Author and Story

Christopher Miller, a Speculative Faith contributor, wrote an intriguing blog entitled, We Are Not Storyless!  He began with the unthinkable (for a writer at least) of what it would be like if there were no such thing as story. He did not phrase the question completely in terms of stories, that is he did not just ask, What if there were no stories, but, What if there were no such thing as Story. The difference is quite palpable if one dwells on it. Stories are the concrete, sweat and tears labor of an author that could not at all be a possibility if there were no such thing as the ideal or concept of Story. When an author cobbles together characters and narrative in a plot that unfolds with a beginning, middle, and an end, which has a progression that is logical, coherent, and meaningful, he can only do so because there is Story.

The difference might be illustrated with miracles. Redemptive history as it is recorded in the Bible was relatively devoid of miracles; they came few and far between. Only during specific redemptive events, such as the Exodus, did miracles teem. They appear sporadically elsewhere in Old Testament history. But when Jesus appears, the New Testament record bubbles over with miracles. John deliberated over the seven he included in his gospel because he writes: And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John 20:30, 31. John chose the seven miracles he records for a specific reason - to persuade the reader to believe in the Son of God. We may say that Jesus performed a miracle to authenticate his claim as the God-man and to validate his message - the gospel. Or, we may say that Jesus proved himself and his message to be true by way of miracle. In the first instance, we have a specific event in mind; in the second, we have an idea of what characterizes the event. We may simply point to the act of Jesus turning water into wine on the one hand, or we may think more deeply, on the other, and ponder the supernatural character of that act and see that it typifies what is true about all such acts, that they are indicative of a person in which everything about him is supernatural.

In the same way are stories related to Story. We talk about Story in the abstract because that is where it belongs. But without the abstract, the concrete would be impossible. Without the idea of Story, there could be no such things as stories. There must be the metaphysical for there to be the physical. There must be the idea before there is a materialization of that idea in the physical world in which we live. Plato labored over the problem of form and matter, and in a way, that is what we are doing here.

Consider the question, Where did Story come from? How is it that there is Story in the first place that makes stories a possibility? The answer lies in the Triune God. Before creation ever was, there was God in three Persons. He was Story and he was the story. He was Story because everything necessary for a story resided in him - Characters, interrelation, communion. God was his own story because he was Story.

In the internal counsel of the Triune God, there was the purpose to create. With the creation, God brought story into being in a different realm. A part of that story is the creation of one who bears the image of God, and as image bearer, he has the capacity to reflect God as story-maker. It may be that story-making reflects God more fully than any other creative attribute man has. In story-making, the author is creating an imaginative world in which he purposes his characters to behave in a certain manner and for particular ends - ends that please him as the author. Christopher Miller struck at the heart of this as he, in effect, compares our authorship with the authorship of God:

As an author, I don’t ask my characters for permission to let them suffer or face evil. I know the troubles they face will ultimately be for their good. I don’t revel in the difficulty, but without trials their overcoming would not nearly be as good. We do not know what is good for us. Our perspective is two dimensional, the Author alone has the full picture.

The Christian Writer and Conflict

A good story is always a story of conflict. A boring story is one in which everything goes right and nothing goes wrong. The sharper the conflict the more there is in favor of the story being a good one. This conflict comes in all shapes and sizes. Conflict between two persons, conflict between two teams, two parties, two countries. The conflict always works its way into the lives of at least two people. The persons involved may be part of a larger body, such as a corporation, or an athletic team, a culture, an army. Even the abstract crystallizes into the concrete lives of human beings. Consider Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, and the assumed struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, how it led to the great revolutions that produced the Soviet Union and Red China. Or, Hitler’s Mein Kampf with its seminal idea of the extermination of European Jewry, the demand for Lebensraum, and the ideal of racial purity all of which led to Nazi death camps all over Europe and a war on two fronts.

Conflict is essential to a story’s credibility not to mention its success. Anyone who knows anything about writing knows that. But why is that so? Why is the conflict so tantalizing, even as it may require the horrors of the human condition to be starkly painted?

At bottom, it is because there is nothing else the human being can relate to. Ever since the Fall, man has always known struggle and conflict. It is part and parcel to his existence. That's what Mom and Dad, and Aunt Max and Uncle Jesse talk about. It's what the neighbors gossip about over the fence. It's what my dog experienced with the dysplasia in his hip.

