Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, like many, that the answer to every question is always Jesus. Lately, a growing chorus of Christian writers is offering another answer to the challenges of our modern age: re-enchantment.
Pastor and author Brian Zahnd’s Unseen Existences is the latest addition. Zahnd’s offering is a welcome one, for his vision of re-enchantment is notably Christocentric. The answer to our existential discontent and ecclesial malaise is to attend to the unseen spiritual realities of this world, in which we will encounter the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
For Zahnd, unseen realities are less a matter of cosmological speculation—think angels versus demons—and more foundationally a matter of human identity and destiny. “If matter is all there is,” Zahnd writes, “then not much really matters.” To embrace the truth that “a spiritual world underlies what we think of as the ordinary world” is to reject the lies of human futility and journey toward human fulfillment.
Zahnd is correct to note this perspective is not “a new idea.” The earliest Christians acknowledged that the existence and presence of the spiritual beyond and in our world demonstrates we were made for life with the one who created all things, visible and invisible (Col. 1:16). The telos for which we were created is real yet unseen: an ever-deepening union with God, which necessitates a pilgrimage toward heaven. But not in the way many American churchgoers might think.
Getting heaven right is a foundational aim of Unseen Existences. Heaven, Zahnd argues, is “all around us.” It is not a far-off place but “a different dimension,” one of “unseen existences.” Zahnd’s early argument lays out the various forms of relating to heaven (and earth): an escapist faith, a this-world or earthly faith, and Zahnd’s retrieval vision of a re-enchanted faith.
Zahnd helps readers by explaining these options from both personal and theological reflection. This isn’t his first rodeo, and he’s fallen in at least one of the pitfalls he describes. Regarding an “escapist faith,” Zahnd describes inheriting a “modern and impoverished Christian notion of heaven” in which this earthly life is essentially “an elaborate SAT test for afterlife placement.” Zahnd reveals he preached this notion of faith for nearly two decades.
Alternatively, an “earthly faith” centers a view of salvation which shapes every sphere of life here and now. Many Christians evolve from forms of escapism to inhabit a “this-world” faith. This progression toward an embodied faith is positive but not without dangers. Overcorrection is Zahnd’s explicit impetus for this book. Zahnd voices his pastoral concern as such:
If in our zeal for a this-world faith we lose sight of heaven, we have made a fatal mistake. … We must make sure that we are not using an earthly faith to mask a subtle capitulation to the spirit of the age.
Zahnd believes many Christians are embarrassed by the hope of heaven. The result of that embarrassment is capitulation, which leads to believers walking in lockstep with “a zeitgeist that insists … that the sole relevance of religion is found in its social value.” Though Zahnd doesn’t make this point explicitly, it’s easy to connect the dots: We witness the rotten fruit of this capitulation in American political parties that view Christianity as a tool for the construction of an earthly utopia made by human hands.
An escapist faith runs the danger of pulling our practice of Christianity out of this world. An earthly faith can appear more sophisticated but runs the risk of buffering itself within temporal concerns, losing sight of the fact that Christians are pilgrims who long for a better city to come, not builders who construct that city by their own might (Heb 13:14).
The answer to these pitfalls is not to split the difference. Instead, Unseen Existences prescribes a turn toward re-enchantment via divine mystery. As defined by the early Christians, mystery implies realities behind what we see, something unveiled which we receive and in which we participate, though not exhaustively. Retrieving and embracing the mystery of a robustly re-enchanted faith is the medicine that will heal our tendency toward escapism and capitulation.
As a result, Zahnd’s entire project rests upon a sacramental worldview, though not explicitly named as such. Even so, the essentials are present: Zahnd teaches that heaven is near. This means the beauty of this world participates in and points to the greater reality to come. This sacramental outlook portrays this world as a “heavenly participation.” To borrow from theologian Hans Boersma (whom Zahnd cites approvingly), this view protects believers from escapism. Since the world is, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “charged with the grandeur of God,” our task is not to escape but to rejoice and receive. At the same time, this view also protects believers from thinking the fullness of heaven will reunite with earth through our activism. A sacramental worldview reveals the transcendence of ordinary life with God here and now while teaching us to ache for the world to come, when we will see our Lord face to face.
