The Grace of Law
Theological Book Reviews
What did the Puritans think about
the Law? In this dissertation now published, Kevan surveys Puritanism on
this important topic.
The Grace of Law,
By Ernest F. Kevan
Soli Deo Gloria Publications, Morgan, PA: 1993.
294 Pages, Paperback.
When the morals of
humanity degenerates, moving closely towards the radical relativism
which has evolved today, then a book like “The Grace of Law” is much
needed. This is Kevan’s
doctoral dissertation on a “Study of Puritan Theology”, specifically
the Puritan’s view of the law. Here
he demonstrates how the Puritans excelled in understanding the
relationship between their salvation and election in Jesus Christ and
their adherence to law. They
were not antinomians by any means, nor legalists.
They did not work for their salvation (as popular opinion would
have us believe) but they were obedient in their salvation.
The keeping of the moral law was that which demonstrated to the
world that they had been converted.
Dr.
Kevan explores the indispensable place of the law in the life of every
Christian through the eyes of the Puritans.
He shows how the Puritans expressed the relationship of the law
to grace, and how the Christian is now free in Christ to keep the law.
Dr. Kevan says in his preface “The object of this work is to
explore the puritan teaching on the place which the law of God must take
in the life of a believer and to examine it for the contribution that it
may make towards a true understanding of the Christian doctrine of
sanctification.”
There
is no doubt that this is an exceptionally well documented and written
book on the subject. I have
found little which matches it concise and poignant spectrum of teaching. Its value is the extensive and well ordered treatment of the
puritans view, and the documentation for further study of such an
important topic. It is
impossible to read the puritans and not find page after page, or sermon
after sermon, of references to the law of God.
It was their hammer by which they drove the nails of obedience,
assurance, sanctification and the like into the mind of the believer.
To remove the law from the theme of puritan preaching would have
crippled it.
The
book has 7 chapters and a conclusion; as well as a thorough documented
list of primary and secondary sources for bibliographic information. The chapters include “The Law of God for Man,” “The
Place of the Law and the Purpose of God,” and “Christian Law
Keeping.” He also covers
a helpful topic in his chapter “The Puritan Doctrine: An Assessment in
the Light of Recent Critical Studies” showing how far recent
scholarship and this topic have come.
I
would heartily recommend this book to anyone dealing with the
“legalism vs. antinomianism” subject, one who is wrestling with the
place of the law in the life of the Christian.
Dr. Kevan’s use of Puritan quotes will give you enough to chew
on for quite some time. You
will come away with a real sense of what the Puritans taught and
preached concerning moral values and the distinction of what is right
and wrong.
Some
Quotes:
“Unless, therefore,
the heart be right, the endeavor to obey God’s Law is nothing more
than a display of legalism.”
“The
Law is thus the glorious expression of the glory of God in so far as
that glory is to be realized by the creatures whom He has made in His
own image.”
“The
Puritans regarded man as a rational being.
By this they meant not only that he was a participator in that
Divine reason which is at the heart of the universe, but that he was
unique, in that he alone of the inhabitants of the earth was aware of
this Divine reason and of the obligation rightly to relate himself to
it. This obligation of
right relationship to the Law – in distinction from the non-volitional
aspects of conformity in the lower orders of being – gives rise to the
concept of moral Law.”
“The
Puritans had a great fear of what they called “morality”, by which
they meant a mere legalism in the doing of good works for no other
reason than they were expected to do so.”
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