on Books and Reading - encountering Andrew Peterson's thoughts

  I have really been refreshed and gladdened by Andrew Peterson's book, Adorning the Dark (with the inexplicable exception of chapter 6). There is much to appreciate in this memoir-philosophy of life and art. For now though, I just want to comment on two statements he makes about reading and books.

“Too often we retreat into the pages of our longing only to return disconsolate to the kitchen or the classroom—we’re escaping from and not to.” (66)

  This first comment (and the chapter that precedes it) hints at my reality as a teenager; it describes when books were my refuge in a sense that was nearly ultimate. One of the most significant spiritual battles in my life was quitting a particular book - and series - because of the way it was dominating my time one summer. Books are a beautiful escape unless they become Ultimate; then they can become a prison so lovely that we may not even recognize our cage. 

“[These novels] strike me as a way to pass the time rather than to enrich it.” (66)

  When I was a child, we had a category of books called "Purple Door" books because of a particular book that my sister and I loved so much that we convinced my mom to read it in her rare and valuable reading time. She didn't love it so much. She explained to us that it would never be a classic even though it was a nice read. That categorization has stuck with me ever since. Here Peterson defines that category exactly: 

short words are harder

  A hundred plus years ago, G. K. Chesterton remarked upon the dangerous laziness of long words and the difficulty and effort required to put things into short words. An extract of his thought seem worth sharing. It is worth thinking about how we think (or not), and then how we speak (or not)! 

Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

   But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word "idealist" has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientific materialists have had just reason to complain of people mixing up "materialist" as a term of cosmology with "materialist" as a moral taunt. So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates "progressives" in London always calls himself a "progressive" in South Africa.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 8. (emphasis added)

A Handout on Linkers or Logical Connectors

  Below is a graphic organizer that I made a few years ago to serve as a guide for how to think about and teach 'linkers' or 'connectors' or whatever you prefer to call them. These devices that help stitch together a text seem to have a million names, confusing for students and confusing for teachers. I suppose this comes from their variety of roles they play and the diversity that is displayed in them. The complexity and richness of linking devices can add much to the power of our writing or speaking, so they are well worth getting to know intimately for any and all of us.

While realizing that it could be much more attractive, I am no longer able to edit the original, so I figured I'd just share it like this.

Is your boss only satisfied with your best work?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28–30). 

  Discussing Matthew 11:28-30, Tim Keller says the following in regard to working and resting as a follower of Jesus Christ.

[Jesus] is the only boss who will not drive you into the ground, the only audience that does not need your best performance in order to be satisfied with you. Why is this? Because his work for you is finished. 

In fact, the very definition of a Christian is someone who not only admires Jesus, emulates Jesus, and obeys Jesus, but who “rests in the finished work of Christ” instead of his or her own. Remember, God was able to rest in Genesis 2, verses 1–3 only because his creative work was finished. And a Christian is able to rest only because God’s redemptive work is likewise finished in Christ. When the work under the work has been satisfied by the Son, all that’s left for us to do is to serve the work we’ve been given by the Father.

Keller, Timothy. Every Good Endeavor (p. 238). Kindle Edition.  (emphasis added)

Earlier...

All of us are haunted by the work under the work—that need to prove and save ourselves, to gain a sense of worth and identity. (p. 234). 

Jesus' 5 Evidences that God was/is His Father

  A month ago, I posted 8 Arguments for the Bible's Reliability; now I want to share something that is tangentially related, the reasons that Jesus is recorded to have given for being from the Heavenly Father. John 5:18 says, "This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God." (ESV, emphasis added) In the verses following that, Jesus lists several results of God being his father.  These deal with how his character and his actions reflect those of the Father.

