MARTYN LLOYD-JONES
His Life and Relevance for the 21st Century
By Christopher Catherwood
IVP. 176 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 783 593 835
‘W.W.M.L.J.D?’ It’s my latest idea for a Christian wristband. Whenever a believer reaches a dilemma on how to do church he must simply ask the question, ‘What Would Martyn Lloyd-Jones Do?’
I’m being facetious, but if you don’t read carefully enough you might end up thinking like that. But Christopher Catherwood (grandson of Lloyd-Jones) is a good historian and he knows how unethical it would be for someone to claim that they knew what Lloyd-Jones would do or say today.
Yet the subtitle is: ‘His Life and Relevance for the 21st Century’. So this book is a bit of a balancing act. I initially assumed that it was another ML-J life story, catering for a market that had no appetite for Iain Murray’s two volume tome. But I now recall that that gap has been closed by the documentary Logic on Fire. So what exactly is this book? And who is it for?
It wishes to concentrate on Lloyd-Jones’ ‘wider appeal’, outside of his British speci-ficities. So it must be said that this book is written for the Yanks; it was commissioned by Crossway after all.
But the title is also for non-Americans. It will be read by Lloyd-Jones fans, but I would recommend it to those who are only moderately interested as well.
Catherwood even tackles the two elephants in the room: Lloyd-Jones’s views on Spirit Baptism and on Anglicanism. His takes on them are especially illuminating. One criticism could be on Catherwood’s habit of perhaps needlessly adding other heroes to the mix. Francis Schaeffer, John Stott and even Mark Dever are just a few names who get more than a nod. What he quotes them as saying is useful, but it isn’t strictly on topic.
The best thing about this book is its insistence on using Lloyd-Jones’ methods, even if we disagree with his conclusions. These are the age-old principles of preaching Christ crucified and always being Bible-centered. Lloyd-Jones held to these tenaciously. May we do likewise.
