Michael Edwards - Untimely Christianity: Hearing the Bible in a Secular Age

Praise for Untimely Christianity

Michael Edwards is a distinguished literary critic and himself a fine poet. In Untimely Christianity, he offers an acutely discerning reflection on the conscience-searing language of Jesus and the startling otherness of the words of biblical poetry from the psalms, prophets, and sayings of Christ. I know of no comparable introduction to authentic reading of the Bibleindeed, this little book, small in size but enormous in consequence, is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand the Bible as the distinctive word of God.

David Lyle Jeffrey, author of Scripture and the English Poetic Imagination and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion

Michael Edwards reminds us that it is dangerous to read the Bible. His piercingly beautiful essay restores the surprising strangeness of the text. I was moved and disturbed and felt often I was experiencing the full reality of Scripture for the first time. We desperately need people with Professor Edwardss poetic and philosophical skill to awaken us from rationalist readings to experience the Person who haunts the text. The meditation on the nature of translation as a spiritual practice was particularly insightful, and the work itself owes some of its power to the fact that it is the work of an Englishman, writing in French, and then ably translated by John Marson Dunaway. I learned so much: about the Lords Prayer as poetry, the relation of faith to reality, and the potency of church architecture and ancient stones alike to prompt us to believe in the existence of a world that responds to this aspiration and this reserve. Christians will find their faith made startlingly strange, while nonbelievers will be beguiled by this elegant, nonpietistic presentation of the compelling nature of faith.

the Revd Canon Alison Grant Milbank, author of God and the Gothic and professor of theology and literature, University of Nottingham

Eureka! Michael Edwardss pungent, wise, and simple book on how Christianity interrupts and reorders our lives is now available for English readers. If you want to know what the Bible says about knowing God, about faith, hope, and joy; if you want to read some of the best pages ever written on the Lords Prayer; if, in short, you want to know how to hear the Bible, read this book.

Kevin Hart, author of Barefoot: Poems and Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia

Echoes of Pascal and Claudel sound through this fresh and profound meditation on the meaning of the gospel. Edwardss book challenges us to embark upon a more authentic search for the truth about our humanity and our plight in this world through a fresh encounter with the Bible. He takes us through the Bible as a disciple with a poets eye so as to discern and unpack its all-too-familiar passages through attentiveness to the poetry of its words, images, and sentence patterns. Not just the parables and psalms but most major teachings and stories show themselves to have a depth that demands a greater awareness of the art of the expression and the mystery contained therein. The chapter on the Our Father is a tour de force that shows the reader how a more careful look at the pattern and meaning of words opens up the teaching of Christ as a surprising and compelling account of human existence in relation to God. While many now speak of the evangelization of culture, as if faith and culture were always at odds, Edwards shows that the Bible, the good news, is already an active source of human culture and a wellspring of poetry and art. Of course, numerous poets, artists, and composers have testified to this fact. Edwardss Untimely Christianity is a reminder and a stimulus for a true cultural renewal of Christian inspiration in our day.

John P. Hittinger, author of The Vocation of a Catholic Philosopher and director of the St. John Paul II Institute, University of St. Thomas, Houston

Michael Edwards

Translated by

John Marson Dunaway

Foreword by

Alister McGrath

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

UNTIMELY CHRISTIANITY

Hearing the Bible in a Secular Age

Copyright 2022 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Translated by John Marson Dunaway from the French Pour un christianisme intempestif (Fallois, 2020).

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are from the (NASB) New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked (NEB) are from the New English Bible, copyright Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked Jerusalem Bible are from The Jerusalem Bible, published and copyright 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd and Doubleday and Co. Inc, and used by permission of the publishers.

Cover design: Kris Miller

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8087-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8088-6

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

In memory of

Dallas A. Willard (19352013)

Do you know God?

Only by name.

The Bible stands at the heart of Christian faith and devotion, a treasure chest of wisdom that resources both the church and individual believers in their journeys of faith and ministries. Yet many, including myself, often find themselves trapped within conventional ways of reading the Bible, which blunt our sense of excitement in engaging the text, often creating a sense of sameness, even staleness. Every now and then, however, a work appears that breathes fresh air into our reading of the Bible. As I read Michael Edwardss Untimely Christianity, I found myself reading biblical passages I thought I knew well in new waysways that opened up new horizons of understanding and engagement. Edwards is not demanding that we change our theology; rather, he is asking us to allow the Bible to speak to us freshly so that we can hear its distinctive voice with a new clarity.

I came away invigorated and refreshed from my reading of Untimely Christianity. It was as if someone had opened a window into a deeper and more reflective approach to the text, which left me satisfied and excited at one and the same time. Edwardss way of engaging the text often led to insights that I already knewbut they were set out in a fresh way that allowed me to see and appreciate them anew, as if I were seeing them for the first time. I hope that many will find that Edwardss short book, so sympathetically translated by John Dunaway, helps them see familiar texts with new eyes.

Alister McGrath

Oxford University

My scholarly interests throughout my career have gravitated toward Christian writers, particularly novelists, and the single most useful secondary source in my research on Christian novelists was a 1984 book by Michael Edwards (