 Then, in John 5:30-47, Jesus gives a series of arguments about why he should be accepted as whom he says he is. These are as follows:

1.  Jesus himself claims God is his father (Jn 5:31, cf vs 17-18).
2.  John the Baptist also attested to this truth (Jn 5:32-36; cf 1:29-35; 3:22ff).
3.  The "works" or actions - including the healing that spawned this discussion - attest to the origin of Jesus (Jn 5:36; cf 3:2; 5:1-17). 
4.  The Father who sent him has also attested to this truth (Jn 5:37-38; cf 12:27-30; Matthew 3:16-17; 17:5).
5.  The Scriptures bear witness to him (Jn 5:39-40; cf Jn 1:45; 2:17).
• Moses' writings, as a subset of Scripture, witness to the person of Jesus (Jn 5:45-47; cf Jn 3:14; 6:32; witnesses about the Christ from Moses' writings).  

  It is interesting that each of these points has support from within the Gospel of John, mostly prior to this account. These are evidences which the listeners could evaluate, events or sayings they were already apparently familiar with. (Mt 3:16-17 shows that God had already spoken from heaven publicly once, in addition to the second-hand recounting of that event that John given in John 1.)

 Now, the connection to the previous posts is a bit clearer. Presuming we accept the Gospel accounts as reliable, then the arguments given here are ones that must be given weight. Jesus did not call on people to embrace his claims in a vacuum or without due consideration. Nor did he simply overwhelm them with the miraculous in such a way that a series of illusions could be the basis of his claim(s). The evidences were varied and often independent. 

  So I ask, what would it take to convince you or I, reasonable people, that the apparently impossible was actually possible? What proofs should we require to believe that God became a man, that the Son of God walked this earth in human flesh? If this is not denied a priori, what would you look for as evidence and how would this relate to the proofs that were given?  

  One final point that should be mentioned is that these are not the only proofs that either the New Testament or Jesus himself is recorded as giving to support who he was and is. The anecdote in John 1:47-51 makes this clear. As well, here's another one I came across in my reading recently.

• Matthew 12:38-41 - Jesus foretold that there would be a parallel between his burial and resurrection and the life of the prophet Jonah. This is not a prophecy by Jonah, but rather Jesus himself prophesying about what will happen and using a familiar story as the pivot point. (cf Mt 17:22-23)

8 Perspectives on the Bible's Reliability

  For quite some time, I have been making a collection of different approaches to dealing with the reliability of the Bible. My recent post regarding undesigned coincidences in the New Testament is coincidental to this ongoing collection. The interesting thing about such a discussion is that it has to be held in different ways with different people. The reasons that my Muslim friends doubt the reliability of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are different from those that my atheist, agnostic, or Christian-raised-but-still-wrestling-with-the-idea friends will have. Beyond that, when my kids want to know why I accept one collection of Scriptures as divinely-given and reliable but not another collection, the discussions are again upended. 

  What I propose to give below is not so much an argument for the reliability of Scripture as it is a collection of the different ways that I have seen and heard the Scriptures argued for. Personally, I find certain arguments more compelling than others, but that is not really the point here. My point is to collect them as group. Note that these are also not arguments for Scripture's inerrancy or inspiration directly; that is relevant, but not the focus here.  

1. Literary structures - This argument has particular force in relation to the idea that Scripture was redacted over generations. If this is so, the structural unity across individual works and swaths of works is staggering. On the other hand, if the writings are works by individual authors, this unity makes much more sense. This particularly came home to me as I researched what became my article on blessing in Genesis, a book that many believe is heavily redacted or pieced together.  

2. Internal claims - The Bible itself claims to be reliable and God-sent; it claims to be unchanging. One may immediately object that this is a circular argument; however, imagine if the Bible made no such claim! In other words, the Bible's claim to divine origin and unchanging character and content is significant for faith. 

  In line with this, the Bible also mentions many other sources that could have been included in the biblical canon; some of those were by the same authors whose other writings are included. So, alongside its claims to reliability and divine sanction, the Bible claims a certain selectivity or exclusivity. Not all of Paul's or the prophets' or the chroniclers' writings were equal or (regarded as) Scripture. 

3. Manuscript evidences - This argument for the reliability of the biblical texts is an overwhelming one when compared to any other ancient document (although the claims of Scripture are correspondingly extraordinary.) Still, there are over 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament besides about 20,000 manuscripts of ancient translations into other languages. Separately, the Old Testament Scriptures have thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, plus translations. (A hard number of OT manuscripts is surprisingly hard to find given how common the 5,800 number is for NT manuscripts: this site has the most concrete number I could find.)

