The Newness of Life
It’s taken me longer than I’d anticipated to read For the Life of the World, largely because I’ve been busy and a little too tired in the evenings to do much reading. But here’s another quotation from my reading tonight:
If the Church is truly the “newness of life” — the world and nature as restored in Christ — it is not, or rather ought not be, a purely religious institution in which to be “pious,” to be a member in “good standing,” means leaving one’s own personality at the entrance — in the “check room” — and replacing it with a worn-out, impersonal, neutral “good Christian” type personality. Piety in fact may be a very dangerous thing, a real opposition to the Holy Spirit who is the Giver of Life — of joy, movement and creativity — and not of the “good conscience” which looks at everything with suspicion, fear and moral indignation.
In other reading news, I’ve finished the first volume of The Book of the New Sun (loved it!) and I’m now reading Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit before going back to Gene Wolfe again.