A scholarly review of early Christian history and its policies against heresy and lessons for today’s church leaders and reformers 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 The Cruelty of Heresy, Bishop C. FitzSimons 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. “Bishop Allison has combined a lifetime of scholarship and pastoral experience in this remarkable, readable work. . . . He vividly describes how the two human tendencies toward self-centeredness and escape from the difficulties of life—both very popular today—always distort the gospel. . . . Invaluable reading for any minister of the gospel, those who are preparing for Christian ministry, and all who seek a deeper understanding of authentic Christian orthodoxy.”—Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago (1982–1996)
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.
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.
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.
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