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The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet
Using poetry, story and philosophy to bring theology alive, this book shows that theology cannot be reduced to conventional forms, but is rather like the enigmatic illustrations of M.C. Echer, many of whose pictures the book reproduces. The book draws on the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Emily Dickinson, Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud and the "Tao Te Ching," among other works, to show how good theology is best compared to the image of wild birds flapping their wings and refusing to be caged. This material was originally delivered at the 1990 Edward Cadbury Lectures in the University of Birmingham.
148 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 1990
5 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Rubem Alves
179 books156 followersRubem Alves é um psicanalista, educador, teólogo e escritor brasileiro, é autor de livros e artigos abordando temas religiosos, educacionais e existenciais, além de uma série de livros infantis.
Durante sua infância, enfrentou os problemas comuns ocasionados pelas freqüentes mudanças de estados e de escolas. Tais mudanças influenciaram sua atitude de introspecção que o levou à companhia dos livros e ao apoio da religião, base de sua educação.
Presbiteriano, tornou-se pastor. Teve três filhos, e entrou numa crise de fé decorrente de um problema de saúde na família, tendo assim de abandonar o pastorado. Apóstata do cristianismo, tornou-se crítico da religião organizada. É considerado persona non grata na Igreja Presbiteriana, pelas suas posições liberais e anticlericais. De volta ao mundo secular, tornou-se escritor e acadêmico.
Durante sua infância, enfrentou os problemas comuns ocasionados pelas freqüentes mudanças de estados e de escolas. Tais mudanças influenciaram sua atitude de introspecção que o levou à companhia dos livros e ao apoio da religião, base de sua educação.
Presbiteriano, tornou-se pastor. Teve três filhos, e entrou numa crise de fé decorrente de um problema de saúde na família, tendo assim de abandonar o pastorado. Apóstata do cristianismo, tornou-se crítico da religião organizada. É considerado persona non grata na Igreja Presbiteriana, pelas suas posições liberais e anticlericais. De volta ao mundo secular, tornou-se escritor e acadêmico.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 9, 2022
Seeking to free the reader and theology itself from a constrictive, Enlightenment paradigm with its absence of erotic desire, magic, and beauty, "The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet" is Rubem Alves's stunning contribution to the emerging field of Theopoetics. Part poem, part "un-lecture," part parable, and part autobiography, the book arose from Alves's Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham in 1990. Illustrated throughout with intriguing pictures by M. C. Escher, the book is a tour de force of Theology, Philosophy, politics, and poetics. Alves says that words are like birds, and as teachers and scholars marshal words for "answers, conclusions, solutions" they cage the birds, forcing them inside of tight and constricting spaces and forcing them to be wherever the thinker is at. Poets, on the other hand, open the cages and watch as the words fly all by themselves in freedom. Theology is poetry; it's open, free, spontaneous, surprising, and erotic (heart-focused and not head-focused). The theologian's task must be less focused on finding the right "answers" (if that is even possible) and asking more questions.
This is my first foray into Rubem Alves. He's a marvelous poet and stylist who writes with both beauty and conviction. He's incapable of writing anything from convention; he writes straight from his heart. This book has very many lovely passages, and quite a few that even rise to the heights of sublimity. However, I take issue with one central thing in Alves's position. When it comes to the Resurrection of the dead, he's a complete gnostic. For him, the power of resurrection is in the effect that the Logos has to re-animate the human imagination. For him Jesus is still dead, but insofar as we speak of Jesus, remembering Him, celebrating Him, invoking Him, then and only then does He become alive. Alves rightly sees that a resurrected imagination brings life out of death, hope out of despair, love out of the abyss, but he doesn't see resurrection as actual dead, rotting flesh coming back to life and vitality again. For Alves, the Resurrection is piercing through the surface of a dark, still lake - underneath the reflections of the trees and mountains - and swimming in the cool depths with the fish. Resurrection is a matter of the head and heart, but not of the body. Dead flesh cannot become re-animated in a physical sense, but rather in a poetic, romantic sense. Despite claiming that he was seeking in his original lectures to go deeper than the 'head' and reach the very guts of the human body, for Alves those entrails are not physical, fleshly stuff, but deep experiences to be drawn out in psychoanalysis. Alves's point of view is ultimately docetic; Christ's fleshly existence and His ascended body are not necessary for Alves's point that poetry (Logos) is the power of God to raise to life. For Alves, life is the exalted life of the inner self, not the literal cells of the body.
The death of Christ is a scandal and His Resurrection will always be a stumbling block.
That being said, much of this book was thought-provoking and beautiful. I'll include some of my favorite quotes to end my review:
- "This is the essence of poetry: back to the founding Word, which emerges out of the abyss of silence" (4).
- "The text: the words are immobilized on paper by the chemistry of ink. When they made their first appearance they were not like that: they were wild birds, flapping their wings . . . The teacher set his traps, caught some of them and selected those which should be locked with ink on the paper cage. Poor words . . . They have lost their freedom. Now they are frozen in time and space. But later, when the teacher begins his lecture, it will be his turn to lose his freedom. He is now under the power of the written text" (6).
- "The eucharist: if the body and the blood were assimilated into our bodies, they would become what we are. But the eucharist is the reversal of normality: we eat and drink the bread and the win, but it is the bread and the wine which eat us. We are to become what they are: the body and the blood of Christ" (15).
- "Poetry: this desperate attempt to say what cannot be said" (26).
- "'The finger points to the moon'; thus starts a Zen saying. The eyes move from the finger to the moon - and they see. But if the skies are clouded, if there is no moon to be seen, then the finger will not do. The eyes will turn onto the cloudy skies, but they will not see anything. 'Moon' - someone says. And the moon shines inside the soul, even if it is absent from the skies . . . Inside our bodies, there dwell the absent moons. And the word has the power to make them visible to the soul" (41).
- "Names engraved on the bark of old trees: for me they mean nothing. But I can imagine that someone could cry, just at the sight of them: the one who wrote them, long ago. The name contains everything which needs to be remembered: images of a lost happiness. Maybe Mallarme's book has been already written many times, on the bark of old trees . . ." (43).
- "My garden is a text. Each plant is a poetic metonymy. Many other plants give me pleasure. But my garden gives me joy" (46).
- "This is the only theological theme. Theology is an exercise about the marriage of Word and flesh, an endless poem about the mystery of the incarnation. Words and flesh make love and the body is born . . ." (74).
This is my first foray into Rubem Alves. He's a marvelous poet and stylist who writes with both beauty and conviction. He's incapable of writing anything from convention; he writes straight from his heart. This book has very many lovely passages, and quite a few that even rise to the heights of sublimity. However, I take issue with one central thing in Alves's position. When it comes to the Resurrection of the dead, he's a complete gnostic. For him, the power of resurrection is in the effect that the Logos has to re-animate the human imagination. For him Jesus is still dead, but insofar as we speak of Jesus, remembering Him, celebrating Him, invoking Him, then and only then does He become alive. Alves rightly sees that a resurrected imagination brings life out of death, hope out of despair, love out of the abyss, but he doesn't see resurrection as actual dead, rotting flesh coming back to life and vitality again. For Alves, the Resurrection is piercing through the surface of a dark, still lake - underneath the reflections of the trees and mountains - and swimming in the cool depths with the fish. Resurrection is a matter of the head and heart, but not of the body. Dead flesh cannot become re-animated in a physical sense, but rather in a poetic, romantic sense. Despite claiming that he was seeking in his original lectures to go deeper than the 'head' and reach the very guts of the human body, for Alves those entrails are not physical, fleshly stuff, but deep experiences to be drawn out in psychoanalysis. Alves's point of view is ultimately docetic; Christ's fleshly existence and His ascended body are not necessary for Alves's point that poetry (Logos) is the power of God to raise to life. For Alves, life is the exalted life of the inner self, not the literal cells of the body.
The death of Christ is a scandal and His Resurrection will always be a stumbling block.
That being said, much of this book was thought-provoking and beautiful. I'll include some of my favorite quotes to end my review:
- "This is the essence of poetry: back to the founding Word, which emerges out of the abyss of silence" (4).
- "The text: the words are immobilized on paper by the chemistry of ink. When they made their first appearance they were not like that: they were wild birds, flapping their wings . . . The teacher set his traps, caught some of them and selected those which should be locked with ink on the paper cage. Poor words . . . They have lost their freedom. Now they are frozen in time and space. But later, when the teacher begins his lecture, it will be his turn to lose his freedom. He is now under the power of the written text" (6).
