Tag Archives: Collected Writings of John Murray

John Murray’s Collected Writings on Sale

18 Feb

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All four volumes of the Collected Writings of John Murray are on sale at Westminster Book for $109 (down from $150+). See below for more information on each volume:

Volume 1: The Claims of Truth contains the most important of John Murray’s shorter writings and addresses between the years 1935 and 1973. They have been placed together in this opening volume of his Collected Writings as the best introduction to his thought on wide range of Christian truth. Murray’s belief was that, while the expression of truth ‘may be expanded indefinitely and furnish nourishment for the highest intellects to eternity’, it is also capable of presentation in popular and generally-understood terms. Accordingly, he speaks in these pages not so much to students as to the church at large in this critical century of her history. Such chapters as ‘Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching’, ‘The Power of the Holy Spirit’, and ‘The Church of Mission’, show how thoroughly he understood the great inadequacies of much contemporary Christianity.

Volume 2: Systematic Theology provides virtually John Murray’s own selection from his articles and lectures in systematic theology. In it will be found definitive treatments of subjects upon which, in the judgement of many, he advanced the frontiers of reformed theology and gave fresh elucidation of biblical truth. This is most evident in the chapters on Adamic Administration and Definitive Sanctification, but the seed-thoughts of further insight are also clearly evident in many other places.

The arrangement is in seven sections which deal comprehensively with the themes of Man, Common Grace, Christ and Redemption (2 sections), Sanctification , Church and Sacraments, and the Last Things. To the authors own selection the publishers have added material from his class lectures. None of the 36 chapters has previously appeared in any of John Murray’s volumes.

Volume 3: Life, Sermons, Reviews brings to the reader both the story of his life and some of the choicest fruit of his ministry. Since the publication of volumes one and two of the Collected Writings of John Murray, this third volume in the series has been eagerly awaited. As promised, it contains an extensive account of Murray’s life and the first published collection of his sermons. Added to these are the penetrating and valuable book reviews which he contributed to The Westminster Theological Journal during the period 1939-1953. Iain H. Murray’s biography of John Murray traces his life from his boyhood days in the north of Scotland at the turn of the century, through the First World War (in which he suffered the loss of one eye), his theological training at Princeton and his long ministry as a Seminary Professor in Philadelphia, until his retirement, his return to his native Scotland, and his late marriage and brief period of fatherhood. The biography closes with a moving account of his last days during the early months of 1974.

Volume 4: Studies in Theology is the concluding volume in the Collected Writings of John Murray. Like the preceding volumes it presents a selection of the finest work, produced mainly during his long and distinguished ministry as Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Volume 4 includes articles dealing with several areas of doctrine which lay close to Murray’s heart. Among them is the hitherto unpublished work, ‘Jesus, the Son of God’, which is possibly his last piece of theological writing. Its chief characteristic – as with all of Murray’s writings – lies in the way in which the text of Scripture suffuses everything he says. This concern to be thoroughly biblical applied also to his doctrine of Scripture, to Christology, and to his understanding of the proclamation of the gospel and the Christian ethic. Outstanding articles in each of these areas may be found in these pages.

John Murray – Why Justification by faith?

27 Feb

John Murray

The differentiating quality of faith is that the nature and function of faith is to rest completely upon another. It is this resting, confiding, entrusting quality of faith that makes it appropriate to and indeed exhibitive of the nature of justification. It is consonant with its source as the free grace of God, with its nature as a forensic act, and with its ground as the righteousness of Christ. Faith terminates upon Christ and his righteousness and it makes mention of his righteousness and of his only. This is the Savior’s specific identity in the matter of justification-he is the Lord our righteousness. And in resting upon him alone for salvation it is faith that perfectly dovetails justification in him and in his righteousness. Other graces or fruits of the Spirit have their own specific functions in the application of redemption, but only faith has as its specific quality the receiving and resting of self-abandonment and totality of self-commitment.

This is both the stumbling-block and the irresistible appeal of the gospel. It is the stumbling-block to self-righteousness and self-righteousness is the arch-demon of antithesis to grace. It is the glory of the gospel for the contrite and brokenhearted-if we put any other exercise of the human spirit in the place of faith, then we cut the throat of the only confidence a sinner conscious of his lost and helpless condition can entertain. Justification by faith is the jubilee trumpet of the gospel because it proclaims the gospel to the poor and destitute whose only door of hope is to roll themselves in total helplessness upon the grace and power and righteousness of the Redeemer of the lost. In the words of one, ‘cast out your anchor into the ocean of the Redeemer’s merits’.

~John Murray~






Collected Writings of John Murray – Volume 2: Systematic Theology (Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 216-217.

Books by John Murray

Other Murray Quotes at The Old Guys