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Edith M. Humphrey (PhD, McGill University) is the William F. Orr Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books, including Grand Entrance: Worship on Earth as in Heaven and Ecstasy and Intimacy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit.

Comprende il nome: Edith McEwan Humphrey

Fonte dell'immagine: Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group, copyright © 2008. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published(see © info.)

Opere di Edith M. Humphrey

Opere correlate

Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (1992) — Collaboratore, alcune edizioni1,594 copie
Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (2005) — Collaboratore, alcune edizioni527 copie
Whose Historical Jesus? (1997) — Collaboratore — 11 copie

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Summary: A group of cousins visiting “Gramgon” and a neighbor boy have a series of adventures in which they meet their patron saints, passing through a portal just beyond the garden gate.

It all began with the fawns. Katie, visiting her “Gramgon,” spots them beyond the garden gate at the bottom of the yard. She’s been told not to go into the valley beyond, but is almost irresistibly drawn to them and passes through the gate. There are other animals including turkeys…and a peacock. She follows and discovers she is in a different time and place. She encounters Lady Edith of Wilton, the sister of King Edgar, who has chosen the life of a religious sister. While there, Edith brother is killed, and the neighbor boy, TJ, who had followed narrowly foils an attempt on Edith’s life before the two are led by the peacock to where they can see the garden gate. Katie carries and hides a feather of the peacock.

Subsequent adventures follow as cousins from Pittsburgh join Katie, who is from Kansas. Together or separately, each of the girls sees the fawns and are transported to an encounter with their patron saints — Rachel, Jacob’s betrothed, Ruth and Naomi, Mary Magdalene. Sometimes they simply learn of the faith of these saints, and sometimes there is adventure, for example, rescuing Rachel from kidnappers who would prevent her marriage to Jacob. The end of the visit to Gramgon is coming but Katie has not met her patron saint Katherine yet. Edith is the saint of the author of this work, and presumably Gramgon. One more time they are bidden beyond the garden gate, this time by chimes, only to witness Katherine’s courageous witness before her martyrdom, and glimpse the glory beyond that Katherine would enter.

They carry the peacock feather on each venture, and when the peacock appears, it is time to depart and the way back to their own time is open–and no time has elapsed. The situations they enter are dangerous and the peacock feather and the peacock represent the eyes of the Lord upon them, protecting and guiding.

This Narnia-like story is about the discovery of the saints, our communion with believers who have preceded us, whose lives may instruct us in living the life of faith. I do wonder a bit with Gramgon’s prohibition of these ventures, the whisperings of the children she overhears, and her unconfirmed suspicions. It makes me wonder if Gramgon herself has traveled beyond the gate. Does she realize that the children can only go if bidden? Does she even “cover” for the children when they are weary from ventures?

This is a delightful story, particularly as the cousins become more interested in the backstory of these saints for whom they are named. The climactic adventure, witnessing the martyrdom, is beautifully written, and to be savored.

This story reminded me of a wonderful experience a few years back when I was invited to be present as a friend was baptized and received into the Roman Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Part of the liturgy includes the Litany of the Saints in which we work through a list beginning with the Holy Trinity, Mary, the angels, patriarchs and prophets, apostles and evangelists, the disciples, the innocents, martyrs, the holy bishops and confessors, the doctors of the church, and many more, interspersed with a long list of names in each category.

With each group or saint, we bid, “pray for us.” It is prayed slowly and meditatively and takes a long time. After all, this is part of a vigil on the eve of Easter. I sat in wonder as I heard this “great cloud of witnesses” enumerated and the vision of our solidarity as we run the same race, fight the same battles that millennia of believers before us ran and fought, and now pray for us. It seemed a “thin place” where the veil between us was barely there and we were present to one another. I knew the stories of some, and wondered about those of many others.

There is something in this for all of us–children and “Gramgons” alike. Stories like this one invite us into the literature of the saints, the stories of all those who have gone faithfully before us until whatever end God had for them. It explains the attraction of the stories of martyrs. They remind us of our communion with them, the mysterious fellowship we enjoy, and that we may well be prayed for not merely by our living friends but by many in glory who are heard by the Father who watches over our ways.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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BobonBooks | 1 altra recensione | Dec 2, 2021 |
Summary: A survey of much of Lewis's literary corpus considering the theological themes developed in these works in interaction with Eastern Orthodox theologians.

Edith M. Humphrey is an Eastern Orthodox theologian who teaches in a Presbyterian seminary in Pittsburgh. She also has loved the work of C. S. Lewis since childhood, writing to him early in 1964, not knowing he had died not long before, asking if he would write more stories like The Chronicles of Narnia. In this work, she brings a lifelong love of Lewis and her own theological perspective to bear on a survey of much of Lewis's literary corpus.

The work is divided into three parts. The first, titled "Mapping the Terrain." She explores the way reading and writing, myth and reality found in story, may open our eyes to larger realities. In the Narnia accounts of creation, we consider our roles as "subcreators", listening to Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, We marvel at Grand Miracle of the Incarnation, as considered in Lewis's Miracles.

Part Two is titled "Travelling in Arduous Places." She considers Lewis's challenges of the subjectivism of the day (and anticipatory of the advent of post-modernism) in The Abolition of Man and Pilgrim's Regress. This forces us how then we are to think and live and the deeper journey of ascesis in Lewis's retelling of the tale of Psyche and Orual in Till We Have Faces. This brings us to the doctrine of the atonement and Athanasius's "great exchange."

The final part is titled "Plumbing the Depths and Climbing the Heights." In both Jonathan Edwards and That Hideous Strength we explore the nature of human depravity and the power of the demonic. More intriguingly, she explores the doctrines of heaven and hell, reflecting on Lewis's The Great Divorce. She touches on the "hopeful universalism" of Eastern Orthodoxy that finds echoes in this work but also suggests biblical and theological boundaries that I found quite helpful in discussing these matters, helpful enough that I quote them at length:

We cannot say that God's will may ultimately be thwarted.
We cannot deny that God "desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (I Tim. 2:4).
We cannot view the salvation accomplished by Christ as automatic in such a way that it violates human integrity or choice, or that it does not require a human response.
We cannot say that salvation depends upon us in a foundational sense.
We cannot say that human acceptance of God's loving offer is unnecessary.
We cannot claim to know that someone is damned.
We cannot say that the effect of Christ's righteousness on humanity is less powerful than Adam's sin.
We cannot say that the doctrine of hell is only "heuristic" -- that it is only a warning. (pp. 239-240)

I thought this quite a helpful summary both of what we know, and where as yet, we still see dimly. Her final chapter in this section includes a similar list of boundaries on matters of gender, reminding us both of the "reversals" that may warn us about established fixed gender roles, and yet being cautious of eliminating the distinction of male and female, given how embedded in reality maleness and femaleness are. Her caution is one against the unthinking embrace of one side or the other in the culture wars around gender.

Edith M. Humphrey offers a feast for any lover of Lewis or the Inklings. We listen to a fellow lover as she shares what she has seen and loved in Lewis. We listen to a careful biblical and theological scholar who brings us into conversation with Orthodox theologians. We consider the nature of our world, our role as sub-creators, how both contemporary thought and our fallen natures color our thought and lives, and the grand purposes revealed in the Grand Miracle, the Great Exchange, and our future hope. The title is fitting. The whole book invites us to join Lewis in pressing, "further up and further in."

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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BobonBooks | Jan 11, 2018 |
"Katie discovers that the valley behind her grandmother’s garden is more mysterious than it seems. After tumbling into tenth-century England and encountering Saint Edith of Wilton along with her wild animal menagerie, she is helped home, wondering whether her adventure was truly real. But after Katie, her cousins, and a neighborhood friend are drawn back in time once again, she realizes her grandmother’s garden gate is a portal into faraway worlds, where patron saints are real people making real-life decisions. Join Katie and her cousins as they mingle with Rachel and Jacob, meet Saint Mary Magdalene up close, trek across the sand with the matriarchs Naomi and Ruth, and have a nail-biting adventure with the heroic Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In seeing the richness of the family of God, they glimpse how very much they are a part of it all." (Back cover)… (altro)
 
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staylorlib | 1 altra recensione | Nov 13, 2021 |

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