What Has Theology To Do With Literature?
The Reflection of Theology in Literature: A Case Study in Theology and Culture, by William Mallard (Trinity University Press, 262 pp., $10.00), is reviewed by Marybeth Lake, associate editor of The Christian School Administrator and Teacher, and Larry M. Lake, English department chairman, Delaware County Christian School, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania.
Literature can entertain, inform, persuade, and encourage. Its terse images can show unexpected relationships between ideas, systems, and cultures. In sermons, it can show divine thought applied to human frailty; in lectures, 50 words can do the work of 10,000. As part of the furnishings of the student’s mind, it can feed, clothe, civilize, and ennoble that mind.
While most of us are aware of literature’s qualities and employ it in our preaching, teaching, and study, we may have given too little serious thought to the principles underlying literature, and to the intimate relationships between literature and theology. In The Reflection of Theology in Literature, Mallard tries to trace these principles and to illustrate theories of reflected theology. He begins by discussing some technical distinctions about language and its uses of metaphor, symbol, and narrative, the way “art” works, and the development of a Christian aesthetic. In the second part he presents a theory of literary criticism that takes Western cultural history into account, and then shows the application of this theory to Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and to Kafka’s The Trial. Finally, he applies these theories to narrative accounts of Christ, and summarizes his concepts of reflected theology. His basic assertion is that “theology is significantly ‘reflected’ in Western literature but that literature need not, and indeed usually does not, embody in its own medium the essential outlook of that theology. The reflection of theology in literature does provide literature a theological dimension that can be appropriately commented upon. But that dimension need not imply a confession of Christian faith, and even when it does, the literary work cannot directly pronounce that confession, but must let its own Active world speak for itself” (p. 110).
Mallard’s work is a significant approach to the study of theology and literature. The issues he comments upon, and the ways he studies them, should encourage further study in this field. But the book attempts to do too many things at once. Tackling metaphor, subject-object dilemma, Dante and the medieval poetic, Faulkner, Kafka, and the Gospels in 262 pages is overly ambitious. The Faulkner chapter, for example, is not so much a study of The Sound and the Fury as it is a stilted approach to it in Mallard’s terms. As accurately as Mallard’s theories may fit into Faulkner interpretation, the reader who is familiar with literary criticism and who expects a carefully crafted critical approach is left short-changed, feeling that he has walked into the final verdict of a trial without hearing the arguments.
We hope this book will encourage other scholars to study Mallard’s ideas and to devote complete and detailed studies to metaphor, to Faulkner, and to the other aspects of the theological interpretation of literature.
The Greatness Of Wilberforce
Wilberforce, by John Pollock (St. Martin’s, 1978, 368 pp., $16.95 hb), is reviewed by Richard V. Pierard, professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.
William Wilberforce (1759–1833) is the best known of all the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English evangelical social reformers. His achievement in bringing an end to the trans-Atlantic slave trade is legendary. Although for 150 years his life has been an inspiration to Christian social activists, the essence of his being has eluded biographers and he is as controversial today as he was then. The radical essayist William Hazlitt excoriated Wilberforce as a well-heeled hypocrite, saying that “he preaches vital Christianity to untutored savages; and tolerates its worst abuses in civilized states” (The Spirit of the Age, 1825). On the other hand, historian W. E. H. Lecky stated that “the unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations” (History of European Morals, 1869).
The problem of understanding Wilberforce is complicated by the fact that his sons, Robert and Samuel, gathered many of his personal papers to form the basis of a five-volume Life (1838) and two-volume Correspondence (1840). Although it was unknown at the time, they took editorial liberties with his papers and left out material they felt was embarrassing or inappropriate. No substantial biography appeared until 1923 when Reginald Coupland, the distinguished scholar of British imperial history, published Wilberforce: A Narrative, but this did not go behind the traditional sources. The favorable image conveyed in these works came under fire by Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), an economic interpretation of abolition that renders the humanitarian impulse irrelevant, and by Ford K. Brown in Fathers of the Victorians: The Age of Wilberforce (1961), who views the entire evangelical reform enterprise virtually as a conspiratorial effort to impose puritanical religious control on British society.
