Post by Josh on Feb 12, 2007 18:46:08 GMT -8
1/6/06:
I just read an article in Christianity Today (Interview with a Penitent by Cindy Crosby) about Anne Rice (popular author of vampire/ horror and historical fiction genres- best known for Interview with a Vampire).
Turns out she's recently returned to her childhood Catholic faith, and she has quite the testimony.
Check it out at:
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/012/11.50.html
A few key quotes/excerpts (at least to me):
In 1993, she says, she became interested in the first century and the Jewish people. Rice recounts, "I remember thinking, 'This doesn't make sense. How did the Jews survive? People don't survive these kinds of things! Their cities [were] smashed. What really happened at the beginning of Christianity?' "
She read obsessively: John A. T. Robinson, Augustine, D. A. Carson, Jacob Neusner, Luke Timothy Johnson, Craig L. Blomberg. Slowly, the historicity of the Resurrection became hard to deny. "Christianity achieved what it did," she says, "because Jesus rose from the dead."
Rice's questions intensified. "The Lord came looking for me," she remembers. "Everywhere I turned, I found images of the Lord and his love."
Rice spent a lot of time sitting cross-legged in her room, her back to the bookcase, surrounded with books. Eventually, she says, "I read myself right back into faith."
As she researched the New Testament, Rice was particularly impressed by N. T. Wright, the prolific bishop of Durham and the author of The Resurrection of the Son of God.
"I was blown away by the fact that he accommodated all the skeptics and did it with generosity," Rice says. "He referenced their books and arguments and answered in his own brilliant, patient way and still maintained that Jesus rose from the dead. I had dreamed of this sort of scholarship."
Last summer, Knopf, her publisher, stunned the literary world with its announcement of Rice's newest volume: Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, a novel about Jesus' life at age 7.
"This book means more to me than anything I've ever done," Rice told Christianity Today from her home in La Jolla, California. "I'm not offering agnostic explanations. He is real. He worked miracles. He is the Son of God! And there is so much more to write."
Of particular note to me was her mention of NT Wright, one of my favorite scholars. Indeed, a skeptic must be quite careful when studying the 1st Century.
I just read an article in Christianity Today (Interview with a Penitent by Cindy Crosby) about Anne Rice (popular author of vampire/ horror and historical fiction genres- best known for Interview with a Vampire).
Turns out she's recently returned to her childhood Catholic faith, and she has quite the testimony.
Check it out at:
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/012/11.50.html
A few key quotes/excerpts (at least to me):
In 1993, she says, she became interested in the first century and the Jewish people. Rice recounts, "I remember thinking, 'This doesn't make sense. How did the Jews survive? People don't survive these kinds of things! Their cities [were] smashed. What really happened at the beginning of Christianity?' "
She read obsessively: John A. T. Robinson, Augustine, D. A. Carson, Jacob Neusner, Luke Timothy Johnson, Craig L. Blomberg. Slowly, the historicity of the Resurrection became hard to deny. "Christianity achieved what it did," she says, "because Jesus rose from the dead."
Rice's questions intensified. "The Lord came looking for me," she remembers. "Everywhere I turned, I found images of the Lord and his love."
Rice spent a lot of time sitting cross-legged in her room, her back to the bookcase, surrounded with books. Eventually, she says, "I read myself right back into faith."
As she researched the New Testament, Rice was particularly impressed by N. T. Wright, the prolific bishop of Durham and the author of The Resurrection of the Son of God.
"I was blown away by the fact that he accommodated all the skeptics and did it with generosity," Rice says. "He referenced their books and arguments and answered in his own brilliant, patient way and still maintained that Jesus rose from the dead. I had dreamed of this sort of scholarship."
Last summer, Knopf, her publisher, stunned the literary world with its announcement of Rice's newest volume: Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, a novel about Jesus' life at age 7.
"This book means more to me than anything I've ever done," Rice told Christianity Today from her home in La Jolla, California. "I'm not offering agnostic explanations. He is real. He worked miracles. He is the Son of God! And there is so much more to write."
Of particular note to me was her mention of NT Wright, one of my favorite scholars. Indeed, a skeptic must be quite careful when studying the 1st Century.