Editors' Note: For more on Commending the Classics, read Ryken on "Why Christians Should Read Camus" and his introduction to The Stranger.

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Plot summary: The opening chapter is devoted the death and funeral of the protagonist's mother. The opening telegraph message from "the Home" announces the death to Meursault. The chapter then unfolds in four stages: Meursault's bus trip from Algiers to Marengo; events at the mortuary (including a night-long vigil beside the coffin); transfer of the coffin by means of a hearse to a church; a concluding phantasmagoria of sensations and memories, ending with the arrival of the bus back in Algiers.

As the travel guide through the opening chapter, I have arranged the itinerary into four "stops:" (1) chapter one as our first acquaintance with the protagonist; (2) chapter one as our initiation into the narrative world of the book; (3) chapter one as our introduction to the modern philosophic and literary tradition of the absurd; (4) a riddle regarding chapter one in light of what happens to the narrator in Part Two of the book.

Introducing Meursault

The telegraph message announcing the death of Meursault's mother is one of the most striking openings in the annals of storytelling. The thing that makes it such is not the message itself but the way in which the narrator (Meursault) turns the message into a puzzle that needs to be solved, as he debates in his mind whether the death occurred "today" or "yesterday."

The Stranger is a first-person narrative in which the protagonist tells his own story. This is central to the book's effect. From start to finish we are being given an inside view of the narrator's consciousness. Accordingly, it always relevant to ask as we work our way through the story what we think of Meursault. Camus himself foregrounds that question by making Meursault the omnipresent center of what happens in the story. Meursault, moreover, records everything around him like an automaton or security camera, so we have a lot of data to assimilate as we scrutinize the narrator.

A good format for reading or rereading chapter one is to compile a provisional understanding of Meursault---mental notes on our first acquaintance with someone we will get to know extremely well. This initial portrait is a combination of description of Meursault as he is and our personal response to him and assessment of him. One thing that immediately stands out is the degree to which Meursault is dominated by the sensations going on around him. The heat and the glare of sunlight loom very large. So do random visual impressions and snatches of conversation with other people. The final paragraph in this chapter is an accelerated list of things that Meursault remembers from the funeral, and it is a riot of sensations.

While there is doubtless a sense of revulsion that sets in as we get to know Meursault, before we make too strong a move in the direction of judgment against him we need to ponder the element of recognizable, universal human experience that Camus captures in his portrait of the protagonist. God has created us as physical creatures with sensory responses. None of us is exempt from Meursault's sensitivity to heat and fatigue and the effect of sensory stimuli. We, too, experience funerals partly in terms of the sensations that unfold around us and our responses to those sensations. Camus "got in right" when he captured this facet of our lives. Truthfulness to human experience is a forte of literature---knowledge in the form of right seeing.

For reflection or discussion: As you compose a mental profile of Meursault, what are its main ingredients? If you had just met Meursault in real life, what would dominate your impression and assessment of him as you left your first meeting? What aspects of yourself and/or your acquaintances do you see embodied in the protagonist of this story? More generally, how is chapter one a window to your own world?

Entering the World of the Story

The ever-expanding portrait of the narrator/protagonist is the dominant piece of narrative business that transpires in the first chapter of The Stranger, but it is not the only one. The opening pages of every novel and opening moments of every performance of a play are our initiation into the world of the story. Here is how a literary critic describes this feature of storytelling:

In a work of art, there is presented to us a special world, with its own space and time, its own ideological system, and its own standards of behavior. In relation to that world, we assume (at least in our first perceptions of it) the position of an alien spectator, which is necessarily external. Gradually, we enter into it, become more familiar with its standards, accustoming ourselves to it, until we begin to perceive that world as if from within (Boris Uspensky, Poetics of Composition, University of California Press, 1973, p. 137).

Applied to the opening chapter of The Stranger, we need to formulate a preliminary understanding of the nature of the world that we as readers have entered, which is at the same time the world that Meursault inhabits. We need to ponder the traits and features of that world. Russian fiction writer Vladimir Nabokov gave the excellent advice that "in reading, one should notice and fondle details. . . . We must see things and hear things, we must visualize the rooms, the clothes, the manners of an author's people" ("Good Readers and Good Writers," in Lectures on Literature, Harcourt Brace, 1980, p. 5).

But there is a further dimension to the "world" of a literary text, and it has been expressed as follows by Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor: "It is from the kind of world the writer creates, from the kind of character and detail he invests it with, that a reader can find the intellectual meaning of a book" (Mystery and Manners, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1957, p. 75). To say that we can derive the intellectual meaning from the kind of world that the writer creates is to make a very large claim, but it is warranted. It is a rule of storytelling that the world that writer creates is offered as an accurate picture of reality. So as we reflect on the opening chapter of The Stranger, we need to ask what Camus wants us to believe is true about the world in which we live. In turn, we need to assess that version of truth and reality. We should not overlook the misery of human existence that Camus puts before us, and the ugliness and oppressiveness of the world that the characters inhabit.

For reflection or discussion: Following the suggestion of Uspensky, as you gradually settle into the narrative world of this novel, what stands out as most noteworthy? Following the lead of Nabokov, what physical details dominate your experience of the first chapter? Accepting Flannery O'Connor's belief that we can actually discern an author's worldview and truth claims from the qualities of the imaginative world that the author creates, what early signposts do you see in regard to what Camus wants us to share with him in regard to his assertions about life and the world?

The Absurd Tradition in Modern Literature

Thus far I have put two items on the agenda for consideration---our introduction to the protagonist and our initiation into the world of the story (offered to us as a picture of reality). By the time we assimilate those two aspects of the story, we are well on our way to identifying the thing for which The Stranger is perhaps most famous, namely, its embodiment of a philosophic and literary tradition known as the absurd (also labeled absurdism). The opening chapter is our immersion into the world of the absurd, and this preliminary plunge will deepen with nearly every chapter of the book.

At its heart, the modern tradition of the absurd denies that life in this world has meaning. Camus contributed to this tradition by basing his concept of the absurd on a conflict between the human desire for meaning and significance and the way in which the universe denies that meaning. It is the tension between the two that defines absurdism for Camus.

Literary authors in the tradition of the absurd exercised their ingenuity in creating narrative situations that would embody their conception of a meaningless universe. The whole story that Camus tells in The Stranger is his ingenious vehicle, but we can experience a piece of the grand edifice already in the opening chapter. For example, as Meursault records and shares how he experienced the weekend of the funeral, it is obvious that he experienced it primarily as a series of sensory impressions. The one thing conspicuously absent from his experience of his mother's funeral is the emotion of grief.

As we read the opening pages we repeatedly see evidence of Meursault's inability to rise from the level of sensory experience to rational abstraction, or a level of logical meaning. This is a major motif of the book. By any normal way of living, there is an absurd discrepancy here between experience and a level of reasoning that ought to be present. A son ought to feel grief at his mother's funeral. Meursault does not experience such grief. When a former resident of Paris launches into a discussion of the need for a hasty funeral in the Algerian heat because corpses decompose so quickly, Merusault pronounces that he found this information "rather interesting," failing to make a connection to his mother's decomposing body.

A related technique for which Camus is famous in this novel is the way in which Meursault puts all experiences on the same level of importance. In other words, he cannot arrange the experiences of life into a meaningful pattern of priorities and levels of importance. The observation of Meursault's acquaintance Céleste that "there's no one like a mother" carries no more importance to Merusault than the fact that he "had to run to catch the bus."

For reflection or discussion: Now that the opening chapter has been positioned in the modern tradition of the absurd, what details do you find that illustrate the modern tradition of the absurd? What response does this absurdism elicit from you here at the start of the story?

