This is not a book of exegetical theology but a readable and relevant communication in Christianity, a message of uncommon literary and theological merit. The familiar passages of the Sermon on the Mount once again are invested with fresh meaning for our day. Professor Thielicke explains the meaning of the biblical texts to the moderns who are all too prone to regard the Sermon on the Mount as a collection of lovely but impossible ideas. He feels the Sermon will never be understood; indeed it will be misunderstood, if we separate the word spoken from the One speaking. The words themselves, apart from Christ, are nothing but a devastating statement of God's radical demands. Only in Christ do these words of the law become the glorious gospel, promising that for everyone life can begin again. Delivered originally in the crisis situation of stricken postwar Germany, the sermons have about them an almost apocalyptic spirit which catches something genuine in the perennial human situation. Thielicke's words on the uncertainty, anxiety, aimlessness, and restlessness of life, are delivered with a warmth and catholicity of spirit.
