I've been drawn back into two recent books by our classmates, Arthur Bellinzoni and Fred Borsch, that were on the "required reading" list for our "Science, Religion and Faith" Retreat/Seminar in Woodstock, IL in September, 2006. As I browsed back through them, certain passages brought to mind memories of our ‘preceptorial.' With the thought that these passages might lure some classmates and family members who haven't read them to do so, I have provided a selection from each book below. Those who participated in the discussions stimulated by Arthur and Fred may read them as reminders of that joyful time together of learning, questioning and exchanging ideas.

My niece, Sarah, a young mother who has just completed the Seminar required reading, writes about Fred's book: ". . . it is true to its' name in that it does set one pondering on things. I often catch myself pausing after certain pieces, holding the book, caught in a tangle of back and forth conversation with myself. Very good." Perhaps these books will set you to pondering too. Take them with you on summer vacation.
Jerry
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The Future of Christianity — Can It Survive?
Arthur J. Bellinzoni 2006

 

"I like to believe that Moses got it right almost 3,300 years ago when he told his followers not to make any images of their god. I think the problem is that not only carved images, but also conceptual images, are idolatrous. (p.19)

 

"The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God. (p. 47)Martin Buber

 

"Christians can and must understand more clearly how to distinguish in the Bible that which is truly timeless from that which was simply timely. The exercise is difficult, and sometimes painful, but it is essential to the future of Christianity. (p. 20)

 

"Should we continue to put our religion in one pocket and our science in another and continue to lead our personal lives as intellectual schizophrenics? I trust not! (p. 22)

 

"I do not intend to imply that everything that Christians believe must be rational and scientific; I do, however, mean that Christianity must dispose of everything that is illogical, unreasonable, irrational, groundless, and absurd. We must be prepared to recognize the legendary and mythological elements in Christianity for what they are and be willing to reinterpret them for future generations. (p. 180)

 

"In many mainstream Christian denominations members of the clergy already know and agree with much of what I have written in these pages, but they lack the courage to share their doubt and uncertainty with their congregations and continue, instead, to preach little more than that Old Time Religion, repackaged from one year to the next. (p. 181)

 

"I would contend that religion is not science minus; it is rather poetry plus!" (p. 159)
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The Spirit Searches Everything – Keeping Life's Questions
Frederick Borsch, 2005

 

"How is it that we not only think but also think about ourselves thinking and are aware of ourselves and the world about us? Is this awareness alone in the universe? Or is it in some way related to a quality fundamental to creation? Why is there not nothing? What is the universe made of? How does it run itself? Could there be a Spirit of life that cares for us? How might we experience this? Why is there so much evil, wrong, and suffering in the world?

 

"Are we for anything? Can our lives be said to have meaning? What is a good life? How can we best live together? Why am I so often restless and unsatisfied? What is it that I long for? What happens to us at death? (p. 1)

 

"The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:10-11) (p. 43)

 

"Randomness continues to produce novelty. And gesturing within the dance seems to be some ratchet or uptick favoring complexity in an evolutionary current that can be brutal as well as beautiful, terrifying, tragic, and awesome. (p. 31)

 

"The evolutionary process is dynamic and wondrous in the complexity, fecundity, and diversity of its results. It is, as it were, always experimenting, trying new combinations of genes and compounds, often using the seemingly odd and abnormal to see what might work next. Within it may be inbuilt a bias and uptick toward more complexity – perhaps even to more consciousness and awareness. (p. 67)

 

"I have imagined God growing with the universe – still, in some sense, in the process of becoming fully God ..................... There cannot be good without evil. There cannot be love without suffering. (p. 72)

 

"It is not the religious act that makes the Christian," held Bonhoeffer, "but the participation in the suffering of God in the world." (p. 83)

 

"It has been suggested that the "big bang," from which it is believed came at once space, time, and matter, and then all creation, happened from some fluctuation in nothingness. . . . . But, again, nothing-ness, once named, has become a kind of thing – an empty something of potentiality, perhaps in some way related to the dark energy that some now believe to be a vital part of the missing something of the universe. (p. 35)

 

"Simone Weil, a believing, attentive quester who never felt called to join the Church, noted all the waiting in the Bible. She saw the virtue in persevering longing – .even in affliction. It was a way of faithfully keeping the questions. ................ Prayerfulness may be thought of as hope-filled attention to the compassion and goodness of God. Attentive waiting is a form of devotion. (p. 115

 

"A faith that responds, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ... you are with me" trusts that our awareness continues to be valued in God's. God then, as the saying goes, isn't finished with us yet. God is not finished with all of God's hope. Indeed, by this hope we may only have begun to be the people the Spirit of God wishes us to be. But in the context of the divine Awareness of all life, we may believe that we have begun, and, in this Spirit, find a sense of questing adventure for now and all that is to be. (p. 137)"