Carl Trueman has given us a rich, variegated exposition of the second sola of the Reformation, sola gratia, which is uniquely captivating and, as such, will leave the reader with a deepened and enduring understanding of grace that will not be easily forgotten or effaced. The reasons for this are several.
First, Dr. Trueman’s exposition of key biblical texts clears away the haze of sentimental abstractions that cloud much of the present day understanding of the doctrine of grace. Trueman does this by firmly grounding the doctrine in the blood-drenched soil of both Testaments as he first expounds God’s unilateral actions in the Genesis narrative beginning with the fall—when God clothed Adam and Eve with the raw, bloodied hides of animals that he had slain to cover the sinful couple. He shows that this primeval precedent appeared again in the heart of patriarchal history in the Abrahamic covenant when God himself elected to pass between the bloody, flayed sacrifices, indicating the covenant’s divinely gracious, unconditional nature. In concert with this, the sacrificial system later instituted at Sinai was wholly the result of divine grace. God took the initiative to reach down to man to create, establish, and regulate the sacrificial system to graciously serve and satisfy his justice. The roots of the system in primeval and patriarchal history are evident in the sacrifices being raw and bloody affairs. And, in Trueman’s evocative words, the theological lesson from the Old Testament is this: “Sin is violent lethal rebellion against God; and biblical grace is God’s violent, raw, and bloody response.”
This places the New Testament’s account of the blood-drenched cross of Christ as the towering center of redemptive history, as the supreme action of God, and as the crowning manifestation of his costly grace. Grace cannot be imagined (much less referenced) apart from Christ. This lays to rest the sentimental notion that grace is a benign overlooking of sin or an impersonal mechanistic process.
The second reason that this book will enlarge the reader’s understanding and appropriation of grace is Trueman’s enthralling theological tour of how grace came to be understood and appropriated over the centuries, beginning with Augustine’s Confessions and concluding with Calvin’s Institutes. The tour includes: a) Augustine’s seismic conversion, his experience of overwhelming grace, and his understanding that God had converted him, which then drew the fire of Pelagius and providentially occasioned Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian Writings, in which he crafted the exegetical and theological grounds of the doctrine of grace; b) the medieval contribution of Thomas Aquinas, who through the use of Aristotelian logic formulated an enriched scriptural understanding of grace (undergirded by the doctrine of predestination) that is in profound continuity with the theology of Augustine; c) the theological development of Martin Luther midst the arcane currents of his late medieval environment and his mature understanding of justification by grace through faith, wherein the act of faith must, necessarily, be an act of sovereign grace; d) though Luther firmly held to predestination, divisions among the Lutherans over the doctrine meant that theological reflection passed to the Reformed and became identified with John Calvin, who though he offered no innovations, adorned it with clarity, maintaining that election, predestination, and grace must only be contemplated in Christ.
R. Kent Hughes
Senior Pastor Emeritus, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois