Friday, April 13, 2007
Faith is born in the aftermath of God
A great description of Christian faith from Peter Rollin's new book, How (Not) to Speak of God:
Christian faith, it could be said, is born in the aftermath of God. Our fragile faith is fanned into life in the wake of what we believe to have been the incoming of a life-giving encounter in which we feel connected with, and transformed by, the source of everything that is. This belief may result from an immediate and psychologically penetrating experience or may arise more gently over time, but, regardless of the means, such faith cannot be reduced to the mere affirmation of religious dogma, a regular visit to some religious institution or the reciting of mechanical prayers. For Christians testify to having been caught up in and engulfed by that which utterly transcends them. In short, the experience that gives birth to faith, at its most luminous, is analogous to the experience of an infant feeling the embrace and tender kiss of its mother.
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posted by Mike Clawson at 12:17 AM | Permalink | 
3 Comments:
At 4/13/2007 09:18:00 AM, 
Mike Clawson
Yeah, my friend Geoff Holsclaw runs that blog, and a lot of my other friends (Tony Jones, Bruce Benson, Dave Fitch) are frequent contributors to it. In fact, you might notice that I have their blog button in my sidebar. :)
Everyone in the emerging church world has been raving about this book (including my wife), so I figured I'd better read it soon.
Thanks for the reviews. I'll read them after I finish the book. I don't like to spoil my experience by reading someone else's opinion until I've had a chance to formulate my own.
Have you heard of the "the church and postmodern culture: conversation" blog? They had a series of posts on this book a while back. They compiled them (as well as a number of other interesting posts) into this pdf.