Letters Along the Way

From a Senior Saint to a Junior Saint

D. A. Carson, John D. Woodbridge

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781433573354
• eBook ISBN:
  9781433573378
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

A Novel of Letters from a Theologian to a Young Christian

When student Tim Journeyman first wrote to family friend Dr. Paul Woodson, he didn't know it would start a fifteen-year mentorship that would shape his life and Christian faith. Within their candid letters are words of real-world wisdom—from a "senior saint" to a "junior saint"—covering various areas of living, from the theological to the everyday. 

Written as fictional correspondence between two men at different stages of life and faith, the novel  Letters Along the Way provides important, biblical perspectives on topics such as apologetics, science and faith, inerrancy of the Bible, heart versus head faith, prayer, the changing face of evangelicalism, and trends emerging in American culture.

Published in partnership with the Gospel Coalition.

• Memorable and Engaging Style: Inspired by C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters
• Tackles Moral, Biblical, and Cultural Issues: Topics include marriage, pastoral ministry, temptation, repentance, and more
• Excellent for Seminary Students and New Believers: Includes a subject index outline to find topics quickly and easily

1

How did this lengthy correspondence with Dr. Paul Woodson begin in the first place? I must confess that I dashed off my first letter to Dr. Woodson not really knowing much about him. I was simply paying a courtesy to one of my dad’s friends from college days. It happened something like this.

In April of 1978, my junior year at Princeton was rushing madly to a frenzied conclusion. And what an eventful year it had been. My father had passed away in the fall. I did not even have a chance to say good-bye to him because I was in Princeton when he suffered his fatal heart attack at work in New York City. I loved him dearly and wished he had not driven himself so hard. But he was determined to provide a “good life” for his family. I would have preferred that he had spent more time with us even if that had meant a lower standard of living.

My mother did not soon get over the trauma of Dad’s passing. And neither did any of us children. Sometimes when I dreamed, I found myself talking to my dad. I wished these dreams would never end. They always did.

Then again, Sarah, also a junior at Princeton who I had thought was the “love of my life,” told me that she just wanted to be my friend. I knew immediately what she was really saying. It turned out that she was quite taken by a fellow on the basketball team. I played intramurals but was certainly not in this guy’s league. I tried to say to myself, “So be it. This is Sarah’s loss.” But my bold attempt at self-deception did not actually assuage my heartache.

At least my grades held up through these traumas. I greatly enjoyed my history program at Princeton. The history of science was my personal forte. I wanted to write my senior paper on the reception of Darwinism at Princeton. Other people must have thought I was doing at least fairly well because the history department did not take my scholarship away from me.

The best thing that happened to me occurred in the early spring. One of my friends from the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship invited me to hear a speaker address the group about why Christianity is “true.” As a kid I had gone to Sunday school, but by high school days, religion didn’t mean much to me. I was working on my studies and preparing for the SATs so I could get into an Ivy League school. On weekends I partied with my friends, and I was not really interested in going to this meeting.

After trying to figure out an excuse, I finally yielded to my friend’s polite insistence. The speaker was actually quite intelligent and very humorous. It was amazing. I heard the “gospel” (as some of the students in the group called it). That evening my friend asked me if I wanted to trust Christ as my Savior and Lord. Without fully understanding what this was all about, I did do that. Somehow I understood that Jesus had died on the cross for my sins; it did not take much to convince me that I was a “sinner.” I sensed that I had done things that really were not ethical and good; even my “pagan” conscience had not been entirely seared. Without trying to be melodramatic, I must say that I had a sense of joy that evening after I committed my way to Christ.

One day early in May I decided to write a letter to Dr. Paul Woodson. He and my dad had been close friends at Princeton in those antediluvian years which, I am told, existed before I was born. My dad had told me that he had always admired Paul but thought he was a little too “religious.” Paul had tried to tell Dad about Christ. Dad indicated to me that in college days he really did not want to hear anything about “religion.” Be that as it may, I do remember that when I was a kid, our family visited the Woodson home. Apparently Dr. Woodson’s faith in Christ had not created a barrier between the two men. My memories of Dr. Woodson were really vague, however, when I wrote to him.

