BOOK REVIEWS

A Companion to the Theology of John Webster

edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson

EERDMANS | 2021 | 366 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $50.00

JOHN WEBSTER HAS BEEN CALLED “the theologian’s theologian” for his incisive style and project of “theological theology,” which responds to the revelation of the Triune God in faithful speech and action. Theology in the hands of Webster is always a vital act, coram Deo, marked by astonishment and joy paired with intellectual precision. As Kevin Vanhoozer notes in the foreword, “When [theologians] are together en famille, they read Webster” (xiii). While Vanhoozer is knowingly exaggerating here, there is something to this statement. Over the past twenty years, there has been a growing sense in the Anglophone theological world that John Webster was not only doing some of the most interesting work, but that his path of theological theology seemed to be the way forward. Many eagerly awaited his projected five-volume systematic theology, which felt assured to be a monumental publication in dogmatics. His untimely passing in 2016 was mourned throughout the theological world, even by those who knew him only through his writings.

It is a rare event and high honor for any theologian to be deemed significant enough to have a companion reader that lays out their career and scholarly contributions, even more so immediately after their death. This work, edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson, is not only in honor of Webster, but it is also the first sustained scholarly engagement with his work. A companion to Webster is particularly useful, given the form of his theological contributions. While Webster wrote several books (especially Holiness and Holy Scripture), his preferred genre was the theological essay. The contributors have successfully assembled the various threads from Webster’s corpus to weave a more complete tapestry of his theological project.

This volume, which offers seventeen chapters with a foreword and epilogue, presents its readers with a thoroughgoing introduction to Webster’s life and thought. After opening with a brief academic biography, it is divided into two parts. The first discusses Webster’s theological development across his academic career, and the second expounds his understanding of and contribution to significant theological loci. The work also presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of Webster’s corpus. The contributions come from some of the leading theologians who are attempting a revival of dogmatics for the twenty-first century. These include Michael Allen, Matthew Levering, Fred Sanders, Katherine Sonderegger, and many others. David Nelson’s epilogue is of particular interest. By looking at Webster’s original project proposal and indications in his later work, Nelson offers insights into the systematic theology that might have been had Webster lived.

The project of theological theology is the unifying feature across these essays, as it was in Webster’s own thought over the past twenty years. Webster’s main thought was to center the doctrine of the Triune God as the ground for all knowledge of God himself, his acts, and his will. As Fred Sanders in his essay on Webster’s Trinitarianism writes, “All other doctrines orbit this doctrine, and it orbits none” (155). The various essays of this volume bring this theme out with reference to different theological loci. For instance, the doctrine of Scripture must be grounded in the Triune God’s perfections and presence

with his people (ch. 7). The doctrine of salvation can only be seen clearly when grounded in the Triune life as the font of grace, which experiences no lack in itself or need of the creature but loves in freedom. As Ivor Davidson notes, for Webster, “the whole economy flows in free mercy from the nature of the triune God himself” (231).

The contributors spin out these ideas essay after essay, demonstrating the verve of Webster’s work to ground all theology in God as the source, object, and ultimate end of the intellectual and spiritual task of theology. As quoted repeatedly throughout this companion, Webster envisioned theology as all-inclusive and focused. In “What Makes Theology Theological?” in God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2018), Webster writes:

Theology is a comprehensive science, a science of everything. But it is not a science of everything about everything, but rather a science of God and all other things under the aspect of createdness. (214–15)

In a companion of this type, variability in the quality of entries is to be expected. But considered overall, this companion amply succeeds in laying out a treatment of the theology of Webster that will both inform those unfamiliar with him and aid in the scholarly approach to his theology. Part I on Webster’s theological development will likely be of main interest to the latter group, but this section offers the most comprehensive account of Webster’s academic trajectory available. The chapters treating Webster’s contribution on specific doctrines are well executed, if sometimes hindered by Webster’s paucity of specific interactions on a given topic. The chapter on salvation, for instance, does not discuss the nature of sin or the atonement, since Webster did not offer sustained treatments of either.

