Indeed, straight-line power (“use the force you need to get the result you want”) is responsible for almost everything that happens in the world. With it, you can lift the spaghetti from the plate to your mouth, wipe the sauce off your slacks, carry them to the dry cleaners, and perhaps even make enough money to ransom them back. “Direct, straight-line, intervening power does, of course, have many uses. The first few come from Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus which is absolutely indispensable for anyone interested in Jesus’ parables, and the ones south of Hoff’s waist are from Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace, a “theological novel” of sorts. Full of vivid imagery, tons of levity, refreshingly un-whitewashed prose, his work is absurdly quotable, as the excerpts below attest. Indeed, his gift for words was virtually unmatched by anyone writing about religion in the past 50 years, let alone those writing about unadulterated, 200 proof Gospel Christianity (law and grace, death and resurrection, etc). The man possessed the sort of creative mind that one almost never sees in a theologian. Robert Farrar Capon was a key figure for us at Mbird, and not just because he was an Episcopalian with a profound appreciation of God’s Grace and a great sense of humor (though that certainly helps).
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