Elliot Ritzema

Category: Books

  • May 2008: Books Read

    Aight my peeps, it is that time of the month once again where I tell you what my nose has been buried in for the past 30-31 days. The end of last month saw me graduate from my master’s program, so there has been a change in my reading habits. Not much of one, though. Here they are:

    The Reformed Pastor1. The Reformed Pastor, by Richard Baxter. Like After Virtue last month, this was a book that I started reading earlier this year, but had to put down because of other pressing obligations. It was written by a 17th-century English Puritan, who wrote it in response to a request by a ministerial association for a little talk on the nature and task of pastoral ministry. He was ill on the day that he was supposed to give this lecture/sermon, so he stayed home and wrote this tome instead (they didn’t call him “Scribbling Dick” for nothing). Despite having been written over 300 years ago, this book is still in print because Baxter has some sound advice for those in pastoral roles in any age. Two things that he stressed which will stick with me were his call for ministers to minister out of living, genuine faith, and his call for ministers to visit each family in their parish annually and take interest in each person’s spiritual state. Not everything Baxter said can be translated directly to our own day and age, but his is a serious call to an energetic pursuit of pastoral work which shouldn’t be ignored in any age.

    2. Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s by R.A. Scotti. This is an entertaining look at the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, 1506-1626. I read it in preparation for the trip I’m taking which starts next week. It was particularly interesting to read, for perhaps the first time, a book about this time period in which the focus was not on the theological (or even historical) implications of what was going on. It’s just a good yarn about the building of a cathedral, and the lives of the popes and the artists who labored over it for so many years.

    Ring for Jeeves3. Ring for Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse. I’ve already sung the praises of P.G. Wodehouse once this week, so I don’t need to go into it again. This is your basic book about an English aristocrat who needs extra money so he disguises himself and works as a bookie, and who wants to sell his country estate to a wealthy widow whom he finds out is an old flame, which makes his current fiancee jealous, not to mention the hunter who wants to marry the widow, and who by the way was cheated out of his money at the race track by the aforementioned English aristocrat. But everything works out well in the end.

    Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World4. Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After Virtue, by Jonathan R. Wilson. I read After Virtue earlier this year, and discussed it in a group led by Prof. Wilson, so I thought it would be helpful to read the book he wrote on the subject. And it was. The book is short – just 78 pages – but it has exerted a disproportionate influence on account of its call for a “new monasticism.” This, I think, has resonated with a lot of people in our culture. In the book, Wilson draws out several lessons from MacIntyre:

    1) that the church must learn to live with its history (distinguishing among the church, the kingdom and the world),
    2) that we live in a fragmented rather than a pluralistic world,
    3) that we live in the midst of the failure of the Enlightenment project in the church and the world, and the effects of this failure are often difficult to discern,
    4) that we must revitalize our ability to give a Christian account of “the good life,” to draw on the living Christian tradition, to engage in practices that grow us in our character as disciples, and to live in community,
    5) and this finally leads us to the recovery of a “new monasticism.”

  • P.G. Wodehouse: English Literature’s Performing Flea

    One of the good things about having graduated from school is that I get to read fiction again. And one of the great things about reading fiction is the work of P.G. Wodehouse.

    Wodehouse (pronounced WOOD-house) was an English writer of comic fiction. These days, he is probably best known as the creator of the butler Jeeves and his incompetent master, Bertie Wooster. He was also a playwright, and wrote lyrics for musicals. He was called “English literature’s performing flea” by playwright Sean O’Casey, and embraced the nickname as his own. (He even published a volume of his letters under the title Performing Flea) I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Wodehouse when I was a kid, because he is one of my mom’s favorite authors and we had several of his books around the house.

    What I love about Wodehouse is not that he writes books that are profound works of Literature. He is a wonderful writer in terms of his style, but he chose throughout his life to devote his great talent to writing, as he called his books, “musical comedies without music.” If you, dear reader, are looking for some summer reading to pass the time while you lay beside the pool, there can be no finer choice than a book by Wodehouse. And he wrote 96 books over his 73-year writing career, so there are lots to choose from. One of my personal favorites is Joy in the Morning (sometimes published in the U.S. as Jeeves in the Morning). It is a typical Jeeves and Wooster book, featuring the main characters immersing themselves in all kinds of trouble, with everything ending happily in the end (and it probably features an engagement, as many of his books do, but I can’t remember).

