To England!

This week I applied for a passport for the first time.

 

I find myself with the awesome opportunity this summer to do some filming for Veritas Press's new self-paced Omnibus Program. I'll be flying to England in July to visit some sites related to Alfred the Great, Richard I, Henry V, Richard III, Shakespeare and Robin Hood.

Evangelism with Olaf

I’m currently reading, and thoroughly enjoying, Heimskringla (The History of the Norse Kings) by Snorre Sturlason. Right now I’m reading about Olaf Tryggvason, the second king of Norway to embrace Christianity. Haakon the Good had previously tried to spread Christianity among his people, but what he got in return were death threats. Specifically, the people of Trondheim told him that if he didn’t drink the offering cup to Thor at the annual sacrifice, they would kill him and get a new king. Since the people of Trondheim were numerous and strong, he gave in, but not without causing a huge ruckus by making the sign of the cross over the cup before he drank it. His PR person spun the situation by telling the people that he was making the sign of Thor’s hammer.

Fast forward a couple of kings to Olaf Tryggvason. He had a slightly different take on the conversion of his fellow countrymen. I’m not sure why we never studied him in our evangelism class at LU.

King Olav straightway opened the matter with the common folk, that he would ask all men in his kingdom to become Christian. Those who had already promised to do so, agreed first to that behest, and they were the mightiest present: all the others followed them. Thereupon all the men in the east in the Vik were baptized. Now the king went north in the Vik and bade all men take up Christianity, and those who spoke against it he dealt with hard; some he slew, some he maimed and some he drove away from th eland. So it came about far and wide over all the kingdom which his father King Tryggvi had vormerly ruled and likewise over that which his kinsman Harald the Grenlander had had, that all the folk took up Christianity as Olav bade. And in that summer and the following winter the folk in the whole of the Vik were all converted to Christianity. (VII.53)

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, this seemed to work very well. Of course, Olaf didn’t always offer the choice between conversion and death. Sometimes, if the man he was trying to convert was a jarl who had a number of warriors at his command, Olaf would offer him the choice between conversion or battle. Given the choice, conversion often resulted. Olaf was not known for losing battles.

When confronted with the stubborn people around Trondheim who demanded he sacrifice to Thor, he readily agreed. But he told them that he was an all or nothing sort of guy and that if they wanted him to sacrifice he would do it in the most ancient way possible and sacrifice men rather than animals. And of course he wouldn’t sacrifice slaves or criminals, but would be free to choose from the richest and most powerful families since the gods deserved the best. This caused many to reconsider and accept Christianity.

Finally, for the people who still insisted he come to the sacrifice, he relented. He asked to be led into the temple of Thor to pay his respects. Then, when inside, he hefted up his battle axe and went to town on the statues of the gods while the leader of the people who had been instigating the unrest got the axe from Olaf’s men. Upon exiting the ruined temple, the rest of the people decided to accept baptism, and so that was that.

Possession by A. S. Byatt

I can’t resist the literary novel. I suppose there’s just a certain kind of person who likes reading books about people reading books. If you are that type of person, then you will love Possession by A.S. Byatt. It falls in neatly with other novels that take place in and around academic settings like Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night or Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Like those other, Possession centers on a mystery though it is officially subtitled “A Romance.”

Roland Mitchell is a minor scholar working part time for a researcher exploring the works of Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash. Roland is extremely intelligent and dedicated to his work but lacks what we Americans would call “gumption.” All this changes however, when he finds in a copy of a book belonging to Ash, two unfinished letters to a mysterious lady. He impulsively pockets the letters and sets out to discover the identity of this belle dame to whom the respectable and erstwhile happily married poet was writing. He soon crosses paths with Maud Bailey, a feminist scholar working on another obscure English Victorian poet, Christabel LaMotte, who just may be Ash’s elusive lady. Together the two determine to unravel the mystery of a relationship unknown to anyone for a hundred fifty years. Of course, there are academic and romantic rivalries that threaten to derail the investigation and an ongoing race for any bits of evidence that can be had.

Byatt alternates her narrative between the exploration of our main protagonists, Roland and Maud, and the letters and journals of Ash and LaMotte, allowing the reader to participate in the investigation as well as the characters. I love books like this if they are done well, and this is done very well. My only complaint is that there are exactly three sections of the book in which the author directly narrates events in the 1800s, unmediated by documents. For me, this seems like cheating, and I would prefer to know exactly what the characters in the book have discovered and no more. The way she has set up the narrative does not lend itself to those omniscient excursions into the past. In fact, I would say the strength of the book lies in the revelation of how much we think we know of the past based on so little information.

If you like books and academic settings, then you’ll enjoy Possession. If everything I’ve just said sounds incredibly boring to you, then you  may want to give it a pass. What else can be said for this book? It’s a literary novel that questions how much we understand of literature, a postmodern book that pokes fun at postmodernity, a feminist critique that parodies feminist critiques, and, yes, I suppose too, A Romance.

