A Big-Enough God: A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology [Hardcover]

Sara Maitland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

Writing as a Christian and a feminist, Maitland approaches the subject of a big-enough God that is beyond gender or image--but not beyond choice--to define theology as the art of telling--and listening to--stories about the divine. If God exists, it is as a being which wishes above all to reveal itself in its work and which labors constantly in its relationships with its creations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Maitland, British novelist (Three Times Table, Daughter of Jerusalem, Ancestral Truths, etc.) and Christian feminist (A Map of the New Country), has here produced a beautifully written book that is part paean to God and part explication of faith. Despite its subtitle, it is also a thinking person's search, not just a feminist's. Providing in the evident acts of divine creation buttresses for the radical act of human faith, Maitland's is a God who struggles to make Herself known to and loved by Creation. "Joy is the game, the playing, between God and God's creation," Maitland writes; and the result of her chronicling of that game is, as the subtitle more accurately reports, a joyful theology that, like the God it celebrates, looks on creation and finds it very good. Recommended for all who seek to enrich their spiritual journeys or simply to expand their theological sensibilities.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Maitland, the British author of novels (Daughter of Jerusalem, Holt, 1995) as well as a study of women and Christianity (A Map of the New Country, Routledge, 1994), presents a reworking of a series of four lectures she gave to the Stepney Episcopal Area of the Diocese of London. With careful regard for science, feminism, and Christian orthodoxy, Maitland explores divine creativity, salvation through faith, the meaning of being human, and the contributions to theology of art, both visual and narrative. She asserts the vast difference and yet nearness of God, whom we must be careful not to cut down to human size. Many of her sentences are compressed gems of profound import. Recommended for seminary and large public libraries.?Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 191 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1St Edition edition (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805041834
• ISBN-13: 978-0805041835
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,752,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book of theology I've read in years., October 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: A Big-Enough God: A Feminist's Search for a Joyful Theology (Paperback)

This is one of the best books of theology I have read in a very long time. As a novelist, Sara Maitland is able to write with great flair and insight. Yet she is also well-versed in science and mathematics. This is a marvellous combination of abilities for any theologian to have. Maitland explores the implications of contemporary science and mathematics for our understanding of God and shows how our traditional picture of the divine is too small to cope with the evidence. With a novelist's insight into the chaotic and unpredictable nature of human life, she draws a tantalizing picture of a God big enough to fit the facts of the universe as we know them.

The book is subtitled "a feminist's search for a joyful theology" and this might deter some readers who are wary of the general run of 'feminist' theology. However, a careful reading of that sub-title will reveal an important point is being made: the is not "feminist theology" but the theology of a person who happens to consider herself a feminist. Though she might not claim the title, Maitland's work is feminist theology at its best--never doctrinaire, always critical of ideology, the product of a woman who draws together extraordinary gifts and abilities and applies them to the big questions about God. Readers might also enjoy her novel "Ancestral Truths" in which many of the insights canvassed in "A Big-Enough God" are given play in the setting of a family struggling with its various demons.