Book Notice: Living Justification

Book Notice: Living Justification October 31, 2014

Jonathan Huggins

Living Justification: A Historical-Theological Study of the Reformed Doctrine of Justification in the Writings of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and N.T. Wright
Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013.
Available at Amazon.com

Calvin, Edwards, and Wright all walk into a bar. If you want to know what happens next then you have to read Living Justification by Jonathan Huggins an Anglican Priest (ACNA) and chaplain at Berry College.

It is helpful study on the context and content of justification according to Calvin, Edwards, and Wright. Noting in particular how they all appropriated a received tradition and yet broke from it as well. I particularly liked the section on how Edwards was different to Reformed scholastics like Turretin and the reception of Wright’s work by critics and defenders

According to Huggins, the main similarities between the trio are: (1) Methodological starting point is the authority of Scripture; (2) Justification is construed in highly christocentric terms; (3) Justification is forensic and (4) Good works “flow” from true faith.

In the end, Huggins argues that the Reformed tradition is living and is there an ongoing process of continual reform according to Scripture rather than a militant affirmation of a Reformed position.  In which case, one can be open to the innovation and insights of a Calvin, Edwards, and Wright precisely because a church is reforming itself in conformity to the Word.

 

 


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