We have clear conceptions of important abstractions that we have heard named, but not defined, since we were children. We live with misconceptions born while we wait to understand when we are able. Unfortunately, these images take on a life of their own, and crowd out any possibility of there ever being any real understanding.

Grace is one of those concepts. We hear the word repeated in sermon and song, we use it ourselves in characature. The image of what we think Grace is limits our access to its reality in our lives.

Enter this annoying book. Capon twists and tweaks and disturbs our sense of what is right and wrong. OUR sense.
Only when the shocking first section is trumped by the final section do we realize what is happening to us. Even though he warns us repeatedly along the way, and taunts us into dialogue.

I admit the central section merely annoyed me without enlightening me ... yet. Maybe I will get it later. Sacred adultary, a mafia hit, and a coffee hour give-and-take seem unlikely parables to expain Grace. It works. With style and grace. Anyone who has tried to live a life of faith honestly in the midst of the contradictions of life will feel this book resonate within their soul.

No wonder it is subtitled "Romance, Law, and the OUTRAGE of Grace."

Capon continues to tantalise, entice and stimulate with this revised edition of Between Noon and Three. Capon captures the incredibly lavish Grace of God through a combination of wit, exegesis, and a carefully crafted story. This book is a real shock to the "grace-fearing spoilsport in every one of us". Capon confronts the menacing ugliness of legalism and drags it screaming into the light of the lavish Grace and Love of God. Capon expounds the Grace of God in such a way that one can't help salivating at the beauty of God made complete in his glorious Son. Throughout the novel one is continuously shouting AMEN (I Love you) to the Father who so loves his children that he does not give grace so that they will feel "much obliged" but rather extends totally free, unconditional, absolutely radical, all encompassing Grace. This is the grace for Dead people, and as Capon eloquently describes: all that is required of a dead body is to stink. I Love my God who makes the little, least, lost, last, losers and the DEAD - ALIVE! FREE and all this is GRATIS!

This was my first Capon book and it made me fall in love with his writing and the way he uses stories and dialogue to expound the meaning of grace.

I think almost all of his books are on grace and that's because he has been captivated by the grace of God.

This novel, like most of his other books, may not be that simple a read but once you get what he's getting at, then you start to stand in awe of the amazingness of God's grace.

Capon is pretty lutheran in his view on law and gospel and it shows clearly in his books.

This particular novel is interesting in the way he tries to convey God's grace to us. It's about two people who are married but carries on with an affair together. This story is meant to outrage us, but Capon uses this storyline to show us that God's grace is like that. Despite the sins we do, He still loves us and accepts us in Christ.

Has Capon gone a bit far in illustrating grace to us? Well, i don't know. All i can say is that he's at least half right! A good book to read and ponder about God's grace

I love this author. He is literally salt and light--sometimes salt in the wound and light shed on dark places--but always offering a profound perspective on the Christian faith. The Astonished Heart shows the evolution of the Christian church and how various cultural models have affected the way Christians understand their faith. From the beginnings of the church to the medieval model of Christendom to the modern corporate model, Capon helps readers understand the dynamics of the development of the church and how it relates to their faith (or disillusionment, as the case may be). But beyond historical models, he shows (as he does in all of his books) that Christianity is an incarnational religion of grace and that we lose sight of that to our peril. This book is not so much a church history as an argument drawn from church history to illustrate that God's grace is greater than our legalism and that our relationship with God is always perceived in a particular historical context. Anyone who is jaded with church hierarchies and institutionalism will find refreshing perspectives in this witty and slightly cantankerous book. Any book by Robert Farrar Capon is a treasure and The Astonished Heart is no exception. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Robert Farrar Capon is one of my all-time favorite authors. I love his salty take on life and his deep paradoxical spirituality that blends heaven and earth, celebrating the goodness of creation and the Creator. He consistently reminds us that Christianity does not have to be bland and insipid, but instead offers a rich gumbo of ideas for anyone, believer or non-believer, to chew on. Capon on Cooking offers good cooking and good theology, blended in one inspired dish.

Like his chapter on the onion in The Supper of the Lamb, his chapter "Bare Hands in the Kitchen" in this book invites you to look at the human hand as not only the ultimate kitchen gadget but also as a marvel of creation. Written in 1983, this book includes a chapter on Thai food before Thai food swept the nation, as well as recipes from German, Swedish, Japanese, Armenian, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish cuisine. The most delicious morsels, though, are Capon's brief meditations on cooking and life. More cooking, not as much philosophy as his classic, The Supper of the Lamb. But delicious and delightful and idiosyncratic all the same.

So you thought you knew and understood the parables of Jesus? Take a look at Robert Farrar Capon's superb trilogy on the parables of the Kingdom, Grace and Judgment and see if they don't rattle your theological bird cage just a little. This volume is on the parables of Grace. The author again deals with lastness, leastness, lostness, littleness, left-handed images, death and resurrection, this time in such parables as the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan, among others. And he includes the hardest parable of all - the Unjust Steward of Luke 16.

I've always checked every book of Bible commentary to see what the author has to say about this parable, and so far, only Father Capon has come up with anything that makes sense to me. He says the unjust steward was wasting (diaskorpizon) his Lord's money. "Diaskorpizon" is the same word used for the Prodigal Son's wasting of his "substance." That's a clue, according to Capon, that this is a grace and not a morality parable. This is also like the parable of the Unforgiving Servant except that it's reversed. Forgiveness starts from the botom up instead of from the top down. It's the steward who forgives the debt (not the rich man or the Lord), and so he is a "dead ringer for Jesus Himself." He dies (to his bookkeeping) rises others (forgives their debts), but most important of all, "...the unjust steward is the Christ-figure because he is a crook, like Jesus."

"The unique contribution of this parable to our understanding of Jesus," says Capon, "is its insistence that grace cannot come to the world through respectability. Respectability regards only life, success, winning; it will have no truck with the grace that works by death and losing - which is the only kind of grace there is." Jesus was "...not respectable. He broke the sabbath. He consorted with crooks. And he dies as a criminal." And he did all this to "...catch a world that respectability could only terrify and condemn. He became sin for us sinners, weak for us weaklings, lost for us losers, and dead for us dead."

For my money, Father Capon is the only writer since C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton who has even a clue about the true dynamics of the Christian Faith.

pamhan99@aol.com

A conservative Episcopal priest, Capon is to theological reflection what stand-up comedy is to an academic lecture. Both may be true, but which one will you spend money to hear on a Friday date?

His lighthearted style belies the depth of his thought, and his passion for the truth. I have a theological degree myself, and found that his style resonated with some of the most meaningful theology I have encountered. That he makes it accessible is even more to his credit.

In sequence he deals with quite serious themes: our common priestly office as human beings, the nature of and reason for evil, and the will of God. He is always creative and original.

"We have forgotten, you see, not what reality means, but how it smells and what it tastes like. The work of theology in our day is not so much interpretation as contemplation. God and the world need to be held up for oohs and aahs before they can safely be analyzed. Theology begins with admiration, not problems."

Any pastor who expects me to sit weekly to hear him preach should spend time with Capon. Maybe some of it will rub off on him, too.

I found this book to be a visual delight and a fun read. The recipes are beautiful and have caused me to completely change my mind about Japanese food.

This book was my first taste of Robert Farrar Capon's writings. One of those underground treasures which makes its way by word of mouth, The Supper of the Lamb was a seminal book in my spiritual and literary development, along with his book, The Parables of the Kingdom. It may include recipes, but The Supper of the Lamb is a cookbook for life.

Each chapter offers lyrical insight on what it means to be human. Read about cutting an onion in "The First Session" and you'll never take an onion for granted again. "Wave Breast and Heave Shoulder" is one of the most beautiful and biblical passages in the entire book. I have read the final pages of "The Burning Heart" many, many times and never fail to be moved. Some sections of the book are reminiscent of Annie Dillard's descriptive style in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or some of the best of M.F.K. Fisher's writings. Capon's salty observations balance the high spirituality, creating a complex blend of philosophy and kitchen craft.

