Book Review
It was several years ago that I read Phantastes and Lilith, George MacDonald’s fantasy novels. I had looked him up on the written recommendation of C.S. Lewis, who considered him one of his great spiritual mentors–though only through MacDonald’s writings, for he lived much earlier, 1824-1905. These novels, Lewis said, “baptized” his imagination, bringing virtue and righteousness into the realm of fantastic literature. They were neither obvious nor easy reads for me, but certainly very enjoyable.
So I felt a sense of real anticipation as I settled in to read a new anthology of MacDonald’s non-fiction: The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips.
The book includes 15 essays–”Unspoken Sermons”–by MacDonald, each one re-composed in modern language and followed by an analysis by the editor. If MacDonald is indeed, as many have said of him, a light to true and deep knowledge of Jesus Christ, it would be in chapters like “The New Name,” based on Revelation 2:17, which says:
“To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.”
In this essay MacDonald carries the reader into an appreciation of intimacy with God, of God’s special relationship with each of his own, of the true humility that each person knows who knows how truly unique and special he or she is in God’s eyes. He asks whether there is danger of spiritual pride in this, and answers,
“Here there is no room for ambition. Ambition is the desire to be above one’s neighbour, but here there is no possibility of comparison with one’s neighbour. No one knows what the white stone contains except the individual who receives it.”
Perhaps it is the symbolic nature of the stone that, to me, has allowed this writer of highly symbolic literature to speak with such beauty and insight. Phillips says in his analysis of this chapter,
“I am struck again with the quiet depth and profound implications of this amazing sermon. It cannot be ‘analyzed’ in any accurate sense of the word.”
And yet this is the best “analysis” Phillips writes in the book. Other analyses, especially in early chapters, were disappointing for their lack of additional insight; they amount to repeating high points of the MacDonald text. Some of Phillips’s contributions provide biographical or historical insight, but their quality and worth is uneven. There were chapters in which I thought, “It was much better–and no less clear–just to read MacDonald.”
The book is about “The Truth in Jesus.” MacDonald says,
“Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam. But, in its deepest sense, the truth is a condition of heart, soul, mind, and strength toward God and toward our fellows.”
Here we see his characteristic view of truth in one brief nugget: it is about one’s condition of soul, and about one’s relationship with God. Propositional truth was probably important to MacDonald, yet he was suspicious of theologians and their systems. His theology was unorthodox; as Wikipedia correctly says, he rejected Reformed doctrines of the substitutionary atonement and imputed righteousness. I actually learned more from Wikipedia than from the selections in this book about what MacDonald proposed to replace those doctrines; from the book alone, all that shows is that MacDonald held an iconoclastic, and rather undefined, position.
And also that, in spite of that, the book reveals that he absolutely loved Jesus Christ and insisted that following Christ includes radical faith and obedience. This is the best message to be discovered from this set of his writings. Let the unorthodox theology be a matter of unanswered questions; let the editorial comments be what they are; there is still much to encourage and to inspire here. There is much to provoke thought. Some of what’s here must, after reflection, be set aside; but for a chapter like “The New Name,” it may nevertheless be worth the digging.
The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, by George MacDonald, edited by Michael Phillips. Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2006. 251 pages, paperback. $14.99; Amazon price $10.19.
(Cross-posted from Thinking Christian blog)
Posted by Tom Gilson under Book Reviews | Comments Off
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