Book Reviews

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Written by: Wayne Schuller

Created: 30 March 2012

Peter Hitchens, brother of the famous anti-theist, Christopher Hitchens, describes how atheism led him to faith.

The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith
Peter Hitchens
Harper Collins 2010
ISBN 9780310320319

Peter and Christopher Hitchens have a shared heritage of British nominal Christianity and the embracing of atheism as a form of intellectual emancipation. ‘I set fire to my Bible on the playing fields of my Cambridge boarding school one bright, windy spring afternoon in 1967. I was 15 years old’ (page 7).
Peter has since returned to an active Christian faith after decades of leftist-atheism, whilst his brother Christopher has become a great preacher of the new atheism. This book is a banquet of biography, a prophetic evaluation of 20th Century Western Christian culture, a defence of common objections to the
Christian faith, and an undressing of self-assured anti-theism.
Peter has written this book as a record of his own journey, and also to help those who might be potentially ‘enchanted by the arguments of the anti-religious intellects of our age’ (page 2). Having been on the inside, he is able to shine a light on the motives and arrogance that makes up much of popular atheism.
Peter argues that the biggest weakness of his brother’s ‘faith’ is that ‘he often assumes that moral truths are self-evident, attributes purpose to the universe and swerves dangerously round the problem of conscience—which surely cannot be conscience if he is right—he is astonishingly unable to grasp that these assumptions are problems for his argument. This inability closes his mind to a great part of the debate, and so this makes his atheist faith insuperable for as long as he himself chooses to accept it’ (page 3). This inability is revealed with insufferable repetition in the 2009 documentary Collision—which narrates a string of public debates Christopher Hitchens held with the American Christian pastor and writer, Douglas Wilson. This DVD is highly recommended as both entertaining and thought-provoking viewing (see www.collisionmovie.com).
Peter puts forward a cogent case that the decay of 21st Century Western societies is due to the 20th Century decay of credal Christianity. He is scathing of Church of England nominalism in the last 100 years, especially in relation to English patriotism and the two World Wars. His reflections on the ‘national cult’ of British patriotism also critique our own Anzac traditions and loyalties.
As a professional journalist, Peter’s observations of the 20th Century have a breadth of wisdom and evidence, not least his insights comparing five years of living in Russia and his return to London at the turn of the century. As part of his spiritual journey he observes what effect predominant belief systems have on the virtue of any society: ‘I also concluded that a high moral standard cannot be reached or maintained unless it is generally accepted and understood by an overwhelming number of people. I have since concluded that a hitherto Christian society which was de-Christianised would also face such problems, because I have seen public discourtesy and incivility spreading rapidly in my own country as Christianity is forgotten’ (page 66).
Peter knows 20th century history exceedingly well. He was thoroughly versed in and supportive of leftist atheistic regimes, and of the excuses required to maintain this ideology in the face of repeated atrocity after atrocity. He is now ‘baffled and frustrated by the strange insistence of my anti-theist brother that the cruelty of Communist anti-theist regimes does not reflect badly on his case and his cause. It unquestionably does. Soviet Communism is organically linked to atheism, materialist rationalism and most of the other causes the new atheists support. It used the same language, treasured the same hopes and appealed to the same constituency as atheism today’ (page 100).
The biographical elements are sparse but riveting. The poetic majesty of the KJV and traditional Anglican 1662 Book of Common Prayer liturgy connected and awakened suppressed beliefs for Hitchens. In fact his journey back to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ came in part through his wife and children’s baptism in a traditional Church of England parish. As Anglican Evangelicals, what does it say of us that should we be surprised by this? There is more than one way to skin a secularist cat—of his brother he suggests that ‘it is my belief that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the unexpected force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time’ (page 3).
At 160 pages this is a concise book, eminently readable and well worth giving to our atheist friends. It represents a challenge to evangelicals who, being weak on history and aesthetics, are often left to debate on the narrow turf of Enlightenment categories. It highlights Christian failures but it also offers philosophical and historical ways forward from our Anglican heritage.
As a weakness, presentation of the person and work of Jesus Christ is significantly absent in this book. But it is a penetrating critique of the spirit of our age and I pray it opens eyes for many to consider the ascended Saviour-King.

