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All Quiet on the Western Front, with Jason Barnhart · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:03
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• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: I am the last of the seven fellows from our class.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone talks of peace and armistice.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: All wait.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: If again proves an illusion, then they will break up.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Hope is high.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: It cannot be taken away again without an upheaval.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: I have 14 days' rest because I have swallowed a bit of gas.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: In a little garden, I sit the whole day long in the sun.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: The armistice is coming soon.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: I believe it now, too.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: Then we will go home.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Here my thoughts stop and will not go any further.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: All that meets me, all that floods over me are but feelings.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Greed of life, love of home, yearning for the blood, intoxication of deliverance.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: But no aims.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Had we returned home in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength of our experiences, we might have unleashed a storm.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if we go back, we will be weary, broken, burnt out, ruthless, and without hope.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: We will not be able to find our way anymore.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: And men will not understand us.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: For the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us already, had a home and a calling.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: Now it will return to its old occupations and the war will be forgotten.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: We will be superfluous even to ourselves.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: We will grow older.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: A few will adapt themselves.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: The years will pass by, and in the end we shall fall into ruin.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: So reflects the narrator towards the very end of Eric Maria Remarque's most famous novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Published in 1928, it became the ultimate indictment on the cruelty and brutality of the First World War.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: After the first-person narrator who has been telling this story all along, after he stops shortly after this reflection that I just read.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: The book's epilogue informs us as follows.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: He fell on October 1918 on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front that the army report confined itself to the single sentence All Quiet on the Western Front.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: Turning him over, one saw that he could not have suffered long.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: His face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Mirror Orthodoxy, where we read old books for the new world.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: I am Nadia Williams, managing editor of Mirror Orthodoxy, and the author of Christian's Reading Classics, the book.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: Today it is my privilege to talk about All Quiet on the Western Front with a friend and a neighbor, Jason Barnhart.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: Jason is a peace theologian and he is currently associate professor of historical theology at Ashland Theological Seminary.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: His work, both writing, teaching, and speaking in the academy and in the church, involves thinking deeply about brethren theology and evangelicalism.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I hear he has just finished a book on friendship.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: So we can look forward to that in about a year.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, Jason, thank you for joining me today.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Nadia, for having me.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: So this is an unusual conversation in several ways.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: One, normally on this podcast, we try not to give you spoilers, but I started with a spoiler.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: The narrator of this book dies.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: And part of it is it's a famous book.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: And chances are, if you've heard of it, you probably have heard that the narrator dies.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: And also it's that epilogue that so simply announces his death that contains the phrase that is the title of the book, All Quiet on the Western Front.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so we're going to talk about this classic with the recognition that you know how it ends.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: But hopefully, if you have never read it before, we will convince you to pick it up and read it.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also an unusual conversation because, as you will see, um we are not advocates of war, although only one of us is a peace theologian.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not me.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: But um, we'll get to that in a minute.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: First, we'll start with the standard question that we always have to start with up front, and that is what is a classic?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I uh I both love and hate this question, Nadia, uh, because I I because I think it is one of those great questions uh to wrestle with.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what draws me to uh books like All Quiet on the Western Front is I think classics somehow speak to the human experience, the human condition.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in a way you find yourself resonating with some of the larger themes that emerge there.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and in some ways, you know, uh I'm not, you know, uh a scholar in any sort of literary work or anything like that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that is more in your field, Nadia.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you have done much more there than I have, but you know, a a classic is is is a a great work that that humanizes us, helps us come in contact with what it means to be human, which I think is all the more important for the world in which we live today.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: That is big, yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Just what keeps us human.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, well, and we talk about this, the humanities.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think you know that is why you know you alluded to the idea.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a here's a guy who studies peace theology, brethren Anabaptist thought.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and why am I reading war books?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it partly because it's they they invite me to step outside of the ideological into let's talk about the human, the existential, the, you know, in philosophy, the the phenomenon, phenomenological.