MY STORY:
A Spiritual & Intellectual Autobiography
By John Lennox
SPCK. 448 pages. £24.99
ISBN 978 0 281 091 973
“This is a book that for many years I refused to write.” Now in his 80s John Lennox MA, PhD, DPhil, DSc, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, acknowledges at the start of this 400-page story of his life how fraught with danger is the genre of autobiography.
“All autobiography is self-indulgent”, at least according to Daphne du Maurier, but Lennox has tried hard to avoid this pitfall in an account of his life which seeks more to bring glory to the One from whom that life is derived than to himself. Perhaps an impossible task given that autobiography, by definition, depends upon personal anecdote, personal recollection, personal opinion and is littered with use of the personal pronoun.
My Story has been described as part adventure story, part history, part spiritual-intellectual autobiography, part reflective memoir. Its aim? Robustly to defend the Christian faith in the context of academia across the disciplines of mathematics, science, and philosophy.
James M. Tour has said that “reading this memoir felt like stepping into a modern-day Book of Acts!” Certainly, the chapters which describe how God used Lennox in the former GDR, USSR and Hungary make for exhilarating reading and demonstrate the fundamental importance of a thorough knowledge of Scripture as well as total dependence upon God’s Spirit in Christian witness.
Respectfully acknowledging from the outset that his reader may not share a Christian worldview, he asks that we meet his story with an open mind and decide for ourselves “whether or not my account contains credible evidence for God’s existence and care” (p.xxii).
It does. Abundantly so.
The danger as we move through the book is that it begins to read like an elaborated CV – a long list of achievements: talks given, places visited, numbers of students in attendance and honours awarded by prestigious institutions: “Apart from my university job I was kept increasingly busy with speaking engagements in local churches and Christian groups in universities, colleges, schools and professional institutions mainly in South Wales and Southwest England; for instance, my records show that I gave 77 such talks in 1972. Roughly speaking six per month.”
God has not gifted many with this level of academic brilliance, energy or the family support to enable such an effective ministry. However, Lennox at no point pushes himself forward – the door is opened by his Lord every time – a salutary reminder that faithfulness to the gifts that He has given is all that God requires of us.
The narrative is chronological; the style akin to that of his other works – to the point, no nonsense and gently humorous. Lennox, also a linguist and Bible scholar, tells us that: “Hebrew narrative in general does not suffer from the contemporary preoccupation with moods, emotions and thoughts. It is more concerned with actions, since the writers of Scripture are motivated by the conviction that who and what people are is best seen in what they do.”
Writing his autobiography in this spirit, Lennox chooses not to spend time on what he considers fodder more suited to the psychiatrist’s couch.
This reader, however, found some of the “Interludes” in the text (sections where he digresses away from the “what happened next” into aspects of his family life, his marriage, his health, his personal walk with the Lord) some of the most interesting in the whole book. Particularly moving is Lennox’s humble realisation that the greatest way he can serve God into his ninth decade is by caring for his wife rather than looking for new ministry opportunities back in his native Ireland.
Sally is a quietly sung hero of this tale. A wife as selfless and sacrificial as she has been would be hard to find in the 21st century. Lennox acknowledges, “My story has only happened because it is also her story, with the difference that her life has been mainly behind the scenes supporting the family, whereas mine has been mainly public.” Her prayerful, devoted, hardworking example, as much as Lennox’s lifelong commitment to being an “ambassador and teacher of [God’s] Word” is deeply challenging, and the book will be enjoyed by those who have known him personally, heard him speak, read his books or who are interested in seeing how God’s power can be seen at work in the most hostile of academic contexts.