Is This Man a Criminal?

In my introductory article on The Stranger I claimed that Part One narrates how the protagonist experienced the events of his mother's death, and Part Two explores how a conventionally minded society seeks to make rational sense of those same experiences. That attempt occurs at Meursault's trial, where Meursault and we with him experience the proposed pattern as an absurd irrelevance to how he experienced the events of the weekend of his mother's funeral.

There is no need to hasten to discover what the prosecutor at the trial says by way of explanation. In fact, it is important that we relive the events of the novel in the sequence that Meursault experienced them. With that in view, we might profitably comb the opening chapter for evidence that could be adduced at a trial as evidence that Meursault is a murderer at heart. If we can't detect such evidence, Camus will have led us to share his view that the universe we inhabit and (even more) the society in which we live are absurd.

For reflection or discussion: If we just look at the data presented in chapter one, what is the worst verdict that we can reach about Meursault? Does anything add up to criminal behavior?

Two books don't qualify as a pile. Three books don't really, either. Four books do. In recent months, I have accumulated a pile of thoughtful, substantive new books about women. I'd like to celebrate this good work, and to make a few general observations about four books and their authors.

1.) The four books are written by articulate, biblically grounded women from various cultural contexts. Carrie Sandom (Different by Design: God's Blueprint for Men and Women) serves in women's ministry at St. John's Church, Tunbridge Wells, UK, and trains women Bible teachers with Proclamation Trust and Cornhill Training Course in London. Diana Lynn Severance (Feminine Threads: Women in the Tapestry of Christian History) is director of the Dunham Bible Museum at Houston Baptist University, and has taught in a number of seminaries and universities. Claire Smith (God's Good Design: What the Bible Really Says about Men and Women) is a well-respected writer and speaker in her homeland of Australia. Mary Kassian and Nancy Leigh DeMoss (True Woman 101: Divine Design) hail respectively from Canada and the United States, and have both been blessed with thriving ministries. Kassian has published Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild, and many know DeMoss through her radio ministry (Revive Our Hearts and Seeking Him) as well as through bestseller books such as Lies Women Believe.

This is only a small smattering of the cultural and global diversity for which we long, as God's people. But it's encouraging. It's women's voices. It's women's voices from a few different countries and continents, and with quite different sets of experiences. It's a good addition to the mixed chorus of voices in the church.

2.) The authors of these four books share fundamental viewpoints but communicate those viewpoints in diverse ways. The books have in common a clear commitment to the complementarian teaching of Scripture (a commitment articulated in TGC's foundation documents). But the books deal with this teaching through a variety of approaches and emphases.

Different readers might prefer different approaches. Some of us might want to argue a point or two with one or another of these authors. We might not agree completely, and they might not agree completely with each other on various detailed applications and implications. Their approaches indeed vary. Claire Smith has written a book focused on rigorous study of key biblical texts---a book that is thorough and succinct in its analysis. Many will certainly find Smith's book refreshing and clarifying. True Woman 101 is a different category of book---a study guide for women, with eight lessons full of lively, colorful commentary through which the biblical teaching is delivered (along with additional resources available online). Many will certainly find this study captivating and convicting.

It's good for us to hear these different voices. It's also very good for us to hear these different voices' consistent affirmation of the basic biblical principles both of male and female equality before God, and of distinct, complementary male and female roles in church and marriage---principles rooted in creation and affirmed throughout Scripture.

3.) Most important, these four books are the work of women filled with God's Word and aiming to listen well (and to help others listen well) to that Word. Although each has a distinct voice and context, none uses her experience as the final determinant of her viewpoints; each aims primarily to light up truth according to God's Word.

It's helpful to note that none of these women spends all her time dealing with this one issue; these are women who clearly have worked to make themselves students and lovers of God's Word from beginning to end. Only when we are immersing ourselves in the whole Scriptures will we begin to be equipped to deal well with any one theme. Carrie Sandom shows the fruit of such immersion with a kind of biblical theology of men and women. Her book does not focus so much on deep textual analysis as on the broader picture---getting at the subject through more of an overview of the biblical storyline, and with a bit more discussion of societal issues and experiences. Many will certainly find her approach helpful and encouraging.

Diana Severance's book differs from the others in that it does not focus directly on studying the Word; her aim is to expose the (fascinating!) stories of Christian women throughout history, starting with New Testament times and then following the thread of believing women through the centuries to ours. She helps Christian women understand and value their heritage by illumining the significant role women have played in shaping it. Severance is doing church history, but she offers her words clearly in light of the Word that tells us what the church is all about. Part of her aim, as with all these authors in their own ways, is to clear away some of the common contemporary misconceptions that might inhibit our reading and rejoicing in Scripture's teaching about women and men.

These of course are just a few of the books "out there." We're surrounded these days by a steady flow of books on Christian views of men and women, offering perspectives both similar to and very different from these four. With so many voices coming from various angles, good questions to ask include:

• Is it clear that this writer's foundational commitment is to the authority of the Bible's words?
• Does this writer tend or not tend to add to the Bible's teaching, or to take away from the Bible's teaching?
• Does experience, crucial as it is, tend or not tend to get the first or final word?
• How evident is this writer's love for Jesus Christ and for the peace and purity of his church?

The issues are complex. We need to work hard to understand them biblically in times like these. That's one reason we can appreciate this particular pile of books; each one in the pile can help us get on with that work.

You'll meet some of these authors again through The Gospel Coalition. Carrie Sandom and Nancy Leigh DeMoss, for example, are among the plenary speakers at the June TGC women's conference in Orlando. The women's conference is not focused on gender issues; as we've put it, that conference is "for women but not all about women"! But we know these issues are prominent and crucial in our day, and we're thankful many thoughtful men and women are addressing them. May we all acknowledge and address these issues with God's grace and wisdom, and with our ears open to his Word.

Quick fact sheet on The Stranger:

• 

  Author: Albert Camus, a French Algerian (1913-1960)

• First publication: Paris, 1942, in French
• First American translation: 1946 by Stuart Gilbert (the translation that made the book famous to English-language readers)
• Approximate number of pages: 150 (varies slightly by edition)
• Genres: novel with first-person narrator; absurdist fiction; realistic fiction
• Setting: French Algeria, mainly the city of Algiers, in the 1930s
• Protagonist: Meursault, an ordinary middle-class person without external claim to prominence
• Plot summary: The novel falls into two parts, each with multiple chapters. Part 1 is a description of the protagonist's life until his murder of an Arab on a beach. Part 2 is the story of Meursault's imprisonment and trial. At a more interpretive level, Part 1 depicts Meursault's acceptance of immediate sensation as truth, while Part 2 portrays society's need to impose a pattern of abstract explanation on the actions that Meursault experienced only as physical events.

The Stranger appeared at a most inauspicious time for the publication of a novel---just as World War II was beginning. Not surprisingly, when the novel first appeared in a small print run of 4,000 copies, it was read primarily by the literati of Paris. By 1950 The Stranger had become a work of immense popularity and influence, perhaps even a cultural icon among young people and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic. Fifteen years after its first publication, Camus received the Nobel Prize for literature. The author who wrote the Twayne's Masterwork Study on The Stranger provides a good summary of the book's importance:

To read The Stranger is to encounter one of the enduring literary masterpieces of the twentieth century, to relive a critical moment of our cultural heritage, and to engage in a living discourse on central moral issues of our times (English Showalter Jr, The Stranger: Humanity and the Absurd, Twayne Publishers, 1989, p. 9).

