The Reformed Faith by Loraine Boettner

In my short time of embracing Reformed Theology with its strong biblical emphasis, Loraine Boettner’s The Reformed Faith is one of the few books that I have found to clearly and concisely address this worldview. Not intended as an exhaustive treatise, Boettner dilates on some of the key tenets of the reformed faith (popularly known as Calvinism) while hinting at other topics in six brief chapters.

In the first chapter, the author deals with the attribute of God’s Sovereignty which he explains this way that “by virtue of the fact that God has created everything that exists, He is the absolute Owner and final Disposer of all that He has made.” Boettner further elaborates that “He [God] exerts not merely a general influence, but actually rules in the affairs of men. He appoints the course of nature and directs the course of history down to the minutest details. His decrees therefore are eternal, unchangeable, holy, wise and sovereign.”

This doctrine does not sit well with many professing Christians because they hold to an unfounded notion of man’s free-will which they regard as highly inviolable to the extent that even God must pander to it and can only interfere when permitted by man. Such a view of God is the product of man’s imagination in which puny man is elevated to the status of deity, inadvertently belittling the Almighty to the lowly levels of the creature. How very demeaning of God’s majesty! Yet Boettner faithfully depicts the biblical view of a sovereign God who “…does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” Dan.4:35ESV

In the second chapter, Boettner deals with man’s totally helpless condition as a consequence of the original sin. He notes with disappointment that the “first and perhaps most serious error [of Arminian writers] is that they do not give sufficient importance to the sinful rebellion and spiritual separation of the human race from God that occurred in the fall of Adam.” This is sadly true of the many who approach man’s grave sin problem as nothing more than a mere failure to achieve perfection or as missing the mark to enlightenment and hence only require some dose of positive motivational influence to reinstate him to the path of perfection. Is it any wonder then that a lot of pastors today are more of motivational speakers than shepherds?

Sadly, many pastors and teachers fail to highlight the intensity of man’s total depravity and his dire spiritual status as dead and utterly blind to God’s truth and thus in desperate need of a savior mainly because of their low view of man’s helplessness to please God. As Boettner noted, many even avoid the subject altogether as these do not actually believe it. Yet true to Reformed Theology, the author doesn’t downplay the gravity of the fall on mankind but aptly handles it in the light of God’s sovereignty making the gospel even more precious to the sinner!

In the third chapter, the author deals with the foreknowledge of God which many Arminians appeal to as basis for the election of the saints unto salvation yet these somehow fail to comprehend its corollary of divine foreordination, which they oddly reject. He skillfully dispels this false notion by displaying the inconsistencies and absurdities that will result if this belief were to be followed to its logical conclusion while at the same time making a cogent case for divine foreordination and foreknowledge which are really two sides of the same coin.

He goes on in the next chapter to address many of the biblical texts that seemingly lend support to a Universal Atonement by situating many of these texts in their proper context and which in the end gives credence to the Reformed doctrine of Definite Atonement. Contrasting the Reformed with the Arminian view, Boettner states that we “have to choose between an atonement of high efficiency which is perfectly accomplished, and an atonement of wide extension which is imperfectly accomplished” because “if we had both we would have universal salvation,” which idea is most disagreeable even from an Arminian perspective.

The final chapter summarizes the crux of the discourse using the traditional TULIP acrostic to concisely state the distinction between Reformed and Arminian Theology where T – Total Depravity, U – Unconditional Election, L – Limited Atonement, I – Irresistible Grace and P – Perseverance of the Saints.

This book is available for free online here at monergism.com which is a treasure trove of free Reformed Theology materials. I highly recommend this book to every Christian especially those unfamiliar with the distinctive of the Reformed faith as an excellent primer.

Indeed, Loraine Boettner is spot on in saying that “Christianity comes to its fullest and purest expression in Reformed Faith.”

Soli Deo Gloria!!!