Review: Climbing Parnassus - Simmons

Can you read and write Latin and Greek? Me either, but according to Tracy Lee Simmons, we ought to, and I’m convinced that he’s right. In Climbing Parnassus, Simmons argues that the ancient languages of Greek and Latin are the two pillars of classical education, and subsequently, wardens of western culture. Simmons explains the title in his easy, elegant way:

Mount Parnassus, a limestone mass hovering over the ancient shrine of Delphi, has stood as a prime symbol of poetic inspiration and perfection since the dawn of the West. It fixed anxious eyes on the heavens. The Castalian spring, being a sacred source of life-sustaining water, trickled far below. . . . But over time it came to embody those things which man, at his best, wishes––and ought to wish––to achieve. It became a sign of his better, divinely inspired self. To “climb Parnassus” was to strive after the favor of Apollo and the nine muses. . . ensconced up there, forever unseen. While presenting the unattainable for most pilgrims, Parnassus also pointed to those treasures bestowed by the muses upon the faithful ones who wait and work. And among those gifts most sought was the civilizing, cultivating boon of eloquence, of right and beautiful expression. Throughout the centuries to come, this forbidding image got lifted from its geographical and mythological settings to be transposed, in the wake of Renaissance Humanism, as an emblem of linguistic flair. “Climbing Parnassus” eventually became a code for the painfully glorious exertions of Greek and Latin.

Simmons begins by examining our current pool of cultural and educational mire, and contrasts the purposes and results of classical education to modern education. Classical education was meant to cultivate an individual, to produce an excellent and cultured human being. Modern education, on the other hand, has “traded in the ancient ideal of wisdom for a spurious ‘adjustment’ of mind, settling for fitting us with the most menial of skills needful for the world of the interchangeable part.” Simmons continues, saying that according to modern education, “We are masses to be housed and fed, not minds and souls seeking something beyond ourselves.” Everyone recognizes that modern (especially public) education is broken. Simmons quotes a study in the 1980s which concluded that

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. . . we have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

Classicist Richard Livingstone noted three functions of education: to teach us to earn a living, to teach us to be good citizens, and to help us understanding the meaning of the good life. Simmons writes that we understand the first function well (even though we often fail in it). The second function, however, is increasingly neglected; and the third we have altogether lost.

Simmons argues (persuasively, I think) that Latin is the foundation of all true learning. It is not so much Latin itself that makes one educated, as it is the mental rigor required to learn it. In the process of learning Latin, one learns how to learn, the mind is duly sharpened, and many of the great texts which created the Western world become accessible as never before. In fact, Simmons goes so far as to say that every lesson in Latin is a lesson in logic. He again quotes Richard Livingstone, who makes the remarkable statement that

Not to know Greek is to be ignorant of the most flexible and subtle instruments of expression which the human mind has devised, and not to know Latin is to have missed an admirable training in precise and logical thought.

There is also a kind of education which democrats like, Simmons writes, and then there is an education which will preserve democracy. The first indiscriminately cries for equality in all things, the second upholds instead the superiority of the good. Unfortunately, modern education is of the first sort, and classical education is of the second kind. A civilization which refuses to call anything bad is a civilization which will soon lose its right to seek anything good.

Climbing Parnassus is a thorough and compelling apologetic for the study of Latin and Greek, which is impressive since classical education is notoriously difficult to defend to modern people. This book ought to be a companion to any other book on classical education. Doug Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, for instance, gives only a cursory defense of Latin’s study; and even Dorothy Sayer’s famous essay by the same name almost assumes the benefit of classical languages, rather than arguing the point.

Review: Tactics - Greg Koukl

I tend to give book recommendations as often as a postman hands out letters, and the book that I find myself recommending most frequently is Greg Koukl’s Tactics. Tactics, subtitled, A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, is is an eminently practical (and readable) handbook for doing apologetics.

Tactics’ strength is twofold. First, it encourages, nay, obligates Christians to do their apologetics and witnessing with compassion and humility. Second, Tactics provides a clear and concise way to understand and uncover common logical fallacies.

