Amazon Book Reviews 2

New Seeds of Contemplation
by Thomas MertonEdition: Paperback
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An Excellent Gateway to Merton and the Contemplative Life!, August 8, 2008

Seeds of Contemplation is a great gateway to Merton's many profound and enriching works on prayer and spirituality. It contains many short chapters which deal with the basics of the contemplative life - solitude and community, silence and words, distractions and dark nights, faith and doubt, etc. It is a helpful and essential guide for any who aspires to be a 'contemplative' - that is, to grow in the life of prayer and communion with God (and Merton would caution that we use this loaded word carefully). It clears the ground by explaining what contemplation is and is not, the unmasking of the false self, the place of solitude and silence vis-a-vis the community, the experiences of distractions and dryness and interacts with the traditional imageries of the 'living flame' and being 'touched by God' that one frequently encounters in the classical mystical writings (such as John of the Cross, Cloud of Unknowing). It really is an excellent introduction of the contemplative life for the beginners. Yet, he has said elsewhere too that if anyone desires to be a contemplative, let him not think of himself as anything else but a beginner! This book is a combination of clarity and profundity and few books succeed in making sense of the contemplative life to the lay reader without making it sound either pedestrian or esoteric. The beauty with which it is written and the timeless quality of its counsels to people in every age that thirst for authenticity and a life of deepening union with God makes it an enduring classic.
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Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year
by Robert E. WebberEdition: Paperback
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A helpful Guide for Observing the Christian Calendar., July 27, 2008

Robert Webber has written an inspiring guide especially for Christians who are learning to appropriate the practice of observing the Christian Liturgical Calendar. He does a good job in explaining how this ancient-future discipline is a great aid to spiritual formation and lays out the full Calendar of seasons from Advent to Pentecost and the special festive days such as Baptism of the Lord, Transfiguration, Good Shepherd, Christ the King Sundays. By reflecting on the themes of these special days and seasons, he helps us enter more deeply into the celebration. He also suggests the peculiar disciplines such as fasting, baptism, giving and cake-cutting (!) that go with the respective festivals as well as questions for our group/individual study and reflections. To be sure, it can be pretty exhausting trying to read it from cover to cover. It is better to be used as a reference as we move through the liturgical seasons like trekking the himalayas with a good map and an experienced Sherpa. I have found this approach to be extremely nourishing and formative. Webber is a wise guide in the area of spiritual formation and he writes with clarity and unusual eloquence. I thank God for his invaluable and lasting legacy. P/S: For readers who have reservations about festive observance as a valid Christian discipline in view of texts like Col 2:16-17 and Gal 4:10, they should take heart that these texts have more to do with clinging back to the now, from the Christian POV, obsolete Jewish festivals which were a shadow of Christ, not the reality. Clearly the issue is not with the observance of seasons and times per se (which the early Church evidently practised such as the Lord's Day and plausibly Easter) but the failure to recognize the *Time* of God's inbreaking kingdom in Jesus the Christ. Further, Rom 14:5-10 gives at the minimum the freedom to observe sacred days as one is so persuaded in his own heart. And it certainly should be done in the spirit and context of Christian liberty and spiritual formation, than as a legalistic thing. Hope this helps!
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Mustard Seed vs. McWorld: Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future
by Tom SineEdition: Paperback
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A book that will rock the world should its proposals be taken seriously., July 27, 2008