The Stranger is a novel of social protest, a statement of radical dissent from the youthful Camus (who was a mere 29 when the novel was published). Camus wished to show that society would inevitably persecute someone who refuses to play the game of conventional social behavior. The literary imagination always heightens the issues and experiences that an author portrays, and Camus went "over the top" by having his unconventional, individualistic protagonist condemned to death in a court of law not for what he did but for who he is.

Of course that premise is preposterous (the more so because Meursault is a French Algerian who murdered an Arab). No jury would have even heard about Meursault solely on the basis of his inner life. Camus's solution was ingenious: he made his protagonist commit an "innocent" murder that bears no explanation or motivation. In other words, the murder is a pretext to get the protagonist into court. Of course all of this will receive its appropriate analysis as our chapter-by-chapter analysis and discussion unfold. I trust that I have said enough to show the inventiveness of Camus in composing one of the most memorable stories on record.

Wide Gamut of Responses

Our responses to the protagonist Meursault inevitably run a wide gamut. We cannot avoid feeling a bond with him in his rejection of his society's decadence. Mainly we are repelled by him even as we find him intriguing. I personally find this repulsion so continuous that I would find it easy to believe that Camus intended his novel to be read as a satire in which the protagonist is held up to rebuke.

However, we have Camus's own statement about how he himself regarded his protagonist in his preface to an American translation of the novel: "One would . . . not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth. . . .  I have tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve" (Lyrical and Critical Essays, Vintage, 1970, p. 337). In turn, we need to "be ourselves" as Christian readers. Camus's own verdict on his protagonist simply signals that our response to Meursault is not exactly the response that Camus intended.

In the chapter devoted to The Stranger in my book Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective, I claim that on the surface The Stranger is a calculated setup to offend Christian sensibilities. The writer chooses depravity as his story material and then offers for approval such alien philosophies as hedonism, naturalism, existentialism, and absurdism. What claim does such a book have on a Christian reader? I can think of several answers to that question and hope the readers of this introductory piece will find the prospect of exploring those answers inviting.

To begin, The Stranger covers so much of the modern cultural "waterfront" that I do not hesitate to call it a primer on modern and contemporary culture and thought. I named the main ones in the preceding paragraph. While there are many other avenues toward an encounter with these forces, The Stranger has claims to being one of the best ones. Its concentrated brevity surely commends it to any busy person, and this is not merely a matter of available time. A compact expression of content is likely to be the product of greater thoughtfulness than a diffuse expression.

A second thing that commends The Stranger as a primer on what our culture is like is the beauty and artistry with which Camus orchestrates his masterpiece. The stylistic brilliance of the book is self-rewarding---a kind of bonus to a reader who might go to the book in the first place because it is a barometer of modern thought and culture. Greatness of style enhances the effect of what an author says. While this should not beguile us into acquiescence with Camus's worldview and moral vision, it does open the door to enjoying the artistic achievement of Camus.

Unusual Clarity

If we put my first two claims together---that The Stranger is compact and stylistically superior---we can see that it commends itself as a work that silhouettes our own world with unusual clarity. Paging around in a secular magazine gives us a vague impression regarding what our culture is like, but it is just that---vague and impressionistic. A book dealing with contemporary cultural trends would be an avenue to getting a grip on our culture, but it leaves us only with a head full of generalizations and statistics. A work of literature, being the product of the imagination, allows us to vicariously live in the modern world. As Henry Zylstra wrote long ago:

If you really want to get at the spirit of an age and the soul of a time you can hardly do better than to consult the literature of that age and that time. In the novels and stories and poems and plays of a period you have a good indication of what, deep down, that period was about (Testament of Vision, Eerdmans, 1961, p. 5).

In addition to being a great piece of writing, The Stranger is a novel of ideas. One of the byproducts of this is that we have a case study in the premise that ideas have consequences. We know this with our minds, but we often lose sight of the reality. The story of Meursault shows us in concrete terms how such ideas as hedonism, existentialism, and absurdism work themselves out in actual living.

How to Read a Novel

I want to branch out from my reasons for reading The Stranger to say something about how to read a novel. A lot of readers, secular as well as Christian, begin from the stance of a judge. These readers know what they believe and are waiting to pounce on an author who deviates from their personal convictions. But this is an act of self-defeating foreclosure. Before we assess, we need to listen.

C. S. Lewis is the best guide in the matter. In the only book of literary theory he ever wrote, Lewis famously differentiates between using a work of art and receiving a work of art. "The first demand any work of any art makes upon is surrender," Lewis writes. "Look. Listen. Get yourself out of the way" (An Experiment in Criticism, Cambridge University Press, 1961, p. 19). The ideal recipient of art "seems passive at first because he is making sure of his orders."

As The Gospel Coalition book discussion venture unfolds, I fully expect that the ideas embodied in the works under discussion will occupy us most. I am not opposed to this, because ideas are more open to discussion than enjoyment of an author's artistry. Still, I would urge readers not to slight an author's artistry and the truthfulness of human experience that a work of literature embodies and clarifies. As I once asserted in the title of an address, literature is more than ideas.

Where We Go from Here

Books & Culture highlights and reviews numerous titles, but one in particular stood out last year. The 2011 Book of the Year award went to Liao Yiwu's God Is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China (HarperOne, 2011). Liao, a "sympathetic nonbeliever," spent three years observing and studying Chinese Christianity from the inside.

Matt Smethurst corresponded via translator with Liao, whose writings have been banned in China, about his experience researching the complex phenomenon of Christianity in the world's most populous country.

What sparked your interest to research and write on the topic of Christianity in China?

At the beginning of this century, many Chinese became disillusioned with Communism. They lacked a sense of security and searched for an alternative form of spiritual support. Conversion to Christianity suddenly became very trendy. Several of my friends in Beijing and Chengdu had joined either government-sanctioned Christian churches or house churches (Christians who believe that only God, not the Communist Party, could lay claim to their beliefs and who gather to worship in their homes despite ongoing persecution by government authorities). A catchphrase at that time was "trust and obey."

I was also searching for my own spiritual support. However, having grown up under the rule of Mao when religious practices were banned and Communism was treated like a national religion, I was skeptical of any forms of religion.

In December 2005, I met a Chinese Christian doctor who had given up a lucrative city job to do missionary work in the remote villages in China's southwestern province of Yunnan. I was fascinated by his story and wanted to find out what had inspired him and other Christians to devote their lives to such causes. I traveled with the doctor to the remote villages, where I discovered a vibrant Christian community. In the villages, I heard amazing stories about peasants who had been imprisoned or sacrificed their lives for their Christian faith in the Mao era and witnessed their persistent efforts to preserve and expand Christianity in the region. At the end of the trip, I felt a strong need to record what I had witnessed and heard, and share the stories with the outside world.

Even though I have not followed the paths of my friends who have joined the Christian churches, those journeys to the villages have brought me kinship with millions of Chinese Christians who are finding meaning in a tumultuous society, where unbridled consumerism is upending traditional value systems. I also see strong parallels in the perseverance by Chinese Christians with my own fight for the freedom to write.

You observe that in China "there is now a new Christian identity that is distinctively Chinese." What do you mean?

One hundred fifty years ago, the London-based China Inland Mission started to send missionaries to China. Many of those brave Christians set their sights on the villages hidden up in the mountains. Because modern transportation was lacking, they journeyed for many days to reach them, arriving just in time to save the mountain people from a devastating bubonic epidemic with Western medicine and their knowledge of modern hygienic practices. They also preached Christianity, which, to the locals, was as foreign as their own appearances.

