Tom Pratt - Clash of Titans: Atlas shrugged, John Galt & Jesus Christ

This a book about a book, aswell as an author, that takes a negative stance toward Christian faith and itstruth claims. It is not often thatpeople like your present authors recommend the serious reading of such writingsto the general public and especially to that of professed Christian believers. In this case we make a resoundingexception. Read Atlas Shrugged! Read it carefully and thoroughly andenjoy its drama and mystery and romance, but whatever you do, read it throughand ponder its message in light of current events. However, a warning is in order about the book you havebefore you. It reveals a lot ofthe plot in some detail and quotes extensively from its pages. The purpose in our doing so is toencourage the casual reader of reviews and summaries to get beyond what you mayhave heard and read and buy and read the book itself before you make up yourmind about its relationship to traditional Christian themes. It is an important work about a verycontemporary subject that deserves more than a casual dismissal as someatheists hatchet job on Christianity. Our experience has been that without knowing and understanding thecontext of Ayn Rands philosophy enfleshed in Atlas Shrugged, many Christians have reacted negatively, withunhappy consequences, to truth that could not be conveyed in any other way thanRand has done it.

Ayn Rand, as we explain at least briefly, came of age in theSoviet political slave-camp nation established in Russia in 1917. She was influenced by the tradition ofEastern Orthodox Christianity and takes her understanding of Christianity fromthat milieu. Her literarytradition is Russian, and she was of the conviction that great ideas require morethan abstract speculative explication to communicate real understanding. They require the concrete portrayal ofthe novel to make them come to life. This is the tradition of AtlasShrugged and her other works of fiction. She wanted the masses of people to read and understand herphilosophy in its actual working environment. With that in mind we have used lots of her own words andscenes to hopefully accomplish what we would not have been able to otherwisepiquethe interest of those who may be predisposed to simply ignore or excoriate herwork in a way that propositional statements and discussion of her ideas willnot suffice to do. Furthermore, intodays atmosphere of hostility to evangelically oriented Christianity many arewondering with the old line in the movie Marathon Man, Is it safe? Yes it is! And we hope the contextualization we have sought in lengthyquotations highlights this fact.

We have also written this book for anotheraudiencethose who wholeheartedly or at least agnostically embrace Randsatheism and distrust of Christianity. It is our hope that you may find something here that will cause you toinvestigate further the truth claims of Christian faith and find them not asformidable to the rational mind as you have been led to believe. We think Ayn Rand was familiarintimately with only one strain of Christian tradition and did not have a fullgrasp on the rational basis for faith in the Western traditions. We cannot know her mind, but we do knowfrom what is written in the speeches of characters in Atlas Shrugged and her other works that misconceptions areapparent. If you are one of thosewho has only dipped superficially into Christian thought and the Bible, weinvite you to read this book and make yourself a binding promise to investigatethoroughly who Jesus Christ is and what He has done for this material world andall its inhabitants.

But be warned one and allif you are put off byknowing too much of the plot ahead of time, read the book first and then readthis one for the discussion of its implications for Christian faith. Atlashas been around long enough now that many already know the gist of its argumentand the plot and will do just fine reading this analysis first. The book is long enough and the plot islabyrinthine enough and the philosophical speeches intricate enough that wethink what we have done will just build your interest in reading the whole 1200pages. But consider yourselfforewarned.

We acknowledge here the helpful work of others in filling inthe holes of our personal knowledge of Rands life and times and the processshe followed in constructing her characters and plot lines. Of particular help here have beenJennifer Burns, Anne Heller, and the compilation and editing of EdwardYounkins, all of which are cited in the notes. Donald Luskin and Andrew Greta are very helpful in settingforth the contemporary parallels to the setting in the novel. David Kotter has authored a paper onsome issues of Christian faith and practice relative to Rands work, which wealso cite, and there is a website for seeing more of his work. In addition we have reviewed forinformation the DVD from Virgil Films and Entertainment, Ayn Rand & theProphecy of Atlas Shrugged,available on Amazon, as well as the film of The Fountainhead starring GaryCooper as Howard Roark. We haveseen also the first part of Atlas Shrugged on DVD and recommend it aswell. All these sources areavailable for the interested reader, and we have found them very helpful inwriting this book. Which is to saythat this literary work is a product of many contributions from other sources,but that implies no endorsement on the part of any of them. What you have here is our opinion fromthe perspective of what some call fans, but we hope that doesnt discourageyour taking a little walk with us through a work of fiction that reads liketodays news.

Unless otherwise noted, all citations from Atlas Shrugged are from the CentennialEdition using Kindle for Mac.