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: What does it mean to experience something?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and sometimes, you know, as in All Quiet on the Western Front, uh, Remarque does it in surprisingly simple ways, not simplistic, but really simple ways, like you described in the epilogue.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: You expect something a lot more than what you get.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: But in the end, there's something you really resonate that there's just this sense of after all of this war, all this violence, all this carnage, the book ends just like that, which makes you as a as a reader go, was everything that went before it worth it to get to that?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so it leaves you, I don't know about you, Nadia, when when you encountered it, but it was just haunting to me, uh, how it how it finished.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Haunting and just very sad.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sad without anything redemptive.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, like as Christians, you know, this is Christians reading classics podcast.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times as Christians, we're seeking redemption.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it ends in a way like the most tragic story is one that ends without any hope of redemption.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a remark, if if I may, in in the in the beginning, he has kind of just a um a a little kind of uh preface or foreword that he writes to the work, and I have it pulled up here, and he says, This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all, an adventure.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: For death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: So already there's this sense of uh you talk about spoiler alert, we kind of get a feeling already from the very beginning of the book that Remark's job here is not going to give us something redemptive in the end.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a, I want you to sit in kind of the ugliness, you know, the grotesque of this.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, when, you know, Paul Boimer, who is this is this kind of leading character throughout, uh, when he falls at the end in the epilogue, there also is a sense in which this is the only way that he gets release.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: This is the only way that he experiences freedom.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: How tragic.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: The only way that Paul will experience freedom is to die.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think, you know, Remark is making a larger kind of commentary on where you know how you feel about war and the and the and the and the justness of it.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there is a sense in which for many of those who go into combat, this is the only way they escape the brutality of it all, uh, which is deeply tragic.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, I'm so grateful as a peace theologian because it's it's so incredibly human at the same time.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: So we've kind of started going through the book already, but I guess set the stage for us.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: What is going on?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: Where are we?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: What are we doing when this book opens?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And kind of let's walk through it a little bit.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we we are on uh sort, we are on the Western Front.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so this would have been kind of the perimeter.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and the almost comical comedic tragedy of it all is that Paul Boimer and his friends, uh, these are school kids uh that kind of get pulled into the war effort because their teacher says you should do this.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: So there's uh a little bit of you know nationalism going on here.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think that's in its ugliness.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think in the same time there is a sense in which they it's these are our people and say we're going to go to war.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so we are invited into just the hostile sort of uh no man's land of of the of the edges of the war, where you know enemies come come face to face with one another.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so we meet our narrator, who is Paul Boimer, and he has a contingent of friends uh that we'll meet throughout the text.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and tragically, we are both invited into friendship with them, and then we also experience the grief of losing them throughout the entire book.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it will be the ups and downs of what is the everyday experience in the trench, uh, to the larger existential of we were kids going into this.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: What will we be when we come out of it?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and also just the sense of we've been formed to kill.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you know, I I have a you know, I have a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old, and not you have you have you have children as well who are who are young and going to put our kids in those in those shoes and go to be trained in this way.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so we're really invited into the sense of kids who want to play, you know, may want to play war on the playground, uh, are are kind of thrust into this combat and they have really have no idea what they're doing or why they're there.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but what ends up taking hold is we just need to survive.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and so it's I I I would say Nadia, almost, you know, it's it's interesting, you know, that I think there is a little bit of redemption in the book, but it comes in odd places.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um because we could go to Lord of the Flies, where it becomes anarchy and we turn on one another.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: But what we see here in the trenches is we see incredible solidarity and brotherhood that forms um that is rich and meaningful.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: That I think when we do experience a death, there is a sense in which we feel like we're losing a friend too.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I think that's kind of why I was drawn to it was just that aspect there.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you mentioned my work on friendship.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so we kind of get taken through the the course of combat and see things through the eyes of Paul Boimer, um, who is trying to make sense of his friendships now, trying to make sense of why he's even here.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then is there any sort of future for him at all when this thing is done?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when will it ever be done?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it just seems to linger.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of is where we are.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: We're in World War One.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the the novel itself is actually semi-autobiographical uh from Remark's standpoint.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: So he he fought in World War I.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and it'll be kind of the tragedy of war uh and and also the uh tragedy of losing his mother.