Gradually, these brave men and women won the hearts and minds of villagers, who for generations had found solace in the chanting of local shamans and the worshiping of pagan gods. Over the past century, the Christian faith has passed down from generation to generation despite the government's brutal persecution against Christians in the 1960s and 1970s. In those villages, Christianity has taken root and become a part of the local heritage. It is as indigenous and life-sustaining as qiaoba, a popular buckwheat cake. During my visit there, I never felt that the locals had embraced a foreign religion. It blended seamlessly with the local cultures. Villagers held their services led by local leaders in their native tongues, and celebrated their Eucharist or Christian holidays in a way that they knew the best---local delicacies. It definitely had a distinctive Chinese identity.

What is the connection between Christian growth in China today to pre-Mao Western missionary efforts?

From what I have seen so far, today's rapid Christian growth, most of which is happening in China's rural areas, is the direct or indirect result of the work of Western missionaries in the pre-Mao era.

Many of the villages that I visited are extremely isolated. There are no paved roads, nor is there any electricity. However, in these remote corners, I constantly ran into people---an old man, a boy, or a middle-aged woman---who called themselves "Peter," "David" or "Ruth." Those were the names given to them by their parents or grandparents who were converted by what they called "blond big-nosed foreigners." Each family had a unique story about how they or their grandparents accepted the Christian faith and how the missionaries had saved and improved their lives.

In addition, I interviewed many elderly Christian leaders, who were tutored in seminaries built by missionaries or trained by missionaries in the pre-Communist days. These Christian leaders played an active role in the revival of Christianity during the 1980s and 1990s. They are now passing the torch to the new generation.

Last, many missionaries who have come to China in the past two decades as English teachers or business people are also contributing to the revival of Christianity in China. For example, Dr. Sun, the doctor who took me to the Christian villages in Yunnan, decided to become a Christian after joining Bible study sessions organized by several Americans who studied at a medical university where he worked.

What were some of the most significant challenges you encountered while researching this issue?

The biggest challenge was to cope with the Communist government, which I believe runs the world's largest cult organization. They banned any objective writings on Christianity in China and attempted to stop the publication of God is Red there. They threatened me with imprisonment if I went ahead and published God is Red and my prison memoir. That's the reason I escaped and managed to overcome my life's biggest challenge.

Another challenge was to reach people in the remote villages and get them to talk with me. Since many villagers were the ethnic Miao and Yi people, I encountered tremendous cultural challenges. Over a period of three years, I went back and forth on the circuitous mountain paths several times. I was lucky to have Dr. Sun, who gained the trust of local villages through his medical missions. Dr. Sun introduced me to the local Christian leaders, who eventually embraced me and opened up to me.

Do Chinese Christians still want Western missionaries to come?  

Of course. I think Western missionaries, especially those who speak Chinese and are well versed in Chinese culture, are needed in the vast isolated rural areas. The new generation of missionaries will be able to continue the work of their predecessors and reach more people, especially their contemporaries, who are in dire need of spiritual support.

What are some of the benefits that the growth of Christianity has brought to China?

Your question is better served by a quote from the Rev. Wang Zisheng, the son of Wang Zhiming, a Christian leader who was brutally executed for his Christian work in Yunnan province during the Cultural Revolution. His son is now following his father's example and has become a prominent leader in the booming Christian community. "There is so much for us to do," Wang Zisheng said. "In our society today, nobody believes in Communism, and everyone is busy making money. People's minds are entangled and chaotic. They need the words of the gospel now more than at any other time."

In addition, I personally believe that Jesus Christ was one of the earliest and the most famous dissidents in human history. He was crucified by authorities for spreading the Christian faith and ideas. While I researched for this book, I encountered many Christians like Wang, who were inspired by Christ and were willing to sacrifice their lives for the preservation of their faith. That's the spirit that we need to bring democracy to China. If democracy comes to China someday, we should thank Christ for inspiring us to stand up for our faith and ideas.

This week The Gospel Coalition welcomes you to join us in an exciting new series called Commending the Classics. We're thrilled to welcome Wheaton College professor Leland Ryken as a sort of literature scholar in residence to guide us as we read classic books together. Every week he'll lend us his decades of learning to help us understand why these works have come to be regarded as timeless treasures. Have you ever thought, I've heard that book is great, but I'm intimidated to read it myself without any help? Then we've designed this series precisely with you in mind. You get the benefits of a reading community who will help you along and a gifted professor who will answer your questions.

We've conceived the series with your schedule in mind, so we're focusing on shorter works you can finish in a matter of weeks or months. Keep on reading God's Word along with good theology and history and let Commending the Classics whet your appetite for thought-provoking fiction. We'll start with the much-discussed mid-century classic The Stranger by Albert Camus. Hear from Ryken on "Why Christians Should Read Camus," grab a copy of The Stranger, and join us in an adventure that promises to challenge, confound, and ultimately cultivate our understanding of and compassion for the world.

If you need even more encouragement to spend at least a little time with us on this series, hear from these Christian leaders about how the classics have shaped them.

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John Mark Reynolds, provost of Houston Baptist University and author of The Great Books Reader: Excerpt and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization:

There is pain in old books. It is a easy to fool myself. I break from the snares of the world, but even Bible reading is done through the assumptions of the age. It is not the faults of the age that trap me, but the alleged virtues. My spiritual grandparents stand warning me of the folly of easy assumptions. Our age looks for diversity but forgets how hard it was to produce our present unity.

There is joy in old books. When I read old classics of spirituality different assumptions are thrust on me. The sin of Adam cut me off from my spiritual ancestors and made a chronological loneliness, but old books allow them to speak even though dead. It is lawful necromancy to read old books.

Every year I read That Hideous Strength. Why? C. S. Lewis warns me that no "inner ring" is worth my soul. Jane Eyre teaches me that duty is the best and surest path to a grand passion. Wuthering Heights reminds me that love can be corrupted and do great evil. Lord of the Rings gives me hope that small people can do great things for the Good. Pilgrim's Progress points me to spiritual adventures and reminds me that the world is not my home. Finally, Crime and Punishment gives me hope that some pain is redemptive and that God will make sure that treatment is available.

John Piper, pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church and Council member for The Gospel Coalition:

Isaiah 53 is a towering presence in the landscape of Old Testament messianic expectation. The substantial new book The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology (Kregel, 2012) [Table of Contents] explores the biblical, theological, and evangelistic significance of this well-known chapter.

Co-edited by Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, and Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries, this volume "presents the redemptive work of the Messiah to the Jewish community, exploring issues of atonement and redemption" in light of Isaiah 53. And in addition to providing "unparalleled help in preparing Bible studies and sermons," the book is bound to prove useful as "supplemental reading for classes on Isaiah, the Prophets, and Jewish evangelism."

I corresponded with Bock about the significance of the passage on which his new volume is based.

What biblical passages and traditions is Isaiah 53 drawing on? How does it connect to the rest of the Old Testament?

Isaiah 53 is unique in the Old Testament in portraying an individual who suffers for sin by making reference to a guilt offering (Isa. 53:10; see Lev. 5:14-6:7 [=5:14-26]) and who does so after being rejected by his own people ("esteemed him stricken" [Isa. 53:3-4]), much like a leper was to be separated from his people (see the reference to the deformity he was perceived to have; cf. Isa. 52:14, 53:2). Isaiah 53 draws on texts that picture sacrifice for sin, the move to ritual purity, and the image of a leper rejected. The passage also, along with Psalm 118:26, pictures a move from rejection to exaltation that the New Testament uses to describe how Jesus fulfilled God's plan. Most people know about Isaiah 53, but I think Psalm 118 in this role is not as appreciated.

Did Isaiah consciously anticipate the Messiah?

His text anticipates a decisive delivering figure of the end who suffers and then is exalted. We call such a figure messianic, even though Isaiah does not use that specific term, because the role and timing now fits. In context, Isaiah's remarks look ultimately to the decisive deliverance of God's salvation of his people, even though there are elements of his picture of the Servant in other texts (Isaiah 42:1-4; 19:1-6; 50:4-9; 61:1-3) that portray a prophetic figure (Isa. 61) or that point to the role of Israel as the Servant (Isa. 49).

