Thomas R. Schreiner

Faith Alone---The Doctrine of Justification is part of the Five Solas Series, offering readers a look back to the five rallying cries of the Reformation---the five solas---while seeking to apply them in a fresh way to the contemporary church.

What the Reformers Taught... and Why It Still Matters

Faith Alone---The Doctrine of Justification

Sean Wilson

There were many helpful sections in this book. I enjoyed Schreiner’s historical reviews most of all: seeing sola fide in the church fathers was interesting, and Schreiner was forthcoming about the fact that not all articulations of the doctrine were as clear as others in those early generations.

I thought his chapter on the nature of saving faith was very good, and he rightly emphasises the *necessity* of good works for justification, even though it is not the merit of those good works that justifies us.

Some parts of the book, however, I thought were not as good. While his exegetical sections were usually fine, there were a handful of instances where the readings were either unconvincing (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:21) or where he simply failed to show why the text said what he said it was saying.

Along these lines, the treatment of Romans 6:7 (“the one who has died has been set free [justified]”) from sin was most noticeable, and Schreiner weakly suggests that “it is possible” that this verse does not teach a transformative view of justification. I really wish he’d given that text a fuller treatment, if only because of his critiques of Leithart and others that justification includes the concept of “setting free”.

Despite criticising Leithart and others for stretching out the meaning of certain terms to encompass other concepts related to them, Schreiner avails himself of this very move a few times: he stretches out “the righteousness of God” to cover the related concept of the active obedience of Christ, and stretching out Christ’s “one act of righteousness” to cover Christ’s entire righteous life. Of course, the related concepts shouldn’t be *divorced* from each other, but as Schreiner himself observes, we must avoid “confusing terms, so that everything means everything” because “words still have distinct meanings”.

I thought Schreiner’s critiques of Wright were generally fair, though the whole debate seems to take the form of false dichotomies set up by Wright. Even where Schreiner will resist Wright’s “either-or”, he tends to emphasise the opposite horn of the dilemma to Wright.

This is a decent book with some very good sections, but others were fairly disappointing.

Faith Alone---The Doctrine of Justification What the Reformers Taught... and Why It Still Matters

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