Sunday 11 February 2024

GOD'S GOODNESS MUST RUB OFF ON US

'You cannot have [a] relationship with a good God without becoming a better man.'
Michael Green, 2 Peter and Jude, p.119.

Thursday 1 February 2024

MIRACLES & BELIEF

'Miracles don't make people believe!...It's the belief that is the miracle.'
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower, p.84.

Friday 12 January 2024

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S SPECIAL WORK

'To persuade a poor, sinful soul that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him and only has thoughts of kindness towards him is an expressible mercy.
This is the special work of the Holy Spirit and by this special work we have communion with the Father in his love, which is poured into our hearts.'
John Owen, Communion with God, p.210. 

Sunday 7 January 2024

THE WIDE EMBRACE OF CHRISTIANITY

'Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.'
CS Lewis in 'Is Theology Poetry?', Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church, p.21.

Saturday 6 January 2024

THE REALISM OF CHRISTIANITY

'Christianity does not merely offer a new way of beholding our world, but an enhanced capacity to live within that world and cope with its uncertainty and complexity, as well as our own frailty and failings. It enables us to confront glib and shallow accounts of our situation, such as the superficial rationalism of the Enlightenment or the facile optimism of an ideology of 'positive thinking', which seeks to exorcise any recognition of the darker and more disturbing aspects of human nature or creation. Reality is complex and ambivalent; wisdom demands that we recognise this, rather than crudely forcing it to be uniformly simple and positive. Intellectual violence is unable to suppress this darker truth about our world, which Christianity has afformed and confronted, rather than implausibly denied.'
Alister McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.207.

THE SELF-INTEREST IN ATHEISM

'It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.'
Thomas Nagel in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.173.

WE ARE MEANING SEEKING CREATURES

'We cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce - we are meaning seeking creatures. The western world has done away with religion but not with religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives - money and leisure, social progress, are not not enough.'
Jeanette Winterson in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.165.

THE NEWNESS OF FACTS

'...facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.'
Alasdair MacIntyre in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly: Journeys through Science, Faith & Doubt, p.158.

Sunday 31 December 2023

My 2023 Reading

 Those in bold are this year's top ten: 

January

  1. Jocelyn Brooke, The Orchid Trilogy
  2. Ocean Yuong, On Earth We're Briefly Beautiful
  3. Katherine May, The Electricity of Every Living Thing
  4. Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, The Awakening of Miss Prim 
  5. Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such 
  6. Valentine Low, Courtiers: The hidden power behind the crown 
  7. Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine 
  8. Tom Crewe, The New Life 
February
  1. Sean Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide
  2. Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives 
  3. John Moore, The Water Under the Earth
  4. James Salter, Last Night: Stories
  5. DA Carson (Ed.), Worship by the Book
March 
  1. Wendell Berry, How It Went: Thirteen more stories of the Port William Membership 
  2. Christine Barnabas, Consecrated Celibacy: A Fresh Look at an Ancient Calling 
  3. Mary Renault, The King Must Die 
  4. Patrick Ness, Different for Boys 
  5. Frederick Buechner, Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought to Say): Four Who Wrote in Blood
  6. Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea
  7. Gregg A Ten Elshof, I Told Me So: self-deception and the Christian life
April 
  1. John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace 
  2. Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died 
May 
  1. Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
  2. Arnold Bennett, Clayhanger 
  3. John Carey, A Little History of Poetry 
  4. Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation 
  5. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 
  6. Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life
  7. Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost 
  8. David Gibson, Radically Whole: Gospel healing for the divided heart 
  9. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow 
  10. Sean O'Nan, Ocean State 
  11. Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men
  12. Mary Renault, The Praise Singer
June
  1. Matthew P W Roberts, Pride: Identity and the worship of self 
  2. Jonathan Rauch, Denial: My 25 years without a soul 
  3. David McCullough, 1776: America and Britain at War 
  4. Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo 
  5. David Haynes, Right By My Side 
  6. Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside 
July
  1. Claire Keegan, Foster
  2. Eve Tushnet, Tenderness: A Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love 
  3. Ted Sorensen, Counselor: A life at the edge of history
  4. Niamh Campbell, We Were Young
  5. Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea
August 
  1. Tony Horsfall, Spiritual Growth in a Time of Change: Following God in midlife
  2. Christopher Landau, Loving Disagreement: The problem is the solution  
  3. Roger Preece, Understanding and Using Power: Leadership without Corrupting Your Soul 
  4. Adrian Bell, The Cherry Tree
  5. Peter F Drucker, Managing Oneself 
  6. Maggie O'Farrell, I am, I am, I am
  7. Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
  8. Rachel Cusk, Outline
September
  1. CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  2. CS Lewis, Prince Caspian 
  3. CS Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
  4. CS Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
  5. CS Lewis, The Silver Chair
  6. CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
  7. CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 
  8. CS Lewis, The Last Battle 
  9. Hua Hsu, Stay True: A Memoir
  10. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 
  11. Margaret Laurence, A Jest of God
  12. Tim Chester, Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God in everyday life
  13. Dominic Sandbrook, Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982
  14. Alistair Gordon, Why Art Matters
  15. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring
October 
  1. Gregory E Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations
  2. Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God  
  3. Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans [Audiobook]
  4. Annie Dillard, The Living: A Novel 
  5. Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis 
November 
  1. Michael Green, Baptism: Its purpose, practice and power 
  2. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
  3. Winifred Peck, House-Bound
  4. Tom Wright, The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion  
  5. John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world 
  6. Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge [Audiobook] 
December
  1. Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo
  2. Victor Heringer, The Love of Singular Men
  3. Julia Strachey, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
  4. Zachary Wagner, Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering healthy male sexuality 
  5. Tim Chester, Fixated: Advent meditations from the book of Hebrews 
  6. David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
  7. JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring [Audiobook] 
  8. Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns

Wednesday 27 December 2023

THE GREAT FAIRY-STORY

'The Gospels contain a fairy-story, a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful and moving; 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of the Primary Art, that is Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.'
JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in The Monster and the Critics, p.155.