A middling contribution to Christian studies.
A new approach to an old Christian subject.
Time contributing editor Meacham (Chair, American Presidency/Vanderbilt Univ.; The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, 2018, etc.) is best known for his political and biographical writing. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson and has written biographies of George W. Bush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In this brief book, the author takes a detour to examine the last seven phrases Jesus spoke from the cross. Because those words have been the subject of endless writings over hundreds of years, readers may question the necessity of exploring them again. Meacham’s answer is not to explain what the words mean but rather use them as a springboard for sermons to Episcopalian audiences on Good Friday and the origins of the Christian faith. The author claims that the words cannot be taken literally because the Bible was written centuries ago, either in Greek or in Hebrew that was translated into Greek and then translated into English. All of this can be notoriously difficult to track because the languages are so different and the meanings of words change with time. Still, Meacham approaches his subject from what he calls “Christianity’s foundational belief…that Jesus was in fact the ‘Christ’—in Greek, the ‘anointed one’—who died and rose again to redeem and restore a fallen world that is to be reborn as what John the Divine called ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ ” On Jesus’ apparently forgiving his murderers, the author asks: If Jesus’ crucifixion was foreordained by God, why should those who carried out God’s wishes be punished? Meacham's answer: Luke included those words so that any Jew or gentile hearing them could feel exculpated from responsibility in his murder. Originally written as sermons and featuring Episcopalian imagery, this book will be most appreciated by devout Episcopalians.
A middling contribution to Christian studies.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-23666-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Convergent
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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