That struggle comes under the two broad categories of good and evil. These may refer to the physical conflict that typically is used to describe the human condition - desert and paradise, poverty and riches, paucity and plenitude. But they also refer to moral conflict, the clash between doing the right and doing the wrong.

If good and evil are the essence of conflict, then every good story of fiction in some fashion is a story about precisely that, good and evil.

Think of that, as a Christian writer. Only the Christian, enlightened by the word of God and illuminated by the Holy Spirit, truly knows what good and evil are. The Christian writer is the most qualified to write anything fictional from that standpoint. If that truth could sink deep into every Christian writer’s literary heart, I think it would profoundly impact Christian fiction.

Paul wrote, the Lord Jesus Christ ‘gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.’ Gal 1:4. This world is intrinsically, inherently, through and through an evil, dark world, and the Christian is the lamp that God has placed here to shed some light on it (Matt 5:16). A Christian writer of fiction is the only truly eligible writer that can do this for the reading world.

Fiction is a marvelous vehicle to bring the reader face to face with not only the evil around him, but also the evil within. When trying to do this, however, it can easily come across as preachy dialogue set in a cast of out-of-touch maudlin characters. There is no requisite for sermonizing. Serious dialogue, yes, where the ‘unbeliever’ is not a push over. Rosy personalities are fine as long as the rose faces the thorns, blight, and drought of the real world - the evil world.

Just as important as the message is the tapestry it is woven into. The writer must write with the greatest care, not shabbily, but as an artisan, crafting his words and sentences into a laudable tale that brings to the eyes and mind of the reader what the conflict between good and evil really is. As the most serious problem in the universe - good and evil - the work becomes a weighty tale elegantly woven. That is not easy, but no work of art that truly earns that accolade is easy. As Christian and writer, it is incumbent that we put into our story the best that we have. Our goal is to paint the canvas and charge the imagination so that the ubiquitous evil character of this world, which reigns in the heart of every person from birth, is not glossed over. The revelation of evil readies the stage for the only hope and deliverance from it, the great redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Spirit Well. Day Three of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

The Spirit Well, by Stephen Lawhead

Day Three of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

One of the intriguing developments of Quest Three is the appearance of the Zetetic Society. Cassandra Clarke, a paleontologist working on a dig in Arizona in her pursuit of a Ph.D., is drawn into the world of ley travel and ends up in Damascus, Syria, circa 1930s. Through a poster she becomes aware of the Zetetic Society who promise they can help those who are ‘lost, lonely, and looking for something to believe in.’ Fascinating how that seems to describe Cass. All the more so since the posters cannot be seen by everyone, only by those who are ready and willing to see it.

There are three striking personalities associated with the Society: Brendan Hanno, Mrs. Rosemary Peelstick, and Tess, though the latter comes in rather late. Brendan and Rosemary eventually get around to explaining the mission of the society in earnest. Here is a rehash of the dialog which I have stripped of its beauty, rhythm and homeliness:

Brendan: “It is not too much to say that the future of humankind may depend on the work of the society. We are engaged in a project of such importance to humankind that its success will usher in the final consummation of the universe. . . Our aim is nothing less than achieving God’s own purpose for His creation.”

Cass: “And what purpose would that be?”

Rosemary: “Why, the objective manifestation of the supreme values of goodness, beauty, and truth, grounded in the infinite love and goodness of the Creator.”

Brendan: “Human beings are not a trivial by-product of the universe. Rather, we--you, me, everyone else--all humankind is the reason the cosmos was created in the first place.”

Cass: “I am familiar with the anthropic principle. The theory that the universe was designed to bring about human life--that the universe exists not only for us but because of us.”

Rosemary: “We go further. We extend the principle to say that the universe was conceived and created as a place to grow and perfect independent conscious agents and fit them for eternity.”

Cass: “Human beings, you mean.”

Rosemary: “Yes, dear--human beings.”

Brendan: “What is the aim, the purpose for such an elaborate scheme? [It is] to promote the formation of harmonious communities of self-aware individuals capable of knowing and enjoying the Creator, and joining in the ongoing creation of the cosmos.”