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's actually born Eric Paul Remarque.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he will change his name to Eric Maria.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: He takes his mom's name uh as his middle name.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: And this is all part of a larger coping mechanism of him trying to write, in a sense, for healing and for posterity about don't be we tend to be so far removed from this.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: I want to invite you into what it actually is like and how it takes a total on those who are involved.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: And one obvious detail that we should mention for listeners is this is German.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: So that's an extra dimension to keep in mind that Eric Maria Remarque is telling us the story of World War I from the perspective of the Germans, which for a lot of us, like this is the people our homelands fought.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's it's one of those things of that um you find yourself surprisingly going, yeah, with that sort of American history that we have here, uh, you know, so we have this translation, you know, so we have the AW translation from 1929.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and and praise God for him for bringing this book into the English language, uh, that not only are you invited into this really awful situation, but if you're an American reader, you're invited in on the wrong side.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I think it's that's a great insight because I think it just it just shows the humanizing going on at really multiple levels in this book.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Jason, I think this is a really good point.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so the humanizing, and in this case, humanizing who to us would be the enemy.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, for German readers, this was really like their story that here's this generation that was caught, as um, as Paul describes in the like the concluding chapter.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they were caught in the middle.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: They never experienced anything but war.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: So they knew nothing else.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: And most of them died.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like this whole tragedy, the missing generation.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but in America, this looked different.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: In Russia, this looked different.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, like I grew up in Russia, so and actually for us, uh, the this was all quiet on the Eastern Front, I think.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, not the Western Front, but the translations.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, leaving geography aside, like there is that sense of this was a different experience, and yet you cannot but sympathize.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it seems like it doesn't even matter what nationality the kids are, whose stories, whose devastating stories we'll read about here.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: I found myself at times, Nadia, and I think this is why I would consider this a classic, is that that I would I I I was choked up I had to put the book down.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh these are children.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they are.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and they should be formed for life, and they're being formed for war.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so, and I and I do think that's a little bit of what, you know, for an American reader, uh you can you kind of go, okay, uh, I'm dealing with children here.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and children who really don't have any larger idea of what's going on geopolitically, you know, in World War I.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's just uh they were there because they were told to be there.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and yet, you know, and then from my own history, I had a my great-grandmother is uh what was from Munich.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh she had, you know, she was you know uh betrothed to to a soldier who went off to fight um in in the Second World War.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean they were children and he never returned, you know.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: So so there was a sense of even more immediacy and intimacy for me in this of going, I've heard similar stories of sending off you know a young man into combat and then they don't come back.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I think there's something really important for people like you and I who are of peace to recapture that humanizing thing.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because what I found is that you know, liberal pacifism, uh, and I what I mean by that is uh separate from any sort of ecclesial or church pacifism, the idea that the Anabaptists believe the church was called to look different, you know.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: But we have these kind of you know, uh liberal pacifism is these kind of uh peace commitments that are sort of untethered from any sort of tradition or any church.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and a lot of times they can be just as dehumanizing as the martial nihilist on the other side, that war is hell.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and both sides end up losing the but there are real people involved here that we need to pay attention to.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And and that I would love to be able to go, it's all good, it's all bad, and separate it out, but I think what books like you know, All Quiet does, they they they invite us into the complexity, into that in a dirty trench, there is good as far as friendship and fellowship, um belonging, uh, that's there.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it almost becomes, and this is me, you know, uh reading into the text nowadays, uh, but I almost kind of see like in a really subtle way this is their rebellion.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: In the in the in the midst of the ugliness of these trenches where we we dehumanize, we name enemies and all this, they go, we're gonna find friendship and foster it, which is incredibly beautiful and provocative.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in some ways they are children, but they're more mature than I am.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Although that also is part of the problem, the idea that they have not been given the chance to mature and um be formed into true persons, full persons.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: But uh your comment, Jason, also made me think, like thinking back to tradition of war war literature, because so much of the classics of Western literature really are around war.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: They revolve around war, starting with the Iliad.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: And in all of them, actually, we see that complexity you noted that war, uh, on the one hand, war is worth writing classics about.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: On the other hand, war itself is nothing beautiful.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: War is um is this thing that takes incredible heroes, incredible people, who are actually ordinary people.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_03: They just, you know, are made incredible and beautiful by the story.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: But it takes them and it completely destroys them.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: It mangles bodies, minds, and souls.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's but for you know, for some reason, Nadia, it it makes for one heck of a story.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: It does.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, again, like we Remember these characters.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I think that there is, you know, you and I have talked about this, just not even towards peace-oriented, you know, Christians in particular, but you know, even towards academics, you know, Christian academics, we need to find ways to tell good stories.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Good stories matter.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think formation is very much narrative-driven.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're invited into a space, and and so reading activates a part of the brain where you know, I can watch something on TV and the TV does all the work for me.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Reading invites me to, I have to actually mentally imagine and inhabit a location and think about it and try to smell the smells and what does it sound like.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so these, so when you think about that and go that what you just said, some of the, you know, the kind of the greatest pieces of literature revolve around war.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we have a formation issue going on here.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so what I find is I find these rich uh detailed memoirs, novels from generals, or about combat.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then what I find from the peace side is uh usually uh doctrinal, ethical kind of you know, statements of here's why we are against war, uh, or here's a tract or here's a treatise, and those kind of and and I go, okay, first off, I never have to make the case for war.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh I would love to.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: I would love for even, you know, people who are not pacifist or non-resistant to it, at least here by just war.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but but that seems to not even matter so much anymore.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: But it seems like we believe that peace is just absolutely impossible.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's idealistic, it's just ridiculous.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you think like that?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's naive, all of that.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder the connection that I'm making as I read these kind of war book uh war novels, uh, like All Quiet, is um we just haven't told good stories.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And we haven't been attentive uh from those of us from peace backgrounds to go war actually is surprisingly good at what it does.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and the idea of I'm gonna take, you know, these young folks and I'm gonna whip them in the shape uh so they will obey orders and they will do what they're called to do.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: Formationally, you know, whether we agree with the style of formation or anything, it's it gets the job done.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And many veterans will tell you that some of their closest relationships are those people that they were in the foxhole with or that you know they were in some sort of combat with.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so I go, I don't hear Christians talking like that about fellowship in the life of the church.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: That closeness, that entis, which is one thing that you know haunts me a little bit.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then I think from the peace side of things, of I in a world of where moral injury is a is a reality, I think one of another thing that peace has not done is because it has not paid attention to the human aspects of war and been able to step beyond just the the the mere uh ideological, um we've not been able to be attentive to why is war so compelling, and then when people come back from war uh or back from combat, what do we do?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: How do we help them?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I I think of Carl Marlantis, who uh wrote a great book on Matterhorn on Vietnam, which is another place of interest for me.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: And and Marlantis says, ask, you know, he's talking about uh Vietnam vets when they come back.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Ask them about you know how Vietnam was, and they'll tell you about these combats they were in, this kind of stuff.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: But then he says, ask them to tell you what was going through their mind when they killed somebody.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, watch them close up because they don't have language.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think peace, and I think what novels like All Quiet do is they invite us into a space to help provide language.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, to in a sensor, the grace of God, you know, uh, you know, you know, kind of you know, paraphrasing Corey Tinboom here, the that there is no pit that is so deep that God cannot go deeper still.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and to be able, but part of that's going to be that we have to be able to not necessarily inhabit in a battlefield, because I don't feel like going to war, uh, but we have to inhabit adjacent spaces to their inner life.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I think is just so fascinating by books like this, or you know, go to the Civil War, you have Red Badge of Courage.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we keep but we keep on rattling these off.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: They invite us into a space that otherwise we wouldn't be privy to go.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: And we talk about how reading the classics expands our imagination.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: And this is an example of that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: It expands our imagination for understanding human experience.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: And in this case, it's a human experience of suffering.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: And all of us will encounter suffering.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: By God's grace, we're not going to encounter suffering in the trenches, literal trenches anymore.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: But um at the same time, we will encounter suffering.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: And some of what we uh some of what we read perhaps can be uh relatable still even to us today.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was fascinating to me in All Quiet, because in the sweep of the narrative, um, it's not all just in trenches.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I I think one one of the more tragic parts is that um, and again, I you know, I'm not trying to do spoiler alerts here or anything, but uh honestly, no matter what you and I talk about, I think if somebody goes and reads it, they will still be benefit from reading it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, is when Paul uh is allowed leave to return home.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: That was the most tragic idea.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and and nothing makes sense.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: He does he doesn't fit anymore.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and it's I would say that is that that is in many ways a pivot moment, a hinge moment in the book, uh, because he realizes that in some tragic way my life is not coherent apart from the trench.