Review of Bryan Fraser's "Winning a Generation Without the Law" -- By: L. E. Brown
Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 24:46 (Spring 2011)
Article: Review of Bryan Fraser's "Winning a Generation Without the Law"
Author: L. E. Brown
JOTGES 24:46 (Spring 2011) p. 21
Review of Bryan Fraser's Winning a Generation
Without the Law 1
Intentional Interim Pastor
Prescott, Arizona
Introduction
Happy coincidence led me to this book. On January 7, 2011 the Grace Evangelical Society’s facebook page linked to a web page entitled, “Take the Gospel Quiz.”2 Intrigued by the test, I dug further into the website and discovered the test’s author, Bryan Fraser, and his book, which serves as the basis for the test. That book is the subject of this review.
About the Book
Free Grace advocates will find this book profitable. There is plenty here that is agreeable and useful. For example, his statement that the only spiritual transaction available to the unbeliever is to believe in Jesus is refreshing.3 His incisive comment that Christianity has laden the gospel with legal obligations that the unregenerate
JOTGES 24:46 (Spring 2011) p. 22
cannot fulfill is a penetrating indictment of Lordship theology (pp. 84-90).4
At times the book frustrates. There is no bibliography, there are no footnotes, interaction with relevant literature is absent, and Biblical citations are scant. Although it reflects deep thought, a clear understanding of the gospel, and careful exegesis of salient Biblical passages, this book was written for the lay reader.
Still, this provocative book offers numerous useful contributions to Free Grace theology. It will be profitable reading for this journal’s audience, particularly chapters one (“The Battle of the Past”), four (“The Battle of the Soul”), and eight (“The Battle of the Law”).
Theme, Thesis, and Purpose
The book’s theme is Christianity’s long history of failure to understand the distinction between the law and the gospel (p. ix). Fraser’s thesis is that Christianity’s mistaken insistence on framing society’s departure from the law as a rejection of Christ is due to its own failure to understand and declare the gospel to a culture without the law (p. x). His purpose is to persuade the reader that the “model of a visibly activist, culturally dominant Christianity is not practical, necessary or even possible” and to urge Christianity to forsake its use of politics and law to speak to the culture, allowing it to play a role similar to the one it fulfilled in the first century (pp. 34-35).
The book raises a number of issues that sho...
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