Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Kingdom and the Liturgical/Sacramental model, June 22, 2001
In modern times, the Church emulates the world. Saints of all denominations dress, talk, and pray like the world-especially in the house of the Lord. Today's worship is just another production in which we can feel good about ourselves so we can go home and finish making Sunday dinner. Personal testimonies substitute Biblical preaching. Rock concerts replace the Psalms of David. Yes, even cookies and orange juice supplants bread and wine in many congregations. Where is the Church's hope? Does it have any? Or will the Church continue to slide down the slippery slope becoming more and more like world? Peter Leithart's Kingdom and the Power says no, the Church will not become like the world. Rather, the world will become like the Church. In his book, Leithart declares that the power and blessing of God's kingdom are realized in the worship and through the sacraments of the Church. Many details make this book unique in its field. First, the emphasis on the liturgical (or sacramental) model sets this book apart from most books in Protestantism and Reformed camps. Another aspect making the book peerless is the refreshing optimistic outlook. Postmillenialism is refreshing. Moreover, Leithart supports his ideas with weighty documentation. He cites verses for nearly every new-sprung thought. He cites items obvious to some to make it easy on the reader who needs evidence for every point. Furthermore, Leithart writes very concise. He does not bundle the reader down with point after point phrased in several different ways. Interesting analogies and stories keep the reader entertained yet do not add to the labor of reading the book. I found this book to be very important to the increasing pile of books on the table. First, the book is consistently reformed. Leithart makes no apologies about what he believes. Second, the work is simple enough for a common reader yet not dumbed down. Third, the invigorating outlook excites the reader.
|
|
|
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Power and the Glory, August 20, 2006
The English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a man subject to periods of depression. When he would find himself in such a state, he would call his wife, Susannah, and say, "Fetch me down Baxter!" This was in reference to the book The Reformed Pastor by the great Puritan divine Richard Baxter. This book always excited Spurgeon and pulled him up, as it were, by his calling. After reading a few pages of Baxter, Spurgeon would again feel the fire of God reviving him.
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church by Peter J. Leithart is my Baxter. If ever I need the excitement of God to well up in my heart anew, I will call out to my wife, "Fetch me down Leithart!"
With the pen of a poet, Leithart sets the hungry soul on fire. Like a treasure hunter, he guides the reader through room after room of the great palace that is the Kingdom of God, exploring each facet in all its glory and finally arriving at the very center of the Kingdom, the room where all the treasure is kept, the living room where the people of God sit enthroned with Him on the love seat between the cherubim. This room is the Church. This is the center of God's purpose and God's Kingdom.
There are two chapters in particular that I will go back and read through again and again. They are chapters 8 and 9, "The People of the Kingdom," and "On Earth as It Is in Heaven." In these two chapters Leithart, without even mentioning the modernist theologies of liberalism and dispensationalism, destroys them both by expounding what God says about the Church and her mandate in the Kingdom.
Allow me to entice you with just one quote. "The Church, as a collaborator with God, is called to nothing less than world conquest, world construction, in the widest possible sense. She is called to labor by God's power to bring every man, woman, and child into the life and under the dominion of the kingdom; to work to see that every institution in every nation conforms itself to Christ's commandments; to bring every thought into captivity to Christ (2 Cor 10:5). Her mission is to see that every human being brings every created thing into service to God, so that the Adamic commandment in both its royal and priestly dimensions is fulfilled. So, the Church has a mission, and what a mission!" (p. 173-174). How's that for comprehensiveness?
I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to see the vastly panoramic vision of the Kingdom of God anew - or for the first time! But beware, this is one of those books that will compel you into joyful action.
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An accurate assessment of ecclesiology, May 13, 2007
This text can be summed up in a paragraph found on pgs 212 & 213 - "In the Bible, the kingdom of God is mainly concerned with the church, her sacraments and worship, her discipline and teaching, and her ministries of mercy ... the really big kingdom activity - the act that radically changes the world - is the gathering of the people of God on the Lord's day at the heavenly banquet table, when God's people hear His Word, offer humble petitions to the King, and feast on the flesh and blood of Jesus."
The Kingdom and the Power is a healthy antidote to different forms of liberation theology or millenarism, which secularize "the kingdom," which was so central to Jesus' teaching in the Gospels. Leithart sets out to show how the Biblical worldview of authentic power lies in Christian worship by means of the liturgy. He also gives solid grounds for what is popularly referred to as a "high ecclesiology."
The Biblical insights Leithart gives in this text build upon one another organically, and from atop the mountain of a Catholic worldview, I can see it leading the reader right on up to where I stand. I say this because having immersed myself in the Magisterial documents of the Catholic Church (especially those of the Second Vatican Council), the chapters in this book synthesize much of what has been expressed in Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, and Sacrosanctum Concilium.
After reading The Kingdom and the Power, I recommend that the avid reader take up Letter & Spirit, Vol. 2: The Authority of Mystery: The Word of God and the People of God (A Journal of Catholic Biblical Theology)
|
|
|
|
by Peter J. Leithart
by Peter J. Leithart
by Mr. Russell W. Howell
by Peter J. Leithart