The companion has two stand-out essays. The first by Fred Sanders on Webster’s view of the Trinity is indispensable in understanding the heart of his theology. Sanders’s expertise in Trinitarian theology and clarity of writing facilitates an effective bringing together of Webster’s abundant commentary on the Trinity that is diffuse throughout his works. Katherine Sonderegger’s entry on Jesus Christ, however, shines above the rest, owing to the magisterial nature of the subject and the ambition of treatment. She not only gives an expert exposition of Webster’s Christology in Trinitarian perspective, but she also situates him in relation to modern theological trends. The essay argues for the power and freshness of Webster’s approach and suggests paths for future development. Also, her almost lyrical theological style functions well to bring out Webster’s ideas. As she summarizes, “Jesus Christ is the radiant self-communication of God” (219).

John Webster’s theology was a gift to the church in his unpretentiousness and incisiveness to invoke a desire to know the Triune God and all things in relation to the Triune God. For those looking for an introduction to Webster’s theology and contribution, this companion is a sure and steady guide. As I am sure every contributor would say, however, don’t read this instead of Webster—read it only to read him better. There are certain figures whose full message and subtlety can be appreciated only through reading and rereading. Begin with Webster’s Holiness and Holy Scripture, and then let this companion guide you deeper into his work. In many ways, this volume is an encouragement to the reader not only to pick up Webster but to pick up where he left off—to develop a proper theological theology where he was prevented by mortality, and to popularize his insights for the sake of the church and to the glory of the God he served.

K. J. Drake (PhD, Saint Louis University) is Sessional Assistant Professor of History at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario. He is the author of The Flesh of the Word: The extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 2021).

The Flesh of the Word: The extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy

by K. J. Drake

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS | 2021 | 336 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $99.00

WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF rapid technological advancement. One could perhaps be forgiven for using the weary term “unprecedented” to describe it. The expanding abundance of easily accessible information about nearly everything has had a revolutionary impact on nearly everything, including the once crusted and stodgy field of historical theology. Armed with internet access and login credentials to a good academic library, today’s historical theologian need not fear a pandemic. Primary and secondary sources abound in digital form. It seems that just about every text from and about the past is accessible online. One result of this new academic world order is the proliferation of publications, not only about past theological minutiae but also about lesser-known theologians of the past. It sometimes seems like historical theology majors on mere trivia.

The extra Calvinisticum—the doctrine that the incarnate Son of God is not limited to his human nature—once seemed like a piece of historical-theological minutiae. In the twentieth century, there was an approximately fifty-year stretch in which the topic garnered precisely one scholarly monograph and two academic articles. In the last fifteen years alone, by contrast, the extra Calvinisticum has been the subject of four book-length studies and about a dozen academic articles and essays. The latest of these books is K. J. Drake’s The Flesh of the Word, appearing in Oxford’s Studies in Historical Theology series. Drake’s work is the fruit of careful research into early modern christological debates, and also undoubtedly of the readily available digital sources related to those debates. Whether the extra Calvinisticum is really a point of theological minutiae, however, gets to the heart of Drake’s concern in this book.

Previous studies of the extra generally fall into one of two groups: those that mine Calvin’s articulation and use of the doctrine, and those that survey the breadth of the Christian tradition for appearances of it. In contrast to both approaches, Drake drills down into sources from the early Reformation era—especially the works of Ulrich Zwingli—and examines the doctrine as a flash point in christological disputes between the Reformed and the Lutherans. Drake contends that the extra Calvinisticum was not a point of mere theological minutiae, nor even a sideline issue in the Reformed and Lutheran christological debates of the sixteenth century, but rather that “it was the crux of both the eucharistic debate and christological debates” between these traditions (11). In this endeavor, Zwingli is Drake’s touchstone, which serves to reorient the historical discussion away from Calvin and to make sure the “Calvin against the Calvinists” historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries remains mostly dead.

As Drake affirms, scholars have long noted that the doctrine known by the unusual name extra Calvinisticum (the “Calvinistic extra” or “Calvinistic addition”) originally was neither Calvinist nor an addition. The doctrine is catholic, and its basic form is clearly articulated in the works of patristic, medieval, and Reformation theologians— Lutherans excepted. The basic form of the doctrine is that “the human nature of Christ does not confine the divine nature nor expand to its metaphysical dimensions” (203). Put positively, the person of Christ exists beyond (extra) his human nature even while incarnate and even after his ascension. As the fifth-century theologian Cyril of Alexandria vividly remarked in a letter to Nestorius,

The flesh [of the Word] was not changed into the nature of Godhead and . . . neither was the inexpressible nature of God the Word convert-

ed into the nature of flesh. . . . [E]ven when a baby seen in swaddling clothes at the bosom of the Virgin who bore him, he still filled the whole creation as God. (Letter 17, Wickham ed.)

