The Offering of Man

The Christian religion is the religion of the Incarnation: God fully in man, and man fully in God. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ was exactly that, it is our divine business to be fully human by being brought into the closest possible relationship God--a relationship allowed only by the Incarnation. There must be a divine-human blend; we dare not take one without the other. We cannot be truly man without God and his church; we cannot be truly God's by offering him only part of our humanity. We fail to offer our full selves to God by making our religion exclusively intellectual, exclusively spiritual, exclusively moral, exclusively emotional, or exclusively physical. If we want the grace of God to bear upon our whole lives and upon the world, life in its wholeness must be offered to God--by worship, by prayer and meditation, by study, by obedience, by charity, by peace, and in Christ. There must be doctrinal certainty, ecclesiastical authority, and supernatural orientation. We must know the Truth, learn the Way, and lead the Life; one, or two, without the other(s) invites damnation.

Harry Blamires is one of America's best-known English authors; his educational, theological, and fictional works have brought him acclaim in all three fields, both in the USA and England. People who run after human gods of current fashion find him irksome because he insists on the value and necessity of obedience, loyalty, integrity, authority, and honesty, and above all of being Christian--really Christian. Like prophets of old, he cries out against much that passes for Christianity today. He never fails to get to the heart of things, and always has something forceful to say--if only to frighten his readers closer to God. Harry Blamires is the former Dean of Arts and Sciences at King Alfred's College, Winchester.