The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by [Richard Rohr]
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Richard Rohr
'I cannot put this book down'– Bono
In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’ last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understanding has been limited by culture, religious squabbling, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the centre.
Drawing on scripture, history and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. ‘God loves things by becoming them,' he writes, and Jesus’ life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God – except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us and in everyone we meet.
Thought-provoking, practical and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’ last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understanding has been limited by culture, religious squabbling, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the centre.
Drawing on scripture, history and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. ‘God loves things by becoming them,' he writes, and Jesus’ life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God – except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us and in everyone we meet.
Thought-provoking, practical and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Fr. Richard challenges us to search beneath the surface of our faith and see what is sacred in everyone and everything. Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”
-Melinda Gates, author of The Moment of Lift
"Rohr sees the Christ everywhere, and not just in people. He reminds us that the first incarnation of God is in Creation itself, and he tells us that 'God loves things by becoming them.' Just for that sentence, and there are so many more, I cannot put this book down."
-Bono
“Here Fr. Richard helps us to see and hear Jesus of Nazareth in what he taught, what he did and who he is—the loving, liberating and life giving expression and presence of God. In so doing he is helping Christianity to reclaim its soul anew.”
-Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America
"A major shift in our culture is needed, and Richard Rohr's unpacking of The Universal Christ is a critical step in the right direction. Remembering our connection to "every thing" has implications for our religious traditions, society—and dare I say it—even our politics."
-Kirsten Powers, CNN political analyst and USA Today columnist
"[Rohr] invitingly asks Christian readers to bring together their thinking about Jesus (the historical person) and Christ (the savior) in order to recognize God in the world around them . . . Rohr’s innovative reflections will inspire believing readers to think deeply about the nature of God."
-Publishers Weekly
“Anyone who has made a confession of faith in Jesus Christ should read this book to grasp more fully the vast and startling implications of this belief. This is Richard Rohr at his best, providing an overall summation of his theological insights that have been life-changing for so many.”
-Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, General Secretary emeritus of the Reformed Church in America
"Here, Christianity finds its root and its destiny in all things, in all matter, in all creation. and here, we find our connection to universal belonging, to universal trust, and to universal love. This book will change religion and make it tender and gentle and transformational."
-Timothy Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Christ Is Not Jesus’s Last Name
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
—Genesis 1:1–3
Across the thirty thousand or so varieties of Christianity, believers love Jesus and (at least in theory) seem to have no trouble accepting his full humanity and his full divinity. Many express a personal relationship with Jesus--perhaps a flash of inspiration of his intimate presence in their lives, perhaps a fear of his judgment or wrath. Others trust in his compassion, and often see him as a justification for their worldviews and politics. But how might the notion of Christ change the whole equation? Is Christ simply Jesus’s last name? Or is it a revealing title that deserves our full attention? How is Christ’s function or role different from Jesus’s? What does Scripture mean when Peter says in his very first address to the crowds after Pentecost that “God has made this Jesus . . . both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36)? Weren’t they always one and the same, starting at Jesus’s birth?
To answer these questions, we must go back and ask, What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Or is there even such a thing as “before”? Why did God create at all? What was God’s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal? Or is the universe a creation in time as we know it--like Jesus himself?
Let’s admit that we will probably never know the “how” or even the “when” of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the “why.” Is there any evidence for why God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal? Or do we even need a creator “God” to explain the universe?
Most of the perennial traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this: Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit. This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and human beings--everything that we see with our eyes. This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus. To put this idea in Franciscan language, creation is the First Bible, and it existed for 13.7 billion years before the second Bible was written.*
When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. But in this book, I want to suggest that the first incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. (This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation, and its speed is now recognized as the one universal constant.) The incarnation, then, is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God’s presence in the general word “flesh” (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ that Caryll Houselander so vividly encountered, the Christ that the rest of us continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling.
Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. What else could it really be? “Christ” is a word for the Primordial Template (“Logos”) through whom “all things came into being, and not one thing had its being except through him” (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be Christianity’s unique contribution among the world religions.*
If you can overlook how John uses a masculine pronoun to describe something that is clearly beyond gender, you can see that he is giving us a sacred cosmology in his Prologue (1:1–18), and not just a theology. Long before Jesus’s personal incarnation, Christ was deeply embedded in all things--as all things! The first lines of the Bible say that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters,” or the “formless void,” and immediately the material universe became fully visible in its depths and meaning (Genesis 1:1ff.). Time, of course, has no meaning at this point. The Christ Mystery is the New Testament’s attempt to name this visibility or see-ability that occurred on the first day.
Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else. This is why in John’s Gospel, Jesus Christ makes the almost boastful statement “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12). Jesus Christ is the amalgam of matter and spirit put together in one place, so we ourselves can put it together in all places, and enjoy things in their fullness. It can even enable us to see as God sees, if that is not expecting too much.
Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is actually filled with tiny particles called “neutrinos,” slivers of light that pass through the entire universe. Apparently there is no such thing as total darkness anywhere, even though the human eye thinks there is. John’s Gospel was more accurate than we realized when it described Christ as “a light that darkness cannot overcome” (1:5). Knowing that the inner light of things cannot be eliminated or destroyed is deeply hopeful. And as if that is not enough, John’s choice of an active verb (“The true light . . . was coming into the world,” 1:9) shows us that the Christ Mystery is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process throughout time--as constant as the light that fills the universe. And “God saw that light was good” (Genesis 1:3). Hold on to that!
But the symbolism deepens and tightens. Christians believe that this universal presence was later “born of a woman under the law” (Galatians 4:4) in a moment of chronological time. This is the great Christian leap of faith, which not everyone is willing to make. We daringly believe that God’s presence was poured into a single human being, so that humanity and divinity can be seen to be operating as one in him--and therefore in us! But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world. The second incarnation flowed out of the first, out of God’s loving union with physical creation. If that still sounds strange to you, just trust me for a bit. I promise you it will only deepen and broaden your faith in both Jesus and the Christ. This is an important reframing of who God might be and what such a God is doing, and a God we might need if we want to find a better response to the questions that opened this chapter.
My point is this: When I know that the world around me is both the hiding place and the revelation of God, I can no longer make a significant distinction between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane. (A divine “voice” makes this exactly clear to a very resistant Peter in Acts 10.) Everything I see and know is indeed one “uni-verse,” revolving around one coherent center. This Divine Presence seeks connection and communion, not separation or division--except for the sake of an even deeper future union.
What a difference this makes in the way I walk through the world, in how I encounter every person I see in the course of my day! It is as though everything that seemed disappointing and “fallen,” all the major pushbacks against the flow of history, can now be seen as one whole movement, still enchanted and made use of by God’s love. All of it must somehow be usable and filled with potency, even the things that appear as betrayals or crucifixions. Why else and how else could we love this world? Nothing, and no one, needs to be excluded.
The kind of wholeness I’m describing is something that our postmodern world no longer enjoys, and even vigorously denies. I always wonder why, after the triumph of rationalism in the Enlightenment, we would prefer such incoherence. I thought we had agreed that coherence, pattern, and some final meaning were good. But intellectuals in the last century have denied the existence and power of such great wholeness--and in Christianity, we have made the mistake of limiting the Creator’s presence to just one human manifestation, Jesus. The implications of our very selective seeing have been massively destructive for history and humanity. Creation was deemed profane, a pretty accident, a mere backdrop for the real drama of God’s concern--which is always and only us. (Or, even more troublesome, him!) It is impossible to make individuals feel sacred inside of a profane, empty, or accidental universe. This way of seeing makes us feel separate and competitive, striving to be superior instead of deeply connected, seeking ever-larger circles of union.
But God loves things by becoming them.
God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them.
Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally outflowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world.* Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God. Honestly, what else could it be, if we believe--as orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims do--that “one God created all things”? Since the very beginning of time, God’s Spirit has been revealing its glory and goodness through the physical creation. So many of the Psalms already assert this, speaking of “rivers clapping their hands” and “mountains singing for joy.” When Paul wrote, “There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything” (Colossians 3:11), was he a naïve pantheist, or did he really understand the full implication of the Gospel of Incarnation?
God seems to have chosen to manifest the invisible in what we call the “visible,” so that all things visible are the revelation of God’s endlessly diffusive spiritual energy. Once a person recognizes that, it is hard to ever be lonely in this world again.
A Universal and Personal God
Numerous Scriptures make it very clear that this Christ has existed “from the beginning” (John 1:1–18, Colossians 1:15–20, and Ephesians 1:3–14 being primary sources), so the Christ cannot be coterminous with Jesus. But by attaching the word “Christ” to Jesus as if it were his last name, instead of a means by which God’s presence has enchanted all matter throughout all of history, Christians got pretty sloppy in their thinking. Our faith became a competitive theology with various parochial theories of salvation, instead of a universal cosmology inside of which all can live with an inherent dignity.
Right now, perhaps more than ever, we need a God as big as the still-expanding universe, or educated people will continue to think of God as a mere add-on to a world that is already awesome, beautiful, and worthy of praise in itself. If Jesus is not also presented as Christ, I predict more and more people will not so much actively rebel against Christianity as just gradually lose interest in it. Many research scientists, biologists, and social workers have honored the Christ Mystery without needing any specific Jesus language at all. The Divine has never seemed very worried about us getting his or her exact name right (see Exodus 3:14). As Jesus himself says, “Do not believe those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ ” (Matthew 7:21, Luke 6:46, italics added). He says it is those who “do it right” that matter, not those who “say it right.” Yet verbal orthodoxy has been Christianity’s preoccupation, at times even allowing us to burn people at the stake for not “saying it right.”
This is what happens when we focus solely on an exclusive Jesus, on having a “personal relationship” with him, and on what he can do to save you and me from some eternal, fiery torment. For the first two thousand years of Christianity, we framed our faith in terms of a problem and a threat. But if you believe Jesus’s main purpose is to provide a means of personal, individual salvation, it is all too easy to think that he doesn’t have anything to do with human history--with war or injustice, or destruction of nature, or anything that contradicts our egos’ desires or our cultural biases. We ended up spreading our national cultures under the rubric of Jesus, instead of a universally liberating message under the name of Christ.
Without a sense of the inherent sacredness of the world--of every tiny bit of life and death--we struggle to see God in our own reality, let alone to respect reality, protect it, or love it. The consequences of this ignorance are all around us, seen in the way we have exploited and damaged our fellow human beings, the dear animals, the web of growing things, the land, the waters, and the very air. It took until the twenty-first century for a Pope to clearly say this, in Pope Francis’s prophetic document Laudato Si. May it not be too late, and may the unnecessary gap between practical seeing (science) and holistic seeing (religion) be fully overcome. They still need each other.
What I am calling in this book an incarnational worldview is the profound recognition of the presence of the divine in literally “every thing” and “every one.” It is the key to mental and spiritual health, as well as to a kind of basic contentment and happiness. An incarnational worldview is the only way we can reconcile our inner worlds with the outer one, unity with diversity, physical with spiritual, individual with corporate, and divine with human.
*Romans 1:20 says the same, in case you’re wondering how this self-critique shows up in the Bible itself.
*This is why the title for part one of this book says “Every Thing,” instead of “Everything,” because I believe the Christ Mystery specifically applies to thingness, materiality, physicality. I do not think of concepts and ideas as Christ. They might well communicate the Christ Mystery, as I will try to do here, but “Christ” for me refers to ideas that have specifically “become flesh” (John 1:14). You are surely free to disagree with me on that, but at least you know where I am coming from in my use of the word “Christ” in this book.
