The Fire and the Rose are One
Ayo, Nicholas
Poetry & theology THE FIRE AND THE ROSE ARE ONE Sebastian Moore Seabury Press, $9.95, 176 pp. Nicholas Aye IN THE VEIN of The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger Sebastian Moore continues his...
...This is the stuff of poetry and theology...
...When one begins with such packed wisdom, one shortchanges the questions, doubts, and despairs along the way to wisdom...
...his name...
...To discover and to name this pre-religious involvement with God" is what his book is all about...
...In the meantime, read anything under his name...
...Moore's analysis of "guilt" is the shortest of the three sections of the book, but I found it most helpful...
...Jesus is Lord broke open the despairing heart and minds of the disciples, because they had lived through the death of religion's God and they were then the raw and living question-if no Kingdom with Jesus, nada...
...No doubt he poses the soteriological questions in an experiential way most likely to lead to the best insights about the paschal mystery...
...Sequels often suffer by comparison, and the present book, although fresh with metaphorical turns of phrase for which Moore is without rival, presents some themes deja vus...
...Thus, Moore says "the religious question today is mystical...
...Jesus is Lord becomes the condensed, but ineffable, answer...
...Moore traces in experience the questing and questioning being that is man...
...Moore would argue that theological statements like 'Jesus is God' are answers...
...Surely this direction for theology is worthwhile...
...The answer Becker gave amounts to-not really, but the cultural dazzle may distract you from the despair of realizing your nothingness...
...Ernst Becker's Denial of Death investigated the question, is man ultimately valuable...
...Nicholas Aye IN THE VEIN of The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger Sebastian Moore continues his insightful and precise meditations on the cross of Jesus and the resurrection faith-Jesus is Lord...
...No doubt there are phrases and whole paragraphs that make your heart sing...
...All metaphors fall short...
...Moore's Christol-ogy will be criticized as laying down a too facile natural desire for the supernatural...
...The Fire and the Rose lies in its shadow...
...Moore knows the mystery is bigger than his renditions...
...It is the all-embracing mystery experienced not as presence but as pressure" - "unhappy unlove," "affective impotence," "original cosmic love affair gone sour," "pure, self-referred self-awareness...
...Creeds and theologies are final-word distillations...
...And yet, sin and guilt are finally unexplainable...
...Human life is the asking of a religious question...
...Karl Rahner's work emphasizes the transcendental properties of common human experience...
...human culture, at least modern culture, is for the most part "the systematic reduction of the child of mystery to the banal world of man's own making...
...Am I valuable in your eyes...
...I have read The Crucified Jesus several times, the first time a bit breathless...
...Christianity, then, answers the question, but Moore's theological approach insists upon the prior, careful, and explicit weighing and being weighted by the question...
...Self-disesteem is the root human evil...
...It is the sense of 'unworth to' that mystery...
...A future synthesis of both books, together with yet more Moore, will be the perduring work...
...Missed is the experience, even though one is given the treasure all unpacked...
...Moreover, his appended "Retractions" of errors in his earlier book leaves you with little need to rush to the attack...
...When "spirit'' becomes recognizable in human affairs, then Christian revelation will answer an actually asked question...
...To read him is exciting and immensely refreshing...
...In fairness, however, his theology is always provisional, in-process...
...they represent a "high Christ-ology," which is true enough but jumps to giving the answer before faith-life, religious-life, even pre-religious life have felt the question lived out in human flesh and bones...
...Moore begins here, with man as this living question put to the infinite mystery...
...John Dunne's theological writings are in a similar vein...
Vol. 108 • December 1981 • No. 23
