The Ironic Christian' Companion: Finding the Marks of God's Grace in the World. - Review - book review

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2000 by T.K. Thomas

Patrick Henry, The Ironic Christian' Companion: Finding the Marks of God's Grace in the World, New York, Riverhead Books, 1999, 208pp., $23.95.

"You may have picked this book up because of my name," writes the author (p.20). I hadn't. I have heard of the Patrick Henry who said during the US war of Independence -- 1776 and all that -- "Give me liberty or give me death", and assumed he had received both. I was in fact attracted more by the title of the book than the name of the author.

My homeland is India, and my church the Mar Thoma. We fondly believe that this church was founded by the apostle who, a little unfairly, is referred to as "doubting" Thomas. But when once his doubts are dispelled, he addresses his master as "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28). If the tradition of apostolic beginnings that we cherish is anything more than wishful thinking, later he must have come all the way to Kerala in the South of India to convert my ancestors! In short: a doubting but also believing Christian.

Doubting, sceptical and even cynical Christians are more common than ironic Christians. During the early philosophical phases of their existence the Cynics affirmed virtue and nothing else, and Sceptics neither affirmed nor denied anything. I had always thought of sceptical Christians as Christians who took people and ideas, theological speculations in particular, with a pinch of salt, and would rather wait and see than be instantly born again and sin no more. "Ironic", surely, is more striking, though at one time the root word meant "dissembling" or "dissimulating". And Patrick Henry commends the ironic Christian with so much wit and persuasive eloquence - and against a background of so much personal experience of pain and loss - that I felt close to conversion, though conversion of any kind is suspect in India today.

Henry begins by warning readers (like me) against prematurely identifying themselves with the ironic Christian. He reminds them that "one of the chief characteristics of an ironic Christian is an instinctive, abiding suspicion of no-loose-ends answers". The world ironic Christian inhabits is more "as if" than "just like", fashioned as it is by "a God of surprises". The book is about the grace of God which "can be trusted but not taken for granted". "To be both ironic and Christian is to know, with a knowing deeper than doctrine, the simple, unnerving truth that the visage of faith is not the happy face but the masks of comedy and tragedy, alternating, unpredictably, between laughter and tears, sometimes crying and laughing at the same time, or even, on occasion, crying because it is so funny and laughing because it hurts so much" (p.7).

For many Christians faith is faith and blasphemy is blasphemy. What is written is written and what is said is said. Increasingly Christians go by "the bumper-sticker litany -- the Bible: God said it, I believe it, that settles it". There is no room for "as if"; grace is "just like" and leaves no room for irony. There was a time, however, when "`Christian' meant wider horizons, a larger heart, minds set free, room to move around. But these days `Christian' sounds pinched, squeezed, narrow" (p.8). The book is an attempt to explore whether Christians can recover the old freedom, whether liberty can be restored to and lived by Christians. It seeks "to offer a way of knowing that increases life's abundance" (p.23). The book is not for convinced and settled Christians; it is to help people face the new and to be surprised by it, and to be content with not knowing it all.

That is an attempt to introduce the ironic Christian, following fairly closely the author's own description of the nature and the potential of the ironic role. But we cannot continue that way, partly because the book is designed to serve as a companion and dialogue partner, and not as a guide who will lead us unerringly and take us all the ironic way. And also because to summarize the chapters would be unfair to the author. In fact there are no chapters; there are only sections and they are not numbered because "the grace of God is not linear" (p.3). The titles of the sections are more suggestive than definitive, or even descriptive. They are "called `on this' rather than `this' because they open up more than they finish off". A passing review cannot claim such freedom or emulate that sort of style.

The section that follows the introductory warnings and offers is "On when It Is" and has sub-titles such as "When was long ago?", "When is it now?" and "What is coming?". The next section is "On Where We Are ". As is perhaps obvious, these sections deal with the changing understandings of time and space. Here as elsewhere in the book the purpose is to bring out the relevance of the Christian faith in our contemporary context. Given the expanding horizons of knowledge and the largely--fixed bases of our faith, how do we relate and integrate the two?

"On Paying Attention" is on God seeking us and our responding to God. Henry describes revelation as "what happens when God tries to get our attention and We, reluctantly or enthusiastically or even inadvertently, give it", p.83). God pursues me, as in Francis Thompson's poem The Hound of Heaven, but God also listens to me, as to Moses when he was called and sent -- "listens to what I may become, and therefore challenges me to come out of myself in order to be myself" (p. 104). (The reference to the poem does not really illustrate anything, but that is, to my mind, the case with quite a few of the innumerable allusions and references in the book. They are often interesting, but they also distract.)