Sanctification

Sanctification by Michael Allen

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This audio lecture reminded me of the worst features of homilies I heard during my Catholic childhood in the 1970s: lots of high level references to glory, love and grace with very little concrete detail to engage the mind in something more than a kind of revery.

I thought this was a discussion of Catholic views on sanctification until I looked up Zondervan to learn that it is a “Christian,” i.e., Protestant publisher. That certainly explains the otherwise ecumenical references to Calvin and Luther and the effort to explain away problems in their approaches.

Ultimately, I never really got a firm grip on the Protestant view of sanctification. Certainly, it is part of the process of making oneself holier - or having God make one holier - or cooperating with God in making oneself holier, but we don't get any idea of how that works or what the believer's role is in that process or even what it means to be holier in any concrete sense.

That may arise from the nebulous position that sanctification plays in Protestant soteriology. If “faith alone” saves and that happens in justification, then, as one Protestant said, the rest of one's life seems to involve something of “running out the clock.”