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| By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification | 
 enlarge | Authors: Gary L. W. Johnson, Guy P. Waters
Creators: David F. Wells, Cornelis P. Venema, T. David Gordon, Richard D. Phillips, C. F. Allison, David Vandrunen, E. Calvin Beisner, Fowler White, John Bolt, R. Albert Mohler Jr.
Publisher: Crossway Books
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $9.95
You Save: $8.04 (45%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 201363
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.7 x 0.5
ISBN: 1581348401
Dewey Decimal Number: 234.7
EAN: 9781581348408
ASIN: 1581348401
Publication Date: March 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: **A few bent pages** Brand New! Christian Family owned business, we sell 100% Christian Books. **Shows signs of shelf wear**
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Product Description
A thorough look at the false and empty doctrines that are attacking evangelicalism's commitment to one of its key doctrines--sola fide, by faith alone.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Book of Essays November 26, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is a book of essays - nine in all (ten, if you count the introduction by Guy Waters) - responding to recent challenges to the historic Reformed understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, concentrating on the New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision, but also engaging the classic Arminian position and Mormonism.
As might be expected from a book that consists of essays by various authors, the book is a little uneven. Some essays seem to be written with the interested lay person in mind, and others assumed much more prior knowledge on the part of the reader. In addition, since the essays were originally intended to stand alone, there is a fair bit of repetition of ideas and arguments.
That means there were essays I enjoyed reading, those that were beyond me, and those I just wasn't interested in. The first two essays engage the writings of N. T. Wright. While I found the explanations and arguments in these two chapters very interesting, I don't think I know enough about the issues to judge them. I also enjoyed several essays defending imputed righteousness and the active obedience of Christ, because this is a doctrine that seems to come up in discussions occasionally, and it was helpful to see it defended from scripture. The essays related to the Auburn Avenue or Federal Vision controversy were mostly beyond me. I'm not Presbyterian, and I don't know enough about the issues to even understand the essays.
If you are like me, and a bit of a novice on these issues, you might need a little more background knowledge before you would find this book completely useful, but if you are up on these things, my uneducated guess is that you'll find this to be a valuable book.
 Thought-provoking theological essays April 10, 2007
34 out of 35 found this review helpful
This is a very thought-provoking series of theological essays engaging the contemporary challenges to the historic Reformed understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Any book of this sort, with multiple contributors, is bound to be somewhat uneven in quality - but this is one of the better books of this sort that I've seen.
Here is the table of contents, interspersed with my brief comments.
1. What did Saint Paul Really Say? N. T. Wright and the New Perspective(s) on Paul - Cornelis P. Venema
2. Observations on N. T. Wright's Biblical Theology with Special Consideration of the "Faithfulness of God" - T. David Gordon
These first two chapters engage the writings of N. T. Wright, who is probably the highest profile proponent of the New Perspective on Paul (and is also one of the most renowned contemporary Jesus scholars). Their critiques of Wright are very, very insightful and should be seriously considered. Everything really does seem to fall on Wright's embrace of a certain way of reading Second Temple Judaism (as non-legalistic) and his interpretation of the phrase "dikaiosune theou" as "the covenant faithfulness of God" instead of "the righteousness of God." This second question is adequately challanged in the second chapter of this book.
3. A Justification of Imputed Righteousness - Richard D. Phillips
4. The Foundational Term for Christian Salvation: Imputation - C. F. Allison
These two chapters address the recent controversies surrounding the doctrine of imputation. Having read Piper's defense of imputation in Counted Righteous in Christ, as well as Carson's essay in the volume on Justification edited by Husbands, I still found these chapters very helpful and persuasive (I've not yet read Brian Vicker's Jesus Blood AND Righteousness, a recent more in-depth treatment of imputation). These essays were very good.
5. Reflections on Auburn Theology - T. David Gordon
This was a little less interesting to me, probably b/c I'm not Presbyterian.
6. To Obey is Better than Sacrifice: A Defense of the Active Obedience of Christ - David Van Drunen
As I recall, this was also a good essay, defending the necessity and imputation of the active obedience of Christ to believers
7. Covenant, Inheritance, and Typology: Understanding the Principles at Work in God's Covenants - R. F. White & E. C. Beisner
Of all the essays in this book, this one stands out as the most helpful and the one that will repay several re-readings in the future. The authors set out to show why the theological construct of covenant theology (as traditionally understood in Reformed theology) is biblically-faithful and warranted from the texts (even though the language is sometimes extra-biblical). Most helpful was their contrasting the two principles of inheritance, by either personal merit or representative merit, and then tracing these two principles through the various historical covenants. This is the best thing on covenant theology that I've read so far (though my reading in this area has not been very wide).
8. Why the Covenant of Works is a Necessary Doctrine: Revisiting the Objections to a Venerable Reformed Doctrine - John Bolt
As with the chapter 7, this was a very, very helpful treatment of covenant theology, specifically the covenant of works. Bolt is an excellent and lucid writer and I finished the essay wanting to read more of his material.
9. The Reformation, Today's Evangelicals, and Mormons: What Next? - Gary L. W. Johnson
This essay was good, but seemed a little bit displaced in this volume.
Overall, this is a very good volume and worth reading for those engaged in the current debates over justification. However, if you are only going to read one book on the New Perspective on Paul, get Stephen Westerholm's Perspectives Old and New: The Lutheran Paul and His Critics. It is much more comprehensive and has been the most important book I've read on the issue.
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