Books on the Holy Spirit are not as plentiful as one might think, and books on the Spirit that take on the entire scope of evidence are fewer yet -- but there is a new book that will become, and perhaps already has become, the benchmark and starting point for all future studies of the Spirit. John R. Levison's
Filled With the Spirit
.
The effusiveness of the endorsements match what I have seen in the book: a full study of the evidence in the Old Testament, the Jewish literature, Greco-Roman materials and the New Testament, and a comprehensive re-evaluation of the state of the art. Levison has a proposal to make, and it is essentially that the pre-Christian materials saw the Spirit of God and the human spirit as one and the same -- hence, his spelling: "spirit of God." The New Testament, however, sees the human spirit within, given to all at birth, as insufficient and those early Christian texts dwell on the additional power of the charismatic Spirit of God coming upon humans. There is a powerful conviction that God's Spirit must be received as an additional endowment.
One more observation of Levison's book: Levison has listened well to the oracle of poetry because this book contains some of the finest prose I've ever seen in scholarship. At times it brushes up against the indirection of English writers and at other times of the cadence of the poet. This book is eloquent and exceptional. Buy it and read it.
I can't possibly discuss every book I'd even like to discuss at length on this blog, let alone books I get that deserve to be mentioned. I would need four blogs to get all this accomplished.
Yet, I've been frustrated about this for a long time, and never landed on anything that works so I want to start a column I will call "Book Comments" that mentions some really good books, usually of an academic level fit mostly for pastors and professors. I want to mention two today:
Scott W. Hahn is known throughout the American religious scene as "the evangelical who went Catholic on us," and Scott was featured in my own study of why evangelicals become Catholic. But Scott is a very good biblical scholar and theologian, and he is perhaps the world's most covenant-focused interpreter of the Bible that I know. Furthermore, he has processed almost all of contemporary scholarship through his lens of kinship (with God) by covenant. Perhaps Michael Horton or one or two others rank up there with Scott, but I'd still give Scott the nod when it comes to a focus on covenant theology in interaction with all the discussions. Scott did his dissertation on this topic and he has been writing and speaking about it ever since, and if you know what he thinks about covenant, you'll see it in every book he writes. I read Scott's thesis and wrote him and urged him to publish it, and I'm so glad that Doubleday has brought it out in revised form in their prestigious Anchor Bible Reference Library. In my view, this book has to be read by seminarians across the theological spectrum. It's that important. In some ways it chases away the old polarities and some of the more recent ones too. In process, it changes the categories.
Chris Armstrong finishes his book,
Patron Saints for Postmoderns: Ten from the Past Who Speak to Our Future
, with a chapter reflecting on how these saints -- ten of them, some unknown and some unusual -- can be of help to Christians today. What makes these stories, these biographies of use to us? His answer:
"Because, for Sayers, as for Dante, and Kempe, and Gregory, the visible, physical world is loaded with spiritual meaning" (205). Armstrong's book is a wonderful book for the Church, a real gift. Why? Because the church needs more contact with its past, and this is how to do it: by telling the stories within that Story of the Church. And, yes, I agree with him: the visible, physical world is loaded with spiritual meaning...
Which leads me to a wonderful new book by Dean Nelson:
God Hides in Plain Sight: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic World
. Nelson is a professor of journalism at Point Loma University in San Diego, and he has been all over the globe ... and he's got wonderful wit and an eye for the uncanny sense of God's presence, and a broad spirit that reads all over the map. This book has taken me by surprise. "My purpose in telling these events," he says about what will become dozens of little incidents, "is not to tell that I believe in magic." No, he says, "I believe that grace goes before us as a way for God to say, 'Welcome! I got here before you. I've been expecting you" (14).
Every pastor needs this book on the shelf.
Every church needs five copies of this book in store.
And of course every widow could benefit from this book because it is written to help with "the new you."
That book is Miriam Neff's
From One Widow to Another: Conversations on the New You
. Written by a widow, written for widows, this book reads like the experience of sitting at a coffee table watching one widow minister to another widow. It's that personal. And because there are so many widows, it's that important. There is a huge demographic of suffering women who are neglected, who are losing their place in churches, and who are seeking for help -- churches need to have widow ministries. This book can build the structure of what needs to be done.
I don't want to summarize every chapter, but here's what this book will provide for you:
A widow's vulnerabilities (grief, fear and [for most] dealing with money). I especially liked her points about the sort of friends widows need.
A widow's strengths (opportunity to change and to comfort) is followed by relationships, where she shows that both family and friends are never the same again. And she encourages widows to find themselves and their mission and their faith anew.
This book, born of grief and working through fears, is a gift to the church.
Michael Card, known mostly for his lyrics and music and concerts (and one of my favorite Christian musicians), has explored how it is that Christians find freedom. And what he has discovered is that freedom comes through slavery, which is the subject of his new book:
A Better Freedom: Finding Life As Slaves of Christ
.
Can't resist: What's your favorite Michael Card song? Your favorite lyric?
What I have liked most about Card over the years is his study of Scripture that leads to lyrics rooted in a biblical imagination. What I like about this book is that it deftly handles what the Bible says, what is known about slavery in the ancient world, and how the image of slavery to Christ is the most liberating message the early Christians used for new life in Christ.
Who could read this book? I recommend it for college students and Sunday School classes and for pastors who could do a 3-4 week series on the image of slavery as the paradoxical image of freedom.
There is here then a liberation theology, but it's a liberation theology rooted in the notion of becoming a slave to Christ -- and that is the heart of the early Christian theme of liberation. It's not just liberation from, but liberation to -- to God, to Christ, to a live of loving service to others. Freedom in the NT is seen in the image of a basin and a towel.
Now a bonus: Michael Card's book is laced up with themes from African American slavery, a lens that anyone in America must (or should) wear -- and Michael Card's own experience in African American churches gives the whole book a concrete reality that few can have. I've read books by singers before; I've read books by Christian singers -- and most of them were published because the person was known. This book deserves to be published, even if Michael Card is known as a Christian musician. It's that good. He knows his sources, the facts, and he knows how to put it all together in a compelling book.
Kris and I both love to read memoirs. Kris likes those memoirs that probe one's psychological state or get into some deep story, while I like memoirs of writers and thinkers (which is not to say they don't sometimes explore...
It seems that most folks I run into have a CS Lewis moment or event or book they like. I first read CS Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia when I was in college. Kris had read them and couldn't stop...
The problem with John Mark Reynolds' new book, When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought , is that neither the title nor the subtitle is fulfilled in the book. The book is about Athens with hardly...
I hope the title to this post didn't scare you off because I want to address a serious topic: how we face death. But we can address this from a variety of angles -- like Christian hope or the medical,...
It is hard to estimate the significance and impact of Dallas Willard in the church today. It is also hard to describe his newest book: Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge .This is a good book, and...
For more than 30 years I have bought books, entered them onto a master list of books in my library, filled out 3x5 cards (which I quit doing a few years back), read them and shelved them. But all of...
For many Christians the creation narratives in Genesis 1-2 and the fall in Genesis 3 are key passages in conversations concerning science and faith. The significance of our knowledge of the age of the earth and the theory of...
St. Augustine famously said, "for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You" (Confessions 1.1.1). Though I've never seen a full-scale discussion of the Bible's presentation of the "inner apologetic," how...
The oddity of Jean Twenge's conclusion that we discussed Wednesday, that our youth are more anxious and depressed than before (see her book Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before),...
One of the more alarming features that Jean Twenge uncovers in her new book, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before concerns levels of anxiety among iGens or what she...
If you have questions about The Shack , and if your questions are theological, and if some have suggested that this book is full of heresy and you are wondering about the book, then you need to read Roger Olson,...
This last weekend in our travel to Canada and back, I read lawyer and professor of law at Baylor University, Mark William Osler's new book Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment . There are...
Friends think about, talk about, and enjoy happiness with one another. David Naugle's new book, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness, is a good book to read and a good book to discuss -- and I...
Blurbing is a delicate art. Publishers seek recognizable names that will raise the credibility of the book and its author; publishers also seek diverse blurbs in order to widen the readership. Blurbs, so it seems to me, are there to...
I wish my family had known of these things years ago! Just got this in the e-mail today from Amazon and had to pass it on for those who still don't know what to buy....
This is what I found at Border's. Here's the image. As you can see, they managed to get The Blue Parakeet's author as a certain former, pretty student of mine named Ron Martoia: This is Ron Martoia and it...
At Beliefnet I am participating with other bloggers in nominating my top books of the year and here are my top picks. I've chosen books I've reviewed here and ones that drew either strong affirmation and great discussions.Klyne Snodgrass' complete...
This selection of new biblical studies books is a bit of a grab book of "must-reads" I saw at SBL. The Jesus Creed blog is committed to speaking about and against racism, and so we want to highlight a new...
In our last post on new books we listed some top-notch new reference books and commentaries. Today I want to mention seven new books in theology and Christian thought. I begin with what is becoming an international argument: the relationship...
I read two wildly distinct pieces this week that somehow are joined at the hip -- I read some more in Kathleen Norris's book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life , and I also read Barry...
Every year at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature I meander through the book stalls, make some purchases, and set myself up for another year of reading and researching. Today I want to make some book suggestions...
The first section of chp 7 in Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life is relentlessly profound. Today I want to clip a few lines of hers about human nature and apathy (acedia) and ask...
A few years ago I discovered the ruled Moleskine: Moleskine Ruled Notebook Large and Moleskine Ruled Notebook Pocket . They have a cool elastic string that keeps it closed and a fantastic pocket at the back for storage. For two...
The desert monks committed huge portions of Scripture to memory, not only putting us moderns to shame but also reminding us of the potency of a simple life. One reason for putting so much Scripture to memory was to learn...
I was recently asked what my top five books on Christian ethics would be ... well, without parameters I thought I'd give five that span the spectrum.A good anabaptist approach, written for an upper level college student, graduate student or...
On Fridays at the Jesus Creed blog we converse about a book that helps us form friendships, and we are now reading through Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me: Marriage, Monks and the Writer's Life. This is a book that paints...
Kathleen Norris tells her story, inAcedia & Me: Marriage, Monks and the Writer's Life, of how she became a poet during her college days at Bennington. It was a teacher who told her she had what it takes. Any Kathleen...
It's easier to talk about depression and acedia than it is to live with either; and it's a whole lot easier to talk about both than to free oneself from either. At the heart of dealing with acedia is to...
A few years back a friend of mine, Jay Phelan, told me about a book about a pastor and a small town in Iowa and so I bought the book and was about 50 pages deep before I realized it...
We've got quite the line-up of books to come. First, I want to announce a major series on racism. I, along with four other professors -- Vincent Bacote (Wheaton), Soong-Cha Rah (North Park Seminary), and two of my department colleagues...
We have been having an ongoing, sporadic conversation on the issues of conversion, apostasy, and doubt on this blog over the last several years. A recent book simply entitled Doubtingby Alister McGrath deals with this issue in a useful and...
I want to remind the Jesus Creed blog community of an offer I made to read a book and engage in a conversation here about it. We will begin on August 11th. The offer is for these kinds of people:...
Robert Webber's books keep coming out, almost like testaments of his commitment to educate the church on worship. I thought they were done and yet, here it is, another final one: Ancient-Future Worship. If you are trying to resurrect the...
The IVP dictionaries are one of the finest gifts to the church of this generation. Whenever a new one comes out, I like to spend the evening dipping into it here and there. The newest one is edited by Tremper...
Every summer, or almost every summer, I read Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea. Whether it is his prose or the subject of the chase or the struggle that blends the human and the natural world, I don't...
Theo Geyser, a pastor in Stellenbosch, recommended that I read J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace. It tells a story of South Africa, as one critic put it, a story that "brutal tyranny has been replaced by brutal anarchy." I don't know how...
Somewhere in high school both Kris and I read Alan Paton's famous Cry, the Beloved Country, but it was so long ago that I had to read it again in preparation for our time in South Africa. Yes, it was...
In the coming month we will turn to two new books, one by Darrell Cosden called The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work. I met Darrell on a flight, got his book, and think this book is a nice change of...
This series on Don Everts is by Chris Ridgeway, a friend and seminary student. His review is more of a critical interaction with the book and I want to thank him for these reviews. We're both wondering what you think...