A helpful move in breaking the impasse in 1974 was the publication of William Wilberforce by Robin Furneaux, Earl of Birkenhead. This work draws heavily upon the main unpublished collections of Wilberforce papers as well as the standard works, and provides a more favorable picture of him. John Pollock’s new study is a competitor to Furneaux’s, but comparatively speaking, it is the better of the two. Pollock, a Church of England minister and author of numerous biographies of prominent evangelicals, has carefully researched his subject and unearthed a remarkably wide range of Wilberforce materials.
From a well-to-do mercantile family, William Wilberforce decided early in life to embark upon a political career. At the age of 21 he was elected to the House of Commons and served there for 45 years. He was a person of enormous energy, but his health was gradually destroyed by opium, the standard medical remedy of the day.
In 1785 he underwent a profound Christian conversion, which Pollock describes better than Furneaux, and soon afterwards plunged into the cause to which he dedicated his life, the abolition of the slave trade. Fearlessly, he went up against one of the most powerful lobbies of the day, the West Indian planter interests. He argued that blacks were “human beings” and demanded that Parliament no longer withhold from them “the rights of human nature.” Beginning in 1788 he introduced abolition bills into the House of Commons that were repeatedly rejected, but his persistence was crowned with success in 1807.
Pollock effectively rebuts Williams’s explanation of abolitionist success by drawing upon the significant work of Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810 (1975). His position could be reinforced by another study, which appeared as his went to press: Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (1977).
Wilberforce was also concerned about the condition of freed slaves as well as the quality of life in general in Africa, and three days before his death in 1833, he received the news of the fulfillment of his life’s ambition: a bill freeing all slaves in the British Empire had passed Commons.
The slavery question was not his sole passion. Other interests included combating poverty, Sabbath observance (to provide a day of rest for workers), reform of prisons and the penal code, Catholic emancipation, Christian foreign missionary work, and the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Underlying this was a concern for the “reformation of manners,” a term he used, which critics have singled out as evidence of Wilberforce’s Tory conservatism and hypocritical insensitivity to the needs and aspirations of England’s lower classes. He was accused of loving black slaves but doing nothing to aid the white “wage slaves.” He supported oppressive actions of the government, such as the Combination Acts banning labor organizations and the Six Acts limiting civil liberties.
Although Pollock could have done more to refute Ford Brown on this point, he does show that Wilberforce sincerely felt moral deficiencies lay at the root of crime and poverty. If the “manners” or “morals” of people in England were reformed, the environment which produced these ills could be improved. His call for reform was aimed at high-born gentlemen who lived above the law, as well as the poor. Wilberforce was a founder of the “Bettering Society” (1796), which aimed at investigating scientifically the problems of poverty and working for relief and improvements in living conditions.
Wilberforce believed that the way to liberty and happiness was the education of the poor, an increase in the number of deeply devoted clergymen, and rejection of violent change. He wanted reform, not revolution. Happier times would come if the British Constitution and the rule of law were preserved, even if this required temporary repression of the civil liberties of some. Pollock is correct in inferring that his social views should not be harshly judged by those in the more enlightened twentieth century. Wilberforce clearly was not a cynical or hypocritical man, and his desires for the spiritual and material well-being of all people arose from a deep sense of Christian compassion and love.
Nothing was more genuine than his Christianity. Thus, he provides an excellent model for every Christian active in public life. He loved the Bible and he worked to strengthen his spiritual stamina by rigorous self-examination in light of the Scriptures. From his inward experience with Christ came the external expression of joy and vitality that so impressed those around him. At the same time he brought not only his appetites but his politics under the control of Christ.
Reading this excellent biography of Wilberforce should stimulate us to encourage and uphold in prayer those Christians who have been called to public service. It should also remind us that they are not above error and that their political endeavors, although dedicated to Christ, may be influenced by the defects of the culture in which we live and thus stand in need of correction.
A New Look At Pentecostalism
Vision of the Disinherited, by Robert M. Anderson (Oxford, 334 pp., $15.95), is reviewed by Harold Hunter, Pasadena, California.
