Do You Now Believe?

""Can anything good come from Nazareth?"" Questions by their very nature are provocative: they provoke answers. Questions emerge from the desires of the human spirit. Questions lead to insight into the new, but those insights can be blocked by preconceptions that obscure present experience, including experience of the divine presence. At the same time, human beings cannot make progress in understanding without some amount of belief, which liberates understanding. Jesus faced these concerns in the people around him, and we face them in ourselves today. By examining the role of questions in the Gospels of Mark and John, we see Jesus's capacity to orient his listeners in their search for meaning, and thus cultivate in ourselves a willingness to believe what we have inherited as well as an openness to new experience, its call to reinterpret beliefs and, if necessary, to change. ""In this wide-ranging and provocative study, Professor Hedrick explores the transformative role of questioning, direct and indirect, in the Gospels of Mark and John in establishing 'reasonable faith' that leads to a 'new way of seeing and acting in the world.'Do You Now Believe? deserves a place on the shelves, and in the thinking, of Scripture scholars and theologians alike."" --Mikeal C. Parsons, Professor and Macon Chair in Religion, Baylor University ""With academic clarity coupled with awareness of the pastoral sensitivity of Jesus, Hedrick unmasks 'blind faith' as a barrier to spiritual transformation. Her insights come from the crucible of years of encounters with students who fear that questions about Jesus will undermine the integrity of dogma concerning Jesus. By examining questions Jesus asks persons around him as well as questions posed to him in the gospels of Mark and John, Hedrick invites readers to encounter the presence of divine power in his words and actions. This encounter elicits an understanding of Jesus that is a threshold to personal transformation. Hedrick's invitation to encounter Jesus reminds me of an experience of Julian of Norwich: 'He showed to my understanding, in part, the blessed Godhead, stirring then the pure soul to understand.'"" --David Keller, retired Adjunct Professor of Ascetical Theology, General Theological Seminary, New York City Pamela Hedrick is a member of the faculty in online theology programs at Saint Joseph's College in Standish, Maine.