Thursday, July 4, 2019

The Brief Review of The Path To Understanding Justification in Christian News

 I said to the owner of this house, "The land is trying hard to reclaim your hidden path." For over 25 years, no one knew the path existed, because it was neglected and overgrown with grass and weeds. This revelation came as I was finishing the book.


Review of The Path to Understanding Justification, by G. Jackson

Review by David Becker Dr. Gregory L. Jackson, a former Christian News contributor who was friendly to CN many years ago, and whose book, Catholic -Lutheran - Protestant, is still sold by CN, has a new book out, The Path to Understanding Justification. This brief review is based strictly on the book’s contents and is my personal view, not necessarily shared by others who contribute to CN.

Dr. Jackson’s latest book is dedicated to Dr. Walter Maier and Rev. Vernon Harley. Lutheran Hour founding speaker Maier has frequently been praised in CN, and Pastor Harley wrote many devotional articles printed in CN in the 1970s and 1980s.

On page 24, Dr. Jackson says that Eve expected the birth of the promised Messiah in Genesis 4:1, a position also frequently held by Christian News founding editor Herman Otten.

A unique strength of the book is that it includes statements on justification from Lutheran catechisms from the early 1900s.

I would recommend the book for study by anyone and I give it four stars. I don’t give the book the highest five star rating because I think Dr. Jackson is imprecise in what he labels “pietism.” Also, Dr. Jackson does not reference Philip Hale’s recent book, Aspects of Forgiveness, which covers similar ground, although Dr. Jackson did publish a critical review of Hale’s book on his blog.

The 91 page paperback is available for $13.67 through Amazon.com (Kindle edition $0.99). It is also available for free as a dropbox PDF link on Dr. Jackson’s blog, The author has placed the book in the public domain.

***

GJ - On Genesis 4 - I agree with Luther and the plain meaning of the Hebrew text.

Becker's review never used the words - Justification by Faith. That has been my point for a long time. The opponents claim their dogma and anyone who agrees with St. Paul and Luther is a "denier of Objective Justification."

Otten refused to print anything from me after I published Thy Strong Word, which eviscerated Objective Justification and its twin parasite, Church Growth. Not only that, he was happy to print letters against me by CLC Church Shrinkers but refused to publish positive letters.

I published a book about Pietism and Objective Justification - here is a free PDF -
Luther versus the UOJ Pietists.

All my books are public domain and posted as free PDFs.