I just finished Eric Metaxas's new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I have to say that from the title (with its all-too-obvious echo of John Le Carre's novel) to the writing style itself, I found the biography to be somewhat long-winded. He lionized Bonhoeffer a lot more than I was prepared to swallow, which reminded me of why I don't usually like reading biographies.

On the other hand, I'm not very familiar with the details of Nazi Germany, so I appreciated being able to read about the battle that the church faced as the Nazis rose to power. Metaxas did a solid job of outlining the theological stakes involved in that struggle. Also, I did very much appreciate some of the direct quotes I found along the way from Bonhoeffer's work.

[On contemplating marriage in the midst of World War II:]

The chief characteristic of such occasions [weddings] essentially rested in the fact that, in the face of the “last” times (I do not mean this to sound quite so apocalyptic), someone dares to take a step of such affirmation of the earth and its future. It was then always very clear to me that a person could take this step as a Christian truly only from within a very strong faith and on the basis of grace. For here in the midst of the final destruction of all things, one desires to build; in the midst of a life lived from hour to hour and from day to day, one desires a future; in the midst of being driven out from the earth, one desires a bit of space; in the midst of widespread misery, one desires some happiness. And the overwhelming thing is that God says yes to this strange longing, that here God consents to our will, whereas it is usually meant to be just the opposite. 

[Bonhoeffer on grieving for the death of a good friend during World War II:]

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also was and is his God. In him we know our brothers and in him is the biding fellowship of those who have overcome and those who still await their hour. God be praised for our dead brother and be merciful to us all at our end.

 [On death itself, in a vein reminiscent of C.S. Lewis:]

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence. Whether we are young or old makes no difference.

What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death? … Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Some wonderful quotes from Knowing God to end the week:

God was happy without man before man was made; He would have continued happy had He simply destroyed man after man had sinned; but as it is He has set His love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by His own free voluntary choice, He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till He has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity His happiness shall be conditional upon ours. Thus God saves, not only for His glory, but also for His gladness. This goes far to explain why it is that there is joy (God’s own joy) in the presence of the angels when a sinner repents (Luke 15:10), and why there will be ‘exceeding joy’ when God sets us faultless at the last day in His own holy presence (Jude 24). The thought passes understanding and almost beggars belief, but there is no doubt that, according to Scripture, such is the love of God. – Packer, 113

Brooks, another Puritan, opens it [Galatians 3:29] up as follows, ‘… that is as if he said, You shall have as true an interest in all my attributes for your good, as they are mine for my own glory… My grace, saith God, shall be yours to pardon you, and my power shall be yours to protect you, and my wisdom shall be yours to direct you, and my goodness shall be yours to relieve you, and my mercy shall be yours to supply you, and my glory shall be yours to crown you. This is a comprehensive promise, for God to be our God: it includes all….’ This is what God does for those He loves—the best He can; and the measure of the best that God can do is omnipotence! – Packer, 114-115

A quote for your Friday morning:

'God is love’ is the complete truth about God so far as the Christian is concerned. To say ‘God is light’ is to imply that God’s holiness finds expression in everything that He says and does. Similarly, the statement ‘God is love’ means that His love finds expression in everything that He says and does. The knowledge that this is so for him personally is the Christian’s supreme comfort. As a believer, he finds in the cross of Christ assurance that he, as an individual, is beloved of God; ‘the Son of God… loved me, and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). Knowing this, he is able to apply to himself the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Not just some things, note, but all things! Every single thing that happens to him expresses God’s love for him, and comes to him for the furthering of God’s purpose for him. Thus, so far as he is concerned, God is love to him—holy, omnipotent love—at every moment and in every event of every day’s life. Even when he cannot see the why and the wherefore of God’s dealings, he knows that there is love in and behind them, and so he can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things are going wrong. He knows that the true story of his life, when known, will prove to be, as the hymn says, ‘mercy from first to last’—and he is content.

– J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 111

Scott and I have managed to fit a significant amount of outdoor work around our other labours during these past two weeks. Today I cut the first five daffodils of the season to bring inside and sit in a mason jar on the kitchen table. No fear; plenty more where that came from!

On Monday morning, while I was doing my quiet time, snow flurries were falling outside, but by this afternoon, almost all the daffodils on the southeast terraces were open--the big classic yellow ones, which are always first, as well as the flatter white ones with pale yellow centres. The crocuses are on the wane, and the snowdrops, which I love (like tiny origami cranes suspended on the most delicate threadlike stems), have disintegrated into brown fuzz under the dogwood.

