The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom
Overview
In these stormy times, loud voices from all fronts call for revolution and change. But what kind of revolution brings true freedom to both society and the human soul?
Cultural observer Os Guinness explores the nature of revolutionary faith, contrasting between secular revolutions such as the French Revolution and the faith-led revolution of ancient Israel. He argues that the story of Exodus is the highest, richest, and deepest vision for freedom in human history. It serves as the master story of human freedom and provides the greatest sustained critique of the abuse of power. His contrast between “Paris” and “Sinai” offers a framework for discerning between two kinds of revolution and their different views of human nature, equality, and liberty. Drawing on the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Guinness develops Exodus as the Magna Carta of humanity, with a constructive vision of a morally responsible society of independent free people who are covenanted to each other and to justice, peace, stability, and the common good of the community. This is the model from the past that charts our path to the future.
“There are two revolutionary faiths bidding to take the world forward,” Guinness writes. “There is no choice facing America and the West that is more urgent and consequential than the choice between Sinai and Paris. Will the coming generation return to faith in God and to humility, or continue to trust in the all sufficiency of Enlightenment reason, punditry, and technocracy? Will its politics be led by principles or by power?” While Guinness cannot predict our ultimate fate, he warns that we must recognize the crisis of our time and debate the issues openly. As individuals and as a people, we must choose between the revolutions, between faith in God and faith in Reason alone, between freedom and despotism, and between life and death.
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- Contrasts secular revolutions such as the French Revolution and the faith-led revolution of ancient Israel
- Warns that we must recognize the crisis of our time
- Explores the nature of revolutionary faith
- Introduction: Upside Down or Right Way Up?
- I Will Be Who I Will Be—The Great Revelation
- Like the Absolutely Unlike—The Great Declaration
- East of Eden—The Great Alienation
- Let My People Go—The Great Liberation
- Set Free to Live Free Together—The Great Constitution
- Passing It On—The Great Transmission
- Putting Wrong Right—The Great Restoration
- Part One—The “Paris Way”
- Putting Wrong Right—The Great Restoration
- Part Two—The “Sinai Way”
- Conclusion: A New, New Birth of Freedom?
Top Highlights
“The West now faces the challenge of the third revolutionary faith. In the form of postmodernism, political correctness, tribal politics, and the extremes of the sexual revolution, the advocates of cultural Marxism and critical theory are now posing serious threats not just to freedom and democracy but to earlier understandings of humanity and to Western civilization itself.” (Page 18)
“The deepest division is between two mutually exclusive views of America: those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of 1776 and the American Revolution, and those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of 1789 and the French Revolution and its ideological heirs.” (Page 6)
“Freedom in the seventeenth century did not come from heretical origins, as claimed, but from principles out of the Hebrew Scriptures brought back into public discourse by Reformation thinkers and by public intellectuals such as John Locke and John Milton.” (Page 8)
“God created the world through a word, and God reveals himself in words. Words are therefore essential for creating bonds and building a world of freedom, so all who know God and love freedom must be champions and guardians of words.” (Page 56)
“C. S. Lewis’s famous prayer before prayer: ‘May it be the real You that I speak to, and may it be the real Me who speaks.’” (Page 43)
- Title: The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom
- Author: Os Guinness
- Publisher: IVP
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2021
- Pages: 272
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Liberty › Religious aspects--Judaism; Judaism › Influence; United States › Moral conditions; United States › Politics and government--Philosophy
- ISBNs: 9780830847167, 9780830847150, 9781665023993, 0830847162, 0830847154, 1665023996
- Resource ID: LLS:MGNCRTHMFTRFRDM
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:31:02Z