From the Beginning to Baptism Scientific and Sacred Stories of Water, Oil, and Fire

Linda Gibler has written an inventive and wonderful exploration of the elements of baptism: water, oil, and fire. There are wonderful discoveries to be gained each step of the way. I am eager to use this book in classes. Gibler's insights will enrich preaching as well as the celebration of the sacraments. The book would also be useful in Sunday School classes and will be of special interest to those exploring the relationship of science and faith.

For those who preach and teach about baptism, Gibler's book is a rich source of materials, scientific and sacred, for opening awareness, inspiring gratitude and awe, and deepening faith.

Poetic, cosmological, theological, and liturgical sensibilities (and highly informed ones, at that) collude in From the Beginning to Baptism: Scientific and Sacred Stories of Water, Oil, and Fire. Linda Gibler's extensive meditations on the physical elements of water, oil, and fire sacramentalized in Catholic baptismal have a 13.7 billion year stretch-reach. There's a lot of learning at work here. It's just hugely engaging reading, and competent liturgical theology deserves as much!

Gibler provides a cutting-edge understanding of sacramentality in which theology and science are fully integrated. Smoothly written and powerfully engaging, the book deftly covers new ground while synthesizing traditional sources, previous studies and the latest scientific findings. The magnificent Teilhardian vision of a cosmocentric sacramentality that emerges is simply stunning.

Gibler provides us with a rare integration of cosmology and sacramentality. Grounded in a theology of creation, the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, as well as the science behind the new universe story, she approaches her study of the Sacrament of Baptism through biblical, patristic, and cosmic insights into water, oil, and fire. The sacrament comes alive in both its human and cosmic dimensions. Her work reflects ways in which science, theology, and spirituality can all complement each other. It is truly a cosmocentric sacramental spirituality.

Linda Gibler's readable work is both original and consequential. I know of no other work that attempts to provide such a carefully developed bridge between contemporary cosmological and scientific understandings of nature on the one hand, and sacramentality as liturgically understood on the other. Highly recommended.