A penetrating and pragmatic interpretation of scripture.
An illuminating guide for Christian living based on a compelling reading of the Bible, Principles starts slowly but ends well.
In his intricate book, Adams tries to answer a basic but compelling question for Christians: How can Christians act on their faith? Or, put another way: What must Christians do? The author’s thesis–that intangible biblical notions like belief and trust can and should be translated into actionable practices–is a simple but valuable message for the religious. However, the author sometimes loses the raw power of that message by getting tripped up in his jargon: “Since faith is accepted essentially as independent of our intellect and reasoning, if we could positively define faith, it would hardly be faith.” In doggedly cycling through these and other abstractions, including hope, trust, belief, intellect, reason and principle, in his introduction, Adams risks losing his audience. But it would be a painful loss, because what follows is quite good. After such a hermetic opening, the author launches into a carefully structured, 12-chapter close reading of Hebrews 11 that makes his case. At the core of his argument is a practical expansion of typology, a biblical-critical theory that exploits similarities between similar moments in the Bible, the classic example being the close resemblance between Isaac, nearly sacrificed by his father Abraham, and Jesus, actually sacrificed by his divine Father. Adams implies that by carrying out “practices of faith” Christians can become “types” of the biblical heroes mentioned in Hebrews. The author, educated at Princeton, has a knack for clearly explaining difficult theological principles, and though his prose demands careful attention, such attention delivers real insight. Further, his reading of the Bible–though traditional–is both sensitive and comprehensive. For Adams, Christian scripture is a unified story, and he handles the text like a veteran exegete.
A penetrating and pragmatic interpretation of scripture.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2009
ISBN: 978-1439221518
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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