Clark Carlton

A few months back someone gave me a book called The Life: The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation, by Clark Carlton. I was finding that the Orthodox notion of salvation seemed to be one of the most pressing issues for Evangelicals I talked to, and I liked the straightforward presentation. At the time I thought, huh--this guy graduated from the Catholic University of America (where I went to school most recently). Since then, I've discovered his podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, which I now listen to regularly. Most of the time I find it entertaining, if not necessarily informative.

Then, the other day, someone posted a link to his testimony of how he became Orthodox. I've read a lot on that site over the past few years, so it's possible that I've already read it before. But now that I have some sense of who he is, I was a bit more interested in what he had to say. It's a very interesting story, especially as I saw a lot of common threads with my own. There are marked differences, of course. He was Southern Baptist, while my background has been in more independent churches. As such, we went through some of the same things, but his were on a larger scale. Prof. Carlton also went through the process at a younger age. From what I can tell, I explored further down the road of theological liberalism (to use the term rather loosely) before finding Orthodoxy. Still, the similarities definitely outweigh the differences.

It's a rather long story, but I would definitely recommend it as worthwhile reading.