I just received a review copy of Christian D. Kettler’s book The Vicarious Humanity of Christ and the Reality of Salvation from James Stock at Wipf & Stock Publishers. I will be doing a full review here at the blog immediately following my completion of this book (let me say thank you though to James Stock for getting me this book!). Christian Kettler is someone I look to being in contact with once I start getting a bit further into my doctoral research on this doctrine (the vicarious). This book represents his PhD dissertation which he did at Fuller Theological Seminary (some years back now) under the watchful eyes of Ray Anderson and Geoffrey Bromiley. Kettler also had the opportunity to serve as Thomas Torrance’s Teaching Assistant for a bit while at Fuller (presumably) in the 80’s. I just wanted to share the brief blurb from the back cover of this book:

In this book, the problem of the reality of salvation is addressed by T. F. Torrance’s doctrine of “the vicarious humanity of Christ.” Through this approach, salvation as humanization is affirmed, yet without the problems of anthropocentric theologies. This book is unique in that it offers both a survey of contemporary Christian thinking on salvation as well as a constructive alternative based on Torrance’s doctrine, a significant yet neglected contribution to modern theology.

This book is one of the best places I can think of to officially kick off my doctoral research on the vicarious humanity of Christ! Kettler’s approach seems to deal much more closely with this doctrine within its modern theological context and discussion. My research will press, in contradistinction a bit, back further into the Tradition of the Church; and will develop and unearth how this doctrine first received its legs through seminal figures scattered throughout the span of Church history starting in at least the 4th century A.D., and moving through the Reformation period into the Modern (with Thomas Torrance), finally placing all of this into the discussion that Kettler mostly focuses on in his own research.

I was thinking of sharing the Table of Contents from this book, but I think I’ll do that later.