Some notable quotes so far:
Furthermore, the covenant itself is stable, though hardly static; historical, though not historicist. The vertical "intrusions" keep redemptive history from being "one damned thing after another," while the horizontal stride keeps eschatology from being subsumed into some ahistorical event. The "new thing" is a true novum, yet not "wholly other." The new creation is both new and creation--that is, both that which transcends creation and that which renews and therefore has some considerable continuity with it.
Peter Berger as quoted by Horton says,
"In a culture where religion is functional both socially and psychologically, Chrsitian preaching itself ought to call men to a confrontation with the God who stands against the needs of society and against the aspirations of the human heart." We need to recover that sense so pervasive in other periods; namely, that even Christians do not know what they really need or even want--and that attending to their immediate felt needs may muffle the only proclmation that can a ctually satisfy real needs. Berger judges that "the more general personal consequence of the abandonment of theological criteria for the Christian life is the cult of experience...Emotional pragmatism now takes the place of the noest confrontation with the Christian message.
2 comments:
Are all of his books this thick? I had a hard time getting my mind around these.
Yeah...the whole book is written in this fashion. It's definitely (at points) too purple-prosey for my taste. It's the most difficult book I've picked up in the past two years.
That being said, there are several golden nuggets in each chapter and I have yet to get into the real "meat" of the book. His command of philosophy, theology and the history of both disciplines is unbelievable. Having context for the former quotations would surely make them easier to understand.
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