Dear Mr. Cantelon,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book. If I had tried to learn about the great theological themes by the standard route, I would have been immured in academic tomes for many months.
I am glad you were inspired to write briefly in everyday language, with wit and humour, and with a story to introduce every chapter, to catch my attention and light up your ideas.
I learned a great deal, not just with my mind, but in my understanding of who God is, and I have come to feel more secure in my faith in God.
Your down-to-earth style worked wonderfully well in the section on the Trinity, for example, and I was surprised at how much I grasped in a few short pages on Revelation. It didn't work quite so well in the first chapter of the book with the arguments (a.k.a. proofs) that God exists. I was quite put out by the paragraph on the cosmological argument, and I almost gave up on the book right at the beginning. I was looking for a bridging sentence or two to link the heading “cosmological” with the explanation “all beginnings have a cause.” Since cosmos means neither cause nor beginning, I could not see the connection between the two. There are other places in the book where, though I felt in tune with your insight and the direction you were taking, I was frustrated because there were gaps in your train of thought as you presented it on the page.
Let me remind you of some of the wise and insightful things you wrote:
About free will – that it is not freedom to do whatever I want, but rather it is “choice within boundaries,” these boundaries being love for God, and love for neighbour.
About miracles – that “God is telling us something vital when He intervenes miraculously in our history.”
About the Scriptures – that their trustworthiness, authority and inerrancy are all bound up with who Jesus is, “the perfect living Word, alive in the frail imperfect words of human beings.”
You underscored for me that relationship, not pious observance, is the touchstone of godly living, when you introduced me to the Hebrew zadkah, meaning both righteousness toward God and justice toward one's neighbour.
You enlarged my understanding of sin and suffering, placing them squarely within God's plan. This is the insight that moved me more securely towards God.
The added bonus of your book is your summary of every book in the Bible: brief, clear, lightly handled, while going to the core of each book. I found myself eager to find out what you would say about particular books – ones that raise questions for me, or just baffle me, like Revelation. I was consistently enlightened.
Equally readable and enlightening is your treatment of Gnosticism as it arose in the early years after Christ, and as it appears today.
Your theological position lies firmly within orthodox Christianity, and your commitment to Jesus Christ and the God revealed in Scripture is obvious. At the same time you give respectful attention to other positions. I appreciate that. Thank you for writing.
Sincerely,
Joyce
