Bad theology and self-help

Almost from the beginning of this volume, we have been guided by the biblical picture of human nature, so well understood by the great literary writers and so much resisted by today’s purveyors of self-help. The biblical figure of “Adam” personifies the ubiquitous human fixation on the idea of its own innocence and the refusal of God’s right to be our Judge. Consequently we live with a delusion, insatiable in its demands and demonstrably false: the delusion that we can live free of the deeply lodged power of Sin in our lives. This is less a failure of anthropology than of theology — it is a tragically insuflicient grasp of who theos (God) is in relation to the creation.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 521 (emphasis original)