John Oswalt - The Centrality of Holiness

From the Henry Center:

In many views of salvation, especially Protestant ones, holiness is often marginalized. It is seen as a desideratum, but only as a somewhat incidental state procured by the Cross, to be realized as a reality at death. This view is the result of an inadequate understanding of the relation of the Testaments to each other. It is clear in the Old Testament that the achievement of holiness as a replication of the character of Yahweh in this life is the fundamental issue. The writers of the New Testament assume that this is still the issue, so do not restate it. Rather, they move on to consider the ways in which the Incarnation and the Atonement of Christ address it. This is especially clear in the Gospels and the Epistles. The failure to recognize these truths is one reason for the observed lack of distinctly Christian character in our contemporary society.

Welcome to the Sawdust Trail: Campmeetings and the Moral Argument

Dr. Baggett felt inspired to write this book about a Michigan campmeeting when his mom was sick and in the hospital in Lansing, Michigan about nine months before she died. As he walked the grounds at the Eaton Rapids Campground in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, thinking about her physical decline, he felt nostalgic thinking about his parents’ love of the place and its formative role in his upbringing. The idea occurred to write a history of the 130 year old holiness campmeeting, and now, four years later, the book by him  and his wife, with Joelee Bateman, is done and available for purchase. It’s called At the Bend of the River Grand, and available at, for example, Amazon.com. The price currently listed on Amazon.com is 45 dollars, but that’s going to change to 31.50 very soon. For those acquainted with campmeetings, you’ll appreciate reading the book and may well recognize much of what’s discussed; for those less familiar, we hope the book brings a little bit of campmeeting to you. Before too long we at MoralApologetics.com may feature a Campmeeting writing contest, the winner of which will receive a free copy of the book. If you’re wondering how campmeeting connects with moral apologetics, that will become clear in the course of the interview, but quickly: campmeeting is about both evangelism and living a victorious Christian life. So it touches in a very practical way on what we here at the site call the performative variant of moral apologetics: how by God’s enablement we are made able to live victoriously, finding victory over sin, and, ultimately, being conformed entirely to the image of Christ.