Wayne Schuller is Vicar of Berwick Anglican Church in Melbourne’s booming south-eastern growth corridor.

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Written by: Rhys Bezzant

Created: 23 March 2012

Rhys Bezzant reviews Eric Metaxas’s biography of one of the twentieth century’s leading lights.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, martyr, prophet, spy
Eric Metaxas
Thomas Nelson 2010
ISBN 9781595551382

Sooner or later every Christian needs to read a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Even better, a couple of them. Pastors, no less, need to interact with his example and his ideas because he has become one of the most celebrated Christian leaders of the twentieth century. His image is engraved above the door of Westminster Abbey and in the stonework surrounding the altar of St John’s Cathedral in New York City. A recent documentary, produced by Martin Doblmeier and available on DVD, is a remarkable compilation of scenes from the Third Reich, a reconstruction of the events of Bonhoeffer’s dramatic life and interviews with surviving friends and family. Eric Metaxas’s biography of Bonhoeffer, published in 2010, is the latest English book to trace his story and summarise his ideas. It has been received with great fanfare, perhaps not least because it contains an introduction by Tim Keller, and reached number twenty-three on the New York Times Bestseller list. It appears that I am not the only person to be intrigued by Bonhoeffer’s life and untimely death.
His story may not be familiar to all. Growing up in a family of academics, diplomats, Prussian military elite, clergy and scientists, Bonhoeffer was destined for greatness. He was born in 1906 and was shaped by the tumultuous events of WWI, the humiliation of Germany and the collapse of the German monarchy, democratic instability in the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazis. Theologically, he was greatly influenced by Karl Barth, with whom he had a long correspondence, and by the ecumenical movement of the early twentieth century. His own doctorate was on the theology of the church.
Having spent time in pastoral work in London and Barcelona, and further study in New York at Union Seminary, he decided that his place during WWII was not to be found in the safety of America, but amidst the dangers and risks of ministry in Germany, resisting the anti-Semitism of the regime and training a new generation of pastors for service in a threatening world. He was later employed as an intelligence officer in the military secret service, and, despite his pacifism, was prepared to involve himself in plots to overthrow the government, in particular to assassinate Hitler. A remarkable step to take for a Lutheran pastor. For his connections to the conspirators, he was killed in the last few weeks of the war in a concentration camp in Bavaria. Some of his last words to a fellow inmate were: ‘This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.’
Metaxas’s biography traces this story with extraordinary pathos and is written in a most readable style. He does well to include material published for the first time in the 1990s, namely letters between Bonhoeffer and his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, and recognises that the resistance to Hitler, once thought to include just a few lone military officers, was actually a broader movement. The biography is long (542 pages), but often includes substantial quotations from letters, sermons, speeches and treatises, which is a useful gift to those who have not met Bonhoeffer before. This is a great place to start to understand the Nazi dictatorship and Bonhoeffer’s Christian discipleship.
The twentieth century has so many examples of Christians living through great evil. I find it purging to read accounts of Christians who persevered in their faith under totalitarian regimes, whether that was in Germany, the Soviet Union, Rumania, or China. There is something bracing about peeling back the layers to get to the core of obedience: listening to the voice of Christ alone and blocking out the screeches of propaganda officers or the seductive words of collaborators, who pervert what is true and real and lasting. I read a biography like this one and ask myself if I would have found it within my power to stand up against horrific crimes, and I pray again that God would spare me from the time of trial.
Unfortunately, after reading this biography, I still have to say that I am waiting for a modern biography of Bonhoeffer that is really fair and doesn’t try to force him into an evangelical box. I fear this is what this book has attempted to do, wittingly or not. It appears to me to be written to make Bonhoeffer appear to be a conservative evangelical, who read his Bible every day, who hated preaching which was divorced from the Scriptural text, and who had a conversion experience in a Baptist Church in Harlem. Actually, he confessed to his closest friend that there were times when he found it too difficult to read the Bible and pray, he was no inerrantist, and had multiple turning-points on an erratic pathway to sanctification.
This book contains almost no interaction with the treatises of Bonhoeffer, the philosophical reasons for his high regard for Gandhi, nor theological reasons for his involvement in the ecumenical movement. I was left wondering if this was a Bonhoeffer deliberately shaped for right-wing Christian conservatives in the US, who would value the Bible-reading Bonhoeffer, but may be less appreciative of the Bonhoeffer who criticises Christians too closely aligned with power. There appears to be no interaction with recent scholarly debate, either in America or in the German-speaking world. Apart from these substantial concerns, my confidence was undermined through dozens of careless mistakes in the spelling of German words, the assertion that a text from Matthew 10 is part of the Sermon on the Mount (page 536), and turns of phrase which were glib and jocular at moments in the story where nothing but searing honesty and sober writing was called for. It was surely an error to have Barth say that the theological community led by Bonhoeffer on the Baltic Coast had a ‘monastic eros and pathos’ (page 269). Certainly ‘ethos’ was Barth’s phrasing!
We need more Bonhoeffer. The tragedy of his life, and of German history in the first half of the twentieth century, needs frequent retelling, to set before us the example of a man who was not scared to confess Christ before human opposition, and to warn us of the base potential of human evil. On a recent visit to Berlin, I was most moved when I sat in the chair at his writing desk from which he was led away by the Gestapo for his two years in jail. The great and the grotesque met there on that day in April 1943. Read this book by Metaxas by all means and give it to others to read too. But find other books on Bonhoeffer to read to fill out the story. We must be generous to recognise that he was indeed a hero of the faith, even when he doesn’t share all the assumptions and priorities of evangelical conviction.

