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Reviews
Short Reviews
Full-Length Reviews* * * * * * * * * * *Unlike many authors reviewed in this column, Rienstra is not religious by
profession but a professor of English at Calvin College. Her faith is
serene, but she is not shy about acknowledging the difficulties of the deep
spiritual life: “The Christian faith rests on great pillars of certainty;
yet these pillars are mysteries...[that] do not require that we shut down
questions but that we open ourselves to greater answers and perhaps to
questions we have never asked.” Written with unobtrusive skill, Rienstra’s
work satisfies both the heart and the mind and should find an appreciative
audience. For most collections.
— Library Journal, March 1, 2005
A Calvin College professor, memoirist (Great With Child) and literary scholar, Rienstra offers an innovative introduction to Christianity....Three cheers for her ability to make abstruse doctrines like the Trinity not only intelligible but practical: “the Trinity gives us a way to organize and speak of our experiences of God.” Rienstra doesn’t shy away from hard questions (for example, drawing on both the Bible and recent scientific studies as she tackles the question of whether prayer works). Though spiritual seekers are clearly the primary audience, even mature Christians will be challenged and encouraged by this slim book....Rienstra’s walk through Christian teaching is generous, sympathetic, clear and often funny.
— Publisher's Weekly, Jan. 24, 2005
“So Much More is a radiant manifesto for the fully realized Christian life. Rienstra speaks to the heart without mawkishness, speaks to the mind without logic-chopping, and speaks to the doubtful without patronizing. With good humor, and with erudition worn lightly, Rienstra provides a compelling Christian account of sin and grace, reason and revelation, the longing for God, the mystery of suffering, and the pathways of love and service.”
— Carol Zaleski, professor of religion at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. and author of The Book of Heaven: An Anthology of Writings from Ancient to Modern Times
“Unlike many introductions to the Christian faith, which seem to be driven by a barely suppressed anxiety, as if the writer was trying to convince himself by answering every conceivable objection, Debra Rienstra's So Much More radiates a serene confidence that is persuasive precisely because it is willing to acknowledge unsettled questions. All we absolutely need to know, she's convinced, is given to us with assurance as trustworthy as the hand of a loving father or mother.”
— John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture and series editor, The Best Christian Writing
“So Much More is indeed so much more--more than your typical book on
apologetics or theology or spirituality. Debra Rienstra is a gifted writer
who imparts much wisdom in all of these areas--and more. This is a fine book
for a person who is beginning a Christian pilgrimage. But it is also gives
much guidance and encouragement to those of us who are well along in the
journey.”
— Rich Mouw, President, Fuller Theological Seminary, Author of He Shines in All That's Fair: Culture and Common Grace, and Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World
* * * * * * * * * * *From Books & Culture, May/June, 2005
You may recall the premise with which C.S. Lewis begins Mere Christianity, that great work of 20th-century apologetics: “First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the world we live in.” Lewis spends the next two chapters raising and dispatching with some objections to his axioms, and attempting to establish, by reference to men and to rocks and trees, that although the “Law of Human Nature…must somehow or other be a real thing…it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact…[T]here is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of man’s behaviour, and yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.” From there, Lewis goes on to his landmark exposition of Christian belief and practice.
Mere Christianity is a classic. It has touched, and will continue to touch, many thousands of lives. But there is something in Lewis’ gambit that strikes the contemporary reader as…a bit dated, a bit inapposite, a bit beside the point. It wouldn’t occur to many of today’s seekers, today’s unchurched, today’s pre-Christians – whatever term you choose – to begin their investigation of Christianity with a grid bounded by propositional truths. These spiritually hungry readers are drawn to the Cross not primarily through rational arguments about the veracity of the Gospel, but through story. This explains in part the recent popularity of spiritual memoir. Such readers don’t want to be argued into Christianity; they want to come alongside someone else’s journey, they want to enter into the story of what God has done in someone’s particular life; and they catch the vision of the Gospel there. Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies may open the door to Christianity for readers who would never pick up Mere Christianity. And this interest in memoir dovetails with the increasing appeal of a theology that emphasizes story over propositional truth – hence Stanley Hauerwas’ famous quip that we live as Christians because Christianity is the best damn story out there. The contemporary moment is one of experience and narrative, not numbered spiritual laws and ratiocinated tracts.