Tom Sine belongs to a rare breed of thinkers who dares to take seriously Jesus' teaching of the kingdom of God. He applies his futurist's foresight to what the world can be like if enough Christians start taking the Lord's call to be the salt of the earth and mustard seeds of faith. Too often, we have given ourselves the excuse that we can remain where we are in our secular vocation and continue to do the Lord's work just as faithfully. Without debunking this approach absolutely (as it certainly works for some), Sine gives us the pause by pointing out that in practice that has easily become for many Christians a safe cover for building our own empires while leaving a mere pittance of time, energy, money and other resources for the Kingdom of God. Sunday is a day where we give a polite nod to the revolutinary message of Jesus but the rest of the workaday week is business as usual! The Bible has some strong words for such a subterfuge! Yet, this book is not simply a book of diagnosis or indictment but a concrete proposal for implementing a 'mustard seed' program(s) that takes seriously the issues of poverty, social injustice, fragmentation of society, environmental pollution and other contemporary ills that come with McWorld - the world of globalization - and poses a challenge to Christians who will take up the call courageously to revamp their whole way of life in the light of Jesus' call of discipleship. It is one of those rare Christian resources that do not delve merely in abstractions and generalities but is committed to working out the brass tags of what it means to be Christ's followers in the 21st century. This is a brilliant exercise in what Walter Brueggemann calls 'hopeful imagination' that will call into question the status quo, bundled with lots of helpful data and practical strategies that will usher in the new. One has to ready himself for the challenge as he opens this book.
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A Testament of Devotion
by Thomas R. KellyEdition: Paperback
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Deep calls to deep amidst the roaring waterfalls!, July 27, 2008

The Testament of Devotion is a gentle invitation to slip into the divine centre amidst the whirlwinds of competing demands, incessant noise, superficial crowds and breathless hurry. Thomas Kelly, a Quaker writes as one who has stumbled upon the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price for which he would trade everything for - a life that grows out of an inner place of calm, peace, clarity and centredness. This divine centre, this inner peace is available to all who would pause and breathe deep and slip gently into it. It does not require the straining of the intellect, or elaborate rituals but humble obedience - a surrender to the 'Hound of Heaven' that offers us this gift of quiet, trust and rest. This place is where you learn to trust the Creator, the Savior and the world's true Lord and know that all is well, all manner of things is well. What we have here is a distillation of Quaker spirituality where the doctrine of the Inner Light of Christ can be realized in the lives of ordinary people and not just the super saints in all the routine and vagaries of modern living - a simple, gentle book that has the power to change us from deep inside. Be warned!
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The Worldly Church: A Call for Biblical Renewal
by Leonard AllenEdition: Paperback
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The bomb that went off in Campbell's playing field?, July 26, 2008

This must be the bomb that exploded in the Stone-Campbell Restorationist playing field sounding off a siren that calls for a serious navigational check lest it goes off further down the sectarian, splintering precipice. For a movement that rallies the call to unity on the strictest interpretation of 'sola scriptura' ('speaks where the Bible speaks, be silent where the Bible is silent'), the Churches of Christ in America and worldwide have undergone innumerable splits, ecclesiastical quarrels and ugly contentions. From one of the fastest growing religious bodies at one time, it has become a scattering of mostly small-sized fossilized institutions that have a particularly strained way of reading the Bible and viewing other Christians. Leonard Allen, Michael Weed and Richard Hughes have written a sharp but compassionate book on the crisis and were among the first bold voices that put the finger on the problems that have plaqued the movement from the start. The Restoration Movement founded by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell had grown out of a particular era in American history, tired of religious wars and 'human traditions' and spurred on by the Reformation plea to have each person studying the bible for himself, the commonsense Baconian approach to reading the bible and other humanistic agendas that have all but ruled out the place of mystery in religion. This era had shaped a people who began to view church tradition and communal reading of scripture with suspicion and have opted for the individual as the final arbiter of biblical truths. The one hundred plus years that followed have shown this to be a recipe for disaster. Allen et al and others that followed have done the RM a great service by steering the ship back to the original intents of her founders, who though fallible and wrong-headed in many ways, were basically right in calling God's people to stand united on the basis of our first allegiance to scripture and not allow sectarian bias or church traditions to trump it, the first step of which was to drop the various denominational labels and be 'Christians only' and to constitute the Church around the visible marks of baptism and the Lord's Supper. However, when their descendants began to dismiss the Church before them as apostate and took on the task of reinventing the whole wheel, they ended up throwing away the baby along with the bathwater and the mystery, the sense of communion with the larger Church, appreciation of the sacraments, the contemplative life and spiritual formation were lost. What is left is an impoverished tradition that is open to the worst secular winds that blow along - individualism, pragmatism, human self-reliance, rationalism, consumerism - in short, worldliness. Two decades have passed since the book's publication, I honor the authors' bold and timely clarion call. The churches that have heeded it in one way or another have begun to see better days in church life, worship and brotherhood ties. I wish that the movement will continue to grow out of its sectarianism and bring to the table of ecumenicity its own gifts and contributions that the Lord has blessed her with for all her foibles and misses till we all be one and mature in Christ.



