Book Review: Acts, by Larry Woiwode
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 2, no. 4 (October 1993)
Acts, by Larry Woiwode, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, $17 (U.S.) and $23 (CAN). Available for a limited time for $15 (U.S.) plus postage from Pleroma Press, Box 242, Carson, ND 58529. Reviewed by Stephen Sturlaugson.
I like Acts for its apologetics, or defense of the faith. Cornelius Van Til, late professor of apologetics at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, said apologetics is, in a broad sense, the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life. Throughout Acts, Larry Woiwode, American novelist and OPC elder, attempts numerous vindications.
Like Van Til, Woiwode rejects the nonsense of trying to refer to “facts” not stated in intelligible words—uninterpreted or brute facts. A writer’s words, Woiwode understands, must submit to the leading and correction of the written Scriptures. A writer himself must bow to Christ, the Word made flesh. See page sixty-seven for Woiwode’s comments on Van Til.
In Acts, Woiwode succeeds in conveying how the book of Acts vindicates, as only Scripture can, the doctrine and practices of Christ in the early church— all that Jesus began to do and to teach in the Gospels. Insofar as the Christian church today conforms to the book of Acts, the book serves as an apology for us, too. Where the church doesn’t conform to Christ, however, the book of Acts stands as an indictment. The church cannot defend itself against Christ. Woiwode draws attention to areas of disconformity—practices surrounding foreign missions, and their effect on local diaconal ministries, for example.
For several years Woiwode was the chairman of the English department and director of the creative writing program at SUNY-Binghamton. As he has worked on Acts, he says, he tried to “address students who might be hearing about the church and biblical concepts for the first time. But another dimension seemed necessary. When I thought back to the time of my entry into the church, I remembered the trouble I had finding an overarching view of the teachings of scripture—much less one from a writer’s perspective, with a writer’s gravitation toward contemporary culture, nor the writer so aged he wouldn’t need to worry about literary-political correctness or incorrect ecclesiastical politics. So I have tried to address the needs of the student I once was” (p 3). Woiwode lives now on a sheep and quarter horse ranch in North Dakota with his wife and children, who attend Bethel OPC in Carson. The overarching view of Scripture’s teachings in Acts is Reformed, in its predestinarian, confessional, and covenantal aspects, and the viewpoint helps Woiwode’s readers to apply Scripture to numerous contemporary thoughts and actions: fact, fiction, fantasy, feminism, farming, far-flung missions, and Reformed forms of government, to name a few. Van Til says Christians must express the Gospel in terms fallen men understand. Van Til chose the language of secular philosophy. Woiwode writes from a writer’s perspective, and discerns the spirits of Chaucer, Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis, John Updike, science fiction writer Thomas Disch, and Stephen King. With the variety of topics covered and writers mentioned, an index would have been helpful. Why Acts? you might ask. Woiwode writes: “[Acts] is the most overtly narrative book of the New Testament, and narrative is the writer’s business. It is also, to my eyes and ears, such a shapely narrative I’m not sure its equal exists in either the Hebrew or Greek testaments, and its curious genius is that its teachings are enacted. True, there is a complex doctrine in many of the sermons that Acts records, but it rises from dramatic speeches within the momentum of the narrative itself. The more attention you pay to the actions and attitudes in Acts, then, besides what is explicitly stated, the more its text begins to open up. It has the power to put pressure on your personal life” (p 1).
Acts draws out a wide range of apologetic acts in Acts: preaching, teaching, close reasoning, poetry, personal opinion, reminiscence, story-telling, miracles, which are not available to us in these post-apostolic days, and rebuke and reconciliation, which are.
Woiwode on Christian scholarship: “Disputing an unprovable point is about as interesting as watching paint dry, and during the last part of this century the American Church has consumed itself on such scholarship” (p 9). One of most neglected gifts men have received from God, he says, is the brain, which
Acts exercises with the scholarly restraint familiar to Calvin’s commentaries.
Acts itself is apologetics enacted by a writer whose faithfulness to Scripture, broad cultural intelligence, and clear style of engagement form a confluence issuing in a body of writings reminiscent of J. Gresham Machen’s. Woiwode credits Machen’s introduction to the New Testament (published by Banner of Truth) as one of his most consistent helps.
Acts by Larry Woiwode is applied apologetics, a book ready to put into the hands of those who ask why we act in the way we do.