This is the fortieth anniversary edition of John Robinson's classic text. Honest to God is a bracing and engaging call to re-examine outdated and troublesome images of God.

What does it mean to profess the faith as North American Christians at the end of the second millennium? What is Christian theology as consciously crafted in light of the distinctive history, culture, and experience of North America? Hall marshalls doctrinal resources for a critical, creative response that stresses God's necessary involvement in an unfinished, dynamic, suffering world.

In these dialogues with doubt, Hall enters into an earnest search with a young inquirer a composite of undergraduates, graduates, clergy, working people, his own children who is on the edges of Christian faith. Half familiar with superficial aspects of Christianity, hopeful of there being greater depth than has been found so far, she or he is curious, insistent, looking for something to believe in but not ready to leap without good reason. Such a person is asking, "Why be Christian?" In a passionate and personal way, Hall probes fundamental religious questions and wrestles with the cogency of...

Professor Hall has written a major work on an agonizing subject, at once brilliant, comprehensive, and thought provoking.In contrast to many writers who gloss over one or the other, Dr. Hall is true both to the reality of suffering and to the affirmation that God creates, sustains, and redeems.Creative is his view that certain aspects of what we call suffering -- loneliness, experience of limits, temptation, anxiety -- are necessary parts of God's good creation. These he distinguishes from suffering after the fall, the tragic dimension of life.Unique is his structure: creation-suffering as...