Rhys Bezzant is Dean of Missional Leadership and a lecturer in Christian Thought at Ridley Melbourne.

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Written by: Gordon Preece

Created: 23 March 2012

Gordon Preece reviews this year’s Australian Christian Book of the Year.

Economics for Life
Ian Harper
Acorn Press 2011
ISBN 9780908284955

Ian Harper is a well-known economist and perhaps one of our most public Christians. It was fitting that the launch of his book Economics for Life was hosted by the new merged entity of Deloitte-Access Economics and the launch was conducted wittily by Ian’s friend and fellow-believing economist, Glenn Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank. Ian has never hidden his faith, nor imposed it. As both an economist and Christian he respects choice, despite the Sunday Age’s headline ‘God to set minimum wage’, upon Ian’s appointment as Chairman of the Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC). It decontextualised Ian’s guiless theological throwaway line about praying before accepting the appointment. And its implication of some Taliban like theocratic takeover, was grossly unfair. Likewise the ABC’s quote from an anonymous professional colleague or jealous rival, describing him as a ‘conservative, right-wing, religious zealot’. Similarly shallow, adding a religious gloss to an ABC and Age bias, was the then Australian Uniting Church moderator’s view that a Christian couldn’t in good conscience serve in such a role. Ian is a controversial figure for secularists and Christians alike. Here is a chance to hear from the man himself.
The book is partly a personal apologetic addressed to two groups, economists suspicious of society, particularly church critics, and church critics suspicious of reductionist economists. But its style is more testimony than apologetic. It is first hand-testimony from a knowledgeable insider of some of the epochal economic moments in Australian life, and of how an economist, one of the high priests who’d fallen prey to some of that reductionist view that economics has ‘got it all’, found a more encompassing faith and a larger life in Christ. ‘Economics is for life, … but not for all of life’ (page vi).
The book falls neatly into three parts. Part 1 asks ‘What is economics, anyway?’It provides a user-friendly explanation in simple, clear prose, of the science and morality of economics. These seem to be neatly separated into descriptive and prescriptive (normative) economics, facts and values. Those educated in the humanities or with a Reformed theological view that nothing is value neutral will find the distinction too neat and simple, but they will not find an economist for whom morality does not matter.
An enlightening survey of Australian economic history in Part 2 ‘Economics at Work ‘illustrates Harper’s distinction between prescriptive and descriptive economics. It puts many of our contemporary issues as a resource-rich nation in helpful long-term context. Next comes an inside account of Ian‘s short time at the AFPC and their surprising determination of a major catch-up rise for minimum wage earners. I was particularly impressed by the empirical-meet-the-public methodology used. Ian’s agony over those who may lose their jobs in a time of economic downturn, especially if he and his colleagues raised the minimum wage too high, is palpable. It reminded me of my father’s agonising over having to sack people from his business. This is followed by an excellent explanation of the Global Financial Crisis, in the context of the 1890s and 1930s depressions, the former of which Ian thinks was closer to the GFC. The chapters on Financial System Reform and The Future of Banks reflect his time on the Wallis Committee whose reforms largely saved Australia from the worst effects of the GFC. Their prophecies of the demise of banks in favour of financial markets proved to be, Ian admits with characteristic honesty and humility, cracks in their crystal ball. He advocates a new banking enquiry to hedge against future finance crises.
