narnia feels different and that when reading Lewis one encounters something deeper than the offerings of much of modernity. Baxter begins by describing the medieval cosmos, then explores Lewis’ deep roots in the scholarship of the era. He then introduces some of the counterpoints between antiquity and modernity, the shifts in the understanding of the human mind and person. Baxter goes on to explore the ways Lewis went beyond the presuppositions of his day to see the wonder of humanity, and the mystery of God. These all contribute to a worldview that tends to tear down barriers build by modern constructs.

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis is an instructive book that may serve for some readers as an introduction to sources often unknown to contemporary readers. For those coming to Lewis anew, being pointed to Boethius and Dante, for example, may open up new worlds for explorations and broader reading lists for continued digging.

Baxter’s book is a good one. It is thoroughly readable and can be consumed by someone without an advanced degree in literature, philosophy, or theology. It is engaging and carefully constructed. For those that love C. S. Lewis, it is a welcome exploration in a cherished topic. This is a book that belongs on the shelf of the Lewis scholar, the teacher hoping to get a student engaged in some deeper thinking. More significantly, it belongs in the hands of a reader hoping to be delighted and broadened through the reading experience.

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind

By Baxter, Jason M.

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NOTE: I was provided a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

A New Edition of Chesterton's Orthodoxy

If you haven’t read G. K. Chesterton, you should take the opportunity to do so.

He’s humorous, incisive, perceptive, witty, and a fierce defender of the Christian faith. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man is one of the volumes that contributed to the conversion of C. S. Lewis. Some find his contrariness and paradoxical thinking grating, but most sense the twinkle in the eye of a brilliant thinker who has been captured by a love of the truth.

Chesterton’s work is out of copyright, so I anticipate (if it hasn’t happened already) many cheap and barely readable versions of the text to pop up in online marketplaces. One of the challenges of reading old books in our age is finding a well-produced edition for a reasonable price.

B&H has produced a gorgeous printing of Orthodoxy, with an introduction, annotations, and guided reading from Trevin Wax. The annotations alone are worth the price of the book, because Chesterton drops many names of popular politicians, thinkers, and cultural fixtures without any context. It’s possible to get the general idea of the text without knowing who he is referring to, but the notes that Wax provides at the bottom of the page are very helpful. The guided reading is also useful for those who haven’t encountered Chesterton before, or who are unfamiliar with the conflict of Christianity and modernity. Chesterton is a very deep thinker, so the first trip through Orthodoxy can be tough slogging for the uninitiated. Wax scaffolds the content with a brief introduction to each chapter telling the reader what the gist is and what to look for; at the end of chapter there is a brief summary and some discussion questions. These are all helpful for engaging the book on its own terms.

Orthodoxy itself, of course, is a classic volume. There is a reason it has been in print for an extended period of time. This volume is a follow up to Chesterton’s book, Heretics, where he takes on Christianity’s modern critics directly, and often by name. However, some of those critics did not engage with Chesterton because, they said, he had not outlined his own position in the positive. They recognized that it is much easier to tear down opinions than it is to build them anew. Chesterton agreed and took them up on the challenge. The result was Orthodoxy.

Chesterton was, of course, a Roman Catholic, which shapes his approach to defending the faith. He also grossly misunderstood Calvinism—or at least, he has misrepresented every real version I have ever encountered in life or in print. And yet, Chesterton’s defense of Christianity from modernity is a defense that is appealing even for a low-church Baptist with Calvinistic tendencies. He makes the locus of his understanding of Christianity the Apostle’s Creed, which is a good place to start, if you ask me.

It’s challenging to sum up the contents simply, but it might be fair to say that, having looked at modernity’s answers to life’s most pressing questions, Chesterton is explaining why Christianity provides the best description for the world as it exists. He begins by showing the circularity of materialistic arguments for the world and the better answer he found in Christianity. The argument moves on from there. This isn’t a typical apologetics book, but trust me, it’s worth your while.

The latest edition of Orthodoxy from B&H is worth the money. It is a handsome edition and the notes add value rather than distracting from the quality of the text. If you haven’t read it at all, get some version of the book and pick it up. You’ll thank me later.

Orthodoxy: with annotations and guided reading by Trevin Wax

By Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, Wax, Trevin

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Another Sort of Learning - A Review

The Preacher who gave us Ecclesiastes famously wrote, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9)

This is true in many arenas, but those who read old books will find it true of controversies, antagonisms, and the general feel of cultural unrest. C. S. Lewis recommends reading old books “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” (Lewis, “On Reading Old Books”) It is by reading old books that we gain a corrective to the characteristic blind spots of our own culture.