Definitions are important in any argument, and this is especially the case in Drake’s argument that the extra was central to the sixteenth-century eucharistic and christological debates. He notes that the basic form of the doctrine, as articulated above and as found in patristic and medieval sources, “seems to stand on its own without further explication” (203). That is, the basic doctrine is not bound to the Reformation and post-Reformation christological conflicts. Drake’s argument about the centrality of the extra, however, is based on an expanded definition, which he draws from Calvin’s Institutes and the Heidelberg Catechism, and which includes a Reformed notion of the communicatio idiomatum—namely, that the properties of the divine and human natures in Christ are attributed to Christ’s person and not transferred between the natures (14–16). We should be quick to note that there is nothing wrong per se with using this expanded definition of the extra, particularly since Drake develops it from the sixteenth-century sources themselves. And yet such an expansive definition—with robust, built-in accounts of the hypostatic union and the communicatio idiomatum—perhaps contributes to an equally expansive account of the extra’s place in the interconfessional debates. To put it another way, if the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum is as broad as the traditional definition of the hypostatic union, then the extra shows up almost every time Christology is discussed. To be clear, Drake does not see the extra everywhere, but there are moments when phrases like “Chalcedonian logic” and “the logic of the extra” seem to be synonymous (240, 277, 278) and where treatments of the communicatio idiomatum and the ascension in, for example, Peter Martyr Vermigli, are considered to be expressions of the doctrine of the extra when instead one might say that Vermigli is simply expounding the doctrine of incarnation. Such definitional challenges are not unique to Drake’s work. They are, in fact, endemic to all studies of the extra Calvinisticum, including my own.

Quibbles over definitions aside, Drake should be commended for two points in particular: his detailed exposition of sources in sixteenthcentury Christology, and his repeated emphasis that the Reformed defense of the extra served to defend the true humanity of Christ and thus the gospel itself. Regarding the first point, arguably the most significant contribution of Drake’s study is the attention he gives to Zwingli, whom Drake credits with being “the first theologian in the Reformation to articulate the extra Calvinisticum” (19). Hence, Drake reorients the historical discussion of the extra toward Zwingli as a Reformed theologian in his own right and as the fountainhead of Reformed christological emphases and polemics. The exposition of Zwingli’s Christology also serves the second point: the Reformed saw the extra as protecting the gospel by protecting the doctrine of Christ’s true humanity, specifically against Lutheran claims that the hypostatic union resulted in the omnipresence, multivolipresence, or ubiquity of Christ’s body. Thus Drake concludes, “The deepest theological motivation of the extra is soteriological since it secures the distinctive qualities of both the human and the divine natures of Christ, which Zwingli understands as necessary for human salvation” (38). In effect, the extra is an expression of the ancient christological axiom that what Christ has not assumed is not healed. If Christ’s human nature partakes of the divine attribute of omnipresence, it ceases to be a true human nature like ours, and hence our human nature, which is persistently localized in one place, is not saved in the incarnation.

To give the Lutherans their due, Drake treats the reader to a thorough review of the original clash between Luther himself and the early Reformed theologians at the Marburg Colloquy of 1529. His review of the colloquy highlights one

thing we already knew quite well: Luther was a man not easily persuaded to change his mind. Arising from Marburg is the picture of an exasperated Zwingli, who probably felt like banging his head on the table where Luther scrawled Hoc est corpus meum (“This is my body”), his central prooftext for ubiquity. More significant, however, is Drake’s conclusion that Marburg revealed divergent understandings of the use of reason, the interpretation of Scripture, and divine power between these two main streams of Protestant thought.

