Reading the Gospel - Softcover

Dunne, John S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268016682 ISBN 13: 9780268016685

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000

Synopsis

Using the method of spiritual reading, lectio divina or “divine reading” as it is called in monasteries, John S. Dunne sets out his interpretation of the evangelists, especially John in Reading the Gospel. Reading the Gospels, according to Dunne, means passing over into the relation of Jesus with his God, the God he calls Abba in prayer, and then coming back from that with a changed vision of life and death. If I pass over into the relation of Jesus with God, then Jesus disappears from in front of me and I find myself in relation to what Jesus calls “my God and your God.” When I come back to myself, I see my life in terms of his life and my death in terms of his death and resurrection, and I am able to say with Paul, “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me.” “We read to know that we are not alone,” Dunne says, quoting from Shadowlands, and we read the Gospels to know that God is with us. “I believe in God-with-us,” he says, as a personal creed summing up the Gospels. He ends with a kind of lyrical commentary that he calls Songlines of the Gospel, twenty-one short lyrics telling of the basic scenes in the Gospel of John.

About this title

About the Author:

John S. Dunne (1929–2013) was the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and the author of twenty books, including Circle Dance of Time (2010), Deep Rhythm and the Riddle of Eternal Life (2008), and A Vision Quest (2006), all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Review:

“John of the Cross wrote that God spoke his Word once and having spoken needed to speak no more. John Dunne teaches us just how capacious that Word is. Not for the intellectually timid, Reading the Gospel is a work of profundity.” (Commonweal)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0268016682
• ISBN 13: 9780268016685
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200