Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Predestination

The American career of a contentious doctrine

Let’s get it over with?

PREDESTINATION
The American career of a contentious doctrine
By Peter J. Thuesen
OUP. 309 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978-0-19-517427-4

When I first glanced at the uninviting cover, title and print, I wondered why I’d been given the task of reviewing such a book for EN. Then I began to read and was so drawn into the subject that it was difficult to put the book down.

The author, professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University and editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol.26, has gathered and sieved an amazing amount of material to present a most readable and easily digestible account of a doctrine that has engendered heated exchanges and unhappy divisions. Don’t dismiss the USA setting or think this is a book just for Calvinists. Whatever your theological background or country of origin, you will be informed and helped to view the issues from a fresh perspective.

After an introductory chapter setting the scene, we are given a historical background to the subject that takes us from the New Testament (the Old Testament is not considered) through Augustine and the Medieval period to the Reformers, particularly Calvin, and to the English Protestants and Puritans, especially William Perkins and his ‘golden chain’. It ends with Arminius and the Canons of Dort. The following chapters cover the controversies within New England Puritanism, the Great Awakening and the Wesleyans, the Universalists, Adventists and Mormons, the Roman Catholics and Lutherans, the Presbyterians and Baptists. Reference is made to the Westminster Theological Seminary, Joel Beeke’s seminary, Al Mohler and the Southern Baptists, the Lutheran Missouri Synod, and Rick Warren’s purpose-driven life, besides Edwards, Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, Billy Graham and countless others. The author helpfully translates Latin references and gives a glossary of theological terms such as infralapsarian, Molinism, Pelagianism, prevenient grace, supralapsarian, etc. One does not have to agree with all the author’s comments and conclusions to beneŞt from this generally fair presentation of a most difficult subject. Those who read will not be disappointed and may, indeed, be humbled to adore the God who cannot be contained or confined within human systems.

Philip H. Eveson,
Wrexham (formerly of London Theological Seminary)