Category: Book Reviews

Norman Shepherd writes in the Call of Grace of the dual dangers of evangelism:

…Reformed pastors want nothing to do with “easy believism.” This is a way of presenting the gospel that separates acceptance of Christ as Savior from acceptance of him as Lord. The Bible teaches that without sanctification, or holiness of life, no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). Therefore, it is not enough to ask the sinner for a simple act of faith. The evangelist must also demand repentance. But the difficulty here is that the opposite of “easy-believism” often turns out to be “hard-work-ism,” and that is not very good news. Indeed, in terms of Paul’s argument in Romans and Galatians, that destroys the gospel (68).

My former college professor Dan Ebert quoting Colin Greene asserts that “Christianity stands or falls by the adequacy or otherwise of its Christology. One of the reasons for a deeper Christology, writes Ebert, is that in “every age there are characteristics of the church that need to be reshaped by Christological wisdom. The antidote for the unhealthy habits of thought and practice that have infiltrated our churches is the wisdom found in Christ (Wisdom Christology, p. 3).

Shepherd writes attempting to avoid future misunderstanding about the nature of reprobation:

And please note carefully the way in which I’m stating this point because it could be very easily misunderstood. I want to block out the possibility of misunderstanding more specifically at a later point, but even here I want to warn you not to misunderstand what I am saying. Reprobation from within the context of the covenant–please underline with about four lines that expression–reprobation from within the context of the covenant, that is to say, reprobation from the point of view of the covenant, is not incontrovertible…but that does not mean that God’s election has fallen to the ground. God accomplishes his purposes.

Unfortunately, Shepherd and many who espouse some form of consistent covenantalism have not been understood. Much of the controversy surrounding Norman Shepherd would have been avoided if advocates got a hold of this important distinction.

Bavinck affirms Shepherd years earlier:

Accordingly, those who misrepresent God’s counsel in general, and the decree of reprobation in particular, as if it were merely the divine purpose respecting a person’s eternal destiny, are guilty of serious error. No one has the right to interpret the decree of reprobation as an iron decree, determining only the final destiny of those lost, who are then viewed as inexorably shut up in this eternal state of perdition no matter what penitent efforts may be put forth (Doctrine of God, 399).

This distinction appears to have not been taken into account consistently in the many documents listed by Hewitson in Trust and Obey. 

Near to the heart of the Shepherd controversy at Westminster (discussed in Ian Hewitson’s work Trust and Obey) is John 15:1-8. Opponents of Shepherd viewed this passage only from a decretal perspective. Thus, they understood Shepherd to be teaching conditioned grace: abiding in the vine is grounded in something in man. However, Hewitson rightly points to a paragraph where Shepherd is quoted as saying “the branches have their vitality at every point from the vine (179).” For Shepherd, the necessity of obedience is not the language of conditioned grace, rather John 15 was an “exhortation to covenant faithfulness enveloped in the overflowing grace of Christ (179).”

Ian Hewitson’s book is a fascinating, detailed account of the situation as it unfolded in the Shepherd trial. One footnote that appears on page 50 concerns a letter from Stanford Reid to Arthur Kuschke on July 22, 1977, where he writes:

…Norman lacks theological insight…he has a strong tendency towards a legalism which also affected John Murray (FT.130).

Reid asserts that Shepherd has a tendency believed to be similar to one of the fathers of Presbyterianism. Since Murray is considered to be a paradigm of Reformed orthodoxy, then why was the treatment of Shepherd so severe, since Shepherd claimed to be following in the footsteps of Murray (Murray, of course, appointed Shepherd to take his place at WTS)? Perhaps the answer lies in an observation made by Hewitson on page 37 that there was already prior to Shepherd’s trial a “judicial atmosphere.” This atmosphere emerged from a previous debate over Professor Knudsen’s philosophical methodology. It was during the Knudsen controversy (see pgs. 35-37) that the controversy over the doctrine of justification began at WTS. It appears Hewitson was correct that the Shepherd controversy did not occur in a vacuum (35).

I have begun reading through Ian Hewitson’s Trust and Obey, which is a full treatment of the Norman Shepherd controversy at Westminster Theological Seminary. The point of the book is that WTS “did not have the necessary grounds on which to remove Professor Shepherd from his teaching post (19).” The book considers vast amount of reports and faculty minutes of those long years of trial.

John Frame writes that this is an “accurate and clear account of the matter (9).” Those who have long watched the Federal Vision controversy unfold over the years will realize that Shepherd’s name is one mentioned quite often in denominational reports. Perhaps this book and the research will add greater clarity to a discussion often misunderstood.

My good friend Luke Welch and I have just finished our review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins. I hope it proves to be helpful.

Here is our paper as PDF: He Has Fixed A Day: A Reformed Response to Rob Bell’s Hell

About Luke:

Luke Welch is a Reformed and Presbyterian thinker, and serves as a lay preacher at Saint Andrews Anglican Fellowship (AMIA) in Baltimore, MD. He is married to Krista, and is the father of Anastasia, Evangeline, Evensong, Ephiphany and Phinehas. Luke is graduating from Covenant Theological Seminary (St Louis) in May of 2011 with a Master of Arts in Theological Studies. Luke’s blog, Polish the Brass, ( notsinking.com ), is decidedly optimistic about God’s plan for the future of the world. His favorite moment of the week is walking with his wife and children to the table of the Lord, and celebrating the resurrection of his Great King.