Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life

by Alan Jacobs

In the work of such major theologians as Lesslie Newbigin and Stanley Hauerwas, the "Christian story" is communal, and the individual Christian achieves meaning only through participation in this communally recounted narrative. While Alan Jacobs acknowledges the importance of the communal story, he suggests that something has been neglected in the development of narrative theology - the narrative dimension of individual Christian lives. Looking Before and After encourages us to ask how individual lives can, in a specifically Christian sense, be meaningful, how we can discern and rightly interpret those meanings, and how we might tell our own stories in ways that avoid the dangers of presumption and despair. In his typically beautiful writing style, Jacobs here reinvigorates narrative theology and demonstrates the power of individual life stories well told and properly understood.

Genres: Theology, Nonfiction, Christian, Religion, Christianity, Spirituality, Essays

128 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2008

About the author

Alan Jacobs is a scholar of English literature, literary critic, and distinguished professor of the humanities at Baylor University. Previously, he held the Clyde S. Kilby Chair of English at Wheaton College until 2012. His academic career has been marked by a deep engagement with literature, theology, and intellectual history.
Jacobs has written extensively on reading, thinking, and culture, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, First Things, and The New Atlantis. His books explore diverse topics, from the intellectual legacy of Christian humanism (The Year of Our Lord 1943) to the challenges of modern discourse (How to Think). He has also examined literary figures like C. S. Lewis (The Narnian) and W. H. Auden. His work often bridges literature and philosophy, with books such as A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love reflecting on the ethical dimensions of interpretation.
An evangelical Anglican, Jacobs continues to influence discussions on faith, literature, and the role of reading in contemporary life.

Reviews

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short review: Looking Before and After was very briefly on sale for $0.99 on kindle and I picked up any book by Alan Jacobs that is only $0.99. This is a short book, just under 100 pages of main content. There is an introduction to the concept of testimony and Jacobs' conflicted feelings about them. And then four chapters. The last chapter is I think the one that I am most interested in and conflicted about. Jacobs is using Nouwen's book Adam (and the person that the book is about) to interact with as a way to think about what it means to have a testimony and trace God's work in our lives. Adam was a profoundly disabled man that Nouwen worked with a L'arch, a group home for disabled adults. I would like to hear some response by someone that has done theological thinking and/or writing about disability and the image of God.

This isn't a must read book. I think there was some very interesting thoughts, but it was also a bit more disjointed than some of Jacobs' books. I am glad I read it, but 100 pages isn't much of an investment.

My slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/looking-before-and-a...

[Rod Zinkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Looking Before and After, Alan Jacobs starts with narrative theology as a jumping off point, but then develops the importance of the individual’s story. Jacobs warns about the increasing emphasis on group narrative, at the cost of the individual, the emphasis on community over all, “What we need is better and more responsible and more coherent personal stories, not the complete subsumption of all personal narrative into group narrative.” “What is currently needed, it seems to me, is a narrative theology that draws on the great resources provided by the thinkers I have mentioned - Maclntyre, Newbigin, Hauerwas, and so on - but that also emphasizes what Augustine and the Puritans understood to be key: thinking narratively about individual lives. That is the purpose of this book.”
Jacobs writes that the Christian church should cultivate story-telling, which is our individual testimonies. People, like narratives, can fit into genres – “life genres”, shapes of lives that are familiar. Reading biographies may enlighten a person to this; there may be patterns. “And the importance of the testimony is precisely this: that it attempts to represent in verbal form the shape of a life.” With our sharing our stories, our shapes, we are able to give counsel to others, to share wisdom.
These quotes and ideas are rather early in the book. They are followed by examples of biographies and literature that Jacobs is always ready to give as examples. Here is the basis of not only why we should share our stories, but why we should read or hear the stories of others, as this forms community.
Looking before and after refers to considering the narrative of our lives thus far, as it would be impossible to form a narrative without looking back to see the pattern, and looking at our lives ahead. “…retrospective understanding must be accompanied by the imaginative projection of oneself forward into a life form….”

[Kathryn Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Alan Jacobs authorial voice and the way he thinks. I would like to read most of his books. One idea that I want to remember from this book is how our lives tell a story but sometimes it is hard to see the narrative path of our lives in the middle of daily life. Jacobs recounts the story of his salvation and points out his mixed motives and the messiness human transformation. I really appreciated his perspective and his testimony.

[David Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Jacobs, like most great essayists, writes about what occupies his thoughts without much concern about "the size of his readership." Half the fascination when reading his books is the wonder engendered by the serpentine journey through his life and thinking. In keeping with Hazlett, Lamb, and C.S. Lewis (all essayists Jacobs admires) reading "Looking Before and After" has the feel of sitting in my living room with a glass of wine enjoying a conversation with an old friend--a very intelligent and articulate friend.

In this gem Jacobs focuses his considerable intellect toward the stories Christians tell, in particular personal testimonies that describe encounters with God. But, nearly all non-Christian spiritual communities also tell stories and they too would profit from Jacob's thoughtful comments and insights regarding the form of story.

I read this book in the early stages of a creative writing MFA program. I found Jacob's insights regarding the forms of recounting spiritual experience to be helpful in developing the deceptively simple craft of describing such stories. But more than this, Alan Jacobs encourages the reader to look for these "spiritual stories" in unlikely places, places and situations in which the story teller is often not fully aware of all that is encrusted by his or her words. His writing and his advice is full of humility. Jacobs' most important message is perhaps the realization in both teller and hearer that, that in the words of Michael Polyani, we "know more than we can say" and when speaking of God we humans can never know, "all there is to say."

Alan Jacobs is not a well known author--few essayists/critics are. Even among the small band of his enthusiastic readers, this book is often forgotten and I think that condition most unfortunate. Our culture and particularly our church communities have forgotten much about the nature and character of the narrative. Alan Jacobs, in Looking Before and After," provides a needed and imaginative reminder.

[Debbie Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of food for thought, some great concepts about the value of keeping a journal and then taking time to read your journals to "observe my heart that I may see my life in frame from time to time," as the author quotes Puritan Richard Rogers. The book is based on a series of lectures and is fairly academic at times. The author is a favorite of mine--good thinker, good writer. He chooses several people as examples of "testimony," or putting your life into a genre/framework. Examples include Isak Dinesen, W. H. Auden, and Mary McCarthy. I found his take on the evangelical tradition of testimony interesting.

[Benjamin Dueholm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacobs is a very generous author, which sounds like a backhanded compliment but isn't. He does justice to a variety of perspectives on memoir and testimony, both theological and secular, and makes a good case for the importance to Christians of assembling their experience of faith into a coherent story. It made me want to read the books he writes about.

[Wesley Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Applies narrative theology to the individual Christian, not just the community. And, as always with Jacobs, has plenty of wit and thoughtful cultural criticism.

[Yuri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little complementary side dish to all the Hauerwas I've been reading.