Christian Spirituality: Four Christian Views

by Gerhard O. Forde

Book Overview

How can we grow closer to God? Is there a secret to spiritual life? Do we need a second blessing? Is sanctification God's work or ours? Is it instantaneous or is it a process?

The nature of Christian spirituality has been widely debated throughout the history of the church. The doctrine of sanctification was one of the main fissures separating Luther from the Catholic Church. Even today different groups of Protestants disagree on how...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0830812784
• ISBN13: 9780830812783
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Where does the Christian life start, and what does it do?

This book is an excellent study, comparison, and critique of the Lutheran, Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Contemplative views on Sanctification. As another reviewer correctly noted, the Lutheran and Reformed views are intentionally founded on the Bible, and arrive at their conclusions from key Scriptural passages. The Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and Contemplative views though making occasional references to Scripture, are formulated based on experience and are much more subjective. Though the content of the latter three essays is of less substance, I rate the book at four stars because of the valuable information it offers on the different perspectives. Another feature of the book which makes it all the more interesting are the responses to each of the five essays. After each view is presented, the other four authors provide their compliments as well as their critiques. It also becomes evident as one reads the book, how the Lutheran and Reformed views are very Christ-centered, while the remainder are anthropocentric. None of the essays are flawless, of course. The Lutheran essay is a little too short and doesn't cover enough ground, and the Reformed essay wrongly seeks the motivation for Christian sanctification in the 3rd use of the Law. Yet both nail the essential point of how the Christian life is lived as both saint and sinner (Romans 7). The Wesleyan author explicitly doubts this Christian truth, which is why he is able to hold to the faulty notion of "Christian perfection", which ends up watering-down the demands of the law. The Contemplative author seeks illumination and love of God in mystic inner meditation, a dangerous practice because it seeks God elsewhere than He has promised to be found--namely in His Word and Sacraments. And the Pentecostal view makes speaking in tongues an essential criteria of sanctification, which certainly adds to what the Scriptures say. Altogether, the essays here are valuable reading, but each must be read critically, and examined against the light of Scripture.

clear up the confusion

Do you realize that the terms justification and sanctification are as confusing as they sound? How many debates over these issues have molded and effected church history? Books like these can analyze such views putting them side by side. How often have people who stood behind the pulpit made an undistinguishable clatter which have left their congregations with an obscure reference on how they ought to live. I was excited to see this book and I hope that more ministers will read it and glean the truths seen in it. We live in a day where the paradigm shift from living by feeling, opinion and sentimentality have dominated our so called expostions. We declare that we want to meet the needs of our people. What is their need? To walk as Christ walked. I am tired of the old nobody's perfect, lets lower the standard chorus from soceity and the so called church. Let us be holy. What a worthy subject for study in a thoughtlessly benign era.