Sayers was a British contemporary of C.S. Lewis’s, and a Christian fellow traveler who is well thought of by many conservatives and Christians. This book is all right, but I have to say that based on it I’m not so impressed that I’m inclined to read her systematically. She is sometimes obscure, and sometimes overreaches. Some specific notes:
- In chapter one she makes the point that we have to be careful to distinguish between when Christian doctrine is stating what it views as a simple fact and when it is stating God’s rule. For example, saying the someone cannot be saved without faith may be the former rather than the latter — that is, it’s a statement about the human heart, not a law.
- She, like Lewis, uses the simile of God being like a writer, but she uses it to illustrate the Trinity; she also adverts, I think, to how many objects and concepts in nature are trinitarian. The whole book is an analogy of writing and artistic creativity to the Trinity, and is often more about writing than religion.
- Chapter nine’s epigraph is from Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. And that book is also quoted on the last two pages (224-25) (again, the “tough love” point).
- I like the idea (192) of trying to find a creative (versus passive) way to do good in all circumstances.
- There’s bad economics in the last chapter (“Postscript”), I’m afraid.