Drefful Mistakes Somewhere

"All systems that deal with the infinite are, besides, exposed to danger from small, unsuspected admixtures of human error, which become deadly when carried to such vast results. The smallest speck of earth's dust, in the focus of an infinite lens, appears magnified among the heavenly orbs as a frightful monster."
~Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, Chapter 23

"Honey, darlin', ye a'n't right, -- dar's a drefful mistake somewhar," she said. "Why, de Lord a'n't like what ye tink."
~Ibid.

"If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
~John 14:7

People who've talked to me over the past three years or so have probably heard me mention The Minister's Wooing. If only because I quote parts of it, like the above, on my Facebook profile from time to time.

I've said repeatedly that I'm going to write about it. But I never do. As a first post after two years of being gone, however, it seems a good place to start. I won't manage to say everything I want to about the book in this post, but I'll say some.

I first saw the book mentioned here. That post introduces the book and the author better than I can, and frames the historical context better than I can, and introduces some of the essential passages better than I can. So I'll just point there and say "read it now." Also, I think walking the same steps I did in becoming acquainted with the book is helpful in explaining this. And because a lot of what it did for this individual, it also did for me.

The book is a local color novel set in 18th century New England, in which Stowe wrestles with both the northern response to slavery and the Calvinist theology in which she was raised. In particular, she explores the ways in which different personality types and temperaments respond to Calvinist theology, especially the doctrine of predestination.

It's also the most bluntly clear-sighted and sympathetic critique of Calvinism I think I've ever read. (Anyone who calls it a "satire of Calvinism" understands nothing of either Calvinism or Stowe).

Now, I know I'm going to make certain people **facepalm** by bringing this book up in any serious way. In fact, shall I list your objections for you?

"Novels on serious subjects are the curse of serious thought. The difficulty of serious reflection upon any subject, and especially on theological subjects, is incalculably increased by those who overlay the essential parts of the question with a mass of perfectly irrelevant matter, which can have no other effect than to prejudice the feeling in one direction or another.

"The only question about [divine matters] which can interest any rational creature is, whether they are true or false. [...] Now, every one admits that the average tone and temper of every-day existence is not our ultimate rule -- that if theology is worth anything at all, it must form the rule and guide of our daily lives, instead of being guided by them ; and, therefore, a novel which (as all novels must) takes daily life as its standing ground, and shows how it is related to theology, has no tendency whatever to show the truth or falsehood of the theological doctrines which it describes.

"It is impossible not to feel a very strong sense of indignation against those who nibble at such questions, gossip about them, and, as far as their influence extends, try to substitute for the adamantine foundations on which any genuine faith must rest the mere shifting sand and mud of personal sentiment and inclination."

To which I can only say, "you're missing the whole darn point." If I'm feeling argumentative later, maybe I'll expound upon that in detail sometime. (One thing Stowe is arguing, for instance, is precisely that very issue -- that exploring the practical "working out" of a theological system is NOT tangential or irrelevant).

But for now, I will simply say this. Stowe doesn't propose some "hazy emotional personal sentimentality." At all. She reaches her arguments in a roundabout way, but she makes arguments just the same, and makes them quite powerfully. And they include such things as this:

a) Humans are fallible and limited, and our systems of theology and pictures of God are never completely perfect.

b) Jesus is the fullest revelation of God we have been given.

c) In light of (b), passages such as John 14 are probably a bit more central to any understanding of God than Romans 9. And any theological systematizing or pastoral care needs to take this into account.

Is it laid out in precisely those terms? No. But it's there for the taking, amongst chapters 6-8, 18, 23-24. And it's the beginning of a theology that focuses upon Christ as the adamantine foundation of Christianity, Christ as the lens through which the Bible is to be interpreted, and Christ only the true solution to the problem of evil and suffering.

One could do far worse than that.