Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine) [Paperback]

David F. Ford (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521698383 | ISBN-13: 978-0521698382 | Publication Date: June 18, 2007

What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of diverse religions and worldviews and the demands and complexities of our world, David Ford explores a Christian way of uniting love of wisdom with wisdom in love. Core elements are the 'discernment of cries', the love of God for God's sake, interpretation of scripture, and the shaping of desire in faith. Case studies deal with inter-faith wisdom among Jews, Christians and Muslims, universities as centres of wisdom as well as knowledge and know-how and the challenge of learning disabilities. Throughout, there is an attempt to do justice to the premodern, modern and postmodern while grappling with scripture, tradition and the cries of the world today. Ford opens up the rich resources of Christianity in engaging with the issues and urgencies of contemporary life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Recommended by the editors of The Christian Century... The wisdom tradition in theology has made a comeback. Ford devotes a chapter each to the scriptures, Jesus, the Spirit and God, and two chapters on Job and post-Holocaust wisdom. The book ends with studies of three contemporary issues: interfaith relationships, interdisciplinary study in the university and the place of the disabled-the latter drawing on the work of Jean Vanier and the L'Arche communities. Christian Wisdom is delightful to read, resplendent with wisdom ancient and new.

Book Description

What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of the demands and complexities of contemporary life, David Ford explores a Christian way of desire, wisdom and love.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 428 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521698383
• ISBN-13: 978-0521698382
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,041,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring analysis of Christian wisdom in daily living, December 1, 2010

By 

Eric Magnusson (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine) (Hardcover)

This well-written book will be a great spiritual blessing to Christians all over the world. David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, England, explores a subject of very high importance, yet neglected in our times: the relationship between Christian wisdom and Christian love in everyday life.

The close relationship between wisdom and love has been a recurrent theme in the discussion of Christian wisdom. Professor Ford points out that this relationship could most comprehensively be called a theology of the love of wisdom and of the wisdom of love. But what is the distinctive content of Christian wisdom? This is a difficult question that was considered very important in the Old Testament times and in the Middle Ages but has been sorely neglected over the past few centuries. Professor Ford explores, in a readable way, the fascinating links between Scriptural passages, Christology, and human experience (ranging from the fear of God and spiritual desire for God to Christian responses to the Holocaust).

His words in the concluding chapter glorify God and his love: "The richest wisdom has been found in God's love of creation for its own sake and a responsive human love of God for God's sake and of other people for their own sake. Wise living before this God involves a faith that above all acknowledges being desired and loved by God, like Jesus at his baptism, and that in response desires and loves God."

On this basis, Professor Ford constructs a practical guideline how to read the Bible wisely: ""The wisdom interpretation of scripture that informs this faith has its encompassing maxim: `Let us reread in love!' This takes scripture's own core commandment of loving God and neighbour (which includes loving with all one's mind) as the motive, criterion and goal of wise reading."Then he draws the conclusion for the Church: "The church can be understood as a school of desire and wisdom, its tradition too needing to be continually reread in love. The core dynamic of Christian wisdom is learning to live together in the spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of love for a God who is praised, thanked and blessed `for his name's sake'."

But Professor Ford's exploration goes even farther, into three wider fields: (1) applying the Christian wisdom of love and the love of wisdom to interfaith dialogue with Jews and Muslims, (2) applying Christian wisdom in an interdisciplinary way in higher education, and (3) applying Christian wisdom to our interpersonal relations.

To put it differently, Professor Ford argues that Christian wisdom is to read the Bible in love for God and the neighbor as "learning to live in the Spirit," as the title of one of his chapters says. In our daily life as Christians, we are often at loss how to view our own afflictions in a biblically wise way or how to view and respond to human tragedies in the world. This book should be a help in such difficult situations. A deep analysis of the Book of Job allows Professor Ford to draw important conclusions about Christian wisdom in responding to personal affliction and to big human disasters like the Holocaust.

The author writes in his Introduction that his intention as a Christian thinker was to make an attempt to search out a wisdom for living in the twenty-first century, exploring key elements of Christian wisdom and its relevance to contemporary living. In his very ambitious project to analyze this very important but neglected subject, he has succeeded in an admirable way