Oxford University Press continues its important contribution to evangelical self-understanding with the publication of Robert M. Anderson’s Columbia University doctoral dissertation. Vision of the Disinherited concentrates on the formation and early development of classical Pentecostalism in the U.S. Some treasured accounts of prominent Pentecostal events have undergone reconstruction as a result of Anderson’s mature work with original sources. Perhaps most notable are the rightful corrections of the embellished accounts of the formulation of Spirit-baptism theology by C. F. Parham’s Bethel Bible College and the Azusa Street Revival, which under the leadership of W. J. Seymour made the theology a worldwide phenomenon.
Anderson patiently corrects a variety of errors found in W. J. Hollenweger’s seminal work, The Pentecostals, but also verifies a central concern of Hollenweger by demonstrating the eventual division of Pentecostal organizations along ethnic lines. Vinson Synan’s central thesis in The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement is questioned by demonstrating the importance of Keswick theology in forming the Pentecostal movement. A. J. Tomlinson is given a positive appraisal not found in many current works, and Tomlinson is cited as proof that the Church of God (Cleveland) did not develop a Pentecostal pneumatology in 1896.
Brevity and selected readings combine to produce an inadequate historical, theological, and psychological study of tongues-speech. Perhaps Anderson’s challenge to the Pentecostals will stimulate someone to offer a verifiable record of xenolalia (i.e., a human language not learned by mechanical means by the spokesperson—Anderson calls it xenoglossy).
Anderson’s appraisal of Oneness Pentecostalism is more complete than most published studies to date, but he does not properly account for the relationship of Pentecostal hermeneutics in the origin of Oneness theology. Anderson also emphasizes the Pentecostal rejection of historic Protestant churches, but he minimizes the lack of concern by mainline churches to build bridges. Further, there are at least four notable facets of the Pentecostal movement that Anderson plays down: (1) they did have a meaningful ministry to a number of Americans; (2) their rightful emphasis on biblical existentialism was responsible, when exaggerated, for some errors, but these miscalculations may not have been appreciably greater than those of their contemporaries; (3) they cannot rightly be accused of having had a low social consciousness, since they were, as Anderson notes, from the lower strata of the socio-economic ladder; (4) their preoccupation with the hereafter did not deny importance to life here and now, but to them simply gave it a different meaning than to many around them.
Perhaps a major concern to the Christian community beyond Pentecostalism will be the underlying thesis that one may account for Pentecostal theology on the basis of sociological factors. Anderson accepts the Pentecostals’ claim to have reduplicated much of original Christianity, but suggests that the primitive theology common to both is but a naive adaptation to sociological conditions. One must ask if it is not possible for the socially disinherited to adhere to an expression of the gospel that is legitimate even if it is not congruent with nineteenth-century liberalism.
Ellul’S Spiritual Burden
The Betrayal of the West, by Jacques Ellul (Seabury, 1978, 207 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, associate professor of theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
Ellul, one of the outstanding thinkers in the Reformed, Calvinistic tradition, is also one of the most prolific serious writers of our age. In a series of books—some representing purely secular scholarship, others distinctively Christian in their analyses—he has drawn a fascinating and frightening picture of the modern world, particularly, but not limited to the West and its technology. Ellul is one of the very few intellectuals of stature who can clearly distinguish evil as evil regardless of the color of the party tie it wears—whether the red and black of Fascism or the red of Marxism. It was Ellul who pointed out that the chief moral distinction between Nazism and Communism is the fact that Hitler lost, while Stalin won.
For those already familiar with Ellul’s works, The Betrayal of the West will offer no surprises. Its main theme is Ellul’s contention that Christian civilization, for all its faults, has virtues, too—both in being civilization and in being Christian. Because Ellul has never hesitated to denounce white racism, capitalistic exploitation, and Western colonialism, he deserves an attentive hearing when he points to equal, or sometimes even greater blemishes on the other side of the fence. He reintroduces his concept of the “interesting” and “uninteresting” poor. (The “interesting” poor are those the communications media and the intellectuals care about, usually those whose causes run counter to the interests of Western nations or Christendom in general.) The poor whose interests do not coincide with those of the Marxists, left-wing intellectuals, or currently fashionable Third World interests he calls the “truly poor.” They are left to suffer and die in their misery; their sufferings are not news—Tibetans, Cambodians, Sudanese Christians—who knows them?
