Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn, by Paul Toscano
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Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn, by Paul Toscano
Read and Download Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn, by Paul Toscano
In this supernatural courtroom drama, an agnostic attorney has a near-death experience in which Christ appears to him and hires him as defense counsel in a criminal trial brought by the devil. Jesus has been charged with the crimes of blasphemy and of atrocities against humanity.
Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn, by Paul Toscano - Amazon Sales Rank: #3169192 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .73" w x 5.00" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 292 pages
Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn, by Paul Toscano About the Author Paul Toscano is a practicing attorney in Utah and the author of The Eyes of Logres and The Oracles at Painted Mesa (the first two books of his trilogy The Last Pendragons) as wells al works of non-fiction including: The Sanctity of Dissent, The Sacrament of Doubt, Road to Exile: Memoir of a Mormon Excommunicant, and Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology (co-authored with his wife Margaret Merrill Toscano).
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. A Refreshingly Original Theodicy By Jeremiah Stoddard Paul Toscano's "Christ on Trial: An Easter Hymn" is a refreshingly original take on the nature of God and our relationship to Him, although it starts out like any mediocre inspirational Christian literature. The protagonist, Cliff Harward, is a lawyer with neither a spectacular career nor much of an interest in religious matters. After a near-death experience and a visit from Jesus Christ, however, his spiritual life is turned upside-down as he has to prepare to defend God in court against charges brought by the Devil.The trial is where the story starts to get interesting, and Toscano provides an interesting theodicy along with some unique ideas about the nature of God and our relation to Him. This book may be upsetting to the stalwart conservative Christian who's God is interested in saving only stalwart conservative Christians. Even the liberals might not appreciate a very moderate Christ; A God that saves both gays and homophobes might just piss everybody off! I admittedly have an affinity for Jesus the pacifist, but Toscano's Jesus doesn't insist that everyone be like me. On the other hand, for the Christian who can't grasp how a benevolent God can cast seemingly good people of other faiths down to an eternal hell, the Mormon who can't find the heart to embrace proposition 8, the Woman who feels second-class under a male God, or anyone who's ever played the role of misfit in spiritual things, this book may be just what the doctor ordered.Toscano presents a very human God - one who accepts responsibility for his role in our suffering, and suffers right alongside us. He presents a God that doesn't hate gays, atheists, women who've had abortions, or any other person that we may hate. Indeed his book's eschatology is almost that of a Christian Universalism - those who truly love evil "are very few," and as for the rest, he takes responsibility alongside them for their acts. "That's why I suffer with each of them and for each of them," Jesus says in the book. Everyone lives in their own style of heaven - at times one that might seem like a hell to the rest of us - until they are ready to progress to a more real, perfect heaven - that is, everyone except the very few who don't want immortality at all, and presumably dissolve into nonexistence in a David Eddings-esque manner.Toscano offers no straw-man here. Satan is persuasive and sounds very reasonable in the story. Even Jesus doesn't appear to blame anyone for believing his arguments. The prosecution and its witnesses allow none of the weak and overused "evil is absence of God"-type arguments. God must, and does, accept that the results of His creation are His responsibility. As with any theodicy, the reader must ultimately decide for himself whether or not he's persuaded by it.Overall, the storytelling is interesting enough that I didn't put the book down out of boredom. In fact, some of the twists in the storyline were quite engaging. What happened to Cliff's brother-in-law, Dave? And who is that mysterious hooded judge? The answers are somewhat surprising. The literary value would be somewhere around Bellamy's "Looking Backward" - perhaps not great literature, but an interesting read nonetheless. The ideas presented in the story are the real treasure. If you're yearning for knowledge about the character of God, and the traditional evangelical theology just hasn't been satisfactory, you could do worse than spend five bucks on this book. At the very least it'll give you some new concepts to explore. As mentioned, some of Toscano's ideas might not find wide acceptance among today's stubborn American Christians, but his Christ is a more approachable God - one who, unlike mainstream Christianity's Christ, is almost recognizable as someone who would teach the Sermon on the Mount...