God's wrong is most of all : divine capacity / Kenneth Cragg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cragg, Kenneth, 1913-2012.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

God (Christianity)--Omnipotence.

Providence and government of God--Christianity.

Physical Description:

x, 204 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Brighton ; Portland, Or. : Sussex Academic Press, 2006.

Summary:

'We do not do God', politicians may say, explaining that theirs is the art of the possible. Some theologians have been reluctant with that plea, whilst practising the art of the assured. But what might 'God doing God' entail? 'God' is a relational word involved in human mutuality. With God, 'doing' is one with 'being'. There is always a 'God and ...' situation obtaining: 'God and the astronomers', 'God and the tsunami'. Then quickly a 'God but ...' situation emerges and the 'wrong' with it. Shakespearean repartee ('God's wrong is most of all: if thou didst fear to break an oath with him', Richard III , Act IV, Scene 4), and from Macbeth and King Lear, may help us focus further the inherent discrepancies of approach. Moreover, by long oath-taking tradition we invoke God in verifying verity, putting perjury on the line. What then of this universal guarantor of truth who is, by the same token, for ever blameworthy? Hence the theme of 'divine capacity' (a wiser term here than 'omnipotence'). For can there be a deep costliness, a 'wrong-bearing', on the part of God vis-à-vis the human scene, with its cry for compassion, pardon and redemption? Christian faith has always believed there is and traces it in this gift of habitable earth and more surely, in the Cross of Christ. That Cross, it has been said, 'is the avowal and acceptance of divine responsibility'. If, in that human scene, love can turn suffering because of into suffering on behalf of, may it not be so with a love divine? 'Because of' is plainly there in broken faith, angry blasphemy, base injustice, 'the sins of the world'. Perhaps the other is known for real in the drama where all these, being suffered, were representatively turned to our salvation. That they were, this book explores.

Contents:

God

ever blameworthy, ever oath-worthy

Shakespeare's dramatic mind and art

Comprehending divine unity

That primal suspicion

Divine integrity in human covenant

Divine integrity in Christ

Cares and 'bewares' in the trust of doctrine

Versions of vocabulary

The necessary ministries of doubt

Expediencies of politics

An honest will to faith

The wounded name and its kindred servants.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-192) and indexes.

ISBN:

1845191528

1845191404

OCLC:

62322140

Publisher Number:

9781845191405