He was teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, when I dashed off a note to inform him of my father’s death. I also mentioned that I had become a believer in Christ. To my amazement Dr. Woodson, in what was probably return mail, sent me the following letter.

Dear Tim,

Thank you for your good letter. Yes, I do remember you, but I must confess that the way your letter reads makes me believe that you have matured greatly since the last time we met. Then you were a small boy with a twinkle of mischief in your eyes. When you visited us with your parents, you scampered around our home quite full of yourself. Your mom and dad were so proud of you, and rightly so. I remember as if it were yesterday your dad saying to me that he hoped you would go to college, meet a young woman as wonderful as your mom, and then advance up the corporate ladder as he did. He wanted the very best for you.

And now the little boy has become a young man. How time flies! Your dad would be very proud knowing that you are a junior at old Nassau—and on a scholarship to boot. It pains me greatly that he is gone. But my personal loss obviously does not match that of yourself and your family.

I am very pleased that you took it upon yourself to write me even though we have not seen each other for years. I counted your dad one of my best friends when we were together at Princeton. Although we did not keep in touch as closely as we should have after college, I always cared for him. That his son would write to me is a genuine personal delight.

It is especially heartwarming to read that you have recently come to faith in Christ. Your dad, for one reason or another, never made such a commitment. He was very upright, one of the most honest men I have ever known. But he just could not see his way clear to become a Christian. He used to kid me about being too “religious,” but he did so in a playful way, not in any malicious sense. That he told you I was a believer and that you might want to contact me sometime may mean that he was more open to the gospel in later life than we might surmise. Perhaps you could fill me in about any discussions you had with him about Christ. Did he seem to understand the gospel? I would love to know about this. He meant so much to me.

You asked me if I could recommend any books on growing in the Christian life. Christians in North America have remarkable access to an abundance of valuable materials about Christian spirituality. But realizing that you are a very busy student, I suggest only three books for you. The first is C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, a classic in its genre. A second is John Stott’s Basic Christianity. A third is F. F. Bruce’s The New Testament Documents—Are They Reliable? Should you read these books, might you be so kind as to give me your impressions of them? I would be interested in your reflections.

I should tell you that I am a bibliophile valiantly striving not to inundate you with titles. Because you and I have had no contact with each other since you have become an adult, I do not know what your interest level might be. Thus the shortness of the list.

In any case, whether you read these books or not, do write again. I am so pleased that you took the initiative to reestablish contact with a family friend. A few lines in your letter remind me of what your dad would say. Let’s continue to keep in contact.

Again, thank you for your kind letter.

Cordially,

Paul Woodson

2

Although the reading list Dr. Woodson gave me proved very helpful (its brevity was a boon), my comments on each book were unremarkable. So, too, were Dr. Woodson’s letters back to me.

In my last year at Princeton, however, I found myself in what I thought then to be the most surprising quandary. Here I was, several months old as a Christian, but instead of feeling holier, I was beginning to feel more sinful. The more I learned of the Christian way, the more I discovered I could not live it. Far from easing my guilt, my fledgling faith was increasing it—and I didn’t like it one bit.

Before long I wondered if I was really a Christian at all. How could a true Christian be so burdened with lust, envy, malice—sins I hadn’t thought much about before? I wrote to Dr. Woodson just after Thanksgiving and frankly told him what I was going through. His letter was a wonderful Christmas present.

At the same time, his response marked a transition in his communication with me. In some ways, Prof. Woodson belongs to the nineteenth century, when letters were not only personal but long and reflective. I doubt if many Christian leaders at the end of the twentieth century would take the time to answer a young Christian’s questions so fully.

