Revisiting The Shack

After over a year, The Shack remains on the New York Times bestseller list. As of this writing it is still number #2 under the heading of trade fiction. An impressive achievement from an author who never set out to have his work published in the first place. I addressed some issues around the book in a blog last fall. I continue to see reviews that either love or hate it. There seems to be very little middle ground. The book has obviously hit a raw nerve in American culture. It is communicating something about God that people are hungry to hear. The question is, “is the message feel-good New-Age Oprah style vacuous spirituality, or is the message more substantive?” And if it is more substantive is it orthodox? Or heretical? (Note here: heresy to have any meaning must mean something more than, “I don’t like it.” Or “I’ve never heard this before.” See my discussion of heresy in The Survivor’s Guide to Theology, 33-35; 145-151; 190-195.)

This second blog on the topic is prompted by a recent critique published in the Spiritual Counterfeits Project newsletter (spring 2009), and written by an old seminary classmate and former colleague of mine. The counterpoint here is the critique given by several members of the Regent College (Vancouver B.C.) faculty in a book discussion in 2008. http://www.regentaudio.com/product_details.php?item_id=801 (I highly recommend this discussion!)

As he introduced Paul Young at a Regent College faculty discussion Dr. Darrell Johnson, of Regent said, “‘All theology is autobiography,’ that is a saying you will hear a lot around Regent College. All theology is autobiography: by this is meant that everyone develops his or her theology out of one’s own experience of life with God.”

Paul Young clearly articulates that The Shack is a metaphor or parable. “It is a fiction story. . . The Shack is not a systematic theology, it is not the Bible. It is a fiction story. But inside that story I wrote my pain. And I wrote my process. And I wrote the conversations I had over the years as I unwound all the junk. And I wrote God as good as I know how. And all I can tell you is He is better than I wrote Him.”

I suspect that It is the sometimes brutal honesty of the telling of the story that has resonated with audiences all over the country and the English speaking world. Paul Young gives voice to the questions, pain and anger that we are afraid to voice. Afraid that God will banish us for questioning. Afraid that our Christian friends will look down on us for saying out loud what we all fear. Afraid to look unspiritual. Afraid to be seen as imperfect.

I don’t want to plow the same ground of my earlier blog. But I do believe that it needs to be repeated at the outset that (William) Paul Young (like me he goes by his middle name) calls this book a parable, a parable of his own spiritual journey, a journey that includes a childhood of incredible abuse and damage that was left unaddressed until Young was thirty-eight years old. As a parable, any critique must take into account the genre. Any legitimate critique must also understand the context and the intended audience (his own children).

One of the repeated criticisms is that of the portrayal of the Godhead. Critiques have charged the book as teaching modalism/Sabellianism, the ancient heresy that God is single and unitary and does not exist in three persons but reveals himself historically in succession as Father (in the OT) as Son (in the Gospels) and as Spirit (beginning with Pentecost). To illustrate this, I am son, husband, and father. These are three aspects of my being, but I am one undifferentiated person. This heresy was prominent particularly during the third century and was roundly rejected by the early church a generation before the council of Nicea. Some critics of The Shack charge that this heresy is portrayed in The Shack through the author’s portrayal of Papa as having scars that mirror the crucifixion scars of Jesus. In the critique by the faculty of Regent, two of the theologians mention discomfort with this imagery suggesting that a more appropriate image might be a wound to the heart of Papa, rather than the nail prints in the hands. (Significantly they do not accuse him of heresy!) Young’s response to this was he was trying to give an image of the Apostle’s imagery in 2 Cor 5:19. “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. . .” As I hear what Young was saying here is that he was trying to illustrate in concrete form the doctrine of the perichoresis of the persons of the trinity, i.e. each member indwells the other, shares in the experiences of the other, and participates in some sense in all the activities of the other two persons. The members of the trinity share a unity of life that is unparalleled by human beings. Whether this was the best image to try to convey this understanding can be debated.

Other critiques have suggested that instead of operating from an orthodox Trinitarian framework , the book falls into tri-theism. This heresy is on the other end of the scale from modalism/Sabellianism. (Note: there is an old saying that if you are being attacked by both sides of an issue you are probably somewhere close to the correct position.) The Spiritual Counterfeits Project review says, “God is presented as The Three Musketeers with shades of Tritheism, the ancient heresy that He is actually three deities.” (p. 5) The critique goes on to say that “in the Bible no one ever sees the Father because God dwells in inaccessible light.—no one can see Him and live.” While the reviewer is accurate in his comment about anyone seeing the Father in the Bible, the criticism is irrelevant at this point. The portrayal of the Father and the Spirit in the book are accommodations rather than images of who the Father is in himself. No one believes that the Father is a large black woman and despite the images on the Sistine Chapel, anyone familiar with Christianity knows that the Father is not an old gray-haired man with a flowing beard). I find it interesting that in his parables Jesus has no hesitation in portraying characters clearly identified with God the Father in human form.

