A paperback edition of this well-known study.

Sets thinking and preaching about atonement in new directions. ""Dr. Young surveys the different types of ideas of sacrifice current in the ancient world, and indicates both their limitations and lasting force. She shows what early Christianity made of the idea of Christ's sacrifice and discusses the spiritual sacrifice it demanded of Christians. A perceptive treatment of the different theories of atonement follows and the continuing moral force of the idea of sacrifice is illustrated and defended."" --Journal of Theological Studies ""This happy blend of understanding of the past with...

Does God act in the world? Does he affect what happens to us in the varied experiences of our daily life? If so, in what ways and by what means? In an age when so many of the particular cases in which communities or individuals find themselves led to speak of God's acting prove to be cases which appear to others both morally and spiritually unacceptable, we need to give thought to the deeper underlying issue. Can God be said to act in the world at all? Does God even exist? The nature of God's action is clearly of the utmost importance for Christians, because they claim that God does act in...

This book is a lucid examination of the relation between faith and reason in light of the varied forms assumed by Christianity in the past as well as in the present. The backdrop for the examination is change--change in theology, church life, and society itself--and the purpose of the examination is to recall the Christian community to its true function as a unifying force in the world. In an effort to enlighten our future, Wiles shows how ""the concept of God as Spirit points toward a way of understanding God that does substantial justice both to the main insights of traditional faith and to...

Maurice Wiles shows that it doesn't require a vast tome to present a penetrating challenge to traditional doctrinal positions . . . The great merit of this important study is that it both highlights the need for massive rethinking of the self-understanding of the Christian faith and challenges those who engage in such rethinking to pay strict attention to what the evidence demands. Doctrine done this way may replace some of the richness of imaginative speculation with a welcome "freedom from certain inevitably fruitless and frustrating lines of enquiry." This book is important. It deserves to...