There is nothing very astonishing about a God who loves us relentlessly, save that we generally do not believe in one. The hope of this book is to examine what deep differences such a belief would make to our doctrine, our ethic, and our ritual, which have too often been directed to a god of whom we have really, at heart, been warily and cautiously afraid. Though the approach is popular, it is also scholarly, and well balanced. In the bible itself, he points out, there is a tension between unconditional grace and the necessity of human merit.