What are arms for?

My five-year-old daughter wants to be an artist. Or to be more precise, she would tell you that she is an artist: this is the first piece of information you'd get, maybe after she tells you her name. From dawn to dusk she can happily do nothing but sit and draw: dozens of pictures, hundreds of them, reams of paper cramming the drawers and cupboards. She could draw us out of house and home. They turn up everywhere. I pull down some obscure 19th-century novel from the shelf, and likely as not I'll find a little bookmark inside, some improbable drawing that she's planted there, hidden away for its uncertain day of discovery – or never found at all, it's all the same to her. When I'm away, I call her on the phone and she gives me breathless reports on the day's drawings. She lives for drawing: she breathes in air and breathes out pictures.

Yesterday while I was playing with her at the park, she fell and broke her arm. We didn't get a wink of sleep all night: she lay in the bed next to me tossing and turning and crying, wanting me to stroke her arm – but without touching it. She asked for a story, so in the dark I told her a long somnolent story about a Russian prince who disguised himself as a pauper and went out one winter afternoon to see how the townspeople live. The prince walked from his palace into the hustle and bustle of the town, and no one recognised him. But he wasn't used to the big streets, the mud, the slick black pools of ice on the ground, and he slipped in the road and broke his arm. The people in the cold street rushed to help him. A man in a huge coat took him back to a little house down the lane, and made him lie down while the man's wife tore one of their sheets and bound his arm. Then she fussed over him and brought him hot stew and a big piece of hard stale bread, and implored him to stay the night with them. It was the smallest house the prince had ever seen: smaller than just one of the great wardrobes in the palace. It was damp and musty with low ceilings (not a single chandelier), one tiny kitchen window, and a few pieces of small plain hard-edged furniture. They made up a bed for the prince beside the kitchen. It was hardest mattress he had ever known, and the thinnest blanket too. But the fire in the stove was warm and good, and a light snow was falling outside; before long the prince had closed his eyes, and he never slept better in his life (broken arm and all). In the morning he went on his way, stepping very gingerly on the icy road. The man and his wife never learned the identity of their guest that night; in fact, they soon forgot all about him. The prince never saw them again either. But as the years passed, from time to time they would wake on a Sunday morning and find – to their never-ceasing puzzlement and surprise – that someone had pushed open the kitchen window and slipped something on to the sill. A silver coin, or some cheese, or a parcel of fine meats, or, once, a single yellow flower, bright and strange and welcoming as sunlight in the room.

When the story was finished, there was a long silence. Relieved, I thought she had finally fallen asleep. But then at last she erupted with an enormous sob, and said: "But it's my drawing arm... I won't be able to draw!"

Have you ever broken a limb – as an adult, I mean? In the same situation, you or I would be worrying about the loss of utility: how will I drive? how will I shower? how will I cut my food? But little Anna sees her arm for what it really is: not a useful tool but a boundless aesthetic resource, a limber extension by which shapeless nature and wild chaotic imagination are disciplined into form. The arm is the mind's pencil, the heart's crayon; it is an instrument not of work but of making. One needs it because one needs (every day) to draw the world into being. If one also occasionally uses the arm to brush one's teeth, then so much the better: it is a happy coincidence, a side-effect of the fingers' capacity to grasp a pencil.

So lying in the dark while my daughter wrestled with her pain, that awful bone-cracking discovery of an inhospitable world, I found myself praying. Not just for relief from the pain, or for sleep, but also (and especially) for her tremendous intuition about what her little limbs are for – what she is for. May her arm still ache to draw the day the cast comes off. May she never grow satisfied with the tawdry three-dimensional drabness of this world. May she always long to colour it, to flatten it into shape, to bring forth those bustling graphite landscapes where all the birds smile knowingly and children's faces stretch out wide from ear to ear, straining to contain the enormous shining bubbles of their eyes.