   Not only is there an argument based on the massive number of manuscripts that were preserved, but there is also the consistency of the text that has been seen. As the number of manuscripts available to scholars has exploded in the last couple centuries, Christian doctrine has not needed to change or be adjusted. There have been places where copying or spelling errors have become evident, but this does not undermine a claim to reliability. Christians do not claim that any single published copy is a perfect copy of the entire Scripture. Instead, Christian belief is that the original manuscripts were perfectly reliable, and we have received reliable copies of them.

4. Historical progression of acceptance - This argument rests on the fact that the Bible presents a 'telescoping' view of its revelation. In other words, each section builds on the preceding one; Moses is built on by Samuel; Samuel and Moses are built on by David and Solomon; the prophets built on those that preceded them; Jesus (as quoted, though he did not write any of the New Testament himself) built on the Old Testament, and the disciples and earliest Christian witnesses built on all that preceding revelation. Below are a few thoughts from the NT concerning the OT:  

- Jesus’ acceptance of OT (Mt 23:35; Lk 11:51; Lk 24:25, 27, 32, 44-48; Jn 5:45-47; his regular quotation & amplification, references to fulfillment and the prophets; Mt 21:42; Lk 4:16-21; 22:37; Jn 7:[38], 42; 10:34-36; 13:18; 17:12; 19:12)

- Jesus' disciples/apostles' acceptance (Jn 1:45; Lk 24:32; Acts 13:27; constant quotation and allusion)

- There is also acceptance of other NT writers even within the NT - Peter accepts Paul as a Scripture writer (2 Peter 3:15-16) where he references Paul's writings among 'the other Scriptures.' 

   One might ask why Moses' original readers accepted his writings. I would suggest that minimally these were the people who had been at Mount Sinai and had heard the words and been terrified at the presence of God. Thus, their acceptance was not simplistic; it was multi-faceted, through faith and experience. With a bit of thought, one can extrapolate further along these lines for Moses' and others' writings.

5. Consistency with the experience world - The subjectiveness of this argument does not necessarily blunt its impact. The world described in the Bible matches the one we experience. Among other things, in the Bible we are led to expect a world of great beauty and humans made 'in the image of a good God' while we are also told that an enemy has brought ruin and destruction upon all the creation. Thus, what is called 'natural revelation' matches both the glories and horrors that we see and hear.

6. Undesigned coincidences - With the recent post on this, I will not extrapolate much, but this is similar to the 'literary structures' argument. The biblical writings themselves often confirm and support each other in the sorts of ways that argue for their authenticity as eyewitness accounts.

 

7. Archaeology - The biblical accounts have shown time and again that they are accurate in historical details, at least to the extent that they care to draw attention to them and that we have found independent witness to the same events. This area is also where there are still many questions and constant developments. I would suggest that no single artifact could sufficiently prove or disprove such a book, not even Noah's Ark in full preservation in the Mountains of Ararat. However, some of the archaeological support of Scripture has offered stunning corroboration in its minute detail. 

8. Impact on art, history, and culture - The little book, "Christianity: Fundamental Teachings" that I mentioned being published by the Turkish Church says it this way, "The Holy Bible is the most influential and successful work ever witnessed" (pg 74). It goes on to list the Bible's influence in inspiring "world literature, fine art, architecture, music, paintings, and other branches of art" as well as influencing the development of science, human rights, gender equality, and democracy. 

Reading in 2020 + 2020 Readings (and Listenings)

  2020 was an unusual year in so many respects. Two of those reasons have been the available time for reading and the current will for reading. On the one hand, the events of the year led to extra space and time at home, which invited extra reading and study. In many ways, this was an ideal time to try to catch up on long-awaited reading projects, to find new literary friends and mentors. 