This series on Don Everts is by Chris Ridgeway, a friend and seminary student. His review is more of a critical interaction with the book. Everts, Don. The Dirty Beggar Living in My Head: One Guy’s Musings About Evil &...
Many of you will remember the fun we had when we posted the three possible covers for our book with Zondervan called "The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking how you read the Bible." Well, here's a link to a Zondervan page where...
Just in case you didn't see this back on the posts on Tom Wright's book: here is Tom Wright's letter to us. Just to say a big Thank you to Scot for giving the book such splendid highlighting and to...
This is the second of Chris Ridgeway's reviews of Don Everts' new series from IVP. Everts, Don. The Fingerless Lady Living in My Head: One Guy’s Musings About Tolerance. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. Don Everts is chilling in...
One of our seminary students has become a friend, Chris Ridgeway. I gave him a new four-set series from IVP by Don Everts and he's reviewing them for us. Everts, Don. All The Ideas Living in My Head: One Guy’s...
I haven't known much about the Salvation Army though as a kid my parents had some friends were Salvationists, so it was with some anticipation of learning that I read Roger J. Green (a Salvationist himself) and his new book...
My own definition of what counts as a "novel" fluctuates. You might say I fudge. If it is a classic, like Homer's stuff, it's not fiction. If it is theological, it's theology. Otherwise, I don't read novels. Unless it's the...
It is customary for many today -- and I'm a big fan of this -- to speak of the Bible as Story. There is another story we need to know, and it is the story of the Church. Why? I...
I have given plenty of attention to books on this blog, and want to call special attention to some pastor-type books that have not been blogged much, but which I would judge to be some of my favorites of the...
In my research for a book on fasting I read a shelf full of books and a stacks of journal articles, and without question the finest thing I read was by Kent Berghuis, called Christian Fasting: A Theological Approach. He...
A pastor who suddenly discovered 99% of the words in the Bible had mysteriously vanished, said this to his wife: "I don't know what I'm going to do. What's going to happen to our ministry? With no Bible to teach...
I grew up among dispensationalists and the first Bible I bought, with my newspaper money, was a KJV Scofield Bible. The singular feature of dispensationalism that has bothered more than a few of us is the graphic realization that dispensationalism...
"Christians talk about hating sin and loving sinners, but the way they go about things, they might as well call it what it is. They hate the sin and the sinner" -- from Jeff in unChristian. "To be judgmental is...
In Kinnaman and Lyons, in unChristian, another issue folks have with the church is that it too political. Frankly, I see this today so much from both the right and left I am discouraged. So, let's see what K-L find....
One of the advantages of flying, as we did this weekend (to Seattle), is some extra time for reading and on the flight out and back I read a book I consider a must-read for all church leaders: Robert Wuthnow,...
I've chosen to skip the chp in unChristian about Christians being antihomosexuality mostly because I've blogged about the issue enough of late. Instead, I'm skipping to chp 6 contends that nonChristians think Christians are sheltered. In what ways are Christians...
We begin the month with a look at John Goldingay's Israel's Gospel (OT Theology), chp. 8, focusing on the period from Joshua to Solomon and the theme of God's accomodating himself to Israel and life on planet earth. How about...
Every year I keep my eyes open for the book that I will remember as the book I read over the Christmas break. This year I've got mine picked out, and if you like well-written but rich history this is...
In the book unChristian by Kinnaman and Lyons, the first major area they examine where Christians are unChristian concerns hypocrisy. Don't roll your eyes this time; there are some important things in this chp that I'm not sure are known...
About fifteen years ago, so I would guess, Andre Agassi was doing commercials for someone (I can't remember) in which he said "Image is everything." How much does the "image" others have of Christians matter? Both the seeker movement and...
McLaren's 22d chp in Everything Must Change is called "Joining Warriors Anonymous." It is about Jesus' strategy for dealing with violence and our security crisis. McLaren relies quite often on Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning,...
Our final post on the intense study of Jones and Yarhouse, called Ex-Gays?, asks if the attempt to change sexual orientation and behavior is harmful to the person? The American Psychological Association warns therapists about the potential danger and harm...
This week we are looking at the first of three global crises we face -- security -- and how Jesus' message of the kingdom addresses such a crisis. Today we look at the two chps on the military story we...
Can sexual orientation change? This is the question Jones and Yarhouse ask in chp 7 of Ex-Gays?. The consensus of the American Psychological Association (APA) is that orientation cannot change. So, J-Y are testing that claim. Remember the issue here:...
We will begin a series next Tuesday on the new book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons called unchristian. This book is about "what a new generation really thinks about Christianity." The book reminds me of Dan Kimball's fine book...
In Part 5 of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change Brian begins to look more specifically at the Security System and how Jesus' message of the kingdom challenges how Christians relate to power and violence and systemic injustices in the world....
Our posts of late have raised a significant question: What does "kingdom of God" mean? It seems to me that many today have switched their Christian rhetoric from Paul's word "salvation" to Jesus' word "kingdom." But, not as many are...
Today we begin looking at Marko Ivan Rupnik, In the Fire of the Burning Bush. Rupnik is a Jesuit, is a director and teacher in Rome, and is also a visual artist. A theme of the first section of this...
This book, Ex-Gays?, is not an easy read because the authors, Stan Jones and Mark Yarhouse, want this to be seen as an empirically-based study. The prose is fine but this is a serious piece and not your typical storied...
The subject of Jones and Yarhouse's Ex-Gays?, whether or not there is evidence that those with homosexual orientation can change that orientation, is not an easy topic to discuss. But, I think we've seen that we can talk and learn...
I try to read a new chp in John Goldingay, OT Theology: Israel's Gospel, the last week of the month. Well, I had to much to do last week so I'm behind ... and now I've got some eager readers...
I love to read the letters and correspondence of historical figures or those in whom I have an interest. And I am a sucker for the letters of C.S. Lewis. I read the original paperback edition twice, and then HarperSanFrancisco...
We are committed to understanding the central ideas of Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse, Ex-Gays?, and to do this we want to work our way patiently through their book. The central thesis of this book is that same-sex orientation and...
That is, what what was it really like to be a Christian -- a Jewish Christian -- in the first few centuries. Here's a fact: the Church shifted from its original Jewish roots with its Jewish story when it became...
Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse's book Ex-Gays? discusses the controversy about a very specific issue and we want today to begin our series today by looking at chp 1: The consensus of the social-scientific community is that homosexuality (more nuance...
Most of us have read enough Bible to know texts that make us uncomfortable, texts like ignoring Hagar or sacrificing Jephthah's daughter or patriarchs behaving badly. But most of us do the same thing: ignore them and hope no one...
Next week we will begin a series on Brian McLaren's new book, Everything Must Change. If Brian's Generous Orthodoxy muddied the waters and his Secret Message of Jesus showed the path he was traveling, this new book makes it abundantly...
Take a deep breath and promise to be reasonable and to converse according to the Jesus Creed because we will be doing a series, beginning next Tuesday, on the new book by Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse called...
Our next two books for Friday is for Friends will be ... Marko Ivan Rupnik, In the Fire of the Burning Bush Telford Work, Ain't Too Proud to Beg...
In this last post on Mother Teresa, I'd like to put together how I understand her "darkness." I have been asked about this wherever I've been and so, after reading the new book, Come Be My Light, I'd like to...
Have you ever taken a pilgrimage or a retreat? Tracy's Balzer's book, Thin Places,, has a chp on how the ancient Celtic Christians took pilgrimages. She joins Tom Wrightin encouraging us to reconsider the value of retreats and pilgrimages. Have...
In 1953, M. Teresa wrote to the Archbishop these words: "Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself -- for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Mother Teresa's launching of the apostolate called the Missionaries of Charity was an immediate success, in all the right ways. The story is found in chp 7 of Come Be My Light.. How often do we know the "inside" story...
Here is my review of Joseph Epstein, In a Cardboard Belt!, which the subtitle calls Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Epstein is my favorite essayist and I commend this book to you as vintage Epstein. This...
M. Teresa had the determination of a terrier, and chps 4-6 illustrate this over and over in the book Come Be My Light. Here's the big picture. M. Teresa, to fulfill the mystical vision she got from Jesus about forming...
We will look this week at the darkness of Mother Teresa. To do this I will be reflecting on her book Come Be My Light, and hope you will join along in reading and reflecting on this influential witness to...
When the word "prayer" is said to you what comes to mind? This is a question Tracy Balzer asks in her book Thin Places. Guilt? Longing? Confusion? Consolation? Desolation? Prayer is important and her chp on prayer provides a way...
Yesterday's mail included, much to my delight, the letters of Mother Teresa called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Last week the book stirred controversy because the depth and duration of her darkness became public. I'd like to spend some...
Some people lose their faith and then find it again. In Timothy Larsen's new book Crisis of Doubt, we are treated to seven such figures in 19th Century England. They had a secularist crisis of (their) doubt. This way of...
On the first day of each month we dip into another chapter of John Goldingay's magnificent . We are in chapter six, "OT Theology: Israel's Gospel."God Sealed" is the theme and it deals with the sealing of the Covenant in...
As you may have guessed, I get lots of books from publishers hoping I will give them some attention on this blog. What has happened, of course, is that this blog has become media and I have become an editor...
Do you have an anamchara, the Celtic word for "soul friend" or "spiritual director"? Tracy Balzer's second chapter, in Thin Places, is a delicate and insightful survey of the Celtic practice and how spiritual direction or soul friendship can be...
Kris and I and our kids and their spouses have been fans of John Ortberg for a long time, and that is why I just had to find a way to read When the Game is Over it All Goes...
This Time magazine article, with a few other variants around the world, briefly describes the struggles of Mother Teresa with her faith -- for a long, long time. All we have are some excerpts, set in a little bit of...
Today we begin a conversation about Tracy Balzer's book, Thin Places. It is an invitation to Celtic spirituality. I hope you join us. An opening question: What have you learned from the Celtic way? Tracy begins with a succinct survey...
In 1986 Dan Taylor gave to the evangelical world a gift called The Myth of Certainty, a book that didn't justify doubt so much as let many of us know that we were not alone. In 2007, twenty years later,...
In doing some work on the doctrine of Scripture I have now read through Craig Allert, A High View of Scripture? and wish to commend it to you for your reading. Here's why: Allert Tied into our view of the...
Categories: Books,
Education
In her essay, "Procrustes and the Culture War," Anne Fadiman warns us of getting caught on the bed of Procrustes -- her image of getting caught up in the ideology of political correctness, of the ideology that you must toe...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Today marks the last Friday devoted to a conversation about Jon Wilson's fine study of the church called Why Church Matters. Next Friday we begin Tracy Balzer's Thin Places: An Evangelical Journey into Celtic Christianity. Does suffering play any role...
Categories: Books,
Theology
We are at the second to last chapter in Jon Wilson's Why Church Matters and I want to ask a question that for many of my readers is (perhaps) ludicrous to ask. If not ludicrous, perhaps the question is just...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Every now and then I post a brief review of books that I simply can't give a lengthy series to -- and they often deserve it. But, I can only do so many books on the blog and we've got...
When are you most creative? Or, should I put it more profoundly: When are you most yourself? In the early hours of the day, before most others have awakened, or after midnight, when most have gone on to the rest...
Categories: Books,
Theology
The 8th chp of Jonathan Wilson's study, Why Church Matters, has to do with baptism, eucharist and footwashing, and in today's post I will take issue in a way that I hope will generate a good conversation. Wilson contends that...
One of the sources for my research into why and how some "lose" their orthodox faith is Edward T. Babinski, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists. My research is not simply concerned with folks who begin as Christian and...
Categories: Books,
Essays
Now before I go any further to state my view on this, let it be known that my kind of doctorate is, as one pastor once introduced me before a Sunday morning sermon, "not the kind that does anybody any...
The first day of each month for the next two years we will be discussing John Goldingay's OT Theology: Israel's Gospel, and we are now on chp 5, "God Delivered: The Exodus." So, here goes ... and I hope you...
I let the cat out of the bag Saturday in the Weekly Meanderings and the nice conversation that followed from it. I linked to the story of the reporter named Lobdell who, after a conversion to the faith and after...
