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veniasum 's review for:
My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
by Christian Wiman
This is quite a book—a combination of "Yes, yes, yes!" and "No, no, no!" on nearly every page.
It was something to pick it up after taking Gospels in the fall and Doctrine of Christ in the spring — discussing on the one hand what the modern rejection of the "Quest of the Historical Jesus" means, and why it's important that the Gospels are *history* and not just "Geschichte" — and discussing on the other hand why the Jesus of Modernism isn't the Jesus of the Bible at all...why he isn't God as God has revealed himself...
Wiman calls himself a Christian, but I'm struck throughout that he is a Christian with a sense of Christ but without a Bible — except maybe one chapter from the Gospels on the passion, a rejection of Genesis 3, a rejection of 1 Corinthians 15, as both too childish and primitive. And yet he is wrestling with the gap that I think we must all feel between spiritual experience (which is individual, beautiful) and external religion and love (which is communal, difficult). I think he underestimates the place that the church is for such difficult relationships—not just dogma.
I finished the book last night, and this morning I read Psalms 119 and 139 — the presence of God and delight in his word — and I can't rest with Wiman's articulation of what faith is, though I find it extremely difficult to simply condemn him for being insufficiently content-oriented.
I'm glad I read it. I'm struggling with what to make of it.
It was something to pick it up after taking Gospels in the fall and Doctrine of Christ in the spring — discussing on the one hand what the modern rejection of the "Quest of the Historical Jesus" means, and why it's important that the Gospels are *history* and not just "Geschichte" — and discussing on the other hand why the Jesus of Modernism isn't the Jesus of the Bible at all...why he isn't God as God has revealed himself...
Wiman calls himself a Christian, but I'm struck throughout that he is a Christian with a sense of Christ but without a Bible — except maybe one chapter from the Gospels on the passion, a rejection of Genesis 3, a rejection of 1 Corinthians 15, as both too childish and primitive. And yet he is wrestling with the gap that I think we must all feel between spiritual experience (which is individual, beautiful) and external religion and love (which is communal, difficult). I think he underestimates the place that the church is for such difficult relationships—not just dogma.
I finished the book last night, and this morning I read Psalms 119 and 139 — the presence of God and delight in his word — and I can't rest with Wiman's articulation of what faith is, though I find it extremely difficult to simply condemn him for being insufficiently content-oriented.
I'm glad I read it. I'm struggling with what to make of it.