  On the other hand, as a couple friends and I have discussed, the events of the year often made it quite difficult to focus on deeper or more extensive reading. The exact reasons for this are not clear to me, but it was interesting to hear this theme among friends who love to read. Due to this second factor, I read the majority of the books listed here during the earlier part of the year. 

   And now, the tenth annual list of recommended readings:

Christian Life and Belief

Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller (2012) - If I were going to recommend a single book this year, it would be this book on work. It might be better to describe it as a book on 'how to steward our time, energy, giftings, and environment.' It is a book about how to be the gardeners we were designed to be. If you work, and if you seek to follow the Bible, this book would probably have areas that would benefit you in your living and thinking. 

Christianity: Fundamental Teachings by The Joint Commission of Churches in Turkey (2017) - This is an excellent consideration of biblical faith, translated from Turkish. It is the work of a commission including the Catholic, Orthodox, and conservative Protestant believers proclaiming the core of faith based on the Bible. I can almost hear the skepticism about such a work growing in your mind. I'd suggest buying it and reading it first. (If you'd like it in hard copy, message me. I can buy copies locally quite easily.) 

Practically, one major function of the book locally was showing the unity of the faith in the face of polemic opposition. Another major function was a pastoral distillation of the central tenets of the Christian faith. It fulfilled both of these functions well.  (A friend did a review of it at ETS this year; that also might be of interest to some.)

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton (1908) - I listened to Chesterton's Orthodoxy as an audiobook this year. He has a delightful way with words! Furthermore, the reactions to, disagreements with, or attacks on Christianity, which he dealt with over a century ago, are surprisingly familiar today. Thus, his response to them, which is semi-autobiographical, also still resonates. This might sound as if he's writing high philosophy against great opponents, but in much of the book, his antagonist is within - his doubts, fears, beliefs, and opinions. There was much to ponder and appreciate here.

Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts by Lydia McGrew - A cousin recommended this book to me a couple months back as having an interesting line of evidence for the reliability of the New Testament. Since it was free on Kindle Unlimited, I decided to look at it while we have the free trial. I'd never heard the argument for undesigned coincidences developed, although apparently it's a couple hundred years old. It has value both as commentary linking the gospel accounts and as an apologetic argument for their reliability. (my post about it)

Additional reads of value: One Gospel for All Nations by Jackson Wu; The Message of Acts by Stott; Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity by David deSilva (related post)

Fiction

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay - This novel exploring the French participation in the Holocaust during World War II was deeply moving. The book's impact on Bethany as she read it was what got it onto my list to read; it was worth it. It is a well-crafted story full of pathos.

A Man of Means by P. G. Wodehouse (or... My Man Jeeves, The Inimitable Jeeves, Uneasy Money) - A friend has been telling me for years of the beauty to be found in reading Wodehouse. This year, I finally started exploring. He was right, of course. You should try them too; all the ones above are in the public domain (aka free). Clever British humor...

Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan - In a reverse from Sarah's Key, Echo was such a good book that I got Bethany to read it.  This is a novel for young people, but it is also a compelling tale for the rest of us. More accurately, it is several tales woven together with a delicate touch.

Princess of Wind & Wave (and others) by Melanie Cellier - The re-imagining of the ancient fairy tales is very nicely done in this series; the old tales guide core details of the plot, but they do not govern harshly. One is always left to wonder how the new tale will end and how the critical nuances of each tale will be intertwined in the book. (Bethany says Cellier's Spoken Mage series may be even better.)

Others: The Good Earth by Peal S. Buck; Call for the Dead by John de la Carré (who passed away very recently); and The Chosen by Chaim Potok (related post)

Re-reads: the Wrinkle in Time series; the Dune series by Frank Herbert (related post)

Nonfiction

Third Culture Kids by Van Reken and Pollock - This book is not the sort that you necessarily read through. I've benefitted from it since I first picked it up in Albania in 2005 and realized that "I was a TCK": I was a normal person from an unusual culture. Now, I'm looking at it more from the perspective of a parent. How does one raise children between cultures in the best possible ways?

   BONUS FICTION: Three Names of Me by Mary Cummings is a book about a little girl raised between cultures and struggling with her identity. It's a beautiful book for kids. (The main character is not technically a TCK, but her questions are similar, so I include her story here.)