Protestants today may be thoroughly surprised to learn that things weren't always so permissive and open when it comes to sexuality -- that is, between husbands and wives. Gilbert Meilaender, in The Way That Leads Home (chp. 4), puts Augustine...
Categories: Books,
Gospel
How have modernity and postmodernity distorted how we understand the gospel? Jon Wilson, in his Why Church Matters, asks this question in chp 7: "Discipleship as Human Flourishing." And we start with a bang: "At these times, the church behaves...
Anne Fadiman is. In her collection of essays, At Large and At Small, she opens the door to her life of collecting butterflies and, as time moves forward, speaks of a Darwin-like obsession with finding, storing, and labeling all things...
The other day I mentioned at the very end of my last post about Oase that "our" book, A Community called Atonement, was soon coming out. Tony Jones gave me the "bid-neth" for using the old-fashioned, formal, if not pretentious...
In the 3d chp of Gilbert Meilaender's exquisite volume, The Way That Leads There, we are treated to a meandering through Augustine's City of God in quest of a Christian perception of politics. After last night's debate and as we...
Mindy Caliguire, who is known in all spiritual formation circles as a result of her "soul care" ministries, public speaking, and national leadership, has just written two small books designed for concentrated retreats -- whether at home over a week...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Is Eat this Book by Eugene Peterson. How do you read the Bible? I begin with my own orientation to Peterson's book. Some view the Bible through epistemological eyes: they see it as truth and upon this truth all others...
Categories: Books,
Missional
In Jon Wilson's fine study, Why Church Matters, we turn this week from "Foundations" to "Renovations" and in his two chps on this topic he speaks first about "Witness." And his way to put it all together is in this:...
John La Grou and Len Hjalmarson created the idea of a participatory book, and I confess that I'm not all that sure what happens but I confess that you probably do. Anyway, they asked me to write a piece and...
Regular readers of this blog know that I read novels as often as most of us visit our friendly dentist: Not very often! I've admitted to all of you that I try, but it's about like some TV commentator, after...
Categories: Books,
Theology
We're back to Jon Wilson's Why Church Matters, and chp 5 is a fascinating chp. But Jon cheats here -- in his section on worship he has included a chp on the pastor. It's the adjustment of a nice article...
How's that for a title to a post? Is it ever morally justifiable to lie? This is the question Gilbert Meilaender addresses in the 2d chp of his book The Way That Leads There. Augustine, his sparring partner, says "Never!"...
Categories: Books,
Missional
The most significant book ever written on house churches in the 1st Century is by Roger Gehring and is called House Church and Mission. I don't very often write posts on this blog about published dissertations, but that is because...
This is our fourth consecutive month where the first day of the month is devoted to a post on John Goldingay's OT Theology: Israel's Gospel. This OT theology is unlike any OT theology I've seen -- it is theological reflection...
Categories: Books,
Theology
We're back with Jon Wilson's fine book, Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice -- and this week we look at another chp on worship and it is about the significance of the Trinity for worship. Good topic....
Every now and then I get bogged up in my reading enough that I post some short notices about books that have crossed my desk that I think Jesus Creeders might like to know about but which I can't blog...
Categories: Books,
Theology
When Augustine said his heart was not at rest until it came to rest in God, was he simply saying that we are selfish and coming to God makes us happy? That we use God for our own ends? Is...
Categories: Books,
Essays
At one point in the history of writing this blog, I thought I'd do a series on my favorite essayists. I think the series got off the ground with my favorite essayist and then fizzled: Joseph Epstein. I suppose it...
Categories: Books,
Missional
I'm reading on table fellowship of late and today I wish to call to your attention three books on hospitality. The first is more for the general reader, the second and third for the more academic setting. Still, each is...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Anyone who has the cleverness to write a book on hospitality called Making Room gets my vote for a good title, and also gets my attention. And, because I'm working a bit right now on table fellowship, I read through...
I rummaged around the books on my desk recently and discovered I had a week of posts sitting here about books written by women. I want to begin today with Pamela J. Smith, Nine Ways Women Sabotage Their Careers. I'm...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Today we look at the 3d chp in Jon Wilson's book, Why Church Matters. This chp concerns how we know when our worship is pleasing to God. Both pastors and lay leaders, along with any Christian who wonders about "good"...
Categories: Books,
Gospel
Static, that's the title of Ron Martoia's new book. Ron is a former student of mine and now is a "transformational architect". I'm not quite sure what that is, but it sounds cool. As Ron's former teacher, I must admit...
In Jon Wilson's Why Church Matters, which explores Christian practices that make the Church what is (supposed to be), the first major practice is worship. He's got three interesting themes to give us a nice topic for discussion: My question:...
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I'm doing some reading on table fellowship, and so I read my friend's, Craig Blomberg's, book called Contagious Holiness. This maybe the most complete display of what the Bible says on meals....
As you know, Kris and I are practitioners of fixed-hour prayer, what I call "sacred rhythms." And you may recall that we practice mostly with Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours. Which, owing to the weight and size of the volumes,...
If I were a seminary President, the first person I'd appoint as professor-pastor- sage would be John Koenig. John Koenig, built like Abe Lincoln, is a rare combination of Episcopal priest, New Testament scholar, anabaptist character, and gentle spirit --...
A perennial issue about the teachings of Jesus is his relationship to the Law, and it comes up in ordinary church life today: What is our relationship to the Law? Some say, "God's Word. We follow it." But it's not...
In the 4th chp, Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, discusses at length the Sermon on the Mount by focusing on two themes: the Beatitudes (today) and Jesus and the Law -- the Torah of the Messiah. Once again, the Pope...
On the first day of the month, unless it falls on a weekend, we dip into a chapter of John Goldingay's Old Testament Theology: Israel's Gospel. This month we look at chp 3, "God Started Over: From Eden to Babel."...
What did Jesus mean by the kingdom of God according to Pope Benedict XVI? In my judgment, the whole mission of Jesus is summed up when one clarifies what "kingdom of God" means, and there are many who talk about...
Chp 3 in Pope Benedict XVI's book, Jesus of Nazareth, concerns the temptations of Jesus -- and this chp reveals his theological and canonical method. "Jesus has to enter into the drama of human existence, for that belongs to the...
In his Introduction, Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes Jesus unmediated contact with the Father, and this will emerge throughout his Jesus of Nazareth. Our concern today is his treatment of the baptism of Jesus (chp 1). The choice to be baptized...
Books about Jesus attract me, but when the Pope (Benedict XVI) writes a book on Jesus, I'm doubly interested. So, I'll do a series -- and it is really nice to kick it off while we are in Italy. Big...
We close today the book of Darryl Tippens,Pilgrim Heart. A gentle, ruminating set of reflections on themes in discipleship that mix the individual and the community. As I have said before on this blog, a discipleship that is group-shaped is...
We've come to the 16th chp in Darryl Tippens, Pilgrim Heart. The topic: Suffering: The Fire that Purifies. Suffering, he observes with could be a little bit of a warning to those who need it, "is not a good to...
Some people study the Gospels to focus on the author's shaping of the message -- so they talk about how Matthew or Mark or Luke or John "tell the story of Jesus." For over a century scholars have contended that...
Hi Scot It's the graduation season again and there are a couple of students in our small church that are finishing high school. Along with the usual card and money I always like to give a book (many times of...
One of the great virtues of Mark Noll's The Rise of Evangelicalism, and this is a great book in every sense of the word for a textbook, is his sketch of the various influences that broke open and forged an...
Ah, a man after my own heart: Darryl Tippens' 15th chp is about "Reading and Storytelling." My father was a story teller -- and still is. For years I avoided telling stories to my students because I thought I was...
Yet another topic for discussion -- a topic rarely discussed in spiritual formation books and yet one that is central: feasting as memory. This is the subject of the 14th chp of Darryl Tippens, Pilgrim Heart. I begin with a...
Categories: Books,
Theology
From John Goldingay, Israel's Gospel, p. 61, where he describes how he teaches his classes: first, a 40 minute lecture; then a 30 minute small group discussion; and then a 30 minute plenary/class discussion. Then he makes an observation --...
Lauren's second lecture at North Park was on Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, and she offers four lies or myths that Christians often tell themselves and their youth about sex. She considers each a myth (as untrue) and...
It's May first, and the first day of the month is Golding-day -- the day we examine another chapter of John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: 1. Israel's Gospel. We are on chp 2, "God Began: Creation," and it is a...
We are in our 13th installment in Pilgrim Heart by Darryl Tippens -- and this chp is on "Creating: The Truth of Beauty." Once again, I admit that I've not seen this topic -- creating -- in any study of...
Diana Butler Bass' book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, has three parts: description of the collapse of mainline liberalism and the renewal of the "village church" in America, a sketch of ten signposts of renewal, and then a section...
When I picked up Darrly Tippens' book, Pilgrim Heart, I knew something was different: anyone who has a chapter on singing in a book about spiritual disciplines has my interest. Why? Because, no matter how much we talk about discipleship,...
I'm reading Diana Butler Bass's Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperSF, 2006), and want to devote a few posts to her ideas. Essentially, the point of this book is to show that mainline, liberal, progressive churches are showing signs...
Anyone who invites me to a table to talk about discernment and wisdom finds me a willing participant -- and I think because the older I get the more significant wisdom has become in my life. Darryl Tippens devotes a...
In W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, we are treated to a sociological analysis of fatherhood, and his major contention is that there are new models of family and fatherhood arising in the culture and Church today, particularly in Conservative Protestant...
Categories: Books,
Gospel
At times on this blog I have observed that I believe far too many Christians anchor too much of their hope in a political party and in the next election -- whether local or national. My own conviction is that...
Paradoxically, one of the disciplines most needful for the community of faith is the discipline of silence -- and Darryl Tippens' 10th chp in Pilgrim Heart addresses that topic. "The pilgrim heart," Tippens opens up this chapter, "is an attentive...
The implication of chp 7 in Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout's book, The Truth about Conservative Christians, has an edge of irony or even humor -- but statistically accurate: if the Mainline Christian couples want to have more influence in...
North Park has a nice gallery in our classroom building in which we are treated to a constant display of art -- some from students, some local artists, and sometimes from the professors. Getting yourself displayed like this is as...
In chp 6 of Greeley and Houk's The Truth about Conservative Christians [CCs] we are given a social portrait of CCs. Here's the stereotype: CCs are "rubes" -- Southern, uneducated gun owners who live in trailer parks or far from...
This is the first in a monthly series on John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, volume 1: Israel's Gospel. We'll look at one chp per month -- on the first day of the month, unless that falls on a weekend. So,...
Any study of the disciplines that shape Christian community eventually comes face to face with forgiveness, and Darryl Tippens, Pilgrim Heart, turns to this theme in chp. 9. I remind readers that we touched on forgiveness and memory when we...
In chp 4 of A. Greeley and M. Hout's The Truth about Conservative Christians [CCs] the authors explore the statistics about the difference between African Americans and white Conservative Protestants (CPs). Listen to this conclusion: "There may be a link...
A second study in Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout's study, The Truth about Conservative Christians, is about the politics of Conservative Christians (CCs). What do they think and practice? It might surprise you. Here's an opening claim: "Conservative Christians [CCs]...
Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout, both professors of sociology and geared up with all kinds of statistics, are convinced that the public perception of "conservative Christians" (CC) is off base in the media. So, they set about to discover what...
It will be called "First Day, Goldingay." The first day of the next twenty months will have a post on John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology -- Israel's Gospel and Israel's Faith. There are now 2 volumes out; it is too...
The 8th chp of Darryl Tippens' Pilgrim Heart concerns yet another spiritual discipline that is designed for the Christian in community rather than just for the Christian alone. This chapter discusses confessing to one another and hearing the words of...
Mark Allan Powell's book, What Do They Hear?, opens up for pastors and laity the differences between how they read the Bible and what they hear when they read it -- especially when they are not together. Chp 4 concerns...
We now come to the end of Alan Hirsch, Forgotten Missional Ways, which book has continued to grow on me as a must-read for missional Christians. What happens when a growing, thriving, missional church gets captured by middle-class culture: it...
Pastors, this one's for you -- non-pastors, this one's also for you. Mark Powell's book, What Do They Hear?, assumes a significant distinction between clergy and laity and, if you are in a reasonably traditional church, the assumption is a...
