In What's So Great About the Doctrines of Grace?, the Rev. Richard D. "Rick" Phillips shows that "the doctrines of grace," those theological tenets more popularly known as "the five points of Calvinism," are comforting, faith-strengthening, and humbling teachings. In six short chapters, Rev. Phillips demonstrates conclusively from Scripture that this view of salvation exalts God and makes plain His great love for man, which drove Him to do all that was necessary to redeem a people for Himself. - Publisher.
Few topics in theology are as complex and multifaceted as grace: over the course of centuries, many seemingly arbitrary distinctions and arcane debates have arisen around it. Edward Oakes, however, argues that all of these distinctions and debates are ultimately motivated by one central question: What are God’sintentions for the world? In A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies Oakes examines issues relating to grace and points them back to that central question, illuminating and explaining what is really at stake in these debates. Maintaining that controversies clarify issues, especially those as convoluted as that of grace, Oakes works through six central debates on the topic, including sin and justification, evolution and original sin, and free will and predestination.
Grace in Practice is a challenging call to live life under grace -- a concept most Christians secretly have trouble with. Paul Zahl pulls no punches, contending that no matter how often we talk about salvation by grace, in our "can-do" society we often cling instead to a righteousness of works. Asserting throughout that grace always trumps both law and church, Zahl illuminates an expansive view of grace in everything, extending the good news of grace to all creation. Conversationally written and filled with fascinating insights, Grace in Practice will reward any Christian who seeks to understand the full measure of God's grace and the total freedom it offers.
Must the gospel message include a call for people to repent of their sins? “No,” say Free Grace advocates. Is evidence of a changed life an important indication of whether a person is truly born again? “No, again,” these advocates say. But in this book, Wayne Grudem shows how the Bible answers “Yes” to both of these questions, arguing that the Free Grace movement contradicts both historic Protestant teaching and the New Testament itself. This important book explains the true nature of the Christian gospel and answers the question asked by so many people: “How can I know that I’m saved?”
The Problem with Grace develops a post-secular, post-sectarian political theology and shows how a series of religious concepts (such as love, faith, liturgy, and revelation) can be constructively used today in both political theory and political practice.
There are many voices out there today that give conflicting messages about what we must do to receive and know that we have eternal life as a secure and sure possession. The world's religions all point to the works of man for the reception of eternal life. Reformed Theology looks to the works of man to know we have it and Arminianism looks tot he same to keep it.Free Grace Theology stands in sharp contrast to these. It teaches that anyone can receive everlasting life by faith alone in the crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ, and that he can know he has it as a sure and secure possession based on God's promises alone. Free Grace Theology: 5 Ways It Magnifies the Gospel sets out to demonstrate that this is not only biblical, but that it magnifies the gospel, giving glory to God.
Christianity struggles to show how living on earth matters for living with God. While people of faith increasingly seek practical ways to respond to the environmental crisis, theology has had difficulty contextualizing the crisis and interpreting the responses. In Ecologies of Grace, Willis Jenkins presents a field-shaping introduction to Christian environmental ethics that offers resources for renewing theology. Observing how religious environmental practices often draw on concepts of grace, Jenkins maps the way Christian environmental strategies draw from traditions of salvation as they engage the problems of environmental ethics. He then uses this new map to explore afresh the ecological dimensions of Christian theology. Jenkins first shows how Christian ethics uniquely frames environmental issues, and then how those approaches both challenge and reinhabit theological traditions. He identifies three major strategies for making environmental problems intelligible to Christian moral experience. Each one draws on a distinct pattern of grace as it adapts a secular approach to environmental ethics. The strategies of ecojustice, stewardship, and ecological spirituality make environments matter for Christian experience by drawing on patterns of sanctification, redemption, and deification. He then confronts the problems of each of these strategies through critical reappraisals of Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Sergei Bulgakov. Each represents a soteriological tradition which Jenkins explores as an ecology of grace, letting environmental questions guide investigation into how nature becomes significant for Christian experience. By being particularly sensitive to the ways in which environmental problems are made intelligible to Christian moral experience, Jenkins guides his readers toward a fuller understanding of Christianity and ecology. He not only makes sense of the variety of Christian environmental ethics, but by showing how environmental issues come to the heart of Christian experience, prepares fertile ground for theological renewal.
Books on the Christian life abound. Some focus on spirituality, others on practices, and others still on doctrines such as justification or forgiveness. Few offer an account of the Christian life that portrays redeemed Christian existence within the multifaceted and beautiful whole of the Christian confession. This book attempts to fill that gap. It provides a constructive, specifically theological interpretation of the Christian life according to the nature of God's grace. This means coordinating the Triune God, his reconciling, justifying, redemptive, restorative, and otherwise transformative action with those practices of the Christian life emerging from it. The doctrine of the Christian life developed here unifies doctrine and life, confession and practice within the divine economy of grace. Drawing together some of the most important theologians in the church today, Sanctified by Grace achieves what no other theological text offers – a shared work of dogmatic theology oriented to redeemed Christian existence.