Making Sense Out of Suffering
by Peter KreeftEdition: Paperback
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An amazing synthesis of answers to the question of suffering., July 26, 2008

I read Kreeft's Making Sense out of Suffering more than twenty years ago and since then have gone on to read quite a number of other books on the same thread. I must say that Kreeft's book stands as one of the best, if not the best concise one-volume popular work that brings together a variety of disciplines - novelists, poets, prophets, philosophers, scriptures - to bear on the age-old existential issue of suffering. The book carries with it the suspenseful quality of a who-dunnit, that makes it unput-downable once you embark on it. You keep racing and grasping forward as the answer gets better and better with each chapter till you come to see afresh the familiar face of the One, acquainted with sorrows and griefs and by whose stripes our wounds are healed. Kreeft is not only a wise man. He is an empathetic conversational partner. What begins as a book that engages the intellect ends with words that touch the heart deeply. It is one of those books I count in my now sizeable collection as one that has left in me a deep imprint of truths that has pointed me and keeps pointing me to the Saviour. Thank you, Professor Kreeft!
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Liturgical Theology: The Church As Worshiping Community
by Simon ChanEdition: Paperback
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Challenging Proposal for Evangelical Worship Renewal, July 24, 2008

Simon Chan has given us here a challenging proposal that takes the evangelicals' self-searching mode a huge step forward as regards its worship and liturgy. In the intro, he evaluates the recent calls for renewal of the evangelical movement by theologians such as David Wells, Donald Bloesch and Stanley Grenz. Taking off from the works of Grenz and Robert Jenkins, the fresh insights he brings to the table include the need for the evangelical church to go beyond discussing style and technique and develop a more robust self-understanding that is rooted in the perichoretic union with the Trinity ie. the ontology of the church. What is interesting is his view of the church as prior to creation in the divine economy. This in his view has far reaching implications for the ecclesial life. Rather than being co-opted as a handmaiden to the world's agendas, the church's raison detre is found in God's irrevocable gift of election to the praise of his glory. This means that the church is most clearly herself at worship. Drawing largely from the Great Tradition (of the first five centuries), he sees the normative liturgy as constituted by Word and Sacrament, flanked on both ends by the welcome and the dismissal. Within this order, he sees the Eucharist as the basic centre that gives shape and orientation to the liturgy. This is a corrective to the evangelicals' tendency in seeing the whole service as revolving around the sermon. It is the Eucharist, he contends, that realizes the Church in her most basic character as communion. Chan then fleshes out his proposal as he looks at Christian initiation (Catechism)and the Sunday Liturgy and concludes with some thoughts on how the church can be formed spiritually through 'active participation' in worship. His program is a far cry from the mass appeal, humanly contrived and instant gratification models we see so much in the popular evangelical scene but if taken seriously and with perseverance, the church may for those rare times find herself buoyed up again by God's own Spirit to be what she has been called to be from before the foundation of the earth. Chan's writing is eloquent and lucid, evident of a first rate theological mind with both feet planted firmly on the ground. His relatively simple prose may mask deep insights that can be mined only through patient listening (lectio divina!), ruminations and further readings. My only small 'complaint' is that the book is too short, leaving some assertions less rigorously argued than I would wish for (but he did make clear that this is not a full-blown work on liturgical theology) and this gifted teacher needs to write more and bless the Church with his refreshing insights.
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Reaching Out
by Henri NouwenEdition: Paperback
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Nouwen at his Systematic Best!, July 3, 2008