4/5 stars

On Never Being Bored

I can understand how a person could be overwhelmed with this life; how one could be harried, hectic, awed, fearful, dizzy or elated with life. However, I will never understand people who get bored. There are too many foods to taste, books to read, games to  play, and things to do. Also, for those of us who are married, a spouse is an endless source of mystery and interest. You can spend years with a person and still barely scratch the surface of their unique and wonderful depth. In fact, every new subject or endeavor is a world in itself, and there's no way a person can experience even a fraction of the wonder of God's created order.

Case in point: a week or so ago, I decided to dip my toe into jazz just to have something to listen to while grading. Now I find myself over my head in a rushing river. I never knew how much there was to explore. Better be careful when you go out on the road, I suppose. As Bilbo said, you never know where it will take you.

So here's a list of what I've been listening to lately. Give it a try if you're so inclined. Since I don't pretend to any knowledge of jazz beyond a week or so acquaintance, I can't promise these are "the best". Just what I've found and liked.

Miles Davis: Round About Midnight (1957) (hard bop) THIS IS GREAT! LISTEN TO IT NOW!
Thelonious Monk: Monk (1954) (bebop)
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (1961) (bebop/free jazz)
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (1957 compilation) (cool jazz)
Joe Lovano & Us Five (live 2011) (post bop)

The Heart Makes the Theologian

It would do a great deal of good if the many litigious firebrands in the Reformed world today patterned themselves as theologians after John Calvin. Too often the feeling is that true holiness consists of crossing all the theological "t"s and dotting all the doctrinal "i"s. The editors of Calvin's Institutes for the "Library of Christian Classics" edition offer this summary of Calvin the theologian.

“One who takes up Calvin’s masterpiece with the preconception that its author’s mind is a kind of efficient factory turning out and assembling the parts of a neatly jointed structure of dogmatic logic will quickly find this assumption challenged and shattered. The discerning reader soon realizes that not the author’s intellect alone but his whole spiritual and emotional being is enlisted in his work…He well exemplifies the ancient adage, “The heart makes the theologian.” He was not, we may say, a theologian by profession, but a deeply religious man who possessed a genius for orderly thinking and obeyed the impulse to write out the implications of his faith. He calls his book not a summa theologiae but a summa pietatis. The secret of his mental energy lies in his piety…

"But he knows experiences that lie beyond his powers of thought, and sometimes brings us to the frontier where thinking fails and the mystery is impenetrable to his mental powers. At this point he can only bid us to go reverently on if we are able. He would not, he says, have the sublime mystery of the Eucharist measured by his insufficiency—“by the little measure of my childishness”; but he exhorts his readers not to confine their comprehension of it by his limitations, but to strive upward far higher than he can lead them…

“Calvin insistently affirms that piety is a prerequisite for any sound knowledge of God. At the fierst mentionof this principle he briefly describes piety as “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”…Theology was no concern to him as a study in itself; he devoted himself to it as a framework for the support of all that religion meant to him.”

Dress Like a Man

Well, now that I've lost enough weight to wear my sports coats again, I've decided to renew a project I began a few years ago: dressing like a man. Anyone want to join me?

 Click this link to get started.

"But, wait!" you say, "Wouldn't such an undertaking be incredibly expensive?" Not at all. To show you what the cost would be if you followed Jeffrey Tucker's advice in the above article, I've evaluated my closet to see what I have. Here's the rundown.

• 3 pairs of slacks (2 khaki, 1 grey) [$3.25 each at Goodwill]
• 3 sports coats [I got these for free as hand me downs from a guy in my church. They would be $8 each at Goodwill.]
• 1 suit [I bought this years ago for my sister's wedding. Can't remember how much it was, but a complete suit is something like $13 at Goodwill.]
• 2 white dress shirts [$3 each at Goodwill]
• 1 blue dress shirt [$3 at Goodwill]
• 1 checked dress shirt [$3 at Goodwill] [Note: sometimes shirts can be had for $1 each when the DAV store is having a sale.]
• Assorted ties [$1 each at Goodwill. For the sake of calculation let's say you buy 5]
• 1 belt [$1 at Goodwill]

 Grand Total: $64.75. This includes all the ties you need, all your shirts, pants and coats. You're done. Seriously. The only other clothing I own are a few t-shirts that I wear for playing in the park or backyard, a pair of jeans for yard work, and a pair of shorts.

To put this in perspective, this is about the cost of 2 pairs of the cheapest jeans Wal-mart sells and 3 graphic tees. I'm also willing to bet that you already have some of these things in your closet, so you wouldn't even have to buy it all.

So are you ready to take the plunge? Ready to make the world a classier looking place? Go out and dress like a man!