Lions of the West by Robert Morgan - This biographical history followed a series of lives to explain the expansion of a small group of British colonies to cover the breadth of the American continent. Morgan shows the tragedies (personal and societal), the visions (also, personal and societal), the courage, the pettiness, and the conniving that went into a century of expansion and conquest, growth and heartbreak. The book is aptly subtitled "Heroes and Villains."

Religion and the Growing Mind by Basil Yeaxlee (one post among several from earlier this year) 

Music from the Year

Psallos' "Hebrews" album - These meditations on the book of Hebrews captured the family's collective musical ear. There's a variety of styles to fit the variety of topics in Hebrews.

Andrew Peterson's "Resurrection Letters" albums were also prominent in our listening this year. Volume 1 is my favorite, but all of them are impacting.

Finally, "The Hound + The Fox" are a musical team whom we have often enjoyed listening to. Check them out; I'd start here with "What Child is This / Child of the Poor." (Then save it for next Christmas!)

Recommendations from years past: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

Hidden in Plain View - a lapsed argument on the New Testament's reliability

I suggest that we have such ample evidence for the reliability of these documents that we should consider ourselves privileged rather than burdened when called upon to present it. We should welcome the opportunity to reclaim and maintain the forward position held by the older apologists, for their arguments have been not so much refuted as forgotten in the shifts of theological fashion. (McGrew, 192)

 Drawing heavily on Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Blunt's "Scriptural Coincidences" (both free online due to their age), in Hidden in Plain View, Lydia McGrew presented a fresh and compelling argument on the historical reliability and accuracy on Scripture. Apparently this argument of (humanly) "undesigned coincidences" within Scripture  traces back to the 18th and 19th centuries, but it mostly disappeared. Now, due to a cousin's recommendation and the fact that it was available on Kindle Unlimited, I have gotten to read and benefit from this really useful book and argument. Hidden in Plain View was helpful in four areas:

1.  Reliability of Scripture (apologetics)

2.  Dealing with Bible difficulties (apologetics and hermeneutics)

3.  The 'Synoptic problem' in the Gospels (apologetics and hermeneutics)

4.  Insight into New Testament Scripture (hermeneutics)

  For the frequent reader or long-term student of the New Testament, the material in this book will probably be both extremely familiar and regularly surprising. This is particularly true of the first half, which deals with the Gospels. The reason for this is that as we have imbibed the different portions of the Scripture, we have often synthesized them in our understanding. This is obviously a good thing! However, it comes with the downside of not necessarily distinguishing the sources of the pieces of knowledge from each other. Therefore, we may not be  fully aware of many of the cases of Scripture supporting Scripture in the nitty gritty details.

  Again, this unawareness of specific links between is especially true in the four Gospel accounts, where the genres and narratives are so often read in parallel. On the other hand, I found that I was more aware of the subtle links between the accounts in Acts and the Pauline letters. I suspect that this is because each of these is more likely to be studied independently. Conversely, the Gospels, particularly the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, Luke), are frequently studied as a whole. 

 It is in this connection that McGrew sheds light on the so-called 'synoptic problem', which she names 'the synoptic puzzle.' In fascinating details, she shows the independence of the four Gospel witnesses from each other. Most interestingly, as she points out, the details of independence often emerge at exactly the places where the accounts seem most harmonized (dependent?) at a surface level. This perspective also gives a clear response to the common question, 'Why are there four gospels (not just one)? (The apparently similar question of the later, Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Barnabas or the Gospel of Thomas, is quite separate actually.)

The providential provision of four Gospels gives us a three-dimensional view of the events. (p. 193)

 It was also in the Gospel sections, that I felt like there were the most significant insights into passages allowing deeper understanding of the meaning of each passage. For example, the links between John 13 where Jesus washes his followers' feet and Luke 22 where he describes servant leadership and declares, "I am among you as one who serves" are particularly poignant. The strength of this connection will certainly inform my thinking going forward.