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and so there, and it's just you know, and I won't go into the detail because I want to leave that for the you know the reader to be able to go there, but looking at the just ordinary things in his house, and they just he feels like he's in a totally different world.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and remark tried to I think is making a commentary that what war does to your point earlier, Nadia, that these are children, that is that it alienates them ultimately from themselves.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: They they the story that you know the me that went into this is is gone.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and so there's profound grief and lament there.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I think so much about this of you know uh when people come back from combat, they're probably they they're they're experiencing the same thing that Paul is experiencing in this book of I've seen things and now this doesn't make sense to me anymore.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and how in the world do I overcome that?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can I overcome that?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there's few know that there was actually a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, which is the road back, um, which begins on the Western Front.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Different characters, although these characters from All Quiet will be referenced in that book, which is doing exactly this.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what do we do when we have to return back?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: And our city's gone.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: My home is gone.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and so I and I there is this invitation to the existential that I think where Mark wanted to do with both of these works of let's look at the formation that goes into and what actually occurs in the trench, but let's also talk about the tragedy of the world that we left is not there when we return, uh, which is incredibly painful.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: I have I have no way to relate to that.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I'm both grateful, uh, and also it's profoundly tragic because I know that many in this world experience that kind of reality regularly.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: The Center for Christianity and Public Life invites you to their annual summit for the good of the public.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: The summit gathers Christians and public service-minded leaders who want to think deeply and work practically for the health of our public life.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Coming together from many places and perspectives, these leaders are united by the conviction that Christianity offers essential contributions for the good of our neighbors, our institutions, and our shared future.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: This year's summit will be held on October 5th through 7th in Washington, D.C., featuring speakers such as Judge Patrick Schultz, Mayor Danny Avila, Nazan and Ash, Russell Moore, Jane Kaminsky, Jennifer Hurt, Vince Picote, and many others.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Learn more and register at ccpubliclife.org slash summit.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find that link in the show notes.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that makes this book dangerous in the eyes of some.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I wanted to ask you about this.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: So this book was published in 1928, and in 1932, um, Hitler bans it.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: So talk about like so, yes, uh, if you're listening, we are talking here about a banned book, All Quiet on the Western Front.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, the sequel, The Roadback, was also banned in Hitler's Germany.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: So talk to me about this.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, why are books like this so dangerous that they have to be banned?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I think Nadia, you know, and and this is my suspicion, uh, is that they remark is at a very deep level offering a critique of nationalism, of, you know, an identity in which, you know, everybody who is not us is bad and evil.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um he is not providing a glorified understanding of war.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in many ways, if my job is to utilize propaganda and polemics to be able to uh mentally form you to be a good fighting member of you know uh of the Nazi army, uh this is not helpful.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this may make you have second, uh make make you make make you question this.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and remark is critical uh of Hitler and the Nazis.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and so he will have to escape to find asylum.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but so I I think there is a sense in which, you know, I I differentiate between nationalism and patriotism.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, patriotism, I love the idea of, you know, Derek.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I have a love for my fatherland.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, and Nadia, you and I have different fathers.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: For me to love my father doesn't mean I have to say your father is bad.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: We can both have an appreciation of that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think nationalism is something very different, but I think they are they're closely related.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the danger is that they can that one can hijack the other one very quickly, usually nationalism to patriotism, obviously.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and so there is a sense in which I think Remark's book it brings us to the end and goes, I don't even know if we accomplished what we were even trying to fight for.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, even at a deeper, uh more depressing level, I don't even know if I know what we were even fighting for to begin with.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: We were just here.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it disrupts that nationalism, it disrupts any sort of like uh coherence that's trying to be coerced on the people through propaganda.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so it becomes dangerous, uh, especially when you are a totalitarian regime and you are you want to make sure you control the thought.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this is this is the kind of thought that will, you know, plant seeds of doubt and can be too disruptive.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh which it sounds weird, Noddy, when you say it, because you we you read the book and you go, why was this banned?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's yeah, that was my thought reading this this time.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and though, and then you go, oh yeah, well, you know, if you are trying to uh resurrect a uh you know a German nationalist identity as as Hitler was trying to do, uh this book would would plant seeds of doubt uh in into people.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, and I think even today, um people who when I when I even when I talk about current geopolitical strategies that are going on and people just was just such absolute certainty, go we should definitely do this, we should definitely do this.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I go, Well, do you have a son or daughter who serves?