The Word That Absolves

"People who love God live in fear of him."

People who were converted because of mercy spend years trying to deserve it. Good people abandon the faith because they can no longer bear the feeling of always being in debt.

This book was written for them.

Justification is not a theory about the soul. It is a sentence: someone with the authority to do so declares that your sins are forgiven. A word spoken from outside in—to be heard with the ears, not manufactured in the heart.

Kleber Denker follows the doctrine the Reformation called the chief article—from Paul to Augustine, from Luther's tower to Trent and to the Joint Declaration of 1999—for readers who are not professional theologians, and with a generous reading of Catholics, Orthodox, Reformed and Pentecostals.

Then he brings it down to the ground: work and the anxiety of performance, shame, grief, religious perfectionism, the feeds that became a permanent tribunal, the church that wounds.

Toward the end it answers the seventeen objections that come up most often—from "Isn't this a license to sin?" to "What if I feel none of this?"—and it closes with voices from the tradition, from Augustine to Oswald Bayer, a final word without conditions, and five appendices, among them a glossary of the terms the argument needs.

One hundred and seventy-two short chapters, in twelve parts. Written for readers who cannot stop accusing themselves. The intention is one: that you finish calmer than you began. Not more careless—calmer.