Our Quest for God

In a wonderfully engaging manner, Neil Brown mines literature, the sciences, and the living tradition of faith to illuminate our present-day world, to identify its joys and hopes, as well as its griefs and anguish. Although the darkness of our world is menacing, Brown’s focus on ‘love’, ‘mystery’, and ‘presence’ encourages us to a renewed faith in the God who is source and fulfilment of our longings, as well as the heart of what unites us. Our Quest for God is an encouragement for all of us to trust the God who calls us beyond fear.

 Richard Lennan, Boston College – School of Theology and Ministry

 Presence and language are key themes in the search which is portrayed within Our Quest for God. Neil Brown’s deep knowledge and love of Scripture and his love of language and literature are evident in his intricate weaving together of Scripture, poetry, prose and drama into a narrative that seeks, as he says in his epilogue, to keep ‘the flame of belief in God alight in our times’.

 This book carefully, thoughtfully and respectfully critiques the arguments of the New Atheists, but its great strength comes from its conviction that beyond physical reality there is a human reality that must also heed the ‘deep-down intuitions of our hearts and souls’. It calls us to undertake a ‘journey’, heeding these intuitions, reflecting on them and testing them in the light of our individual and world context as we strive to be authentic in mind, heart and action. This is the spirituality to which we are called and it is founded on trust, leading to hope and faith.

 Sr Annette Cunliffe, Congregational Leader, Sisters of Charity

See also Believing in God

Author:

Neil Brown is a priest of the archdiocese of Sydney. He taught Christian ethics for over thirty years at the Catholic Institute of Sydney. His other books include Christians in a Pluralist Society and Spirit of the World. He is presently parish priest of St Anne's, Bondi Beach, Sydney.