A schema of Christian doctrine, bristling with biblical knowledge yet grounded in the real world.
A treatise on the nature of Christian belief.
Morris, in his nonfiction debut, initially strikes a binary tone: The whole spiritual life of mankind boils down to two features—a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. But, in the author’s thoughtful, intensely comprehensive readings of the Old Testament and New Testament, this somewhat stark opening broadens almost immediately into a much wider investigation of the scriptural warrants for faith. Morris’ text isn’t for the lighthearted: This is dense theologizing along the lines of St. Augustine’s monumental Civitas Dei. Pagelong paragraphs aren’t uncommon, and the author’s rhetorical style sometimes needlessly encumbers sentences with a shaggy moss of clauses that can obscure the points at play. Morris reinforces nearly every observation he makes with at least one textual citation; indeed, text is central not only as document, but as dogma: “[T]he Christian’s life,” he writes, “is an affirmation of the struggle fashioned by the word of God.” That struggle recurs throughout Morris’ book, as do the concentrations on the practical, pragmatic dimensions of working faith. But this isn’t as much of an airy, theoretical dissertation as it might first appear. Early on, Morris assures his readers that the Holy Spirit grants every true believer “the spiritual authority of self-assurance,” and it’s through that personal authority that his Christian audience (needless to say, that is the book’s sole imaginable readership) is urged to act. The book’s strongest chapter, “The True Gospel,” stresses that “forgiveness is a practical program,” applying equally man’s forgiveness of his fellow man and God’s forgiveness of his creations. At times, the excess verbiage can bleed into the incomprehensible—e.g., “The article of implementation is instrumental in its invocation of logic that alludes the human level of thought that is manifested into action.” Even so, this is a powerful, sweeping interpretation of Christian faith.
A schema of Christian doctrine, bristling with biblical knowledge yet grounded in the real world.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480239784
Page Count: 436
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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