1 of 3

Christian History magazine

"It is a law with us that no one shall sing a song
who cannot be the hero of his tale,
who cannot live the song he sings."

— from "Within and Without"

Convinced that her son's violin is a satanic snare, a stern Scottish matron casts his beloved instrument into the fire.

Accosted by a mob about to burn him in effigy for a false accusation, a gracious Scottish man wins over his accusers with humor and humility.

The former is George MacDonald's grandmother, whom he immortalized as the violin-burning grandmother in Robert Falconer. The latter is his father, with whom he had a relationship C. S. Lewis called "almost perfect." These two contrasting personalities represent the dominant forces that shaped MacDonald's theology: the Scottish Calvinism of his era and the Celtic influences of his heritage.

MacDonald wrestled deeply with their divergent perspectives of God. He came to believe that Truth is not to be found in a theological system but in a person, Jesus Christ, who calls people to follow him in all aspects of their lives. "Our business is … to live truly," he wrote. Only as we live truly "will there be a possibility of our thinking correctly." Faith is a song that must be lived as well as sung.

Federal Calvinism provided the early scaffolding of his faith. Rather than affirming God as the Father who loves all of humanity and who freely forgives all through Jesus Christ, Federal Calvinists believed that God's love and forgiveness had to be purchased by the payment of Christ's sufferings on the cross. God was sovereign over all things and had chosen to love only the elect. This development of Calvinist belief arose in the late 16th and 17th centuries and became a dominant expression of Christianity in Scotland.

Aspects of this tradition remained vital to MacDonald, while others felt like a cage from which he yearned to escape. The imprisoning aspects involved intense legalism and the belief that God had from all eternity chosen to damn some and elect others for salvation. Though Federal Calvinists understood salvation as a gift of unmerited grace, they believed that one gained assurance of election through evidences of good works. The need for signs of salvation weighed heavily on MacDonald when joining the church. "I consented but with fear and trembling," he wrote in a letter to his father. "My greatest difficulty always is—How do I know that my faith is of a lasting kind and such as will produce fruits."

Fear of God's wrath produced sobriety in religion that frowned on the arts (hence MacDonald's grandmother's distrust of the violin) and enforced strict Sabbath observances. Jesus was conveyed as the legal means by which the elect escape punishment, though not necessarily the revelation of God's character and nature. Thus the grandmother in Robert Falconer explains, "But laddie, he cam to saitisfee God's justice by sufferin' the punishment due to oor sins; to turn aside his wrath an' curse; to reconcile him to us. Sae he cudna be a'thegither like God."

MacDonald wondered how the Creator and Redeemer could be described by his church as less loving and just than his own father. He agonized to think of God as a potentate supremely concerned about His own glory and establishing a system of limited atonement. In Weighed and Wanting he describes feeling as a child that he didn't want God to love him unless God loved all people. Thus he began to associate God more with his father's noble and caring character than with the wrathful God of his catechesis.

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help