The title should really read "A Hesitant Review." I'll explain later why. I'll try to keep this short:
To get straight to the point, "The Holiness of God" is about helping believers understand that our God is Holy. I think that RC.. Sproul does a great job doing that. He reveals how Holy God is and in a more cheerful way describes the magnificent power, might, and justice of God, who abhors sin.
Like Jonathan Edwards in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," (which he quotes) he does a great job describing the fierce wrath of God against sin and reminds us that we should never think that God "owes [us] perpetual mercy." My experience is that many people can easily describe the problem with man. It's been beaten into our heads that we're sinners in many hellfire sermons. I think very few people can describe how we should respond to God in such a state. I think that is also the case with R.C. Sproul's book.
In church sermons about God's holiness, or in a book like this, the speakers portray God as the Justice giver and express Him as tremendously Holy, and rightly so! Then at the very end they tack on this tiny adendum of Grace, "oh, but God is merciful," leaving the hearer more certain that God is out to punish him then to forgive him. It's almost as if the narrator doesn't want to mention Grace for fear that his emotional tug and psychological leverage on the person might be lost. This is what I find occurs in, "The Holiness of God."
Nobody wants people to think that now that you're saved you can do whatever you want, but redeemed man has to understand that we have been forgiven and can walk confidently into God's presence. So we keep reminding ourselves that we need to be afraid of our terrible God otherwise he'll punish us unmercifully. No! I deserved hell, but now I've been fogiven. Now, my Lord corrects me, but He's not seeking to punish me like a prisoner. Sometimes we don't want to mention God's Grace because we think people don't understand that God is just. God's Grace is scandalous! (as Phillip Yancey puts it). We should not be worried if we preach about God's Grace and people actually feel forgiven! God's Grace is scandalous because we know how Holy and Just He is.
Sproul ends with a few pages on how to respond to God's holiness. Which (though I love him and understand that he is a much smarter man than I and I could be terribly wrong) I did not think he gave enough credit to God's Grace nor to how we should respond to God now that we know He's Holy. Plus, he adds a one-paragraph argument against Arminianism, which I thought was kind of cheap and distracted me greatly from what the book was about: as if one paragraph is enough to end this long running debate. I, personally, was not edified by these couple of pages at the end.
Remy.
Post Script: Why would I call this a hesitant review? Personally, because I don't like book reviews. It's never the same as reading the book for yourself (the reviews are often boring, including this one!), and it often captures only one man's perspective. How many people have read this book and have had their lives transformed? Yet, I wasn't one of them. Furthermore, a review should be honest, but I feel unqualified to discredit the work of a mighty man of God and theologian (even if it was just the last few chapters that I disliked). Plus, I would not want anyone to misunderstand me and think that I don't love the man as a brother in Christ, who bears His image, and have great respect for him. So instead of a book review, I prefer to call this 'A Journaling of my Feelings and Thoughts Towards "The Holiness of God," by R.C. Sproul.'
No comments:
Post a Comment