Butterflyfish: songs for children

As a parent of young children, I often gripe about the abysmal quality of products made for kids – especially that dismal cacophony of books and music that is marketed each year to young children. Bright sparkly sticker-infested books, bursting at the seams with bad grammar, colourless characters, incoherent plots, hackneyed illustrations, and all those endlessly repeated psycho-spiritual-gender banalities which have come to constitute The Disney Worldview (a worldview that is infinitely more malignant and more destructive than anything Lars von Trier could ever dream up).

Similarly, where children’s music is concerned (I won’t even mention television shows), the ruling principle seems to be: Any old crap will do; after all, they’re only kids. No need for lyrical imagination; no need for creativity; no need for musical talent or versatility. Just rhyme a few words, grunt out a few lines, bang out a couple of chords on your cheap electric keyboard – it’s good enough for the kids.

If you have young children in your home, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Which is why it’s so refreshing when occasionally you come across a piece of real music for children. That was how we felt when Roger Flyer (a regular friend here at F&T) sent me a copy of one of his wonderful CDs for children: a CD that I know very well indeed, since my kids have been listening to it almost every night for the past 18 months!

Anyway, while I was in Princeton last month, one of the highlights was getting to know the brilliant young Harvard theologian, Matthew Myer Boulton. Not only is he the author of a superb book on Barth and worship, but he’s also the singer-songwriter for a sweet and groovy children’s band, Butterflyfish. He gave me a copy of their brand new debut CD, Ladybug – and after listening to it dozens (hundreds?) of times now, I’m pleased to report that this is the real deal: an album that kids adore, and that grownup folks will also continue to enjoy after countless hours of repeat listening.

The album is musically vibrant, surprising and exciting: it blends styles as diverse as bluegrass, country, jazz and gospel, in a way that brings out that characteristic joy and lilt and humour of American folk music. And the lyrics (all written by Matt Boulton) are quite wonderful: linguistically inventive, poetically playful, and at times also theologically serious and reflective. Where so many kids’ CDs are characterised by attitudes of patronising banality, it’s a tremendous pleasure to hear music like this: music that takes children seriously, music that respects its audience, music premised on the assumption that young children are capable of lively joy, honest reflection, and exuberant aesthetic delight.

The songs range from the light-hearted jollity of “Ladybug” to the fast-paced rollicking bluegrass adventure of “What Jonah Learned Inside the Whale” (“He learned that whales have no teeth, but they do have great big tongues; / God is underneath everything and everyone”), to the delicate and imaginative “Noah’s Lullaby”, the jubilant a cappella celebration “Deep Down in My Heart”, and the rich smoky-jazz-bar groove of “There Is a Love”.

But the real highlight is the extraordinary track, “All Sad Songs.” I’ve never heard a children’s song quite like this – and without getting too carried away in autobiographical pathos, I might also admit that it’s probably the only song from a children’s CD that has ever made me cry. Here are the lyrics:

It’s been all sad songs since you’ve left
I’ve cried and I’ve kept my sorrow so deep inside
And I’ve swept up all of my pride
Sad songs since you died

It’s been all sad songs since you went away
I’ve been lost, and sleeping right through the day
This has cost me all that I had
Now the songs are all sad

Something deep inside of me
So wanted to believe
But that cost me all that I had
Now the songs are all sad

(Male voice: La la la…)

But then Mary came to our house of shame
To proclaim that you were alive again
And the grave was as empty and dark
As my broken heart

Something deep inside of me
So wanted to believe
That the grave is as empty and dark
As my broken heart

(Female voice: La la la…)

I know all sad songs have another verse
It’s the one the heavenly choirs rehearse
For that day when the broken will mend
And the sad songs will end

Not that we’ll forget, we’ll sing those songs yet
In a different key, we’ll sing differently
In the music God has arranged
All the sad songs will change

(Both voices: La la la…)

God will wipe away all our tears
Banish the fears we’ve collected for all these years
On that day when the broken will mend
The sad songs will end

Something deep inside of me
Can’t help it but believe
In that day when the broken will mend
The sad songs will end
In the music God has arranged
All the sad songs will change

A remarkably poignant and sensitive meditation on death, grief, and the triumph of resurrection. The song reflects on music itself as an eschatological metaphor: God is writing another verse for our sad songs, and arranging the score in a different key. In the day of redemption, we will still sing our sad songs – nothing will be lost or forgotten – but these same songs will be translated into something new, utterly sublated so that they become songs of grace and redemption.

