Face to Face

Like falling in love, this book argues that a relationship with God begins with surprise, proceeds with discovery, and shapes a life that comes to share a story of love. This book does not describe God, but pursues the nature of personally relating with the triune God. Consequently, it also engages how we relate with humans made in God's image. We finish the Face-to-Face series with this most mysterious and fulfilling encounter--a personal engagement with the Relational God, known as a community of persons who invite us to share in their life. ""This book builds an important bridge between a profoundly constructive but difficult theological tradition and attendant approach to knowing, and the rest of the church that so needs this counsel but that usually finds it obscure, if it finds it at all. And across this bridge flows a great deal of warm-hearted and life-giving wisdom."" --Douglas Campbell, Duke University ""Through personal stories, anecdotes, and experiences, not to mention his years of theological learning, Folsom paints pictures in words and invites his readers into a new reality, one far grander and more intoxicating than they could possibly imagine. This is theology, but not like your fathers knew it."" --Myk Habets, Dean of Faculty, Head of Carey Graduate School, Lecturer in Systematic Theology, Carey Baptist College, New Zealand ""Folsom encourages us to reach beyond the individualistic and consumeristic inheritance of modernism and, instead, to embrace the complex mystery of being persons in community. His invitation is to attune ourselves to the fullness of the love of the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. This love will spill into our everyday lives, if only we have the ears to hear the music of God's ever expanding love."" --Chelle Stearns, Associate Professor of Theology, The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology ""With lyrical clarity and deep insight, Marty Folsom invites us to live into the rich mystery of the interrelatedness of all of life--life that flows from, and is sustained by, the Triune God, whose very being is self-giving love. I hope that many will read this book and enter into this wondrous, face-to-face approach to life for which we were created."" --Kerry Dearborn, author of Drinking from the Wells of New Creation Marty Folsom (PhD, Otago, New Zealand) is the Executive Director of the Pacific Association for Theological Studies. He has taught theology in the Seattle area for over twenty years. He is also a popular speaker on relational themes. This book, Sharing God's Life, completes his Face to Face trilogy: Missing Love (2013), Discovering Relational (2014).