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Catch the vision

Roots of the Reformed recovery

20th-century reformers

CATCH THE VISION
Roots of the Reformed Recovery
By John J. Murray
Evangelical Press. 192 pages
ISBN 978-0-85234-667-9

Catch the Vision is a brief book, which provides pen-pictures of some of the key players as the UK church shook off liberalism and recovered its confidence in the Reformed theology of Calvin and the Puritans.

It starts by charting the decline of the church (1900-50) as the liberal gospel took its toll, noting the reducing numbers, the absence of student witness in the majority of Universities and the almost total lack of any decent evangelical literature (either authors or publishers).

The following chapters show how the vision was recovered, crediting this to:

* Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his ministry at Westminster Chapel
* Geoffrey Williams and the Evangelical Library of Puritan literature
* Jim Packer and his championing of the Puritans
* Iain Murray and the Banner of Truth publishing house
* John Murray and his influence in Scotland

Although Murray notes that ‘it is important to look at the wider picture’ (p.149), he concentrates primarily on nonconformists and consequently does not mention the considerable work of John Stott at All Souls, Dick Lucas at St. Helen’s/Proc Trust and UCCF/IVP.

While the welcome features did offer hope of a recovery, Murray notes that movement’s momentum stalled in the 1960s. His explanation is that ‘the church had not fully recovered from the liberalism that wasted her for over half a century, before she was invaded by the 60s culture and gave in to worldliness’ (p.152). I am not convinced and think that a more likely explanation is absence of successors of the calibre of Lloyd-Jones (died 1981).

Despite its limitations, the book has given me a couple of new challenges: to read the biographies of Lloyd-Jones and Stott and to go back and read the Puritans for myself.

Tim Horn,
Oxford