At the end of Isaiah, the individual servant takes on the role that Israel as a nation failed to achieve. Nonetheless, the Servant in Isaiah 53 cannot be the people or the remnant, because he is said to be cut off from the people (Isa 53:8) and is said to die for our sins and iniquities (Isa 53:5, 11). This cannot be the nation, because how can the Servant be cut off from himself? In addition, he is a righteous sufferer. That cannot be the nation, as Isaiah has portrayed the nation as being in sin (just look at Isaiah 58).

Christian readers today directly link the servant to Jesus on the cross. Who did Isaiah and his first readers have in mind?

Isaiah describes a suffering figure who dies for the sins of those who reject him and then is exalted by God. No specific name for this person is given other than to call him the Servant of God. His role is simply described. Jesus fits the portrait. Outside of Jesus himself, the New Testament says this in several texts (Rom. 15:21; 1 Pet. 2:21-25; Matt. 8:17; Acts 8:32-33). There are even more allusions to the passage. In Paul alone, one can mention allusions in Romans 15:21; 1 Corinthians 2:9; Romans 10:16; Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 15:3; and Romans 5:19.

Did Jesus understand himself to be fulfilling Isaiah 53? If so, what's the biblical evidence?

Yes, Jesus described his mission as involving his being a ransom for many in Mark 10:45. At the Last Supper, Jesus mentions dying for many, using the language of this text. He also speaks of being reckoned with criminals as the Isaiah text describes (Isaiah 53:11-12; Mark 14:22-25; Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:37). So the idea of being the Servant comes from him. Jesus also cited Isaiah 61:1-2 in Luke 4:18-19, which is a text most tie to Isaiah's servant imagery. Jesus declared that he fulfilled the mission of this text of bringing the gospel to those in need of it.

You contribute a chapter on "Isaiah 53 in the Book of Acts." What is the function of Isaiah 53 in Acts?

It shows Jesus died an unjust death as Isaiah predicted. He also died without fighting the charges. This actually fits how Luke 23 and the Passion narrative portrays Jesus' death. Six times in Luke 23 Jesus is said to be innocent of any crime worthy of death. Yet the injustice is that despite Pilate's recognition of this, Jesus is put to death. I think this dimension of the use of Isaiah 53 often goes unnoticed and is underappreciated. The injustice of Jesus' death is prevalent also in the preaching of Acts, as Jesus was put to death although God had attested to his position (Acts 2:24-26; 10: 38, 40-42).

What are some common evangelical misunderstandings about Isaiah 53?

We do not appreciate how much of this chapter Jesus fulfills. We might see a verse or two, but the entire passage summarizes Jesus' death and the reaction that produced it. All this comes some 700 years before Jesus was born! That makes Isaiah 53 quite an unusual text. That is why we wrote about it.

Evangelicals are also slow to see how the Servant moves from a picture of Israel to the picture of an individual as one moves through the various Servant passages. That movement is important to understand in light of Jewish claims that the text is about the nation, citing Isaiah 49:3. Failure to see this movement from nation to individual blocks a good conversation about who the servant is as we move through these texts and the picture narrows to an individual who is said to restore Israel. This is a reason several chapters in the book discuss Jewish views of this text, revealing how Judaism sees this text and how to address the interpretive issues Jewish people who know Isaiah often raise.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

These words, near the end of Flanner O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," bounced around in my head as I made my way through Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. The man and son on the road live every day knowing that someone is there to shoot them, just around the bend, in the weeds across the ditch, or coming up behind them. Along with the constant threat, McCarthy's spare prose builds a world in which trinkets and distractions have been stripped away. Neither color nor sunshine decks this landscape. The story confronts us with characters forced moment by moment to recognize what matters.

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.

The man and son in this predicament testify by their very existence that humans must live for others, else there's no reason to live. And they show us that we cannot live without hope.

World as We Know It

The novel's opening paragraph invokes Plato, Bunyan, Jonah, and Dante:

In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. . . .

Like Dante finding himself in a dark wood, McCarthy's pilgrim will be led through hell to love not by Virgil but by the child. Like Bunyan's Christian he shoulders his pack, which he will lose on the way to the celestial city. Like Jonah this man's journey and experience are in themselves a message that calls Ninevites to repentance. Like Plato McCarthy seeks to deliver us from the illusion of the cave to know what is real ("forms" are invoked throughout, as is the image of "philosophers chained to a madhouse wall").

McCarthy's pilgrim is loath to wake from dreams of the world as we know it, and McCarthy calls his audience to repent of discontented distraction and awaken to this world, the world of our dreams. At one point the man finds clean water, "water so sweet that he could smell it," and he finds "Nothing in his memory anywhere of anything so good." Savor your next drink of the same.

Like Job's wife, the man's wife gave up (the line "Curse God and die" appears in the novel, followed shortly by the suggestive word "Blessed"). She asserted that those who had survived were "the walking dead in a horror film." She claimed that there was no counterargument, that she hoped "for eternal nothingness." But the counterargument McCarthy shows---not tells---is faith, hope, and self-giving love. These show the bankruptcy of hopeless, faithless existence that ends in nothingness. The man even pled that his wife not kill herself with the words, "For the love of God, woman. . ."

These Three Remain

McCarthy's words depict a world of "The frailty of everything revealed at last," and the story he sets in that world shows that when all else is gone hope, faith, love, and life remain, that a man knows no greater love than to lay down his life for another, that life itself---the fact that we go on living---argues against despair. The birth of the boy was the man's warrant for hope and faith against the devastated despair of his wife that a child had been born into such a world. The man and his wife responded in opposite ways: to her the child was a sorrow that tore out her heart, to him a miracle aglow with goodness:

They sat at the window and ate in their robes by candlelight a midnight supper and watched distant cities burn. A few nights later she gave birth in their bed by the light of a drycell lamp. Gloves meant for dishwashing. The improbable appearance of the small crown of the head. Streaked with blood and lank black hair. The rank meconium. Her cries meant nothing to him.

The alternatives are clear: death/life; despair/hope; selfishness/love. And in this book the good guys choose life, hope, and love. The good guys never give up. The good guys don't break small promises because it leads to breaking big ones. The good guys carry the fire.

The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn before battle. . . . There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasnt about death. He wasnt sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he'd no longer any way to think about at all.

Sharp Contrast

Other religious answers are also contrasted. At one point man and boy encounter a traveler, "a starved and threadbare buddha," and this traveler regards the world and his experience as though nothing matters. When the man asks the buddha, "How would you know if you were the last man on earth?" The buddha says to the man:

"It woudnt make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too."

The man replies: "I guess God would know it. Is that it?

Buddha: "There is no God."

The man: "No?"

McCarthy condemns the buddha's logic by presenting him contradicting himself with the retort: "There is no God and we are his prophets."

The man meets the buddha's nonsensical assertion that he is the prophet of a God who does not exist with a counterargument for the buddha's indifferent rejection of God: "I dont understand how you're still alive. How do you eat?"

The assertion "There is no God" is answered with the counter-assertion "you're still alive." The man seems to be suggesting that life itself is proof of God, evidence against meaninglessness.

To the question "How do you eat?" the begging buddha replies: "People give you things." With these words the buddha confesses that apart from the Christian virtue of charity he has no hope of life. The man has countered the buddha's rejection of God with the fact of the buddha's ongoing life, and the buddha himself has acknowledged that the generosity of others sustains his life. The wider narrative makes plain that generosity and charity spring only from faith in God, from hope that God will deliver and provide, and from love that mimics the very love of Christ, who gave his life that we might live.