Hildegard, one person says, "was a remarkable woman in an age of remarkable men." And Carmen Butcher, author of a beautiful study on St. Benedict, brings Hildegard of Bingen to life in this fresh translation and study of her life....
We Protestants teach everyone this: You must read the Bible for yourself. Of course, we don't want those "you"s to get too clever and start saying things that aren't there, but there is a lot in this teaching we hold...
On Fridays we are conversing our way through Darryl Tippens' Pilgrim Heart, a book that explores the spiritual disciplines that impinge upon our corporate life together. The topic this week is one familiar to this blog: befriending. I want to...
Categories: Books,
Missional
I just finished a deeply moving book by Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues. There is nothing in this book that makes you think Gilbreath, an editor at CT, thinks the end of racialization is imminent. Instead of repeating well-worn figures, Gilbreath...
Yesterday I posted some general and positive thoughts on Rob Bell's new book Sex God. Today I want to register my critique. I usually don't do this, but I've been asked by so many to set out my views so...
We have been conversing on this blog for weeks about Alan Hirsch's fine book, The Forgotten Ways. Today's topic for conversation is his 5th element of apostolic genius or "missional DNA" (mDNA). As with previous chapters, I think this chp...
It's OK for the Church for the better part of twenty centuries to interpret the Song of Solomon as a parable of Israel's or the Church's or the individual's relationship with God -- with YHWH or with the Father or...
Between 1968 and 1988, the average American added 168 hours of work to his or her annual work load -- working about a month more per year! We work too much. Darryl Tippens, in chp 6 of Pilgrim Heart, adds...
This is the 3d and final part of RJS's review of Vern Poythress, Redeeming Science. [SMcK adds later: Take advantage of this; you are reading a world-class scientist and Christian as you read this post today and interact with RJS.]...
The first three elments of apostolic genius, or missional DNA (mDNA), according to Alan Hirsch in his The Forgotten Ways, are: (1) centrality of Jesus, (2) disciple-making, and (3) a missional-incarnational impulse. Today we look at #4: an apostolic environment...
I'll be analyzing Rob Bell's new book, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality, starting sometime next week. Rob's on tour about this book now. Any thoughts?...
According to Steven Keillor in his God's Judgments: Interpreting History and the Christian Faith, the fundamental obstacle for Christians' interpreting historical events is the philosophical stance called "worldview." Mark Noll writes the foreword and admits he's a worldview thinker and...
A discipline central to seeing disciplines as community-shaped is "resting" or participating in Sabbath. Darryl Tippens' 5th chp of Pilgrim Heart addresses this very topic. I read this chp with anticipation. Why? Because Sabbath and resting principle of Sabbath has...
Alan Hirsch has a mission himself: to inspire Christians and churches around the globe to become missional. His book, The Forgotten Ways, traces the DNA of missional churches (mDNA). We've looked at two of the six ingredients -- the centrality...
Here's my simple contention: if you believe God is in control of all, then you are driven to think either (1) that catastrophes are divine judgments or (2) that God has surrendered "control" to cosmic or human forces. When 9/11...
Categories: Books,
Theology
This is part two of RJS's review of Vern Poythress, Redeeming Science. Vern Poythress in his book Redeeming Science begins with a thoroughly Christian worldview. God is the creator of the world. Everything came into being by Him and through...
There is a movement underway, in some places quite significant and in others not yet significant, but it seems to be growing. It can threaten, it can transform, and it can provoke. It is called "new monasticism." I'm wondering if...
Spiritual disciplines, normally taken to be individualistic disciplines, are given a new boost by Darryl Tippens in his new book, Pilgrim Heart. How so? Disciplines are also needed to promote an ecclesial spirituality -- disciplines that create community. It is...
1. Beate Epp, one of our readers and occasional commenter (and artist), has a nice book for kids on horses: I gave the book to a friend whose daughter loves horses. Here is her comment: "A charming story, perfect for...
I received a copy of a book that I could not review intelligently. It is by Vern Poythress and it is on science and faith, so I asked my friend, RJS (a science professor at a research institution), if she'd...
Anyone who begins a chp with this quotation from TS Eliot has my attention: "The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he...
Emptying -- not a word often heard these days -- is the first "discipline" Darryl Tippens discusses in his excellent study of the sorts of spiritual disciplines that we need to develop in community. Remember, this is a book about...
When English teachers turn to writing -- turn away that is from their mounds of grading -- I tend to find something to read. Why? Because they know what they are doing when putting pen to paper (or finger to...
Last week I said I'd post on Wayne Grudem's response to William Webb's proposal of the redemptive trend. So, today I will summarize Wayne Grudem's response and next week I'll respond to this summary of Grudem's strong criticisms of the...
Dan Kimball's new book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, is a must-read for pastors for one big reason: what Dan learned can be a spur for a more effective ministry. What did he learn? That to reach his...
The core of the problem for Alan Hirsch, in his The Forgotten Ways, is Christendom. That is, the Church created by Constantine and whose ways simply haven't changed all that much since the 4th Century. The solution, Hirsch thinks, is...
I've spent a fair amount of time in the Psalms, as have many of you. One thing I find so incredibly penetrating for me is the utter honesty and raw emotions in those prayers. My favorite OT theologian these days...
This marks the end of our time together with Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory, and it ends on a breath-taking note. Let me give the big picture, ask our question(s), and then summarize his final chapter. (Next week we...
Categories: Books,
Missional
This post will put together William Webb's 18 criteria but will begin with a few of my conclusions about the redemptive trend. You might want to print this out for future use. My suggestion is that you use a set...
The 17th and 18th criteria in William Webb's paradigm of the redemptive trend -- or how we move the Bible's message into our world in a progressive, redeeming way -- deal with Extrascriptural criteria. No matter how biblical we think...
Last week we began looking at Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways. This week we want to look at chp 1. Alan Hirsch is a practitioner (not simply an "armchair theologian") of missional churches; he has been involved in revitalizing, re-envisioning,...
Categories: Books,
Theology
One of the difficulties in blogging through a book is finding a book that can sustain a conversation over a month or more by both advancing an argument and doing so in such a way that variety obtains. Miroslav Volf's...
This is our last post about Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion, and we here cover chp. 10: A Much Needed Gap? Here he examines the supposed gap in our hearts/minds that religion contends it fills. He, of course, contends...
I want to devote a series of posts to Alan Hirsch's new book, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Baker: Brazos, 2006). I will kick it off today with a brief whetting of your appetite to purchase this book...
Here's a good question from Miroslav Volf's book, The End of Memory: "But it is right to insist on the everlasting memory of suffered wrongs?" (Read this.) The question Volf is asking is if it is desirable or inevitable that...
When I got back to my NPU office after Christmas break I had received a bundle of books from publishers who wanted me to blog about their publications. I simply can't blog about all of them, but I'm going to...
Here's a chapter that should concern each of us. In chp 9 of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion Dawkins contends that forming our children into our faith is child abuse. And he challenges each of us to consider the role...
Most of us think the Bible is from one world (Ancient Israel, Greco-Roman, etc) and that we are in another world (modern West, etc), and that moving the Bible from its world into our world requires a gentle art. Whether...
When a student of mine sends me a book he (or she) has written, it's a glory day ... and it's even more glorious when the book is called Glory Days. IVP England has published this, and I hope his...
How, Miroslav Volf in his The End of Memory asks, does a Christian remember rightly? In particular, how does a Christian remember suffered wrongs if the Christian learns to remember throught he lenses of the Exodus and the Passion? This...
Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion has provided many of us with plenty to talk about and I want to say thanks for the conversation. Some have written to me to point to reviews at other sites, and I'll begin this...
Categories: Books,
Missional
If you are interested in justice, if you are interested in the struggle for justice, and if you need a shot in the arm to bolster your courage to fight through the mundane and the red-tape, then I've got a...
The singular question for women in ministry is this: At its simplest it is this: Are there transcultural elements in the Bible? Are some elements "cultural"? And how do we do know the difference? William Webb, in his book Slaves,...
When the leaders of what is now called Emergent landed on the term "conversation" to describe itself, they landed on a loaded term. Why? Because "conversation" has a noble history and because not all Christians know how to "converse." They...
Well, you ask, what did we read while we were here? Kris and I begin a few months in advance planning our "vacation reading," so we had more than a few books to choose from. My approach is to bring...
There are two uses of memory according to the 5th chp of Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory. There is literal memory and exemplary memory. What we do with our memories is what matters most -- do we "do" literal...
Where do we get our morals? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, chps. 6-7, dedicates much ink to spilling out his theory of morals. He is bound to do two things: demonstrate that morals are an evolutionary deposit in humans (through...
Categories: Books,
Theology
In chps 3 and 4 of Hans Urs von Balthasar's Love Alone is Credible, Balthasar speaks of an aesthetic that speaks to us from outside ourselves. Such an aesthetic perception of beauty cannot be reduced to my imagination. Love, Balthasar,...
I heard about this two years ago: America's finest NT scholar, Dale Allison, was packing up his books for a little while to write a book on none other than George Harrison. It's out! The Love There That's Sleeping: The...
And what does it mean to be "credible"? And how does one determine if it is "credible"? These questions have been asked time and again by good thinkers, but surely one of the most interesting is Hans Urs von Balthasar,...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Friends, we might need to remind ourselves, talk about the inner life, and nothing is more "inner" than a wounded self -- a person who has been damaged to the core by wrongdoing. Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory (chp....
Chp 5 of Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, contends that religion can be explained on the basis of natural selection. "What ultimately explains the lust for gods?" he asks (p. 169). Or, put in more Darwinian terms, "What is the...
Once again, we return (as friends) to M. Volf's book, The End of Memory. His concern is how to remember wrongdoing and wrongdoers truthfully. His topic haunts those who have suffered, and those of us committed to loving our neighbors...
I've suddenly been found on the radar for writing blurbs for books. I have gone from total obscurity to occasional presence, and I think it is because of this blog -- now considered by some to be "media." My favorite...
I suspect that most of us became aware of Opus Dei (Latin for "work of God") through the DaVinci Code book or movie. In both it was caricatured in order to ridicule and other. This is why a book like...
In chps 3 and 4 of Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, the author evaluates arguments for God's existence and then offers arguments why "there almost certainly is no God." RJS and I are summarizing and offering brief evaluation. Here goes:...
Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church, chps 17-20, discuss the most controversial -- according to all -- and significant -- according to some -- text in the entire NT when it comes to the "role" of women in...
Here is Richard Dawkins' essential thesis: "any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything [the God hypothesis], comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution" (The God Delusion, 31). And the God...
Terry Tiessen's 6th chp asks this question: To whom does God reveal himself? Let us remind ourselves of the basic options -- some say God reveals himself only to those who hear the gospel as preached through the Church (ecclesiocentrics);...
There are four theologians, who happen to be my age (or close), whom I have decided to read whatever they write -- if I can find time. LeRon Shults, Kevin Vanhoozer, John Franke, and Miroslav Volf. Volf's newest book, which...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Richard Dawkins, who writes with a prose that is saucy and caustic and witty, argues in his newest book that God is a delusion. I will be joined in this series by RJS; I will write the first few paragraphs...
If what I am calling "the" emerging question is as central as I think it is -- and that question is 'what about those who do not know about Jesus Christ'?, then the entire "in vs. out" issue is immediately...
The posts last week about buying books at SBL spurred a bundle of questions. I'd like to answer this one today: I thought I'd submit a possible topic that has interested me for years: what are the ethics of book...
Sarah Sumner's chp 11 in Men and Women in Ministry discusses what 1 Peter 3:7 means when it says that women are the "weaker vessel." Sarah begins with a lesson in how to do word studies, but first our questions....
Wendell Berry's Citizenship Papers piles up repetition of ideas, and it's starting to wear on me. His ideals are noble: agrarianism. But, I must admit that the essays are repetitive, and before I long I will be asking someone else...
Every year I find one publisher to be at the top of the list for the best new books, so here is my rating for this year: I'm biased: I must say Paraclete did a great job this year. And...