Cass: {Confused, uneasy}

Brendan: “The Omega Point is. . . the point at which the purpose of the universe is finally and fully realised. When the universes reaches the point where more people desire the union, harmony, and fulfilment intended by the Creator, then the balance will have been tipped, so to speak, and the cosmos will proceed to the Omega Point--that is, its final consummation. The universe will be transformed in an incorruptible, everlasting reality of supreme goodness.”

Cass: “Heaven?”

Rosemary: “Yes, but not another realm or world. This world, this universe, transfigured--the New Heaven and the New Earth. It will be a place of eternal celebration of God’s love and goodness where we will live and work to achieve the full potential for which humanity was created.”

Cass: “Which is?”

Rosemary: “Human destiny lies in the mastery of the cosmos for the purpose of creating new experiences of goodness, beauty, and truth for all living things.”

Brendan: “And extending those values into the rest of the universe at large. You see, the universe as it exists now is but Phase One, you might say--it is where living human souls are generated and learn the conditions of consciousness and independence. The ultimate fulfilment of the lives so generated, however, will only be found in the next phase of creation--a transformation we can hardly imagine.”

There are some things I really like about this. One is that the purpose of the creation (in part) is that human beings might know and enjoy the Creator. The other is the corollary to that, that this knowing and enjoying will take place not in another dimension of which we have no point of contact, but in this world, this cosmos--albeit transformed.

But virtally everthing else is wrong. Before I appeal to scripture, let me say that I do so because the Society apparently does. The reference to the New Heaven and New Earth is from Revelation 21, as well as 2 Peter 3:13, Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. And as we will see, Brendan cites Saint Paul.

The significant thing that Peter says about the new heaven and earth is it is where righteousness dwells. It is not so for the old heaven and earth. Paul says that the whole creation is groaning now because of the death and corruption that descended upon everything when Adam sinned (Romans 8:22; Romans 5:12), and it awaits the day when it will be delivered from this corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God, Romans 8:21. Revelation says that nothing will enter into the new creation that will defile it.

What is missing in the Zetetic Society’s eschatology is that the end point is not simply the betterment of humankind, but its rescue from sin into a sinless world. That is what Paul’s eschatology is all about. And it will not take place at a tipping point where mankind seems to wake up and realize its purpose. Mankind will not do that precisely because of its deadness in sin. Men, women, and children are deaf of ear and blind of eye to their sin because they are dead in it, Ephesians 2:1. Man on his own will never wake up to anything spiritual. If he does so, it is only of God’s doing, and it is always a waking up to his own sinfulness and God’s condemnation because of it. He is awakened to a heart-rending awareness of his sin and loathes it. He is aware of God’s mercy and grace in the sacrifice of Christ for his sin, and flees to it. None of this is in the Zetetic Society’s eschatology, anthropology, soteriology, or cosmology.

Brendan appeals to the references of “our guide” Saint Paul, that our conflict is not of flesh and blood, but with “the spiritual hosts of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly warfare.” [p 302]. How much better it would be if Brendan and the society listened to everything their guide had to say.

The Society smacks of universalism. . . it is difficult to see any sign that it is not.

“Human destiny lies in the mastery of the cosmos for the purpose of creating new experiences of goodness, beauty, and truth for all living things.”

That statement sounds like one out of a universalist’s handbook. One of the key passages the Christian Universalist appeals to is 1 Cor 15:22, For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. That reference is in the middle of an exposition by Paul that reveals exactly how the so-called Omega Point will be reached. A proper explanation of that text not only refutes universalism, but also corrects any notion that there is a tipping point.

The Zetetics sound more like an eclectic cult than a Christian society.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson for kindly providing a copy of The Spirit Well for review on the October, 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

The Spirit Well 
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The Spirit Well, Day Two of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

The Spirit Well, by Stephen Lawhead

Day Two of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

My original intent for day two was to do something that I had done for The Bone House, and that was try to lay out the lines of development sequentially for the principle characters of the story.

I began, and all seemed to be going along just fine, but when I was a good ways into Wilhelmina’s adventure, I got lost.