    One of the more entertaining aspects of Wodehouse’s prose style are his similes. Here are a few entertaining samples from Wodehouse’s works (you can find more at the Random Wodehouse Quote page):

    “Alf Todd,” said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, “has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat’s left ear with a red-hot needle.” – Ukridge (1924)

    Chimp Twist was looking like a monkey that had bitten into a bad nut, and Soapy Molloy like an American Senator who has received an anonymous telegram saying, “All is discovered. Fly at once.”

    She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle with a shrewd “Emu” in the top right hand corner.

    He uttered a sound much like a bull dog swallowing a pork chop whose dimensions it has underestimated.

    He looked haggard and careworn, like a Borgia who has suddenly remembered that he has forgotten to shove cyanide in the consomme, and the dinner-gong due any moment.

    The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. – Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)

    Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, “So, you’re back from Moscow, eh?”.

    He looked like a bishop who has just discovered Schism and Doubt among the minor clergy.

    Do yourself a favor and go pick up some Wodehouse at the nearest used book store with all speed.

  • Mark Twain and the Problem of Evil

    Over the last couple of nights, Mary and I watched a documentary on Mark Twain, directed by Ken Burns (who also brought us documentaries called Baseball, The Civil War, and Jazz). Mark Twain has been one of my favorite authors for a while – ever since I was a teenager and read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. When I lived in Prague in 2002, I was looking around my school’s English library one fall day and found a biography of him (Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan) and all of his essays in one volume. I read both of them that year.

    What fascinates me about Mark Twain is not just that he was a fantastic writer, but he led an intriguing and eventful life. He was born in a small town in Missouri, as everyone knows, and variously worked as a printer’s assistant, a riverboat captain, a prospector, and a journalist (among other things) before he began to earn money from his books. His was also a tragic life: even though he was a brilliant writer and made a comfortable living from his books, he was obsessed with investment schemes that would make him still richer. These invariably failed, and made it necessary for him to write and lecture constantly to get out of debt. (more…)

  • April 2008: Books Read

    I graduated last Monday night, and my parents were in town to see it. Up until then, I’d been pretty busy with various things that I had left to the side while in the thick of the semester: going to the doctor, doing my taxes, etc. From now until I leave for the cruise on June 3, I don’t have as much to do. So I’m getting back into blogging regularly. Here are the books I finished during the last month:

    1. A Little Guide to Christian Spirituality: Three Dimensions of Life With God by Glen Scorgie. This book was the second of the two textbooks I was assigned to read for my Christian Spirit class. I actually read it in March, but forgot about it because I’d read it so quickly. Unlike Thirsty for God, the other textbook for the class, this is not a historical survey of Christian spirituality, but is a popular-level introduction to the Christian take on that much-used but little-understood word “spirituality.” The three dimensions referred to in the title are the relational, transformational, and vocational. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is interested in what spirituality means for Christians. The very short answer to that question is that, for Christians, spirituality is life in the Spirit – not just any spirit, but the Holy Spirit.

    2. The Shoes of the Fisherman, by Morris L. West. When I was finished with classes, I felt like reading a novel, and so I picked this one up off my shelf. My mom had given it to me a few years ago, but I never made the time to read it. It is a novel about a pope from Russia, published in 1963. Some say that it foreshadowed the election of John Paul II, who was the first Slavic pope. It’s unclear whether West did this deliberately, but one thing that he definitely did do on purpose is include a character reminiscent of Pierre Tielhard de Chardin. This character, a Jesuit, is called to Rome over the course of the book, wins the love and confidence of the pope, and then has his work on evolutionary biology condemned by the Catholic Church. In all, I found the book thoughtful and thought-provoking, though the plot was very slow-moving. It took me a while to get into it, and to care about some of the characters. By the time that happened, the book (just 288 pages) was over.

