Book I Read: Celebration of Discipline

 

I read this book when I was in the Seminary almost 30 years ago. Now that I was diagnosed with kidney cancer and having radical nephrectomy of my right kidney, I thought it would have a long and hard road to recovery. I have been struggling with my personal spirituality. But I know that during the difficult times, it is my spirituality that will help me stay strong. So I am revisiting this book on spirituality. No, I won’t write a book review but I will just post few nuggets that I hope will inspire those who will read to grow in their spiritual life.

 

Here is the description of the book written by Richard J. Foster.

From the Inside Flap

In the twenty years since its publication, Celebration of Discipline has helped over a million seekers discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace, and a deeper understanding of God. For this special twentieth-anniversary edition, Richard J. Foster has added an introduction, in which he shares the story of how this beloved and enduring spiritual guidebook came to be.

Hailed by many as the best modern book on Christian spirituality, Celebration of Discipline explores the "classic Disciplines," or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found.

Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contributes to a balanced spiritual life. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration bring us nearer to one another and to God.

Foster provides a wealth of examples demonstrating how these Disciplines can become part of our daily activities--and how they can help us shed our superficial habits and "bring the abundance of God into our lives." He offers crucial new insights on simplicity, demonstrating how the biblical view of simplicity, properly understood and applied, brings joy and balance to our inward and outward lives and "sets us free to enjoy the provision of God as a gift that can be shared with others." The discussion of celebration, often the most neglected of the Disciplines, shows its critical importance, for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. Celebration of Discipline will help Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth.

From the Back Cover

In the twenty years since its publication, Celebration of Discipline has helped over a million seekers discover a richer spiritual life infused with joy, peace, and a deeper understanding of God. Hailed by many as the best modern work on Christian spirituality, Celebration of Discipline explores the "classic Disciplines," or central spiritual practices, of the Christian faith. Along the way, Foster shows that it is only by and through these practices that the true path to spiritual growth can be found.

Dividing the Disciplines into three movements of the Spirit, Foster shows how each of these areas contributes to a balanced spiritual life. The inward Disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward Disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate Disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration bring us nearer to one another and to God.Foster provides a wealth of examples demonstrating how these Disciplines can become part of our daily activities -- and how they can help us shed our superficial habits and "bring the abundance of God into our lives." The discussion of celebration, often the most neglected of the Disciplines, shows its critical importance -- for it stands at the heart of the way to Christ. Celebration of Disciplinewill help motivate Christians everywhere to embark on a journey of prayer and spiritual growth.

About the Author

Richard J. Foster is the author of several bestselling books, including Celebration of Discipline, Streams of Living Water, Life with God, and Prayer, which was Christianity Today's Book of the Year and the winner of the Gold Medallion Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. He is the founder of RenovarÉ, an organization and a movement committed to the renewal of the church of Jesus Christ in all its multifaceted expressions, and the editor of The Life with God Bible.

 

 

Book I Read: Jesus: A Very Short Introduction

Bauckham, Richard. Jesus: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, 2011.

Two billion people today identify as Christians, with the implication that Jesus is the focus of their relationship with God, and their way of living in the world. Such followers of Jesus are now more numerous and make up a greater proportion of the world's population than ever before. Despite its decline in the West, Christianity is rapidly increasing in areas such as Africa and China. 

 Richard Bauckham explores the historical figure of Jesus, evaluating the sources and concluding that they provide us with good historical evidence for his life and teaching. In order to place Jesus in his proper historical context, as a Jew from Galilee in the early first century of our era, Bauckham looks at Jewish religion and society in the land of Israel under Roman rule. He explores Jesus' symbolic practices as well as his teachings, looks at his public career and emphasises how his actions, such as healing and his association with notorious sinners, were just as important as his words. 

 Bauckham shows that Jesus was devoted to the God of Israel, with a special focus on God's fatherly love and compassion, and like every Jewish teacher he expounded the Torah, but did so in his own distinctive way. With a discussion about the way Jesus understood himself and what finally led to his death as a criminal on a Roman cross, he concludes by considering the significance Jesus has come to have for Christian faith worldwide.

Book I read: Letters From A Skeptic

I have been reading lately. Since I have not been posting more often, I thought it would be a good idea to post the books I have read in the last couple of years. Here is a book by Gregory A. Boyd. The simplicity and clarity of his writing got me interested in reading more of his works. His correspondence with his father (who was in his 70's) has provided a personal and emotional elements in a deep and yet simple theological answers to common questions about God that agnostics are asking. However, I believe that even Christians who have the nagging questions about God and their faith would find most of the answers helpful.