After Wilhelmina is warned by Lady Haven Fayth that Lord Archelaeus Burleigh has devised a plan that will likely put Mina in jeopardy, Mina decides it is best to leave medieval Prague for a while. Among other things, it will give her some time to look for Kit. She decides she must first go to her mentor, Brother Lazarus and enlist his aid.

On page 96, the back story of how Wilhelmina first came to meet Brother Lazarus begins and continues on for pages and chapters, so excessively that I’m not sure if or where Mina’s tale returns to the point where the back story began. It just seemed that for Wilhelmina the pieces no longer fit together.

Now I am going to assume that on closer inspection, I will find that they do, but the fact that I’m running into such a problem now may indicate that the method Mr. Lawhead has taken up may not be the best after all. Perhaps the story should be told in a more linear fashion for each character. The intersection and coincidence of individual stories prohibit a pure linear tale, but I think I’m ready to say it could be improved upon.

I hope to eventually get it all straightened out, but it is doubtful that will happen before the tour will end. At any rate, when I do, I’ll post it.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson for kindly providing a copy of The Spirit Well for review on the October, 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

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The Spirit Well, Day One of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

The Spirit Well, by Stephen Lawhead

Day One of the October 2012 CSFF Blog Tour

The Spirit Well is the third quest of the Bright Empires series. The saga began in The Skin Map which introduced ley travel and Arthur Flinders-Petrie or The Man Who is Map. It continued in the second quest, The Bone House, where the Well of Souls (The Spirit Well) was briefly encountered in its climax. And now, the third quest which advances the saga further wherein the threads of the first two continue to grow and bifurcate – an expected consequence of a story of ley travel.

Ley travel may be taken as a mistaken synonym for time travel but it is really a journey through space and time together. As such, the ley travelers of our story (and the number is growing) take the entranced reader backwards and forwards in time as well as hither and yon across the globe.

Ley travel reminds me of a rather primitive computer game I wrote for my daughter once (she was twelve then). Written in Commodore Basic for the Commodore 128, it allowed two players to compete by controlling their individual figures (best described as a disc) across a grid-like screen. The goal was to snatch and possess as long as possible a green diamond shaped object. The longer you carried it the more points you scored. If your opponent managed to intersect your object, he gained control of the green diamond and began to rack up the points. This was well and good but was too predictable. It needed some randomness, so I placed holes here and there in the grid; as the game progressed, more holes would appear. If your opponent was hot on your tail and you could make it to a hole in time, you could duck into it and come out at another hole whose location was unpredictable. Sometimes that helped, other times it did not – you might pop out right in the path of your pursuer and lose the diamond. My daughter and I enjoyed it for hours.

The popping into a hole and randomly popping out of another is like the ley jumps of our story. You may be in the United States one moment, and somewhere in the Middle East the next, and very possibly in a different decade or even century. Such was the experience of a new comer to the story. Cassandra Clarke, a paleontologist and hopeful Ph.D. is swept from her dig in Arizona and lands in a vast monochrome plain which has the feel of prehistory. Attempting to return the way she came, she is transported to Damascus where she has ‘the sensation of having wandered onto a movie set of a film about the 1930s.’

The Spirit Well is a cast of many characters, most of them introduced to us in the first two quests. Kit Livingstone, parted from his girlfriend (Wilhelmina) by the trickiness of ley travel, has ended up in the stone ages where he has taken up with primitives who have the uncanny ability to communicate telepathically. One wonders over the significance of that. He’s the one who has had a glimpse of the Well of Souls, transported there by ley travel, having slipped through the solid dirt floor of a house of bones the shape of an igloo. What he saw at the Well is significant and certain to play prominently in the grand quest.

Wilhelmina herself, a fussy and rather colorless personality, has ley traveled to medieval Prague, where she has become an enterprising and charming woman who has taken up a partnership with a likable baker. She introduced the coffe house to history and makes a fortune at it. She befriends some of the court of the mad emperor Rudolph and surreptitiously gains the possession of what she calls a ley lamp – a device that can detect ley activity, much like the gizmos of Ghostbusters which detect the paranormal activity of the spirit world. Through much practice, she learns to come and go as she pleases. In this third quest, she finds Brother Lazarus (aka Father Giambattis Becarra), an astronomer in Spain who himself is a ley traveler, a secret he was able to keep until Mina’s arrival. Mina poses as a nun, and learns much from Brother Lazarus about the mystery of the electromagnetic energies that allow one to pop in and out of space and time. He has a theory that one’s departure point along a ley line determines the time period of a traveler’s destination. Get that down and theoretically, one may travel to any point in history.