As Capon himself says, "We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great." This book continues to inspire my writing, my cooking, and my spirituality. If you want a flavorful literary feast, buy The Supper of the Lamb. I highly recommend Robert Farrar Capon's other books as well. Each one is a treasure.

I grew up around Bob Capon. My father is also an Episcopal priest, and our families often got together to break bread. The kitchen was the place to be. This book, which I hadn't read for many years, brought back lots of memories. Capon was one of the first "crazy" people I ever met. (I was around 9 years old.) I am a better person for it. Food and God. God and Food. They go together especially well in this book.

Lets face it...all of us who cook (unless we are filthy rich) do a lot of work with leftovers (Ferial cooking). Yet most folks buy cookbooks that give us these grand, one time and you're done (Festal cooking) recipes. This is not what you get from Robert Capon's "The Supper of the Lamb." This book is all about Ferial cooking--and proud of it.

Capon is a true wild man. He has become one of my favorite authors (His book Between Noon and Three is one of my top ten). "The Supper of the Lamb" is earlier, yet vintage Capon.

The book is indeed a cookbook. It is also so much more. What the reader will find here, besides the recipes, are reflections on life and reality. The theme of Ferial cooking is transferred to a kind of manifesto on Ferial living. Capon sees food, and life as well, through a lens of wonder.

Capon's book is really a recipe for living life more fully. While his recipes for food are great, it is this "larger" recipe that holds the greatest appeal for me.

I recommend "The Supper of the Lamb" to you with all my heart.

Father Capon has done it again! He has given us food for thought with his own unique spin. True, he makes points that he's already made in preceding books - but in this one, he zeros in on the mistakes of some of the church fathers and puts a name to it - "transactionalism" - the old left-brain idea that one must contribute some kind of coin - sacrifice, repentance, good works - whatever - to deserve the free gift of forgiveness and grace given by God from the get-go to humanity. The Reformation kicked transactionalism out the front door, proclaiming salvation by grace, through faith, (not works), but let it right back in the back door by stipulating that faith was the current coin of the realm.

In his own inimitable style, Father Capon has the Holy Spirit saying (in a dialogue among the Trinity at the beginning of the book), "They're going to paint themselves into a corner and say that the unbaptized go to hell or even that sins after Baptism make forgiveness flake off like a bad paint job, and that unless Christians go to confession for a second coat before they die, they'll go to hell too. Oh sure. We've also agreed on this Reformation business where I convince them that nobody has to do anything to be forgiven except trust the grace that Jesus has already given everybody. But give them a hundred years after that and they'll manage to turn faith itself into a requirement for grace: no faith, no forgiveness. Out the window again goes the free gift we've given them once and for all; and back in comes forgiveness as a deal that's good only as long as they behave themselves."

The author goes on to explain how the great church reformers such as Irenaeus, Athanasius. Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon, while contributing invaluable insights essential to a true reformation, still slipped in this pernicious transactionalism. "Human beings aren't afraid of accountability," says Capon's Holy Spirit, "they're crazy about it. If they can't get credit for themselves or dish out blame to others, they cry, 'Unfair!'"

Father Capon says he was originally planning to call the book *Re-forming the Reformation* and I think that may have been a better title for it (a worthy double entendre) because the book seems to hang together on the explication of these wrong turns in Christendom better than it does on an exploration of images. The only time images take center stage is when the author is talking about Literalism/Fundamentalism vs. Liberalism (turning the Bible into a book of ethics and denying the mystery) and he says both views are mistakes. God can jolly well use any device he wants to tell the STORY of scripture - images in poetry, hyperbole, allegory, parables, and yes, even literalism - even though the latter is seldom employed. So literalism is madness and deconstructivist liberalism takes all the vital juice out of it and who needs that?

The history of church thought that the author covers is most valuable and enlightening, but I thought that the imaginary dialogue with the church fathers toward the end of the book was a bit pedantic and tedious. Most of the same points were made in an earlier chapter.