The story really doesn’t change much in the decades after Marburg, as Drake demonstrates through his exploration of the more extensive and technical arguments of Vermigli and the unsung French Reformed theologian Antoine de Chandieu. While Vermigli has received a lot of attention in historical theology in recent decades, Chandieu still remains in the shadows. Drake’s exposition of Chandieu’s 1585 treatise on the true human nature of Christ brings the Reformed arguments for the extra into the era of early orthodoxy, and it fills out the historical picture of the extra, which, as Drake puts it, must be seen as developing in “dialectical relationship” with the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity (203). Drake concludes his study by noting a few ways the Reformation controversy spilled into areas beyond Christology and eucharistic doctrine, and he suggests some ways the extra might lead us to deeper theological reflection in our day. In this regard, the theological import of Christ’s ascension deserves mention as one area that has suffered relative neglect in contemporary theology. As Drake notes, the extra might be a spur to consider Christ’s ascension in more depth (288).

In the end, The Flesh of the Word stands as the most significant study of the early modern Reformed account and development of the extra Calvinisticum. Drake succeeds in demonstrating that the extra is “not a piece of theological trivia” (285). Rather, it is a doctrine deserving of the detailed attention it has received in both the Reformation era and our own.

Andrew M. McGinnis (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) is a research fellow at the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research and the author of The Son of God beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the extra Calvinisticum (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

From Christ to Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the Church in Less Than a Century

by James R. Edwards

BAKER ACADEMIC | 2021 | 320 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $27.99

A STRANGELY DISJOINTED PICTURE emerges for those studying the earliest forms of Christianity. On the one hand, we have the New Testament descriptions of the ministry of Jesus and his earliest followers, portraying “the Way” as largely composed of rural itinerant Jews. On the other hand, less than a century later, the writings collectively known as the Apostolic Fathers describe a body of primarily urban Gentiles who called themselves Christians throughout the Roman world. Yet both movements claimed to follow Jesus of Nazareth while standing as heirs of his message. How was such a transformation of the Jesus movement possible? And why did the scope and form of those following Jesus change so much in such a short time?

These are the questions James R. Edwards addresses in From Christ to Christianity. Standing in the oft-mentioned but rarely addressed gap between New Testament studies and church history, Edwards argues that while the content of the Jesus movement stayed the same, during the first one hundred years after Jesus, the form of his church adapted in order to reach the wider Greco-Roman culture of the era.

While the christological center of Jesus’ person and ministry kept the church’s message

focused on the news of salvation in Christ, the church’s missional emphasis transformed the form and approach of the movement, resulting in what Edwards calls the “most creative era in the entire history of Christianity” (xxvi). Thus the church was able to adapt and extend into the Gentile world through incorporation and institutionalization at a time when it was largely powerless, disparate, and lacking central organization. In short, the seemingly radical changes to the form of Christianity during this period flowed from a desire to organize the witness of the church in ways that would further the mission of the church.

To trace this transformation, Edwards devotes chapters to a dozen of the most influential changes during the first Christian century, with each chapter tracing the transition from New Testament standards to the situation at the time of the Apostolic Fathers. Some subjects will be familiar to anyone familiar with the character of early Christianity, such as the spread of the movement from Jerusalem, the transition from synagogue to church, and the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Yet Edwards also examines other sometimes neglected subjects, such as the changes from communication in Hebrew to Greek, from Apostolic to Episcopal leadership, from Sabbath to Sunday, and from scroll to codex.

Overall, Edwards paints an informed picture of this era that simultaneously frames the scope of the transformation of Christianity, while also offering pushback on dichotomous thinking that creates too clean a picture of these changes. More than just a treatment of a particular aspect of early Christian development, this volume takes an overarching approach and attempts to trace every major transformation of this period. Because of this, no one issue is exhaustingly examined. Such forays into these issues advances Edwards’s thesis but may leave some readers desirous of deeper engagement. Such limits are, of course, inevitable components of historical inquiry.

Edwards’s greatest strength resides in how he sets the table and describes the key events and characters of this transformative period. His command of relevant scholarship for each of the subdisciplines discussed puts this volume in meaningful conversation with other voices engaging this period. One downside to this approach, however, is that some chapters merely whet the appetite or raise more questions about the development being traced. For this reason, this volume is perhaps best suited for those with some prior understanding of New Testament literature and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.