Lord Archelaeus Burleigh is a ruthless dealer in antiquities who has gained some expertise in ley travel (he is much the genius behind the device for astral exploration, i.e., Mina’s ley lamp) and thereby has obtained countless treasures by which he has made a fortune.

The fate of Arthur Flinders-Petrie and his son Benedict is revealed. Arthur, the original expert of ley travel, who had discovered something marvelous but kept the secret to himself, mapped his travels and discoveries through tattoos on his skin. This map was removed from Arthur’s body and made into a parchment; the details of how this happened are explained in this quest.

Charles Flinders-Petrie (son of Benedict), whose faults and vices are not to be overlooked, turns out to be a somewhat compassionate and discerning character. He manages to do something with his portion of the Skin Map that keeps it out of the hands of his shady and dangerous son, Douglas – for the time being at any rate. Douglas, a college drop out, has his own interests in the Skin Map and does some terrible things as a result of it.

The swelling tide of the story reaches a high point with the revelation of the Zetetic Society and two of its colorful and charming members, Brendan Hanno and Mrs. Rosemary Peelstick. These take Cassandra into their confidence and reveal the purpose of the society. Cassandra seems to undergo a conversion of sorts and is inducted into the Society, the first in over a hundred years, and now the youngest living member.

The Spirit Well, the Skin Map, the Zetetic Society, Arthur’s secret discovery are what the quest of the Bright Empires series is about. This third book, in all of its byzantine threads, carries the reader through ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, and places of the relatively modern day. The customs, traditions, architecture, medical and business practices, legends and myths of eras past are exquisitely woven together with such vividness and pertinence to the story that one has the feel of being there in the middle of it all – and that is the mark of a great writer.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson for kindly providing a copy of The Spirit Well for review on the October, 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

The Spirit Well 
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Matthew 13:36-43 and Universal Salvation

After Jesus had delivered the parable of the tares and the wheat,[1] (Matt 13:24-30), his disciples came to him and asked him what it meant:

³⁷ He answered and said to them: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.
³⁸ The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.
³⁹ The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.
⁴⁰ Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.
⁴¹ The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness,
⁴² and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
⁴³ Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The Christian Universalist (CU) believes, as all orthodox evangelical Christians do, that all men are saved only through Christ [2] because of Christ’s atonement for their sin. They also believe that (a) all men will be saved, and (b) some men will die unrepentant and faithless and therefore suffer the punishment of hell. The two views are made compatible by their view of hell, that the punishment is not retributive or eternal, but rather corrective and temporary. Therefore, all men who die in their sins will eventually come to their senses in hell and repent and believe. At that time, the penitent sinner in hell will be rescued and brought into the kingdom and share its glory and blessing with those who died in faith and received that kingdom on the Day of Judgment.

How might a CU respond to the parable of the wheat and the tares? As Christ explains it, the kingdom has two kinds of members, those who are the sons of the kingdom (the wheat), and presumably, those who claim to be sons of the kingdom, but in fact are sons of the wicked one (the tares), having been sown by the devil himself. As such, there are at work two opposing agents, God and the devil. Both are sowing seed in the world. The one sows wheat while the other sows tares respectively identified as the children of God and children of Satan. The one who presides over the kingdom has ordered that the sons of the wicked one will be allowed to grow up side by side with his own true children until the end of the age at which time they will be separated. The destiny at the time of separation for the sons of the kingdom will be glory as they will shine as the sun in their Father’s kingdom. The destiny of the wicked is to be cast into the furnace of fire accompanied by weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I suspect the CU will stand unflinchingly before this text and deny that it has any power to persuade him away from his universalism.

One response of the CU might be to accept everything as explained by Christ but ask the question, What bearing does that interpretation of the parable have to do with whether or not the wicked will remain in the furnace forever? How does it prove that there is no redemption from hell for the resident of hell? It explains how they get there but it does not prove that they will stay there forever.

