Customer Reviews

Why Go to Church?: The Drama of the Eucharist

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I read this book with great interest. It is a super book that brings out clearly the meaning of the parts of the communion service. It is a perfect study book for Lent- you will understand Easter far more deeply after reading it.

I did not find it easy reading, but that may mean I was assimilating new material as I was reading. It is an easy paced book, and is well suited to being read in small portions over...well 40 days would be about right. I ended up with an impression that the author would be very likeable, and that I would enjoy hearing him preach. I learned a lot from reading him.

I can recommend this book to Christians who want to deepen their understanding of the communion service, and our community.

I find this book very important in that it deals with a delicate matter in a profound and practical way.

Radcliffe is an excellent writer, but his book is tarnished by some glaring theological errors, the most serious of which is that Christ's death made satisfaction, not to God, but to our own sinful bloodthirstiness as human beings (pg 120-122). This is so ludicrous that it goes even beyond the past errors of Irenaeus and Origen, who posited that Christ's death paid a ransom owed to Satan himself. Doctrine naturally develops and solidifies over time, and the magisterium of the Church recognized this as error and rejected this aspect of atonement theology about a thousand years ago. It's a shame Radcliffe's theology is stuck in the middle ages.