Honest to God
Honest to God is a book written by the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich John A.T. Robinson, criticising traditional Christian theology. It aroused a storm of controversy on its original publication by SCM Press in 1963. Robinson's own evaluation of Honest to God, found in his subsequent book Exploration into God (1967), stated that the chief contribution of this book was its successful synthesis of the work of seemingly opposed theologians Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rudolf Bultmann. Major themes in Honest to God The dominant theory of Honest to God is that having rejected the idea of 'God up there', modern secular man needs to recognize that the idea of 'God out there' is also an outdated simplification of the nature of divinity. Rather, Christians should take their cue from the existentialist theology of Paul Tillich and consider God to be 'the ground of our being'. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's notion of religion-less Christianity is also a major theme in the book. Robinson's interpretation of this phrase is—inevitably—controversial. He claims that secular man requires a secular theology. That is, that God's continuing revelation to humanity is one brought about in culture at large, not merely within the confines of "religion" or "church."