- "The eucharist: if the body and the blood were assimilated into our bodies, they would become what we are. But the eucharist is the reversal of normality: we eat and drink the bread and the win, but it is the bread and the wine which eat us. We are to become what they are: the body and the blood of Christ" (15).
- "Poetry: this desperate attempt to say what cannot be said" (26).
- "'The finger points to the moon'; thus starts a Zen saying. The eyes move from the finger to the moon - and they see. But if the skies are clouded, if there is no moon to be seen, then the finger will not do. The eyes will turn onto the cloudy skies, but they will not see anything. 'Moon' - someone says. And the moon shines inside the soul, even if it is absent from the skies . . . Inside our bodies, there dwell the absent moons. And the word has the power to make them visible to the soul" (41).
- "Names engraved on the bark of old trees: for me they mean nothing. But I can imagine that someone could cry, just at the sight of them: the one who wrote them, long ago. The name contains everything which needs to be remembered: images of a lost happiness. Maybe Mallarme's book has been already written many times, on the bark of old trees . . ." (43).
- "My garden is a text. Each plant is a poetic metonymy. Many other plants give me pleasure. But my garden gives me joy" (46).
- "This is the only theological theme. Theology is an exercise about the marriage of Word and flesh, an endless poem about the mystery of the incarnation. Words and flesh make love and the body is born . . ." (74).
April 10, 2022
If you are sick of how far the chasm is between theology and poetry nowadays, you should read this book. Theopoetics just makes sense to me. Not in my brain necessarily, but in my chest.
Alves is a prophet whose message lies primarily in his form rather than his content.
Alves is a prophet whose message lies primarily in his form rather than his content.
January 25, 2018
"To plant a little garden is easy. My body has power enough to do it. As I enjoy my little garden I eat a sacrament, a fragment of the great garden. But this little space is not enough to satisfy my hunger for joy. We are unhappy because we cannot eat all that we see. The whole universe must be served as a messianic banquet...The sunset is beautiful because it is a metaphor of ourselves. We are rainbows just before darkness, playing colours before night arrives. Even the lightest of Mozart's sonatas has the same drop of sadness, because sooner or later the final chord will be played." (131-132)
December 31, 2024
One of the the most brilliant, compelling, and provocative (not in a controversial sense, but an erotic one — meaning a stirring of our deepest longings for beauty) books I’ve read in a long time. Alves is a treasure whose marginalization in the academy is a real tragedy.
This is a book that spoke to my soul in a language I didn’t know I knew. I feel as if I’ve been excavated and filled with the wind of the spirit, with purpose and clarity and an eye to spot beauty. I’d like to return to this book regularly. It deserves the kind of patient, regular attentiveness that embeds itself in your imagination. And that’s exactly what he’s inviting us to: an imagination of beauty, a reconnection to the desire deep within us of resurrection and joy, a recognition that poetry is prophecy and reality. The word as the most distilled form of power there is.
Wow!
This is a book that spoke to my soul in a language I didn’t know I knew. I feel as if I’ve been excavated and filled with the wind of the spirit, with purpose and clarity and an eye to spot beauty. I’d like to return to this book regularly. It deserves the kind of patient, regular attentiveness that embeds itself in your imagination. And that’s exactly what he’s inviting us to: an imagination of beauty, a reconnection to the desire deep within us of resurrection and joy, a recognition that poetry is prophecy and reality. The word as the most distilled form of power there is.
Wow!
June 15, 2024
A very unusual and difficult to categorize little book, with a misleading and banal title. There is also no apparent reason for the picture of Kyle Maclachlan as Paul Atreides in Dune to be the cover image.
But whatever. This is one of those books which causes the mind and heart of a reader to spark and flame. It pulls together and distills from many sources that similarly open doors to thought and image. It's always interesting, sometimes quirky, occasionally brilliant.
It is a quasi-Christian work of theopoetics that's ultimately, I think, a little neo-gnostic. But it is also anti-Enlightenment. I liked it. I will keep it close and read it again.
But whatever. This is one of those books which causes the mind and heart of a reader to spark and flame. It pulls together and distills from many sources that similarly open doors to thought and image. It's always interesting, sometimes quirky, occasionally brilliant.
