This book contains many dangerous statements!  And the author, a Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, wants us to see just how dangerous such ideas are...dangerous because they could lead people away from the Scriptures with the false idea that salvation is what we do. He writes this excellent book as a novel, set in a Lutheran parish in the Swedish countryside.  It covers the years when three different pastors served there, and it shows so clearly how the church was struggling with synergistic ideas of pietism.

  First, there was the  false notion that people, though baptized as infants, needed to add their work to His work by establishing a personal relationship with God:  One pastor, concerned about a brother pastor, thinks, "Did he know through personal experience [italics mine] what it means to be born again?" Some of the people agonized over the idea that their personal commitment to Jesus might not be genuine,  might not be strong enough.  A pastor, searching his own thoughts, comes to this question:  "And what about himself?  Did he not have precisely the same corrupted nature...?  Was not this the only difference, that at this moment his will and his thought had stretched across the dark abyss a thin coating of conscious faith and personal commitment?  As long as this thin, trembling layer of faith remained intact, he was therefore a believing soul.  But what if his will should no on longer be able to make that commitment?  What if his thought should be shattered and faith's thin shell broken?   What if a hardening of the arteries should set in, and he should be unable to will and to direct himself?" 

Then there was the false idea that, once people were saved, they were not like other creatures. A pastor, considering himself "a poor curer of souls," thinks about his people:  "What really crushed him was the insight he had just received into the weaknesses of believers.  Was it really like this behind the pious words, the warm prayers, and the hearty singing?  In what could one then put his trust?  Where really was the border line between believers and the children of the world?"   Were the Believers still sinners like everyone else?..."Perhaps there were many still unsettled and unforgiven sins among those who participated week after week in the meetings and labored with him for the gospel.  He felt that the very thought of such a possibility lay as something slimy and ugly upon his heart."

  The people were carefully giving up "worldly" things because they felt that really made them part of the Believers.  They wore only the plainest clothes.  They would not drink wine or coffee.  They would not wear jewelry.  They believed they were in the process of "establishing their own righteousness."  The burden was on them, but they were finding no peace.  The questions were always there:  "And what about the baby?  Such a screaming, self-willed bundle, filled to the brim with selfish obstinacy, could it be saved?  Why, it could not believe at all."  Or, "Here we meet together, sing and pray and talk for one another's edification, believing that we are thereby engaged in driving sin and Satan out of the parish, and yet we are told that he still has his cloven hoof within the doors of our hearts.  What will become of all our cherished work of revival?  And what will become of us?"And sometimes it was a statement, not a question:  "The important thing was not what one believes but what one does."  or "One can do no more than follow one's conscience." 

The author shows, again and again, the freeing truths of the Scripture.  The young, struggling pastors, as mistaken as they sometimes are, as discouraged as they sometimes become, learn how to answer the questions that trouble both them and their parishioners.  God enlightens them and uses them to direct the church.  As Bo Giertz shows on every page, it is all God's doing--never ours:  "Neither does God in His grace reckon with the good deeds of men, for God looks only upon the dear Son and will not look upon man and his good deeds, and this in order that He may not have to look upon man's sins and count against him the very sins with which all human good deeds are tainted...sin always remaining, yet always atoned for!"  A book about the freedom of the Gospel, and about God's strong and loving arm. 

Buy on Amazon

Print This Page