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So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality by Debra Rienstra Jossey-Bass, 2005 288 pp., $22.95 |
You may recall the premise with which C. S. Lewis begins Mere Christianity, that great work of 20th-century apologetics: "First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the world we live in." Lewis spends the next two chapters raising and dispatching with some objections to his axioms, and attempting to establish, by reference to men and to rocks and trees, that although the "Law of Human Nature … must somehow or other be a real thing … it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. … [T]here is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of man's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us." From there, Lewis goes on to his landmark exposition of Christian belief and practice.
Mere Christianity is a classic. It has touched, and will continue to touch, many thousands of lives. But there is something in Lewis' gambit that strikes the contemporary reader as … a bit dated, a bit inapposite, a bit beside the point. It wouldn't occur to many of today's seekers, today's unchurched, today's pre-Christians—whatever term you choose—to begin their investigation of Christianity with a grid bounded by propositional truths. These spiritually hungry readers are drawn to the Cross not primarily through rational arguments about the veracity of the Gospel, but through story. This explains in part the recent popularity of spiritual memoir. Such readers don't want to be argued into Christianity; they want to come alongside someone else's journey; they want to enter into the story of what God has done in someone's particular life; and they catch the vision of the Gospel there. Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies may open the door to Christianity for readers who would never pick up Mere Christianity. And this interest in memoir dovetails with the increasing appeal of a theology that emphasizes story over propositional truth—hence Stanley Hauerwas' famous quip that we live as Christians because Christianity is the best damn story out there. The contemporary moment is one of experience and narrative, not numbered spiritual laws and ratiocinated tracts.
And yet—do not hear me say that apologetics is a dirty word. It is a good, if unfashionable, word (just as dogma and piety are good, if unfashionable, words). People may be drawn into the Gospel by story, but doctrine remains indispensable. Living into the story is great. But so too is having a handle on the systems and truths that are the skeleton of that story. The question before us is how to play apologetics on a postmodern register (always remembering, too, that generations are not monolithic, and that for some of our contemporaries propositional apologetics is alive and well). If Mere Christianity was the apologetics for the post-World War II era, where, and what, is the apologetics for our era?
One answer to that question is So Much More, a gentle new introduction to Christianity by memoirist and Calvin College English professor Debra Rienstra. In many ways, her book is not that different from Mere Christianity—and that is a great compliment, for when presenting the basics of the Christian life, one's job is not principally to innovate. One's job is to present unchanging truths in a way that makes sense to a changing culture. Rienstra accomplishes that task with panache.
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