I picked this book just for the history, and it turns out the author is quite Christian-sympathetic and -oriented. Here are some notes: Augustus (27 B.C. to A.D. 14) pushed for returned devotion to the traditional gods, restored old temples, was named “Pontius Maximus” (high priest), and so forth. Caligula (A.D. 37-41) had many anti-Jewish, … [Read more…]
It seems to me that Pascal’s Wager is greatly underutilized and ought to be used more aggressively in evangelism. Brief review: Pascal’s Wager argues that, because the costs of incorrectly choosing not to believe in God if He turns out to exist (namely, eternal damnation instead of eternal and joyful life) are so much greater … [Read more…]
In deciding to read this book I recalled the author’s excellent Acts commentary (discussed elsewhere on this site), and learned that an admired polymath law professor had read the author’s history of Christian thought (five volumes or so) and endorsed it. There were some occasional insights in this book, and not a lot I actually … [Read more…]
This is an extremely well-written, measured, and intelligent book. As the title suggests, it has a relatively limited aim, but the book achieves it very well. The author also wrote Fermat’s Last Theorem and much else in science; he has a Ph.D. in mathematics and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard. The author is … [Read more…]
Great title, eh? The book is okay: The basic idea is an intriguing one, namely to be alert to how God is guiding your life to be a story, a coherent narrative with a theme. Cf. C.S. Lewis’s suggested analogy — albeit in the context of God’s being outside of time — between an … [Read more…]
I noted this important exchange (477): When asked, “What Christian writers have helped you?,” C.S. Lewis replied, The contemporary book that has helped me the most is Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Others are Edwyn Bevan’s book, Symbolism and Belief, and Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, and the plays of Dorothy Sayers. [Footnote: “Such … [Read more…]
The author of this 80-page book, which is part of a series on myths, is a Cambridge professor. The myths recounted are bloody and irrational, entertaining but not edifying, and so it seemed to me very different from Bible stories or even classical myths. It’s also much harder to see how the Norse myths would … [Read more…]
I made two notes: (1) There are lots of references to Paul’s Letter to the Romans in The Merchant of Venice; and (2) Judah was an isolated (the southernmost) and rustic tribe, and so we have another case of the last being first (see page 22, para. A.2, of the course guide): “poorest of the … [Read more…]
Ravi Zacharias is a good man, but I found this book to be disappointing — not particularly helpful in recapturing the wonder or insightful generally. Still, I liked this (46-47): In other words, if we are to understand wonder we must see that the first chronological destroyer of wonder is anything that takes away the … [Read more…]
The author of The Road Less Traveled and People of the Lie gives a straightforward account here of two exorcisms he did. There’s no proof the devil here, exactly, but pretty good evidence. I’ll note here a piece in the Washington Post‘s Outlook section, “As a Psychiatrist, I Diagnose Mental Illness/Also, I Help Spot Demonic … [Read more…]