Yesterday's post on book buying at SBL generated a bundle of questions, and I thought I'd just drop some quick answers right here. So, here goes... First, I have a long paper I wrote on my reading habits called "Never...
As I stated in last week's post, I think the singularly-most significant question facing the emerging generation of Christians is world religions and the "salvation" of those who have never heard the gospel. Terry Tiessen's study, Who Can Be Saved?,...
The Society of Biblical Literature holds its annual meeting alongside at least four other major conferences: the American Academy of Religion, the Institute for Biblical Research, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the American Schools for Oriental Research. Because there are...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Wendell Berry's Citizenship Papers is not an easy book to work through chp by chp because it is quite repetitive -- but the chp "Two Minds" seems to me to put together some of his central ideas about a more...
First: Happy birthday to my sister, Alexa. Now to our day's post: Is God a "father" or a "mother"? How should we talk about God? And is the word "Father" fixed or flexible? This is discussed in Sarah Sumner's book,...
Dear Emma, You've asked me what I think of Brian McLaren, and I assume by that you are talking about his many writings. And you've asked me "how" to think about him. As a person, Brian is gracious and kind,...
The generation that grew up with Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, was also thoroughly indoctrinated in public education and through the media to think all religions are the same. Tolerance, the deistic doctrine of our day, is not only a...
Here's how Obery Hendricks defines kingdom, or the sovereignty of God, in his book The Politics of Jesus: "a new world order of transformed human relationships; it was social, economic, and political relationships in this world made holy" (99). Enough...
Mary. Many thanks to Paraclete's heroic efforts to get this book out this Fall. I'm hoping the Street Team participants got their copies this week, too. Did they?...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Friends tell one another a story, and the story invites the friend into its own world. Here's mine: last year Kris and I decided to have a garage built. (We had lived here for about 20 years without one; it...
In Obery Hendricks' The Political Jesus, chps. 1-2, we are treated to a survey of the socio-political context for Jesus' kingdom message. Let me ask this question for our conversation today: How significant are the socio-political themes of the Old...
That's our new bracelet idea: "Who Would Jesus Vote For?" On the question of the politics of Jesus, many have put forth their proposals, none more influentially than The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder. And now from the...
The 7th chp (and chp 8 ) of Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church begins with this statement: "If Christian women have a tendency to pretend they are inferior, the opposite is true for Christian men" (81). This...
If I've been asked this once, I've been asked it 500 times: "How do you do it?" And by that my questioners want to know how I have time to teach, write books, take care of this blog, and speak...
In James Vanoosting's And the Flesh Became Word, he has an essay about leaders and administrators. He trots out three "types" of leaders: business manager, military commander, and intellectual leader. He then suggests another image, simile, for leaders. I suggest...
Wendell Berry, in Citizenship Papers -- a volume that is not afraid to disagree with government, has a chp called "The Failure of War." Here is his essential point: "Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders."...
Categories: Books,
Theology
In my teaching career, especially since I've been at North Park and started with this blog, I've had more than a few questions that are now being given a fresh examination by Peter Enns, in his new book, Inspiration and...
Mary. Thanks to Paraclete's heroic speed and efforts, the book is now here. I don't know if street teams have gotten their copies yet. Hope so....
Last week I received a sensitive letter -- a letter that made me more sensitive. Here's the issue that the writer pressed into my mind: when we talk about "women in ministry" we need to understand that, regardless of what...
It's November 1, and Paraclete now has copies of The Real Mary ready to ship out. You can order the book from the publisher by clicking here. (I'm grateful that Paraclete is getting the books available well before the publishing...
This is our last in the series on Roger Olson's book, Arminian Theology. Myth #10 is that Arminians adhere to the "governmental theory of atonement." Most may not know what this theory holds, and most may never have heard that...
My grandmother, at the time over 90, worried to my father that she was pregnant. Her worries did not come from some kind of Sarah-for-our-time miracle but instead from the gradual loss of her mind. My grandfather, who landed in...
Categories: Books,
Essays
James Vanoosting, in the introduction And the Flesh Became Word, says something that struck my inner chords: "Given half a chance, I'll write an essay before a book, after a book, between books, and (my favorite) instead of a book."...
Friends, it is sometimes said, don't talk to one another about politics. I beg to differ, but I add a requirement: friends can talk about politics if they behave themselves, talk to one another with civility, and carry on their...
Myth #9 from Roger Olson's Arminian Theology is appropriate for me today: I'm at Westminster Theological Seminary, one of America's foremost bastions of reformed theology. The myth is this: that Arminians deny justification by faith alone through faith alone. At...
Added later: I'm at the Chestunut Hill Coffee Company outside Philadelphia; best Latte I've ever had in my life. As we age, so I'm told, we don't need as much sleep -- or, with a darker twist, as we age...
When it comes to being made in God's "image," what I call being an Eikon of God, Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church opens up 1 Corinthians 11:7 and dwells on Augustine's interpretation, and suggests that Augustine's theory...
Categories: Books,
Theology
What, LeRon Shults asks, is "knowledge" like for God and for us -- that is, after the turn to relationality? His answer is very important for each of us. What God knows cannot be reduced to cognition, or to knowledge...
Myth #8: Arminians do not believe in predestination. Not so, says Roger Olson in Arminian Theology. Predestination, because it is in the Bible, is believed by Arminians. Here's his point: predestination is God's sovereign decree to elect believers in Jesus...
We come to the end of Joseph Epstein, Friendship: An Expose. It's been a good book to provoke thinking about friendship, and of course his prose is excellent. He's not as funny here as he in his essays, which of...
It is boilerplate to state that one-volume commentaries on the Bible are never deep enough. Which, of course, is followed with this: Unless you are a Bible reader who just needs brief comments on the whole text. Which is exactly...
So when people call themselves "traditionalists" with respect to the role of women, esp in ministry, what do they mean? And, are there traditionalists today? Sarah Sumner's book, Men and Women in the Church, chp. 3, discusses such questions with...
Any church that prohibits women from minstering in ways that women minister within the pages of the Bible, regardless of the text that church chooses to use in order to restrict women (usually 1 Cor 14:34-35 or 1 Tim 2:11-15),...
Categories: Books,
Theology
"Of the three late modern trajectories," LeRon Shults concludes at the end of chp 7 of Reforming the Doctrine of God, "the renewal of eschatological ontology may be the most difficult to understand for many Western readers." Indeed. And this...
Myth #6 in Roger Olson's book, Arminian Theology, is another oft-repeated accusation against Arminians: that Arminian theology is a human-centered theology with an optimistic anthropology. In fact, Olson argues, Arminian theology is every bit as God-intoxicated as Calvinist theology when...
Joseph Epstein's fine study, Friendship: An Expose, has a chp on "friendlessness." The chp, which speaks of a few kinds of friendlessness, led me to ponder a number of things. Some are friendless because they have not made friends, some...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Chp 6 of LeRon Shults' absolutely breath-taking (and not easy to read) book Reforming the Doctrine of God deals with "reviving trinitarian doctrine." The recent revival of trinitarian thought shows an affinity for the Cappadocians, and also for Luther and...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Myth #5: Arminian theology denies the sovereignty of God. The fundamental expression Roger Olson uses, in his book Arminian Theology, is that "God is in charge of everything without controlling everything." It may surprise to hear one say this, but...
Friday may be for friends, but sometimes friendships fade or, sadly, are broken. Epstein's 17th chp of Friendship: An Expose is about broken friendships. A little dreary of a topic for the day that ushers us into the weekend, but...
We need to resume our look at LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God. He speaks of God's infinity and Trinity and futurity, and I have called this the "in-God and un-God" because his study deals with terms like infinity...
Myth #4: the heart of Arminianism is belief in free will. Nonsense, Olson argues in his must-read Arminian Theology. The heart of Arminian theology is the character of God, God's goodness, and its system yearns to glorify God by exalting...
In chp 2 of RT France, Women in the Church's Ministry, the subject of authority is addressed. France contends that at the bottom of the discussion about the role of women in ministry among evangelicals in the Anglican communion was...
In Roger Olson's Arminian Theology, chp. 3, a 3d Myth is addressed: that Arminianism is neither orthodox nor evangelical. I cannot say that I have ever heard anyone say Arminians are not orthodox, but I have heard more than I...
Myth #2: a hybrid of Calvinism and Arminianism is possible. Instead, Olson argues, the two systems are incommensurable systems of theology. Many think they are "Calminians" but there is no such possibility -- according to Olson. Now the truth of...
Myth #1: Arminian theology is the opposite of Calvinist/Reformed theology. This is not true: Arminius and most of his followers are part of the broad Reformation movement and there is common ground. So, Roger Olson, Arminian Theology, chp. 1. Do...
The answer, in general, is no. (I need to say that gently as I am in Grand Rapids today to give some lectures.) So argues Roger Olson is his brand-new must-read Arminian Theology. I'll do a series on this book....
Categories: Books,
Theology
Social context shapes how we read the Bible, and the 16th chp in J. Holcomb's Christian Theologies of Scripture is written by L.B. Baldwin and S.W. Murphy on how Scripture works in the African American tradition. I've posted on this...
The conversation of friends, the great Samuel Johnson once said, is nothing more than a "calm interchange of sentiments." And Joseph Epstein, in his Friendship: An Expose, devotes an entire chp to the talk of friends. Here's how he defines...
A nice convergence: our series on Women in Ministry and on Scriptures and Scripture converge in the chapter by Pamela Cochran on "Scripture, Feminism, and Sexuality." This chapter in Justin Holcomb's book, Christian Theologies of Scripture, neatly and efficiently rehearses...
Categories: Books,
Theology
A theologian with an enormous impact but whom I've barely read is Hans Urs van Balthasar. In Justin Holcomb's Christian Theologies of Scripture, the essay on Balthasar is written by a specialist, W.T. Dickens. The question he provokes is this...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Here is a question that occurs to anyone sensitive to interpreting the Bible: Is the event itself -- say the crossing of the Red Sea or the exile/return or the incarnation or the death or the resurrection of Jesus --...
Are your friendship within a "clique," a "clan," or a "community"? Joseph Epstein's 13th chapter in Friendship: An Expose, explores friendship through these three categories. Where are yours? Announcement: Our next book will be Citizenship Papers by Wendell Berry. About...
Categories: Books,
Theology
What is the proper order? Do we believe in Scripture because we believe in Christ -- as a result of preaching and the illumination of the Spirit? Or, do we believe in Christ because we believe in the Scriptures? Did...
Categories: Books,
Theology
In LeRon Shults' book, Reforming the Doctrine of God, the 4th chp takes on "God as First Cause," and once again puts the way this has been understood to the test of whether it measures up to the biblical concept...
Categories: Books,
Theology
In this series on how Scripture has been understood in the history of the Church, we will be reading through J.S. Holcomb’s Christian Theologies of Scripture. Today’s post will make brief remarks about Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, the Catholic Reform (Counter...
We rightly call God "person," but what is meant by calling God "person"? In LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God, the history of how theologians have understood "person" is sketched. Revealingly. Ponder this statement: "... the question is not...
This is Kris, a guest blogger for the day. My favorite type of book is a memoir, and I recently read a new book by Sarah Kay called Pieces of Glass. This is a young woman's story of tragedy who...
A person begins a conversation, a letter, an introduction, or an e-mail with a "I know you're busy" or "I know lots of people would like to have your time" or, with what is really at the bottom of it,...
Categories: Books,
Theology
I'm doing some reading for a short piece on the doctrine of Scripture. One of the issues pressing many revolves around the unity of the Bible -- is it Scripture or is it scriptures? -- which provokes the question also...
Categories: Books,
Theology
"In"-God and "Un"-God is my expression for the transcendence of God, the God who is so unlike the absorption of so many with an "immanent" God-who-is-alot-like-us- but just-a-little-bit-more-than-us but before whom very few sense awe. To help us forward with...
The 11th chapter of Epstein's Friendship: An Expose concerns friendships with the opposite sex. He writes eloquently -- why even mention his habit? -- of Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale as well as of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. Then...
This is the last of my posts on David Wells' new book, Above All Earthly Pow'rs. I thought his criticism a bit relentless, and I found his conclusion a bit surprising, but I thought his emphasis on immigration as significant...
