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Indeed, it is in his discussion of Ricoeur that Lundin most explicitly challenges many of the reigning assumptions at work in the humanities divisions of universities today, and in the intellectual spaces of high-brow periodicals and influential media of all sorts. His argument is learned and complex, and yet the book's rewards are not only invaluable for the field of literary and cultural studies but also edifying on a spiritual level, something pretty rare in English departments these days.
The cover features a breathless proclamation by Stanley Hauerwas: "This could well be one of the most important books written in recent times." These are strong words, and of course elevated claims are the staple of advertising copy. And yet there is something both timely and sobering about the implications of Lundin's book; it would be unwise to dismiss Hauerwas' praise as mere gush. We are, after all, living in a time of widespread confusion regarding the nature of spiritual authority—a time marked as much by yearning as by hostility for well-grounded belief. In such a context, this is indeed an important book. And it is a hopeful book in a field that rarely seems much interested in hope anymore. The study of literature, ostensibly about helping people become more humane, has been for decades now overly influenced by the nihilist underpinnings of high theory.
The decisive insight of From Nature to Experience is that this need not be the case. The book ends powerfully with Karl Barth's meditations on the "real mystery of Easter," which Lundin pits against Dante's version of Limbo as a place of hopeless sighing and never-ending discussion (rather like some of the departmental meetings I've attended lately). Lundin cites Dorothy Sayers' remarks about the citizens of Limbo: "Their failure lay in not imagining better … . [They fall] short in the imagination of ecstasy."
Emerson began his literary career with just such elan, but it faded as he aged. Lundin seeks to recover and re-baptize the Emersonian "ecstatic" imagination, taking it through and beyond the endless conversation and jaded skepticism of "Experience" to make it a new thing. Re-enchanting Emerson for a post-critical America while simultaneously reasserting the possibility of a supernatural source of authority beyond history, From Nature to Experience is itself an exemplary work of the critical (and hopeful) imagination.
Harold K. Bush teaches at Saint Louis University. He is the author most recently of  Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age (Univ. of Alabama Press).
Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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