Also this week our new shipment of roses arrived. We have fifteen roses planted on the south side of the house now. We have three Munstead Wood, a deep maroon; three Glamis Castle, which are white; three Queen of Sweden, which are enormous and palest pink; three Graham Thomas, which are yellow, and wiry climbers; and three Lady of Shalott, which are also supposed to be enormous, and are a rich coppery-orange colour.

Under the early spring sun, the vegetable garden beds look so barren, so desolate, so vulnerable. The sun feels gracious to my skin but harsh on the naked dirt as it beats through the leafless hackberry, and I wonder if we’ll have any success in the end. Today, though, I saw the first tiny lettuce sprouts in the corner bed under the redbud. Appropriately enough, Scott and I managed to rig the deer fencing today, which will hopefully protect our plants from herbivores.

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack by Howard Shore, "The Black Gate Opens."

Good old standby, perfect for lesson-planning and commenting on poems for workshop.

A couple of photos from our Easter Sunday:

We enjoyed sunshine, a tremendous Easter lunch, and an Easter egg hunt at the Hs' house, complete with Mary, Grant, a wide selection of the Hs' extended family, and another family from church. Happy times. Against the backdrop of everything else going on, a reminder of our lasting fellowship in Christ.

Lately in The Brothers Karamazov, one of the brothers has been accused of murdering their father. His interrogation by the local authorities takes chapters and chapters, but buried in the paragraphs of dialogue are revealing gems about this particular brother's character, and how Dostoyevsky understands him in context of the story.

This particular brother says at one point, "No, not penitent, don't write that. I'm not much good myself, I'm not very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him [his father] repulsive. That's what I mean. Write that down, if you like."

Later, the authorities insist that they must strip him naked and search all his clothes. Since his clothes are blood-stained, they appropriate his clothes as evidence and give him someone else's, which fit him badly. When he returns to the interrogation room, he asks, "Well, what now? Are you going to flog me? That's all that's left for you."

Together those two pieces of insight were turning points for me in understanding this character's function. He's been a profligate, a wastrel, a sensualist, a womanizer, and a thief so far in the story. Before he's arrested, he spends the whole evening partying it up with a bunch of complete strangers and the woman he wants to seduce.

Yet I think that Dostoyevsky uses this brother's sins, together with this dialogue, as clear echoes of Christ's work. Christ, too, ate with tax collectors and sinners; Christ, though completely perfect, took our sins upon Himself in such a degree that He had committed our sins Himself. They were His; He had done them.

So it's not inappropriate for this brother, who's such a despicable person, to be surrounded by Christlike imagery at his interrogation--to be stripped, condescended to, given other clothes, and finally to feel as though he should be flogged. I haven't read far enough yet to see what punishment he does receive, but for now I'm marvelling again, as I did in Crime and Punishment, at the way Dostoyevsky so beautifully paints the complete identification of Savior with sinners.

A humbling portrait of what redemption costs.

Recently I've managed to make it into the heart of The Brothers Karamazov--at least if you define "heart" in terms of number of pages, and intensity of action. One of the brothers may have just murdered someone accidentally. We'll see.

Long before that happened, during spring break I was reading Father Zossima's very, very, very lengthy deathbed discourse. I must confess to having struggled through it, though some of his ideas were fascinating, and some of the passages were beautiful. Take these, for example:

"Nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven."

And:

"We are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at once."

Beautiful and seductive. I'm tempted myself to write as though nature is perfect--the perfect mirror for God's character, the perfect conveyor of truth about the human condition--but it's not. It's under the curse just the way human beings are. (And anyway, I find the binary between nature and humans problematic. God doesn't seem to think of nature and humans as separate. When nature was created, so were people; when humans disobey, all of nature gets cursed, too, and when Christ returns, He displays power over the entire created order, human and otherwise.)

This point, though, resonated with me as being in dialogue with my earlier questions about suffering:

"The Creator, just as on the first days of creation, looks upon Job and again He praises His creation. And Job praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since for that he was ordained."

I can begin to understand, if only dimly, how God's glory becomes more majestic in the world when human beings--rational but deeply flawed--demonstrate such an operation of His grace that they praise and worship Him even when they are in pain or grieving. That shows His worthiness, I think, in some way that nothing else could.

On Saturday, the last day of spring break, I finally got around to hanging pictures above the china cabinet. Not really pictures: most of them are maps of SR's from old books, and the one in the middle is a watercolour my mother painted.