Here is the short description of the book and a review by reader Jill Heatherly:

Greg Boyd and his father, Ed, were on opposite sides of a great divide. Greg was a newfound Christian, while his father was a longtime agnostic. So Greg offered his father an invitation: Ed could write with any questions on Christianity, and his son would offer a response.

Letters from a Skeptic contains this special correspondence. 

The letters tackle some of today's toughest challenges facing Christianity, including

• Do all non-Christians go to hell?
• How can we believe a man rose from the dead?
• Why is the world so full of suffering?
• How do we know the Bible was divinely inspired?
• Does God know the future?

Each response offers insights into the big questions, while delivering intelligent answers that connect with both the heart and mind. Whether you're a skeptic, a believer, or just unsure, these letters can provide a practical, common-sense guide to the Christian faith.

Edward Boyd's agnosticism rested "not ... too much on any positive position ... but rather on a host of negative ones" about Christianity. In an attempt to address these negative issues, his son Greg, a professor of theology, asked his father, a strong-willed, highly intelligent, and stubborn 70-year-old, to enter into a correspondence in which "all of their cards would be laid on the table." Greg would give his father the opportunity to raise all his objections to the veracity of Christianity, and Greg would "answer these objections as well as give positive grounds for holding to the Christian faith."

Three years and more than 30 letters later, Letters from a Skeptic was published and Edward Boyd came to accept Christ. During his journey, he and his son hash through such topics as why the world is so full of suffering; why an all-powerful God needs prayer; how you can believe in someone who rose from the dead; and how another man's death can pardon others. Despite their brutal honesty, both men exhibit respect and love toward one another as they address these volatile subjects. In Edward's second response to Greg, he boldly says, "Well, your distinction between the 'Christian Church' and 'Christians' is interesting and novel, but frankly, I don't buy it." Greg responds, saying, "I've got to admit that you are raising some extremely good points in your letters. You are raising the most difficult questions a theist can face." 

The Book of Jesus

The Book of Jesus: A Treasury of the Greatest Stories and Writings About Christ edited by Calvin Miller. Here is a book I wanted to read for a long time. Surprisingly, I found it in our library, one of the books I mindlessly picked up during one of the conferences held in Chiang Mai last year. The book is edited by Calvin Miller. He is a pastor, speaker and professor. He is the bestselling author of more than thirty books including the enormously popular Singer trilogy.

From the blurb, it says that The Book of Jesus is an essential volume for every Christian library: an all-embracing collection—in style of the The Book of Virtue—of the best stories, poems, essays, and songs about the life of Jesus Christ.

“No two people know quite the same things about Jesus or see him in quite the same way,” says Calvin Miller in the Introduction to this monumental work. “Some see him as judge, coming to scourge the nations. Others see him primarily as a lover of children. Scholars tend to see him in scholarly ways. Poets see him more poetically. Preachers see him as a preacher, teachers as teacher. Carpenters like remembering he was one of them.” The Jesus of Scripture, Dr. Miller says, “is only finished in the individual hearts of those who believe.” In compiling The Book of Jesus, Dr. Miller’s goal is to bring together some of the most fascinating, original observations on the life of Jesus Christ, and the result is truly wonderful.

The Book of Jesus contains hundreds of selections drawn from every era of history, presenting a spectrum of contributors from Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hemingway, and C.S. Lewis to Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, and Desmond Tutu. This broad, eclectic volume also includes works by contemporary Christian writers such as Max Lucado, Elisabeth Elliot, Charles Colson, and Eugene Peterson, and other poems, songs, and essays, traditional hymns, and verse from the Bible.

The selections in this indispensable book, when taken together, present “the Christ of universal reflection, “for many thousands of people who see to find out exactly who is this most important man.

What I am reading

I actually finished reading Colin E. Gunton’s The Theologian as Preacher while in a 10-hour bus drive going to Chiang Mai City and coming back. This is the reason I prefer to ride a bus than to drive. Anyway, the blurbs at the back say that it “is a collection of sermons by a world-renowned theologian who was also a much loved preacher. Following on from the success of Colin Gunton’s first collection Theology Through Preaching, these sermons from the later years of his life demonstrate Gunton’s preaching in a local-church setting, enabling readers to gain insight into how his academic theology enhanced and influenced his personal preaching. Ranging across such subjects as the problem of evil, Christianity and Islam, materialism and Judgement, they speak not only to academic theologians and students, but also to preachers and Christian readers everywhere.

