The Benefit of Christ: Living Justified Because of Christ's Death

by Juan de Valdés, Don Benedetto, Leon L. Morris (Introduction)

Almost unknown by evangelical Christians today, Juan de Vald?s and Don Benedetto were Italian Reformers who penned what are probably the two most significant works of the Italian One Hundred and Ten Considerations and On the Benefit of Jesus Christ, Crucified. Both writers protested not merely against the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, as Martin Luther did, but went further to challenge the Italian humanism of the Renaissance. While John Calvin's Institutes richly teach the doctrine of the atonement by faith, the thought of Juan de Vald?s reflects more of a struggle and debate among a group of friends about how the experience of justification by faith is actually lived out. The writings of Don Benedetto develop similar ideas about the centrality of Christ's death, and the role that assurance and joy play in the Christian life.

Genres: Theology

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Juan de Valdés (c.1500 – August 1541) was a Spanish religious writer.

He was the younger of twin sons of Fernando de Valdés, hereditary regidor of Cuenca in Castile, where Valdés was born. He has been confused with his twin brother Alfonso (a courtier of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who attended Charles's coronation in Aachen in 1520 and was Latin secretary of state from 1524). Alfonso died in 1532 at Vienna.

Reviews

[Joshua Sprinkle]

This is the devotional mannual that Michelangelo read, causing him to discover the doctrine of grace i.e. justificaiton by grace through faith. This changed his entire approach to art and it's markedly visible in his later works (after his idolatrous sistine chapel cieling for instance.)

[Travis Daggett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good; a little hard to understand some of it.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb! What a treat to come across [on the bookshelf of friends who have lent us their apartment while we pack up five years of life in Beijing and make a tremendous mess in our own place as a prelude to imminent departure...] these 16th century works from the very heartlands of unreformed Roman Catholicism, the authors (a Spaniard and an Italian) apparently not in contact with Luther or Calvin or any other Northern European reform movements, but still writing vivid gospel truth unencumbered by obscuring and misleading traditions. Some of the metaphors and conceits are quite wonderful and illuminating. Not mere doctrinal quibbling, but shot through with psychological insight. From the thirty-third of Valdes' One Hundred and Ten Considerations...
"I believe that scholarly men without the Holy Spirit suffer the same illusions with reference to the Holy Scriptures that unholy men do with image. It happens like this. /
An ignorant man will keep a crucifix at the place where he enters his room in order to recall what Christ has suffered. Because he finds this suggestive, he will set up similar images in other parts of his house. As a result he will always be assured by looking at them and by his memory recollecting what Christ has suffered. So he really does not seek to imprint the reality of Christ crucified upon his inward being, nor will he therefore really taste or experience the benefit of Christ's passion. When he wants to solicit something from Christ, all he does is simply look at the effigy rather than the reality of Christ's presence within him."
But before we conclude that this is just confirming Protestants in a knee-jerk reaction to medieval iconography, or a kind of condescension towards the illiterate, Valdes continues, in a rebuke to anyone who approaches the Word of God without real faith and without divine aid...
"In the same way, a learned man without the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures everything recorded that is relevant to the life of a Christian. There he will find all that he ought to believe and what he ought to do. Every time he opens his book he can understand the one or the other. Because this appears sufficient to him, he will exhaust all his study and all his diligence in procuring many books that expound the Bible. [Ouch, it's like he knew me when I was in my 20s!] /
But in the process, he will not be concerned to have imprinted upon his spirit what he reads and studies. When he is moved to seek understanding of some divine mystery, he will turn to the Bible to attain the information without bowing in prayer that God will show him and teach him. So he makes the mistake of teaching his own mind and nature those things which men wrote who had the Spirit of God. No wonder he may become disillusioned with the Scriptures, because he does not have the Spirit of God within his own heart" (pp.37-38).
In the 1984 Multnomah "Classics of Faith and Devotion" edition this pair is nicely introduced by James M. Houston and again by Leon Morris, and then there is a bonus essay from Houston by way of an appendix on devotional reading and on broadening one's appreciation for the spirituality of earlier Christian writers (from a variety of traditions). I found it deeply moving.