This volume brings together three bracingly original theological works by Robert Farrar Capon: An Offering of Uncles (1967), The Third Peacock (1971), and Hunting the Divine Fox (1974). The author, an Episcopal priest and freelance writer on food, stands in a small circle of serious and spunky defenders of Christianity who would like the faithful to emphasize joy, creativity, and imagination over dogma, pietism, and world-weariness. Capon has been tilling these fields for many years with more than 20 books to his credit. In these pages, he assesses the meaning of the priesthood of humanity, examines the knotty problem of good and evil, and takes a hard look at images in Christian faith. To read Capon's words is like sitting at a table with a charming host who loves life and relishes surprises.
The author asserts that a major challenge for believers is to honor the Mystery of God. He calls this milieu our true home. But over the centuries our natural propensity has come to the fore: "to welsh on the Mystery, to take it, reduce it to a plausibility, to equate it with morality, philosophy or religion." Capon feels these tendencies must be fought. By overspiritualizing the Bible, making Jesus into some kind of Superman "who never once touches Lois Lane" and viewing our bodies as "the nasty old physical cocoon in which the beautiful butterfly of the soul is imprisoned," we have betrayed the Mystery of the revelation. We have verbally abused reality and given the religious imagination a bad name. These tendencies, says Capon, must be resisted by men and women of faith.
