archives

Church is effective in its work when it works to persuade and reconcile, as Jesus did. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the grandfatherly Pope John XXIII instructed the gathered fathers to think of mercy as the right remedy to cultural misdirection rather than severity. (Maureen Sullivan, Review of book, “VATICAN II: Did Anything Happen?”, AMERICA, March 3, 2008, pg 26)

Grandfatherly Pope Benedict XVI now seems determined to advance Vatican II by his proactive affirmation of the necessary and continuing work of correlating Faith and Reason, as did Pope John Paul II in his “Fides et Ratio”. The ongoing correlation of Faith and Reason in social/ personal living accomplishes in fact the updating “aggiornamento” theme of the Second Vatican Council.

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A God worthy of belief
Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, distinguished professor of theology at Fordham Universtiy, talks with Tom fox about her new book, Quest for the Living God Mapping the Frontiers in the Theology of God. Of this book, Roberto S. Goizueta, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College, wrote, "Karl Rahner had an abiding concern that much of Christian theology presented God ‘unworthy of belief.' Here Johnson has given us a God truly worthy of our belief, fidelity, and love. Every word breathes with the author's own deep love of God, the church, and the world."

NCR Book Club

Interview by TOM FOX

QUEST FOR THE LIVING GOD: MAPPING THE FRONTIERS IN THE THEOLOGY OF GOD by Sr. Elizabeth Johnson Continuum, 256 pages, $24.95

Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, distinguished professor of theology at Fordham University, talks with Tom fox about her new book, Quest for the Living God Mapping the Frontiers in the Theology of God. Of this book, Roberto S. Goizueta, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College, wrote, "Karl Rahner had an abiding concern that much of Christian theology presented God ‘unworthy of belief.’ Here Johnson has given us a God truly worthy of our belief, fidelity, and love. Every word breathes with the author's own deep love of God, the church, and the world.”

Excerpts from the Fox’s interview with Johnson follow. You can listen to the full interview or read a transcript here: A God worthy of our belief.

Tom Fox: Allow me to start where many people probably start when they talk to you about your book, and that is the bad press that God has been getting recently, and even you allude to it early on in your book. Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion is giving God a bad time. Is this deservedly so, given his arguments?

Elizabeth Johnson: To talk about Dawkins, and also Hitchens, Harris, the others that are writing those kinds of books, simply gets me very frustrated because the God that they are denying existence to is not the God that most Christians even believe in. …