In chp 10 of Joseph Epstein's book, Friendship: An Expose, Epstein asks this question: What are the friendships between males like? What do you think of the following quotations? First, Epstein observes there are differences between men and women, and...
Categories: Books,
Missional
David Wells, author of Above All Earthly Pow'rs, was one of my teachers in seminary and the best lecturer I have ever heard. I was mesmerized by his sketch of theology, and will never forget his standard answer to questions:...
I'm not sure how to describe Hope in the Dark. It is a book of pictures by Jeremy Cowart with some textual observations by Jena Lee. What about? Life in Africa. Visual, real, and not staged. You will not find...
As I said last Thursday, Jarrett Stevens' new book, The Deity Formerly Known as God, is a remake of J.B. Phillips' famous Your God is Too Small. The book is definitely designed for the younger generation (than mine). The first...
Some titles of books work, and some don't. Jarrett Stevens' new book, The Deity Formerly Known as God (Zondervan, 2006), is a title that works. I'll post on this book twice. The book is an upgrade of a book that...
Joseph Epstein's Friendship: An Expose tackles a politically incorrect subject: the difference in friendship between men and women. So, let's see what we really do think. I'll give you some quotations from Epstein and you ponder them to see if...
I was thoroughly impressed with Christopher Bryan's Render to Caesar study of how the Bible understands power and empire. In this post, I want to draw together his major points, and I think you will see that much of the...
Christopher Bryan is, if his prose any indicator, both a scholar's curmudgeon -- much on the order of Morna Hooker -- and a happy person. He's a scholar's curmudgeon because he doesn't buy trendy scholarship just because everyone likes it,...
What about universalism? Before I say anything, I want to ask if you think the following proposal by Spencer is universalist or if it is not more accurately a (very, very) "generous inclusivism"? Here are Spencer Burke's central theses, and...
The conclusion to Randall Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come is both a jeremiad and a plea -- a critique of the Religious Right and a basket of suggestions of how evangelicals can move forward. There is no way to sum this...
I've got a book that you need (or one like it): Ginny Olson's Teenage Girls: Exploring Issues Adolescent Girls Face and Strategies to Help Them. Recently Kris and I were at a store, we went to the counter, and I...
What are the obligations of friendship? What can a friend reasonably expect of a friend? I've not thought much about this, other than in the quiet moments of visceral responses when something happens in a relationship to a friend. So,...
The third section of Spencer Burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity is called "Living in Grace: Mystical Responsibility." Again, I'll provide here the main lines of his thinking: Jesus is the first heretic. Why? "Sometimes you gotta break the rules."...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Environmentalism? Where do you stand? Are you green, dark green, light green, or something else? If your tendency is to move to another blog because this post is about something you are not interested in, well maybe you should hang...
Spencer Burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity is divided into 3 major sections. The second one concerns "Questioning What We Know: New Horizons of Faith." Because Spencer does not operate rigorously with the law of non-contradiction, but instead operates with...
Evolution or intelligent design, science or faith? Those are the questions that shape chp 4 of Randall Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come. Once again, his points sharpen the debate as they create controversy. Here are his central claims: First, evangelicals "resisted...
Epstein suggests in the second half of his sixth chapter on Friendship: An Expose, eight reasons why friendship as an art, as a preoccupation, or as a core value is no longer what it was. Wondering what you think of...
In a delicious irony, I was finishing up Balmer's 3d chapter on education and democracy while on the TV in the living room Ann Coulter was being interviewed by Chris Mathews on MSNBC. They were outside; young students were in...
A while back I posted on our brief visit with Spencer Burke, creator of TheOoze.com. At the time I mentioned that Spencer had written a new book that gives a twist to universalism called The Heretic's Guide to Heaven. On...
Randall Balmer's book, Thy Kingdom Come, turns in chp 2 to ask this question: "Where have all the Baptists Gone?" and looks at the First Amendment. Here's the overall thesis of the chapter: "America needs more Baptists -- real Baptists,...
Last night I discussed on Extension 720 Mark Galli's bood, Jesus Mean and Wild. I'm not sure about the word "mean," for what Galli means is not really a dictionary definition -- he's speaking of the stern Jesus, of the...
Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, An Evangelical's Lament, by Randall Balmer, is bound to create some controversy for those who read it and who are willing to face the tough suggestions and...
Joseph Epstein's Friendship: An Expose asks in chp 5 an important question that we often do not ask ourselves, but in our more cynical moments we recognize ourselves in an affirmative answer to the question: "Is friendship, when stripped down...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Just in case you haven't heard of it, in the early 1990s Richard John Neuhaus (editor of First Things) and Charles Colson (who needs no intro to most of you) began a fruitful dialogue that has led to four "Evangelical...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Where do you find Roman Catholic theology? Now, before we go too far, let me make this point: Evangelicals tend to define themselves and therefore everyone else by their doctrinal statement. (This has given rise, in part, to the emerging...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Here’s the question I propose to you regarding Noll and Nystrom’s book, Is the Reformation Over?: How significant are ecumenical dialogues for (1) the RC Church as a whole and (2) for lay level understandings of the RC faith? Here’s...
Categories: Books,
Theology
Noll and Nystrom, in their Is the Reformation Over?, chp 3, see the shifts that occurred in the 1950s to concern four, yea five, things: changes within the Catholic Church, in world Christianity, in American politics and society, in the...
Joseph Epstein's Friendship: An Expose turns in chps 3 and 4 to two more topics: best friends and how to kill friendships. This is not a review or even a description, but the simple recording of some quotations and some...
In 1912 George Santayana taught a course at Harvard on Jesus, but no one taught another course on Jesus at Harvard until 1982, a full seventy years, when Harvey Cox did so. Cox was known to me in my college...
Joseph Epstein, plain and simple, is my favorite writer. In one calendar year I read about a dozen of his books and it saddened me when I came to the end of his non-fiction. I did buck up and read...
Mark Galli, editor at Christianity Today, thinks so. His new book, Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God, now out with Baker, enters the fray about Jesus with some unexpected themes. I read this in ms...
Starting July 7th, Friday, I'll begin a series on my favorite, one-of-a-kind, drop-all-your-other-books-to-read, author, Joseph Epstein, and his new book called Friendship: An Expose. We'll do maybe two chapters each Friday, and the point won't be so much to interact...
We come now to our last post on Michael Horton's book on covenant theology, God of Promise. Many of us generic-brand Bible readers can benefit from being exposed to this covenant approach, even if we disagree. I offer a critique...
Michael Horton, in God of Promise, provides what is surely the most recent and complete defense of a covenantal theology reading of the Bible. And chp 5 sketches the fullness of this approach to the Bible. He calls it "From...
Michael Horton's God of Promise, chps. 3-4, puts the big blocks of his thesis in place, and the big blocks are not hard to understand, and they go a long way to explain how his understanding of covenant theology works....
How do we read the Bible? In Michael Horton's eyes, we read it "covenantally" for it alone ties us to the God who is covenanted within three persons and whose hyper-relationality extends to creation. This is one big idea in...
At some point in many of our conversations someone steps up to the plate and says "that's not, or that is, how to read the Bible." For years I have thought one of the most important sorts of books to...
This convoluted title to my post today means that I've found a book that no one seems to talk much about but which is a very fine book -- and when I was wandering around trying to find the best...
Andii Bowsher has recently written a book that might be of some use to you, especially if you'd like to combine structure with spontaneity in your prayer life. His book is called Praying the Pattern, and there is a website...
In Jason Boyett's Pocket Guide to the Bible: A Little Book about the Big Book I came across his entry on the Holy Spirit, and it got me to thinking about my grandma, bless her heart. Boyett's entry says the...
If I were you, and I'm assuming you have days when you're a bit down, when being a Christian is not what you thought it would be, and when you wonder if you should be doing what you're doing ......
This is my last post on J. Frye's wonderful book, Jesus the Pastor. I will do the final three chps today, and hope I've not said more than I should about this fine book. Chps 10 and 11 deal with...
In chps. 8 and 9 of J. Frye's book we encounter one central theme -- that of teaching. What is it? I suggest that if we believed what J. Frye says about what teaching is most of us would adjust...
When I opened J. Frye's Jesus the Pastor Wednesday evening for the next reading, I sighed because it was about "spiritual disciplines." I remember the days when no one, and I mean no one I knew of, had ever heard...
One of the reasons I'm blogging through this book is that it was written by a pastor, and it is important for me to understand more deeply what pastors think and do. Chp. 6 deals with the heart of pastoral...
Do you think Jesus depended on the Spirit? That is the subject of Frye's fifth chapter, and it is a good chapter. Once again, very good stories in this chapter envelop the basic biblical discussion of whether or not Jesus...
Where does the pastor, and nearly every one I've met has struggles with this one, find his or her identity? John Frye, in Jesus the Pastor, weaves together one big biblical idea with personal realities to frame a solid answer...
John Frye's excellent, Jesus the Pastor, raises two major issues, the value and role of seminary education and the meaning of "pastoring." Here's the question John provoked for me: If you could make one change in a seminary education, what...
I will be looking at John Frye's 2000 book Jesus the Pastor: Leading Others in the Character and Power of Christ for a while. John challenges pastors in this book to look to Jesus, not just to pastoral theories and...
What do you really think of Mary? Most Protestants know far too little about Mary, and often don't even know that the Immaculate Conception (Mary's) is not the same as the virginal conception (Jesus'). I expect to be posting occasionally...
In this last post on Russell Moore's book on the kingdom, I want to look at the heart of his last chp and then offer some concluding observations. First, progressive dispensationalists are beginning to see the Church as a present...
The next chp of Russell Moore's study of kingdom concerns ecclesiology: With the new unity being achieved beyond traditional dispensationalism and covenant theology, there arises the issue of what the church should look like. Once again, Moore has landed on...
Let me begin by provoking with a question: Is Russell Moore's proposal in chp 3 an emerging proposal? Is his proposal that there is a way beyond traditionist dispensationalism and traditionist covenant theologians a "purple" theology? Is it post-dispensational and...
I would say the second chp of Russell Moore's The Kingdom of the Christ is the finest survey of how eschatology and kingdom have been studied by evangelicals, both dispensational and covenant, in the 20th Century. I lived through most...
What do Russell D. Moore, a professor at Southern Seminary, and Brian McLaren, a major voice in the emerging church movement, have in common? A lot I will suggest today -- and it that "a lot" has to do with...
Jonathan Wilson's For God So Loved the World: A Christology of Disciples came across my desk recently because it has a nice section on atonement theories, arguing as many of us are arguing today, that atonement is a multi-splendored work...
Categories: Books,
Gospel
My friend Joel Green recommended that I read Ted Peters' Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society and I'm glad for Joel's suggestion. This is a really fine theological and soul-ish analysis of sin. There is a pastoral element to...
Kris and I began the day in Louisville, Kentucky, at Springdale Community Church, where I spoke about The DaVinci Code (and the bad version of the book in the new movie). My talk went a full hour, but the audience...
Kris and I went to the movie of the DaVinci Code tonight. I'm not a movie critic, nor do I understand all the stuff that movie critics think about, but the story plot was just OK for me. We both...
Kris and I are not big fans of fiction, even though I generally try to read a new piece of fiction every year. Last year I read Gilead and liked about 80% of it. I'll try to read Saint Maybe...
Kris and I saved our shekels so we could go back to Italy, and in about two weeks we will be off to Milan. A day in Bellagio in the Lake Cuomo district; then a week in the Cinque Terra....
Last night I was on a panel on a nationally-televised program with Total Living Network. Jerry Rose, the omnicompetent and tireless President, interviewed art historian, Doug Adams, and a near complete endorser of Dan Brown's theory, Vincent Bridges. Included were...
"How do you get on the side of Jesus and his secret kingdom?" Or, what if a modern person wants to follow Jesus, "What do you do?" How do you move from "egotism, racism, consumerism, hedonism, and its associated -isms...
The 9th chp in Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus concerns global mission. He properly sets the Christian mission in the Jewish context where there was no active mission. McLaren ties the global mission of Jesus to the blessing...
The second section of Brian McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus is called "Engagement" and Brian investigates the meaning of kingdom. Today we look at what he says about Jesus' communicative style via parables, miracles, and exorcisms. While the book...