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: And many times, no.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Then you may have an opinion, but can we can we at least back up the certainty a little bit and embrace a little bit more humility?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: To go, I don't want that that would mean I'm putting somebody else's child on the front line here.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so so I think in some ways the the the the propaganda you know begins from this I think long before war gets to combat, war begins in the imagination.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: And and so this is, you know, in the our mind, you know, our our inner selves becomes kind of a battlefield in and of themselves of this battle of ideas.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in what ways can I control that?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: Then I need to control what we what the intake is.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so and I think today people don't want to read text like this.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: First off, you and I know not we talked about this, people don't want to read, period, which I think you need to read more.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it's a there is a sense in which allowing us to allowing the intake of a text like All Quiet on the Western Front is really important for our imagination, so that we also don't embody the the level of certainty uh that that we saw Hitler and the Reich uh you know embody.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and we can remove ourselves and go, that will never happen.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I you know I don't think history repeats itself, but I I I do think it rhymes.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: I do think there's resonance along the way.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I think it it all it always begins with we with the battlefield of the imagination.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I think books like this to All Quiet are still disruptive because they are they're an important weapon uh in that battle in the imagination.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: And for Christians, we remember again that everything we read is formational.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: So that battle for our imagination is very much a battle for what are we formed by and for.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I I I think you know, one of the uh one of the lines that's really haunted to me, it comes early in the book, and uh Remark writes, uh I think Paul makes this comment, and he says, um quote, we were 18 and had begun to love life in the world, and we had to shoot it to pieces.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: End quote.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and in it just just simple first off I I would love to be able to write lines like that.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and and and and and secondly, uh the he remark is um he's so sneaky in how a simple sentence can be so subversive at the same time.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I think you know, partly because it's semi-autobi autobiographical, but I'm also going, there's something quite powerful about would I have read this book the same way, Noddy?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: I asked myself, if Paul Boymart and his friends uh were in their late 20s.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is there something about the fact that these are children that that leads itself to the to the subversion of it to me?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so, and there's something about this of you know, if it was somebody in their 20s, I'd go, Yeah, get over it.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: War is war.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: But when it's a child, you start to go, I I pay a little more attention to things, and I feel a little bit of my paternalism coming out, a little bit of going, this is this child just wants to be hugged by by his mother.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: He wants, you know, to see his father again.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and so that makes it even more uh have even more of an impact.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think so.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that makes a difference for us also reading this as parents who have kids and imagine, like see the face of our child children in the kids described in this book.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think about this because when I first read this, I think I was a teenager, and I did not have that, like that thought did not occur to me, which is natural.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I read this as a teenager, and you know, I remember when it came to award novels, uh Stephen Crane's uh The Red Badge of Courage, that was the the novel for my schools to read.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: And Crane's book is um, I mean, I enjoyed it.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, it's uh it didn't seem to have as much of an impact on me as Remark's work.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I when I've talked to people uh who do read, you know, kind of um uh more modern war novels, uh there always seems to be this tension with people of like you're either on the red badge of courage side or on the all quiet on the Western Front side.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and for some reason I I I tip over to the all quiet on the on the Western Front, even though the Red Badge of Courage, you know, I I come from Virginia, so I you know I'm in the heart of civil war country.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there there is something that kind of just pulls me into all quiet uh that I don't experience in the red badge.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also a reminder that uh one definition of a classic is a book that you can keep rereading, and it changes you, and you have something new that you see in it every time you reread.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: So this is an example of that.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_03: We could have we read it as teen teens, and rereading it as adults, it still hits hard.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's it's it challenges me as uh you know, as a theologian in a peace tradition of that um it's not enough for peace to simply oppos oppose war.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it it peace has to um we have to offer a belonging that is stronger than what war offers.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And and and and this is where I don't know you know from church history, uh it seems that war um or apocalypticism, those are always, you know, these kind of things that rally people together.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: And they usually, you know, we know the former always will be violent, and the latter, the apocalypticism, that usually almost always goes violent as well.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so there's there's something about these two things that kind of capture the the the minds, the imagination.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but again, going part of just you know living in America, the individualism of our society, um man, I would long to feel this level of belonging in the life of the church.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's an Anabaptist who believes that the witness of the church is is central to everything.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there's there is some way that I that I wonder, Nadia, if the the reason that war uh so captivates the American imagination at times is because it offers us the only form of transcendence that we really have.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, for you and I, it's it's like we we are we're so comfortable, everything's so near us all the time.