not a reader

Challenging material

Revisado: 02-10-25

The text of this book was fascinating and helpful to my line of work. I will take a lot of what I learned with me. I have already recommended this book several times.

I will not, however, recommend the audible version. The narrator read the book with entirely too much subjective interpretation. Words like "tooootally, sooooo, maaaajor" and such were read as if he were channeling a teenage girl from 1985. Just read the words on the page. There are several other books this narrator has done for audible that I would like to listen to, but I can't do it again. Awful narration.

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Good, not groundbreaking

Revisado: 11-08-24

Overall a good book. I agree with the premise of the book and the seemingly endemic problem of one-sided church. However, I found the book to be more of a surface summary of the one-halved church. It didn’t lack offers of solutions, but I wouldn’t say they were substantive. Additionally, while I agree with the author’s view of shame, his explanation was not especially helpful especially if your church is not as mainstream American as what he describes. The book is good, but not great.

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Good, but…

Revisado: 11-26-23

Very helpful in terms of understanding the main point of the author. However, his characterization of many aspects of Christianity which are not part of the Orthodox Church were at times merely inaccurate and at other times unrecognizable from the way other Christians believe and live.

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Timless content delivered in an unlistenable mode

Revisado: 05-27-23

Athanasius is one the the most important Church Fathers and this is probably his greatest work. I was excited to listen to this work. But my excitement turned to frustration as this is one of the worst narrated books I have ever purchased from Audible. Amateurish doesn't sum it up. Words were repeatedly mispronounced and there didn't seem to be any familiarity with the text on the part of the narrator. It felt like he had been given a text and was told to read it aloud without any preparation. Painfully bad.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Almost

Revisado: 01-26-23

The text of the book is ok. There are better books on the subject. The narration is not a narration. It’s a dramatization and the accents chosen for various “characters” are puzzling and distracting from the content of the book.

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Exhausting

Revisado: 07-08-22

I appreciate the work put into this book and the skills of Metaxas, but my head is tired from the endless arguments. 10 years ago this would have seemed fresh, but today it is taxing and doesn't provide much new in this line of Christianity. At least not for me.

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Almost 5 star, but...

Revisado: 06-22-22

Coming from an Orthodox perspective, Constantinou's work provides an often unheard viewpoint in modern Evangelicalism. Her book is a great contribution to the Church's understanding of the Savior and paints an eloquent picture of the work of Christ. I can highly recommend her work with only one caveat. Her depiction of substitutionary atonement is a caricature at best and is barely recognizable to anyone with a deeper understanding of this atonement theory. I would say the same thing to my Reformed brethren who often provide inaccurate (and often deliberately flawed) depictions of Christus Victor or Moral Influence for example. At least for me, when I take the major atonement theories not as rivals but as complimentary, I find myself marveling all the more at God's gift to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth. I would have liked to see a more nuanced understanding from the book, but it seems to be a defense of the Orthodox view of the Cross so I'm probably blaming the book for being something it never intended to be. Still, from someone with Constantinou's credentials, I hoped for better. On a picky note, I had to listen to the book on 1.5 speed because the author read her own (very excellent) work at far too slow a speed as is comfortable for me. Overall though, this was well worth my time and I was greatly blessed by the book.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 02-23-22

I had high hopes for this book since I have read and enjoyed many of Beck’s other works. Perhaps I’m not part of the intended audience, but I found little to be of real help for me. I was expecting something along the lines of L’Engle’s Walking on Water. If you are someone who is new to enchantment this is a good starting point, if you’re further down the road this book will be lacking.

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Repetitive and horribly narrated

Revisado: 01-20-22

This is more a dramatization of a work of nonfiction than a narration. When the narrator made the creative choice to impersonate Reagan (kind of), it pretty much did me in. That was in the first 20 minutes and was an omen of the entire listening experience since he would make similarly questionable choices throughout. Almost unlistenable.

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As good a defense of God as there is

Revisado: 08-08-21

In the face of continuous revisions of God’s person by contemporary (and well meaning) theologians, this book reminds the reader of God’s otherness in a way that is both jarring and comforting.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas