Grace Alone–Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters
by Carl R. Trueman
Series: The 5 Solas Series
Paperback, 243 pg.
Zondervan, 2017
Read: October 8 – 22, 2017
After struggling through three books in this series, I will admit to some trepidation about this one — thankfully, Carl Trueman is an author I have a bit of experience with, so I figured it’d be worth the effort. Thankfully, there wasn’t that much effort, and the book was absolutely worth the time.
Trueman organizes this book differently than the others — in Part 1, he considers Sola Gratia in Scripture and Church History. Trueman surveys the idea of grace alone through both Testaments (it’s easier than some would lead you to think to find it in the Old Testament), looking at individual texts as well as themes throughout the books. I would have liked this to be a bit longer — but I really can’t complain about it. Following that, Trueman focuses on the teachings of the Church throughout history about Grace — starting with the early church, focusing on Augustine and his Confessions as emblematic of the first centuries of the church. Then he continues to focus on Augustine but shifts the focus to the controversies sparked by the Confessions with Pelagius and his followers as the prism through which the (Western) Church discusses and teaches Grace since those days. In the next chapter, Trueman focuses on Medieval theology about grace using Aquinas as the example. Following that we get chapters on Luther and Calvin (and those who’d be allied to Calvin’s branch of the Reformation), shaking off the accumulated tradition and misunderstandings to get back to the core of Scriptural and Augustinian teaching (with help from Aquinas). Would I have appreciated another chapter or two about post-Reformational history? Sure. But they weren’t necessary to fulfill Trueman’s aims, and we get a taste of what they’d offer in Part 2.
Part 2 is titled “Sola Gratia in the Church.” Grace is communicated to Christians via The Church, Preaching, Sacraments, and Prayer and so Trueman a. defends that idea and then proceeds to discuss how God goes that in chapters devoted to each of those. For those of the Reformed tradition, there is nothing ground-breaking or controversial here, although Protestants from other traditions might find some of the ideas challenging. These are solid chapters of the kind of teaching I expected from this series, and I appreciated them.
In the book’s Conclusion, Trueman attempts to address the questions: “What would a ‘grace alone’ church look like today? What would characterize its life as a church? How might we recognize such a church when we see it?” The answers to these questions are a mix of doctrinal and practical ideas that he lists in ten points showing the interconnections between them. This conclusion (in building on what came before) is worth at least half the price of the book — just fantastic stuff.
I still have one to go in the series, so I may have to modify this, but this one is by far the best of the bunch — accessible, pastoral, and thorough without sacrificing depth. Trueman doesn’t seem to get distracted by pet details, nor to just beat the same obvious deceased equines on this topic. If you’re going to read just one of the five, let this be it. Alternatively, if the some of the others have left you wanting, give this one a shot, I think you’ll appreciate it.
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