It snowed overnight for the second time this week. And last March, we were grilling outside and eating on the patio on St. Patrick's...!

We started our seedlings indoors yesterday. They're in the basement. Six artichoke seeds, five tomato varieties (two of each), three sweet pepper varieties (four of each), jalapeno and anaheim peppers (two of each), and three onion varieties (six of each). I can't stop myself from checking on them, as though something will have magically changed in the last twenty-four hours.

More Dostoyevsky. So far, Alexey has just been running around the town, trying to keep his father and his oldest brother, Dimitri, from killing each other--and yet he seems to pack an awful lot of contemplation and long conversations in between the family intrigues.

For example, a sample of his dinner conversation with the middle brother, Ivan, who's a flaming agnostic:

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men--but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't accept it" (279-280).

Why is Ivan so set against believing that God will work out a final redemption for all suffering?

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth" (291).

Ivan tells horrific stories for about ten pages of child abuse in order to lead up to this point. In other words, he asks the basic questions about why God allows evil and suffering in the world, and he asks these questions on emotional and ethical grounds. He confronts Alexey, an Orthodox novice who believes fully in God, with the problem of pain: how can God lead up to a final resolution when that final resolution will be built upon the most terrible human suffering, the suffering of innocent people? How can any justice pay back that suffering?

I haven't yet read Alexey's response, and I suspect that Dostoyevsky is going to put his (naive) character through a lot before the novel itself responds to these questions. Of course, in Calvinist terms, the innocent child really isn't innocent--he or she is a sinner and suffers the wages of sin just like everyone else.

Is that the logical conclusion? Abuse and sickness, abandonment and loneliness, these are simply the facts of living in a world where we have all chosen to sin? Can we then demand a resolution to the world that could pay back abuse and torment, when we have by our sinful natures deserved far greater torments at the hands of the angry God?

I struggle with these questions. To update them, what justice could pay back the elderly people left to drown in their beds during Hurricane Katrina? What justice could pay back the creation that has been so badly stewarded by humankind? What justice could heal aborted babies? If God prizes suffering, as He sometimes seems to in a world so full of pain, in what sense is suffering precious to Him?

I've read Job recently. I've recently listened again to Rut Etheredge's sermons on Christ our Cornerstone and God's hard doctrines and hard providences. But I'm also thinking about the recent suicides and deaths-by-sickness of friends' parents, and the news that another friend has been diagnosed with a chronic, potentially fatal illness.

With Ivan, I believe that God will someday renew the creation and bring a harmony between Heaven and earth. But I'm not sure that he asks the right question in his last quote--or that the questions I just asked are the right ones, either. God Himself has also suffered, suffered the ultimate. How does that give an answer?

I decided to start reading The Brothers Karamazov this past week. Accordingly, on Tuesday I went up to the Slavic Languages floor in the library and found the back corner where they squirrel away all their translations of Russian authors. Of course they had lots of editions of The Brothers, so I settled on a lovely old volume published by The Modern Library, trans. Constance Garrett, that's so old that it doesn't have a publishing date in it. It was originally a paperback, so it has the comfortable size of a pocket edition, but it's been given a library hardback binding, which gives it a good heft. The pages inside are of that lovely silk-smooth paper, paper that feels more like fabric than paper, that you never find in mass-market books anymore.

My philosophy with this book has to be totally different than with most books I read for fun. Usually I blaze through books because I want to know what happens (this is why I read books more than once). However, when I took a class on Middlemarch my first year here, the professor assigned us to journal as we read the novel. I had read Middlemarch before and enjoyed it, but writing my way through it helped me appreciate the narrative style, the slow unfolding of plot and philosophy alongside one another, much more thoroughly. 

Ever since I read War and Peace in highschool, I've felt some animosity toward anything written by a Russian. I loved Crime and Punishment, but War and Peace came after and was huger, more boring (dare I say it), and more daunting. So I haven't been back to the Russians since. But I thought I'd try The Brothers since it's by Dostoyevsky, and I thought I'd try the journalling method since my problem with War and Peace was arguably that I read it far too fast. 

So far, writing through The Brothers has been good. Dostoyevsky's narrator is an enigmatically engaging character in the story, and though I know I probably won't ever meet the narrator in the story (since this is a 19th-century novel, not some crazy 21st-century avante-garde thing), I'm fascinated by what he withholds. 

I'm also fascinated by Dostoyevsky's attitude toward faith. He's definitely not a Calvinist, but I found this beautiful quote last night:

“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged…. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.” 

(Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 57-58)