I’m not sure if James Schall’s book, Another Sort of Learning, counts as an old book, since it was published in 1988, but it had a revealing effect for me. Schall’s book is worth considering on its own, but it also provides evidence that today’s cultural battles are not really that new. More than thirty years ago, Schall was calling out the same problems that might be the source of concern in The American Conservative, First Things, or National Review today. That doesn’t mean that the concern is not warranted, but rather that we might be better served by recognizing that this election or this court case or this movie may not actually be the straw that broke the camels back. It may be, but that seems less and less likely the older I get. There is nothing new under the sun.

In Another Sort of Learning, Schall writes “about being a student, about reading, about the fact that each of us is called to understand. . . ‘the truth about our lives.’” This is a book that discusses other books that can help shape the mind. It is a book about thinking well, appreciation of the transcendentals, and recommendations of others who are thinking along the same vein.

Contents

The book is divided into three parts. The first is addressed to college students, pointing them toward what their goal as students ought to be. Schall expresses concern that students seek to answers to the big questions of life, rather than simply learning a trade. The whole of this section is framed around that. In his first essay, “Another Sort of Learning,” Schall commends used book stores for being able to find the right sorts of books that are often not in as regular circulation. A lovely way to begin an engaging book.

The second part of the volume recommends “Books You Will Never Be Assigned.” Here offers to “provide reviews of certain books that I think help us gain some insight into the heart of reality.” These are mainly modern books with an ancient soul. They are the sorts of secondary literature that take the Great Conversation seriously and try to engage it meaningfully rather than demonstrate why it is a foolish attempt. For those with a hefty book budget, these are chapters ripe with suggestion.

Part Three seeks to provide an alternative viewpoint to the most common modern perspective. Schall states, “I want to discuss rather substantive things, both intellectual and spiritual. Here I want to say something about the humanities, about devotion, prayer, something more, again, about permanent things.” Here he again is recommending volumes that pull readers deeper into the idea of reality about the universe, rather than directing them to their own reality.

Conclusion

Another Sort of Learning is a deeply conservative book. Not the sort of conservatism that produces strong tweets or rages against the right enemies, but the sort of conservatism that digs deep into the intellectual realities of the world and seeks to find truth, goodness, and beauty. It is a sort of reactionary perspective that is revulsed by the evils of modernity, looking to the solidity of the past for a conversation of substance.

One of the interesting benefits of reading a book like this over thirty years old is that it skips a generation. The authors that I recognize are mainly the ones still being discussed today, so Schall’s reading lists can point us back to older books of substances that may further help clear away the cobwebs of the contemporary cacophony. There is nothing new under the sun, but Schall provides access to the ongoing debates that doesn’t include the gaps and blind spots of the latest cycle of blogs.

Another benefit of Another Sort of Learning is that Schall describes the same sorts of problems being lamented by thoughtful people today. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. On one hand, the continuance of this concern about the loss of the transcendentals is discouraging because we have not made much progress. On the other hand, the continuance of concern on this issue shows that we have not altogether lost the fight. This is an encouraging volume that is worth the time to read. The essays are no worse for being more than thirty years old. Maybe they are even better for it.  Overall, the collection is well-written and engaging, perfect for taking a chapter at a time after a long day at work.

Another Sort of Learning

By James V. Schall

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Homeschooling - Our Freshman Curriculum

Homeschool continues to grow in popularity. Some of this is due to curriculum concerns. Some due to COVID protocols and the unpredictability of schools that continue to alternate between in person and remote learning. Others, I think, have leaned toward homeschooling because the homebound instruction during the earliest stages of the pandemic showed them that parent-led learning was possible.

There are many reasons to homeschool, but I think the best reasons include it being a form of learning that fits the needs of the student. So, for example, it may be better for a student with special needs to get the attention available from a local public school. Or, for a parent and child whose personalities clash, it may be better to commit to a private religious school. For those of us that have options, it is good to consider which one serves the student the best.

My family committed to homeschooling early on and it is has worked well for us. One of the enjoyable parts of the high school experience has been shaping a curriculum that fits the personality of our eldest and will push her to grow as a person as a student.

Since she is very verbal student, there is a lot of reading in her curriculum. We value the Great Conversation, so I have made an effort to begin her high school with ancient cultures and texts, with the intention of getting her into the modern era when she is a senior.

In case some might find it helpful, I am going to describe her freshman curriculum here.

Math and Science

We purchased Math and Science curricula off the shelf. Math has been a source of parent-child stress over the years with our oldest student, so we used Thinkwell’s homeschool honors Algebra I material for the freshman year. It has tended to make the learning process much less stressful and it is a solid, interactive mathematics course. For science, our homeschool co-op was doing the Marine Biology labs from Apologia’s catalog. The community support for that worked well for us.

