Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jun 7, 2007 - Religion
What is Christian wisdom for living in the twenty-first century? Where is it to be found? How can it be learnt? In the midst of diverse religions and worldviews and the demands and complexities of our world, David Ford explores a Christian way of uniting love of wisdom with wisdom in love. Core elements are the 'discernment of cries', the love of God for God's sake, interpretation of scripture, and the shaping of desire in faith. Case studies deal with inter-faith wisdom among Jews, Christians and Muslims, universities as centres of wisdom as well as knowledge and know-how and the challenge of learning disabilities. Throughout, there is an attempt to do justice to the premodern, modern and postmodern while grappling with scripture, tradition and the cries of the world today. Ford opens up the rich resources of Christianity in engaging with the issues and urgencies of contemporary life.

From inside the book

Contents

Wisdom cries
14
A wisdom interpretation of scripture
52
with an intrabiblical reading of the Song in intersection with
76
always remaining open to the never exhausted potential of the
82
Job
90
Job and postHolocaust wisdom
121
wisdom
153
tradition and
192
Loving the God of wisdom
225
Aquinas writes in the very first section of his Summa
268
scriptural reasoning
273
knowledge
304
LArche learning
350

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 88 - You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
Page 18 - Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard : the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up...
Page 28 - O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not ! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate.
Page 54 - I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
Page 18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Page 31 - God comes.' 10And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Page 230 - Spirit in the inward man ; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Page 377 - The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Page 375 - I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...
Page 250 - ... the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle.

References to this book

About the author (2007)

David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is author of Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (1999) and co-editor with Ben Quash and Janet Martin Soskice of Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century (2005).

Bibliographic information