J. Todd Billings. Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018. 217 pp. $20, hardcover.
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past.
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last,
Was Time long past.
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past:
And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast
Which made us wish it yet might last—
That Time long past.
There is regret, almost remorse,
For Time long past.
‘Tis like a child’s belovèd corse
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.“The Long Past,” Percy Bysshe Shelley
Though it is probably less of a unified movement than an ethos, the project of theological retrieval has increasingly featured in scholarship and the church over the last few decades. Whether in search of something solid and enduring amidst the fads and chaos of liquid modernity, disaffected with America’s consumeristic pop religiosity, or in search of historic resources to reform decadent, weak, or corrupt institutions today, a number of people have become interested in recovering wisdom and practices from the church’s past that have either been forgotten, distorted, or misunderstood and unnecessarily rejected.
Login to read more
Sign in or create a free account to access Subscriber-only content.
Topics:
