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Richard Hughes Gibson, The Way of Dante: Going Through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven with C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams (IVP, 2025)
One of the greatest writers in history is also, to the modern reader, one of the most intimidating. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was a poetic genius, ranking alongside Homer, Li Bai, Goethe, and Tolstoy as one of the most important writers in any language. C. S. Lewis remarked that reading Dante made Shakespeare seem artificial. Yet many of us are scared to read the Divine Comedy, whether because of its form (intricately rhyming Italian poetry), its subject matter (hell, purgatory, and heaven), or its sheer size. “After all,” as superfan Dorothy Sayers admitted, “fourteen thousand lines are fourteen thousand lines, especially if they are full of Guelfs and Ghibellines and Thomas Aquinas.”
This should make us grateful for Richard Hughes Gibson. In The Way of Dante, he introduces us to the Florentine master by way of his influence on Lewis, Sayers, and the poet Charles Williams. The result is a fine, brief work of literary criticism that does two distinct things. On the one hand, Hughes explores the various ways in which Lewis, Sayers, and Williams wrestled with how to understand, translate, criticize, imitate, and spiritually engage with Dante (chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6). On the other hand, he illuminates the Divine Comedy itself with chapters on the Inferno (3), the Purgatorio (5), and the Paradiso (7).
The most accessible parts of the book explore Dante’s influence on Lewis, whose visions of heaven and hell are familiar through The Great Divorce and the Narnia stories. The most sparkling sections involve Sayers, whose prose is by turns penetrating and mischievous. But fittingly, the star of the book is the Comedy itself, from its terrifying depiction of hellish monotony to the breathtaking splendor of “the love that moves the sun and other stars.”
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Joseph Loconte
Matthew W. Bates, The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament (Oxford University Press, 2015)
When I started Matthew W. Bates’s book, I had never heard of “prosopological exegesis.” By the time I finished, I had become convinced that it was crucial to a proper understanding of multiple New Testament texts—and more importantly, I had been stirred to rejoice in fresh ways as I reflected on the Trinitarian God and the books he inspired.
Prosopological exegesis is a reading technique that, Bates argues, was widely used in the early church and was crucial to the development of Trinitarian doctrine, especially the way we speak of God using personal language. In a nutshell, it involves reading numerous Old Testament texts as dialogues between different divine persons. (Prosopon is the Greek word for “face” or “person.”)
In Psalm 110:1, for example, we have the famous words, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,’” which the Gospels take as being addressed to Christ (Mark 12:35–37). Notice the Trinitarian implications: The Holy Spirit is telling us about something the Father said to the Son.
This is different from typology. David is not speaking about himself here, in a way that Jesus later imitates; David is taking on the voice of a character in a divine drama. Once you notice this, you see it everywhere. “A body you have prepared for me,” says the Son to the Father (Ps. 40:6; Heb. 10:5). “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” says the Father to the Son (Ps. 2:7; Acts 13:33, ESV). “Your throne, O God, will last forever. … Therefore God, your God, has anointed you,” says the Spirit to the Son about the Father (Ps. 45:6–7; Heb. 1:8–9). In this rigorous yet accessible book, Bates takes us through lots of examples of this reading strategy and shows us how much it has shaped the way we talk about God.
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Matt Reynolds
Zacharias Ursinus, The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563
The Heidelberg Catechism is one of the great texts of Christian history. Written in 1563 in the German city of Heidelberg, it consists of 129 questions and answers about Christian faith and practice, organized into 52 sections, one for each Lord’s Day of the year. Confessions and catechisms can sometimes be rather dry affairs, which appear pedantic and fussy to readers from other theological traditions. Heidelberg is the opposite: short, warm, pastoral, practical, rich, and joyful. (And I say that as a nonconformist charismatic pastor who has never baptized a baby in his life.)
The catechism gets off to a flying start. “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” it asks, revealing straight away that the questions will aim at pastoral encouragement, not just doctrinal detail. The answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.”
Its final sentence is equally heartwarming. Q: “What does that little word ‘Amen’ express?” A: “‘Amen’ means: This shall truly and surely be! It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer than that I really desire what I pray for.”
In between, the catechism covers the heart of Christianity by going through the Apostles’ Creed, the sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. Many of the answers—on the meaning of “Father Almighty” or “Christ” or Communion or the ninth commandment—are utterly delightful. There is hope and joy here for anyone who loves the Lord, whatever they think of Reformed theology.
Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Follow him on Twitter @AJWTheology.
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