In Christianity Today’s 2011 Book Awards, Elise Erikson Barrett’s What Was Lost: A Christian Journey Through Miscarriage won the award for "Christian Living." While I’m sure there are a number of Christian treatments of suffering in general, there do not seem to be an abundance of books on the subject of miscarriage, so I decided to give this one a try.

I expected to disagree with the author, a pastor in the United Methodist Church (the denomination in which I grew up) on some matters, since theologically I fit labels like "Calvinist," "credobaptist," and "complementarian" better than typical UMC labels like "Wesleyan/Armenian," "paedobaptist," and "egalitarian" (the last being obviously descriptive of the author). I was hoping the book would contain more of what is common to all Christians than what we would disagree on. Unfortunately, I disagreed a lot with the book.

Phrases like "At least according to the nature of God we see portrayed in Scripture" (page 51), "Probably God knew they would not" (page 55), and "[Jesus] did not, in all likelihood, share the conditions of female embodiment" (page 71) indicated a lack of firmness of belief in truths (like the truth of Scripture or the omniscience of God) held in common with orthodox believers through the centuries.

In my mind, chapter 6, "What about the Baby?" was particularly troubling. In this chapter, Barrett is primarily attempting to argue that God will take care of unborn babies, which involves discussion of personhood and salvation.

One aspect that bothered me about this chapter was its display of a fundamentally different view of salvation. Barrett says "Theologically, one way of defining personhood is to describe a person as ‘one who is capable of receiving salvation’ or ’one who is capable of being in transformative relationship with God’ (page 60). The "one way" means Barrett is claiming that "one who is capable of receiving salvation" is equivalent to "one who is capable of being in a transformative relationship with God." The parallelism between the two phrases would lean toward a reading that might even be simplified to say that "receiving salvation" is equivalent to "being in a transformative relationship with God."

Now I am not particularly thrilled with her definition of personhood, but salvation isn’t just about being in a tranformative relationship. Salvation requires a saving—a saving from something—in this case a saving from the wrath of God. Barrett encourages the notion that the unborn get salvation, but it seems the unborn could only be saved from a ceased existence. The only time I saw Hell mentioned is in another chapter when she quotes someone else as saying "I sure as hell didn’t deserve this" (page 111). I understand that God is loving, but He is also holy and just. God’s wrath is clearly revealed in Scripture (Romans 1:18 and 2:5 for example). Now I’m not saying the unborn go to Hell (I’m not saying they don’t either), but I found Barrett’s discussion of salvation quite unsatisfying.

I have other disagreements with this chapter, but I’m not convinced that it is profitable for me to go into detail with all my disagreements. I think it is sufficient to say that I am convinced Barrett and I hold very different perspectives on many theological (and for that matter epistemological) matters.

In some ways, I almost wish this book had been written from a secular perspective because I thought that the chapters with less outright theological discussion were significantly better. I thought it was at its best when discussing how to relate to others, and I hope I have learned from it.

It can also act as a source for other resources. I haven’t had time to see if these resources are worthwhile (if I find any that are stellar, I’ll be sure to pass them along). There is a chapter at the end containing a list of resources, but the footnotes are also an interesting place to look, for example I learned that Martin Luther apparently wrote "Comfort for Women who have had a Miscarriage" which I hope to read at some point.

Overall, I’m not sure how to deal with recommendations. On one hand, I have serious disputes with the author. On the other hand, I found it helpful and think it can be helpful for others, so I might suggest reading some of it but skipping Part 2. (If you happen to pick up your own copy rather than borrowing a copy, I can firmly recommend that you remove the weird nudish artwork between the Introduction and Part 1.)

You might be interested in Christianity Today’s 2011 Book Awards (Warning: one of the covers depicts a woman who seems to be only wearing a serpent, so if you visit the site you may want to not load images (your browser preferences probably have a setting (in Firefox it is in the "Content" tab))).