The Old Testament Books — in Fifteen Couplets Creation of all, and Jews starting: That’s Genesis. In Exodus, Moses is Pharaoh’s arch nemesis. Leviticus is “legal”; for Numbers, think “census.” Deuteronomy doubles what we have for lenses. — The twelve books that follow are all Jewish hist’ry. They show that God’s frequent dismay is no … [Read more…]
This book, published by InterVarsity Press, was written in 1994 by two Catholic philosophy professors at Boston College. I hasten to add that the arguments made here should be welcomed by all Christians, not just Catholics, and indeed the first chapter says explicitly that the book embraces “mere Christianity” (12, 24-25). It is is a … [Read more…]
This is not the most profound or polished book of all time, but I very much enjoyed it. The book is essentially a series of reminisces by a variety of people about their personal encounters with C.S. Lewis. As you’d expect, the recollections are nearly all positive (the editor’s only negative page is 131). There … [Read more…]
There are intimations in the Bible, and speculation in sermons I’ve heard, about what our resurrected physical bodies may be like and how they may differ from our present bodies — but how about our resurrected psyches? Surely they, too, must change. You don’t have to be a total-depravity Calvinist to recognize that every person’s … [Read more…]
I first read about this book nearly nine years ago, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the John Templeton Foundation: In the 1960s and 70s, while the atheistic straitjacket of logical positivism was loosening, smart, young Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff began crafting new ways of defending Christian … [Read more…]
I had enjoyed several of N.T. Wright’s other books, and he himself recommends this book at the end of his Simply Christian. The book was originally published in 1999, and the 2015 edition (by InterVarsity Press) has a new, seven-page introduction by Wright. The “backbone of this book,” says the author in the preface (9), … [Read more…]
This book is one of the “Long Line of Godly Men Profile” series, and its author — a prominent American minister — is also the series editor. It’s a short book (132 pages of text, plus a foreword, preface, notes, bibliography, and index), providing a brief and necessarily selective account of the life of the … [Read more…]
I think there’s a case to be made that the Lord’s Prayer has a chiastic structure: Opening (“Our Father, Who art in Heaven”) > > Glory – Kingdom – Power (“name”=glory, “kingdom”=kingdom, “will”=power) — in all places (“on Earth as it is in Heaven”) > > > > Asking for two very important things (bread … [Read more…]
This is a delightful book, and if you have the chance to read it you should. There are plenty of satisfying insights, and the book brings Paul and his travels excitingly to life. It’s a short book (155 pages), and decidedly nontechnical (no index and just a few footnotes, mostly to the relevant verses in … [Read more…]
During our church’s Easter service, a video was played that featured excerpts from (I’m almost certain) a Billy Graham sermon. One point made was that the Resurrection is the most important fact in human history, and also that it is as incontrovertible historically as just about anything else that happened in ancient Rome. Now, we … [Read more…]