Tomáš Halík is a Czech Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, and scholar. He is a professor of sociology at Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish by St. Salvator Church in Prague, president of the Czech Christian Academy, and a winner of the Templeton Prize. His books, which are bestsellers in his own country, have been translated into nineteen languages and have received several literary prizes. He is the author of numerous books, including From the Underground Church to Freedom (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019).
Gerald Turner has translated numerous authors from Czechoslovakia, including Václav Havel, Ivan Klíma, and Ludvík Vaculík, among others. He received the US PEN Translation Award in 2004.
"Tomáš Halík recovers the old insight of the church fathers that
faith should be seen as a journey rather than a fixed dwelling. His
meditation on this is full of fresh insights that renew old truths
and help us make surprising, biblical sense of our bafflement
before the existential issues of faith. This is a book for our
age." —Charles Taylor, emeritus, McGill University
"Seldom have I read a book that prompted me to think about the
mystery of God's love in such surprising and delightful new ways.
By turns profound, challenging, and unsettling, Tomáš Halík's new
book is also a rarity in theological and spiritual discourse in
that it is beautifully written, clearly articulated, and
wonderfully inviting." —James Martin, S.J., author of Jesus: A
Pilgrimage
"In this luminous book, Tomáš Halík embodies St. Paul’s description
of love—as patient, as kind, as bearing and enduring all things—in
providing wise and gentle accompaniment to all those, believers and
nonbelievers alike, who are seekers of transcendence in our
perplexing times. In his exploration of the meaning of love of God
and love of one’s enemy, he mines insights not only from familiar
figures such as Eckhart, Kierkegaard, and Levinas, but from
surprising sources including Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. I Want
You to Be adds to a body of work in which Halík has responded to
Charles Taylor’s historical-sociological-philosophical analysis of
our 'secular age' with his own penetrating theological, spiritual,
and psychological diagnosis of the conditions of post-secularity."
—William A. Barbieri, Catholic University of America
“Tomáš Halík is building a broad community of readers in Europe,
between various religions, disciplines, cultures, and nations. He
writes at a level higher than our best spiritual writers but does
not write as an academic theologian despite the fact that he knows
that kind of literature well. Halík's message of religious
tolerance and understanding, against the background of European
secularization, reflects a new voice for an American audience.”
—Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation
“I think of Tomáš Halík as I think of C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton,
and Henri Nouwen—a rare combination of intellect along with an
uncommon commitment never to betray the gene that unites us all as
children of God.” —Doris Donnelly, John Carroll University
"Fluently translated by Gerald Turner, Halík's book is a
masterfully written meditation on love, the God of love, and the
implications that the love of God has for the Christian life.
Eschewing easy or simplistic answers to the questions it poses, it
seeks to shake believers from complacency and to instill in them an
attitude of greater openness to the world and to the God who is its
ground of being." —Catholic Library World
"A one-time member of the Czech underground and advisor to Václav
Havel, Halík explores the theological understandings of love,
grounding his discussion in scholarship yet writing in a style that
is accessible to nonspecialists. . . . With this important book
Halík joins the conversation taken up by Charles Taylor in A
Secular Age and Martha Nussbaum in Political Emotions: Why Love
Matters for Justice. In addition to exploring the concept of love,
Halík weaves important autobiographical elements that add personal
depth to the conversation." —Choice
"In reading this fine book, I have come to see [Halík] as a
theologian for Friends (Quakers). . . . I Want You to Be is all
about love—not the love of adolescent infatuation or romantic
fiction, not the love of the narcissist, nor the love of
possessions or their acquisition—the deep love in which the ego is
transcended and we come into the power that unites without
destroying or appropriating. . . . Halík carries the reader gently
and surely through reflections and meditations toward this end,
yielding no final answers (as he warns in the first chapter) but
only an “interim report” of his own journey. It is well worth
accompanying him." —Friends Journal
"Seeking to apply his understanding of love in beneficial ways for
our culture, Halík offers a diagnosis of our times throughout this
book, rather than in a designated section. Echoing Teilhard de
Chardin’s assertion that love alone can unify all without
destruction, Halík sees the need for a fundamental, unifying
spiritual vision in the West, particularly in Europe." —Reading
Religion
"What we have here is not so much prayer but what I have
experienced as a profound, beautifully expressed, and translated
propaedeutic to prayer. For, in my prayerful reading of it . . . I
found it to be an extraordinarily 'pure'/unadulerated example of
theologia secunda as, e.g., distinguished from theologia prima."
—Worship
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