Customer Reviews

And Now I See . . .: A Theology of Transformation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked this book up knowing nothing about its content. As a reward, I received the most readable, sensible and well-supported view of Christianity I have ever read. This is not a religious book in the sense that it does not about Church or religions. (In fact, the author, Catholic Priest, seems to recognize that churchs and religions can be of the most difficult obstacles to understanding Christ.) Rather it is a book that focus on a multi-level interpretation of scripture and its call to transform our view of ourselves and our place in creation. This is done in part by reference to literary works be Dante, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and others in a successful effort to show a common search for the real Christ in us and in our midst. This book about transformation can transform the way you view the Bible and your place in and beyond the world. I set it aside to reread in two weeks and will probably do so several times.

As an aside, Barron is very similar to Richard Rohr in many of his views. (He quotes Fr. Rohr's works at least once.) If you find Fr. Rohr interesting, Barron, intentionally or not, follows and expands many of his themes.

Barron draws on religious writings ranging from the Old and New Testament,Augustine, Thomas Aquinas (the subject of one of his previous books),Martin Luther and Dante to more contemporary writers like Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Paul Tillich, Hans Kung and Thomas Merton to position the story and meaning of Jesus' life in a profound new way. This book gave me, a lifetime seeker, powerful new insights into why Jesus really is the way, the truth, and the light. The writing style is intelligent, brilliant, yet wholly readable. You'll want to savor and underline many of the thoughts and observations. For example, the succinct interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is reason enough to get and read this book. Barron, a priest who is a theology professor at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois, provides us with a fresh way of viewing the Trinity which gives new meaning to the divine love it represents and what the Trinity says about how we can make love, and thereby personal fulfillment and happiness, integral aspects of our lives. If your looking for a book that will invigorate your faith and spiritual life, then get and treasure this book. It's a reference manual that you'll go back to often for encouragement and counsel. You'll keep it handy alongside books by Richard Rohr, Anthony DeMello and Thomas Keating. If anything its brilliance, scholarship, and insights exceed any of these authors. This book may well be for you the next best thing to having your own spiritual director. It could be the basis of a turning around, a metanoia, that will change your life!

Robert Barron's aptly titled book, "And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation" is a work that will potentially change your life, if only you invest the effort in its very readable, yet "dense" pages. They are to be pondered and incorporated into your heart. He synthesizes saints and sages, poets and writers, philosophers and theologians into a remarkable "symphony of voices" -- each enriching the others -- with Jesus Christ as the Conductor. The result is a mind- and heart-opening work, the likes of which you are unlikely to find anywhere else. This is not a book to be read or taken lightly, although a likely outcome is that your own heart will become lighter; and with time and grace, it will soar like a hawk. Our salvation is Fr. Barron's only interest. Chapter 13, "Jesus the Revealer of the True God: Christmas, Chalcedon, and the Cross", is itself worth the price of the book, even more. And while Fr. Barron has been extended deserved accolades (as on the front cover we see that he has entered the front ranks of contemporary American Catholic theologians), he writes for us -- the faithful. I cannot recommend this work highly enough. If it was possible, I would give it a sixth star.

Barron's writing is beautiful, almost at times poetic. His use of well known fiction to explain theology is unique.

This was the first book in theology that I read as a freshman as part of a small one-credit class led by Fr. David Burrell, and it helped me to fall in love with the discipline. Wonderful book.

In the book under review the author writes that, "The doctrine and official teachings of the church are nothing but distillations of basic spiritual experience, highly concentrated and focused expressions of the dynamics of soul-doctoring as they have been felt and practiced in the life of the believing community" (p 55).

The Catechism, contra Barron, states, "The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these" (Section 88).

This makes it clear, for all the other "good" that might be said, that Fr. Barron is, in strictest sense of the term, a modernist as condemned by Pius X in his "On Modernism". Or to quote a reformed theologian from the 19th century, Herman Bavinck, "Thus, theology after Kant denies dogmas rooted in the science of God because of the modern dogma that God is unknowable. Dogmas rooted in morality or religious experience are then substituted in their place. However, from the viewpoint of Christian orthodoxy, dogmatics is the knowledge that God has revealed in his Word (and Tradition, we would add) to his Church concerning himself and all creatures as they stand in relation to him"; which is another way of exposing the suppressed premise underlying Fr. Barron's above quote.

Becuase of this I would advise "read with caution."

I was very disappointed with Robert Barron's book. I did NOT "see" much of what he's driving at, except when he made analogies with stories, such as from the life of Thomas Merton in Chapter 4 or from a Flannery O'Connor story in Chapter 11. I thought the book would be something more understandable, along the lines of something by Henri Nouwen or Richard Roher.