« Back to Issue 55

On Being Saved – The Roots Of Redemption

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

Rod garner is an Anglican priest, theological consultant to the Diocese of Liverpool and a writer of several publications. His surname is a good one, for he seems to have collected huge quantities of intellectual and spiritual material, which he employs with eloquence. Before I engage in detail with this piece of anti-fundamentalist polemic, I would, therefore, just like to say that it is an absorbing book, in places beautifully written. I read it all, not because I had to, but because of its power to move, and on that ground alone I would recommend it.

It is written, apparently, not simply to open our eyes to lost emphases, but to provide a censure of certain kinds of restricted evangelical notions of redemption. The erroneous viewpoints are represented by iconic individuals such as the “repent-for-the-end-is-nigh” placard-holder Garner once saw in the USA; the ‘thou shalt not’ mother who brought her child up on Deuteronomy; and the multitudes in the churches who insist on the substitutionary atonement, the acquisition of certainties and the personal pursuit of being saved. He criticizes those who claim that suffering is sent by God, people who believe that “God represents ‘three angry letters in a book,’ ” or who picture Christ as the “grim Galilean preacher who makes the world go grey with his breath.” I confess I don’t always recognize these caricatures, for there is more wonder, love of nature and mystic Christianity among our people than we sometimes think. I do admit to some of these qualities in myself – mostly the bits about an exclusively narrow and personal notion of salvation.

The great thing, however, is the way Garner opens it all up: it’s his sheer breadth of vision. He rejects as “ruinous” the notion that humanity or the earth is ‘wretched’; but he agrees that there is a “doubleness” about us, some kind of original sin, however defined, which needs redemption. He homes straight in on the cross as the only true theodicy. He offers a cosmic salvation in which humans may share. He sensitively shows how adversity may be conducive to spiritual growth. He offers memory, beauty, laughter and hope as God-given paths to redemption. He holds everything dear. I like that. I also like the sheer breadth of his knowledge: biblical, theological, of the arts, sciences and literature, and stories from famous lives – applied to his argument in a way that is always apposite. He quotes writers such as Raymond Carver, T S Eliot, Jean Paul Sartre, Proust, Simone Weil, D H Lawrence, George Steiner, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Jeannette Winterson, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Backett and Steinbeck – and these are just the major ones. The arts are represented by Bach’s cello suites (up a mountain!), late Beethoven string quartets, Schubert’s lieder, the paintings of Turner; philosophy and politics by Laplace, Voltaire, Darwin and Thich Naht Hanh; theology by Luther, Bunyan, the Cappadocians, Augustine, Calvin, Cardinal Newman, James Barr, Rowan Williams, the Jewish theologian Heschel, collects, and stuff unknown to me such as curiositas, and creation continua. There are expositions of Paul, Peter, Revelation; there are Gospel pericopes, and scatterings of Scripture references everywhere.

I love the joke about Mary explaining why she is always depicted as serious-faced: she had wanted a girl! Or Luther’s answering the devil with a fart.

Look: I reject his statement that “the cross is not an answer to how the world is redeemed.” I don’t want to abandon all the glittering theories of personal atonement in favour of some unspecified “mystery of the cross,” and at the end of the book I wondered whether he had really got the point of the Gospels or the book of Romans at all. But if you have personal salvation in your armoury, the things of which he speaks add to your spirituality and your missionary appeal. My viewpoint was widened and enriched. Can people really be ‘saved’ through laughter, beauty and hope alone? I don’t think so. But Garner has got hold of something valuable here, something which captures the essence of the wonder of discovering the love of God amidst a dark world! And the book’s chock full of potential sermon illustrations too...