Read a Sample: The Edge of Words by Rowan Williams

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‘The most gifted Anglican priest of his generation’ Goodreads The former Archbishop of Canterbury and now Master of Magdalene College Cambridge, Dr Rowan Williams has published a number of books including The Wound of Knowledge, Lost Icons and Faith in the Public Square, his last

‘Impressive, thought-provoking’ Sunday Times ‘Brilliant and subtle’ Church Times

book as Archbishop.

www.bloomsbury.com Author photograph: Getty images Front cover image: ‘Interior with a Young Man Reading’, Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1898. Reproduced by kind permission of The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark Jacket design by Steve Leard

ROWAN WILLIAMS the EDGE of WOR DS

PRAISE FOR FAITH IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

T

he Edge of Words is Rowan Williams’ first major book since standing down as

Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012. Invited to give the prestigious 2013 Gifford Lectures, Dr Williams has produced a scholarly but eminently accessible account of the possibilities of speaking about God – taking as his point of departure a series of reflections on the way we use language itself. Williams enters into dialogue with a wide range of thinkers, from experts in the treatment of autistic conditions to thinkers ancient and modern – philosophers of religion, language and science such as Augustine, Wittgenstein, Rorty, Mary Hesse and many others. He also engages with a variety of writers of poetry and fiction, exploring the strange behaviour of words ‘under pressure’, when used in metaphor, fantasy and paradox – and in the framing of silence. Our speech, Williams argues, is never a simple matter of cause and effect, or even of descriptive accuracy, but opens out on to all sorts of unexpected horizons that compel us to think about the nature of freedom and imagination, and help us to see where and how people are driven to refer to the divine.

£20.00

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