Justification

At Logos Bible Software, this month’s free book is John Frame’s Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology (P&R, 2006). According to the book’s blurb,

Beginning students of theology and church leaders looking for a theological refresher or teaching tool will welcome this remarkably clear introduction to the doctrines of Scripture. In an almost conversational style, Salvation Belongs to the Lord explores all the major biblical truths, explains key terms of systematic theology, and reflects on their implications and connections under the lordship of Christ.

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This month’s free book from Logos Bible Software is Stephen Westerholm’s Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme (Eerdmans, 2013). Those who get this free volume are also eligible to purchase Douglas Campbell’s massive The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul(Eerdmans, 2013) for only $0.99.

This month, Logos Bible Software is giving away Hans Iwand’s The Righteousness of Faith according to Luther (trans., Randi Lundell; Wipf & Stock, 2008, originally published in 1941). According to the product page, the volume:

is an important contribution to contemporary appreciation of Luther’s theological significance. Although Iwand wrote his study three decades after the beginning of the Luther Renaissance, it nevertheless developed some of the central insights of Luther scholarship during that period. Two concepts—in particular, promise and simultaneity—are crucial to an appreciative understanding of Luther’s doctrine of justification. The language of promise presents justification to the believer as a reality that has yet to arrive or is hidden under present reality. And the language of simultaneity attests that humans remain throughout their lives one in the same, sinner and saint.

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Since Michael Bird’s books are still in transit, cross-checking with Piper’s Future of Justification, 24–25 n. 30 ( PDF), that Bird’s post (“Justification - Publications and Conferences”) mentions, here is the relevant Jonathan Edwards quote to accompany the other excellent remarks in Bird’s post:

The design of the parable [of the Pharisee and the publican] is to show them, that the very publicans shall be justified, rather than they; as appears by the reflection Christ makes upon it, Luke xviii. 14. “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other;” that is, this and not the other. The fatal tendency of it might also be proved from its inconsistence with the nature of justifying faith, and with the nature of that humiliation that the Scripture often speaks of as absolutely necessary to salvation; but these scriptures are so express that it is needless to bring any further arguments.

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Douglas Campbell’s new book, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul, has come to publication at Eerdmans. The publisher’s description reports that:

In this scholarly book Douglas Campbell pushes beyond both “Lutheran” and “New” perspectives on Paul to a noncontractual, “apocalyptic” reading of many of the apostle’s most famous-and most troublesome-texts.

Campbell holds that the intrusion of an alien, essentially modern, and theologically unhealthy theoretical construct into the interpretation of Paul has produced an individualistic and contractual construct that shares more with modern political traditions than with either orthodox theology or Paul’s first-century world. In order to counteract that influence, Campbell argues that it needs to be isolated and brought to the foreground before the interpretation of Paul’s texts begins. When that is done, readings free from this intrusive paradigm become possible and surprising new interpretations unfold.

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