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Faith Alone should goad both Catholics and evangelicals to more exacting study of Christian traditions outside their own heritage. One model is the rich Roman Catholic Luther scholarship of the last half-century, which has made major contributions to mutual understanding and reappraisal of our common ground and differences. It continues to be a scandal of the evangelical mind to live in isolation from the work of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and ecumenical scholars.

If Sproul's volume clarifies the need for evangelical honesty in theological research, and for Roman Catholic seriousness about the still-standing evangelical critique, it may serve as a stimulus to dialogue at a level it does not itself achieve. All of our Christian churches stand in need of clear preaching on the centrality of Christ, the sole sufficiency of grace in our competitive and merit-oriented culture, and the dynamic and central role of saving faith in Christ's plan. Roman Catholics and evangelicals in the Reformed tradition have in common a high esteem for biblical faith preserved by confessional formulations. That shared legacy makes our relationship particularly important and particularly challenging.

Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC, is associate director, Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Sola Scriptura! The Protestant Position on the Bible , edited by Don Kistler (Soli Deo Gloria, 280 pp.; $14.95, paper). This collection of essays, from a viewpoint sympathetic to that expressed in R. C. Spoul's Faith Alone, centers on the sufficiency of Scripture as the final authority for faith and practice. Following an introduction by Michael Horton, the volume includes essays by Robert Godfrey ("What Do We Mean by Sola Scriptura?"), James White ("Sola Scriptura and the Early Church"), R. C. Sproul ("The Establishment of Scripture"), John Armstrong ("The Authority of Scripture"), John MacArthur ("The Sufficiency of the Written Word"), Sinclair Ferguson ("Scripture and Tradition"), and Joel Beeke and Ray Lanning ("The Transforming Power of Scripture").

Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today International/CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Last Updated: October 4, 1996

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October 7 1996, Vol. 40, No. 11