Part 3 ‘Beyond Economics’ begins by arguing that while there’s nothing wrong with affluence, there’s more to the abundant and truly happy life. This chapter seems more moderate and appreciate of the happiness literature questioning capitalism than Ian’s ‘Treating Affluenza’ in Ian and Sam Gregg’s Christian Theology and Market Economics. In fact, in general, the GFC’s capitalist excesses seems to have had a moderating effect on Ian’s tone. The final chapter, ‘There’s More to Life than Economics’ is for me the highlight of this economist’s testimony. It is a moving story of how Ian came to Christ from a nominal church-school educated background, through his wife Roslyn’s influence after her conversion at Princeton University chapel, and through the timely influence of a visiting Christian economist colleague and the genuine friendship evangelism and apologetics of once economist, now Bishop John Harrower. Oh please God that our churches would encourage more of such thoughtful and unapologetic marketplace mission, and thank God, even when we disagree with some of his economics, as I do, for an economist evangelist and man of integrity like Ian Harper.
So for a model of marketplace ministry with integrity and excellence, for a user-friendly understanding of a major area of modern life, for an interesting look behind the news of industrial relations and the GFC, buy this book, or if none of those work, to see what it takes to win the Australian Christian Book of the Year Award.

Gordon Preece is the Senior Minister at Yarraville Anglican Church, Director of Ethos: Evangelical Alliance Centre for Christianity and Society (www.ethos.org.au) and author of the forthcoming book Moth and Rust Consume: Christ, Wealth and Ongoing Financial Crises.

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Written by: Kanishka Raffel

Created: 23 March 2012

Kanishka Raffel chooses a favorite book

The Cross of Christ
John Stott
InterVarsity Press 1989
ISBN 9780851106748

The Cross of Christ was the first Christian book I owned other than the Bible. It is one of only two or three books that I re-read, either in whole or part, every year. It is well known and well loved for its thoroughgoing exposition of the meaning and significance of the work of the Lord Jesus in his death upon the Cross. The scriptural, historical and theological rigour of Stott’s articulation of the meaning of the cross is amply demonstrated in his gracious but exacting response to critiques of the evangelical doctrine of the atonement.

Stott affirms not only the centrality of the Cross for understanding Christianity, but the centrality of ‘satisfaction through substitution’ for understanding the Cross (page 159). Stott expounds the bible’s images of the atonement—propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation—and demonstrates how substitution is ‘the essence of each image and the heart of atonement itself’ (page 203).

He engages with historical and contemporary debates with typical generosity and resolute fidelity to Scripture. But the book is no mere textbook. It is steeped in reverent praise of the crucified and risen Lord who gave himself for his people. Part Four of the book, ‘Living Under the Cross’, is a manual for disciples who have been summoned to ‘take up your cross and follow’. Stott describes a life of joyful fellowship and service, generosity and forgiveness, endurance and hope; a life infused with the transforming power of the Cross of Christ. The book concludes with seven affirmations about the cross drawn from the Letter to the Galatians. One could hardly hope for a better seven day cycle of meditations on Christian life and service.

Kanishka Raffel is Rector of St Matthew’s Shenton Park, Perth.