Posts about books that I’ve read.
One of the blurbs on the back of the cover jacket describes Charles Murray as, “Arguably, the most consequential social scientist alive.” Yes, indeed, and so I was delighted to hear of this book and to get an advance copy of it. It is similar to another book published earlier this year, Ross Douthat’s Believe: … [Read more…]
This is another book that I read because it was cited in Ross Douthat’s recent and excellent Believe. After this book’s 15-page introduction, there follows the author’s new translation of Mark’s Gospel and his and verse-by-verse (more or less) commentary on it. Since there are sixteen chapters in Mark, the book is divided into sixteen … [Read more…]
This is another book I read thanks to its endorsement in Ross Douthat’s Believe. It’s excellent! And more good news (so to speak): The whole book is available online here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64c13fbd86667f166b3c5901/t/6605a833f6068e6a27855728/1711646775902/Can%2BWe%2BTrust%2BThe%2BGospels.pdf The book is fairly recent (2018), short (140 pages of text), and with good footnotes (and both a general and a Scripture index). There’s … [Read more…]
This book was recommended by Ross Douthat in his recent book, and an excellent recommendation it was! *** I’ll begin with an overview of the book, starting with the author’s definition of the eponymous “undesigned coincidence” (12): An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to … [Read more…]
It is exciting to have a book of Christian apologetics on the New York Times best seller list — debuting at number eight among nonfiction hardbacks! I will give you a quick summary and my bottom line first: The book begins with chapters on how recent science on fine-tuning, human consciousness, and supernatural events like … [Read more…]
I was googling “best gospel books” or something like that and, lo and behold, I found the subject of this blog post, namely Leo Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief. My thought then was, well, Tolstoy was one of the great writers of all time, and a committed Christian, and so it would make a lot … [Read more…]
I’ve discussed here on this blogsite my suggestion that the Lord’s Prayer is structured as a chiasm, including an argument that the center of the Prayer (promising that we will forgive others) is especially important, as is characteristic of chiasms. So I wanted to note that I recently discovered that it is commonly noted that … [Read more…]
Is There a God? I have some good news for you, gentle reader: I can recommend to you a wonderful apologetics book by a distinguished Oxford philosophy professor, it’s only 123 pages long, and you can read it right now for free since the whole book is online here [link: https://ia801904.us.archive.org/13/items/RichardSwinburne/RichardSwinburne-IsThereAGod.pdf ]. I was led … [Read more…]
The last letter that the apostle Paul wrote was likely Second Timothy, and on the last page of the current issue of Touchstone magazine there is a thoughtful column about it (Patrick Henry Reardon, “As It Is Written …: The Library Left Behind,” Touchstone, July/August 2024, at 56; here’s the link). The column focuses, in … [Read more…]
Joseph Epstein is what used to be called, and I guess still is, a “man of letters.” That is, he is a writer of his own books, essays, and shorter pieces, on a wide variety of nonscientific subjects, as well as a literary critic. If you’ve run across him lately, it’s probably through short columns … [Read more…]