Justified by Faith By Stephen D. Nadauld Deseret Book, 2001. Hardback: 163 pages. ISBN: 1-57345-831-7 Suggested retail price: $18.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Jeff Needle

It is perhaps unfair for a non-Mormon to review this book. Coming from a Protestant view of salvation, with the accompanying Reformation views of grace and justification, my own theology is often at odds with the Mormon community on these issues.

Perhaps this is why Justified by Faith was such a challenging read for me. It wasn't the pastoral writing that I had expected.

Nadauld teaches at the Marriott School of Management at BYU. As such, he views his subject through the eyes of a businessman, organizing and quantifying theology as one would a business plan. And, in the process, I fear he lost a great opportunity to raise people up in a renewed hope of a satisfying relationship with God.

In his first chapter, "Faith and Assurances," Nadauld begins with Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," and using the writings of Joseph Smith and others, stretches the verse to what he considers a more understandable statement:

Faith is having or accepting mortal assurances from priesthood leaders, family members, and friends, and heavenly assurances from the Holy Ghost, that Christ lived, atoned for our sins, was resurrected, and promises eternal life. (32)

To get to this point, the author presents a complex scheme of mortal and heavenly assurances, along with ideas of "macroevidence" and "microevidence," all of which intersect in a series of line graphs and other visual aids. The degree to which a person might believe is mapped out using x- and y-coordinates, nicely quantified and (supposedly) accessible to the normal reader.

Later he gives us "A Graphic View of Faith." At this point he realizes that all this graphing might be confusing, so he counsels neophytes to skip this chapter and move on to the next (a luxury the reviewer doesn't have).

He rounds out the book with discussions of "Justification" and "Amazing Grace." I'll treat "Justification" first. In this chapter, Nadauld presents more graphs. He begins with a list of "commandments" one must obey in order to be justified. His list is as follows:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself
Thou shalt not kill (spill innocent blood)
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not covet
Thou shalt pay tithing
Thou shalt honor thy father and mother
Thou shalt keep the sabbath day holy

Each of these is represented by a horizontal bar. Nadauld illustrates our compliance with each of these laws by shading the bars. (He suggests that the Holy Ghost is our "compliance officer.") If a bar is shaded a light grey, then you're okay -- you've never committed this sin. But if you've committed a sin, you must do something about it. You can either repent and ask forgiveness, or you can end up paying for it with your own suffering. If you've repented, then the bar is a medium-dark grey. But if you haven't repented, then the bar is a dark grey.

In some cases, repentance might only be for some of the occasions of that sin, and the author presents parallel bars with various amounts of light, medium and dark shading, suggesting that you'll only need to suffer for those times you hadn't repented.

In the chapter on justification, he offers us checklists of how to know who will be in which of the three kingdoms, as well as who will be among the Sons of Perdition. Page 116 summarizes these checklists, giving us a bird's-eye-view of the eternal destinies of humankind.

He rounds out the book by offering a view of grace, giving comfort to those who meet God's requirements, and dread to those who don't.

I must confess to not being very fond of this "business model" of God. I lost interest in the whole enterprise about half-way through the book, wondering if God really has this enormous bar chart by which He judges us. Is Christianity really a religion of checklists and punishments? Is this what the Gospel is all about?

Nadauld betrays himself in a very telling comment near the close of the book, in his chapter on "Amazing Grace." Having stated that the process of "atonement" may not cover all a person's sins, he comments on the relationship between "grace" and "atonement" in Mormon theology. He admits to a "modest aversion" to the use of the word "grace" in Mormonism and wonders why this is so.

Documenting the number of references to the word "grace" in the LDS Topical Guide (more than 50), and comparing this to the relative sparsity of references to the word "atonement" (only two), he comes to an interesting conclusion:

What are we to make of this? I believe a good case can be made for the notion that, at least to a degree, when we say 'atonement,' they (i.e. others in the Christian world) say 'grace.' (143)

He couldn't be more wrong. "Others in the Christian world" see grace as an all-encompassing phenomenon. The grace of Christ covers ALL sins, not just a percentage of the. Grace admits to no exclusions, nor does it require good works on the part of the recipient.

I went away from this book in a rather gloomy mood. If I'm to take it all as gospel fact, then I'm in for a real whipping on the other side. Frankly, I can't remember all the sins I've committed. If God is really keeping a list, I suspect I'm not the only one in trouble.

Nadauld's picture of God is, in my opinion, badly skewed by his business orientation. I think he would fare better sticking to his chosen field, and leave the theology to others.