Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment

Rating:
Summary: A Fair and Well-Researched Assessment.
Review: Lane begins with tracing the history of dialogue between the Reformers and Rome. He goes over the dialogue of the sixteenth century (with special attention to the Regensburg Colloquy) and then presents brief chapters on the doctrine of justification according to Calvin and Trent.

His next two chapters present the recent eccumenical discussions between Roman Catholics and Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic. He discusses Kung's Justification and other documents culminating in 1999's Joint Declaration. He then presents some key points of difference that remain between Rome and Protestants and is very objective in his treatment. He concludes his work an assessment of where the ecumenical discussions are going and what they are capable of accomplishing.

This book gets five stars because it is copious and fair. Lane does not fall back into rhetoric and polemical defenses in his evangelical assessment of the recent ecumenical dialogue, but gets to the heart of the issues underneath semantic word games and flexible definitions. One will understand the doctrine of justification and its history from both sides of the debate better by reading this work.