Carroll James - Christ actually: reimagining faith in the modern age

Praise for Christ Actually: Reimagining Faith in the Modern Age

The divinity and greatness of Jesus for a secular age, Carroll asserts, are not to be found in miracles ascribed to Him, nor in the grandeur of His elevation by millennia of Christian theology. Carroll argues, finally, that the appeal of Christ to the contemporary faithful has much less to do with creed, and more to do with our ability to imitate Him in his unwavering acceptance of love for the brokenness of human beings.

TheWashington Post

Carrolls own reading of Jesus, at once stunningly original and strangely familiar, is a testament to the power of a critical, creative faith.

TheBoston Globe

Written in the brisk, argumentative style that has won James Carroll a broad popular readership, Christ Actually avoids the interminable maundering of academic prose, even as its extensive footnotes indicate attention to advanced, if radical, scholarship. Conservative Christians may well be shocked and annoyed at Carrolls configuration of Jesus. Nevertheless, for its pushback against the boundaries of conventional interpretations and, above all, for its passionate presentation of the sinfulness of Christian anti-Semitism, his book deserves serious attention.

Commonweal

Its the books greatest virtue that Carroll can present all these real-world possibilities for Christ alongside his lifetimes work in theology, historical research, and biblical criticism.... But for all this historical fidelity, Carrolls writing is also thoroughly modern and devotional. His notion of Christ for today depends on taking seriously the possibility that ours is now a religionless world.... Believers like Bonhoeffer and, later, Day, whose very lives opposed the infernality of war, groped for words that might give Christ some meaning amid the ruins of Christendom. Carroll gropes too and well. But there are no words as powerful as our human lives. Carroll knows this. It is his final word. And for Christians, he concludes, the fullness of their lives remains Christs only hope.

Los Angeles Times

With well-researched clarity, Carroll explores the question posed by anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: who actually is Christ for us today?... Because Christ actually is meaningful in some way to a billion Christians around the globe, this heartfelt investigation is of interest to many.

Publishers Weekly

Carroll... strives to reconceive Christ for a secular, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima era.... Readers seeking a faith responsive to the zeitgeist will find it here.

Booklist

Compelling.

Todd Gitlin, The Tablet

PENGUIN BOOKS

CHRIST ACTUALLY

James Carroll is the author of eleven novels and seven works of nonfiction. His memoir, An AmericanRequiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us, received the 1996 National Book Award in nonfiction. His book Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History was a New York Times bestseller and was honored as a Best Book of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times, the Christian ScienceMonitor, and others. Carroll is a columnist for the Boston Globe, and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University. He is married to the novelist Alexandra Marshall.

Also by James Carroll

FICTION

Madonna Red

Mortal Friends

Fault Lines

Family Trade

Prince of Peace

Supply of Heroes

Firebird

Memorial Bridge

The City Below

Secret Father

Warburg in Rome

NONFICTION

An American Requiem

Constantines Sword

Toward a New Catholic Church

Crusade

House of War

Practicing Catholic

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

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First published in the United States by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Published in Penguin Books 2015

Copyright 2014 by James Carroll

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:

Christmas Trees from New and Collected Poems 19521992 by Geoffrey Hill. Copyright 1994 by Geoffrey Hill. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and the author. All rights reserved.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ by Daniel Boyarin. Copyright 2012 by Daniel Boyarin. Reprinted by permission of The New Press.

Triduum from A Little Book of Hours by John F. Deane (Manchester, England: Carcanet, 2008). By permission of the author.

The Scripture citations in this book are from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CAT ALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Carroll, James, 1943

Christ actually : the son of God for the secular age / James Carroll.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-1-101-60912-5

1. Jesus ChristPerson and offices. I. Title.

BT203.C365 2014

232dc22 2014022328

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

Cover design: Jennifer Carrow

Cover image: Alan Sansome/EyeEm/Getty Images

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For Annie

The present life of man, O King, seems to me like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the great mead-hall wherein you sit at supper in winter, with the warm fire ablaze, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, once more into the dark winter.

So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new teaching contains something more certain, it seems justly deserving to be followed.

A chief counselor to Anglo-Saxon king Edwin in 627