Paul Young has become a close associate of C. Baxter Kruger, Ph.D. (This might be characterized by an orthodoxy by association defense.) Kruger (perichoresis.org) obtained his degree at Aberdeen University under J.B. Torrance and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on T.F. Torrance, one of the premier English speaking theologians of the 20^th century. These theologians are adamant about the centrality of historic orthodox trinitarianism as defined by the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. They rightly, I believe, decry the way that western trinitarianism (both Catholic and Protestant) has lost the personalistic and relational focus that the Eastern Orthodox tradition has been able to keep at the center of its worship and theology. In the west, the doctrine of God has become abstract and focused upon the divine attributes especially transcendent majesty/holiness, at the expense of personal relationship characterizing the members of the trinity. But the Torrance brothers go further, focusing on the presentation in John’s gospel (particularly John 15-17) they insist that there is a personal indwelling of both the Father and the Son within the believer that is the basis of intimate personal communion of the believer not only with the Spirit but with the triune God. This is a spiritual reality that cannot be pictured literally, it must be pictured analogically. This is the approach Young has chosen in The Shack, despite the inherent difficulties/dangers. Again, remember the genre.

Hand in hand with the above critique is the “cheekiness” and lack of reverence in Mack’s interchange with the members of the Godhead. All we need do is read the Psalms to see a repeated “lack of reverence” in the Psalmist’s addresses to God particularly in the lament Psalms. Tremper Longman and Dan Allender have discussed these at length their The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God. Significantly, we find that God hears us in our anger and our pain. He is looking for honesty in us, rather than being worried that we do not respect Him by raising questions and issues even in anger. If this is true in the OT, how much more so in the NT where we have the example of Jesus who according to Hebrews 4:14-16 understands our weakness because he has been tempted in all ways like we are.

This leads to the next major critique; that The Shack denies hierarchy within the Trinity. This critique comes from several different sources and is one brought up by the Spiritual Counterfeits critique. “The root of all authority, hierarchy and relationships is the Godhead. Paul Young crafts his godhead after the image of the rebellion-driven counterculture.” (p. 5) What is fascinating is that this very issue has become a hot button within the very conservative Evangelical Theological Society. Several prominent Evangelical theologians, including Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware, are vociferously asserting an eternal hierarchy of authority within the trinity, a hierarchy that inheres in the very being of God, while asserting at the same time that all three persons share equally of a single divine essence. (Sorry if this is getting a little technical.) On the other side is another group, whose most visible spokesman is the Australian Kevin Giles, arguing that within the trinity there is no hierarchy. What makes this issue more heated is that this issue is used by each side to bolster its position on gender relationships. (This makes the whole discussion agenda driven in what I consider to be an improper way, but the question of the intra-Trinitarian personal relationships remains.) Within the past two weeks I have finished reading Evangelical theologian Millard Erickson’s latest work: Who’s Tampering With The Trinity? What makes this work significant is that Erickson does not have a horse in the race with reference to gender relationships. His analysis is careful and dispassionate. He presents each position descriptively and often in the words of the proponents of each position. He lays out the criteria for evaluation of the two positions then examines the evidence, biblical, historical, philosophical, theological and practical. He presents criticisms of argumentation on both sides and ends up addressing the question “So Who’s Right?” While he sees some problems with the articulation of each position, he concludes that each position falls within the boundaries of historic orthodoxy. However, in the last three pages he clearly concludes that those who are advocating eternal hierarchy have serious problems in maintaining their position. That is

“that it contains elements that logically imply an unorthodox dimension of the doctrine of the Trinity . . . the idea of ontological equality [i.e. equality of essence or being] combined with the eternal and necessary supremacy of authority of the Father over the Son and the Holy Spirit. . . I believe this is an unstable position. For if one member is always and everywhere functionally superior to the others, there must be an ontological basis for the difference. In other words, while explicitly rejecting the idea of ontological subordination, this view actually implies it and thus contains an implicit ontological subordination. (257)

He goes on to note that the historic pattern is for succeeding generations to work out the implicit propositions of their professors, and cites numerous examples of this phenomenon. Having just stated this he says, “I therefore echo Giles plea to the gradationists [i.e. those who are advocating eternal hierarchical authority], ‘Go back. You are going the wrong way’.” (258)

He continues:

Please think through the implications of your view, observe the body of evidence against it, and reconsider the idea of the eternal functional superiority of the Father over the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is no shame in modifying one’s view when confronted with considerations one may have overlooked. In fact, it is a mark of strength to possess a continuing open mind. (259)

This is getting long, so I will cut it short recognizing that I will revisit the topic with more observations in the coming weeks. To summarize what we have here looked at briefly. The basic issue of the nature of Trinitarian reality has been addressed. I believe that much of the criticism arises from a lack of historical understanding in breadth of explanation of Trinitarian relationships within the tradition of historic orthodoxy (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant). The second major critique again with reference to Trinitarian relationships objects that the denial of hierarchy within the intra-Trinitarian relationships is grounded in counter-culture rebellion. This is patently false . In fact Millard Erickson has demonstrated that those arguing for intra-trinnitarian hierarchy have implicitly endorsed the type of subordinationism that gave rise to the Arian heresy in the fourth century and has been revived by the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past century and one-half. Third we have looked very briefly at the difficulty arising out of trying to portray in concrete terms the reality of the intimate spiritual relationship that the believer is to have with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.