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Title: Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest by David R. Blumenthal, Rita Nakashima Brock ISBN: 0-664-25464-0 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: November, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (4 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: If it cannot even begin...
Comment: I think the review, "Fails at the start" is a conclusive refutation to the entire book. If our very definition of justice comes from the words and acts of God, then whatever he does is ipso facto just, and it is nonsense to say that he is unjust or abusive. The author may not like the way God is, but God cannot be said to be unjust.
Rating: 1
Summary: Fails at the start
Comment: This book, with all its pages of argumentation, fails at the fundamental level. That is, it fails to answer the question of how we may define good and evil, justice and injustice. The Bible never describes God as unjust, but rather that any concept of justice is derived from his words and actions.
If God is BY DEFINITION just, then I question where this book obtains its definitions of justice and injustice by which to judge God. The book's definitions could not have come from God himself, since he never calls himself unjust. If the definitions come merely from the author's mind, then this book only tells us something about the author's anti-biblical thinking, and says nothing about God himself. And if the definitions come from anywhere else other than God, then they are non-authoritative and cannot be used to evaluate God at all.
As the Bible says, Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Let God be true, and every man a liar.
Thus, this book fails from the start; it does not pose any challenge at all to orthodox Christianity.
Rating: 5
Summary: Raises Some **VERY** Uncomfortable Issues For Christians
Comment: This is, bar none, the most uncompromisingly and unflinchingly honest work of theology I have read in 35+ years of studying the subject. Blumenthal's proximate subject is the Holocaust, but his ultimate subject is holocaust-as-such, not only **the** Holocaust -- in particular, those experiences of holocaust, personal and individual as well as historical and communal, in which God's tendency to abuse His/Her children are nakedly manifest. Most moving of all, in terms of individual holocaust, are the comments of one of Blumenthal's colleagues at Emory Univ, herself a survivor of the holocaust of childhood sexual abuse, who was given the MS for evaluation and comment. Christian theologians, this writer included, would do well to ponder a conclusion Blumenthal never states explicitly, but which is inescapably latent in his text: for a holocaust survivor, the only authentic and honest mode of theological discourse is the rhetoric of deliberate blasphemy. Perhaps respect for God ends where the experience of holocaust begins. If this book, and that possibility raised thereby, does not keep you awake nights, then take warning: your soul may quite possibly be dead.
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Title: Proverbs of Ashes : Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us by Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker ISBN: 0807067970 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 18 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Arguing With God: A Jewish Tradition by Anson Laytner ISBN: 0765760258 Publisher: Jason Aronson Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith by Marcus J. Borg ISBN: 0060526769 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Beyond Belief : The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels ISBN: 0375501568 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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