Critical Thinking

The learning outcomes for this course are:

1. Learn to think well, fairly, honestly, and clearly about big ideas.

2. Consider how thinking well supports living a moral life.

These outcomes will follow through all four years of this approach. In support of this, our student had to read volumes that were selected to get her thinking about the world, about ideas, and about how thinking takes place. I had her read:

C. S. Lewis, “On Reading Old Books”

Lloyd Alexander, The Gawgon and the Boy

Epstein and Kerberger, Critical Thinking

Bluedorn and Bluedorn, The Thinking Toolbox

Bluedorn and Bluedorn, The Fallacy Detective

Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences

Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Dogma is the Drama”

C. S. Lewis, “Religion and Rocketry”

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks

Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Creative Mind”

Most of these resources are either directed thinking and logic explicitly or are from a friendly perspective. As she matures, the intention is to put more challenging perspectives into this mix.

English Literature

Freshman English was intended to hit some of the high point English literature. This was intended to complement another course in the homeschool co-op that ended up cancelled. I will probably revise this for the next two, but this is how the year went. I had her read six novels over the course of the year. Given the extent of the reading for the Great Conversations portion of the curriculum, the brevity of this list did not seem problematic.

The learning outcomes for this course were:

1. Read significant works of English literature for familiarity and to engage with our shared culture.

2. Improve writing reading, thinking, and writing skills by summarizing books as they are read.

3. Appreciate the beauty of the written word in the English language.

4. Critically engage with literary themes in major works of fiction by writing essays that draw together themes and ideas.

The books selected were:

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Willa Cather, My Antonia

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

I had her do a little research on the historical context of each novel, a biographical summary of the author, and a brief summary of the work. Additionally, I assigned a 500-1,000 word essay on each novel.

The writing was supposed to be covered by the co-op class. So I hadn’t thought the essays through. This was a bit frustrating because of the quality of the work was not very good. Over the course of the year, I figured out this was because the student did not understand how to arrive at a thesis, and instead continually defaulted to attempting to compare and contrast works. I think my vision for these assignments was ahead of where she was developmentally. If I had this to do again, I would assign a thesis, which is what I did for Sophomore literature. For the Sophomore curriculum, I also made “literature” a parallel track to Great Conversations, to get more of the volumes from the same time period but read them from a more literary angle.

Spiritual Disciplines

One of the major reasons we homeschool is so that we can make spiritual disciplines a part of the curriculum. The learning outcomes for this course are:

1. Grow toward Christlikeness by reading and meditating on important books, both contemporary and historical.

2. Develop the practice of journaling as a discipleship tool.

As a result, the assignments were to do the reading and write a journal each week. The texts for the course were intended to reinforce Christian doctrine and faithful practice of spiritual disciplines. They included:

J. C. Ryle, Holiness.

Augustine, On Christian Teaching (or On Christian Doctrine).

Brother Lawrence, Practicing the Presence of God.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Dorothy L. Sayers, “Strong Meat” in The Whimsical Christian, 17-23.

Gloria Furman, Alive in Him.

Athanasius, On the Incarnation.

History

We have followed a basic 4-year cycle for much of our time homeschooling, though one year we substituted in a year-long study of the Eastern Hemisphere. The plan is to do another 4-year cycle through high school, this time including reading that accompanies the time period.

I chose Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the World series to use as a backbone. We had already purchased all four of her The Story of the World books and encouraged the kids to read them as supplements, so taking the step to the next level seemed appropriate. Additionally, Bauer seems to deal more fairly with Christianity than some approaches without slipping into pandering as do some of the overtly Christian approaches.

Bauer’s History of the World books have accompanying curriculum, which we purchased. In addition, I created a Google Classroom for this course with a topic per week. In the classroom, I linked a lot of the CrashCourse YouTube videos and other videos that help provide visual stimulation and additional support for the ideas in the curriculum. Each chapter also had an objective quiz in the classroom, so that we could monitor whether the reading was being done well enough without having to hover.

I scheduled about eight exams for the course of the year. Each of the exams was an essay question, with essays selected from a pre-published list of the long form questions in the History of the World student curriculum. It was an introduction to the Blue Book exams that were the torment of many college students.

The learning outcomes for Ancient History were:

1. Gain a sense of the trajectory of history, the development of human culture, and how motivations and ideas shape human responses to events.

2. Meditate on why studying history is a vital discipline for a virtuous life.

3. Think critically about politics, society, science, and culture to better engage a diverse world.

These learning outcomes will be common for the four years and are the target of the high school history program, not the focus of this year, only.

Old Testament

Again, one of the reasons we homeschool is to include religious instruction in our curriculum. Therefore, one of the subjects this year was a survey of the Old Testament. Once I figured out how the Google Classroom thing worked, I decided to give homemade Old Testament instruction a try.

In the past, I haven’t been as engaged in the teaching aspect of homeschool because I’ve been at work. However, by created a weekly video of me lecturing on a given topic or book of the Old Testament, I could be directly involved in instruction without being present during normal school hours or having to have energy on a given night.