Aside from the recurring concept of missional adaption to the culture, Edwards remains less clear at times on why adaptive changes occurred within the Jesus movement. An apologetic for a change without corruption model is at work throughout this volume, which is a welcome variation from classic Protestant approaches to early church history. However, it is not immediately evident why Edwards comes to this conclusion, apart from his overarching thesis of Christian adaption without captivation to cultural mores.

Furthermore, as is often the case with those treating this historical period, Edwards at times finds himself relying heavily on nonperiod descriptions. Particularly in certain early chapters, there is heavy reliance on historically later figures such Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius. This is not necessarily a problem so much as a reflection of some historiographical decisions and the reality that any historical reconstruction of these early years must work with what limited material exists. That being so, there sometimes seems to be less a case from the Apostolic Fathers as a case about the era of the Apostolic Fathers. In later chapters, however, any concerns with this approach recede as the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers moves front and center.

Finally, Edwards offers only brief remarks on the significance of this study for today. Not every historical study lends itself to practical application, nor should it. Still, the final pages of this book speak of the parallels between the earliest church and the church of today, yet without any

sort of explication of what that might mean for today’s church. One is left wondering what sort of meaning we might make of this period of church history. At the very least, this seemed an appropriate spot to advance the call for continued investigations into what the Apostolic Fathers reveal about this critical period. Some reevaluation of the historiographical models oft used to study this period might have been useful, as Edwards adopts a model of creative adaptation that stands as a helpful third way between the sometimes sloppy models of corruption and natural development. Overall, any concerns with Edwards’s work are far outweighed by the value that his scholarship and cumulative approach bring to those studying earliest Christianity. This contribution to the conversation around the history of the church will be a helpful read for anyone interested in the early development of theology and practice, as well as those more generally interested in the contributions of the Apostolic Fathers. The transition from the Jesus movement to the church may be confusing and disjointed, but From Christ to Christianity brings some welcome clarity and cohesion to this fascinating time in the history of the faith.

Jacob J. Prahlow is lead pastor of Arise Church in Fenton, Missouri. He holds a MATS in the New Testament and Early Christianity from Saint Louis University.

Union with Christ: Salvation as Participation

by Jordan Cooper

JUST AND SINNER PUBLICATIONS | 2021 | 241 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $24.00

WITH HIS UNION WITH CHRIST, Jordan Cooper adds a second publication to his “Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology” series. This publication is projected to be volume six in the overall series, by which Cooper is attempting to rejuvenate seventeenth-century Lutheran Scholasticism, a high point of Lutheran orthodoxy and piety as he sees it. But more broadly, Cooper argues for Classical Protestantism: its use of traditional philosophical categories, its thoroughgoing metaphysical realism, its catholicity, and its practice. Here one finds similarities to other Protestant ressourcement (“return to the sources”) efforts in recent years, say, in Michael Allen and Scott Swain’s Reformed Catholicity or in the renewed interest in Mercersburg Theology.

This Classical Protestant ethos permeates Cooper’s volume on union with Christ. Cooper upholds forensic justification and imputed righteousness, while arguing that “Christ’s union with humanity is not only that of federal headship... but an ontological reality which impacts all of humanity” (90). Though focusing primarily on the Lutheran tradition of which he is a part, Cooper interacts with key Reformed perspectives and some Catholic and Orthodox theologians, noting areas of alignment and departure on issues related to union with Christ.

The book begins with a literature review, most pointedly dealing with developments in Lutheran scholarship connected to union with Christ. Significant attention is given to Tuomo Mannermaa and the Finnish school, which in Cooper’s view “revitalized an essential theme in Christian theology which has been unfortunately neglected by many in the contemporary church.” Yet Cooper also notes how “Mannermaa’s view results in a conflation of justification and union with Christ, which are certainly related concepts, but distinct” (47).

He then provides a philosophical review of sorts, arguing that “the loss of a robust concept of union with Christ is largely due to shifts in philosophy” (90). After a discussion of the perennial question of realism and nominalism (90–98), Cooper falls decidedly on the realist side of this debate, arguing that:

Christ is not simply linguistically related to other people, nor is his connection with other persons merely conceptual. It is an objective, universal, and ontological connection. It is historically with the loss of realism that the incarnation is no longer a central saving event for Protestant thought. (97)

For Cooper, while aspects of relational or linguistic ontology can provide insights regarding the nature of God’s performative word that does what it says, and the nature of man as an “I-in-relation,” he finds such views incomplete.

