Book Recommendation: The Doctrine of the Christian Life

Back in January I described my reading project for the year:

I’m going to try that this year with these books. I’ve figured that if I read 21 pages a day, 4 days a week, with time off for vacation, I can get through these books:

• Lectures to My Students – 635 pages
• Institutes of the Christian Religion – 1001 pages
• The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God – 402 pages
• The Doctrine of God – 806 pages
• The Doctrine of the Christian Life – 999 pages

I’m now half way through the year, and I’m on track. I’m just days away from completing the John Frame trilogy, which has been excellent. But I never would have read them without the discipline of setting aside time every day to do so.

All three books in the Frame series are excellent, and a fourth one is on the way. Here I want to highlight the third in the series, The Doctrine of the Christian Life. It’s intensely theological and builds on his earlier works, and deals with issues that everyone in ministry has to face such as war and peace, bioethics, sexual morality, wealth and poverty, population and the environment, marriage and family, slavery, capital punishment, nuclear ethics, and more.

Frame is Reformed, but that shouldn’t scare you if you aren’t. He is more than fair and, even if you disagree with him on some issues, his thinking will cover areas you need to reason through as well. Besides, Frame isn’t afraid to push the boundaries. This may be the only Reformed book I know that suggests that we want to rethink our approach to illegal drugs – for instance, rethinking the imprisonment of those caught with small amounts of marijuana. I like his willingness to think through issues and come to conclusions that may not completely fit within party lines.

We’re all being called upon to think through complicated ethical issues all the time. If you want a reliable guide that is both theological and practical, then I highly recommend The Doctrine of the Christian Life.