And so, I put together a robust reading list, a set of standard objectives for each book of the Old Testament, a weekly quiz, and a video of me, filmed in my basement office. Additionally, I included one of the Bible Project videos for each book, and sometimes lectures or sermons on a specific verse or book that were helpful and instructive. To kick off the year, I had the student watch David Platt’s Secret Church videos where he goes through all of the Old Testament in about 4 hrs.

There were weekly quizzes, chapter exams, and self-reported Bible reading reports this year.

The Old Testament Learning Outcomes were:

1. Explain the overarching themes and message of every book in the Old Testament.

2. Gain a deeper appreciation for the gift of special revelation, particularly the Old Testament.

3. Defend Christianity against basic cultural criticism based on the nature and content of the Old Testament.

4. Explain the historical contours of the Old Testament History.

The reading list was extensive. There were selections from several other volumes, but the following books were assigned in their entirety (except for only reading the OT portions of Schreiner):

Mark Dever. The Message of the Old Testament. Wheaton: Crossway, 2006.

Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton. A Survey of the Old Testament. 2nd Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Thomas Schreiner. The King in His Beauty. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013.

Michael Cosper. Faith Among the Faithless: Learning from Esther How to Live in a World Gone Mad. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018.

C. S. Lewis. Reflections on the Psalms. New York: HarperCollins, 1958.

Francis Schaeffer. Genesis in Time and Space. In The Collected Works, vol 2. Downers Grove: Crossway, 1983.

_____. No Final Conflict. In The Collected Works, vol 2. Downers Grove: Crossway, 1983.

_____. Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History. In The Collected Works, vol 2. Downers Grove: Crossway, 1983.

This amount of reading only works because the student is a high-level reader and because the reading makes up the bulk of the course content.

Great Conversations

The summer before starting high school, I assigned Sophie’s World to provide an introduction to the intellectual history of the West. Along with that, I assigned a list of names for the student to research and write a paragraph about, so the list of new characters would be diminished over the course of this first year.

Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s essay “On Reading Old Books” this curriculum represents an attempt to go back to original sources. I decided it was better to try to hit some of the major works in full rather than trying to do selections of a wider range of sources. The readings were generally sorted in chronological order. I ordered standard English translations, usually from a recent source to try to get the best reading experience possible.

The course learning outcomes were:

1. Engage in the “Great Conversation” by reading books written by men of women of diverse backgrounds and eras to better understand the human condition.

2. Enrich the understanding of the history of ideas by reading primary sources to support the readings in history.

3. Meditate on why studying history is a vital discipline for a virtuous life.

4. Improve writing reading, thinking, and writing skills by summarizing books as they are read.

The assigned readings included:

Myths from Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh and Epic of Creation)

Homer’s Iliad

Homer’s Odyssey

OUP Presocratics volume, intro only

Finn, History: A Student’s Guide

Plato’s Republic

Plato, Defense of Socrates and Other Essays

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric

Aristotle, Politics

Virgil, Aenid

Sima Qian, The First Emperor

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Confucius, The Analects

The Bhagavad Gita

Plato, Gorgias

Cicero, The Republic

Cicero, The Laws

Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe

Cicero, On Life and Death

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Aeschylus, Libation Bearers

Aeschylus, The Eumenides

Euripides, Medea

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

1-2 Maccabees

Josephus, War of the Jews (Selections)

Early Christian Writings

Many of these were referenced in Bauer’s book in History, especially the non-Western texts. It wasn’t possible to line this reading up exactly with History, but there was enough overlap so there was plenty of interplay.

In addition to the reading, the only other assignment was to keep a notebook with a summary of the historical context, a biographical sketch of the author, and a summary of the work. I would check in with the student periodically to see how the reading was going. The written work was not always exemplary, but was good evidence through discussions that the reading was happening and things were beginning to come together. Many of these volumes could be the study of a lifetime, so the goal for this course is exposure and increasing appetite rather than getting everything from them on the first pass.

There is no question that this is a Western-heavy reading list. Since we live in the US and since many of these books have been so influential through history, this seems natural. I did, however, make an effort to include some significant texts from other ancient cultures. Ancient cultures of every sort are so foreign to ours that even the Western canon is a form of multi-culturalism, but these is something to be said for having read The Bhagavad Gita and Confucius’ Analects in addition to a fair amount of Plato and Aristotle.

Some experts in education will probably tell me that this volume of reading is excessive. Looking back, I would have cut a couple of volumes from this list. However, when you recall that this is both homework and class, the volume makes more sense.

Concluding Thoughts

This post is already too long, so I will save discussion about my philosophy of curriculum development for another post. This approach was possible largely because my student is a very motivated reader.

Raising kids and homeschooling is a decades long experiment with no control group. We will see how it goes, but this is part of the approach I’ve been using and I offer it for your information.