Just these notes on the latter: The author is a fan of Paul; he’s critical of Luke’s reliability and Timothy’s performance as a leader. I read just the beginning and end because I thought that these are the parts of Paul’s life that are not really covered in Scripture. He sees Paul’s family as originally … [Read more…]
I enjoyed this book: As you’d expect from the title, there’s nothing profound, but there’s still plenty of good material, and the format of the “Idiot’s Guide” series is very reader-friendly. The author seems sound enough; the only off-note is his obsession with not offending women by the use of masculine pronouns. (The author is … [Read more…]
This terrific book covers a number of important issues, including the evidence of God from the nonrandomness of the universe; near-death experiences; and faith and health. The author is a skeptic/atheist turned believer, a former Reagan administration official (arms control), and Harvard Ph.D., then working at the American Enterprise Institute, Ethics and Public Policy Center, … [Read more…]
The author is the ABC News physician and journalist (like Luke!). This is a very ambitious book, and generally quite good, marred only by a little political correctness and quickness to criticize religious conservatives and the rich (but I shouldn’t overstate that: on the big questions, he comes down the right way, believing in God, … [Read more…]
“Not bad,” I wrote in my notebook after reading this book. It’s not brilliant, but straightforward, well-organized, and generally believable. As you’d guess from the title, there’s lots on prayer and meditation and their importance. He advises, for one thing, just to be quiet and clear your mind. I especially liked his discussion of how … [Read more…]
Mr. Zacharias is a good man, but I was disappointed in this book. It’s not heretical or wrong — just not persuasive or on point. And he doesn’t really deliver on what’s promised in the secondary title, “How God Shapes Us through the Events of Our Lives,” namely how God weaves our destiny, etc. He … [Read more…]
The secondary title is “A Translation with Commentary,” and that’s what it is: You read the translated psalm, and then the author’s footnotes explicate the psalm and also explain some of his translation decisions. The commentary is succinct and incisive, neither philosophical nor roaming. The author is quite an accomplished scholar, and he takes the … [Read more…]
The author is “a Christian and a Lutheran” (37). The discussion in chapter one of ways to read the text is interesting and thought-provoking (some politically correct elements creep in, though). He makes the point that the themes in Genesis cannot be forgotten in interpreting Exodus and the rest of the Pentateuch. Wikipedia, by the … [Read more…]
The book had some good insights (see below), but overall I was not that impressed. There is some political correctness in it that really runs amok in the final section on environmentalism (chapters 16 and 17). Some notes: Praise psalms help us to see, as we pray them, how much we have to be thankful … [Read more…]
This is a stretch, but I’m a Wodehouse fan, so I thought I’d note that in this book he pokes fun at Constable Dobbs, who reads Robert G. Ingersoll, an American agnostic. I’ll also note that elsewhere Jeeves observes that Nietzsche is “fundamentally unsound” (from the short story “Jeeves Takes Charge,” later included in the … [Read more…]