Someone once quipped that Henri Nouwen was such a gifted writer that anything he scribbled out even on a discarded bus ticket deserved to get published! Having read many of his published works, I would nod heartily at that hyperbolic statement! There is in Nouwen's simple and beautiful literary expressions a profound grasp of life in the Spirit with all its odd tensions and paradoxes. This shows in the schema he uses in this book which sees the progress in the spiritual life not so much as a ladder one climbs unabated to the end goal (visio dei!) that traditional authors deigned to employ. It is more like the polarity that one shuttles back and forth between the Spirit and the flesh (in the language of St Paul). But here he creatively uses the idea of "Reaching Out'- to self, to others and to God. In these three movements of outreach, one finds himself experiencing the deepening of the life of faith when he moves from the false self of loneliness to the true self of solitude, from hostility towards others to hospitality and finally from the illusions of hubris to prayer. These concepts are not new but Nouwen has a refreshing way of weaving together the ancient Scriptures and the time-tested wisdom of the spiritual fathers and mothers with the modern struggles of contemporary men as well as his own existential issues. He writes in such a way that those with eyes to see could recognize the images and stirrings of their own hearts in them and perhaps discover for themselves the way out of the maze one often finds himself. I particularly love the way he retells the ancient stories of the Zen masters as well as the Eastern Orthodox teachers. No one tells them like he does within the larger reflections of what it means to live the spiritual life ie. 'to live a life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ'. In this he shows his ecumenical spirit and his clear discernment of truths within the diversity of faith traditions, while remaining deeply anchored in the gospel. One small complaint that some readers make of Nouwen is that his prolific writings often lack the systematic character that would have helped believers construct a more comprehensive and well thought out understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. I think this critique has some merits because many of his writings are done in the forms of letters (You are my Beloved), spiritual journals (Genesee Diary), case studies (Wounded Healer) and biographical reflections (Adam) which carry a plethora of gems here and there, which some feel need to be pieced together into a crystal glass! Then again, perhaps these genres are a more accurate reflection of life itself with all its messy bits and mysteries that do not yield to neat systematization. Having said that, if anyone must have a book that sets out the thoughts of Nouwen in his systematic best, this might well be the book he is looking for as Nouwen answers in three movements the book's central thesis: 'What does it mean to live in the Spirit of Jesus Christ?'. Savour this book slowly and meditatively and be nourished by this deep well of inspiring truths that move the heart as well as the mind.
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Choices
by Lewis B. SmedesEdition: Paperback
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Hard nosed approach to ethical decision-making., November 7, 2006

I find Smedes' approach to ethical decision-making extremely helpful, especially for people who do not settle for hand-me-down rules and simplistic solutions. While I do not agree with all that Smedes concludes in all of his ethical musings, I find myself constantly challenged by what he writes, to think critically about life's issues, which are often complex, and full of tensions, paradoxes and uncertainties. Every chapter gives an insightful, real-life and highly readable account of the principles(outlined in the Table of Contents) he commends to us in ethical decision-making. I find that his emphasis on developing the character rather than having the 'right answers' exactly right and his conclusion that 'getting it right is not the most important thing, being forgiven is'(rough paraphrase) tugs at the heart of all who yearn and desire to live right and yet find ourselves falling repeatedly into the hands of grace and hence energized by it.
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Love Within Limits: Realizing Selfless Love in a Selfish World
by Lewis B. SmedesEdition: Paperback
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Smedes at his best, July 27, 2006

I have been a fan of the late Lewis Smedes whose insightful writings have been a rare inspiration in the field of ethics and theology. Besides 'Forgive and forget' and 'Mere Morality', this book has been IMO one of his best works on ethics. He combines deep ethical insights with beautiful prose, that croons in your imagination long after you have put down the book. Using Paul's rhapsody on 'Agape love' in 1 Cor 13, he teases out the powerful drives of the love that knows no bounds - love does not seek its own self, love is not haughty, love has poise, love believes and risks with a kind of reckless abandonment, love hates evil, love gives hope... and at the same time holds all these superlatives in tension with the finitude of the human lover. So while the far-flung larger-than-life characteristics of love are eloquently expounded, Smedes discusses how love works itself out in our day to day world, conditioned by limited resources, human sinfulness and societal constraints. What we have is a hard-nosed treatment of the virtue of Christian love as it is exercised in the fallen world with the accompanying virtues of discernment and justice. Smedes writes with the theological acumen of Aquinas and the literary prowess of Shakespeare! Destined to be a classic.
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