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DANIEL CANDEL BORMANN
University of Alcalá
Abstract
This article
analyses and evaluates from a Catholic perspective the
notion of Christianity Julian Barnes articulates in
Nothing to Be Frightened of, his latest book. The
article first presents the picture of Christianity Barnes
offers. It then provides theological arguments to show that
Barnes’s picture is in crucial terms not a Christian one,
e.g. as regards the relationship between body and soul,
listening and thinking, and the Old and New Testament God. A
further argument, the notion of God as father, leads to a
comparison of a Christian account of successful filio-parental
relationships with Barnes’s description of such relations in
Nothing to Be Frightened of. The article argues that
Barnes’s filio-parental experience suggests his views about
God are rooted in personal experience, or in experience as
constructed in Nothing to Be Frightened of. The
article closes by showing some of the consequences of
Barnes’s filio-parental experience in Nothing to Be
Frightened of.
Keywords:
Nothing to Be Frightened of, Catholicism,
Christianity, Aristotle, soul and body, faith, listening and
thinking, Old and New Testament, filio-parental experience
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