Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Thinking Theologically about Food
- 2 The “Roots” of Eating: Our Life Together in Gardens
- 3 Eating in Exile: Dysfunction in the World of Food
- 4 Life through Death: Sacrificial Eating
- 5 Eucharistic Table Manners: Eating toward Communion
- 6 Saying Grace
- 7 Eating in Heaven? Consummating Communion
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- Scripture Citation Index
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Thinking Theologically about Food
- 2 The “Roots” of Eating: Our Life Together in Gardens
- 3 Eating in Exile: Dysfunction in the World of Food
- 4 Life through Death: Sacrificial Eating
- 5 Eucharistic Table Manners: Eating toward Communion
- 6 Saying Grace
- 7 Eating in Heaven? Consummating Communion
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- Scripture Citation Index
Summary
I must confess, I did not want to know much of what I learned by reading this book. Indeed I found it somewhat painful. In these pages, Norman Wirzba writes about what seems to be our unrelenting desire to degrade God's good creation. But Wirzba is a gentle soul and he has written a beautiful book. That is no small achievement because much of what he has to describe is incessantly ugly. Yet Wirzba has found a way to help us see that by the grace of God we can still learn to live lives of gratitude.
The painfulness I found in reading this book resides in my desire to remain ignorant. I do not want to know how my everyday eating habits make me complicit with cruel treatment of animals. I do not want to know that the way I have learned to eat contributes to the ongoing degradation of the land. I do not want to know how the way my food is produced puts an unjust burden on people who often have no food to eat at all. In truth, I vaguely “knew” about these realities, but Wirzba knows how to bring them to my attention in a manner that demands I must acknowledge them. Acknowledgment can be excruciating.
Do not be fooled by the admirable modesty that pervades Wirzba's prose. This is a book of great philosophical and theological depth, but its strength has largely to do with Wirzba's “method,” which does not call attention to itself.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Food and FaithA Theology of Eating, pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011