As the man and boy move on, the man asks if the buddha will thank the boy for giving him food, but the buddha refuses to do so. Christianity makes gratitude possible, but the buddha will not give the thanks he owes.

This conversation with the buddha shows that love is distinctly Christian. The buddha has no category for love, goodness, or kindness, and the man's suspicious interchange with him also shows how essential trust is to human communication. God is basic to human kindness and essential to human dignity. That is to say, apart from God there can be neither kindness nor dignity. The buddha will not even wish the man and the boy luck, and McCarthy seems thereby to intimate that a belief in God's providence undergirds the kind of luck the man knows the buddha will not wish him. As they leave him, the man tells his son, "There's not a lot of good news on the road" (175). The buddha has no gospel.

The book opens with the man waking to grope for his son, earnest for reassurance that he is there, that they are safe. The book closes with the man going to sleep, choosing not to kill his son before he dies, clearly trusting that though he will not be awake to protect the boy, he can rest knowing that the boy will be safe. For this pilgrim, dying is an act of faith. They have not wandered in a cave but in a world without civilization, a world without forms. The forms are the world we now enjoy, if . . . if McCarthy's Jonah can lead us to repentance by escorting us through the inferno, pilgrims making their way through the ruins of Vanity Fair. McCarthy seems to want us to know that the life we long for is the life we have.

Editors' Note: On Saturday, March 24, leading atheists plan to hold a "Reason Rally" on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. They will raise up Reason as their banner, claiming that it will lead thinking persons away from belief in God.

In a pre-emptive response, Patheos Press has published an ebook featuring chapters by William Lane Craig, Sean McDowell, and 11 other Christian scholars. The following is a excerpt from True Reason: Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism.

One of the great ironies of the contemporary atheistic movement comes from its ubiquitous use of rhetoric, branding, and emotional triggers to advocate for reason. The leading atheists trumpet their devotion to reason in all their public communications, typically featuring the word in bold type across the names of their books, websites, organizations, and events. For instance, Sam Harris, co-founder and chairman of Project Reason, has said, "The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love." Christopher Hitchens told us in God Is Not Great: "We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake." In the BBC (Channel 4) documentary The Enemies of Reason, Richard Dawkins, founder of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, claims, "Reason has built the modern world." Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer have gone so far as to argue that atheists should really be called "brights," in light of their insistence on a reasoned approach to all knowledge. Throughout their books, talks, and websites, the New Atheists consistently promote their allegiance to the glory of reason.

This is not a novel development; the "new" atheists are hardly the first atheists to claim the brand of reason for themselves. In Aristophanes's play The Knights, written in 424 B.C., Demosthenes asks Nicias, "Do you then believe there are gods? . . . What proof have you?" There is a well-established tradition that connects the skepticism of religion with a love for reason. But some of these connections are more dubious than others. For instance, during the French Revolution, a "Cult of Reason" ransacked churches for their silver and gold and "converted" these churches into Temples of Reason. In the government-sanctioned "Festival of Reason" that accompanied this movement, a young woman was presented as the Goddess of Reason.

At other times the connection has been presented hyperbolically, without reference to serious historical or sociological research. To provide just two examples, Nietzsche once wrote that "all founders of religions and their likes . . . feel a thirst for things which are contrary to reason and do not put too many difficulties in the way of satisfying it" (emphasis added). More recently, H. L. Mencken said, "Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration---courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth."

How Atheists Unwittingly Honor God

For the New Atheists, as for some of the old, ardent love for reason apparently motivates visceral disgust of religion. As Harris has said, "Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction." Dawkins has even gone so far as to say that molesting children "may be less harmful in the long run" than giving children a religious education.

Despite such attacks, as Christians we are delighted that those who consider themselves our opponents are such ardent appreciators of reason. After all, Jesus famously proclaimed that the most important commandment includes loving God "with all of your mind" (Mk. 12:30). So, ironically, we believe that atheists honor God unawares when they reason well. Because we desire to honor God, we want to demonstrate why Christianity provides the most reasonable framework for the existence and use of reason.

The contrasts are clear: atheists claim that religion is the main barrier to reason. Christians believe our capacity to reason comes from being created in the image of an all-knowing God, and the active use of reason is an important way to honor him. Atheists brand themselves as a community united by reason. Christians marvel at how this group rallies together even as their most prominent leader, Richard Dawkins, argues that evolution favors the selfish gene, not the reasonable group. Atheists work hard to eradicate religion for the sake of a brighter future. Christians are amazed that atheists so blissfully ignore the scientific fact that, if religion is a false consolation, the future always ends in death.

Atheism Is a Thought Stopper

Leading atheist Sam Harris says "faith is a conversation stopper." Christians reply that Harris has also said that none of us is "the author of your thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose." The reductionistic, deterministic, and materialistic worldview of many atheists seems, to reasonable Christians, to exclude the existence of transcendent, immaterial things like propositions, the rules of logic, and, most important of all, the very existence of minds.

These aren't straw men, but rather, a description of how many atheists see the stakes as well. Consider the famous Madalyn Murray O'Hair's speech on atheism from 1962:

We must look to materialistic philosophy which alone enables men to understand reality and to know how to deal with it . . . Atheism is based upon a materialist philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. There are no supernatural forces or entities, nor can there be any. Nature simply exists. But there are those who deny this, who assert that only mind or idea or spirit is primary. This question of the relation of the human mind to material being is one of the fundamental questions dealt with by all philosophers, however satisfactorily. The Atheist must slice through all obfuscation to bedrock, to the basic idea that those who regard nature as primary and thought as a property (or function) of matter belong to the camp of materialism, and that those who maintain that spirit or idea or mind existed before nature or created nature or uphold nature belong to the camp of idealism. All conventional religions are based on idealism.

That is the question: do we have minds, or are we neurological processors akin to robots? And which worldview can better account for the existence and use of reason?

In short, [True Reason] directly challenges the goals of organized atheist communities. Our hope is their fear: a revitalization of faith and thinking Christianity. Their identity as reasoning individuals depends upon the truth of our worldview. Their communal ideals of honesty, freedom, love, and justice are borrowed from the Bible. The very existence of reasoning Christians responding to atheist rhetoric undermines their fallacious, straw man depiction of religious people.

If Jonathan Edwards is America's most important theologian, Charles Hodge is a close second. At least that is the conclusion I reached after spending ten hours per week during seminary reading through Hodge's essays and articles as a research assistant. Hodge was the premier public intellectual among Christians in America during the 19th century. No one taught more graduate students, and prolific is a poor way to describe his literary output. Raised and catechized as a Presbyterian, the only job he held his entire life (1797 to 1878) was as professor at Princeton Seminary. During his tenure, Princeton Seminary became synonymous with orthodoxy, a reliable source for biblically based thinking on a wide range of issues.

Because of the length of his life and volume of his writing, Hodge defies simple summaries and generalizations. He was a churchman, theologian, exegete, ecumenist, missiologist, apologist, critic, and philosopher. Whether or not you agree with everything he believed and published, his life remains worthy of serious consideration. In his writings you find a brilliant theologian and devout disciple wrestling with what it means for the church to bear witness faithfully in a rapidly changing world. Studying his life and writing has been immensely helpful to my own ministry and understanding of the church. Here are nine observations from Hodge's life that illustrate his continuing relevance for Christians today.

