JUSTIFIED - Monergism Books

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Contributors JERRY BRIDGES is an author and conference speaker. He has been on the staff of The Navigators for over fifty years and currently serves in the Collegiate Mission. JOHN V. FESKO is associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido, California. SIMON GATHERCOLE is lecturer in New Testament studies and fellow at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. RYAN GLOMSRUD is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the history department at Harvard University, executive editor of Modern Reformation magazine, and author of scholarly articles on historical theology and modern European intellectual history. T. DAVID GORDON is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and associate professor of religion at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, host of the White Horse Inn national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. GEORGE HUNSINGER is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. J. A. O. PREUS III is executive vice president for Mission Advancement for Bethesda Lutheran Communities in Watertown, Wisconsin. HAROLD L. SENKBEIL is executive director for spiritual care with Doxology, The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care and Counsel. R. C. SPROUL is the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, Florida. DENNIS E. TAMBURELLO, OFM, is professor of religious studies at Siena College in Loudounville, New York. DAVID VANDRUNEN is the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido, California.
INTRODUCTION Getting Perspective RYAN GLOMSRUD Compared with the “Battle for the Bible,” sola fide has not loomed large as a topic of conversation in evangelical circles in the past. The formal cause of the Reformation, Scripture alone, captured evangelical attention from the 1950s more than the formal cause, justification by faith alone. And yet, one of the many flashpoints in evangelicalism in recent years has been between leading Baptist minister John Piper and Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright who are very much at odds, not on Scripture, but on the substance of biblical soteriology or the doctrine of salvation. Wright has produced several volumes of biblical-theological work at the lay and academic level, many of which are controversial in their own right; but the rising public dispute began with Piper’s The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Crossway, 2007) and continued with Wright’s rejoinder, an elaboration of key Pauline teachings in Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (IVP, 2009). Neither book pulls any punches and in places the side discussion is harsh: for Piper, biblical orthodoxy is at stake, and Wright returns fire by comparing critics such as Piper to flat-earthers, even Pharisees. 1 Ironically, Wright and others are critical of overly “introspective” Protestants for having cast themselves in the role of “Paul” and the medieval church doctors as “Pharisees” at the time of the Reformation; yet Wright now has little trouble placing himself in the apostle’s shoes against his “old perspective” agitators. “Someone in my position,” he writes, “is bound to have a certain fellow-feeling with Paul in Galatia. He is, after all, under attack from his own right wing.” 2 Within broader evangelicalism, however, the fever-pitch at which this debate is sometimes argued is not, one suspects, because of either Piper’s or Wright’s intense argumentation and escalating rhetoric, but because the topic is keenly felt to have been at issue well before the clash of these two evangelical leaders. In other words, the justification debate in evangelicalism actually goes back much earlier than the arrival of the New Perspective on Paul. The five “solas” of the Reformation were at one time the consensus of Protestantism. Converging in the doctrine of justification, we are saved by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (sola fide) because of Christ alone (solus Christus) all for God’s glory alone (soli Deo Gloria), a message of good news that is revealed to us in Scripture alone (sola scriptura). Over the past number of years, unfortunately, evangelicals have been divided on these otherwise unifying truths, tending to associate what was once the lifeblood of the evangelical movement with merely “getting saved.” While some evangelicals, including many teachers and high-profile pastors, have directly attacked the old Protestant consensus, undermining specifically the doctrine of justification, other rank-and-file believers have 3
Page 1 and 2: JUSTIFIED Essays on the Doctrine of
Page 3: Contents UNION AND PEACE WITH GOD 1
Page 7 and 8: GETTING PERSPECTIVE ation of leader
Page 9 and 10: GETTING PERSPECTIVE discontinuity i
Page 11 and 12: GETTING PERSPECTIVE Union and Peace
Page 13 and 14: 2. Gospel-centered preaching that r

JUSTIFIED - Monergism Books

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