Cooper then unpacks three aspects of union with Christ that he finds in Lutheran orthodoxy: the objective union, formal union, and mystical union—all of which bump up against a variety of ongoing contentious issues.

He maintains that the redemptive-historical reality of the incarnation creates an objective union between Christ and humanity. For the objective union of Christ with humanity to be applied personally, “one must first be united to Christ in faith,” which Cooper identifies as the formal union of faith (223). This necessitates his engagement with a variety of sources on the relationship between union, faith, and justification, another area hotly debated. Cooper argues that:

Justification does not occur initially to the individual with faith; instead, the verdict of justification was placed upon Jesus at his resurrection. It is through faith that one is formally united to him, and thus to justification, resulting in objective justification being subjectively appropriated by the believer. (165–66)

Third, Cooper contends for a mystical union, as he explains: “Through faith, the believer is justified and also participates in the divine nature” such that “this union is real, spiritual, and mystical.” He then enters fraught territory, incorporating language usually used in trinitarian discourse: It involves an interpenetration of essences through a perichoretic relationship between the triune God and the human subject . . . wherein there is no conflation of natures with one another, though the divine nature restores and renovates the human person. (217)

For anyone looking to dig deeper into union with Christ, Cooper’s book deserves consideration as part of that investigation as he makes a case that “the forensic nature of justification as well as the participatory reality of union with Christ . . . is most consistent with Scripture” (222). Cooper’s style is eminently readable and not overly polemical—a true gift indeed. He comfortably moves from philosophy to theology, from Reformed to Lutheran sources, from Eastern to Western Christendom. In Union with Christ, readers from a variety of denominations will find much that is thought-provoking and devotional.

Cooper’s synthesis of the extra nos reality of forensic justification with the intra nos reality of the unio mystica is encapsulated in his evaluation of the Finnish school:

[The] problem in the Finnish proposal on union is in its identification between Luther’s idea of justification and that of union with Christ. . . . Such a conflation of these two soteric realities is not necessary, for when the great exchange is properly understood, the forensic nature of justification as explained by the Formula of Concord and a real-ontic union with Christ are both confessed. This unified soteric approach brings together the centrality of forensic justification with Mannermaa’s emphasis on an intimate and mystical union between the believer and Christ, which results in ontological transformation. (143)

Such talk of “ontological transformation” might make descendants of the Reformation nervous, but Cooper’s case for this being part of the historic church’s heritage merits further thought.

Such a position also offers a rich sacramental element to life that is missing in much of modern Protestantism.

One of the challenges in a book such as this is the attempt to straddle the academic-popular line. Periodically, further argumentation using additional key primary and secondary sources would have been helpful; too much is assumed at points. For instance, when Cooper uses perichoresis to describe the relationship between the Trinity and human nature, he drops a bombshell but leaves much to sort out. Similarly, some consequential arguments seem to hinge on a few quotes from one author. For example, is Gregory of Nazianzus’s statement that the “unassumed is the unhealed” as clear as Cooper suggests regarding Christ and a fallen nature? And then, using T. F. Torrance as a main source to validate the non-assumptus will give some readers pause.

These quibbles aside, the great mystery of the incarnation and of our union with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection will give energy and sustenance to the Christian life until its final fulfillment in the eschaton. This is not something just in our heads or in our hearts. It is real— objectively in the historic Christ-event, and subjectively made ours through the spoken and sacramental mysteries of word and water, bread and wine. Cooper’s work helps this reality sink in, and his final words are apt:

A fully formed Reformational spirituality is not defined solely by extrinsic relations between God and humanity in the legal act of justification, but it also includes the sharing of the believer in the divine nature, which leads to the formation of character and intimacy with God, leading to eternal communion with him. (232–33)

Joshua Pauling teaches high school history and was educated at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University. In addition to Modern Reformation, Josh has written for Areo, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Public Discourse, Quillette, Salvo, and The Imaginative Conservative. He is also head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina.