A Joyful Theology: Creation, Commitment, and an Awesome God

by Sara Maitland

For Sara Maitland, the Scriptures, tradition, and the creation are sources of God's greatest gift to us-the desire and the ability to know something about God. In A Joyful Theology, Maitland makes a lively exploration of creation in order to learn more about the Creator. What she finds is a God who inspires awe, who calls us to be committed to one another, and who invites us to live in joy.

Genres: Religion

146 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2002

About the author

Sara Maitland is a British writer and academic. An accomplished novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency. Maitland is regarded as one of those at the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement, and is often described as a feminist writer. She is a Roman Catholic, and religion is another theme in much of her work.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sara Maitland is one of my favorite feminist, religious writers. Not that I read many of them. But Maitland has always stretched my brain in good, good ways. This book was no exception.

Maitland has been trying to get her readers to look at both science and religion as worthy of creation by our God. She says she is looking for evidence of God, not for God. I feel that this is a wonderful continuation of her argument in A Big Enough God.

What I especially like is Maitland's emphasis on joy. We could all use more joy and I think God believes in and loves joy.

I know I will need to read this book again. There is so much in it.

[Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read another book by Maitland previously that I really enjoyed so I wanted to read this also. I like her perspective on faith and science, though I don't agree with all her conclusions.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sara Maitland is fastly becoming my favorite Anglo-Catholic, feminist, lay-theologian. Previously I read her A Book of Silence. That was her memoir of her exploration of silence. That book was more personally revealing than this one, though her experience of prayer, spirituality and theology is said vaguer there in order to appeal to a wider audience. This book, published by Augsburg Books is explicitly Christian, but it isn't a narrow and sectarian Christianity. Maitland wants Christians to engage with the best of scientific knowledge and discover the implications for Christian belief. In short, she doesn't envision a war between faith and science (or at least a war anymore) but a dialogue because creation reveals the Creator so therefore, science has something to show us about who God is.

And so Maitland takes her readers on a mad-romp through Mathematics, astronmy, quantum physics, evolution, psychoanalysis, psychiatry and the social sciences to reveal how each reveal a God who is bigger and more wonderous than can previously be imagined. She declares:

Wow! Nothing in this threatens the narrative of my faith! The incarnation of Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, my hopes of salvation are all deepened, enriched and secured in this science. God's love--an adult, passionate, free and generous love--is manifested in the atom and in the far-flung cosmic spaces beyond the reach of our telescopes ; it is demonstrated in our bones, our brains, our blood-cells, and in our social connections to one another. No there is no safety, but there is a wild delight: a deep beauty, a contagious and reliable source of joy. Wow!(105-6).

Maitland concludes this book with reflections on respect for art and cultivating joy. I am certain I don't agree with everything Maitland says here, but there is enough that makes me feel like she is on to something. My own Christian heritage was deeply suspicious of various of the sciences as potentially undermining faith. So I appreciate that her engagement with science is much more gregarious and her awe for God is not threatened by exploring natural processes and their implications. Certainly she isn't the only one to make this point, but she makes it well.

[Juan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised when I read this book. I went into it with a very slanted opinion because I knew the woman writing it was a Christian and thought she had an agenda.. She may still have had an agenda, but her book was very good. Speaks to the person in all of us. Muy bueno