Interacting with literature

I'm looking forward to a series of posts by Carolyn Weber, entitled I Read Dead People, that she describes as such:

In this upcoming series, I would like to examine a handful of examples from literary greats, and consider how they challenge and inform our faith walk. The list need not be limited to Christian writers, or overtly Christian topics. I have found that to be irrelevant in the long run, as everything I have ever read, and continue to read, regardless of cultural or spiritual context or background, still speaks to me in some way of the human condition, our need for redemption, and most powerfully, the glory of God.

 You can follow this series by visiting her site regularly: Pressing Save: Reading, Writing, and Living the Word Eternal. She can also be found on Twitter: @CarolynWeber and @PressingSave .


In light of anticipating Weber's series on interacting with literature, I thought I would collect and present my blog posts in which I have reflected on classic literature that I was reading. The posts are listed under the author who's literature I interacted with.




Dumas:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/10/we-believe-were-much-mre-unhappy.html


 
Dostoyevsky:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/11/grotesque.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/11/all-ways-are-thine.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/11/pre-piperian-christian-hedonism.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/11/dostoyevsky-on-repentance.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/07/engage-to-read.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/06/packer-on-dostoyevsky.html


 
Shelley:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/05/despair-guilt-and-remorse-in.html


 
Goethe:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2010/01/from-faust-by-goethe.html


 
Donne:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2009/11/john-donne-holy-sonnets-xv.html


 
Steinbeck:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/06/perfect-among-mornings.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/06/detatchment-of-god.html


 
Tolstoy:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/07/loss-of-our-wealth.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-never-regretted-anything.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/06/packer-on-dostoyevsky.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2010/10/from-leo-tolstoys-short-story-death-of.html


 
Shakespeare:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/06/macbeth-and-preacher.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/01/shakespeare-on-stuff_16.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-will-these-hands-neer-be-clean.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2010/04/shakespeare-and-burroughs.html

http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2011/05/shakespeare-and-psalm-46.html


 
Solzhenitsyn:
http://quercuscalliprinos.blogspot.com/2009/05/quoting-solzhenitsyn.html

Of Resolutions and Gopel

Over at Pressing Save, Carolyn Weber has a great post on resolutions and the gospel. Here is an excerpt:

God's Resolution for each of us is not just for a new year, but a New Life.

Because He fulfilled His resolution with His own flesh and blood. Because His Word is restorative beyond all our understanding – a Love that falls beyond the margins of our lists. The movement from womb to tomb, conception to epiphany, death to resurrection … quite the ambitious list. And yet everything on it has been crossed off (if you pardon the pun) and burned in our hearts, even the most doubting ones, for us to see.

Read the whole thing here.

Peter Cockrell, at Already Not Yet, touches upon the gospel as well:


C.H. Spurgeon:

We ought not, as men in Christ Jesus, to be carried away by a childish love of novelty, for we worship a God who is ever the same, and of whose years there is no end. In some matters “the old is better.” There are certain things which are already so truly new, that to change them for anything else would be to lose old gold for new dross.

The old, old gospel is the newest thing in the world; in its very essence it is for ever good news. In the things of God the old is ever new, and if any man brings forward that which seems to be new doctrine and new truth, it is soon perceived that the new dogma is only worn-out heresy dexterously repaired, and the discovery in theology is the digging up of a carcase of error which had better have been left to rot in oblivion.

In the great matter of truth and godliness, we may safely say, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
(HT: Trevin Wax)