Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostle's Creed. - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 22, 1993 by William C. Graham

All manner of books on every aspect of life

Emphasis turns to caring and helping

The changing seasons call us back to Robert Frost's fresh vision in "Birches": "Earth's the right place for love./I don't know where it's likely to get better." The poet's hopeful's speaks to the reign of God among us. that same spirit animates most of the authors considered here.

Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, by Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University Press, 334 pages, $14.95 paperback), arrived late. It was published in 1991, but Wuthnow's considerations are sisgnificant and timely. I wish I had seen his work sooner.

He wonders how we, who devote billions of hours to volunteer activity in care and compassion, can still be a nation of individualists who pride ourselves on personal freedom and the pursuit of self-interest. He asks how these paradoxical elements might be reconciled.

Through interviews and sociological research he shows how love, given away, influences many people. It's a compelling case for compassion.

Michael Martin, professor of philosophy at Boston University, is sure to outrage Christian readers who can manage his turgid prose. In The Case Against Christianity (Temple University Press, 273 pages, $18.95 paperback), he concludes that the doctrines of the resurrection, the incarnation and salvation itself are "problematic in their right," but also that "there is no known theory that plausibly accounts for them."

Not counting faith, I guess.

I heard recently from one of my high school teachers whose elderly, ill mother had died. She described the loss as "devastating." Few of life's pains can accurately be compared to the loss of a parent.

Cathleen L. Curry provides comfort and direction for those experiencing that sorrow. When Your Parent Dies: A Concise and Practical Source of Help and Advice for Adults Grieving the Death of a Parent (Ave Maria Press, 150 pages, $6.95 paperback) touches not only on prayer and spirituality but on practical adivce for the time of death as well.

This practical aspect might also serve those preparing for the death of a loved one.

Nicholas Lash knows that God's garden, fashioned in the beginning, does not lie behind us, but rather ahead of us in hope. And, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. He puts into theological language the same point Martin Sheen made in a Sept. 4 interview in TV Guide. Asked if he were a communist, Sheen replied, "I'm far worse. I'm a Catholic." Lash and Sheen both have heard the call, command and invitation of the reign of God.

Lash has written Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostle's Creed (University of Notre Dame Press, 136 pages, $21.95 hardbound), an insightful examination of a central statement of the Christian faith. He echoes a Rahnerian sensitivity, seeing Trinity as God's ways of being rather than three persons. Trinity as three persons seems to express a profound religious truth in a way too easily confused with tritheism.

Those who seek a deeper understanding of the creed will find this book substantial but nontechnical, a learning text and prayerful tool.

In The Equipping Pastor: A Systems Approach to Congregational Leadership (An Alban Institute Publication, 196 pages, $15.95 paperback), R. Paul Stevens and Phil Collins assert: "Certain of the revealed, transcendent dignity and nature of the people of God, the equipping pastor can gain from systems theory in its multitudinous forms something more valuable than another firstful of how-tos." Sounds complex to me. Perhaps the complexity is one more reason that those who most need this kind of book are most often slow to make use of it.

Those who seek an introduction to the Bible's last book will be helped to mine its great treasure by Jean-Pierre Prevost in his How to Read the Apocalypse (Crossroad, 118 pages, $15.95 paperback). He is attentive to text, context and symbol. He make John the Divine's revelation accessible to average readers. It would be a good book for private use, group study and even for a college classroom, I think.

Grief: Climb Toward Understanding, by Phyllis Davies (San Luis Obispo, Calif.: Sunnybank Publishers, 271 pages, $12 paperback), may be a helpful resource for those who mourn.

The book is a collection of poems Davies wrote as she grieved for her 13-year-old son's tragic death. Also included is a checklist "of what you can do," and extensive information helpful at the time of death. The author's sensitive struggle may light the way for those who mourn, and for those who prepare for death as well.

I was once told by a well-respected editor that a book on Christian funerals just wouldn't sell. Dead people don't read, and living people don't want to plan for death, he told me. I hope Boston's Fr. Terence P. Curley proves that editor wrong.

His Console One Another: A Guide for Christian Funerals (Sheed & Ward, 100 pages, $8.95) might be a very important and helpful book.

Written in light of the new Order of Christian Funerals, the book is to assist those who seek to manage the pain of separation and loss in the context of the Christian community. It deals with the rituals and phases of grief, and deals also with special circumstances that complicate life and grief in turbulent times.