But the burning question, to my mind, is - isn't the atonement itself a transaction no matter how you slice it? Just as C.S. Lewis says that the fall of man didn't HAVE to happen, did the atonement HAVE to take place? What dark necessity required it? Was it a god above and beyond or behind the Father as the god of Destiny was behind and beyond and above Zeus? We find out what the atonement is NOT. It's not a "ransom" - a transaction between God and the devil; it's not a task - a "what" that Jesus accomplished by fulfilling a transactional bill of particulars; it's not even a "bait and switch scam perpetrated by God himself" where "the cross is a mousetrap for the devil" (although Capon seems to favor this interpretation above the other two because it has a sense of humor). But I'm still scratching my head. How ELSE to see the atonement except as SOME kind of transaction?

To be fair to Capon, this was a burning question with me long before I read *The Fingerprints of God*, but since his earlier books (that little gem of Theodicy) *The Third Peacock* and the Parable books (Parables of the Kingdom, Judgment and Grace) changed my life and outlook, I was hoping this one would answer that question. Who knows? Maybe the next one will. In any case, Robert Farrar Capon's books are all and always worth reading, in my opinion. Read this one. Read his others. You won't be disappointed.

pamhan99@aol.com

Fr. Capon has a book that gives me an Emmaus experience. This author has been gifted with the ability to present the Gospel in fresh ways that light a fire inside. Like his other works, Capon has been careful in his accuracy, yet prophetic in his mission. He is one of the few authors today who side steps the modern avalanche of pious moralisms. Rather, he seeks to present the Word in context and in the radical and revolutionary power of what God is saying to us. From page one, I found my well-constructed theological walls of presumption and complacency being chipped starting to crumble. Not a casual read, but an incredble journey for someone who already has inner hints that there must be something more than we have been told about God's relationship to us!

Reading Capon's little book is like riding a merry-go-round for a little too long. I had fun, I think it was a good thing, but my head's spinning and I feel weird down in the plumbing. Woah.

He's a crazy man writing crazy things and whirling metaphors around like colorful ribbons. And he just might be right, and true, and more "enlightening" then all those dudes at Dallas Theological Seminary who probably either hate or fear him or both.

There's a lot of things I will remember and hang on to from this book. One is the understanding that God didn't create long ago (at least not exlusively) but IS creating, moment by moment. I exist right now, as do you and the duck behind you, because God wills it. There is no other why for our existence. Don't understand? Read the book.

And the very act of creation is more akin to making love than to anything else. Can you dig it?

And the other rememberable (is that a word? if it is, maybe is shouldn't be) thing is the snowstorm analogy -- which basically captures the thesis (if there is one) of the book. Stuck in a snowstorm, God is not the kind of God who comes and rescues us. He is the kind of God who comes and makes out with us and the snowstorm, as we die together. Then he raises us. Maybe.

I have a friend who calls him "Father" Capon, but I can't go that far. Mostly because he plays fast and loose with scripture, both using it for um, weird things and deciding on his own which parts are from God and which parts are the writer's indigestion or prejudices. (that irks me. Capon knows the voice and character of God better than Paul of Tarsus? please.) But I'll definitely read him and discuss his ideas and, when fitting, happily adopt them into my own conception of the Big Guy.

It was memorable. I'll read it again. Not Nouwen (Father Nouwen? I'm way more comfortable with that) but way, way better than most of what you find in Christian supply. --- talk to me. williekrischke@hotmail.com

This book was a great influence to me as a young woman in the early seventies. Capon's wonderfully uplifting approach and sense of humor really bring home what our relationship with God should be. And he brings us home to the happy ending like the fairy tale from whence the title. No, God won't start your car for you, but He will sit with you in a snowbank and hold your hand. No one had ever before suggested to me the romantic nature of God's love for his creation.

Robert Farrar Capon is a very enthusiastic, passionate author with a very definite point of view. It is definitely in his favor that he takes a biblical approach, patiently explaining why the Bible, in his view, teaches that the whole world is in Christ, and therefore the whole world will be saved. This is the "mystery of Christ" to which he refers. The only ones who will not enter into heaven will be those who pointedly reject the free grace of God, which the author believes will be continually offered even after death.