Debating religion often raises one’s blood pressure, but Koukl reminds us that the point of tactful witnessing isn’t to win arguments, but to win people. Koukl calls this the Ambassador Model. He writes, “This approach trades more on friendly curiosity––a kind of relaxed diplomacy––than on confrontation.” Koukl also provides a manageable goal, which takes the pressure off those of us who feel that we must have a convert at the end of every conversation.

“It may surprise you to hear this, but I never set out to convert anyone. My aim is never to win someone to Christ. I have a more modest goal, one you might consider adopting as your own. All I want to do is put a stone in someone’s shoe. I want to give him something worth thinking about, something he can’t ignore because it continues to poke at him in a good way.”

Not only does this help relieve the pressure, it reminds us that it isn’t our duty to convert anyone. That job belongs to the Holy Spirit. Koukl writes,

“Understanding God’s central role in the process removes a tremendous burden. We can focus on our job––being clear, gracious, and persuasive––and then leave the results to God (what I call “100% God and 100% man”).”

The core of Koukl’s method is the well-placed question (which is also every good conversationalist’s secret). The first half of the book explains how to use questions effectively. The second half of the book is dedicated to common logical fallacies (which gives you something to ask about).

Logic is often confusing. A friend once accused me of “twisting words” when all I was trying to do was show her that one of her views was logically inconsistent. Perhaps the fault was mine, but what seems self-evident to logicians is often confusing to everyone else. Koukl, however, succeeds in explaining his list of fallacies simply and clearly. To supplement his explanations, Koukl follows each with practical examples––often real cases from his career as an apologist.

If you’re serious about the Great Commission, you’ll want a copy of this book.

(For a more thorough treatment, see GoingToSeminary.com's review HERE.)

Review: Keep in Memory - Woychuk

I was recently given a copy of Keep in Memory by N.A. Woychuk. The book is a 12 chapter apologetic for Bible memorization. Unfortunately, it is poorly written and, like most motivational books, exceedingly redundant. I say “unfortunately” because Woychuk does an excellent job of stressing the importance of memorizing scripture and gives decent advice on how to do it.

If I was the book’s editor, however, the book would have 50 or 60 pages, rather than 198. Woychuk struggles to maintain a consistent tone throughout the book and leaps from formal to chatty language, often within the same chapter. Nevertheless, just as we should never judge a book by its cover, neither should we judge a man’s ideas by his eloquence (or lack of it).

Woychuk does, thank heavens, consistently quote Scripture. Every chapter is littered with Bible verses, which provides frequent (albeit brief) relief from his prose. He also has a strange habit of abusing ellipses and citing obscure housewives as authorities. I don’t doubt that the persons he quotes are authorities and experts on their own experiences, but the way he meticulously gives their full names (in italics) is odd.

Woychuk’s approach is holistic, which I appreciate. After a brief chapter on memory in general, he launches into a series of discussions on the nature of Scripture and our relationship to it. Woychuk’s primary reason for memorizing Scripture is its inspiration. If the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, then it is, as Woychuk puts it, “the thinking of God. It is infinitely superior to everything that man has produced, including the most up-to-date philosophies and compositions.” Thus, the act of memorizing Scripture is nothing more than a proper recognition of its authorship and value. Only after Woychuk has established inerrancy as the prima mobile of his apologetic does he go on to discuss the many practical benefits of memorizing Scripture.

Like all good motivational authors, Woychuk weaves illustrative stories into his chapters. He recounts a multitude of obscure persons’ encounters with Scripture (as well as that of a few famous persons like Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Morrison). The stories, however, are often little more than a few lines, just enough for Woychuk to support his methods with someone’s experience.

Disappointingly, much of the book reads like an expanded advertisement for his Bible memory curricula, and the memory advice he offers is largely common sense. For instance, Woychuk advocates studying memory verses, putting them on flash cards, organizing verses under topical headings, reading them aloud, and acting them out (when possible).

Despite its faults, the book is worth reading if you need some inspiration (or reasons) to memorize Scripture. Woychuk’s writing, although awkward, is clear and simple, so Keep in Memory is a fast read.

