Three Mountains to Freedom

Bishop John Dudley Davies (MA 1963, Trinity College, Cambridge), formerly Church of England Bishop of Shrewsbury, 1987-94, is Honorary Assistant Bishop of St. Asaph, Church in Wales. He was mission priest and university chaplain in South Africa 1956-70 and Principal of the College of the Ascension, Selly Oak, Birmingham 1976-82. His many publications include Good News in Galatians, Creed and Conflict, The Faith Abroad, World on Loan, The Crisis of the Cross and God at Work. .

In Galatians, we meet Paul at his most passionate, most personal, and his most political. For him, the heart of the Gospel is: The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. But for some of his colleagues, faith in Christ is not enough. They want something that will give more of a sense of achievement; they yearn for the more exclusive insignia of the Jewish law. Senior church leaders are confused and compromised. Paul faces this crisis with two further essentials of the Gospel, our unity in Christ and our freedom in Christ. The book shows how, in our own day, the same testing of faith happens, with issues of race, gender, poverty, equality, in a culture which values the achievements of some while treating others with disdain. Written geographically from a Welsh context, this is the Archbishop of Wales's recommended Lent book for 2016; but it speaks to the wider motivations of our present culture. For the author, Galatians was a primary weapon in the theological struggle against the ideology of apartheid in South Africa; it has a similar relevance for today's Britain and beyond.