Another response might be that of Thomas Talbott who, in his treatment of the parable of the sheep and the goats, insists that parables are not to be taken in their detail.

“. . . Jesus never intended for anyone to take the details of a parable literally; the details merely provided a colorful background for the main point, which itself is not always easy to discern. So as a first step towards understanding the parable of the sheep and the goats, we must try to discover its main point.”[3]

Within the context of Christ’s own explanation of the parable, there are observations that would indicate the aforementioned CU responses are not adequate to oppose a non-universalist interpretation of the parable.

The first observation is that Christ’s explanation of the parable takes on great detail. Talbott’s point that a parable should not be taken too seriously in its detail does have validity to it. Nevertheless, when we see Christ’s own explanation of the parable, we find that there is much weight given to the particulars. Christ commences to interpret the parable by identifying precisely what the elements of the parable represent: the field, wheat, tares, harvest, reapers, and furnace. None of these details are insignificant. They all must be given their full force in order to understand the meaning of the parable.

Such details reveal that there are two agents in opposition to each other and whose purposes are contrary. The agents are the Father and the devil. The Father’s purpose is to produce sons who are righteous in this age. The purpose of the devil, who is explicitly identified as the enemy, is to produce his own sons who are wicked and as such, oppose the kingdom and the sons of the kingdom. The former’s purpose is to produce a kingdom of holy ones, the latter’s intent is to infiltrate that kingdom with unholy ones, thereby undermining its work in this world. The ultimate goal would be to destroy the heavenly kingdom.

The emphasis on the distinction between the wheat and the tares at every point of the parable is given greater relief by the fact that there is no attempt to work out an arrangement of co-existence. At first, it may seem that that is the very idea of the Father since he commands to let both grow up together until the harvest. However, the Father’s purpose in doing so is not to bring the two in a harmony or peaceful agreement with one another. Rather, it is that the wicked will manifest themselves as the wicked and thereby become readily identifiable at the harvest where they are finally separated from the righteous. The contemporaneous existence of the two is temporary and has always in view the harvest, the time in which the Father’s purpose toward the true sons of the kingdom are fulfilled, namely, their confirmation in glory. It is also a time in which the Father is going to confirm his kingdom collectively in holiness and in doing so it will require the removal of the sons of the wicked one.

Another aspect of this distinction is the obvious. The tares are biologically different from wheat and cannot be transformed into wheat. So it is with the sons of the wicked one. They cannot be transformed into wheat. One may argue, Are we not all tares and some of us have been transformed into wheat? I would say that in terms of the identity of the tares in this parable, the answer is no. It is true that Paul says that Christians were all children of wrath by nature when God, because of his great love with which he loved them while dead in trespasses and sins, made them alive together with Christ (Eph 2:1-5). But that is not the lesson of the parable. The parable does not contradict Paul. But its purpose is to show that from the beginning, there are certain ones whom the Father has planted in his kingdom, and that they are there because of his doing. If they are not planted by the Father, they are not his. And it is certain that there are those in the kingdom who are not there by the Father’s planting. They are not true sons of the kingdom and never will be because it is impossible for them to be transformed from sons of the wicked one to sons of the Father. The impossibility for transformation resides in the fact that the Father’s intent is to produce no miracle of transformation for the tares. The tares are to remain tares during this age until they can be purged out of the kingdom. That is their destiny, not by chance, but by the good pleasure of the owner of the field, the Father.

The purpose of the separation at the end of the age is to facilitate the removal of the tares from the kingdom in such a way that the wheat will not share the same destiny of the furnace of fire. The wicked will be readily distinguishable at the time of the harvest. As such, the tares only will be rooted out and banished from the kingdom. This complies with other NT teaching, particularly Paul who warns that evildoers who practice all manner of sinful deeds shall not inherit the kingdom of God, Galatians 5:21; Ephesians 4:3-6. The destiny of the tares is not an inheritance in God’s kingdom. They are rejected because they are wicked. Their destiny is the furnace of fire.