    3. After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre. This book I began back in January, when it was discussed by the Ethics Reading Group I was a part of this semester. I made it through all but the last three chapters, then I was overcome by the busyness of the semester. After I finished classes, I went back and finished. I found this an interesting and provocative read. My friend Eric has written over on his blog that After Virtue is “a critique of modernity from the inside.” I think this is a fair assessment. MacIntyre stands back from modernity and criticizes its accounts of ethics, and I think that he is brilliant in his critique. But in the end, MacIntyre is a western liberal who longs for Aristotle, and chooses to go back. He is part of modernity even in his critique of modernity. He argues for teleological ethics in this book, but when the book ends, the reader finds out that MacIntyre has not actually given us a telos. He argues for ethics situated in a community, but in the end his readers are left wondering where to find such a community. This is in part why so many Christians have been attracted to this book. When MacIntyre wrote the book, he was not a Catholic, but in subsequent years he converted to Catholicism. He was on the doorstep of the church when he wrote the book, and he leaves his readers there as well. His work is philosophical rather than theological. But it has left itself open to theological interpretation, and writers like Stanley Hauerwas and Jonathan R. Wilson (who teaches at Carey Theological College and participated in the Ethics Reading Group) have taken up this task in the years since After Virtue was written. One book that I would like to read in the coming month is Wilson’s Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s ‘After Virtue.’

  • March 2008: Books Read

    March was a very busy reading month, but I didn’t have much to show for it in terms of books actually completed. Most of the time I was doing research for papers, and it’s not typical for me to read whole books for that. But here is the list of books:

    1. Stories of Karol: The Unknown Life of John Paul II, by Gian Franco Svidercoschi. (more…)

  • February 2008: Books Read

    Since much of what I do as a student is read, I thought you might be interested in what I’ve had my nose buried in these last 29 days. Although I read a lot of excerpts and articles, I’ll just list here those books that I read from beginning to end. (not those I read from end to beginning, which was none. This month.)

    1. Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden

    Mary gave me this one for Christmas, and fortuitously I was able to read it for my class, “The Christian Pastor in Historical Perspective.” I tried to read a different biography of Edwards a few years ago, and I must admit that I got just under halfway through before I was too bored to continue. I thought at the time, “How interesting can reading about a guy’s life possibly be if he spends 13 hours a day in his study?” After reading Marsden’s book, my answer to that question is, “Extremely, if the right person is writing about him.” Marsden does a wonderful job of setting Edwards in his 18th century context: as a Puritan, as an early American, as a revivalist, as a theologian, and as an intellectual with his finger on the pulse of the thinking of his day. While it paints a sympathetic portrait, it is by no means hagiographical. Edwards had faults, but he is worth reading about if for no other reason than to learn about the influence he had on religion in the United States.

    2. The Search for Christian America by Marsden, Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch.
    (more…)

  • Don’t Cry For Me, Readers. The Truth Is, I’ve Got Work To Do

    For those of you who may be wondering where I’ve been — the semester started at the beginning of last week, and now I’m deep into many books and assignments. So although life hasn’t stopped, I haven’t found much time to blog in the past week. I’ll try to post some thoughts from time to time, but since I’m not particularly interested at this moment in building a large and faithful readership (which requires regular blogging 4-6 times a week, so I’m told), I’ll just let you know that I’ve got a lot of work to do.

    If you’re interested in what I’m reading at the moment, there is a sidebar on the right that shows what I’m working on. If you click on the “My Library” link, you can see all of the books I own, which I’ve sorted into “Owned and Read,” “Owned and Not Read,” “Reference,” and “Reading Now.” Since many of my books are currently in boxes or not readily available, I thought that it would be useful to keep track of them online until I can live in a permanent location with bookshelves.

  • Reinhold Niebuhr. Again.

    When I started this blog back in September, I didn’t think that I would write two posts on Reinhold Niebuhr in the first five months. I have never even read an entire book by him (though I have read articles). And yet, here is number two (Here is number one):

    Over the break, one of the books that I read was a biography of Reinhold Niebuhr by Richard Fox. I got this book for free last year from a pastor in Burnaby, BC who was retiring and giving away much of his library. I read it now because I have heard a lot about Niebuhr in my time as a theology student, but I was still a little foggy about how to classify him. Or even whether or not I agreed with him.

    The book, I must say, was a great help. It dealt with the development of his ideas and his actions based on those ideas in a very helpful way, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in “Reinie” (as his friends called him) and is a little bewildered by the sheer amount of what he wrote over his long public career. It only makes sense that people should be bewildered; after all, he did write some seemingly contradictory things. Here is a quote from the epilogue:

    In retrospect his centrifugal career tends to fragment into its component parts. Latter-day disciples seize upon the particular Niebuhr they prefer. Neoconservatives flock to the Niebuhr of the late 1940s and 1950s: the vehement opponent of Soviet communism, the persistent adversary of left utopianism. Liberals and left-liberals take heart from the Niebuhr of the 1920s and 1930s: the zealous antagonist of business hegemony, the angry critic of the consumer culture. Theological scholars meanwhile debate his religious works, cut off from the historians and social scientists who analyze his political thought. In life Niebuhr always confounded those who stressed one side of his career or one segment of his standpoint at the expense of another. He confused his comrades as often as his detractors.

