Author |
: William Hamilton |
Publisher |
: |
Total Pages |
: 168 |
Release |
: 1966 |
ISBN-10 |
: UOM:39015058611503 |
ISBN-13 |
: |
Rating |
: 4/5 (03 Downloads) |
Synopsis The New Essence of Christianity by : William Hamilton
"Here's functional belief for a jet age with superfluous baggage flung out--ready to go to work and meet new needs. "We need to reduce the area of what is believed and lay claim upon it," says William Hamilton. "We need to learn from anyone, anywhere, who has the time and grace to speak about what he really knows. Then we have to learn to talk in our own way, though brokenly, less assuredly. This may mean being willing to admit that our knowledge and our faith is in bits and pieces." Bluntly, but with refreshing candor, William Hamilton speaks for the millions who want to know what they can believe and why, but suffer from "theological indigestion" of too rich, too heavy and too much food for the spirit. Let's start, he says, with the idea of fragments--those durable items of belief that have survived persecution, creed building, monasticism and the acids of modern life. These he gathers up, turns over and finds good enough for the cornerstone of the structure he erects for THE NEW ESSENCE OF CHRIRSTIANITY. Our hard, sober look at things forces us to admit that, first of all, we have problems with God. Nietszche proclaimed that God was dead; Carl Goerdler, the anti-nazi martyr, that He was a "botcher"; and, in our own day, Arthur Koestler that He is dethroned; and Albert Camus that He has withdrawn. Even the Christian, says Hamilton, may find that "he is there when we do not want Him, in ways we do not want Him and He is not there when we do need Him." Yet this makes for firmer faith in a God at last found through search and suffering. Greatest help of all, Hamilton believes, is in a revitalized view of Jesus the Lord of life as well as of death. Through a revaluated, de-sentimentalized view of Jesus, we learn how the Christian man is to deal with the world--"the same ways that God dealt with man in the world--with humiliation, patience and suffering." Finally, he emerges with a clear idea of the style of life required of Christians today. He sees choices open along a broad spectrum, ranging from "rebellion, activism, transforming the world...a break with conformist culture" to "resignation, receiving and suffering in the world, the search for a concealed break within culture." By probing the meanings of these cultural expressions, in the clue offered by marriage, in historical examination of ways in which Christlike men have abided in the world are revealed the means by which we today may think, like and obey God. In a book spiced and brilliantly interwoven with apt quotation, William Hamilton turns at last to Dietrich Bonhoeffer for his summary "Man is challenged to participate in the suffering of God at the hands of a godless world."" -Publisher