How does a person come to faith in Christ? Is that faith a gift from God or the work of man or some combination of the two?
As Martin Luther wrote long ago, the issue of who does what in the matter of salvation constitutes the most fundamental of questions that the believer in Christ must face. It was the question at the heart of the struggle to reform the church in the sixteenth century, and it has resurfaced as a source of contention within the evangelical church of our day.
In The Gift of Faith, Bryan Holstrom offers a fresh exploration of the issues involved and the biblical basis for the traditional understanding that faith is a gift from God. He lays out the relationship between grace and faith, and argues that the teaching on salvation that is found in many churches today is derived more from the modern self-esteem movement than from a careful reading of the Bible.
Most importantly, Holstrom demonstrates that what is ultimately at stake in the battle over grace and faith is
