Alive in God: A Christian Imagination

by Timothy Radcliffe

Overview

Timothy Radcliffe considers the strength of the Christian imagination in its ability inspire others.

How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully. God says: "I put before you life and death: choose life."

Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life—novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on—can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today's secularism but its banality.

We accompany the disciples as they struggle to understand this strange man who heals, casts out demons and offers endless forgiveness. In the face of death, he teaches them what it means to be alive in God. Then he embraces all that afflicts and crushes humanity. Finally, Radcliffe explores what it means for us to be alive spiritually, physically, sacramentally, justly and prayerfully. The result is a compelling new understanding of the words of Jesus: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472970206
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Timothy Radcliffe is a former Master of the Dominican Order in Rome. Educated at Downside and St John's College, Oxford, he then joined the Dominican Order in 1968. He has written a string of bestselling books for Bloomsbury Continuum over the past 15 years—most notably What's The Point of Being a Christian; Why Go to Church? and I Call You Friends. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, a city in which he now lives with his Community.

Table of Contents

Imagination

1 Wingless and Three-Legged Chickens 3

2 Choose Life 17

Journeying

3 The Transcendent Adventure 35

4 A God for Our Aches and Pains 60

5 Initial Skirmishes 78

6 Growing Up 93

7 Sin and Forgiveness 119

Teaching

8 Teaching: The Dogmatic Imagination 141

9 Impossible Friendships 159

10 The Non-Violent Imagination 180

11 At Home 202

12 The Ecology of Faith 222

13 Affliction 241

The Risen Life

Introduction 259

14 The Spiritual Life: Fresh Air 262

15 The Bodily Life: Hallowing the Senses 280

16 The Sacramental versus the Technocratic Imagination 301

17 The Liturgical Imagination: Gods Providence 328

18 The Life of Prayer: The Poetry of Hope 354

Conclusion 378

Notes 383

Acknowledgements 409

Bibliography 411