Fictional Religion: Keeping The New Testament New

by Jamie Spencer

Overview

The books of the New Testament are not the infallible words of God. The texts were in a state of flux during the faith s early centuries. We can and should build on that flexible tradition. These are the claims by which this book is guided. In Fictional Religion, Jamie Spencer challenges readers to take a more rational, more scholarly, and a more historical-critical approach to the New Testament. He examines twelve writers who, he posits, allow us to see how thoughtful artists over the last 600 years have taken the Christian doctrine they inherited, and applied both its formal tenets and its spirit to the intellectual needs, social contexts and cultural biases of their age. Throughout the Christian era, playwrights, poets and story writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare and C. S. Lewis have performed the same services for New Testament doctrine that Hebrew Bible prophets and story-tellers provided for Jewish law as laid down in the Pentateuch. Although our creative artists are not allowed official entry into Holy Writ, they shape Christian doctrine and insights in new ways to meet new human conditions. They keep the New Testament new.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013116825
Publisher:	Polebridge Press
Publication date:	07/25/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	669 KB

About the Author

Jamie Spencer is a Professor of English at St. Louis Community College, where he teaches courses in both composition and literature, and a Capstone course on Film. He has written book and music reviews for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and is currently a member of the Princetoniana Committee of Princeton University and the volunteer Guild of Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He also serves on the College Board's SAT Critical Reading and as a long-time reader of the Board's Advanced Placement English Literature Examination. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, a history teacher; he appreciates dogs and adores cats.

Editorial Reviews

A marvelous mash up of sacred and secular texts. The conversation ranges from raucous to sublime, from hilarious to heady. After reading this book, you won t think of God, humans, or books in the same way again.

Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament, Eden Theological Seminary - Deborah Krause

A thoughtful, intentionally provocative and helpful work which will challenge experienced theologians and prove equally engaging to a wider audience.

Rector, Saint Peter s Episcopal Church, Ladue, St. Louis, Missouri - The Reverend James H. Purdy

Surprising and pleasing. Any open-minded reader of this irenic book is likely to find both instruction and delight. As for the closed-minded ones, there s just the outside chance that it might pry open an eyelid.

Louis W. Fairchild Professor of English and Comparative Literature emeritus at Princeton University - John V. Fleming