Just a note to praise a new book from InterVarsity Press, Louis Markos' From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP 2007). It's a gem.
I confess that much of my appreciation for this book is based on the fact that as an amateur lit teacher-- I teach literature to high schoolers in our local homeschool co-op-- I need all the help I can get in integrating sound Christian scholarship into my lessons. In fact, this book came out at just the time I was preparing to teach The Iliad for the first time in four years. This book is a real blessing to those of us who, without much formal training, are trying to help students gain an appreciation for classics of any kind.
But I recommend this book to anyone who has even the remotest love for literature or antiquity. Markos brings a real eloquence to the topic, drawing the reader into the pagan myths and stories in a way that both informs and edifies. His broad readings cast these works as pre-figurings of the great myth that is also fact. This theological journey through Homer, the Greek tragedians, and Virgil, is fascinating and instructive. At times, his discussions have an almost devotional quality, and more than once I was moved to deeper meditation on God's work in time and history.
At first I thought the subtitle was wrong: Markos doesn't provide a reasoned defense that leads to a conclusion that I should look into these pagan classics. Instead, he guides me through them, reading them in faithful Christian hindsight, filling up my former readings and informing and encouraging my future forays into these stories and plays. By the end of the book, I was indeed convinced that God has used these great pagans and their stories to show us truth and direct us to the One who works in human history to bring about his purposes. In short, I now know why I-- and my students-- should read the pagan classics.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed this thoughtful post. Thanks. (brelevant.blogspot.com)
Markos and you, Mike, are leading your students to follow where Paul (Acts 17 on the Areopagus) has led us. Like the Apostle, we are called to study the classics so that we might more deeply discern the insights that God, by His common grace, has revealed through the thoughts and words of Epimenides and Aratus, as well as the whole host of pagan poets and authors. In so doing, we are all the more equipped to engage the conversation of life with others who happen to cross our paths. (Acts 17:17)
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