Years ago the movie Avatar was released. Director James Cameron produced a reality so inviting that movie goers found themselves depressed that they couldn’t live in it. Reading Surprised by Oxford had a similar effect on me only rather finding myself depressed that I couldn’t live in it, it found myself profoundly glad that I, in fact, did live in it. Like CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, and Marilynne Robinson, Weber reminded me of the surprising joy of the Christian life.
To be fair, I was primed to enjoy this book. My undergraduate studies focused on literature. I wanted to be an English professor until God used the insanity of the job market to draw me towards ministry. I enjoy reading about the intersection of literature and faith. If any of this describes you, please pick up this book.
Weber is very articulate in describing her journey from skepticism to faith. This book has helped me as a pastor. We pastors are constantly bouncing between the universal truths revealed in God’s word and the particularities of how this truth works out in individual lives. Weber skillfully weaved these two together. There were, at times, some theological question marks in my mind. The theology seems Anglican and perhaps Anglo-Catholic at times.
This book reminded me of the importance of conversations. Having been out of school for years now, I had forgotten about the unparalleled time students have for meaningful conversations. Such conversations are still some of my greatest joys in ministry.
Each conversation recorded in this book is insightful, witty, and eloquent. It seemed that articulate apologists for the faith were all over the place in Weber’s life. Reading this book would make you seem as if creation itself were conspiring on Christ’s behalf. I found myself wondering, at times, whether her poet’s eye saw more than was present or whether I too often see less than is present.
This book stressed the importance of place. Oxford is properly in the title. This would have been a much different book if it took place in UCLA. Oxford was a character in this book and it was decidedly an Inklings-friendly view of Oxford.
It was impossible to walk away from this book without recognizing the beauty of humanity. It is the very best sort of humanism. “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, In apprehension how like a god,” as Shakespeare put it. The trick is holding this very real beauty in tension with our very real depravity. Different Christians tend to fall on different sides of that tension. I know I tend to think far more about our depravity than about our created glory.
This book is highly readable. Some readers may find themselves annoyed by some of Weber’s turns of phrase and poetic fancy, but that is undeniably Weber and this book is undeniably hers and it is that particularity that makes it so rewarding.