Wednesday night, 8pm CDT, I will be at TLN studio for a 1.5 hour live interview about The DaVinci Code. I'm not sure who will be in the studio, but I know they will also be talking to Josh McDowell,...
Brian McLaren's new book, The Secret Message of Jesus, seems somehow to have escaped the sort of reviews that his other more recent books have -- Generous Orthodoxy and The Last Word and the Word After That. I'd like to...
In the form of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. Tuesday afternoon, fast at work grading student papers and journals, I got a phone call from Garry Poole. Garry is a friend, a former student of mine at TEDS and now...
Peter Rollins has written what I predict will be a firestorm of a book -- no one will agree with all of it, most will find challenging insights, and everyone will be brought to the table for a passionate discussion....
In N.T. Wright's third section to his book Simply Christian, he deals with the following themes about the Christian life: worship, prayer, Bible, interpretation, believing/belonging, and new creation/starting now. It is a bit of a short manual on Christian living...
N.T. Wright's new book, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, is Tom's adventure into a new kind of apologetic -- not by way of disproving but by way of expounding three dimensions of the Christian faith: the inner echoes of...
Jamie KA Smith has a new, readable, useful book on postmodernity called Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?. I want to recommend as the best interface of evangelical concerns and traditional theology with postmodernism. It is not as saucy or philosophical as...
Categories: Atonement,
Books
Here's a thesis Mark Biddle, in his excellent new study on sin (Missing the Mark), defends in his last chapter: "Sin creates a real circumstance that lingers in the world until it comes to fruition -- sometimes with the assistance...
I've been reading Thomas C. Oden for a few years, and his newest book, Turning around the Mainline, continues his theme of renewal within the mainline denominations in the USA and Canada and the return to classical orthodoxy. Some highlights...
Tomorrow morning, at 6:00am, Paraclete will announce at this site a special deal on my new book, Praying with the Church (the "candle book"). "Deal" as in "free."...
If truth be told, many of us are not happy about our prayer life -- its intensity, its duration, its stimulation, its discipline, its effectiveness -- and the list could go on. There are statistics out there even about how...
Here is what Irenaeus says about The Gospel of Judas in his Against Heresies, 1.31.1: Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related...
Scene 3 has all the sensational and new stuff about Judas, and I will briefly summarize what this Scene tells us. I see four sections, and then a final conclusion. First, Judas informs Jesus that he, too, had a vision,...
As I indicated in the first post, the best way to deal with the news about the Gospel of Judas is to read it, reflect on it, and then evaluate the claims being made. Today we look at the second...
Early in chp 5 of The Faces of Forgiveness, LeRon Shults states this: "believers are called to face one another in a way that manifests grace as they are faced by the gracious face of God" (169). And he sees...
"The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot..." -- this is how The Gospel of Judas [GJ] begins. Jesus, GJ tells us, did great wonders and spoke about mysteries and was sometimes "appeared" to...
Carmen Butcher, in her elegantly written little book on the life of St. Benedict, Man of Blessing, traces the life and beliefs of St. Benedict. Last summer Kris and I visited his birth church (in Nursia) and had a memorable...
CNN and a couple of publishers -- HarperSanFrancisco and National Geographic -- coordinated their efforts yesterday to inform us all of yet another newsworthy religious story: the true story of Judas. NG has published an official translation of The Gospel...
LeRon Shults examines what salvation looks like after the "turn to relationality." If life is inherently about relationships, what does salvation look like? If it is not about substance but about relationships, what about salvation? What happens to all our...
Steven Sandage and LeRon Shults, in The Faces of Forgiveness, propose a new and fresh approach to how the Bible speaks about forgiveness and how forgiveness works in real practice today. The question I will ask today is this one:...
Kris and I are in Placerville, California, up the road from Sacramento, at a fine little gelato shop that has a Wi-fi. I just got to this response by Allan so I'm posting it a bit late today. Allan Bevere...
Bart Ehrman, in his new book, Misquoting Jesus, tells his story: how he found an evangelical faith, attended Moody, Wheaton and then Princeton -- during which time he came to the conclusion that the Bible is simply a human book....
Summary by Bevere: 1. Introduction: In chapter seven, "Reimagining God's Future," Wright comes to the final theme in the trilogy of Paul's reworking of traditional Jewish theology-- eschatology. He sets forth the argument in the following way: 1) A brief...
This section in Eugene Peterson's book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, deals with how the fear-of-the-Lord is developed in history: Peterson suggests it occurs through Eucharist and Hospitality. The Eucharist: Two elements: remembrance and proclamation. The Eucharist anchors us...
Some more sayings from Khalidi's collection of sayings and stories about Jesus that are not found in the Kor'an. From saying #79 Khalidi includes sayings of Abu 'Uthman al-Jahiz who is a towering literary figure in the Muslim tradition, and...
This is the sixth installment of a series on N.T. Wright's new book, Paul in Fresh Perspective, by Allan Bevere and I, and we've observed that Tom Wright here is playing his view of Paul over against the "new" perspective....
In chapter 5, "Rethinking God," Wright works through the discussion of Paul's monotheism. This is perhaps what H. Richard Niebuhr would have called radical monotheism, but no doubt with a much different twist. Summary by Allan Bevere 1. Introduction The...
How important is history, real stuff on earth by real people with God empowering such stuff with salvific power, for Christian spirituality? This is at the heart of this part of Eugene Peterson's em>Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. To...
N.T. Wright's Paul in Fresh Perspective is "fresh" because on top of the older "new" perspective is added a pervasive Pauline rhetoric against Rome. Wright paves his own path here, he charts a different casting of Paul's theology and letters,...
Here's a brisk and evocative claim: "Salvation is not a one-night stand. It cannot be isolated from the thick texture of history; it is all-encompassing, pulling everything that has happened and happens, and every person named and unnamed, into relationship...
The second section of Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places deals with Christ playing in history (the first was on creation). And in this section he explores the significance of the atonement, Jesus' death as an act in history,...
Eugene Peterson, in his Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pp. 119-129, sets out a second element of cultivating fear of the Lord in creation. The first was Sabbath, upon which I posted some time in December, and the second...
Once again, we return to some more of Khalidi's The Muslim Jesus, which sorts out the sayings and stories about Jesus from the Muslim tradition. The earliest traditions about Jesus in the so-called Muslim gospel is that Jesus was a...
This marks the end of our series on Douglas Jacobsen's and Rodney Sawatsky's fine book, Gracious Christianity, and tomorrow I'll resume looking at Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places -- one day later than I hoped. Overall, Gracious Christianity...
Allan Bevere, a rare combination of pastor and professor, and I will now begin a series of looking at N.T. (Tom) Wright's new book, Paul, In Fresh Perspective. We will do two chps per week, Monday and Thursday, if our...
I know about 1000 Christian leaders who were given free copies of Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and I'm willing to resume our previous posts about the book. We began before Christmas, and it was a bit...
Here is a parable (I will summarize it) about Jesus (not by him). It is not titled, but I'll call it the Parable of the Repentant Bird (#21 in The Muslim Jesus): Jesus was with disciples; they see a beautiful...
Gracious Christianity follows many today by not making Scripture the prolegomena to a theology, this one a gracious theology, but letting it flow out of Spirit and Bible. I have many times said that I think the order is Christ/Spirit/Church...
A few more sayings about Jesus in the Muslim tradition reveal once again how Jesus was appropriated for specific concerns as Islam developed. A politically quietist attitude on Jesus' part can be seen in this saying: "Just as kings left...
Any Christianity worthy of the name is gracious. Here's an opening definition from Jacobsen/Sawatsky: "Being church is being Christian together" (89). What do you think of this definition? 1. Church as community: "Freelance Christianity is seen as an anomaly" (90)....
Chp 5 of Gracious Christianity by Douglas Jacobsen and Ben Sawatsky is called "The Spirit and Life." The reality and power of the Holy Spirit cuts like a knife through a Christian faith that transforms and a Christian faith that...
In Tarif Khalidi's new translation of the "Muslim gospel," he provides 303 sayings and stories about Jesus in the Muslim tradition. I'm finding them fascinating. I'll comment on a few to give us a taste of how Muslims appropriated Jesus...
Tarif Khalidi, in his ground-breaking The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature, introduces the "Muslim gospel" and then provides translation and brief commentary on 303 sayings/stories about Jesus in Muslim literature. It is just the sort of book...
Chp 4 of Gracious Christianity deals with the "Fullness of Salvation." The authors, Douglas Jacobsen and Ben Sawatsky, open with a grand vision of what salvation is, and they begin with Ephesians 1:3-23: salvation is God's redemption of the entire...
Chp 3 in Jacobsen and Sawatsky, Gracious Christianity, is about "hearing God's voice." God's voice comes to us as summons, as a call. Here's a great quotation: "God does not compete for our attention by trying to outyell everyone else"...
The next chapter in Douglas Jacobsen and Rodney Sawatsky's small study in theology, Gracious Christianity, turns next to "Human Nature." The chp deals with Image of God (something dear to my heart), and then with a few topics around the...
In the first class I ever taught I had a Scottish student named Peter Grant (God bless him). One day I told him that I grew up with a family friend, an Englishman, who, when he got stubborn, my parents...
Rodney Stark, noted sociologist of religion, has contended in a series of publications that Mormonism is well on its way to becoming a world religion. (Stark, The Rise of Mormonism, Columbia University Press.) Stark predicts their numbers will rival other...
I recently read Rebecca's Revival by Jon F. Sensbach, a professor of history at the University of Florida. Rebecca Freundlich Protten was the first ordained black woman in Western Christianity (she was ordained in Europe). Born in Africa, enslaved in...
I don't blog much on Saturdays and Sundays. But, I've been away and now it is all spilling out. So... here's a bit to read on defining memoirs. Here's a good link on Memoirs at Inkspell. Here's another: Memoir Cafe....
David Fitch's book, The Great Giveaway, as been featured and discussed in many ways on this blog for two weeks, and David has been a "good guy" in listening. Now he responds, and I think you can say this is...
Well, I've had a chat with my literary critic with whom I had spoken about memoirs, and I wish to back down from my genre definition and say that, from what I understand of Frey's memoir, he is too fancy-free...
Yesterday a blogger commented that Fitch got him to recall, in his chps 4-5, that IH Marshall had written an article back in 1985 that argued that the NT evidence does not suggest the Christians got together for "worship" (as...
The seventh chp in David Fitch's The Great Giveaway concerns spiritual formation. The primary direction of the chp is to return counseling to the church and to get more church in the psychologist's office. [Now he's meddling with my wife's...
So far David Fitch, in his provocative book, The Great Giveaway, has taken on the pillars of evangelical church life: success, evangelism, leadership, experience, and preaching. He will also address spiritual formation and moral education. But, I'm particularly happy he...
Some of you may know that I wrote an introduction to a reader's digest and friendly version of the four Gospels called The Story of the Christ. How would a 1st Century Roman reporter have described Jesus? The book could...
David Fitch's The Great Giveaway turns in chp 5 to the "Preaching of the Word" and he sub-titles his chp "the myth of expository preaching." What do you see as the primary function of preaching? To be an exposition of...
Chapter four of David Fitch's The Great Giveaway takes on a troubled and troubling dimension of corporate worship: the production of experience. Because of Fitch's personal study of the history of liturgy and worship, and because of his experimentation and...
We are in the third chapter of David Fitch's provocative, if not accusatory, study called The Great Giveaway. This chapter deals with pastoral leadership and the thesis of this chapter is very simple, and it is one that should be...
The second chp in David Fitch's book, The Great Giveaway, concerns how to evangelize in postmodernity, and for those of you who have read this blog or are conversant with the discussion about evangelism in the emerging movement, this chapter...
David Fitch, in his Great Giveaway, first studies how evangelicalism defines "success." This is, in my estimation, a great place to start a book. Evangelicals, he contends, too often define success by numbers: attendance and baptisms. He contends this is...
David Fitch, in his new book, The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies (Baker, 2005), weighs in in a modern genre of literature: evangelicals vs. evangelicalism....
The following is a review of Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger's important book, Transformative Encounters, and was not published. It was written to be read at an SBL meeting, and then the session fell through and I was left with this...
