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Book Review: Theology and Sanity, Francis J. Sheed

I was given this book by a Roman Catholic friend of mine once he discovered that I was in a Trinitarian class at Dallas Seminary. I found it to be very interesting  and was written how I suspect C.S. Lewis would have written; had he been Catholic. The style is very philosophical and challenging although many illustrations are given to help communicate exactly what Sheed is communicating.  Unfortunately for myself; the audience being targeted is exclusively Roman Catholic and unwarranted assumptions (at least from my perspective) are commonly made. While several of the arguments rest on dogmatic beliefs, (For an example, Sheed claims that the concept of a 'community of faith' relies on the infallibility of the Catholic Church’s teaching.) often times the arguments are helpful for viewing Protestantism through another lens. I found this book to be a helpful supplement to my Trinitarian class in that it gave me several technical, weighty arguments to wrestle with. (Some aligning with and others contradicting an evangelical perspective)  two (not surprising) issues I had were the few passages that clearly did not originate from NA27 (for an example, see Sheed’s treatment of John 17:21) and a very Catholic “sensus-plenior” approach to interpreting scripture. 

Overall, I found this book to be a helpful perspective especially relating to anthropology, trinitarian theology and soteriology. While I would not recommend it as a quick read, the writing style is more accessible than most and the arguments are simply presented.

2.5 dogmatic statements out of 5

-Yates