*See both Romans 8:19ff. and 1 Corinthians 11:17ff., where Paul makes his expansive notion of incarnation clear, and for me compelling. Most of us just never heard it that way.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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ASIN : B07NPGJ2NB
Publisher : SPCK (March 5, 2019)
Publication date : March 5, 2019
Language : English
File size : 408 KB
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Print length : 274 pages
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Customer Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,402 ratings
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Biography
Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (www.cac.org) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he also serves as Academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy--practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.
Fr. Richard is author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs, Adam's Return, The Naked Now, Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, and Eager to Love.
He has been a featured essayist on NPR's "This I Believe," a guest of Mehmet Oz on the Oprah and Friends radio show, and a guest of Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday. Fr. Richard was one of several spiritual leaders featured in the 2006 documentary film ONE: The Movie and was included in Watkins' Spiritual 100 List for 2013. He has given presentations with spiritual leaders such as Rob Bell, Cynthia Bourgeault, Joan Chittister, Shane Claiborne, James Finley, Laurence Freeman, Thomas Keating, Ronald Rolheiser, Jim Wallis, and the Dalai Lama.
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richard rohr universal christ jesus christ must read highly recommend father rohr last name new age christian faith catholic church fresh air thought provoking jesus last reading this book second half move forward breath of fresh father richard recommend this book holy spirit
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MJII
1.0 out of 5 stars A Catholic Response to The Universal Christ
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2019
The central claim of Richard Rohr’s new book, The Universal Christ, is that there is a fundamental distinction between Jesus of Nazareth, on the one hand, and the universal Christ, on the other. Jesus was a human being who lived and died 2,000 years ago; the universal Christ is an ever-present and all-encompassing presence that, while quintessentially expressed in Jesus of Nazareth, is also manifest both in and as every created thing. As Rohr repeats again and again, God (who is more or less equivalent to the universal Christ) loves things by becoming them, and not metaphorically.
Although with such a claim we are obviously far afield from the unclouded waters of Catholic doctrine, this is not what is most unsatisfying about the book. That is Rohr’s response to the tacit presupposition undergirding the central claims of his book. Rohr supposes, rightly, that the Postmodern world has left human beings in a state of intellectual and moral poverty and cast them adrift in a cold and disenchanted universe.
True enough, but Rohr’s solution is to say that, no, we are not isolated, and the universe does have meaning, but this is so because all things already just are the universal Christ, whose inundating presence obliterates the otherness of all things, even of God, to myself. For Rohr, this is good news. However, such a response is inherently disingenuous, for with such a solution Rohr merely swaps a lonely universe for a hall of mirrors in which ultimately there is nothing and no one that can be reflected other than myself.
We see this when Rohr offers his take on the death of Jesus. In a chapter entitled “Why did Jesus die?” Rohr rejects outright, as he has done elsewhere, that Jesus’ death ransoms us from sin.
According to Rohr, those who believe the death of Jesus effects our salvation ascribe to the “penal substitutionary theory,” and hold that God demands the blood of his son as the price of his love for us. Such a theory of Jesus’ death is grossly inadequate, first because it makes God out to be a bloodthirsty monster, who puts “retributive justice” ahead of love and mercy, even if it means the death of an innocent person.
But Rohr notes a second inadequacy. Jesus must be seen not as a savior, but as someone who knew himself already to share the identity of the universal Christ and whose mission was to call us to the knowledge that we also are already one with the universal Christ. Thus, Jesus’ life and ministry must be understood as awakening us to the knowledge of our divine identity, not a paying a price to a bloodthirsty and far-off tyrant.
Such a response in no way gets us out of the Postmodern malaise. In fact, Rohr concludes the chapter with a sort of prayer to Jesus, which turns out in the end to be, rather creepily, a prayer to oneself. Rohr wants a Christ without the cross and without the Church, but the price he pays turns out to be a weird kind of pantheism in which there is no one whom I can encounter, not even God, who in the end is not identical to me.
From the standpoint of Catholic theology, what can be said in response to such a position? It is dismaying that a book on Christ would never pause to reflect that “Christ” translates “Messiah,” and that Rohr should fail to engage the rich Jewish messianic theology of the Bible. The book refuses to consider the imprint, so clear in all the Gospels, of Isaiah 53 as the key to Jesus’ own understanding of his death and ignores Paul’s theology of the cross. Such biblical amnesia is a reflection of a Postmodern reluctance to wrestle with history and theology, a refusal to allow the texts of Scripture to speak to and challenge our preconceptions.
But there is something even more sinister. Rohr plays the magician throughout his book, conjuring a sweeping narrative but by sleights-of-hand misdirects our attention, allowing him to play fast and loose with both history and scripture, and in the process to look with contempt and derision upon the simple faith of all who have ever cast their hope on the cross of the Lord Jesus. We do better instead to stand in this simple faith, founded upon the friendship of Jesus our Messiah and Lord, and to gaze upon the cross in the piety of the old Cistercian hymn:
What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.
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William Ryan
5.0 out of 5 stars A Foundational Book in Mystical Christianity for a New Century
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2019
I have not finished this book, but wanted to express my wholehearted and joyful support for his book that I have been waiting for. This is the book that articulates the fullness of the Christ Mystery as expressed in John's Prologue in the Gospel like no other. I am a 70 year old Catholic Christian and lifetime contemplative practitioner with experience in Soto Zen Buddhist practice, for many years now a decades long practitioner of the Prayer of the Heart practice from Orthodox Christianity and the desert tradition. What was life-changing for me was the inner experience of the Universal Christ at the center of my own heart and the heart's of all beings. To discover, incarnate, and live that experience of Oneness is the spiritual journey and the road to peace between all peoples and religions. It is the healing balm our world needs, especially now. I heartily recommend this book which is firmly grounded in the Christian contemplative tradition of practice and experience. I will update my review when I have finished it.
Update: Having now finished this book I can now say this: I have been on the path of Contemplative/Mystical practice now for 50 years, Christian centered the last 30 plus years . I can safely say this book is a validation of every insight and awareness I have had through these fifty years. If you are an ideological and exclusivist Christian, you will likely not approve of this book. The Contemplative Mystical path has always been marginalized by the institutional Church. Those who are on this path eventually come to the same unitve consciousness and awakening that Richard so ably articulates in this book. The Universal Christ is Reality. It is NOT a belief system. Those who have this awakening whether Christian or of another tradition may use different language and concepts, but the Reality is the same. This insight is called the Perennial Wisdom and exists globally across humankind. I can safely say this is the most important spiritual book I have read in my life. Blessings on Richard and on all who open to the awareness of the Universal Christ, regardless of your tradition or background. "In the Beginning was the Word...." "Before Abraham I AM." -Gospel of John
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KimberlyA.
5.0 out of 5 stars No Words/Just Recognition
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2019
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Normally I try to write reviews that are generally helpful to a potential buyer/reader in that they point out the strong point/flaws, etc. I don’t have anything like that to offer here.
What I do have to offer is this: my soul seemed to recognize (or somehow remember?) the words on these pages. Like I had known it all long ago but have somehow forgotten and was now being pointed back to what I always knew-what I always was.
I have always had serious anxiety-since I was a very small child. All I can say is when I read this book I did not feel afraid.
