'The Shack' by William P. Young

[Luke Isham]

I thought someone had to begin a thread on this eventually, as the 'The Shack' phenomena sweeps the great south land.  (The book tour actually stops in Melbourne tomorrow night at Crossway Baptist, although the closet Koorong catalogue readers knew this already.)

Let me release the feline among the avians:  I'm reading it at the moment as my bedtime book and enjoying it so far, although I admit I haven't got to the part yet where Mack meets God in the shack, that is the controversial bit apparently.

Will Brigg's review is here. (Will says it's the most viewed page of his blog!)
The Sydney Anglican opinion piece is here. (The latest paper Briefing had a very interesting article about it as well.)

If anyone would like to borrow my copy after me and won't mind my pencil annotations you welcome to.

[Luke Isham]

The Sola Panel makes an observation about The Shack.

Last night I read about Mack meeting God the father, she was a woman!  (But I'd been warned about that so I took it in my stride.)  I was disappointed that the snowbound nasty looking shack by the lake was transformed into beautiful log cabin before God turned up.

By far the best modern-theophany I've read is Adrian Plass' The Visit: Would you be ready? Link. Although in his book only Jesus makes an appearance which simplifies matters greatly.

[Jereth]

Luke,

You're too fast for me. My bedtime reading is still Desiring God by John Piper -- and I'm almost up to chapter 3

Take home message: stop reading that rubbish and read something wholesome and good, in other words something by John Piper. Don't you know that your brain is a limited space and everytime you put garbage in something good falls out to make room!! :-)

cheers
Jereth

[Luke Isham]

I know your the fake Jereth, because the real Jereth would want to know why the Shack is successful.

It's interesting to note while I'm reading it how theological concepts get translated into the popular experience.  It's good bedtime reading, interesting enough for me to read before sleep but not to exciting to keep me awake.  American gods tried to do something similar but with Paganism as it's model.

[jane churchland]

Luke Isham wrote:

 American gods tried to do something similar but with Paganism as it's model.

Do you mean Neil Gaiman's book?

[Luke Isham]

That's the one.

[Tamie Davis]

I thought a bit about 'The Shack' and wrote a couple of papers on it last year. You can get to them from here:

http://arthurandtamie.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/the-shack/

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Luke Isham]

Hi Tamie,

Good review, it's good you focused on only a few theological problems rather then with every issue in The Shack.  I think what you say in your conclusion to your second paper sums up one of the essential problems with the book and with Young's theology as it appears.

This is a God who comes to us on our terms, even forsaking the predominant way the Bible talks about him, as Father, in order to make himself more comfortable for Mack and presumably the reader. Yet The Shack fails to present a God who actually is bigger, higher, deeper and wiser than human beings. There is little that is difficult to understand about this God who explains himself so clearly in the pages of The Shack. I believe the great danger is that this God fits squarely into a caricature of what our culture wants him to be and therefore does not offer authentic relationship with the true and living God.

[Andrew Bowles]

"This is a God who comes to us on our terms, even forsaking the predominant way the Bible talks about him, as Father, in order to make himself more comfortable for Mack and presumably the reader."

There seems to be a bit of truth in that view of God, though...

'Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on the cross'.
                                                                            Phil 2:7-8

[Tim Patrick]

Andrew Bowles wrote:

'Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God...

Or even 'Because he was God... ' (a better translation I think). It's not as though an act of condescension for the sake of his creation is somehow contrary to God's nature. It's completely in line with his gracious character!

Tim

[Luke Isham]

No, I still think Tamie is still correct.  Although I agree with the idea God humbles himself to our humanity, we do not as Young suggests in The Shack shape God according to our humanity.

[Andrew Bowles]

Are you thinking of a particular passage that suggests that? The representation of the Father as a woman is far more trivial than people are making it. The Father isn't a male either, he is a spirit without 'parts or passions', so giving him any bodily form is departing from theological accuracy. If you're going down that path in a story, you might as well use a female form make a point about God's character, which it does, pointing back to Phil 2 again. I think Papa is actually a great exposition of divine apatheia, if anything. Reading it I understood much better what 'impassibility' would actually look like.

The whole story seems to me to be set in a kind of narrative space which is similar to The Great Divorce, where C.S Lewis asks the resurrected George MacDonald if he is truly seeing what heaven is like. The answer is 'Don't ask for a vision in a dream more than it can give. You saw things a bit more clearly than you otherwise would.' The Shack is a 'vision' where suffering and God's love are explored. I don't think we can ask more of it than a dream can give. No-one can actually represent the Trinity, because it's incomprehensible to our current ability to understand.





 

[Jereth]

Andrew Bowles wrote:

"This is a God who comes to us on our terms, even forsaking the predominant way the Bible talks about him, as Father, in order to make himself more comfortable for Mack and presumably the reader."

There seems to be a bit of truth in that view of God, though...

'Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on the cross'.
                                                                            Phil 2:7-8

Andrew buddy, I think you've gotten your lines crossed. In Scripture, the Father never forsakes his name, nature or being as Father. He always has been and always will be Father. Phil 2:7-8 is about what happens to the Son -- and even the Son does not forsake his divinity nor his Sonship when he becomes a man. Jesus' manhood (Adam-hood) is completely in line with his divine Sonship. (see Luke 3:21-38). That's how I understand it anyway

Jereth

[Jordan]

Hi all,

'Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me."' (Jn 12:44)

When we look at 'Papa' from the Shack, we can't be quite sure what we're looking at. But when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospel, we know we're seeing the Father as he truly is.

