The Hammer of God

Few works of Christian fiction popular among American evangelicals tackle the struggles of the Christian life from a deeply theological and pastoral perspective rooted in the Lutheran Reformation.  Bo Giertz provided such a work with his book, Hammer of God.

Matthew Claridge reviewed Giertz’s book.  Claridge writes:

Within the past few months, the Gospel Coalition . . . brought to the attention of the evangelical world a work of fiction entitled The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz (1905-1998), who served as a bishop in the Lutheran Church of Sweden. It involves a fictional account of three pastors from three different eras in Swedish history struggling with how to apply the “law” and “gospel” in the life of their congregations. Along with our brothers over at the Gospel Coalition, I can affirm that Hammer deserves inclusion in the canon of great evangelical literature. It is a unique and powerful exploration of the gospel’s daily relevance to pastoral ministry and the Christian’s life. Giertz is the first author I have encountered that can translate the “world” of Luther’s thought. If the German Hercules had written fiction, this is what it would look like.

A law-gospel dialectic drives the plots of the stories Giertz tells. By doing so, he offers a form of Christian story-telling virtually without peer in the English speaking world. Lamentably, the drama of much Christian fiction is often more sentimental than noticeably biblical. The conflict is usually resolved when the protagonist “surrenders” his life, the sun pops out, the bluebirds chirp, and the newly awakened believer sings “Victory in Jesus.” Giertz uncovers the seedy underbelly of this kind of triumphalism so often paraded in our lives and mirrored in our fiction. Far from ending the conflict with sin, conversion often exacerbates and deepens it as a superficial application of the law transforms our easily conquered external sins into the pious sins of pride, hypocrisy, flattery, and showmanship.

Read the rest of Claridge’s view here.