ABSTRACT
Sermon illustrations are a powerful means of communication when they do the job well; used naively they can be seriously misleading. Addressing the subject of "Narcissistic motives in Historical Religiosity" Pruyser writes: The pictures we have in the canonical Gospels, although historically scanty, yield sufficient to suggest a rather different understanding of Jesus as saviour from the traditional concept of salvation from sin. This chapter emphasises that the picture of the (Christian) religious portrayal of sin and salvation outlined is not without truth. The issue of sin and salvation is more subtle and therefore potentially more confusing and misleading. It revolves, not for the first time in the discussion of this book, around interpretation; more precisely around what in religious and spiritual terms we mean by concepts like "self", "sin", "grace", and most crucially, salvation.