  Anyways, this book is definitely worth reading, if not in all the details, at least to get the main argument. It is approachable in tone and, because she usually quotes the passages she is dealing with in their entirety, the argument has greater force as you see the coincidences in the details of the texts. 

  A few additional quotes to stir your interest (bold emphasis mine, italics original): 

But it is particularly noticeable that the Gospel authors often seem to write with the lack of affectation that we find in a person whose primary purpose is getting important information out there, getting down what happened, making it available, rather than in one whose primary purpose is to fit together what he writes in a polished manner. The author of the Gospel of John is certainly theological, perhaps more so than any of the other Gospel writers. But again and again we find him including items in his Gospel without their full explanations, apparently just because he wanted his readers to know that they happened. (p. 44)

What one sees in undesigned coincidences, again and again, are points which “impressed themselves upon the eye” of the spectator and came thus into the accounts we now have. (p. 63)

It’s also worth noting that any intentional connection of this miracle with the earlier miracle could, if both occurred, be attributed to Jesus himself. [...] It’s important not to assume that, if there are resemblances between two events in the Gospels, this automatically implies a literary parallel created by the author. (p. 207) 

~ McGrew, Lydia. Hidden In Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts 

a Disastrophe with Hanitizer

   My sister recently shared with me the word malaphor, which apparently is the blending of idioms or cliches; her sharing included the example, "it's not rocket surgery." It's always nice to have another word for something you already know how to do. I mean this summer I had realized that you should 

Never count your chickens before they come home to roost!

  

  Having said that, I have for years been collecting words along the same line - serendipitous combinations of words that, merged together, picturesquely convey far more than the sum of their parts. Language Nerds (the main reason I've considered getting Instagram) had one this week: 

cupidity: the dumb stuff we do when we are in love 

   Here are some additional samples that I present for your use.  

hanitizer: the stuff we wash COVID off our hands with (credit: small human in Texas) 

himpered: when you feel both hampered and hindered in and from doing something

disastrophe: when a catastrophe gets disastrously worse

crimpled: the feeling of not being able to walk because you've been sitting all crumpled up

anticdote: 1. a story about one's own antics; 2. a humorous anecdote told in order to offer warning for others as an antidote to their foolishness (credit: unsuspecting theologian in a lecture)

clowsy: cloudiness that makes one feel drowsy (credit: brother-in-law)

waservoir: a place with a large accumulation of water held in reserve (credit: small human)

wuzzled: the state of a paper that has been crushed and wadded and was not supposed to be in that state Ex: Why is this all wuzzled up?!? (credit: father) 

Imagining the Creation before the World's Creation - The Silmarillion, Chapter 1

   If you've read my blog or we've talked much, you may recall some of my theological speculations (sample 1, sample 2, sample 3). There's lots of areas for wondering in Scripture, many things that are hinted at, but not detailed. It is along these lines that J. R. R. Tolkien's first chapter in The Silmarillion is so gripping. 

 Middle Earth is neither a Christian allegory nor even a theologically correct construct of 'the real world'. There are elements in it that differ from what we might call a 'biblical' worldview; however, it seems to me to be a thoroughly Christian worldview. Middle Earth is a place where the creative mind that has been saturated with the possibilities latent within the world we see and the revelation that has been given to us can run free. 

  Thus it is that in the first lines describing the dawning of the reality in which Middle Earth will later occur, we find Eru, the One. Then, follows a chapter filled with what the imagination can suggest happened before the Beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. It is a consideration of what might have been when 'the morning stars sang together... for joy' or when a son of Dawn said, "I will make myself like the Most High" (Job 38:7; Isaiah 14:12-14). It is in no way an exposition or interpretation of those passages, simply a fantasy of what might have been before our own dawning. It considers how the One knew that a darker theme would enter the Story  through pride and increase the majesty within the music, never denying the Composer one iota of the glory of His composition. Instead, setting theme against theme, the Subverter would amplify the Creator's own harmonies.

  I'd highly recommend these 10 pages of a novel as a meditation for the Christian mind. Imagination is a gift from the Creator, and Tolkien was a gifted imaginer.