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, we've been a nation that's just you know it's amazingly blessed uh to the point where we just hoarded things.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yet we realize that there has to be more to life than this.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the Christian knows there's more to life than this.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, and I think that, you know, in a in a secular way, that that war uh provides some transcendent virtues that I that I think we long for.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: That I, you know, I think in Augustinian fashion we have some disordered gloves going on here, but I think the longings are right uh to belong.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Friendship, intimacy, to be known and to know others, to feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, these are all good things.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: But in disordered loves and in a in a society, you know, taking Augustine a step further, we we we seek to find the definition of those longings in the city of man.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we are part of the city of God who are traversing the pilgrim people in this earthly city right now.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that's difficult at times.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so we get captivated by uh these echoes that I think are there that war and stories like All Quiet speak to.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: But as a Christian, I want to go, I think it's wrong that I have to turn to a trench to be able to find those longings fulfilled.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I think, you know, so don't hear me say, you know, hey, I think we should all get into a trench and you know break bread together.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not don't want to do that anytime soon.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I do think we can look at this and go, oh my goodness.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um when I just blanket make a statement that all war is bad and just oppose war, I'm missing these human aspects of where beauty actually does come through the rubble.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and maybe just maybe as a person in a peace tradition, I need to be a little more humble and not have so much certainty.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and because you know, pacifists can tend to be almost like Pontius Pilate, we wash our hands, you know, you do what you gotta do.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I I wonder sometimes if if peace should be less about opposition and more about creative response.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: And a world world that says we're doomed to go to war, just do it.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: How could we tell stories that kind of capture something different?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: And some of those stories may go, let me tell you what I saw happening in a trench in all quiet on the Western Front.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe it would be helpful if we kind of found ways to bring that into our everyday life here.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, that's not in that trench.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: More conversations with friends about books are always a good idea.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: And more conversations about complexity.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's what you and I are in history, because history invites us into complexity, uh, which I think is so needed uh in our moment.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: Jason, your uh comments just now reminded me of a kind of a weird encounter I had.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um the uh Hale Farm Civil War Days, a bunch of people who reenactors who spend the weekend there, um, actually not in trenches, but you know, Civil War tents.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and we talked with one reenactor this um a few weeks ago uh when we went, um, because it's also delightful to just visit if you're just like doing the touristy thing and see the people in costume.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: And like, I don't have to sleep uh on the ground tonight, but I guess they are like all the power to them.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: But one of these reenactors was waxing eloquent, and he's like, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: This is my church.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, like, whoa, man, you went there.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like that that's what he would say that this is his church, and your point that war creates these kinds of bonds.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder now, like, if some of these reenactors and people who join those kinds of communities, that's what they're looking for.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I just wish they would look for these things in church, the local church.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like it is there for you.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, and Nani, I was uh I've been reading literature, you know, and AI a moment and screen-oriented world that we find ourselves in about, you know, video games and especially more violent ones that are either war-related or, you know, apocalypse, you know.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's fascinating, uh, especially with men, is that you know, we have lived in a society where we have not allowed and interpret what I'm about to say charitably, anybody that's listening, uh, boys to be boys.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: I don't mean that in any sort of grotesque, uh grotesque or abusive sense that we see, okay?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: But the idea that, you know, on the playground, you know, playing rough and these kind of things.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so what ends up happening is that we continue to put them into environments where they have to be more pacified and they don't get the play time.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then perhaps that's why war and violence is so captivating because they feel that that's how they can become a man, they're pulled into that.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I think to your point, Nadia, going, what if we could kind of intersect that traject that trajectory and go, you don't need to go to war to find that, but let's be okay with, you know, that number one, let's let's talk about uh it's you can find some of those deep longing the stories met in literature, and let's talk like that in life of the church in a way that men go, okay, you know, connected.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and and then to be able to uh in a sense at educational, you know, early education to to say playtime is extremely important.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and so and so all these things are connected.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you have a society that's screen oriented, that doesn't read these classics, uh then then we're we're losing a lot of humanity uh in the process here.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: And instead of going, okay, now let's come back and let's inhabit these and and let's let's talk about the deeper themes.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because I think when we talk about the deeper themes, we stop talking about the surface level stuff that we are so natural to do in the church.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we we're just uh we're only kind and nice to each other, and that's and I appreciate that.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: But there's also a sense in which there's some darkness in the world, and and and I think what happens is what I love again about history and these and and uh and these pieces of literature is there's darkness in the world right now that oftentimes we don't know how to talk about and we don't feel safe to talk about.