The Divine Embrace

Robert Webber’s newest book in the Ancient-Future series is entitled “The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life”. Although I have never read any of Mr. Webber’s work before, I was interested in this title because of the subject – passionate spirituality. This is one of the 10 Indicators of a healthy church within the EFCA. I have always been a fan of Eugene Peterson as well, who often writes about spirituality.

I did not like the book. For a book talking about passionate spirituality, there was just dry academia. I like dry academia – but not in a book which I expect to read, discover & encounter passionate spirituality. I found myself bored right after the opening story.

Mr. Webber breaks his book up into two parts. The first part is entitled “The Crisis – How Spirituality became separated from the Divine Embrace.” This section takes the reader through a historical overview of spirituality from the time of Jesus to the present. The second part, entitled “The Challenge – Returning Spirituality to the Divine Embrace”, tells the Gospel story & tries to weave it into our own.

If you have interest in passionate spirituality, I would say this is a book to flip through & be aware of, but a better resource is a talk that the EFCA National Ministries director, Fritz Dale gave at the 2006 National Leadership Conference. Mr. Dale interacts with Scripture, Eugene Peterson & presents some of his owns learning on the subject.

You can see more about The Divine Embrace here.

Pick up a copy of Fritz Dale’s talk from Leadership Conference here.