I've gone on record at not being a big fan of envisioning the Christian life through the spiritual disciplines, though I'm all for them. I just don't think the way to approach the Christian life is through a means but...
Ben Witherington has recently published a useful, biblical analysis of three segments of Evangelicalism: Calvinism (which neither he nor I are), Dispensationalism (the same), and Wesleyanism (which he is, I'm not). The book is called The Problem with Evangelical Theology:...
James M. Robinson is perhaps the leading scholar in the world on the hypothetical source of the canonical Gospels called "Q." He's also a leading voice in the Jesus Seminar, which Seminar is not hypothetical but is instead the source...
Categories: Advent,
Books
Every Christmas I read Charles Dickens', A Christmas Carol, and am in Stave 4 now. It is the story of a conversion from miserliness to generosity, from self-preoccupation to other-directedness. One assignment I give when I teach about conversion is...
Sorry, nothing to stir the pot today. I don't know if you buy used books, but, like a microbrew, it's a good habit to acquire. When I was a seminary student, my professor, Murray Harris, gave us all a list...
This post summarizes Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, pp. 108-118. I’m hoping a short section, focused as it is on only one issue (Sabbath), might draw more into the conversation. Peterson contends to “play with Christ” in creation we...
This post will summarize Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, chp. 1 pp. 85-108. This is a short section, but it is better than biting off too big of a chunk that extends to nearly 50 pages and...
I thought I'd offer some book suggestions at the beginning of December for those of you who are wondering about books to buy someone (or yourself) for Christmas. Again, buy something for yourself for I have often bought myself a...
I've been asked to be interviewed by Lee Strobel for a Zondervan response to the upcoming movie, The DaVinci Code (I really don't know the name of the movie). Many of you know I'm not a fan of novels and...
This post is the first in a series of a review of Eugene Peterson's new book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. There will be a gaggle of speakers in this series, including me (I'll...
Doug Pagitt's new book, Body Prayer: The Posture of Intimacy with God, just came out, I was sent a copy, and I wish to record some brief thoughts. First, the book has a short chapter that sums up the thrust...
My first encounter with John Piper was memorable. I now recall it was the first faculty retreat I was at Trinity, and we were for the day at a hotel in Mundelein. John Piper addressed the faculty on the trivialization...
Brad Bergfalk and I are both tiring with the prose of James Houston, and one of us thinks the book better than the other. But, here is our fifth part (on chp 6). Summary (Brad Bergfalk) After reviewing the meaning...
That's an attempt at a clever title for a short post on Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz and Anne Lamott's Plan B. I've read both recently and discovered that many of my students were either reading or had read Blue...
In this fifth installment on James Houston's The Mentored Life we (Scot McKnight and Brad Bergfalk), we will look at his first "positive" chapter, chp 5: Mentored and Discipled Christian Living. Summary The chapter is largely a statement of Kierkegaard's...
Summary (Brad Bergfalk) Houston moves from describing the "Heroic Mentor" and the "Stoic Mentor" to what he calls the "Secular Psychotherapeutic Mentor." Houston asserts that the "therapeutic mentor" is the most pervasive of the three in American culture. The "therapeutic...
George Barna, in his new book Revolution, claims the primary source for the new generation's spiritual formation is shifting away from the local congregation model to a more fragmented model. That is, we get what we need from the sources...
Because I was hearing so much chat about Barna's new book, Revolution, I thought I'd read it. Here's the nub of the book: there is a revolution going on in the Church (big "c" not little "c"), and it concerns...
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and an author of many books about Christian spirituality, has recently published Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another, and I want to jot down a few notes about what I think is a...
Chapter 3 of James Houston's The Mentored Life is opening up to me what this book is all about, and in this post Brad Bergfalk and I will interact with this chapter on Stoicism. The Mentored Life is about "world...
I will provide links here to reviews, whether good or bad, and direct discussions of Embracing Grace, and I will update this post. Review by Jamie Arpin-Ricci....
Summary of Chapter Two Houston begins his argument for a return to the "mentored life" by examining the "Heroic Myth of Odysseus." In this myth, Houston suggests we see all the characteristics of individualism and narcissism that stand as obstacles...
This is a series of blogs, over a couple of weeks, about James Houston, The Mentored Life. It is being written by both of us, Scot McKnight (at North Park University) and Brad Bergfalk (pastor of Zion Covenant in Jamestown,...
I have seen the title Freakonomics mentioned, haven't looked at it all, but Fr. Rob Merola, of St. Matthew's in Sterling Virginia, has pointed me to a link that is worth reading and discussing. It is by columnist named Orson...
Categories: Atonement,
Books
I got my first copy of Jesus and His Death today from Baylor University Press. I thank its fine editorial folk, Carey Newman and Diane Smith, for their exceptional work. It is hard for me to compare editorial staffs, but...
Categories: Atonement,
Books
Rick Brannon, a bibliophile, has blogged the first brief review of Jesus and His Death. I posted it at my Jesus and His Death blog, and point you there....
There is a reason, perhaps less in importance but perhaps just as insidious, why Christian communities of faith need to stop in their tracks and post a new life-sign about the end of racism in the Church. That reason is...
I have been asked to comment on the book with my name on it called The Story of the Christ. The book was commissioned in England with T&T Clark/Continuum, and recently picked up by Baker Books in the USA. Hence,...
This is our last post on Franke's book, The Character of Theology. Here's my overall assessment: The book exposes themes that penetrate deeply into the fabric of doing theology and deserves to be read, especially by students who have teachers...
This fifth installment of Franke's Character of Theology deals with the second half of chapter 4: The Task of Theology. A brief on the second half of chp 4 Franke surveys how Scripture and tradition relate, and proposes three models...
John Franke deconstructed me yesterday in an e-mail. He said he likes my idea of "purple" theology, but he figured out why and it is related, so he thinks, to my bias: he suggests it is the color of the...
In this third post in a series on Franke's understanding of what theology is, we will look at what he says about the nature of theology. (By the way, Baker puts too many words on a page.) Franke, many will...
Franke's Character of Theology, which I began here, turns in the second chapter to the Subject of Theology. The book is written for seminary students and academics. A Brief of the second chapter In essence (no pun here), the Subject...
John Franke's new book, The Character of Theology: An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose, promises to be a study of theology that will enable (what I have elsewhere called) a purple theology. In other words, it is postconservative...
A recent meandering through the new biographies at Barnes & Noble confronted me one more time with a bald fact of our time: people want to read biographies with salacious details or biographies of celebrities who have achieved -- well,...
I have a study of John Bunyan's classic, Pilgrim's Progress, now online with Covenant Companion. You can see it here....
This is the first in a series of posts by Brad Boydston and me on Doug Pagitt's new book, Preaching Re-imagined. We will be posting these on both Brad's site and this site, so you can go to either to...
It is only 2005 and I am willing to stick my neck out and announce the best book on Scripture for the new century. Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, has captured the modern discussions about propositionalist, expressivist, and the...
A good book for understanding a Kingdom perspective on "gospel," is R.J. Sider, Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel (Baker, 1993). Followed by Churches that Make a Difference....
Check this post out on whether or not Carson has been fair to Frei and Lindbeck. Should make for a good discussion on Harbinger....
Just finished a book many of you probably have already read, Michael Yaconelli's Messy Spirituality. Very much along the line of Yancey's What's So Amazing about Grace?, Yaconelli's book is disarmingly honest and filled with stories that ring true about...
In thinking through what it means to be "missional," and in reading some stuff about it, I came across John Burke's No Perfect People Allowed and blogged about it already.But, a book that tells the story of what is often...
In their 2004 book, If Grace is True, Philip Gulley and James Mulholland make a case for universalism and this is their essential creedal contention:I believe -- on the basis of their experiences;God -- who is the gracious, loving Father...
Categories: Books,
Missional
Another "emerging" type book crossed my desk and I want to be an advocate for much of what he says.But first, a clarification: Emergent describes the offical organization of Emergent Village and now coordinated by Tony Jones. Emerging describes the...
Everyone will want to buy and read Rob Bell's new book, which I think is to appear in a week or two. It is called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Rob Bell is the kind of pastor I'm thankful...
When I was first teaching in seminary, we brought in Robert Banks who spoke on a book he had just written, but he also spoke with me about a book called Going to Church in the First Century and if...
In a previous post on Lesslie Newbigin, I reflected on his now out of print book, Foolishness to the Greeks. In this blog I'd like to put together the powerful influences that converge in his updating of Foolishness in his...
Lesslie Newbigin is a leading thinker in the Emergent conversation, and his Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, which I finished last night, is a book still worth reading (published 1986). [The link will take you to...
A couple of posts and a couple of e-mails separate from the blogsite lead me to make some suggestions on what pastors should read. I've been asked what I think pastors should read, but I make these suggestions with some...
The recent Barna report, forwarded to me by my colleague, Ginny Olson, publishes its findings about books pastors are reading and who their favorite authors are.The question seems to be this: "What are the three books that had been most...
The recent discussion about the rhetorical nature of language about heaven and hell leads me to reflect some on a classic, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progess. Our BTS Dept at NPU is writing a monthly column in The Covenant Companion...
McLaren’s The Last Word and the Word After ThatThis is a slightly edited version of an earlier blog.In this blog I will interact with Brian McLaren’s helpful and provocative new book that seeks to deconstruct “hell” language as a rhetoric...
I'm not quite done with McLaren's The Last Word and the Word After That but I've come to a point where I want to put some of his book in perspective. Two observations tonight.First, a smaller one but one that...
If you've followed these blogs about hell, you'll know that I got them going before I started reading The Last Word and the Word After That. And of the blogs I had planned had to do with the role historical...
When my editor friend suggested that I blog, I balked. Mostly because I didn't know what it really was all about, but also because I never anticipated it would be this much fun. Maybe I'll burn out with this and...
In yesterday's very active blog about Dark Thoughts some commented on what they "hoped" while some others thought such "hopes" were unbiblical and misplaced. I offer here not so much what I believe and what I will eventually state in...
As a college student, and over in Belgium on a mission trip where I learned so much about the bigness of the Church, I was fortunate enough to be able to sit daily and listen to John R.W. Stott preach.He...
Kevin Corcoran, from Calvin, writes in Books and Culture on a topic that many of my students have recently asked me about: hell. The questions came up well before McLaren's book, which I'll be working my way through shortly.Corcoran is...
I'm up here in Seattle, and Doug Pagitt's heart-felt record of his church's, Solomon's Porch, work, called Reimagining Spiritual Formation, which for many Emergent folk is "old hat," was a wondrous read and gave me many things to think about.But...
The final chapter of DA Carson’s book is a biblical meditation on Truth and Experience, and largely a gentle, but well-informed, commentary on 2 Peter 1. Here’s his opening line:“A good deal of the discussion of this book could be...
This chapter is easier to cover because of the nature of the chapter:Chapter 7 of DA Carson’s book tones down the rhetoric. DA Carson is a biblical theologian (shaped as he is by the Reformers and esp the Calvinistic Baptist...
No one who reads Brian McLaren or who finds him to be a significant theologian can afford not to read the seventh chapter of DA Carson’s book. Here’s what I mean: if DA Carson is right, McLaren’s book is seriously...
We now turn to chapter 5 of DA Carson’s book on the Emerging church. Patient listening is required, and that means patient sorting out of his argument and points, if we are to hear what is being said. I make...
In this fourth part of discussing DA Carson’s new book on the Emergent movement, I will consider a chapter on “Personal Reflections on PM’s contribution and challenges” (PM=Postmodernism).He begins with Premodern epistemology (reducing the postmodernity to an epistemology, which has...
In this third installment of DA Carson’s important new book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, we will briefly summarize and ask questions of his third chapter, a chapter on how well (or how well not) the Emergent leaders understand...
I didn't think I'd get to a second part until tomorrow, but I just got the book for review, so here we go.In this second installment we will look briefly at what DA Carson says positively about the Emergent movement....
As I told Andrew Jones in my blog at his site, I am a former colleague of DA Carson’s at TEDS; I had the office next to his for years; he is my friend; I consider him an expert; I...
One of the more than 58,000 (count ‘em) names on the War Memorial to the Vietnam Veterans in Washington, D.C., is Barry Armstrong. We weren’t close, but we did play sandlot baseball together at the Little League field in Read...
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