Science Fiction

Douglas Wilson has pulled out a song he and his brothers made years ago, and someone has animated it. Enjoy! (HT:www.dougwils.com)

Resources for the Middle Ages

Setting people straight on the subject of the Middle Ages is one of my favorite hobbies. In our world today, all forms of entertainment and media almost universally paint the medieval period with the same bleak, oppressive palette.  If you’d like to be set straight on some common misconceptions, you can take my Medieval Quiz here.

A couple weeks ago I was practicing my aforementioned hobby in one of my classes, and my students asked me where to go to find good resources on the Middle Ages – that is, the real Middle Ages.

A good starter book for revising your history is Those Terrible Middle Ages! Debunking the Myths by Régine Pernoud. Pernoud was a curator at two museums and at the French National Archives. As such, she had access to tons of primary sources and wrote dozens of books, only a few of which are available in English. In this book, Pernoud sets about to rehabilitate the reputation of the Middle Ages. The book is informal, written to a general audience. It is primarily franco-centric, but useful to readers interested in the medievals generally.

 

When you’re ready to move on from that, you should turn your attention to Frances and Joseph Gies who were a wife and husband medievalist team. Together they wrote a number of books on the Middle Ages suitable for scholars or laymen. The great benefits of their books are their readability, their great bibliographies, and their close fidelity to primary sources. More than anything, these books will bring you right into the day-to-day life of the Middle Ages.

If you want to understand the thrust and scope of the Middle Ages, you need to read G.K. Chesterton’s A Short History of England. A warning ahead of time, though: this is not a history book. If you don’t have a good outline of the history of England in your head, this book will make no sense to you. Chesterton is not presenting history, but a certain theory of history that encompasses and exhibits the spirit of the medieval period. He references historical events that he assumes his audience will know. The first time I read this book, I was completely lost. Two years and a number of history books later, I reread it and found it incredibly insightful.

 

Finally, if you’re one of those people who just don’t have time to read, you can always have Middle Ages misconceptions debunked by none other than Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. In Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives *, Jones takes a look at the Middle Ages in a chatty humorous way that is actually very educational. His impetus for the series, he says, was to get back at the Renaissance. “It's just that I'm sick of the way people's eyes light up when they start talking about the Renaissance. I'm sick of the way art critics tend to say: 'Aaaah! The Renaissance!' with that deeply self-satisfied air of someone who is at last getting down to the Real Thing. And I'm sick to death of that ridiculous assumption that that before the Renaissance human beings had no sense of individuality.” When I last checked all the episodes are available on Youtube. Episodes 1 and 6 are the most informative in my opinion.

So there you go. That’s probably more info than you can easily deal with at one time. Have fun perusing and watching. And remember, as I always tell my students, NO ONE IN THE MIDDLE AGES BELIEVED THE EARTH WAS FLAT!

*[Parental Discretion Advised for some of these episodes. It's British television after all.]

Between Babel and Beast

This book by Peter Leithart on the relationship between the Church and American Empire is brilliant. The entire volume is essentially an extended footnote to his much larger work “Defending Constantine” that was published a couple years ago. This “extended footnote” has 50 pages of endnotes in itself, creating a sort of footnote-ception. If you like scholarly notes, then this book is for you!

Leithart is at his strongest when, working within his stipulated definition of “empire”, he explores the nuances of the relationship between empire and the people of God in the Bible. He rightly draws out the complexity of the Bible’s treatment of imperial themes and squashes both the modern anti-imperial and older pro-imperial readings of Scripture. He also does a great job of pulling the pious mask off America’s Thucydidean motivations for war. Fear, honor and interest drive American foreign policy, but the whole project is veiled with quasi-religious rhetoric that is often cheered on by oblivious Christians with flags in their church sanctuaries.

Leithart is at his weakest when interpreting the Middle Ages and the Reformation. I wish he had been as nuanced in his treatment of history as he was in his treatment of theology and Scripture, but it is after all only a 150 page book. This is an important addition to scholarship about Church and Empire that needs to be widely read by pastors and church leaders throughout America.

Faith, Hope and Love

I'm listening to an audio book of On the Love of God by Francis de Sales. I always like to have something to listen to while mowing the grass, and, well, 'tis the season for grass mowing. He gives a great allegorical interpretation of the Israelites in the wilderness.

"Faith points out the way to the land of promise as a pillar of cloud and of fire, that is, light and dark; hope feeds us with its manna of sweetness, but charity actually introduces us into it, as the Ark of alliance, which makes for us the passage of the Jordan, that is, of the judgment, and which shall remain amidst the people in the heavenly land promised to the true Israelites, where neither the pillar of faith serves as guide nor the manna of hope is used as food."

-from On the Love of God by Francis de Sales, Book 1 Chapter 6