    – p. 294

    In the end, although he did have interesting perspectives as an ethicist, as an evangelical Christian I was taken aback by his theological liberalism (and, though he did criticize liberals a lot over the course of his career, he remained liberal himself throughout his life). Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

    …for all its attention to Christ crucified and risen, the book [The Nature and Destiny of Man] offerend only a very abstract Incarnation and scant assurance of the eternal life most believers yearned for. Niebuhr did not want to give ‘comfort to literalists,’ as he wrote to Norman Kemp-Smith. . . . ‘I have not the slightest interest in the empty tomb or physical resurrection.’

    – p. 215

    For him religion was not doing good, feeling holy, or experiencing the transcendent; it was grasping the evil in one’s efforts to do good, recognizing one’s finitude, realizing that the transcendent was unattainable. . . . His religion, for all of its Biblical allusions and ethical drive – was more like a philosophy of life than a mystical encounter.

    – p. 172

    I must say that recognizing one’s finitude is a good thing. But in the end, I’ve got deep reservations about Niebuhr because his God simply doesn’t act in history. His God is not the God who revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth. If his ethics has this belief in the background, I’ve got to take whatever he says with a huge grain of salt. Niebuhr had conflicts with his brother Richard over this very point during the course of their lives, and I think Richard is the more orthodox of the two.

  • Heavy Presents

    Even though I’m ambivalent about the commercialism of Christmas, I still appreciate the tradition of gift-giving. It’s an excuse to give gifts to other people, and a good opportunity to add books to my library. Here are some of the books that I received this year:

    Helping Angry People

    Meet The Rabbis

    Both of the above books I got from my brother and sister-in-law. The first I wanted because although I love theology and biblical studies, I thought I could stand to learn a lot more about how to deal with people in situations as a pastor. The second I wanted because I wanted a good introduction to Jesus’ Jewish background (particularly with regard to the parables and the Sermon on the Mount). There are a lot of books on this out there, and I looked for a while but couldn’t find one book or author that was recognizably the “best.” So, I went ahead and asked for one that just looked “good.”

    The Bible As It Was

    The One, The Three and the Many

    These next two I got from my dad. The first one I was interested in for similar reasons I was interested in Meet the Rabbis: it focuses on Jewish interpretation of the Torah from 100-300 A.D. The second book is one that has been mentioned at Regent frequently. Since it’s talked about so much, I figured I ought to read it.

    A Life

    This last one I got from my lovely, intelligent and thoughtful girlfriend. Not everyone would love to get this book for Christmas, but she knows my love language: receiving biographies of Christian leaders. And it’s appropriate that she is the one who gave it to me, since she is a lover of history herself.

    Did you receive any exciting books for Christmas? Any recommendations for me to read (in a couple of years, when I’m finished with all the books I own but haven’t read) based on these?

  • Rookie Dad

    ‘Tis the season for not writing many blog posts. I’ve been visiting family for the last several days, and will continue to visit family for a few more. I flew from Vancouver to North Carolina to visit my parents, and I drove from North Carolina to Michigan with my dad a couple of days ago. Now we will spend time with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Grand Rapids until just after Christmas. Then we will go visit my brother, sister-in-law and nephews in Wisconsin for a few days. Then, back to North Carolina for a few days and then back to Washington.

    So as you can see, I’m too busy relaxing and enjoying the company of family to write much.

    Rookie Dad

    The main point of this post, though, is to encourage all of you to read a book that was written by a friend of mine. It is called Rookie Dad: Thoughts on First-Time Fatherhood, and is written by David Jacobsen (The link to the blog that he and his wife Christine write is on the right). Dave graduated from Regent a couple of years ago, and he was the editor of the Et Cetera my first year there. He is a wonderful writer, and has a great sense of humor. I’ve not read the whole book, but I went to his Arts Thesis presentation when he read some excerpts from it. The excerpts that he read were funny – as I would expect from him – but also sincere and thoughtful, but not in a corny way, or a way that makes you think he just tossed in a bit of sincerity because he thought he should.

    But don’t just take my word for it: visit his web site and read some sample chapters for yourself. Or, go straight to Amazon and buy it.