Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 19:1 (Spring 2022)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

Book Reviews

Changed into His Likeness: A Biblical Theology of Personal Transformation. By J. Gary Millar. New Studies in Biblical Theology 55, edited by D. A. Carson. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. 288 pages. Paperback, $28.00.

I have been asking biblical scholars for a biblical theology of change for several years. Perhaps that is why I was excited about Millar’s new book and somewhat disappointed by the final product. However, while the work is described as a biblical theology of change (27), it does not provide a biblical theology of change as such. Millar does not, and does not intend to, address the question of what it means, in biblical terms, for change to occur. Millar’s project is to provide a significant biblical theology of regeneration. He argues that the work of regeneration is both progressive in time and more than merely forensic (8–13). His focus is on the nature of the personal transformation in the believer brought about by the Holy Spirit rather than on change itself. The assumption that grounds Millar’s argument is that “people are . . . yearning for change. . . . Everyone wants his or her life to be better. Everyone wants the world to be a better place” (2). He opens the book by introducing three fundamental questions: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” (1). These questions set up a fourth question that is the core intention of his project: how do we get there? How do human beings achieve the change that they so ardently desire? “What will our experience of this change process be like?” (242). The brief version of his answer is that “It will be a mixed experience of discomfort and joy as we ride the roller coaster of repentance and faith, of mortification and vivification, of being humbled and lifted up, of being disciplined and commended, until the day when we are like Christ and see him as he is” (242).

The first two chapters of Millar’s book offer a whirlwind tour of the psychology of change and philosophical and theological anthropologies, at the end of which he concludes, “Psychotherapists are surprisingly vague about what is really the holy grail of their discipline” (54). He also points out that

JBTM 19:1 (Spring 2022) 176

It is fair to say that just because the text speaks to and about people as ‘wholes,’ that does not rule out any kind of dualism or any kind of distinction between our bodies and our personalities or spiritual faculties. The Bible was not written by Platonists, but we must be careful not to throw the philosophical baby out with the bathwater or, for that matter, the baby out with the philosophical bathwater. (54)

He ends by suggesting a “Christian Aristotelian Platonism” that “comes very close to the idea of ‘substance dualism’ or ‘integrative du...