Philosophy & Religion
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by James Romm (Get the Book)
Was Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger an exemplar of Stoic virtue who, pulled into politics in the service of Emperor Nero, did his best to modulate the young despot's cruelty? Or was he a shrewd manipulator whose ethical treatises were just a cynical attempt to restore a reputation sullied by his complicity in Nero's cruel and decadent court? Tacitus, who wrote a lot about Seneca, seems to have had trouble making up his mind. Romm suggests that we might bring together these conflicting portraits by understanding Seneca as a serious thinker who suffered from passivity and obsequiousness, and had the misfortune to live at a time when intellectual activity had become particularly dangerous. Seneca's elegant humanistic vision (which would influence, among other things, Roman Catholic church doctrine), therefore, was not fraudulent, but aspirational, and somewhat tragic: ideals articulated by a flawed man who was all too aware of his inability to live up to them. Vividly describing the intensity of political life in the Nero years, and paying particular attention to the Roman fascination with suicide, Romm's narrative is gripping, erudite, and occasionally quite grim. --Booklist
by J. Krishnamurti (Get the Book)
Krishnamurti shows how people can free themselves radically and immediately from the tyranny of the expected, no matter what their age--opening the door to transforming society and their relationships. J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a renowned spiritual teacher whose lectures and writings have inspired thousands. His works include On Mind and Thought, On Nature and the Environment, On Relationship, On Living and Dying, On Love and Loneliness, On Fear, and On Freedom. (Publisher)
by Andy Crouch (Get the Book)
The executive editor of the magazine Christianity Today follows his groundbreaking book, Culture Making, with a study on the idea of power and how it drives our relationships and lives. If our understanding of the term "power" is shaped by the world's definition, which often carries a negative connotation, we will fail to recognize that it was intended to be a gift from God to help us make something of the world. Broken into four parts focusing on biblical stories about the creation of power and where it will lead, the book also offers personal experiences and examples from modern culture to show that power, as we think of it today, isn't how it originally was intended by its divine designer. How are power and idolatry related? What can we learn from powerful people in our business culture like Steve Jobs? How can a Christian in power be a good steward and use it to help solve injustice in the world? These are just a few of the questions that readers will ponder from Crouch's deeply layered study. The wide-ranging allusions and references from the Cornell and BU grad who served as a campus minister at Harvard might lose readers who are less well-read. --Publishers Weekly
by Marcus J. Borg (Get the Book)
A participant in the Jesus Seminar, the group of biblical scholars whose studies to ascertain what Jesus really said eventuated in The Five Gospels [BKL Ja 1 94], Borg is further concerned with how Jesus' original message may remain at "the heart of contemporary faith." In the six chapters of this book, he first presents his own journey of faith from childhood's trusting belief through young adult skepticism to mature apprehension that a "Christian is one who lives out his or her relationship to God within the framework of the Christian tradition." That tradition, subsequent chapters argue, arises out of four aspects of the "pre-Easter Jesus": Jesus as a "spirit person" (i.e., one who had an "experiential awareness of the reality of God"), a teacher of wisdom, a social prophet, and a movement founder. Further, the tradition calls upon Christians to follow Jesus "from life under the lordship of culture to the life of companionship with God" and from belief not in fixed doctrines but in giving one's heart to the "living Lord, the side of God turned toward us." First-class argumentation for experiential as opposed to institutional Christianity. --Booklist