The West, in part through Christianity, in part through secular reason, has made some very remarkable contributions to human freedom. It is not surprising that the tyrants denigrate the West and label its achievements illusions or fraud. What is surprising is the way in which Western intellectuals, political leaders, and to a large extent both liberal and conservative Christians join in repudiating and maligning their own heritage and in preparing the way for the triumph of what the late General Charles de Gaulle called “the most odious tyranny ever to befall mankind.”
Ellul is a pessimist, at least as far as this present world is concerned. However, since a large part of his pessimism is based on his analysis of the weakness of character and spiritual treachery that he sees as characterizing Christians in the West, his analysis does leave open at least one avenue for hope. Ellul does not expect it himself; but is it not at least possible that European and American Christians may recover their values and courage in time to change the course of world events?
Ellul is probably the most important Christian political thinker active today. The Betrayal of the West offers a good introduction to his spiritual burden. It is a book to be read with care; I hope that readers, listening to his warnings, will be shocked into an honest response, and into demonstrating the courage of their professed convictions, rather than being merely beaten into submission.
The Politicization Of The Gospel
Christianity and the World Order, by Edward Norman (Oxford, 1978, 98 pp., $3.95 pb), is reviewed by W. Stanford Reid, professor emeritus of history, Univeristy of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
This volume presents the Reith Lectures on the BBC for the year 1978. The author is dean of Peterhouse and lecturer in history at the University of Cambridge, England, who has also written a number of works on the history of Ireland and England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The present work represents six radio lectures, which were subsequently published in the BBC paper, The Listener, and which now appear in book form.
The general theme of the work is what the author would call “the politicization of the gospel” in the contemporary world. He points out in no uncertain terms that the gospel today has ceased in many quarters to be a message of forgiveness by the grace of God in Jesus Christ; instead, it has become a sort of religious endorsement of liberal or socialist ideologies. Rather than bringing politics under the influence and control of the Christian gospel, he contends, many of the leading churchmen of today have been willing to accept secular ideologies as being the core of the gospel, with the result that the Christian message is one of social reform and, in the extreme, of armed rebellion and murder.
The author’s search of basic source materials provided the evidence for his position. His initial attack is upon the World Council of Churches and its program. He points to the fact that many avowed socialists are in control of the WCC’s bureaucracy, some of whom are far to the left—even in the Communist camp. He indicates that as a result the WCC frequently pushes for the support of groups who are in fact financed and controlled from Moscow. In the following chapter, Norman continues with an analysis of what is going on in Africa and South America, whose situations may differ, but where the same ideological claims for Christianity are being made. His indictment, supported by copious footnotes, certainly cannot but lead the reader to render a verdict of “guilty” to the charges he makes against the ecclesiastics who are attempting to make Christianity a political ideology.
In the concluding chapter Norman sets forth what he feels is the essence of Christianity, i. e., the indwelling Christ. He issues a call for the church to return to the Christianity portrayed in Scripture, and to make men realize that among all the attempts to prop up or change human systems, the final answer is in God’s control over history, and man’s ultimate responsibility and hope is not in temporal, secular idealism, but in the eternal presence of the sovereign God.
This is a very instructive, if not frightening, piece of work. There are, however, two problems that arise. The first is in the last chapter’s treatment of Christianity itself. It is somewhat difficult to grasp firmly what Norman means by “the indwelling Christ.” No mention is made of sin or reconciliation. The other problem is that an impression is created that the whole visible church is given over to the proclamation of a secular ideology with a Christian veneer. No mention is made of evangelicals who are opposed to this type of thinking, and who are carrying on mission work by preaching the biblical doctrines of the Christian faith. Along with this, he also seems to feel that Christianity should have nothing to do with social and political problems There is a danger in that Christians may receive from this the impression that since they are “not of the world,” they have no responsibility for their neighbors’ economic, social, and political difficulties.
But apart from these questions, the book is well worth reading as it gives some idea of where much of the church’s effort and money is going today.
