Book Review: Finding God in The Shack

Randal Rauser realized that Christians wary of William Young’s bestselling novel might nevertheless be willing to listen to a defense of the book’s merits from a seeker-sensitive theologian whom they recognize as one of their own. The fruit of his insight is a 160-page book, Finding God in The Shack (c. 2009, Authentic, $10.19).

I remember The Shack as flawed but interesting. I do not feel threatened by Young’s departures from orthodoxy, and may not be in the demographic at which Rauser aims the “conversations” in his book (one conversation for each chapter, plus an introduction explaining why it’s good to have a theologian around when contemplating Mr. Young’s novel). Rauser seems gratified by William Young’s accomplishment as a first-time author, and impressed by the breadth of the questions that Young's work raises both implicitly and explicitly.

Rauser praises The Shack for several things, the most important of which is pushing the doctrine of the Trinity back into the spotlight of pop culture. It’s a fair point. Curiously, Rauser quotes Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (d. 1984) in support of the assertion that the Trinity is so rarely invoked among contemporary Christians that even those of us who believe in a triune God might almost be called “mere monotheists.”

Rahner said that, but the appeal to his authority is curious because of something Rauser does not mention, which is that the “pain point” involved has special resonance for Reformed Christian churches. A thought experiment shows why: If you are Catholic, recall the last time that you prayed with Baptist or Presbyterian friends. Chances are, the prayer leader waited for heads to bow and then said something like “Father God, we just want to thank you for this [game, gathering, person, intention, or day].”

Among Catholics, by contrast, prayers usually start with the words that accompany the sign of the cross (“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”). When that is said reverently, you can practically hear the capital letters.

One result of this divergent devotional practice is that Catholics are likely to be more familiar with Trinitarian thinking, even if only through osmosis, than people raised in “low church” or Congregationalist worship styles. Accordingly, a novel whose protagonist spends a weekend with all three persons of the Holy Trinity comes as less of a shock to Catholics than to other Christians.

Rauser takes pains to be fair with almost everything he addresses, except perhaps for the Calvinism that makes a cameo appearance in his chapter about how The Shack confronts the problem of evil. Neither William Young nor Randal Rauser is Calvinist, and while Rauser summarizes John Calvin’s austere theology, he also admits what his Calvinist readers probably figured out for themselves: that he finds Calvinism “not only unpalatable but nearly incomprehensible.”

Closer to his home turf, Rauser observes that some critics of The Shack raise their eyebrows at the book’s depiction of God “without ever acknowledging similar tensions in the bible’s depiction of God.” He does a fine job of describing those tensions and defending The Shack as “presenting a rich picture of God’s accommodation” to our own limitations. (“Shack Mack” might have had a heart attack had God initially appeared to him as anything more intimidating than a jovial African-American woman).

While noting that “one excellent reason to believe that the Spirit is a person is because Jesus did,” Rauser cheers Young’s depiction of the Spirit. He also defends The Shack against charges of “modalism,” the heresy that God is one person in three different guises, similar to the way water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas, depending on its temperature.

Finding God in The Shack is not as comprehensive as it could have been. Rauser says nothing about The Shack’s weak Eucharistic scene, for example, most likely because differences in denominational outlook would color any commentary there. More frustrating for me is that even while defending a novel of which he is especially fond, Rauser tends to hedge his bets.

Were Rauser in a poker game with friends, he would be the player who describes the chips exceedingly well, but refuses to ante up. As a result, Finding God in the Shack has passages like: “Could it be that Sophia, the shadowy female figure who interrogates Mack in the cave as the personification of God’s wisdom, is actually Jesus appearing in female form? The Shack offers no final clarity on the point, but it is an intriguing speculation.”

Rauser’s chapter on hierarchy (“God with Nobody in Charge”) offers another milquetoast example: “Could it be that occasionally Christians have become so comfortable with God that as [atheist writer Barbara] Ehrenreich charges, they have walked into the dangerous waters of blasphemy?” Well, yes, it could. That is one of the charges leveled at The Shack by some of its fiercest critics. But Rauser demurs: “These are difficult questions and we certainly cannot resolve them here. As for The Shack, it may be that the appropriateness of the book’s description of God depends on who reads the book and what prior conception of deity they bring to it.”

When a Christian theologian appeals to relativism in a conversation about God, the notion of “core competency” gets knocked sideways for this particular reader. One wonders whether Rauser considered hierarchy a more intimidating issue than the questions of divine wrath and atonement that he addresses with greater aplomb. If nothing else, straight answers to questions about divine sovereignty and identity would have given perspective to Rauser’s later disappointment over how the harmony of (redeemed) creation in The Shack is “interrupted by the consumption of meat.”

Instead, Rauser and his editors let that “relatively minor quibble” (his words) muddy a conclusion meant to speak positively of The Shack while reminding Christians of the hope of renewal anchored in scripture.

What Randal Rauser has given the rest of us is a study guide. I have stubborn, armor-plated, hairy, ill-tempered problems with some of it, and the book could really use an index that it does not have.

Nevertheless, “Finding God in the Shack” is worthwhile for three reasons. First, Rauser provides an accurate snapshot of the debate over William Young’s novel in Christian circles. Second, where necessary, Rauser contrasts what scripture says with what The Shack says. Third, Rauser uses multiple sources, some of them surprising, to examine issues that continue to make The Shack a topic of fruitful discussion for many readers. Rauser writes from the assumption that those who complain about darkness ought to help dissipate it by lighting a candle, and “Finding God in the Shack” does an admirable job of that.