Guest Review: Crazy Love - Francis Chan

By Taylor Ellen

I received a copy of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love for Christmas. Although I expected it to be another decent book on what it means to be a Christian in today’s culture, what it gave me was a “holy slap in the face.” It convicted me about the way I was living my life. Instead of living a merely “good, Christian life” in today’s culture, Crazy Love challenges readers to go against what society is saying and to go all-out and live a radical life for Christ.

Chan opens the first chapter with this: “What if I told you to stop talking at God for a while, but instead to take a long, hard look at Him before you speak another word?” So often, especially in American society, church is 90% concerned with the type of music we worship with, the person who gives the message, or the building we go to; and only 10% is about God Himself.

American Christians have become so consumed with the world’s idea of religion that they have lost sight of who God truly is. Instead, we have turned God into what we want Him to be for us. God is holy, yet we manage to constantly overlook that holiness. Chan quotes R.C. Sproul saying, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.” American Christians compare themselves with how the world thinks a follower of Christ should look, rather than what God says a follower of Christ should be. As we make our relationship with God completely about us, it becomes harder and harder to look past ourselves and earnestly, passionately seek after Him.

Chapter two begins, “You could die before you finish reading this chapter.” Comforting, isn’t it? But it’s true. In the scope of all of eternity, our lives are rather short—a blink of an eye. So why are we so selfish? How come we think that everything is about us? One of the most convicting sections in the book was a metaphor that Chan used which compares our lives to a movie. It went something like this: Suppose you were cast as an extra in a movie, and your scene was ¾ of a second long. Then, you get all of your friends and family together for the premier and tell them to come see this movie about you. After the movie ended, wouldn’t they all think you were crazy for thinking the movie was about you? Life is the same way. Our lives are ¾ of a second in the movie of life. Clearly, the movie isn’t about us; we are crazy to think that it is. The purpose of an extra in a movie is to point back to the star, and since God is the “star” of the movie, “the point of your life is to point to Him.”

Chapter three focuses on the craziness of God’s love for us. He knew everything about us before we were created. He knows what our names will be, what school we will go to, whom we will marry, how we will die. He knew everything about us before our great-grandparents were born. This incredible God who knew us even before our creation, loves us. “The wildest part is that Jesus doesn’t have to love us. His being is utterly complete and perfect, apart from humanity. He doesn’t need me or you. Yet He wants us, chooses us, even considers us His inheritance…” God’s unfathomable love for us is crazy. That’s why it’s so hard for us to understand. But just because we can’t always understand God’s love doesn’t mean that He loves us any less.

Chapters four, five, and eight go together. Chapters four and five focus on what a lot of churchgoers look like today: lukewarm. If you’re a coffee drinker you can know that there is almost nothing worse than taking a huge gulp of lukewarm coffee. It’s disgusting. That’s how lukewarm Christians are to God (Revelation 3:16). The lukewarm Christian is almost indifferent to God, living foremost for himself and serving anything that’s left over to God. But what are leftovers to the God of the universe? Lukewarm lives couldn’t be farther from the holiness that God intended for His children. As Chan writes, “they equate their partially sanitized lives with holiness, but they couldn’t be more wrong.” In contrast to the Lukewarm, chapter eight is all about the Obsessed—people who are truly in love with God, and whose lives reflect it. Chan gives multiple examples of how your love life with Christ shows through your life on earth, but the main pattern I saw was that people whose lives are consumed by love for God aren’t focused on themselves. Rather, they are entirely concerned with Christ and others.

I encourage you to go to a bookstore, purchase a red book entitled Crazy Love, and sit down to read.

Review: Orthodoxy - Chesterton

I decided to write my senior thesis on G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) during my last year of college. I quickly discovered that Chesterton was extremely prolific. In addition to being a full-time journalist, he wrote approximately 80 books, volumes of poetry, hundreds of essays, and several plays. It was overwhelming, but since I had received a copy of Orthodoxy for Christmas, I began my research there. It was the perfect place to begin, because, as I later learned, the book is critical for thoroughly understanding the rest of Chesterton’s work. All of the major themes in his fiction are explained in this short book.

