Learning on Life?s Way: Remembering and Reflecting by a Teller of Tall Tales

Born into a pack of religiously divided siblings with a devout mother and an agnostic father, Sponheim finds the triad of faith/unfaith/many faiths central in telling the tall tale of God. Through his half-century of teaching and writing, the doctrine of creation becomes decisive for Sponheim, featuring a God who has a “very big operation going in this world.” Drawing on such diverse mentors as Søren Kierkegaard, Alfred North Whitehead, and feminist authors, he offers a deeply relational conception of the “tallness,” the height, humankind seeks. In his own family he sees God’s operation in such diverse worlds as music, science, and athletics. Personally, he has witnessed the saving work of the Creator in such worldly affairs as inner city social change programs, a domestic abuse project, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Without compromising a present-time “ethic of risk,” he closes with an eschatological exploration, asking "What future would do, if it were true?" And "Is it true?”

Paul R. Sponheim is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul. He is the author of nine previous books and co-author of Christian Dogmatics.