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Second, in their desire to emphasize the power of God's grace, they end up trivializing human freedom. Talk about irresistible grace! If you reject grace in this life, Gulley and Mulholland promise, God isn't finished with you yet—what they call his "infinite patience" guarantees that sooner or later in your posthumous existence, you will see the light. Ultimately theirs is a world in which human action has no real consequences, a distorted mirror image of Calvinist predestination.

But Gulley and Mulholland have done what many evangelicals and orthodox Christians more generally have failed to do: they have honestly faced the church's traditional doctrines of salvation and eternal justice, even if only to reject them. In many congregations, these teachings are emphatically affirmed on paper yet rarely preached or even discussed. There's a deep double-mindedness at work here.

For my part—as for many others, I suspect—the questions that tormented me so many years ago were never completely resolved. What gave me a measure of peace was the faith that God is both just and merciful, that he can be trusted. I couldn't answer all the questions, but I could turn them over to him.

To testify to salvation in Christ and Christ alone, then, needn't be an arrogant yet insecure act of religious imperialism, "salvation as recruitment," as Gulley and Mulholland depict it—though it can be that, alas. Rather, in our confusion and uncertainty, this much we can be sure of: Jesus is our Savior.

"Without any doubt," the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy almost 2,000 years ago, "the mystery of our religion is very deep indeed: He was made visible in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed to the gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory" (1 Tim. 3:16, New Jerusalem Bible). Proclaimed to the gentiles, be-lieved in throughout the world: the surpassingly generous offer is extended to all, without exception. It remains for us to respond.

John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

If Grace Is True is available at Christianbook.com and other retailers.

The Harper SanFrancisco site for the book includes author bios and a chapter excerpt.

Other reviews have appeared in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, The Dallas Morning News, and Crosswalk.com. The Associated Press and The Tennessean have run articles about Gulley and the book.

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September 2003, Vol. 47, No. 9