I opened Orthodoxy for the first time and was soon confused. Knowing that Chesterton was Roman Catholic, I expected that a book titled "Orthodoxy" would be an overview of Roman Catholic theology. It isn't. Ironically enough, it is an unorthodox apologetic for Christianity as a whole. Orthodoxy is unorthodox in that, rather than giving arguments to defend Christianity, Chesterton defends common sense, and finds in the end that common sense itself defends Christianity.

I decided that I liked the book upon reading the first two sentences, and by the second chapter, I was chortling in my coffee. Orthodoxy begins with the words,

The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.

In addition to being witty, Chesterton is an exceptional writer. Every paragraph is full of personality. Even on the rare occasion when I disagree with him (he wasn't a fan of the Reformation, but I am) I can't help but like him. All he writes is so well put that to paraphrase Chesterton is to commit a crime against his talents. This makes Orthodoxy a difficult book to pull quotes from. It's nearly impossible to pull out a single sentence; whenever I try, I end up quoting an entire paragraph or two. His writing is also notable for the way he turns the world on its head. But through Chesterton one soon finds that the world makes sense only when it is upside down. Two examples will suffice:

The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

Everyone I know who has read Orthodoxy has remarked that they were overcome with an urge to underline every sentence. This is probably because besides being remarkably insightful, Orthodoxy, like every other non-fiction book Chesterton wrote, is really a book about everything. As he once wrote elsewhere,

If Christianity should happen to be true -- that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe -- then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true.

Why Read?

Well, one reason to read books (or at least to buy them) is to impress people. In 2005, this headline appeared: One in three has bought a book just to look intelligent.

Of course, that's a bad reason to read books, so here are some good reasons. (FYI, reading to be smarter is a better reason to read than reading to look smarter.)

4) Reading makes you smarter. I don't mean that you just gain more facts. I mean that it changes how you think and interact with the world. Perhaps I should have said, "Reading makes you rational." We live in an image-saturated culture. We are so accustomed to reacting to visual media that rational thought has become a chore for us. When was the last time you noticed a logical fallacy? (Hint: they're everywhere, from political speeches to junk mail.) Reading increases your capacity to think critically.

3) Reading makes you a better learner. In order to read a book you have to sit still and remain focused for extended periods of time. You do the same when you watch TV, but television spoon-feeds your brain. When you read, however, your brain works harder because you process squiggles on a page and convert them into images and bits of information. This ability to focus makes studying and learning not just easier, but pleasurable.

2) Reading gives you the opportunity to join the Great Conversation. If you haven't noticed, folks have been writing books for a little while. Reading great books allows you to join the conversation and exchange of ideas that is 2500+ years old and running.

1) The Bible is full of books. God didn't give us the gospel in a DVD box set. It is significant that God chose the written word to reveal his mind to mankind. Most everyone agrees that the Bible is the most influential anthology ever written and compiled. If you don't read books, you won't ever read the Bible. Even if you don't believe it's the Word of God, it's the height of historical, cultural, and religious ignorance to not be familiar with it.

Reading in Decline (Statistics)

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half have never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." —Gore Vidal, author.

Here are a few staggering statistics on how much (or little, rather) Americans read. (Source)

• Only 38% of adults in 2006 said they had spent time reading a book for pleasure the previous day.
• 65% of college freshmen in 2005 said they read little or nothing for pleasure.
• Only 56.6% of adult Americans said they read at least one book, fiction or non-fiction, between August 2001 and August 2002 compared to 60.9% ten years prior.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.
• 70% of Americans haven't visited a bookstore in five (5) years.
• Customers 55 and older account for more than one-third of all books bought.
• People reduced their time reading between 1996 and 2001 to 2.1 hours/month.
• Only 32% of the U.S. population has ever been in a bookstore.
  

The mean age of book buyers in 2001:

• Age 15-39: 20.8% of the books bought
• Age over 55: 44.1% of the books bought

In 2004, Americans spent

• 86 hours reading books, per person
  
• 1,673 hours watching TV, per person

I find this last figure horrifying. 1673 hours is a few hours shy of 70 days. This means that if you are average, every 5 years you will have spent 1 year with your brain glued to your television. Don't waste your life being spoon-fed on the couch. Feed yourself; read more. Think.

(Image source)