The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism [Paperback]

Norman Shepherd (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 110 pages
• Publisher: P & R Publishing (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875524591
• ISBN-13: 978-0875524597
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,167,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Protestantism > Presbyterian
  • #38 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Pneumatology
  • #93 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Soteriology

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33 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a book on covenant theology!, October 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism (Paperback)

If you are a Christian layman in the Reformed tradition, say, a member of a PCA,OPC,ARP congregation or some other evangelical calvinist denomination, then you know that the word "covenant" is kicked around an awful lot, yet all the books aimed at persuading laymen of Reformed distinctives are either about predestination or infant baptism. Only these latter actually bother to mention the covenant and then only as a means to an end.

This is one of the most important books that could be written because Shepherd has given us an easily accessible introduction to the covenant. It is about time! And this is a really good book for those outside the Reformed tradition as well. Anyone interested in the controversy over recent attempts by Evangelicals and Roman Catholics to come to a concensus will want to read this book. Anyone struggling for the first time with questions about God's predestination and human resonsibility will also want this.

Also anyone wanting to get past the way Reformed people typically downplay the importance of the church, the sacraments, and God's offer of mercy to all who hear the gospel (because of an unbiblical obsession with predestination, regeneration, and conversion) will find this book a gem.

Finally, a note on various naysayers:

I don't mind people disagreeing with Shepherd, but the shrillness and extreme language is simply unjustified. Anyone can go buy Bullinger's "On the One and Eternal Covenant of God" translated in _Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition_ by Charles S. McCoy, J. Wayne Baker, Heinrich Bullinger, and see plenty of Reformation precedent for what Shepherd is saying. Indeed, Shepherd appears quite tame in comparison. One can read _The Binding of God_ by Peter Lillback and see how Calvin and Bullinger were offering one consistent covenantal theology. One can read Zacharias Ursinus or Francis Turretin on the Covenant or on salvation and see obvious precedent.

Perhaps Shepherd is wrong, but if so, then the entire Reformed Faith was a huge mistake. There is nothing of significant novelty in this book. One can disagree with details of this book, but it is what it claims to be, a helpful introduction to Reformed Covenantal Theology.

5.0 out of 5 stars Cutting Edge Theology, October 14, 2011

By 

Bernard Vallandingham - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism (Paperback)

This book is for the advanced reader of theology. If you are unfamiliar with covenant theology or you haven't gotten past the 5 points of Calvinism, then this book is not for you. Norman Shepherd, who was the protege of John Murray at Westminster West, is a brilliant man. However, he was drummed out of the seminary by a number of men intent on safeguarding their antinomian views. He wasn't fired from the seminary, he wasn't brought up on charges (the way godly men would have done things), he was just forced out by various nefarious means. All of this is exhaustively documented by the book Trust and Obey by Ian Hewitson (you can buy it on Amazon). This book, The Call of Grace, is an important work about the relation of election to the covenant. Only the most obtuse of Reformed people are unable to see that there are gaps in Reformed theology on this issue. And only a Romish approach to the Westminster Confession of Faith which views it as the highest attainable theology possible is unable to understand the importance of semper reformanda in regards to our theology. But things never change, the medieval Roman church, the modern American Evangelical church (including the Reformed), what's the difference (I mean no insult to Catholicism :-))?

If you are familiar with Reformed Covenant theology, read this book, then go on to read Bavinck, and also Ralph Smith's Eternal Covenant.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A More Corporate and Covenantal Perspective (High View of the Church)!, January 12, 2007

By 

Michael W. Spreng - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism (Paperback)

Norman Shepherd's book The Call of Grace has aided to the current controversies within the Reformed faith regarding justification. It is provocative to many Reformed, in my opinion, not because it is unbiblical but because it ceases to be a part of any one particular camp. It really is a book that seeks to be both orthodox and ecumenical. It teaches covenant theology from a more rational and corporate perspective, rather than the individualistic and rhetorical perspectives that many teach through today.

Norman Shepherd, in the beginning of the book mentions how "there have been long standing differences between adherents of the historic Lutheran and Reformed confessions." He goes on to say that there are significant difference in the doctrine of the law. No problem there, right? Reformed pastors teach the moral law to be valid after conversion, but Lutheran believe in a more "spiritual" law, or a law that is not still mandated by the Old Testament.

These types of disagreements have caused many to teach a law-gospel dichotomy; that the law is a type of detour sign that shows us the gospel. The law is said to be part of a "covenant of works" that no man could tackle and then so the detour aspect comes in to play to show "grace" to the recipient. Then, after conversion, depending on your denomination, a type of new law comes in to help guide the Christian.

But Norman Shepherd proposes something different. He says that the Abrahamic covenant was a covenant of grace (with conditions of obedience) and the Mosaic covenant was also a covenant of grace (with conditions of obedience).

Many Reformed teach that there was a covenant of works with Adam (Westminster Confession mentions this term but does not say it is a "meritorious" covenant). And yet some Reformed even teach, as the dispensationals do, that the Mosaic covenant was yet another covenant of works. This then leads to that law-gospel dichotomy, that the law was completely separate from grace, and that only the new covenant was a covenant of grace.

If the covenants of old were covenants of works then, at best, they were covenants of grace disguised as covenants of works. In other words, God would have had to be deceiving the people since, according to Paul, even the OT saints were saved the same way we were (Romans 4). Why would God lie? Or, why would Moses propose a false promise?

So Shepherd goes on to say that the OT covenants were full of promise and grace. This then leads to the proposition that Christ did not come to morally earn a covenant of works, as many men teach (what is known as "active obedience").

Shepherd moves on through this little book to teach us that we should view election through covenant rather than viewing covenant through election. He says that when we view covenant through election we attempt to become "as God."(p.83)

Please allow me to comment a bit more: Ever since I became a pastor I have believed that we should teach election through covenant. To me it was the only way out of being tried as one who is judgmental. The accusations against Calvinists have been that they do not evangelize because they believe it is a waist of time to preach to reprobate, and that God will draw the elect. But we do not know who the elect are, as Shepherd proposes, and so we make a covenant assumption when evangelizing, hoping that all who we come in contact with are God's elect. Subliminally we know this is likely not true, since God has told us there are people going to hell. But we don't presuppose things based on what God knows but based on what we know; based on what God had revealed to us. And God has not revealed to us who the elect are and are not. So the debate narrows to that epistemological question: Do we act on what God knows or what we know? Which is reality to us on earth: the invisible or the visible?

Many Reformed do not understand the implications of epistemology and polemics within theology. The study of knowledge and the art of debate have come a long way since the Reformation. We certainly need to learn how to apply the great doctrines of grace in a more concise and logical way to where God's righteousness and God's mercy (law and grace) do not oppose one another to create the confusion of today's many divided camps. We need to know when the more Platonic philosophy is important and when the Aristotelian philosophy is important (two camps that have created harsh and unreasonable dichotomies).

The new covenant, as Shepherd teaches, brings clarity. It is based on the same promises in the old covenants but with that final fulfillment of the cross and resurrection. Christ is that living sacrifice that lives out his mercy and righteousness in our lives. Christ is obedient in us (p. 104); which is probably one of his harder statements to swallow, if you are a modern Reformed. But suffices to say, the doctrine of sanctification and its very reason of existing (see Shepherd p. 62) is very seldom taught or written on in the Reformed world. This lack of knowledge has fueled and even ignited this whole controversy, in my opinion. Certainly Christ's works are not infused like the Roman Catholics teach but his works must indeed have an eschatological outcome of some sort.

The Call of Grace is packed with clear teaching if you are willing to break down the walls of today's theological reductivism. And at only 105 pages, you should be able to read it in only a few nights.