Mystery Theology

I mentioned in Clerical Detectives my non-commendation of the compiler’s recommendations, though I should also say that his brief biographies and his summaries of the books are nicely done, judging by those of authors and books I’ve read.

But Philip Grossett’s judgments are what you might call post-sixties. For example, his comments on one of the Father Bredder stories by Leonard Holton (aka Leonard Wibberly), which are not classics by any means but are rather good. The compiler writes of one:

Parts of the book may seem old-fashioned now (Father Bredder felt “gratitude to his Creator that such small comforts as tobacco had been provided for man to cheer him during his time on earth” but he also “lived in the belief that he was more often wrong than right”). He also believes quite literally in the presence of Satan (“Satan was real — not a figment of mediaeval imagination. He had possessed people in Christ’s time on earth, and he was capable of possessing them in this day as well.”) and struggles to convince the condemned murderer in his cell “that having abandoned his Creator, he would spend eternity in torture unless he repented”. And he does repent at the very last minute. It isn’t what you’d call very profound theology — but it’s a good story.

It’s that “seem rather old-fashioned,” which is a judgment, not just an observation, and that not “very profound theology,” where the judgment is hardly to the point. What does “profound theology” have to do with telling a condemned murderer that he’s going to Hell unless he repents? If Grossett recognized profound theology, or at least profound insights rooted in theology, he’d recommend G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, but he doesn’t.