Jordan

 

[Andrew Bowles]

'When we look at 'Papa' from the Shack, we can't be quite sure what we're looking at.'

Of course Papa is not the Father. Papa is a fictional representation of someone's experience of God's love and care for them, cast in terms of the the doctrine of the Trinity as mediated by a vision experienced by a character in a novel.

With the reference to Phil 2 I was just trying to point out that in how he depicts the Father, William Young has tapped into the condescending love of God in some way.

No more discussion on the finer points of Trinitarian doctrine will be entered into on MASG by Andrew Bowles, neither in his ousia as a human being nor in his hypostasis as a commenter on this forum, without confusion or distinction, to the ages of ages.

[Andrew Stagg]

Andrew Bowles wrote:

 No more discussion on the finer points of Trinitarian doctrine will be entered into on MASG by Andrew Bowles, neither in his ousia as a human being nor in his hypostasis as a commenter on this forum, without confusion or distinction, to the ages of ages.

I wouldn't want you to feel people were hounding you Andrew, but given that you were used to work (and occasionally preach) at the church service I go to and given that earlier you said the following  "The representation of the Father as a woman is far more trivial than people are making it. " I feel I'd like to ask you - do you actually believe this??

[Phil Weickhardt (Phool)]

Based on opinions expressed in this forum and other reviews I decided that it was not helpful for me to read "The Shack". My wife was reading it and there were certainly copies in the local Christian Bookshop.

That is until I was given a copy as a present. My interpretaion of this was a nudge from Sovereign Lord saying "read it for yourself". So I did.

Reading the book was somewhat cathartic. I found it to be a terrific allegory [an African Pastor friend once explained that African christians are very comfortable with allegory but he does not find this in the West where empiricism is more valued]. I did not agree with all of it but wondered if it was biographical or autobiographical due to the depths of human experience that it explored.

Like Mack the death of a child is an experince I will never forget and some of Mack's experiences when he returns to the Shack are things that resonated with me. My son did not suffer in the same way as was pictured for Mack's daughter, nor did I have any guilt that his death was my fault. Having said that I was in tears as the book touched deep emotional points in my soul.

There were images of God that I found extremely helpful and broke some personal shackles: wisdom personified to me was brilliant literature as was the playful Spirit that could not be tied down or defined as it were.

I would carefully recommend it to others!  

[Luke Isham]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, loosing someone close is heartrending, especially I imagine a child.  I'm glad you were able to find truth in The Shack and it helped process some stuff.  I respectfully disagree with your recommendation.

While there are important themes of healing in The Shack, the way evil and suffering is dealt with borders on making God responsible.  To paraphrase Young, God allowed harm to come to Mack's daughter in order to allow human freedom.  Freedom, it seems to Young, is the greatest gift God can offer humanity.  In other words God goes beyond enduring and allowing evil to facilitating it and being indirectly responsible for it's existence though the creation of freedom.  However I would have thought God's righteousness is the greatest gift a loving God would offer and evil is a moral category humans activate through their anti-righteousness (sinfulness).  Primarily however, it is the representation of God that is probably the most problematic idea in The Shack.  The topic of God is controversial, vital and complex.  I'm no expert but I suspect neither is Young and it's disappointing to see him explore the theology of God, the unity and distinctiveness of the Trinity (sorry Andrew B., the 'gender' of God) and the way God reveals himself and relates to his people in a way that is both confusing and misleading.  Like I said on my blog it's an important topic so lets get it right.

I'm happy to discuss this further however I won't be able to cite The Shack by chapter and verse because my copy is in Tasmania at the moment.  

[Phil Weickhardt (Phool)]

Hi Luke,

as far as matters of orthodoxy go, I think I would agree with you on most points and I am happy not to analyse The Shack chapter by chapter.

I found it helpful and it does deal with very difficult themes. I will continue to carefully (possibly very carefully) recommend it, but also selectively. I would not promote it to a group but I may suggest to an individual that they read it and we discuss it.

[Rob Miller]

It seems to me the problem is not merely with the way that the persons of the Trinity are represented, but with how these representations relate to each other. In other words, does the Trinity in the book act in a way that is consistent with what we know of God from the Gospel? If not, then we would have to say that the book is unhelpful and perhaps heretical.

The first thing to say is that in the Bible it is not usual for the Father to come to us. Instead he works in and through (or sends) the Son and the Spirit in order to make himself known and draw us to himself. I take it that this action reflects something of the internal relations of the Father, Son and Spirit (though some will disagree). So to portray the Father as directly ‘showing up’ seems to me to ignore God’s characteristic way of working (to overturn the ‘economy’ of salvation) and to constitute a kind of disordering of the Trinity.

Second, Jesus the Son is the exact representation of the Father. To see him is to see the Father. This is absolutely crucial. So to present the Father showing up in one ‘form’ and the Son manifesting in another, different form is really unhelpful. It suggests that the revelation of God in Christ is somehow inadequate or inaccurate. The book seems to show that it is possible to have knowledge of the Father apart from the Son, and this would be a contradiction the Gospel.