This metaphor is evoked very vividly in the song’s own arrangement. After describing his grief in the first verse and chorus, the lead voice sings a melancholy wordless tune, singing only the syllable “la la la…” But then after Mary’s announcement of the empty grave, a female voice enters the song. Again, she sings a wordless tune to the same music, but the melody has subtly changed so that those syllables now convey hope and light and sweetness. Then finally, after the verse describing the eschatological sublation of grief, the male and female voice join their wordless tunes together. Now the two distinct voices and melodies combine to produce a single harmony of redemption: the sad grieving voice is overlaid with a voice of hope and healing; or rather, the sad voice is lifted up into a harmony which fully includes the sad tune, yet utterly transforms it.

The female voice slips into the song so gently, so unobtrusively. The voice alights like a dove, then rises again, leading the male voice upwards. I’m reminded of George Herbert’s poem, “Easter Wings”, where God is depicted as a bird in flight, helping us to fly when our own wings are broken, so that we are raised up together and “combined” in one harmonious song. (As you can see in the picture below, the poem is itself shaped like two birds together in flight.) “With thee / Oh let me rise / As larks, harmoniously… With thee / Let me combine / And feel this day thy victorie: / For, if I imp my wing on thine / Affliction shall advance the flight in me.”


The harmony of the two voices in “All Sad Songs” is like the movement of two birds in flight. The song’s whole theology of resurrection and hope is conveyed most powerfully here, in this simple monosyllabic harmony. My sadness has not fled, but another voice now sings with me, bearing me up, supporting my broken wing, lifting my mournful melody and translating it into a hymn of redemption. The same song – but how different now!

Not that we’ll forget, we’ll sing those songs yet
In a different key, we’ll sing differently
In the music God has arranged
All the sad songs will change.

My wife and I love this album just as much as our kids do. If you’re looking for some good music for your children, then why not grab a copy of Ladybug. And while you’re there, be sure to download the Butterflyfish colouring pages: because everything’s better in crayon.

Four-year-old theology: Abraham and Isaac

My four-year-old daughter handed me one of those big children’s Bibles. You know the kind I mean: set in a dour Calvinist typeface and filled with big angry ink-drawn pictures of bearded unsmiling Americans, with stories punctuated by thunderous pronouncements from a brow-furrowed Baptist-preacher God. The kind of children’s Bible that has you scared to go to sleep, lest divine horrors invade your dreams or you are woken, like Samuel, by the summons of that shrill and unfamiliar Voice. (It’s no coincidence that today’s Hollywood directors – so obsessed with brutality, fear, and a kind of pure excessive violence – were brought up on this species of children’s Bible, together with its close relative, the hellfire gospel tract.)

Anyway, my daughter had opened it to the story of the binding of Isaac, and she asked me to read. The picture darkly portrayed Isaac bound to an altar, his father’s knife raised high above him, and in the foreground a white ram tangled in brambles. I had mixed feelings about the way the story would be presented, but eventually I went ahead and read it: God’s command to Abraham; Abraham’s all-too-willing obedience; the angel’s last-minute intervention; the provision of the ram; the final triumphant bloody act.

As I read all this, I wondered what my daughter must be thinking. When the story was over, she looked intently at the picture for a few silent moments, and then finally said (in a voice filled with sympathetic concern): “The poor goat.”

Yes or no?

One of the best things about young kids is their amazing ability to ask unanswerable questions. For example, here’s a question my daughter asked me yesterday – should I have answered Yes, or No?

“So dad, is the Bible the most important book in the world, even though it’s not very interesting?”