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. This book came highly recommended from a respected friend By Danster This book came highly recommended from a respected friend. I read the Kindle version which is not as finished, I'm told, as the hard copy print.The first person narrator, Cliff, is visited by Christ and asked to represent Christ in a trial where Satan has brought a couple reasonable charges against Jesus. Cliff has never felt very successful as an attorney and becomes enthusiastic about his opportunity to take on a big case.I was unsure whether this read would be a chore. However, when I read Christ's first conversation with Cliff, I became hopeful. Here are a few examples of their first interaction:“Cliff,” he said, “if I ignored Satan, if I insulated myself from his accusations, I’d begin to become what he says I am. The more I ignored him, the more his lies about me would cease to be lies. That’s what he wants.”A defensible Christ was interesting. Then, there's one of Satan's reasonable charges:“Satan claims it’s blasphemous for me to put myself higher than the law and to encourage the worship of myself as a person.”The narrator's voice was charming:“I knew that I was talking face to face with God. It should have been a staggering moment. But I didn’t stagger. I realize now that he didn’t let me.”And Toscano's jab at angelic help was amusing:“’Will I get the help of-er-ah-.’ I didn’t know exactly how to ask this. ‘Can I count on the help of …?’‘Angels?’ he said, catching my drift. ‘No. I’m afraid you would find them unreliable and bit trying.’I looked at him. ‘Really?’ I said.‘Really’ he said.”That's when I started to believe I might be reading something important. Then, there's this interaction:“My partner Rick and I were having lunch. I was feeling depressed. At another table sat eight young guys from the university. We could hear them talking excitedly about some plan to make big bucks. They looked lean and eager, as full of their own future as I had been back in the spring of 1963. I turned to Rick and asked, ‘Why do I hate those guys over there?’‘You don’t hate them,’ he said. ‘You hate what they believe in.’‘Oh yeah? And what’s that?’ I asked.‘The American Dream: fame, money, power, and sex,’ said Rick digging into his fried chicken.‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But what do I believe in?’‘The same,’ he said.‘Really?’ I said testily. ‘Well then, how come they’re so happy, and I’m not?’Rick snickered: ‘They don’t know yet it’s just a dream.’”This is when I knew this book had soul. Its poetic and Toscano has a developed aesthetic. That's when I actually started feeling a thrill that we Mormons might finally have our own great book. I heard some time ago from Oliver DeMille that every nation has a book which is the foundation of their culture. The Italians, Macchiavelli, the Spanish Cervantes, the English Shakespeare, the Americans Twain and Melville. I think of the American Jews with Chiam Potok and I wished our people, American Mormons, would produce an author with some poetry. There were early signs in my reading that Toscano might provide us such a book.Toscano was going to resurrect a dying dogma by breathing his insightful christology into an otherwise hopeless set of rules and laws. In his words:“Jesus is the law because he’s perfect, I thought. He is the standard because he’s perfectly loving, perfectly just, perfectly merciful, perfectly intelligent. All these perfect attributes add up to complete perfection. All laws-even the laws in the holy books-are attempts to capture in words these perfections. But because humans and human language are imperfect, these laws can only give us a partial, abstract, and incomplete idea of his perfect attributes. The reason why there is no law above God is because God is perfect, and all law-all real, true good, and valid law-is derived from him and constitutes the verbal expression of his perfections. That is why God is not only the lawgiver-in the sense that he gives the laws-but also the law because law is merely a way of describing his attributes.”He persuasively argues that we all miserably fail by worshipping the law because the law is simply an attempt to describe something better. He breathes life into worship because he condemns Pharisaic observation as idolotrous and doomed to fail. I have come to have high expectations of Toscano's theology. He doesn't disappoint here. However, I was unsure how Toscano's philosophical and theological arguments would translate to fiction. This is where Toscano has really impressed.On his first attempt, he wisely chose a first person narration which permits a much more intimate conversion story. Additionally, he uses a