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Joshua
1.0 out of 5 stars Dangerous
Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2019
Rohr completley misunderstands who Jesus is and what His death on the cross meant. This is pantheism in a thin coat of Christianity. John 1 most clearly argues that Jesus is alone in being the Christ, and several places in the Gospels, Jesus warns about false Christ’s (Luke 21:8, Mark 13:6-22, and Matthew 24:5-26) He also calls Himself the Christ (The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:25-26) and never at anypoint does the Bible make refrence to a Christ Force if you will. Rohr also believes that the death of Jesus was not an atoning sacrafice for the sin of
Man even though there are many verses clearly stating that His death on the cross was for the atonement of mankind (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 1:18-21, Acts 20:28, Colossians 1:18-23, Ephesians 1:3-14, Hebrews 9:11-28, the whole chapter of Hebrews 10, 1 John 1:5-10, Luke 22:20, the whole chapter of Romans 5, Romans 3:21-31, Revealtion 1:5-7, Revelation 7:13-17, Revelation 12:10-12, and Jesus Himself declared it to be so in Matthew 26:26-29)
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Paul Nelson
5.0 out of 5 stars A helpful vision of Christian living for today
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 9, 2019
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Bill Bryson, in his "Brief History of Everything", gives an image of the Royal Albert Hall in London full to the brim with frozen peas. Each pea, he tells us, could represent one of the galaxies now visible from earth. Such mind-blowing knowledge has only been available since the mid-twentieth century. Richard Rohr, in his new book, is attempting to set out a vision of Christian life not enclosed in world-views of antiquity but taking into account the realities of present day experience. Not that there is anything particularly new about the concept of the "Cosmic Christ": Teilhard de Chardin and many other teachers, both inside and outside "official" Christianity, have long expounded similar views. But what Rohr shares here is a clear, inspiring, passionate and often very personal account of a (perfectly traditional) way of seeing Christ in all things that can help us lift our sights, here, now, where we are. I have read and appreciated many of Richard Rohr's books, but for me this is far and away the most moving of all his writings. If only I had heard preaching like this when I was a lonely and disaffected teenager, and not the well-meaning simplistic fundamentalist stuff that was served up. "Saints are those who wake up while in this world, rather than waiting for the next one..." If that rings any sort of bell for you, read this book.
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billy cullen
5.0 out of 5 stars Often said, seldom true, but THIS book WILL change your life, forever.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2019
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A revaluation! Completely changed my history and thought. And just SO practical THEology, down to Earth, IS earth, IS every- thing, IS every- where, Christ! This IS what’s it’s all about ! Outstanding beautiful loving piece of really deep work. Totally recommended!
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Thomas Aquinas
1.0 out of 5 stars This book is a complete denial of true Christian doctrine and should be rejected
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2019
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Rohr claims that Christ and Jesus are two separate entities. I give typical quotations from Rohr's book as follows" Jesus is a Third Someone not just God and not just man but God and human together". "What if Christ is another name for the transcendent 'within' of everything in the universe". This is sheer nonsense. The standard teaching of the Christian Church is that Jesus Christ is one divine person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who retains His Divinity but takes on the nature of Man. Ordi nary people may not realise what he is saying but the point is that what Rohr has written is what he has made up for him self, It is not Christianity.His boo k is full of such errors I,.t will also confuse devout Christians with regard to the Eucharist. I am quite willing to face up to Rohr about this. His whole theory about creation is also wrong. Many people will be led astray.
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Sarah T. M. Bell
5.0 out of 5 stars Someone I'd love to meet!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2019
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I only discovered Richard Rohr in the last two or three years. This is a writer whose works have rekindled my relationship and friendship with Jesus Christ. Whatever you think of religion, Richard Rohr does make people realize that what is important in one's faith life is a personal relationship with the good Lord who loves all of us. It is not a set of rules dictated by God - most religions have done their best to transmit the heart of God and being mere humans we get it wrong from time to time. Talk to God directly, and to his friends, and you will get to know him.
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Joseph Cash
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, beautiful exploration of mystic yet embodied faith!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2019
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I never expected to find another book on Christianity as good as Cynthia Bourgeault's 'Wisdom Jesus', but thanks to Richard Rohr I have found it. This is a deep and refreshing explanation of Christianity for the early Third Millennium. Every chapter in this book is packed with wonderful insight about the universal Divine Presence, bringing wonderful new insights from familiar scriptures. Often I found myself thinking, how come I never noticed that before? This is a brilliant tool for Christians willing to open up to a vastly bigger, radically inclusive dimension. It draws upon orthodox, liberal, and mystic insights- both including and transcending all these categories. Really superb!
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