December 15, 1978

Dear Tim,

It is almost inexcusable that I have delayed three weeks in replying to your letter. It caught me near the end of term, when papers and examinations completely fill the horizon of seminary professors. I thought of dashing off a quick note, but the candor with which you described your anguish forbade me from writing with glib brevity.

Unfortunately, by delaying until I could write with more balance and thought, I have undoubtedly contributed to your sense of dislocation. I apologize and will try to do better next time.

Before I set out some biblical truths that bear on what you are going through, I must say that your experience is by no means unique. It is very common for new converts to Christ to pass through a stage of shame and guilt. Intuitively, we can see why this is so. Before you began to think seriously about Jesus Christ and his claims, not to mention his death and his resurrection, you probably lived your life with only those minimal ideas of right and wrong you had absorbed from your family and friends.

On becoming a Christian, all of that changed. Prayerlessness would not have made you feel guilty before; now it does. Resentment at some slight, real or imagined, never troubled you before; indeed, you may have nurtured it to safeguard your sense of moral superiority! Now you are appalled that such self-serving behavior is so deeply rooted in your personality. Doubtless you were already mature enough that you would never have wanted (at least in times of sober reflection!) to hurt a woman, but prolonged pandering to secret lust never struck you as evil—nor did barracks-room jokes or overt flirtation. Now you find you are far more chained to lust than you could have imagined. Worst of all, you are finding how impossibly difficult it is for poor sinners, like you and me, to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

But in one sense, this feeling that you are awash in guilt is a good sign. It means that you are taking sin seriously, and that is one of the marks of a true believer. I believe it was the Puritan theologian John Owen who wrote, “He that hath slight thoughts of sin never had great thoughts of God.”1 Of course, if your consciousness of sin does not lead to a deeper awareness of the grace and power and love of God, it achieves little but a kind of repression that may keep you from some public offenses while churning you up inside. But rightly understood and handled, what you are facing can become a stepping stone to a deeper knowledge of God.

What is at issue is how you should apply to your own life what Christians have called the doctrine of assurance. Since you are studying history, perhaps the best introduction to this doctrine would be a survey of some historical turning points.

At the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church, at least at the popular level, taught that it was a mortal sin for a person to claim he was sure he was saved. After all, the church argued, he will sin again; he might even sin seriously. That is why he has to keep going to confession and to Mass; the sacrament of the Mass was widely understood to be a further sacrifice of Jesus, a bloodless sacrifice, that could be applied to the lives of those who had confessed their sins. Put crudely, to the problem of continuing sin the church had a ready answer—a repeated sacrifice that atoned for the guilt that had accumulated since the Christian’s previous attendance at Mass. But suppose you died after committing some heinous sin, but before you had the opportunity of dealing with it in the confessional and at Mass? Suppose the sin was not merely “venial”—something that could be paid off in the fires of purgatory—but “mortal”— something that threatened the soul with eternal ruin. From this perspective, to claim assurance of salvation sounded desperately presumptuous.

But with the insistence of Martin Luther and others that we are “justified”—that is, acquitted before the bar of God’s justice, declared not guilty and received by God as entirely just—by God’s grace, grace that is appropriated by faith in Jesus Christ and his unique sacrifice on our behalf, the place of assurance changed. Having died once, Christ dies no more (Heb. 10:10–14). The Reformers could not accept the Catholic view of the Mass. If a Christian sins, the sin is dealt with, they said, not by looking to a new sacrifice, but by confessing our sins to God and seeking his pardon on the basis of the atonement Jesus has already made for us. “If we confess our sins, [G...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Newsletter Signup
• Endorsements
• Other Crossway Books
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19
• 20
• 21
• 22
• 23
• 24
• 25
• 26
• 27
• 28
• 29
• 30
• 31
• 32
• 33
• 34
• 35
• 36
• 37
• 38
• 39
• 40
• 41
• 42
• 43
• 44
• 45
• 46
• 47
• 48
• 49
• Outlines