Trust in an Age of Arrogance - Softcover

C. FitzSimons Allison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0718892364 ISBN 13: 9780718892364

Publisher: James Clarke and Co Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

God is in the dock. Shall we convict him or forgive him? Shall we replace the God of Scripture with another of our choosing, mock and deride him, or ignore him? Shall we replace revelation with the chaos of speculation? We perceive ourselves, rather than God, as the center of the world and this universal condition leads to conflict with others and with God. Maintaining our center causes cheating, lying, litigation, divorce, wars, genocide, and human misery. Western civilization is giving up trust in the promise of God's mercy, justice, and forgiveness and replacing it with trust in the goodness of man. Jesus warned us to beware the teaching of the Sadducees and Pharisees. The Sadducees, who denied hope of eternal life, are a rough equivalent of our modern day secularists with their religious trust that this world is all there is. Replacing God with trust in flawed human nature is a mark of arrogance that even pagans would have characterized as hubris evoking divine wrath. The Pharisee's yeast of self-righteousness is a natural condition of us all. Even when cleansed it reappears in every tradition rendering forgiveness and transformation a promise only for those who think they have earned and deserve it. Such a distortion of God's word is congenial to our self-as-center, but it robs us sinners of the justice and mercy of a loving God. Following Jesus's warning we have the opportunity to wipe away the Sadducee arrogance and the Pharisee self-righteousness and discover anew the supreme power and joy of the Christian faith.

About this title

Review:

'[The] arguments are presented with fervour and urgency, but this book is not a rant. It is the work of a scholar as well as a pastor ... This is in many ways an admirable and timely book, rooted in biblical teaching, and it should not be neglected ... Christian readers should heed its positive message'.
--Times, 9 December 2011

'This is a book which promises much. It is imaginative, scholarly and written with a lightness of touch which makes it accessible to the thinking Christian as well as to the academic. Its central theme is compelling and even prophetic. It turns on the idea of yeast and what happens when its limitless powers for life-giving fermentation are corrupted, when they are not channelled within the constraints of God's good purposes.' --Lorraine Cavanagh in Modern Believing, April 2012

About the Author:

C. FitzSimons Allison is in active retirement as the former Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina. He is the author of: Fear, Love and Worship (1962), The Rise of Moralism, (1966), Guilt, Anger and God (1972), The Cruelty of Heresy (1994).

About this edition

• Publisher: James Clarke and Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0718892364
• ISBN 13: 9780718892364
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 175