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by John A. Vissers (Author), Hans Boersma (Foreword by)
Friendship has the capacity to elevate our lives and make us better people. It plays an important role in our moral development, spiritual growth, and personal flourishing. This is true of friendship between humans, and it is also true of friendship with God in Christ. What did friendship with Christ mean for Christians in ages past, and what can it mean for us today?
In Friendship with Christ, John Vissers offers a robust biblical, historical, and theological study of friendship with God in Christ. Rooted in the "friendship teaching" of John 15, this book draws on the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king to develop a theology of divine friendship against the backdrop of the biblical record and historical tradition. Friendship with Christ, Vissers argues, is a theological truth and experience that continues to provide consolation and hope in a secular age and a suffering world.
With a foreword by Hans Boersma, this book shows that friendship with Christ has been central to the experience of the providential love of God throughout the church's history and that it still matters today. Friendship with Christ will appeal to professors and students of theology, Christology, and spiritual formation, as well as to pastors and church leaders.
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"Enhances our understanding of the person of Christ, the work of Christ, and the shape of the Christian life"
This book lifts up friendship with Christ as central to how Christians have experienced the providential love of God throughout history and demonstrates why friendship with Christ still matters today.
"The rich fruit of a lifetime's reflection on its theme, Vissers's fine study of friendship with Christ enhances our understanding of the person of Christ, the work of Christ, and the shape of the Christian life. A most welcome contribution to contemporary Reformed theology, not least in its creative use and renewal of the 'threefold office' to display the richness of the identity and activity of the Savior."
--Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen
"This promises to be an important book, especially in our current anxious world. A return to friendship with God and the virtues that will emanate from the spiritual practices that Vissers proposes might return Christians to a joy-filled, peaceful life that can infect the rest of the world for good and God."
--Esther E. Acolatse, clinical fellow, ACPE; Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
"Friendship with Christ develops themes in Reformed theology for the life of the church that speak to the moment. Its themes of love and friendship are essential in a time of alienation and fear. Rooted in Reformed Christology (with its appeal to the threefold office of Jesus Christ), this book draws the reader's attention to seminal New Testament texts and offers support and encouragement for the Christian life. It will be useful at both seminary and congregational levels."
--Richard R. Topping, Vancouver School of Theology
"A deep dive into friendship with Christ, about which we have had far too little theological engagement. Vissers's key passages from the Gospel of John are surprisingly underexplored theologically. The book can be read with profit by fellow scholars, pastors, and laypeople. This is not only a work of theology done well; it is a model for how the rest of us should be working. I heartily recommend it."
--Jason Byassee, senior minister, Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, Toronto
Author Biography
John A. Vissers (ThD, University of Toronto) is professor of systematic theology at Knox College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, where he previously served as principal. He is an ordained minister and has served as the pastor of three congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He is also the author of The Neo-Orthodox Theology of W. W. Bryden.