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: What I can read all quiet on the Western Front and hit upon really similar themes, and then I can trust that the spirit will just provide the resonance that's needed.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't need to, you know, if I go directly at the at today, people put up their defense mechanisms.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: When I embody the classics and inhabit them, all of a sudden I'm dealing with deep themes that I would never be able to talk about if this is a conversation of current events.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: What a gift! What an absolute gift.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that, you know, these classics you know, going back to what I said about the humanizes, you know, you know, since we are Christians reading classics, I think they help us incarnate.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: They they invite us into a way in which we go, okay, what does it mean if I'm a Christian reading this?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: How would those convictions play out in the trench?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: As I'm terrified, would I be like Paul and be pursuing friendship?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the reality is I probably would, because I would feel so incredibly alone that I would need people to go, you're not alone.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: That we see you, we're with you, and and I've got your back.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's not just a nice little thing I say.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've literally I've got your back.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: When I start talking at that in audia, which by the way is all through this novel, um that's not a war conversation anymore.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's a human conversation.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think you and I today, you know, yeah, you and I aren't in the trenches, but uh um when I go into a new space, I want to meet people immediately.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want to belong.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: I want to know that I have a place here, that there's and and so I and I I think that's what you know, just that theme of belonging that is somewhat elusive throughout Remark's work, but at the same time is is the driving force.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that that is a timeless, timeless theme.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then going back to Augustine, because I just go back to Augustine, I think, you know, one of the ultimate classics for me will always be Augustine's confessions.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: I just think they're brilliant.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and by the way, I love book 10 on memory, but I won't talk about that.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's brilliant.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but you know, I how Augustine begins, I think, is is what we're talking about.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: There is a restlessness in our hearts.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we read all quiet and go, yeah, but that restlessness is not going to be won if Germany gets a victory.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: That restlessness only comes from being reconciled to God through Christ.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then the solidarity that comes with others who have made that same commitment.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then to recognize that, as Paul says, Yeah, my I'm my battle is not against flesh and blood.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: But let's let's make no argument.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: We have a battle.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so, what does it mean to be formed for belonging in all this in a world in which we have a spiritual battle that we were we're dealing with, which scripture talks about?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, which when you look at the early church, is just it animates so much of what they are, how they operate and how they think.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and even though doctrine, you know, theology is wet cement in the early church, which drives some of my students crazy, like, when does it get cleared up?
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, just be patient.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there also is a sense of they're trying to do exactly what all quiet's trying to do, is we we are foreigners in this land, and we're trying to figure out where the hostile forces are and and and all of this.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so that so there's just so many levels that as a Christian, as a theologian, as a peace theologian, as a as a person who loves history, uh, that I just resonate with this novel, and it has really become one of one of my favorites of all time.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jason, thank you so much for this.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we conclude with our usual difficult question, although maybe it's not difficult for you.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: What classic book do you wish you had written and why?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, after all that I said about All Quiet, um, I my life experiences I don't think would have lent me to be able to write a book like All Quiet.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: There is a sense in which Remarque was was was the man for the job.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think, you know, the underlying autobiography there comes through.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'll I'll give you a fun one, Nadia.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I wish I would have written the Canterbury Tales.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I find that book again, but it it's uh it's a again themes of belonging, of friendship, of pilgrimage.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I number one, I love books that have like multiple biographical sketches around a single kind of event.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, it in a way, you know, it's kind of appropriate that, you know, throughout the entire book, we're getting played the entire time, uh, that uh we we think it's all about where we're going.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it really is.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, as we listen to these stories, we stories, we start to go, my gosh, we have a lot in common.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Or we start, and so there's just you know, friendship as an ongoing act of self-disclosure.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and what people don't realize who haven't encountered it is it's it's just funny.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: Canberra Tales is it is uh and and it's and so it's just it's really valuable.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and I just I love it.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I've always been somewhat you know fascinated by the medieval era anyway.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so medieval England on top of that.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I would have loved to have written that.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to meet Chaucer.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: I just think he he's just a uh a fascinating character in and of himself to me.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jason, thank you so much.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Nadia.