ALL IS GRACE
Author BRENNAN MANNING
Publisher DAVID COOK
ISBN 1-4347-6418-8
I first came across Brennan Manning’s writings around 1995. I was immediately impressed with the fact that this man had something from the Lord, an emphasis desperately needed by many Christians who’s lives are more given to a ‘works oriented’ faith. From first to last Brennan Manning’s message was grace, grace and nothing but grace. Some critics felt that he spread a pseudo, cheap grace doctrine that eroded the truth and undermined the faith of some. He knew the criticisms but undeterred he ploughed the same furrow in all his books. Although he shared snippets of his own walk in those books this particular one is his last, written in 2011 three years before he passed away of a disease related to alcoholism. It is his memoir and will surprise, perplex and shock some and others who were his critics are likely to say, “well, I told you so, his message was cheap grace after all, and it excused his own sin and shame.” So, be warned if you read it. I freely and gladly recommended his earlier writings, but this one is not for the fainthearted. He lays his life pretty bare before the readers eyes. Some will be grieved for him and will find that God is glorified for His mercies and goodness. Others will be reinforced in their negative attitudes about the man and his message. Perhaps also, others will just scratch their heads and wonder, perplexed that a man beloved of many who knew him face to face and heard words direct from is mouth lived with such abysmal failure and apparently did not avail himself of the full supplies of God’s grace about which he wrote so grippingly. I am not at all sure that the honest reader of this book will come away with any excuse to go on sinning which is the inevitable result of the message of cheap grace. Manning mentions that he prefers the adjective God’s ‘vulgar’ grace. Yes, I was saddened as I read it, but also aware that the greatness of God exhibited in Brennan Manning’s life, His goodness and mercy that followed him right to the end stirs us to the obedience of faith, to rise up and follow on and to know the power of God to deliver fully from the power of sin as well as its penalty. Although the author is candid about his family, his failed marriage, the complex pathway he took throughout his life, the contradictions of his life somehow did not shake His confidence in God. The mixture present in this memoir is graphic, but possibly, in smaller ‘quantities’ that mixture of being humbled and yet wilful at times, stumbling over personal shame, often blaming the past and falling into the trap of likeness to hereditary failure, although not replicated in every Christian in detail, a measure of the struggle is surely present in many of us and the discovery of true grace is that which is sure to emancipate us into a life consistently glorifying to God. So, at the close of writing this little book brief I thank God for Brennan Manning and much more than that, thank God for His glorious grace and mercy.