John Webster comments that “all that one would expect from a master theologian: biblically rooted, pastorally acute, humane and above all alert and responsible to the judgment, consolation and joy of the gospel.”

The introduction was written by Stephen Holmes. Here Holmes reminisces his time together with Colin Gunton as Gunton's former student. Holmes remembered him saying that “you can always tell when a theologian has stopped preaching; their work loses something vital.” Gunton believed passionately that theology is the church’s science—pointless and meaningless if not directed to the maintenance, edification and extension of the body of Christ. This conviction was clearly evident when Gunton was behind the pulpit.

In times when preachers are concerned that their sermons should be seeker-sensitive, Colin’s sermons deliberately neglect the elements that would make them to be categorized as such. Holmes says,

Relevance is not to be strived for, simply because the gospel is necessarily already relevant to all people. One of the great themes of these sermons, surely, is asking what is truly relevant. Much of what passes for ‘relevance’ in our preaching is imply a capitulation to a pagan value system (or at best, a despairing admission that one’s congregation has capitulated). Sport or celebrity or items of passing notice in the news media are endlessly recycled in the pulpit in the (surely mistaken!) belief that this will aid the preacher in being heard.

Worship and life, theology and daily Christian living, Colin always sought to hold these together in his own life and he helped his congregation to do the same. Colin died in Spring of 2003 in what most people described as untimely and unexpectedly.

I personally chosen this book expecting that I will learn and be blessed by Colin’s sermons and at the same time, I want to have a glimpse on how a highly regarded, seasoned and contemporary theologian used his academic achievements in preaching to the non-academic (theologically) members of his congregation. A glimpse makes way for me to see a horizon.

I am also reading John Webster, Karl Barth, Second Edition. (Continuum Books, London, 2004). Reading only during free time, I am just half through the book. This is a good introduction to life and work of Karl Barth. Webster claims that he avails of posthumous and mostly unpublished writings of Barth to come up with this book. Readers can expect updated information about Barth's biography and more lucid presentation of Barth's theology as his earlier works are studied in the light of new materials.

And for those who are not familiar with Barth and his works, this book gives a readable presentation of the great man and theologian. I, myself, although familiar with Barth admittedly do not know enough from his 13 large volumes of Christian Dogmatics, which I have not read a page. Webster attempts to summarize Barth's stand on different topics like God, Trinity, Christology, Justification among others.

Here is the blurb:

Karl Barth has been called the most important Protestant theologian since Schleiermacher. A lifetime of work produced a huge and complex body of writings that emerged from both his theological teaching and from his engagement in church life. The posthumous publication of previously unknown works by Barth has invited fresh and attentive interpretations of his thought.

This book draws together this readings to provide a clear and authoritative introduction to the main themese in Barth's theology. In an accessible way it shows the continuity and coherence of Barth's work and stresses the importance of his biblical and ethical writings alongside his sytematic theology. In conclusion it focuses on Barth's response to modernity, postmodernity and the tasks of theology, presenting him as an outstanding resource for constructive theology of our age.

Moltmann on Academic Theology

I started reading Jurgen Moltmann's Experiences in Theology. I agree with Frank it is fun and enjoyable to read and judging from the few pages I had read so far, the book's language is clear and simple but not simplistic. A characteristic very hard to find in a theology book. It is readable compare to Moltmann's early "contributions" to theology. For people like me whose first language is not English this is excellent.

I may response to this book while I go along by either posting quotes or making comments positively or otherwise. Meanwhile, here's an interesting quote:

Academic theology is nothing other than the scholarly penetration and illumination by mind and spirit of what Christian in the congregations think when they believe in God and live in the fellowship of Christ. By scholarly I mean that the theology is methodologically verifiable and comprehensible. Good scholarly theology is therefore basically simple, because it is clear. Only cloudy theology is complicated and difficult. Whether it be Athanasius or Augustine, Aquinas ot Calvin, Schleiermacher or Barth--the fundamental ideas of every good theological system can be presented in a single page. p. 13

The book has arrived!

Three hours ago, the postman dropped something at our front door. Jared shouted excitedly, Tatay! (Father) your book has arrived. It is indeed a very beautiful book. It's Hermann Haring, Hans Kung Break Through: The Work and the Legacy. I haven't own a book for some time. Thanks a lot to Richard of Sub Ratione Dei. A glimpse at the table of contents shows me some articles about Buddhism. This is perfect! I'll be expecting more books in the future from a friend. What a joyful day it must be!