You must join our site in order to rate this article.
Alan Jacobs lifts the title of his book from Hamlet, but it could just as easily be a description of the Roman god Janus, whom Ovid invokes in his poem "Fasti": "Two-formed Janus what god shall I say you are,/ Since Greece has no divinity to compare with you?/ Tell me the reason, too, why you alone of all the gods/ Look both at what's behind you and what's in front." Unacquainted with his neighbors to the east, Ovid thought a retrospective and prospective god was peculiar to the Romans. Jacobs is intimately acquainted with Yahweh, the God of the Bible whom we might regard as the Judeo-Christian analogue of the pagan Janus. Like Ovid, Jacobs invokes his all-seeing God in a book that explores how Christians-avoiding the dangers of presumption and despair-can discern a shape and meaning in their lives to tell stories with both comeliness and counsel.
If you have a current subscription or current on-line account please log-in here to read the rest of this article.
No bio information available for this author.
Issue: "Christ in a Post-Christian Culture" Jan./Feb. 2009 Vol. 18 No. 1 Page number(s): 37-39
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies. We do not allow reposting an article in its entirety on the Internet. We request that you link to this article from your website. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by Modern Reformation (webmaster@modernreformation.org).
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: This article originally appeared in the [insert current issue date] edition of Modern Reformation and is reprinted with permission. For more information about Modern Reformation, visit www.modernreformation.org or call (800) 890-7556. All rights reserved.