Thursday, May 15, 2008

Quoting Theology: Caputo on Hope

"If at the end of our lives we find that all our hopes have been sensible and moderate and measured by the horizon of the future present, if we have never been astir with the impossible, then we shall also find that on the whole life has passed us by. If safe is what you want, forget religion and find yourself a conservative investment counselor. The religious sense of life has to do with exposing oneself to the radical uncertainty and the open-endedness of life...which is meaning-giving, salt-giving, risk-taking...Religion on my telling is a pact or 'covenant' with the impossible. To have a religious sense of life is to long with a restless heart for a reality beyond reality, to tremble with the possibility of the impossible."

1 comment:

Erich Robinson said...

Adam, congratulations on the upcoming transition to "preacher man". I haven't been to your blog in a while until yesterday... so I had no idea. I wish you and your family the best.

I've just started reading N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope. I'm only about 50 pages in but after thumbing through for a quick preview and reading yours and others reviews I can quickly see that this is a book I've been searching for for a long time (finally someone makes sense of all the confusion and misinformation about the matters he writes about). I know McLaren and others have briefly touched on some of these concepts but not at this width and depth.

Again, I wish you guys the best. We are still at Southlake -- coming up on 10 years in November (I'll be on sabbatical the whole month of July -- we'll be visiting Palo Alto for a bit during that time).

Peace,
Erich Robinson