Customer Reviews

A remarkable book - By: The Revd Dr Shepherd, 19 Feb 2008
The volume is one of the SCM `Core Text' series, aimed at 2nd & 3rd year undergraduates, & as such would not be a particularly easy read for any without some theological training. Nevertheless, its qualities mean that anyone who is a Christian would benefit from having a go and, having done so, will be richly rewarded by the experience. While Higton deals with some of the most obvious traditional topics: the Trinity, Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, Creation, Death, Suffering etc., he does soin a way that is soakedin Christian devotion & driven by the imperative not simply to `make sense' of (what we mean by) `God', but particularly what all that means for living a Christian life. So `theological proficiency' lies not particularlyin the ability to write an essay on the Chalcedonian Definition butin becoming "critically attentive to the world.......to start taking critical notice of the ideas & patterns of thought that make the world go round....to learn what happens when you start examining & questioning all those ways of making sensein the light of the gospel, asking what difference might be made to those ways of making sense by the belief that God has addressed the worldin Jesus Christ". Another appealing feature is the intellectual humility of the author. Many books on Christian Doctrine manage to give the impression that the writer has had some kind of privileged `viewing' of the Godhead; that they are explaining to us - rather like being guided around a factory - how this bit works, how that bit is related to the other bit, & so on. Higton is not that kind of guide. So, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity is not primarily about understanding God at an intellectual level; it requires a more existential understanding: "the primary reality of Trinitarian Christianity is not the words or images that Christians manage to deployin order to describe God, but the waysin which their whole lives are caught up...into God's own life of love & justice.....[and he concludes] knowing God is more like joining a party than it is like facing an individual". Making the traditional, rather technical distinctions between an `economic' & `immanent' reading of the Trinity, he reminds us that while God certainly makes his Trinitarian `Godself' known to us, we should not be so bold as to imagine that we therefore know everything there is to know about that `Godself': "the doctrine of the Trinity declares that this graspable, knowable, effable set of historical realities is the ineffable God's way of making Godself known. This is the opening up to us....of the ineffable life of God - a life that is something like a drama, something like a dance, something like a community." Higton lecturesin Theology at the University of Exeter & he is clearly a born teacher. His ability to take some complex idea & then explain it using stories & analogies is also remarkable. Each chapter begins by reminding us of the ground we have already covered, & its relevance to the next part of the journey. He then, using bullet-points, tells us what he is going to doin this chapter, following that with some suggestions (many setting `homework' to be done on the internet) as to how we might prepare ourselves for the journey ahead. He then suggests some further reading for those who are particularly interestedin taking some diversionary route or two and, for those who are `proper' students, there are various explanatory boxes & exercises sprinkled liberally through the text. Every now & then we re-cap key points. Each chapter ends with a section for those who, having managed to get that far, wish to go further.