Walking Blind, Revised and Expanded Edition

Essays on Faith

Robert L. Canfield

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9798385242528
  9798385242535
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385242542
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In this collage of essays, Robert L. Canfield examines passages of the Bible that have informed his understanding of himself, his faith, his life, and his career. Its narratives, proclamations, claims, and promises have influenced his priorities, his preoccupations and public consciousness, and his approach to the deep questions that, on a subliminal level, vex all of us. In the biblical passages he examines here, he reflects on the nature of the human condition, the origins of the Christian movement, the importance of creativity in the practice of authentic faith, the social implications of the gospel, the status of those who have "never heard," the contemporary threats to Earth's ecosystem, and the wonder of the cosmos. Some of the passages examined here receive little notice by biblical commentators. He addresses this work to those who have limited knowledge of the Bible in hopes of inspiring them to examine its various writings as sources of personal wisdom and self-understanding as well as perspective on the ever more urgent issues of public and international concern.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Invitation
• 1. Walking Blind
• 2. The Walk of Faith
• 3. Why I Believe in the Resurrection
• 4. Legal Certainty, Ethical Cowardice
• 5. Biblical Advice on Nonreligious Living
• 6. Social Revolution in the Two Letters to Philemon
• 7. Political Uses of Religious Zeal
• 8. Peter’s Little-Noted Statement About Peoples “From Every Nation”
• 9. “My God! You Are a Mussulman Man Like Me!”
• 10. The Authority of Twelve Jewish Men
• 11. The Greatest Social Critics of All Time
• 12. The Bang and the Glory
• 13. A Strange Prophetic Sign of the World in Crisis
• 14. Biblical Sources of the First Amendment
• Bibliography