Joseph Minich and Bradford Littlejohn, eds. People of the Promise: A Mere Protestant Ecclesiology. Lincoln, NE: The Davenant Press, 2017. 194 pages.
What is the essence of the church?
According to the contributors in People of the Promise, the church is simply the people who trust in God’s Word and who rest in his gracious offer of salvation. As Joseph Minich states in chapter one, “The church, at its most basic, is just the people of the promise. . . . The church is the community of those who have been claimed by God’s promise—who have said ‘yes’ to the gospel message” (9). This understanding of the church is an outworking of Luther’s key insight that justification is by grace alone through faith alone. For those who have been united to Christ by faith, they simply are part of Christ’s body and members of his church.
People of the Promise seeks to explore and unpack this key principle of Protestant ecclesiology: the church is a spiritual reality hidden from human eyes, a reality that transcends any of its visible, institutional forms. The church, no less than the other articles of the Apostles’ Creed, is an object of faith. While Protestants
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