Christ the Tiger

Book excerpt: This book is a reprint with revisions of one of Thomas Howard's earliest and most popular books. It is somewhat autobiographical, revealing the thoughts of a young man who has been seized by the love of Christ and, at first, sees dogmas and institutions as obscuring the terrible truth of God's love in Christ. But even at that earlier period, Howard showed his awareness that without those institutions there would be no way of encountering Christ the tiger. Howard is able to bring out the true vitality of what this faith is and should be, the radical nature of the Christian faith. This book powerfully presents who Christ is and what faith in him means. from 'Christ the Tiger': In the figure of Jesus we saw Immanuel, that is, God, that is, Love. It was a figure who, appearing so inauspiciously among us, broke up our secularist and our religious categories and beckoned us and judged us and damned us and saved us and exhibited to us a kind of life that participates in the indestructible. And it was a figure who announced the validity of our eternal effort to discover significance and beauty beyond inanition and horror by announcing to us the unthinkable: redemption.