well established plot template (a trial) to manage tension and dramatize his arguments. However, unlike many novels wound only to argue philosophy, ie almost all dystopian lit, Ayn Rand novels, etc, Toscano is capable in some moments of high drama. Consider this dialogue, where George, a self-righteous, bigoted, bombastic salesman, changes from zealous overconfident believer into a disillusioned non-believer. His transition was a result of discovering his son was gay and his son's subsequent death. When asked who he blamed he said:“’God! Who else?’ cried George getting to his feet and pointing his finger at my client. ‘He made my son what he was. He let me send him to Europe and into the army. He let him blab his problem. He let him get stabbed. He let him die. And he let me sit there alone in the hospital room looking at him, not feeling any love or anger or anything. And I haven’t felt anything since. He said if we lived right, things like this wouldn’t happen. But it was a goddam dirty lie. He makes promises and more promises, but he never keeps any! If I ran my business the way he runs his business, I wouldn’t have a penny to my name. It’s no wonder he’s in court. A guy who doesn’t keep his promises belongs in court. And for my part, I hope they hang the son-of-a-bitch!”George is an extremely familiar character to all of us within the tribe and Toscano raises the tension with a satisfying flair for drama in that above excerpt. Toscano's aesthetic, dramatic execution, and poetic moments are why his novel has taken its place at the top of Mormon literature. Sure, Orson Card, Sanderson, and Meyers all have accomplished superior commercial success. Yet, Toscano's fantasy provides a much more satisfying commentary on the state of our people and is presented with an infectious contempt for his targets.I liked his main character Cliff. He was paradoxical and self-effacing: “The prosecution had already taken the table to the right, leaving the left table for the defense. This would not have been my choice. But, of course, it makes no difference-except that, over the years, I’d developed feeling that I was more likely to win my cases from the right side. I wasn’t superstitious about it, though. Besides, I was wearing my lucky suit.”He was perceptive and opinionated:“The judiciary is the last remnant of feudalism. A good judge is an asset. A bad judge is a terror. And there are bad judges. Judgeships tend to draw men and women who like robes, flags, and people that say “yes, your honor,” and “may it please the court.” The isolation and prestige of the position can foster incompetence and arrogance-a bad mix in people with power. And the longer a person-even a good, well-meaning person-stays in office, the more incompetent he or she can become.”Toscano tackles difficult and diverse issues infecting Mormon culture. His Christ rolls his eyes at an exaggerated anxiety of sex:"I’m afraid, though, my words have been quoted more often to berate the young for their sexual fascination with each other than to chastise adults for their deliberate manipulation of each other through sexual means."And Toscano is ironic and at times comical. When Cliff ate lunch with his client he wondered:"I wondered whether we should say grace. I looked down at my plate a moment, then looked up and said: ‘Thanks for the lunch.’‘You’re welcome,’ he smiled. There was an awkward moment, and then he added: ‘Well, dig in.'"Christ on Trial is an imperfect book and part of my enthusiasm results from my relief that there is still a Mormon, an unrighteously exed Mormon, who wishes to participate in the conversation about our culture using higher literature to deliver the needed observations. As the greatest truths Christ taught were fictional parables, so Toscano carries the torch of speaking needed criticisms through fiction.May it be that our tribe embraces Toscano's Christ and cultivates a much needed aesthetic.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A Story That Makes You Think Long After You're Done Reading By Donovan Davisson Christ on Trial An Easter Hymn delivers an entertaining, thought-provoking and suspenseful story of a young couple whose lives, by a single experience, are transformed from the mundane to the extraordinary. Cliff Harward, a conflicted defense attorney is to defend Christ on charges of blasphemy and indifference. Satan, the plaintiff, is also the prosecutor. The trial dialogue presents questions that most people have thought about and because they can think no more, give up on the answer. Toscano presents food for thought that will spark within the reader this discussion, once again. There are few writers that can put into words how the reader feels about these subjects, but in his book does just that. Regardless of a person’s religious convictions and whether you agree or disagree with the thoughts expressed, this work will have great appeal.
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