And yet – do not hear me say that apologetics is a dirty word. It is a good, if unfashionable, word (just as dogma and piety are good, if unfashionable, words). People may be drawn into the Gospel by story, but doctrine remains indispensable. Living into the story is great. But so too is having a handle on the systems and truths that are the skeleton of that story. The question before us is how to play apologetics on a postmodern register (always remembering, too, that generations are not monolithic, and that for some of our contemporaries propositional apologetics is alive and well). If Mere Christianity was the apologetics for the post-World War II era, where and what, is the apologetics for our era?
One answer to that question is So Much More, a generous new introduction to Christianity by memoirist and Calvin College English professor Debra Rienstra. In many ways, her book is not that different from Mere Christianity – and that is a great compliment, for when presenting the basics of the Christian life, one’s job is not principally to innovate. One’s job is to present unchanging truths in a way that makes sense to a changing culture. Rienstra accomplishes that task with panache.
Here are the doctrines of the Fall, Jesus’ work on the Cross, suffering and hope. Here are evil and free will and atonement and resurrection. Rienstra admits to occasional theological fuzziness – for example, not coming down firmly on the side of Calvinism or Arminianism but finding the basic common ground between the two positions. Her elegant and very accessible gloss on different theories of atonement – substitutionary atonement, sacrificial atonement, victory atonement, ransom atonement – acknowledges theological complexity. Her discussion of universalism strikes me as balanced and honest, though it may rub some evangelical readers the wrong way. “Christianity maintains that salvation comes through Jesus Christ,” she writes, “but different strains of Christianity mean different things by that.” She suggests that Scripture has universalistic impulses (such as Paul’s assurance to the Corinthians that God will reconcile himself through Jesus to “all things”), but that many other passages of Scripture point to something starker, fiercer – the separation of the wheat from the chaff, the outer darkness and gnashing of teeth. Rienstra says that “The universalist strand and the outer darkness strand are in the Bible for good reason”: one strand reminds us that God extends an invitation to everyone (TULIP Calvinists, gird your loins), the other strand works against a lazy arrogance about salvation. “Some confusion about who’s in and who’s out is probably quite healthy.” Rienstra’s discussion of the Trinity, found in her second chapter, is also noteworthy. If academic theology has renewed attention to the Trinity, many American Protestants are functional Unitarians. Kudos to Rienstra for reminding us that the Trinity is not abstruse or optional, but a crucial Christian basic.
Contrast Rienstra’s first chapter with the first chapter of Mere Christianity. Rienstra’s starting-point has nothing to do with natural law. Rather she begins with the intuition that there is something more than the harried daily grind, the morning latté at Starbucks, the push to fill one’s Roth IRA. So, as Lewis opens with “The Law of Human Nature,” Rienstra opens by tugging at the reader’s impulse toward meaning. You might be wading through grief after your father’s death, she writes. Or you might be a young girl intrigued by the waddling penguin and leggy giraffe you saw at the zoo. Or you might be a new mother, blown away by the mystery of childbirth. Wherever, whoever you are, you know that “there must be something more” than “the morning commute… the half-lies we tell to get by… the evening news of crime and war, embroidered with empty banter and car advertisements.” She nudges her reader to explore Christianity because the reader’s own experiences nudge him toward transcendence (as Lewis himself persuasively did in his memoir, Surprised by Joy). Rienstra invites the reader not to march down the road of reason with her but to be “swept into meaning.” We are pulled to the Cross through an “alchemy of perceptions, understandings and memory.”
The second half of So Much More lays out some basic Christian practices – prayer, Scripture study, worship, Christian community, service. At first I wished Rienstra had dealt with Christian practices that were more calculated to catch the imagination of seekers, appealing to yearnings that they’re already trying to satisfy – practices such as simplicity, fasting, Sabbath-keeping. But my instinct was wrong, and Rienstra’s was right. The five practices she lays out really are the basics, and one ought not delve into fasting, say, until one is grounded solidly in Scripture and prayer.
Rienstra’s introduction to Christian living feels just right for our moment. She speaks honestly about her own struggles with prayer yet gently insists that prayer is real, and although she sketches some different styles and approaches to prayer, she never loses sight of the fact that “to embark on a life of prayer is to encounter a mystery.” Her chapter on Scripture encourages readers to “sink into” the Bible rather than to approach it as a rule-book. Her chapter on worship champions faithful “church ladies,” sitting in the pew week in and week out; some, says Rienstra, criticize these ladies’ faithfulness as “empty ritual,” but she sees in them a piety that carries them through inevitable “dry spells.” Through all these chapters runs an emphasis on the importance of community, a theme that will doubtless strike a chord with a generation of Americans searching for “something more” than solo bowling.
Rienstra has presented solid teaching in a contemporary idiom. She has drawn on ancient church teaching and contemporary fiction. She has pointed toward embodied, not merely propositional truth. She has sought to inspire, not instruct; to encourage lifelong formation, not merely datable conversion. She has maintained a high view of Scripture, while also deferring to theology and church tradition on matters ranging from the Trinity to the sacraments. She has written a Christian apologetics for our era.
— Lauren F. WinnerCopyright 2005 Christianity Today. Reproduced by permission from the May/June 2005, issue of Books & Culture. Carol Stream, IL 60188.
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From The Christian Century, April. 19, 2005
I once owned an ambitiously titled book, All the Doctrines of the Bible. Too many apologetics are muscularly evangelical, seeking to answer definitively all questions, enumerate every important theological theme, and quash questioners. One thinks of John Stott’s Basic Christianity, J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, or Josh McDowell’s gauntlet, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. The classic Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, is more irenic and deservedly retains a good reputation. Yet even its style of persuasive charm and logic is not as compelling in the postmodern milieu as when Lewis penned it.Debra Rienstra writes a gentle and winsome introduction to Christian faith, beliefs, and practices as a “gesture of welcoming friendship for people who are new or newly returned to the Christian faith – those who are searching, lurking, longing, or learning.” She blends a “broad overview and a sense of my own experience.”
Rienstra, like Lewis, teaches literature. Not surprisingly, one attraction of this book is her deft writing and frequent references to literary classics, particularly Milton, Dante, and Shakespeare. She also shows a fondness for Lewis, both Mere Christianity and his novel Till We Have Faces.
She sets an ambitious goal: articulating key Christian practices and beliefs, but not primarily through argument. She portrays how in Christianity “belief, practice, passion and imagination” come together into a spirituality of “so much more” which allows God to “bind together all of ourselves, all parts of our lives into a vibrant and enduring wholeness.”
Rienstra explores how Christian faith is imagined (the mysteries of God, Trinity, incarnation, sin, atonement, redemption, suffering and hope) and lived (prayer, scripture reading, worship, community and service of God and others). That is a tall order for one volume. Yet she achieves her unlikely agenda. Writing from within her own Dutch Reformed understanding (for which she shows deep gratitude), she carefully thinks through many topics. At the same time, she celebrates and appreciates nuances and approaches of other Christian traditions.
While Mere Christianity can be grasped by literate high schoolers, Rienstra writes for a more sophisticated audience. If her reader is not college-educated, her literary references would be lost.
Several aspects of this book are especially commendable. Rienstra unapologetically sees beliefs and practices as deeply and inextricably intertwined. Convictions lead to actions and are, in turn, shaped by them.
She often brings in insightful stories from her experiences as a daughter, friend, wife, professor and mother. Her anecdotes are self-deprecating and winsomely humorous. The personal is never intrusive or inappropriate, but invariably evocative. Perhaps this is a gender-related approach to doing theology; notably, the aforementioned cerebrally focused apologetic texts are all by men.
Wit and intelligence are evident in Rienstra’s style. Her insights are communicated through carefully crafted wording. More than once, sentences leap out as worthy aphorisms: “We serve out of obedience, but obedience is gratitude at work.” Or, in making a case for the unlikely blessings of being churched: “A person who believes she can homeschool her own soul has a rather high view of her own ability.”
As a high schooler and college student I was enamored of some of the apologetics texts mentioned above. That changed when my only sibling died of leukemia at the age of 17. Those “answer men” were not much help on suffering or theodicy. Later, when I was a pastor, such matters were among the most important ones for my ministry. Thus I appreciate Rienstra’s chapter on suffering and hope, an exploration that includes the Christian mandate of protest and doubt. She shows “where great evil is countered with great hope.” She gives a ringing call to address and redress suffering.
Rienstra treads gently with dicey theological questions: universalism, eschatology, human freedom, open theism. She does not resolve everything, nor does she try. She delicately negotiates the conviction that “Christian faith rests on great pillars of certainty; yet those certainties are mysteries.” Thus we believe, without fully comprehending. And we live out our convictions even as we grow into them.
— Arthur Paul BoersCopyright 2005 Christian Century. Reproduced by permission from the April 19, 2005, issue of the Christian Century. Subscriptions: $49/yr. from P.O. Box 378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054. 1-800-208-4097.
Watch here for more reviews as they come in.
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