Christian Life and Christian Hope: Raids on the Inarticulate

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant book
Review: Christian Hope and Christian Life is one of the best books I've read in years. The basic theme of the book is simple. In the New Testament, we see a consistent emphasis on hope for the future, but different books emphasize different aspects of hope. In the early church, as with the theologians Augustine of Hippo and Gregory of Nyssa, hope for the future life with God is sometimes seen as a distant hope with little relation to the present, sometimes as a hope close at hand that can inform our lives and the decisions we make every day. These two ways of relating the "there and then" of future life with God and the "here and now" of mundane life survive in later Christianity. In English literature, for example (the author is also an Anglican Studies scholar), John Donne represents Christian hope as a somewhat distant, future-looking activity, while writers such as Jeremy Taylor see it as something closer to our everyday world.

What sets Greer's book apart from most studies is its integration of excellent scholarship and spirituality. Greer knows Gregory of Nyssa, for example, as well as any living scholar. But the work is written to appeal to people who also believe, people who care about Christian faith and struggle to find hope in their own lives.

I recommend this book with great enthusiasm.