It is a quasi-Christian work of theopoetics that's ultimately, I think, a little neo-gnostic. But it is also anti-Enlightenment. I liked it. I will keep it close and read it again.
March 12, 2016
Exactly the book I needed for this time. I see a relationship to the first chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, insofar as the arborescent contrasts with the rhizomatic. While I bring my own questions of language and experience to the task of interpretation, tradition, and community, during this reading, poetry was elevated for me beyond something romantic and arbitrary into something contiguous with revelation and communion. It disclosed and opened good thoughts in me.
July 16, 2023
What a superb book this is. Loved it. Get it and read it if you feel a little (or big) desire to do so. An invitation.
This is the third book I've read in some way associated with liberation theology this year - fourth, if you include Māori Marsden's The Woven Universe. But (and) in particular this one is and is about something very reverberant - the theopoetic. Oh my heart!
Theopoesis in action, doing its deep-delving embodied work, far-seeing, diving into the deep water and venturing into the forest. Leaning into the Wind. Learned and inspired. Lovely. Controversial. Beautiful.
If my blurb here sounds a bit elusive, it's because you really need to experience it for yourself. It's like no other book I know. As I say, if you have an inkling towards the theo and the poetic, feel able to suspend the urge to classification and the systematic, feel the desire, the invitation, and be suspended in the unknown(ing), this book might be quite an adventure for you.
Godspeed.
(Yeah that is Kyle MacLachlan in Dune on the cover - don't ask me why - something to do with poets, warriors and prophets I guess.)
This is the third book I've read in some way associated with liberation theology this year - fourth, if you include Māori Marsden's The Woven Universe. But (and) in particular this one is and is about something very reverberant - the theopoetic. Oh my heart!
Theopoesis in action, doing its deep-delving embodied work, far-seeing, diving into the deep water and venturing into the forest. Leaning into the Wind. Learned and inspired. Lovely. Controversial. Beautiful.
If my blurb here sounds a bit elusive, it's because you really need to experience it for yourself. It's like no other book I know. As I say, if you have an inkling towards the theo and the poetic, feel able to suspend the urge to classification and the systematic, feel the desire, the invitation, and be suspended in the unknown(ing), this book might be quite an adventure for you.
Godspeed.
(Yeah that is Kyle MacLachlan in Dune on the cover - don't ask me why - something to do with poets, warriors and prophets I guess.)
January 14, 2023
This book deserves 5 stars for content, but I gave it 4 stars because it's not an easy read; I can see it confounding some. I would not have enjoyed or even understood this book nearly so much 10 years ago. Alves's book is revelatory, and I adore his assertions. I can see myself returning to this book again and again as I know each read will reveal more--it's that kind of book. If you are a philosopher with a theological bent or a theologian with a philosophical bent, you shouldn't skip this one. An essential text for theopoetics and theopoets. Beautifully and paradoxically written, this text changed and challenged me for the better.
February 17, 2023
“Theology wants to be science, a discourse without interstices…It wants to have its birds in cages… Theopoetics instead, empty cages, words, which are uttered out of and before the void…. Exegetes and hermeneuts are at a loss. Their job is to find the meaning that a voice has. They hear, they read, and they say: “This is the meaning of the words!” But now, if the poet is to be believed, “there is another voice” which lives in the “interstices:” the silences of the text” (99).
March 31, 2022
Read for school. There were parts that spoke to me and parts I could not wait to finish. It is creative and beautiful and a little out there in the way Alves perceived the world from an amazing gift for communication. Not out there in theology, just out there in the way people don’t talk about God and Jesus. It was refreshing.
September 30, 2020
"A good teacher is a luminous creature."
January 3, 2021
This book will take you somewhere that you can never come back from.
March 4, 2022
Full of imagination, poetry, the mysteries of faith, and the realities of the world, Alves speaks in a voice which is uniquely original and prophetic.
April 19, 2015
this book. seriously, this book. it is impossible to describe in words; it animated my imagination, my soul, my heart, my faith like very few other theological books have. you will not see or be the same again. this is a book I will carry with me -- and to which I will return often -- for life.
January 2, 2014
My all-time favourite - ee cummings meets narrative theology!
June 10, 2015
Wonderful book - somewhere between poetry and prose.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews