Christ on Trial

To put it simply, this book is everything I thought it would be before I picked it up. A very thoughtful, in depth, illuminating analysis of Christ's trial accounts. In addition to the accounts that you expect (from the four Gospel accounts) they also have a section on martyrs and the trial of Christ from "The Grand Inquisitor" (part of the Brothers Karamazov). As the Brothers K is my favorite novel, I was enthralled to learn midway through reading the book that this was a chapter that was included. However, upon reading the section, it was more of a wrapping up chapter than one that needed multiple readings of "The Grand Inquisitor" to understand (which would have mirrored the other chapters on the Gospels). However, the entire book did deliver, and the sparse details in the last chapter is actually making me more intrigued about his book on Dostoevsky. Overall, the rest of the chapters were quite well thought out, easy to understand, had short (though still powerful) sections, and most importantly, pushed the reasons (and focus) of the trials back upon the reader, which is exactly what I hoped this book would do. Lastly, I bought this as a book on my Kindle. Thankfully, they had the references tagged, so that if you hit them, you could go to the index to see what the reference was quickly. In other words, it used the Kindle format to its advantage.

With Rowan Williams I have looked into the face of an enemy and seen a friend. I was raised Catholic and Irish and to say the least Englishmen and their brand of religion were not held in the highest of esteem in the days of my youth. I have of course moved far from those tribal positions and it is through the writings of such profound Christian thinkers and writers as the Archbishop that I have broadened my horizons. In this little tome Rowan Williams has taken the trial of Jesus and thrown its withering light on how humans have constructed our systems of oppressions and exclusion. God bless the archbishop a man I would not mind calling a friend and standing trial with.

This is a magnificent book by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The theme of the book is well-described in the subtitle: how the Gospel unsettles our judgment, and why this unsettling is a good thing. To establish these points, the author examines the trial scenes in each Gospel and proffers a typically unexpected interpretation of Christ's actions therein. For example, while examining the Gospel according to Mark, the author re-imagines "what it is for God to speak to us as God - not as a version of whatever makes us feel secure and appears more attractive than other familiar kinds of security. For if our talk about God is a religious version of talk about human safety, the paradox is that it will fail to say anything at all about salvation. It will not have anything to do with what is decisively and absolutely not the way of this world." His fans and critics alike frequently point to the author's intellectual prowess, but this is a book in which the reader can glimpse in the text a pastor's heart. Each of the gospel chapters moves the reader away from an interpretation of the texts that would "let God become again a competitor in the world's business, whose power can 'trump' all other claims at the end of the day," toward an awareness that God meets us "on this lowly ground" (quoting Donne) and frequently in circumstances and through people that show little or no signs of transcendence or even joy. As the author notes, "the mystery is in our midst, wherever and however we find ourselves." And each chapter ends with a wonderful prayer that captures the spirit of each chapter's meditation. Williams' prose can be tough to negotiate at times, but this book is well above average for his works in terms of its ease of reading, approaching his sermons in terms of accessibility. Not every chapter is equally understandable in a single reading, and I recommend several passes over the chapters on John and the Christian martyrs. That being said, the book is wonderful, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in a thoughtful assessment of the unsettling nature of the "Good News" of Christianity, especially those within the Anglican tradition. There is wisdom here for both sides of the current Anglican unpleasantries!