Peter Bien

This quite wonderful pamphlet raises for us fundamental questions of spiritual development, as it provides a guide to Kazantzakis' great novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. He asks: what is spiritual growth for us humans in an oppressive and violent world? While readers may well not agree with some or all of Kazantzakis' answers, the questions will resonate and will challenge many readers to take another step along on their own paths, in any of several ways. Written in 1950-51, the novel show more transcends a literary context (as described by Bien) that seems rather dated, in terms of both psychoanalytic theory and scholarship on Jesus. It does this by means of its still- or ever-current understanding of spirit, spiritual development, and the human challenge, not to say predicament, of living in both material and spiritual reality. show less

The author employs poetry and literature to reflect on the meaning of retirement and whether death is an unmitigated calamity. He concludes it is not better to live forever, and that strangely, death enhances life, rather than negating it.

Light is the central metaphor in the religious lives of Friends, but not of Friends alone. “The light that lighteth every person who cometh into the world” has served as an image of sacred mystery for ancient Hebrews and Greeks, for Dante, for modern poets, and theorists on the physics of electromagnetism. What has Light meant to different people throughout the ages? How did various ideas about Light influence the prologue to John’s Gospel? What did early Friends understand Light to show more mean? This pamphlet explores the theology and poetry of Friends’ favorite religious symbol. show less

The author employs poetry and literature to reflect on the meaning of retirement and whether death is an unmitigated calamity. He concludes it is not better to live forever, and that strangely, death enhances life, rather than negating it.