URL: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-10965-SF-Religion-in-the-News-Examiner~y2009m9d17-Book-...

Summary:
This quote from the introduction explains enlightenment: "...an experience of things or persons outside myself as direct and unmediated as my experience of myself is." The author, in going through the book of John, tells the story of the blind man whose site is restored. This is a world rebuilding event for the blind man, and it suggests a new understanding of the world (cosmos) and the beginning of a new life and relationship that was out of joint with God, as Christ offered.


Before writing in this review about the definition of these spiritual matters, well defined in L. William Countryman's book right from the beginning, here is a sense of the way the book is constructed. Divided into sections, the work takes on the life of Jesus as described in John with subjects like "Conversion," "Baptism," "Eucharist," "Enlightenment," New life," "Union I, II, III," and an "Epilogue." One can see that this introduction of the life of Jesus allows the reader to discover in the Christian Way that Jesus "...has already ascribed to the logos a glory far greater than that of any miracle worker--'glory as of an only child from the father'. Now he tells us that Jesus 'revealed his glory' through the sign, meaning that the same note of unique access to God is again struck here."

Category: Books

Tags: John's Gospel, Episcopal Church, mysticism, enlightenment, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, San Francisco, L. William Countryman