1. Go deep into the Scriptures. Though Hodge is known by most for this three-volume systematic theology, his first love was biblical studies. He was trained in Hebrew by a rabbi and traveled to study under the leading experts in the Greek language. His career at Princeton started with teaching biblical languages to new seminary students. As B. B. Warfield recalled of his beloved professor, Hodge could easily translate the Greek New Testament without assistance in class while being brought to tears when describing the love of God. Hodge's theology was born from deep and detailed interaction with the Scriptures. Theological precision results from being continually sharpened by the Bible.

2. Know yourself. Hodge is known by contemporary readers for his dry and analytical style of writing. Whether it appeals to the reader or not, Hodge's vigorous mind and unique personality come through in his writing. As one historian has observed, even the commentaries he published dealt with the books of the Bible that catered to his analytical bent (Pauline epistles). He left no commentaries on those that tap into the poetic side of the mind (the Gospels and the Psalms). His writings clearly reveal how his mind operated. Moreover, he knew his weaknesses. He never perceived himself as a strong preacher, which kept him from pursuing a pastorate and itinerating. Whenever he discovered an area of weakness academically, he sought to correct it by exposing himself to that area's leaders, whether they were in New England or Germany. Though Hodge admired his mentor Archibald Alexander and his childhood pastor Ashbel Green, he never tried to imitate their personality or style. God has made each of us unique and speaks through us in unique ways.

3. Keep an eye on cultural and social trends. Before contextualization was popular, Hodge kept his finger on the pulse of American culture. He read the latest thought making its way over from Europe and tried to read popular novels. Hodge was a public theologian. He devoted his intellectual energies to interpreting the Bible, especially as it intersected with movements around the world. As John W. Stewart notes, Hodge has as much in common with Reinhold Niebuhr as he does with Warfield. His interest in trends wasn't born from a love of novelty but from a desire to understand the peculiarities of the modern world.

4. Stand firm on your principles. Charles Krauth, a Lutheran theologian, once said that "next to having Dr. Hodge on one's side was the pleasure of having him as an antagonist." He often argued for unpopular positions among his fellow Presbyterians. He once referred to certain views of his Southern counterpart James Henley Thornwell as "mischievous" and a sermon by Benjamin Morgan Palmer as a "monstrous perversion." He sparred with his former seminary colleague John Williamson Nevin and unleashed a torrent of criticism on Charles Finney. Though Hodge sought Christian unity, he was committed to his understanding of Scripture, even when it meant controversy or speaking against popular figures.

5. Don't be afraid of new ideas. Hodge believed all truth is reconcilable because it comes from the same source: God. He didn't dismiss ideas until he first sought to become acquainted with them. The journal he edited was a "review," a place where new ideas were examined theologically. He was particularly fond of new discoveries in science and read The Origin of Species three years after it was published. Beyond science, Hodge interacted with new forms of philosophy, models of education, and hot topics on the political front. He believed it was intellectually lazy to simply dismiss an idea rather than analyzing it firsthand.

6. Treasure your family and friends. Hodge was a man of many friends, something his cheerful countenance made easy for him. If ever you became his friend, you remained his friend. He kept in touch with seminary classmates and friends from travels abroad. The collection of his letters includes almost 800 different recipients. Every Thursday evening, Hodge opened his home to friends and professors for vigorous discussion that later came to be known as the "association of gentlemen." Moreover, Hodge could be found playing croquet in his front yard with family and friends. His study was located in his home on the seminary campus. The office had two doors, an interior one for children and an exterior one for students, neither of whom he turned away. Outside his wife and children, Hodge was close to his brother Hugh, who supplied him with money whenever the seminary could not provide him a paycheck. From reading his letters and journals, you get the impression that Hodge felt deeply privileged for the relationships afforded to him.

7. Extend the boundaries of your fellowship beyond the boundaries of your theology. Though he boasted that he never taught any truth outside the Westminster Confession of Faith, Hodge treated any Christian he met as his sibling in the Lord. Accused of being narrow and rigid in his beliefs, Hodge was anything but narrow in his fellowship. He even considered German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, with whom he publicly disagreed on many important points of doctrine, to be numbered among the children of God. His best friend was Bishop John Johns, a leader in the Episcopal Church. Hodge's catholicity leaks out in a letter he wrote to the pope in 1869. Composed in what would be the last decade of his life, Hodge wrote, "although we cannot return to the fellowship of the Church of Rome, we desire to live in charity with all men. We love all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity."

8. Give yourself to your work wholeheartedly. It would be difficult to accuse Hodge of sloth, at least when it comes to his vocation as professor and writer. Beyond teaching in the classroom, Hodge launched a periodical in 1825 that became known as the Biblical Repertory and Theological Review. The journal was the platform for Hodge and his colleagues to interact with issues both inside and outside the church. Through it, Hodge's views on theology, politics, and science were distributed far and wide. He served as editor until 1872. On account of his writing, he was respected globally and yet also found time to serve on countless local boards and committees for the Presbyterian Church. Whether writing letters or debating fellow ministers, Hodge poured his energy into his work.

9. Above all, love Jesus Christ. The best kind of theologian is the kneeling kind. Of the many observations students made of their professor, Hodge's love of Christ is the most common. He was not a cold rationalist. He believed a renewed heart was more important than a renewed mind. Hodge believed "one can ascertain the real faith of people more clearly and uniformly from their hymns and expressions of devotion than from their creeds and theologies." The goal of theology is the same goal of Scripture, to lead us to greater love of Christ.

For those interested in learning more about Charles Hodge, two recent biographies provide an invaluable contribution in making him accessible to a wide audience. For those unacquainted with Hodge, Paul Gutjahr's biography, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy, provides a helpful overview of his life, thought, and influence. Charles Hodge: The Pride of Princeton by Andrew Hoffecker has an excellent analysis of his controversies and connections with Europe.

Hodge was not without his faults and shortcomings. He was opposed to slavery but against immediate emancipation. He limited the role of women to domestic activity. He was raised fatherless and had a strained relationship with his mother, feeling hurt that she never acknowledged his success. Despite his failings, William Shedd was correct in his assessment when he said, "Dr. Hodge has done more for Calvinism than any other man in America."

**********

Previously in the series on Princeton Seminary at 100:

• The Legacy of Archibald Alexander
• Old Princeton for New Calvinists

Blue Like Jazz was a book that came at just the right moment. Donald Miller winsomely captured and voiced the sentiments of many Christians who grew up immersed in Christian culture. They felt disillusioned with hypocrisy, unconvinced by politics, and out of place in their churches. The cultural scorn from progressives and the parodies of evangelical life in movies like Saved and shows like The Simpsons rang all too true, and many young evangelicals (like Christians in generations past) wondered if they were a fish out of water, if perhaps there was an alternative from the enculturated Christianity of their parents in the post-9/11 world.

This, in many ways, was Don's story, and Blue Like Jazz was a collection of essays and vignettes that reflected upon his journey. The book struck a deep chord and sold like hotcakes. Certainly, Miller's fresh and humorous voice was an essential ingredient in his success, but his timeliness and cultural progressiveness gave the book momentum. Along with a host of "emergent" writers, he painted a picture of a different way of being a Christian in the world. Writers are commonly told, "Don't tell me, show me." This is the power of Miller's work. Rather than yet another didactic how-to for the Christian life, he showed a way of being that readers found hip, compelling, and fresh.

In just one month, on April 13, the film based on Blue Like Jazz will premier in theaters nationwide. It's far more inspired-by the book than based-upon it, telling a largely fictionalized version of Miller's first year at Reed College, a liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. (Miller tells the story of writing the film's screenplay in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which I actually think is his best work.)

Not everyone in the evangelical world was eager to embrace Miller's books, and the criticism Blue Like Jazz elicited was often quite heated. In anticipation of the new film, it seems worth reflecting on a few of those surrounding issues.

The Film

Blue Like Jazz is a good little indie film starring Marshall Allman (True Blood) and Claire Holt (The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars), with a strong supporting performance from Tania Raymonde (Lost). It was written by Miller, photographer Ben Pearson, and Steve Taylor, a former CCM artist and record producer who made waves in the late 80s with his sharply satirical song "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good." In the late 90s, Taylor wrote and produced hits with Sixpence None the Richer and The Newsboys.

The movie entertains, moving along at an occasionally hurried pace under solid direction, supported by believable dialogue, good acting, and a good soundtrack. It was made with a modest budget of about $1.2 million (for comparison, less than 1 percent of the cost of Hugo). As indies go, it's a good movie. At times, it's a bit too cute, occasionally preachy, and a bit too neatly tied up at the end---but most movies are guilty of similar crimes.

The Content

It's rated PG-13, and it deserves the rating. The movie tells the story of a fictionalized Don who leaves behind his fundamentalist Texan roots for Reed College. Life at Reed is a realistic portrayal of life at many liberal arts colleges---full of drugs, sexual innuendo, binge drinking, and foul language. Don's closest friends are an atheist who serves as the campus "pope," and Lauryn, a recently out lesbian. This is not a Kirk Cameron-style Christian film. Debauchery abounds.

But these elements of the story are nothing if not realistic. Don's story is like that of many young Christians who find themselves immersed in a post-Christian environment. He's ashamed of his past, when he was an assistant youth minister, and he denies his faith in a class discussion. It's a particularly poignant scene, cutting to Don lying awake in bed as an alarm sounds with a rooster's crow. His sense of failure will feel emotionally familiar to many.

The Roots of Rootlessness

Like much of Miller's writing, the movie brushes on themes of fatherlessness. In another classroom scene, it's said that calling God "father" is a huge marketing mistake, given the wretched track record of earthly fathers. Don's father in the story is a womanizing college professor, living in a trailer like a pathetic, past-his-prime slacker. A conversation with a friend reveals that their parents are bitterly divorced, to which Don responds, "Aren't they all?"

News from home reveals the hypocrisy of both Don's mother and his youth minister. His sense of rootlessness and despair grows deeper. He drives to a seaside park to reflect, standing in solitary contrast to a young girl throwing Frisbee with her father.

Miller is giving voice to a whole generation whose fathers failed them, whose churches rang hollow, and who found friendship in the liberal world they'd been taught to hate and distrust. The intellectual rigor of progressives and their inclusive sense of community stood in sharp contrast to a past that felt morally and intellectually vacuous. At one moment in the film, the campus pope is rounding up books to burn, purging the campus of unacceptable spiritual reading. In Don's room, he snatches up Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, a gift from Don's mother upon graduation from high school. "Would a loving God let that exist?" he asks before tossing it into a burning shopping cart.

Plausibility in a Post-Christian World

Eventually, Don finds his faith redeemed, but not through his own wrestling. Instead, it's through a friend whose faith makes Christianity plausible for him in a new way. "Sometimes," he says, "you've got to watch somebody love something so you can love it yourself."

Don's restored faith comes just as he's declared the campus pope for the next year, and Don must now decide whether to follow the lead of the previous pope---eliminating any spiritual or moral inhibitions---or to set a different tone. This leads to a scene with Don presiding as the campus pope in a confessional booth, a moment he turns on its head by seizing the opportunity to apologize for all the ways he and other Christians have misrepresented Jesus to the world.

It's a throwback to the book, where Miller describes setting up a confession booth on a sidewalk, apologizing to all who enter for a myriad of Christians' sins, from ordinary hypocrisy to the Crusades. It's his way of acknowledging a different way of being in the world---connected to Christ without having to take responsibility for the sins of our fathers. This, again, is what makes Miller resonate with his readers.

Blue Like Jazz and the Critics

Personally, I'm not much of a culture warrior. With Blue Like Jazz (the book), I never saw the cause for alarm that many others saw. Similarly, I anticipate that as this film releases, there will be many minute-by-minute, point-for-point critiques of the film's content, theology, and worldview. I'm not entirely interested in engaging it on that level. Instead, I want to talk about the film's (and Miller's) place in Christian culture.

When the book released there were several months of chatter and debate surrounding it. Many in my city identified Miller as a reactionary liberal trying to make Christianity cool and marketable. The book was sliced open and picked apart; every questionable glimpse of doctrine, every ethical grey area, every shady interaction with an unbeliever was dissected and deconstructed.

But I think this kind of critique misses the point. In the book and in his subsequent works, Miller has never claimed to be a theologian. He doesn't labor at making precise theological statements; he labors at telling compelling stories, at being truthful about life. He's a storyteller whose gift takes us into the uncomfortable world of Christians living in exile. I don't get the sense that his stories are prescriptive; they describe his life and experience, and the success of the book demonstrates that something about his life resonates with readers.

Hipster Christian?

One persistent critique of Miller is that he, like many emergent writers, is at pains to make Christianity something "hip" and "cool." In the case of someone like Rob Bell, who has worked particularly hard at reframing doctrine and softening hard truths, that critique is fair. For Miller, though, I'm not sure it is.

If anything, Miller's stories and this movie both demonstrate that Christianity is irreversibly uncool. When movie Don talks about his rediscovered faith to the campus pope, he apologizes for trying to make people think he was cool and smart. The conversation seems resonant with the apostle Paul, when he tells us that the gospel is foolish in the eyes of the perishing world. Miller's own self-effacing nature and style reveal a personality who seems to be very comfortable in his own, uncool skin. In a world of blustering megachurch pastors and triumphalist Christian bravado, Miller strikes me as earthy and refreshing.

The Real Issue

The challenge with a movie and book like Blue Like Jazz centers on its singularity in the Christian world. There isn't really an established market for this kind of Christian literature and storytelling. Yes, Christian fiction exists, but Miller's work is more free-ranging: essays, vignettes, short stories, all weaved together thematically. It has far more in common with Jack Kerouac than Tim LaHaye or Bodie Thoene.

As a result, his marketers were presented with a challenge. How do you sell someone like this?

Miller ended up on the shelves and the conference tour with pastors and theologians. Miller was presented to the world as an authority on the Christian life as opposed to being a witness to the Christian life. So the pastors and theologians of the world had to respond to him as such, instead of allowing his book to simply be a testimony.

Miller, of course, isn't innocent here. He's jumped into the fray on a variety of arguments (like his much-debated blog post on who should run the church), and he has willingly served the marketing machine's efforts to present him as an expert. This, to me, is unfortunate because it clouds what's most valuable about Miller's work. It's testimonial; or as I said earlier, he's a witness, not an authority. Miller shows a plausible way of trusting in Jesus in a post-Christian world. For people who are drawn to the gospel and repulsed by Republicanism, Miller shows another way.

I'm not saying that he should get a free pass on the issues. I'm curious why the film isn't explicit about the gospel (unlike the book, which talks very directly about the cross). I can't help but wonder if that isn't a bit of a compromise. But on the whole, I think we should address the issues at an almost personal level---understanding that Miller is just a guy with a writing gift, telling his story and the stories around him. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Witness, not authority. I tend to believe that Miller would agree with those categories, and I'd be interested to hear him speak about it.

Without such a distinction, the evangelical world is going to freak out when they see this movie. How else would we expect them to respond to a "Christian" film featuring lesbians, atheists, adulterous youth ministers, vandalizing Christian activists, and a sexy carrot?

If it's prescriptive, then Miller has advocated homosexuality, drug abuse, and more. If it's descriptive, then it's actually an encouraging message that even here, in the heart of progressive, post-Christian America, God is at work, and hope for the transformative effects of the gospel isn't lost.