Product Description

Based on a celebrated TV series, these illuminating portraits bring to life seven famous men in search of God.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #228675 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 172 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781570755323
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

Astute Observations
"A Third Testament" by Malcolm Muggeridge is the script version of a TV series the author had previously done. It is a collection of short biographical sketches and observations about the lives a various influential writers, thinkers, and theologians. Or perhaps all of the men described her meet all three of those descriptions.

At first there might not seem to be a common tie between such men as Saint Augustine, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer: yet Muggeridge makes the claim that all of them were spiritual wanderers, devoted to a search for God in their own time. He calls these men 'God's spies' as they endeavored to make the truth of the gospels shine in the dark times in which they lived. All of the men Muggeridge devotes his time to went through a crisis in their life or in their nation. They found strength through their relationship with God to overcome these travials and serve as a bastion for their faith. They, alone sometimes, were the bright light shining through the overcrowding darkness.

Muggeridge's portraits are brief, but succinctly complete. Even without having read anything by some of these men, the reader is not at a loss. Muggeridge aptly portrays how their faith affected their lives, and interweaves their own thoughts with his, and the observations of those who knew these great spies. What "A Third Testament" causes in the readers is a renewed sense of wonder at the men God uses for His purposes - these motley men who challenged their countrymen to repudiate false teachings. Indeed, their challenge has survived throughout the generations, and is just as necessary today as it was when they were living.

A humble, honest and beautiful work
Muggeridge has created in this book and in the accompanying video series a humble, honest, and beautiful work of simple yet deeply compelling biography. By focusing on the spiritual journeys of six/seven essential figures (in the video series he covers Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Blake, Tolstoy, and Boenhoffer, and in the book he adds to this group Dostoyevsky) Muggeridge discovers certain necessities of the spiritual life and illuminates them and brings them into focus. Both the book and the video series are essential to any library collection of contemporary religious thought.

Someone must bring these back into print!

A Compelling Inter-generational Narrative of Counter Culture
There is a tradition in Christianity, of individuals gifted with the uncanny ability to stir the secular culture of their generation with such poetry and excellence that posterity could not relegate them to obscurity. Muggeridge is firmly planted in this tradition and is an able spokesperson for those before him. His treatments of Pascal, Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer were basic enough that they could serve as introductions but substantial enough that despite the fact that I have read much by and about these men, I found their treatment in "Third Testament" both informative and moving. It is his treatment of Tolstoy, however, that really stands out as his very personal connection with Russian culture and people gives it a particular poignancy. Contemporary Christianity could benefit a great deal by reflecting on the approach of contemplation, passion and rigor that is represented by the biographies in this book. Muggeridge has done and excellent job bringing them to us.