The author, an Australian, is an Anglican bishop. I sought his book out because it was listed among the “[g]ood defenses of the historical reliability of the Gospels” for further reading by Richard Bauckham in Jesus: A Very Short Introduction, and I had been impressed by Bauckham (Barnett, in turn, has a brief citation of … [Read more…]
How unified is the Bible text? At one extreme, you could argue that, since the whole text is inspired by God and since He knew from the beginning what text He would inspire and how it would and should be arranged, then the whole Bible — including every book, Old and New Testament alike — … [Read more…]
This short (only 114 pages of text) book is part of a series on a wide variety of topics published by Oxford University Press. I sought it out because I was impressed by the author’s much longer Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (discussed elsewhere on this blogsite), which I found valuable but daunting in its length … [Read more…]
Years ago I had clipped and saved a description of this book, and recently I finally bought a used copy online (I’m not sure it’s easily available any other way; I’ll note that the copy I got had quite a few typos in it). I’m glad I did. Peter Kreeft, who is a philosophy professor … [Read more…]
This short post makes a slight variant of a point that has been made famously elsewhere (see, for example, here), but since I do a lot of speaking and writing — and am around people who have spoken and written a lot more than I have and been greatly honored, often for how prolific they’ve … [Read more…]
The worst Bible couple, of course, was Jezebel and Ahab. But which was the best? It’s an interesting question to consider even if, at the end of the day, the answer turns out to have been pretty obvious. I’m looking for two things. First, both husband and wife should have strong and good character; a … [Read more…]
The secondary title is, “An Introduction: From the Apostolic Fathers to the 21st Century,” and the author is president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Oxford (and, to his credit, he quotes Oxfordian C.S. Lewis a lot). It’s a very useful and engaging book. The chapters are: the apostolic fathers, Justin … [Read more…]
Owen Barfield was a great friend of C.S. Lewis’s, a member of the Inklings who played an important role in bringing the atheist Lewis to belief, and as I recall Lewis praised this book in particular, so I thought I should read it. The bad news, dear reader, is that I got little out of … [Read more…]
This book was originally titled, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, and the author, who headed the English department at Malvern College in Worcestershire, was a friend of Lewis’s and occasional attendee of meetings of the Inklings. He met Lewis in 1934 when the latter became the former’s tutor at Oxford, and remained apparently close … [Read more…]
The author is a transplanted Scot, now a seminary professor and pastor in Grand Rapids, and the book’s secondary title is, “Ten Ways To Be a Joyful Believer in a Gloomy World.” The book’s ten chapters address how to achieve greater happiness as a Christian in different contexts, namely: facts, media, salvation, church, future, world, … [Read more…]