A thought-provoking, but imperfect call to a revolution in Christian thinking.
A debut book offers a reinterpretation of Christian theology.
In an appraisal of virtually the entirety of Christian thinking, Brathwaite argues that the church has spent centuries misleading the faithful into a belief in false and distorted teachings. Chief among these is the existence of hell. The author argues that Scripture clearly teaches that God’s love and mercy cancel out any possibility that souls might be cast into an eternity of suffering in payment for their sins. He builds upon this assertion by also arguing that souls are not formed at conception or birth, but that all souls have existed since the start of creation. This fact, then, would lead to a reevaluation of the soul’s fate after it has lived in a human body. Eventually, Brathwaite comes to his ultimate thesis, that the soul lives more than one life. Rather than label this as reincarnation, he calls it regeneration. Brathwaite declares throughout this work that the established Christian church has knowingly ignored obvious Scriptures on regeneration to control believers with the promise of heaven or hell, earned through a single life. Various discussions stem from the regeneration argument. For instance, the author theorizes that the priest Melchizedek was an early manifestation of Jesus, and that John the Baptist was indeed Elijah the Prophet. Brathwaite also asks how the spirit of sin is supposed to have spread through every generation of the human race, whereas individual spirits are supposedly confined to single lives. Brathwaite’s arguments have the potential to be revolutionary in nature; but his rhetoric toward the established faith is so caustic that it detracts from the strength of his arguments. Speaking throughout of an “impostor God” and theology taught by “bearers of false witness” who act as “pallbearers” for the faith, Braithwaite is strangely harsh toward the basic thinking of the global church, even if he feels it has always been in error. A lack of academic rigor (for instance, little if any use of original Greek and Hebrew) also handicaps this otherwise promising work.
A thought-provoking, but imperfect call to a revolution in Christian thinking.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5355-4995-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2016
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
