Jesus the Liberator of Desire:

...The philosophical quest for wisdom and the scientific search for truth are fully appreciated in his work as a form of the liberation of the mind...

...Generation after generation, persons who are inadequately selved mistakenly seek what they need in material things, or in power over others...

...Sin "deadens the nerve of creaturehood...

...For Moore, desire is "the allure of God," the heart of the mystery instigated by the Holy Spirit who solicits us to become more ourselves as we become more one with God...

...The disciples were first awakened, but then had their hopes annihilated by the crucifixion...

...How refreshing not to be bored, or tempted to think of theology as narrow and dull...

...Yet the richness emerging from so many resources-so fully integrated-is essential to the genius and charm of Moore's work...

...Most American readers will need more help than he supplies with his offhand references to Eliot, Einstein, Eckhart, Blake, Keats, Habermas, Iris Murdoch, and the plethora of theologians, scripture scholDAVID TOOLAN, S.J., is an associate editor of America magazine in New York...

...Sebastian Moore achieves his own remarkable synthesis of orthodox theology and the best of modern thought...

...When the finite is taken up into the infinite life of God, even bodily death loses its power...

...He is a Christian humanist who gets everything into a right balance, even producing a fine chapter on sex and desire-an acid test for a modern Catholic theologian...

...Sidney Callahan Sebastian Moore, an English theologian teaching at Boston College, produces theological and spiritual reflection as though writing an epic saga...

...The doctrine of original sin is interpreted by Moore as an accurate psychological description of the human predisposition to find one's deepest desires threatening, and to prefer self-security and inertia...

...He shines a new light on the rich tapestry of received orthodoxy, and indeed, a more "wildly beautiful" pattern appears.iful" pattern appears...

...People emerge into adulthood with needy egos or damaged selves, because their parents were incapable of providing adequate nurture and confirmation-since they themselves didn't get enough...

...Moore's major insight here is that the transforming, intimate personal experience of the disciples with Jesus before and after the Resurrection is the core of God's self-disclosure in history...

...Our sins bring suffering also-in their deformation of self...

...I am an enthusiast who finds Moore's work to be intellectually stimulating, solid, wise, and, best of all, spiritually energizing...

...And yes, perhaps he could use an editor to help him write in a more*accessible manner...

...Liberated lives which are dying to falseness can draw forth violence from other people...

...Along with our joy and the awakening of our deepest dreams, suffering too is inevitable...

...Moore relates the human desire to know to the desire to love and be loved...

...It is the avoidance of our freedom...

...But Moore's idea of transcendence and human transformation is not the cheap grace offered by New Age spiritualities...

...As for criticism, I can only suggest that Moore might bone up on the new findings of cognitive psychology, which could further strengthen his basic arguments on consciousness and the mind...

...We fear becoming like Jesus because when we live like him in true person-to-person solidarity with others, a cross may await us as well...

...What do we want and why do we want it...

...through Jesus our finite humanity is taken up into the infinite life of God...

...SIDNEY CALLAHAN is associate professor of psychology at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, and the author of With All My Heart and Mind (Crossroad, 1988...

...We too will have to suffer if we would be transformed through him...

...Other religious writers palaver about psychology, the self, interpersonal relationships, spiritual growth, and transcendence, but Moore delivers the goods...

...Suffering comes from sin but also from the painful process of breaking open and becoming changed...

...True desire is threatening because to begin to want something new, to become more and more ourselves, we will have to change...

...We must die to sin after the painful awakenings to the suffering we have caused others...

...Jesus awakens our deepest desires and liberates them fully...

...We know this because Jesus the sinless one also suffered and shrank from his passion and cross...

...In this work Moore takes up the theme of human desire and the "generic wonder questions": Why is there anything at all...

...Here at last is a theologian who realizes the primary importance of psychological self-awareness and dynamic human consciousness...

...There is a story line and a series of reasoned arguments, but his chapters are also filled with aphorisms, parables, elliptical references, apt quotes, and lyrical outbursts of original verse composed to underscore important points in his narrative...

...ROBERT M. HAYES, a New York attorney, is a founder of the National Coalition for the Homeless...

...JOHN A. COLEMAN, S.J., is professor of religion and society at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California...

...Readers may either be enthralled by this exuberant original approach or find it too exotic and somewhat baffling...

...They were catapulted by their personal experience into a new liberated existence...

...After this dying, their subsequent experience of the risen Christ transformed them...

...He seems to understand the minds and hearts of mystics, scholars, and ordinary people...

...Jesus did for his first disciples what he does for us: he brings our deepest desires out of hiding and makes it possible to overcome the inertia and sin which stu'nt and deform our lives...

...But Jesus and the Holy Spirit draw us onward into the desire to know, the desire to be more, the desire to want to want more...

...ars, and psychologists he mentions...