On children's ministry: or, where to find the most impressive person in Princeton

A place like Princeton is full of impressive people. While I was there last year, you could meet local scholars of tremendous intelligence – people like Peter Brown, Jeffrey Stout, Robert Jenson, Bruce McCormack; or you could go and hear visiting speakers like Talal Asad and Jacques Berlinerblau.

But I must admit, the most impressive person I met in Princeton was a kindly old chap named Tom. He was a volunteer teacher each week at the church Sunday school. I must confess I was surprised when a friend told me that this man was none other than Thomas Gillespie, the former president of Princeton Seminary.

When I heard this, I replied: “He used to be president of the world’s greatest seminary. But now God has finally entrusted him with a real ministry!”

I like to think that all his decades as a pastor, scholar and seminary president – all those years of speaking and writing and teaching and managing a billion-dollar endowment fund – all this was simply God’s way of preparing him for something truly important: to tell the children stories and sing with them and help them with their colouring pencils and glue.

On children and technology

My six-year-old daughter told me that she is old enough now for her own laptop. I explained that we didn’t even have computers when I was growing up. “Wow,” she replied. “So how did you send your emails?”

Two small books: Dr Barth and Dr Seuss

Robert L. Short, The Parables of Dr. Seuss (WJKP, 2008), 95 pp.; Karl Barth, Fifty Prayers (WJKP, 2008), 63 pp. (review copies courtesy of WJKP)

Here’s a couple of nice little books (Thing One and Thing Two), both just released from WJKP. In our first book, Robert Short offers an entertaining reading of Dr Seuss’s stories as Christian “parables.” I adore Dr Seuss – I’m always begging my kids to let me read more Dr Seuss, instead of those bland and banal Disney books that clutter their shelves. So I enjoyed this book’s playful engagement with Dr Seuss’s stories.

Admittedly, Robert Short’s analysis is not a very nuanced one; and it’s a shame he neglects both Dr Seuss’s sharp political edge and his extraordinary aesthetics (first and foremost, these books are great because they’re works of true poetry).

Ultimately, Dr Seuss’s writing can’t be turned into neat theological “parables” (although many of them are certainly political parables). So I can’t help cringing a little when Short tells me that Christ = the Cat, or that Christ’s body and blood = green eggs and ham, or indeed that Sam-I-am represents the name of God! (I’ll let you in on a secret: he’s called “Sam-I-am” because it rhymes with “eggs-and-ham”…) But all this can be taken in good fun, and Short is clearly enjoying himself with bucketloads of playful exaggeration.

In any case, there are some nice insights along the way – for example, in the chapter on I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Short remarks: “The difference is that Christian faith has an infinitely greater appreciation of trouble than the world does” (p. 51). An excellent point!

And Short is right to observe that Dr Seuss’s stories possess a “profundity-in-simplicity” which allows them to make a real impact. These stories, he remarks, are deceptive in their simplicity. “Charming, childlike little tales suddenly become meaningful…. They sneak up on us. They become Trojan horses or sugar-coated medicine. They are the wise Cat in the otherwise empty hat” (p. 66).

On a somewhat more serious note, our second book brings together fifty of Karl Barth’s prayers, written for before and after his sermons. In the foreword (these prayers were originally published in German in 1962), Barth explains his growing discomfort with the traditional liturgical prayers, since they remained too disconnected from the language and content of his sermons. “For a while,” he says, “I sought help by replacing the petitions of the order of liturgy not with extemporaneous prayers (I have never dared to risk such a thing), but with freely bringing together biblical passages from the Psalms.” Only in his later years did he begin to write his own prayers as part of his sermon preparation. The resulting prayers are stirring, colloquial, often profound, and always blissfully concise – as Barth remarks in the foreword, “the spice for all parts of all spiritual and theological sayings should consist in brevity!”

Barth decided to publish these prayers in the hope that they would be used both in assembled worship and privately. The book thus arranges the fifty prayers according to the liturgical year, with some additional thematic sections (e.g. prayers for funerals). The prayers will certainly be of interest to researchers and students of Barth – but if we are to use the book as it was intended, our proper response should be to pray these prayers, to call upon God in weakness and humility and gratitude and joy. Here are a few short excerpts:

“Lord, our God, you know who we are: People with good and bad consciences; satisfied and dissatisfied, sure and unsure people; Christians out of convictions and Christians out of habit; believers, half-believers, and unbelievers. You know where we come from…. But now we all stand before you…” (p. 1).

“Lord our God, you wanted to live not only in heaven, but also with us, here on earth; not only to be high and great, but also to be small and lowly, as we are; not only to rule, but also to serve us; not only to be God in eternity, but also be born as a person, to live, and to die” (p. 11).

“None of us is a great Christian; rather, we are all very small Christians. But your grace is sufficient for us. Awaken us to the small joy and thankfulness that we are capable of, the timid faith that we bring, the incomplete obedience that we cannot refuse – to the hope in the greatness, wholeness, and completeness that you have prepared for us in the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and that you have promised us in his resurrection from the dead” (pp. 29-30).

GIVEAWAY: Anyway, I’ve got a copy of The Parables of Dr Seuss to give away. So if you’d like a copy, just name one thing that Barth and Dr Seuss have in common. The most interesting or imaginative comment wins the book.

Eucharistic tears

At my local parish, young children are allowed to receive the bread at Communion. But this morning our rector was away, and the visiting priest followed the usual Anglican procedure of giving the children a blessing instead of bread. I didn’t really notice this until my family had returned to our pew – when we had sat down, my three-year-old daughter burst into tears and exclaimed loudly: “But where’s my body of Christ?”

Hearing God

This morning, I overheard this conversation between my two daughters (aged 5 and 3):

Older sister: You know, we can never hear God.
Younger sister: Yes we can!
Older sister: No, we can never hear him.
Younger sister: But I hear God every time I say the word God. You watch: God. See, I just heard “God”!

I don’t know about you, but I was impressed – there’s an entire theory of language here which deftly and elegantly resolves the hotly debated question of whether human beings can hear God. Perhaps my little daughter has been reading the pre-Socratics – it was Zeno who said, “If you say cart, a cart passes through your mouth.”

Avoiding hell: theology with Jane Eyre

“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child? [...] No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?”

“They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer.

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”

“No, sir.”

“What must you do to avoid it?”

I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and not die.”

—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1848), chapter 4.

A three-year-old's Calvinism

My three-year-old daughter had a little tantrum the other day, which led to this brief conversation between me and her:

—“Could you please stop that tantrum!”
—“No, I can’t stop!”
—“Would you please try to stop, then.”
—“Noooo Dad, I CAN’T try!”

So there you have it: the whole classical Calvinist system in a nutshell. To which Jonathan Edwards added his own cunning twist (a twist which both betrayed and perfected the old Calvinist system): “I really could do it if I tried; but I can’t try, so I can’t do it!”

Deliver us from evil

When my five-year-old daughter was saying the Lord’s Prayer tonight, she made a delightful (and utterly profound) verbal slip: “Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from email…”

Mysticism versus rationalism: a tale of two sisters

Is it possible that each of us is genetically predisposed to either mysticism or rationalism? As a case in point, here’s a conversation I recently overheard between my two daughters (aged 3 and 5) – a clear case of unflinchingly nihilistic rationalism versus unwaveringly optimistic mysticism:

Younger sister: I would love to see a shooting star.
Older sister: Why?
Younger sister: So I could make a wish.
Older sister: What would you wish for?
Younger sister: A pony!
Older sister: But, you know, there aren’t any real shooting stars.
Younger sister: Yes there are!
Older sister: No, there aren’t. We call them shooting stars, but they’re just little pieces of space-rock coming through the atmosphere. [Gleefully] Just ugly pieces of rock.
Younger sister: Oh. [Long pause] Well, I will wish for a shooting star then.

Exegesis with a five-year-old

A recent conversation with my five-year-old daughter, after I’d been telling the story of Jonah and the whale:

—“But there wasn’t really a whale, was there, Dad?”
—“What do you think?”
—“Umm. I think some of God’s stories are really hard to believe.”
—“Well, even if there was never really a whale, it’s still a true story. True like a song or a poem.”
—“Oh, you mean like a rhyme.”
—“Yeah, the story is true like a rhyme – it’s true because it tells us something important about God.”
—“Oh, I see what you mean. It’s a story about what God is really like.”
—“That’s right.”
—“You know, Dad, I’ve got a big picture Bible with famous paintings of all these stories. We should look at those – the pictures make it much easier to believe the story.”

Eschatology with a five-year-old

A recent theological conversation with my five-year-old daughter:

—When will God bring all the dead people back to life?
—God will bring everyone back to life at the end of the world. And we’ll all live again with him.
—Here, or in heaven?
—Here in this world. But he’ll make the whole world brand new.
—And the lion won’t eat the lamb anymore?
—That’s right. In God’s new world, no one will be hurting anyone else. We’ll all be at peace. Do you know what ‘peace’ means?
—It means it’s quiet.
—Yes, it could mean it will be quiet. But it also means that no one will fight anymore, no one will ever get angry or hurt – and there’ll be no more wars. Everyone will be friends. And because of that, there’ll be no more tears in God’s new world.
—No tears ever?
—Nope.
—Not even tears of happiness?
—Oh yeah…. Well, I’m sure we’ll still have tears of happiness. Have you ever had tears of happiness?
—Yes, of course I have.
—When?
—Umm…. When you come home from another country.
—Oh, I see. Actually, that makes me think of God’s new world as well. In God’s new world, all of us will be coming home from another country – coming home for the first time. So I guess we’ll have tears of happiness forever.
—But are they real lions?

A two-year-old's doctrine of creation

A recent conversation between my two daughters (aged 4 and 2):

Older sister: Do you know where animals come from?
Younger sister: From the Ark.
Older sister: (Laughter) No, God made the animals.
Younger sister: No he didn’t. Noah made them.

Four-year-old theology: prayer

Yesterday my four-year-old daughter erupted into a loud and vibrant song about prayer:

    If I need anything
    I can just pray to God;
    He might do it His way,
    But He still gives me what I want,
    Oh yeah, still gives me what I want.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Theology from a four-year-old

A bedtime conversation with my four-year-old daughter:

—Dad, does God go to sleep at night?
—No, God doesn’t sleep.
—Why not?
—Because he’s much too busy watching over you while you sleep.
—Oh. So he doesn’t ever sleep at all?
—Nope.
—But wouldn’t he get very grumpy?

Theology from a four-year-old

While my wife and four-year-old daughter were taking a walk, they saw a dead bird on the path, which led to this conversation:

—“Mind you don’t step on the dead bird, darling.”
—“A dead bird? Do birds die? Just like humans?”
—“Yes, bird die too. Everything that’s living has to die – even grass, flowers, trees. They all die eventually.”
—“But was Jesus the only one who died and rose again, so that now he’ll never ever ever have to die?”
—“That’s right.”
—“And how could he rise again? Was it because he’s bigger than anything else in the whole wide world?”
—“Yes, that’s right.”
Long pause, then:
—“So how could he die?”

Robert W. Jenson and Solveig Lucia Gold: Conversations with Poppi about God

Robert W. Jenson and Solveig Lucia Gold, Conversations with Poppi about God: An Eight-Year-Old and Her Theologian Grandfather Trade Questions (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 158 pp.

Robert W. Jenson is one of the world’s most profound, energetic and creative theological thinkers – and in my house, there is always great rejoicing when he publishes a new book. So it was a delight to read this remarkable little volume, released just last week (with thanks to Brazos Press for the review copy).

The book consists of a series of transcribed conversations between Jenson (“Poppi”) and his eight-year-old granddaughter, Solveig. The conversations were spontaneous and unscripted; each weekend while visiting her grandparents in Princeton, Solveig talked with “Poppi” about theology, and they recorded the conversations on a cassette recorder.

Their wide-ranging discussions cover everything from liturgy and Lucifer to hamsters and time machines; from church history and ancient Israel to evolution and capitalism. They explore denominational differences: she is a (rather liberal) Episcopalian, and he is “sort of half Anglican and half Lutheran” (p. 70). They talk about the Eucharist: she admits that communion is her “favourite part of going to church” since “I get to stretch and walk around a little” (p. 31). They talk about confirmation and a certain bishop who is “really stupid” (p. 34). They talk about whether masculine pronouns should be used for God (Solveig thinks they shouldn’t, and on one occasion she refers to God as “it” or “The God” [p. 102] – poor Poppi tries to change her mind, but without much success).

Naturally, Jenson’s side of the dialogue is full of sharp and memorable insights: “if heaven just goes on and on and on, and hell goes on and on and on, there’s not a whole lot of difference between them” (p. 15); “the Spirit is God’s own future that he is looking forward to” (p. 42); “if there are kings, that is because God is king, and there are Solveigs because there is something sweet and charming in God” (p. 29).

But, from the first page to the last, it is really Solveig who steals the show. She is perfectly spirited and cheeky and precocious – and even more intellectually adventurous than her famous grandfather. On one occasion she reminds him that “[Jesus] did not write your systematic theology” (p. 141). In another conversation, she wonders whether angels might in fact be “the hidden most important characters in the Bible” (p. 76). She has independent opinions about almost everything, and some of the most delightful conversations are those in which she remains firmly unconvinced by her grandfather’s arguments. In a discussion about heaven and hell, for instance (p. 132):

  Poppi: So you hold to the doctrine of purgatory?
  Solveig: Yes.
  Poppi: You know that is very controversial.
  Solveig: Why? It’s in Dante, isn’t it?

Or in a conversation about Santa Claus (p. 28):

  Solveig: When people thought of Santa Claus – the idea of Santa Claus is very much like God…
  Poppi: No. It’s not.
  Solveig: Sort of. He’s just very jolly and very…
  Poppi: […] He is a little bit like God…
  Solveig: Very much like God.

Many of the conversations focus in different ways on the doctrine of the Trinity, and, theologically speaking, these are the richest and most rewarding parts of the book. In a discussion of pneumatology, there is even a cameo appeareance by the late Colin Gunton. When Solveig argues that the Spirit should come second, rather than third, in the trinitarian formula (“Father, Spirit, Son”), Poppi agrees with her, and the discussion continues (p. 146):

  Poppi: Actually, I agree with you too. I think Father, Spirit, Son is probably a better arrangement.
  Solveig: Have you thought that since you were born, or have you…
  Poppi: No, just the last couple of years.
  Solveig: You did?
  Poppi: Yeah.
  Solveig: When you started reading all these theologians?
  Poppi: I am a theologian; I don’t just read them. It’s an idea that’s floating around with a lot of us these days. Colin Gunton – our friend who just died – was very big on having the Holy Spirit in there right from the start.
  Solveig: He’s probably listening to us right now.
  Poppi: Could be.

Throughout these conversations, the generous, affectionate and spirited to-and-fro between grandfather and granddaughter offers a model of good theological dialogue. Neither party has all the answers; each is learning from the other; both are discovering new questions and new answers together. As Jenson remarks in his introductory note, the book is like a Platonic dialogue, “though in this one, the role of Socrates goes back and forth” (p. 10).

Whether you’re a theologian or a child (or a bit of both), you’ll be sure to learn a great deal from these charming and insightful conversations. And if you’re looking for gift ideas this Christmas, what more could anyone want than an attractive hardcover book filled with cheerful conversations about God, Jesus, angels, and Santa Claus?