The experience of incongruous grace

Abstract

This symposium contribution scrutinizes Zahl’s treatise on the Holy Spirit and Christian experience from the perspective of his utilization of Augustine, Luther and Melanchthon. It exposits his argument as a critical retrieval of the early Reformation doctrine of justification by the Spirit’s sanctification which is the gift of faith, recognizable as affective transformation from servile fear to filial trust. It qualifies his genealogy of the discrediting of such affective experience in modern Protestant theology by tracing it to the Osiander controversy and its resolution in the 1580 Formula of Concord’s separation of justification from the Spirit’s sanctifying work in bestowing faith as the gift which receives the gift of Christ in his joyful exchange with the sinful.