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.

Ancient heresies have modern expressions that influence our churches and culture, creating cruel dilemmas for today s Christian in the form of error, sin, and various distortions on orthodox faith. In Cruelty of Heresy, Bishop Allison captures the drama and relevance of the Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries and shows how the remarkable achievements of these early struggles provide valuable guidelines for believers today. "

Description: ""McGill has the power to make ideas, concepts, differing perspectives vivid--to 'in-flesh' them. . . .Then comes the ""switch"" or reversal or inversion empowered by the very confrontation McGill has arranged. . . . McGill leaves only the demonic as the object of our worship. Just when we supposed that he was about to come to the defense of this ""world-governing, background God,"" he dismisses such a God, leaving us with the demonic, leaving us room to affirm our own doubts and perplexities, leaving us with a harsher formulation than we might have ventured, leaving us attentive to what he is going to do next and to where he is going to lead us. Because by now we are following him."" --From the ""Introduction."" Endorsements: One of Art McGill's favorite passages from the Gospel of John (12:24) notes that a grain of wheat becomes fruitful not when it is on the stalk but when it falls to the ground and dies. The stalk of wheat must expend itself in letting a new crop flourish. Nourishment rather than domination described McGill's sense of the Christian life. It is the theme of this collection of his writings on the New God, New Death, and New Life. David Cain has admirably, painstakingly, and patiently expended himself in making McGill's work available for our tasting and nourishment. --William F. May, Testing the National Covenant: Fears and Appetites in American Politics About the Contributor(s): Arthur C. McGill was the Bussey Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School. A distinguished philosopher and theologian, he also taught at Amherst College, Wesleyan University, and Princeton University. David Cain is Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia, and minister in the United Church of Christ. He is editor of Sermons of Arthur C. McGill, (Cascade Books, 2007), and author and photographer of An Evocation of Kierkegaard / En Fremkaldelse af Kierkegaard (1997).

The Reformation swept across Europe with a God-glorifying gospel of grace. Now the doctrine of grace cherished and proclaimed by the Reformers is under renewed assault from an unexpected place--the evangelical church itself.

With the help of several theologians, Gary L. W. Johnson and Guy P. Waters trace the background and development of two seemingly disparate movements that have surfaced within the contemporary church-the New Perspective(s) on Paul and the Federal Vision-and how they corrupt the truth of salvation by faith alone. By regaining a focus on the doctrine of grace, pastors, seminarians, and future leaders can regain the cohesion, coherence, and direction to truly build the church to withstand the attacks of false and empty doctrines.

Guilt, Anger & God: The Patterns of Our Discontents 1-57383-262-6 C. FitzSimons Allison 164 pp. Drawing from what perceptive non-Christians such as Freud, D.H. Lawrence, Reich and Marcuse have said about the human condition, Allison examines four contemporary patterns of the discontents of modern humanity-Anger, Disesteem, Guilt and Death. Believing that Christianity has been hurt as much by its friends as by its enemies, with deep pastoral concern Allison addresses the anguish many Christians feel today. He then discusses the gospel and its timeless message to our discontents. Skeptics, both within and outside the Church who hunger for more than "bread alone" will find this book an occasion for delightful surprises. "This is one of the most stimulating and evocative book I have read for some time. It is by no means the old psychological/theological witches' brew but really relates Christian doctrine to current and future questions about our human destiny."-David H. C. Read Dr. Allison is retired Bishop of South Carolina. His other books include The Rise of Moralism and Guilt, Love and Worship.

During the seventeenth century, a remarkable change took place in Anglican theology. FitzSimons Allison describes a unique consensus that emerged in the century's early years through the labors of such seminal theologians as Hooker, Andrewes, Donne, and Davanant. Their difficult task was to outline an English theology to be distinguished from Trent on the one hand, and the increasingly aggressive Reformed continental theologies on the other. That they managed a clear, creative, and comprehensive outlook while avoiding the excesses of Roman and Puritan theologies is no small accomplishment. With the later Carolines, notably Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter, there arose a theology whose generating principle was morality, quite unlike their immediate predecessors. This decisive transition, Allison argues, led to the Deism of the eighteenth century, and secularism of the twentieth. First published in 1966, this eloquent and level study provides a basis for understanding many modern dilemmas. The Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison is retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. His other books include Guilt, Anger, and God and Fear, Love, and Worship.