A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined

Couverture
Simon and Schuster, 2003 - 146 pages
When renowned novelist and poet Reynolds Price, one of Christianity's most eloquent outlaws, was invited to deliver the annual Peabody Lecture at Harvard University Memorial Church in 2001, he chose to explore a subject that has produced fierce debate -- even wars and crusades -- and is still intensely relevant today: the ethics of Jesus. In two succeeding lectures at the National Cathedral and at Auburn Seminary, he continued the theme, exploring not only the apparently contradictory ethics that Jesus articulates in the Gospels but also constructing scenes that present Jesus with urgent dilemmas he never confronts there. In "A Serious Way of Wondering," Price greatly expands those lectures and imagines Jesus in moments of confrontation with three problems of burning moral concern -- suicide, homosexuality, and the plight of women in male-dominated cultures and faiths.

It was while teaching a university course on the Gospels of Mark and John that Price first explored the ancient idea of expanding upon the Gospel narratives with further encounters between Jesus and troubled persons. Price has previously documented his studies in "Three Gospels," a book in which he not only translated Mark and John from the Greek -- and discussed them extensively -- but also provided a third gospel of his own making. Price based the third gospel closely on the earliest sources but imagined his way into some of their baffling omissions. He continued those explorations when he wrote provocative new scenes for the cover story on Jesus in one of "Time" magazine's millennium issues.

Now, in this new book, Price offers a devoted and profoundly thought-provoking look at a subject that underlies vastareas of world civilization and has occupied the minds of many great thinkers. A sweeping view of the inescapable implications of Jesus' merciful life and all-embracing thought, and of the benefits of enlarging our notions of humane community, "A Serious Way of Wondering" is a significant contribution to Price's penetrating works of religious inquiry.

 

Table des matières

PREFACE
1
A CROWD OF DISSONANT VOICES
26
HIS NEWS
39
THE CORE OF HIS ETHIC AND WAYS TO EMPLOY IT
54
AN OUTLAW CHRISTIAN
110
FURTHER READING
135
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À propos de l'auteur (2003)

Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 - January 20, 2011), born Edward Reynolds Price in Macon, North Carolina, was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. After graduating from Duke University in 1955, he won a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University. Despite being living as a paraplegic after receiving radiation treatment for a spinal tumor since the mid-1980s, he produced approximately one book a year. His first novel, A Long and Happy Life (1962) won the William Faulkner Award. His other works include The Names and Faces of Heroes, Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides, A Whole New Life, and The Good Priest's Son. Kate Vaiden won the National Books Critics Circle Award. His plays have been produced on stage and on PBS's American Playhouse. He died due to complications of a heart attack on January 20, 2011 at the age of 77.

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