Swiss theologian Karl Barth said no theologian can function without wonder—and if capable of astonishment, even “a poor theologian … is not lost to the fulfillment of his task.” The same applies to believers. We may struggle mightily, but if we cultivate wonder in our life with God, we’re far from hopeless. Many of the chapters Zahnd offers are a training ground for increased wonder, encouraging primers on receiving and rejoicing in the beauty of divine presence in the tangible grime and glory of this world.
For Zahnd, a sense of wonder is essential: “To sustain faith in the midst of a cynical age, we must have some experience of religious awe.” Readers might therefore expect Zahnd to turn his attention immediately and perhaps exclusively to the wonder of God’s creation. And while Zahnd dedicates an entire chapter to the refrain that all creation is a gift, the foundational source of wonder and awe is Christ. For Zahnd, “the greatest wonder of all is to be found in the mystery of the incarnation.”
This Jesus-centered answer is important in both its conclusion and its methodology. One of the strengths of this book is that Zahnd is marked by a constellation of influences: the patristics’ loving attentiveness to Scripture’s details, Pentecostalism’s emphasis upon the experiential, Eastern Orthodoxy’s focus on mystery and participation. The method by which Zahnd arrives at the beautiful, proper conclusion that the Word made flesh is the supreme wonder is indicative of his diverse influences and unique pilgrimage as a Christian and pastor.
As Zahnd recounts, it was while gazing upon the beauty of the Never Summer Mountains that he petitioned God that he might live always in a state of wonder, only to hear a whispered reply: “This is the greatest wonder of all—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It’s a safe bet that in the hands of another writer, this point would be made strictly based upon John 1. The adventure of reading Unseen Existences is the many streams that shape Zahnd’s own spiritual reflection and pilgrimage.
What sort of specific guidance can readers, as pilgrims on the way, expect from Unseen Existences? A good guide offers wisdom seasoned by experience. Perhaps nowhere is that goodness clearer than in Zahnd’s caution that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage with an unalterable pace. It is slow. Pushing against modernity’s love affair with technique and optimization, Zahnd instructs by testimony and exhortation that our journey is indeed a journey, one in which we slowly comprehend the way of the kingdom. How Zahnd makes this point is another gift for fellow pilgrims. It features a deep love for Scripture in its beauty and complexity. Zahnd even mines difficult texts like Judges 19 in a reading that is historical, Christocentric, and canonical. This is a valuable model for pilgrims.
While Zahnd’s many influences are predominately a gift, there is one notable place where readers may be more confused than helped. Zahnd references apokatastasis (Acts 3:21). Well and good. The term speaks to the restoration of all things, which, for some patristic, Orthodox, and contemporary theologians, can include universal salvation. My issue is, Zahnd uses the term without much of an explanation. I foresee this omission leaving unfamiliar readers confused and leaving conversant readers dissatisfied by a lack of elaboration in the footnotes or otherwise. Perhaps a concluding chapter exploring the final destination of the soul’s pilgrimage—the beatific vision and the new heavens and earth—would have served as a place for discussing the scope of restoration, in addition to solidifying more explicitly the embodied hope of our spiritual journey.
There’s another place where I craved more elaboration: For all the book’s emphasis on mystery and re-enchantment, robust reflection on God’s presence and action in the dominical sacraments, particularly Communion, feels lacking. While reading, I eagerly anticipated places where Zahnd might set his pen loose, in detailed fashion, on the topic of the Lord’s Table as mystery encountered. Though there are a few interspersed moments, the opportunity feels missed for readers to grasp how Communion, as a means of sacramental grace, strengthens us in our pilgrimage.
I was surprised a discussion of Communion did not conclude the “Into the Wonder” chapter, which instead ends with Zahnd’s “personal testimony of a mystical experience” while praying with (not to) a Christ Pantocrator icon. It’s more likely readers would benefit from deep reflection on the divine wonder of Christ in the Eucharist than from an admittedly breathtaking testimony, since it’s not every week believers have a mystical moment (if ever), but every Sunday believers gather humbly for a heavenly meal. Still, I can’t help but note that Zahnd points to Christ, even in such a mystical moment. On the whole, this book is a valuable primer on sacramental Christianity, a welcome meditation on the mystery and presence of Christ—in creation, in the Scriptures, and even in mystical moments—as the true wonder and answer to all things.
Claude Atcho is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville and author of Reading Black Books and Rhythms of Faith.
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