Capon loves Jesus' parables (he has written three books on them, one of which I have read), and draws much of his theology from those parables. Some of the parables presented in this book (the Sheep and the Goats, for example) are interpreted in the light of Capon's universalism, which results in some novel interpretations. Not that that's always a bad thing, indeed, his interpretation of the parable of the Ten Virgins is quite enlightening. Just the fact that the "wise" virgins are portrayed as being selfish and snippy show the reversal in the Kingdom of the good and the bad, and that nothing is received on merit, all on grace.

I don't give this book a relatively low rating because I'm anti-univeralist (I don't happen to be a universalist, although I'm always open to change), but because I have some issues with certain things in the book that just cannot be easily resolved. Capon gives far too much value to astrology, and without much explanation except for the fact that his wife is a professional astrologer. It has always been my conviction that astrology is anti-Christian and anti-intellectual (in simpler terms, both Satanic and a crock), and those who engage in it are either deceived or are spiritual flim-flam artists. Anyone who deems astrology acceptable and then tries to teach me Christian theology suffers a severe credibility problem. Another stumbling-block is that the author doesn't seem to take sin very seriously. That problem is addressed in the book, but not in a very convincing manner. Some things that, from a biblical standpoint, are indeed sin are deemed a non-sin in this book (sprecifically homosexuality).

I enjoyed the format of the book, alternating between one-on-one counseling sessions or conversations and group discussion of those situations. One of the discussion participants fits my profile really well. That participant, while he learned a lot, still had reservations at the end. That is my position as well.

With his characteristic wit, humour, digression and depth, Robert Ferrar Capon has delivered another book centred about grace. In his always inimitable way, Capon is able to present an old theme in a new way, using various writing styles and techniques to get his point across.

Having read "From noon to Three" and this book, clearly Capon wants to emphasize - no, pound into your head - the idea that God has done it all, that grace is free, that God simply does not see our sin anymore. He must have quoted the verse "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" and it is the entire world who is in Christ, and we are in Him. This is part of the mystery.

As a pastoral tool Capon's perspective is refreshing and greatly needed in our works-loving, bookkeeping Church. Capon writes like a prophet, warning us that we fall too easily into the danger of thinking we have to "do" something. I also enjoyed his discussion of ways that we can view the resurrection. This was an education and well thought-out section of the book.

Of course, I have a "but"....I was continually uncomfortable with Capon's approach which, while he claims is theological, often plays fast and loose with the Bible. He was unconvincing in his analysis of the sheep and the goats parable. Moreover, I did not appreciate his several jabs at Bonheoffer, nor his implication that the "medieval" theology of Luther and Calvin, qua medieval theology, was unacceptable. Capon claims that, instead, he is more "biblical" - a term too often bandied about these days.

He speaks near the end of ways that our lives need to be, not acceptable to, but "congruent" to the mystery of Christ. And this would seem to me to mean that congruent should be biblical, but no....instead it is okay to practice astrology as if it gave us even the "weather" of things. Meanwhile the bible specifically indicates that it is not a godly practice. How is it then congruent that his wife is a practicing professional astrologer? No, I do not "condemn" her for it, only to question how he can make this claim.

Given that Luther has expounded so well on the grace of God, I think Capon takes it too far somehow and goes somewhere that is not warranted. Now, if he read this, he would think that I was falling back into "medieval" or "works" theology. No, I just am not convinced that what he argues is fully biblical. It's not that I want grace to cost anything, just that I think he is not convincing.

I read this for the first time shortly after becoming a Christian. Earlier, I thought Christianity meant constantly avoiding sin. Capon points out that we will always sin, but the Good News is that God loves us anyway. He emphasizes love and hope, and does not waste energy on the little questions. And he exhorts us also to remember that we do not need to waste our energy on the little questions, but to instead remember Jesus' commandment to love God, ourselves, and each other. This book increased my new-found joy in knowing God's love.