This distinction stresses another point. There is absolutely no mention in the parable of its reversal, not in this age, nor in the age to come. There is not the slightest hint of delivery of the tares from the furnace. The silence is so potent that it suggests strongly that the furnace is the final, irrevocable destination of the tares. As a parable about the kingdom, if deliverance from the furnace were ultimately true, its exclusion here is baffling. Granted, a parable about the kingdom is not expected to say everything there is to say about the kingdom. But the inclusion of such a dimension of the kingdom, that is, ultimate universal delivery from the furnace, if it were true, would fit appropriately, even expectantly.

An argument from silence, it is said, is not a valid argument. But when there is complete silence, it stands as a weighty argument. And there is nowhere, in this parable, or the New Testament that explicitly identifies the children of Satan as ever being transformed in such a way that they are removed from their condition as residents of the furnace. If there were such an essential element in the redemptive historical purpose of God, one would expect at least one overt reference to it in the body of revealed truth deposited in the scriptures. But there is none. Instead, the book is closed on them, so to speak, Revelation 20:15.

The universalist would counter that there is no explicit statement of the Trinity in the Bible. Should we therefore cast doubt on its veracity? If the CU is referring to the absence of a formulaic expression of the Trinity or even simply one that covers the traditional elements of the expression as it occurs in the Church’s creeds, the answer is obviously not. However, the creedal formulas of the Trinity are derived from mountains of New Testament evidence that refer to the persons of the Trinity and their relationship to one another such that the only conclusion one may come to is that God exists as a Trinity of Persons.

But the CU cannot offer any explicit scriptural evidence that those in hell will repent and be saved. When the damned in hell come under the scrutiny of the New Testament, nowhere is there any suggestion that they will ever be delivered from their condition. There is always a foreboding sense of finality when speaking of those who are condemned at the final judgment.

Christ’s emphasis on the details of the parable informs us that (a) there is a distinction between the wheat and the tares that persists not only in this age, but also in the next, (b) there is no intent to transform the tares so that they may become wheat, (c) these is no suggestion that the tares will ever be rescued from the furnace. Because of this, the teaching of this parable argues against a universal notion of salvation.

ILG        The Inescapable Love Of God, by Thomas Talbott. Universal Publishers/uPUBLISH.com, 1999, 235 pages.

CUCD  Christian Universalism? The Current Debate, Edited by Robin A Parry & Christopher H. Partridge. Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003.

EU         The Evangelical Universalist, by Gregory MacDonald. Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2006, 204 pages.

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[1] The disciples refer to it as the parable of the field and the tares, Matt 13:35.

[2] “. . . there is what we would call ‘Christian Universalism’. Although this is a wide family of views, they share in common (a) the commitment to working within a Christian theological framework and (b) the claim that all individuals will be saved through the work of Christ.”  CUCD, p xvii.  Gregory MacDonald, a Christian univesalist, writes, "The universalist will happily concur that reconciliation is only for those who are in Christ through faith. There is no salvation outside of Christ, and one is included in Christ through faith. However, the universalist will also maintain that, in the end, everyone will be in Christ through faith." EU, p 47.

[3] ILG, p. 85.  

Night of the Living Dead Christian, by Matt Mikalatos. March 2012 CSFF Blog Tour, Day 3

The author identifies a disturbing problem so prevalent in our churches today, and that is the disjunction between so-called faith and the evidence of that faith through works. He brings this out near the end of the novel, after the werewolf’s quest for a cure has come to a successful conclusion:

...it suddenly hit me that our churches are full of these people. Faith with no deeds. We believe in Jesus, we go to church, we lead semi-decent lives, but we aren’t being transformed. We aren’t changing. We don’t think the deeds matter, because we have the “fire insurance.” We’re going to get into Heaven just fine, so we can keep lying and stealing and sleeping around and murdering and being selfish and whatever else it is we’re doing.

  But what James seemed to be saying was that a faith like that was a problem. It’s not the deeds or lack of deeds that’s a problem, it’s that something is wrong with our faith if it’s not producing actions. It’s ineffectual. It’s the sort of faith that fills a pew but leads us to a moment when we are face-to-face with Jesus and show him our works and he says, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (p 217)

Can we identify the reasons for why this problem exists? Obviously, it has been present with us since the beginning of the New Testament church as evidenced by the letter of James, “So also faith, by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” 2:17). Part of the reason is the natural tendency of our depravity to misunderstand the implications of the gospel. Paul sensed this as well, and, like James, may have had to defend against it: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Rom 6:1,2.

Mr. Mikalatos understands this aspect of the gospel, that genuine saving faith produces good works, and he brings the reader face-to-face with it. There is a great need for that in our Christian writing, and Mr. Mikalatos has not shrunk from that.

Yet, there is a serious flaw in Mr. Mikalatos’s theology, and it can actually contribute to the problem. The flaw is this: he does not believe in man’s total depravity, and one's stance on total depravity  has a direct bearing on his preaching and evangelism which in turn affects the response of the unconverted. Let me explain.

In a conversation with Robert (a zombie) and Lara (a vampire), who are despairing of their conditions, Mikalatos points to the image of God in them as a reason for hope. Robert counters by asserting we are totally depraved and if we are a reflection of God, bearing his image, then God himself would likewise have to be completely depraved. Mr. Mikalatos responds:

“I don’t think so. It might mean that we’ve misunderstood what it means to be sinful. Or that we’ve emphasized it so much that we’ve simply lost sight of the fact that in our deepest, most horrific actions, some piece of us is still outside of that, some part of us is made in God’s image, and that’s not something we can ever completely eradicate.” (p 220)

A little later, Matt relates a story for Robert and Lara about a symphony he and his wife once attended, and how the music filled the concert hall with magnificent beauty, and how it revealed that, as an image-bearer,

“...a man can take what is in his mind and scratch it out on paper, and others can fashion instruments, and still other sacrifice their lives to learn to bring pleasing sounds from these instruments.” (p 222)

And then, later again, while observing other nameless men and women who had attended the symphony, and reflecting on the players of the symphony, and the conductor, that for all of them and us,

“... we need not be captives to our base selves, because by God’s grace there stirs a deeper desire to be like the one who made us.” (p 223)

Now, I believe that we are made in God’s image and appeal unhesitatingly to that fact as a reason to pursue writing as a conscious effort to reflect our Creator through the creation of our own story-making.

But being made in God’s image does not mean that there lies within the sinner a spark or tiny island or a small reservoir by which he wants to be like the one who made him. If this notion of an inherent sensitivity or openness or searching for God is at the bottom of one’s anthropology, I maintain that one’s understanding and explanation of the gospel is going to be affected adversely. If there is somewhere deep in the heart of every person a desire to be like God, then the appeal to that person will be merely to become a follower of Jesus. And that is not what the gospel calls us to do. We cannot call sinners to become followers of Jesus because sinners do not want to be followers. Sinners want to be sinners.

The New Testament appeal to the sinner is this, “Repent and believe.” Jesus saves us from our sins. He frees us from our sins. If there is any hope for change, it does not spawn from a fractured remnant of the image of God that resides in us as a deep, innate stirring that seeks to be like the one who made us. We are called to look away from ourselves and turn wholly to the one who has the power to set us free. By the work of regeneration, the Spirit of God awakens us to our sinfulness, grants us repentance and faith to turn to the only one who can free us from our sin - its penalty, power, and someday, its presence. And that will not happen unless the sinner is faced with the truth of his sinfulness and his complete helplessness to do anything about it.

Regrettably, the gospel call often is misconstrued to be a call to follow Jesus. Mr. Mikalatos himself presents the gospel in this way as one may conclude from videos of his speaking engagements. Such a call assumes that the one called actually has the power to follow Jesus. A call to follow Jesus presumes that if the sinner looks within himself he will realize that following Jesus is the only thing that makes sense.

The response to such a call is disastrous. Instead of the sinner repenting and turning to Christ to be delivered from his sin and thereby enabled to do what he cannot do in himself, he takes courage in his own ability to follow Christ, having a false sense that he has the power to do it, and that all he needs is to give in and let Christ show him how. It does not address the root of his problem, his slavery to sin and inability to do anything but sin. There may be change, but it is not the transformation that the New Testament speaks of. The sinner remains at heart an unchanged sinner.

Thanks to Saltriver (Tyndale House Publishers) for kindly providing a copy of Night of the Living Dead Christian for review on the March 2012 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour.

Matt Mikalatos’s Web Page
List of CSFF Blog Tour Participants

Night of the Living Dead Christian on Amazon.