The cold grey days of winter are here again. This year has been particularly frigid, driving even the hardiest indoors for unusually long spells. In such weather, there are few pass times more profitable than spending the day in a reading chair with a good book. Below we have provided some of our favorite reads from recent weeks that may be beneficial to you as we slog through the last half of the season. Be sure to leave us some of your favorite suggestions in the comment box.
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Jane Austen, Emma (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999), 328 pages.
Jane Austen believed no reader would like her heroine Emma. She is rich, willful, and overly confident in her opinions. However, by the end of the novel, most readers have developed a soft spot in their hearts for Emma Woodhouse, would-be matchmaker extraordinaire. This book is certainly one of Austen’s most humorous works, exploring Emma and her friends’ adventures and misadventures in English countryside society. With its exploration of wrong assumptions, societal duties, and the nature of love, Emma is a classic that is worth frequent revisits.
—Recommended by Christa Hill
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Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy, Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 138 pages.
How should we deal with our pain? In his recent book, A Crazy, Holy, Grace, Frederick Buechner reminds us how God “does not sow the pain, He does not make the pain happen, but He looks to us to harvest treasure from the pain” (24). Buechner has a reputation for revealing grace in some of life’s most ordinary events and his newest book is no exception. Buechner fans will be familiar with selections from Beyond Words, A Room Called Remember, and The Sacred Journey. However, the opening chapter includes an unpublished lecture titled “The Gates of Pain,” where Buechner talks about ways we can best steward our pain. This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the intersection between grief, pain, and grace.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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Edward John Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense of the Trinitarian-Theistic Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 379 pages.
For those interested in apologetics, there is no shortage on introductions to the discipline. Apologetic mainstays like John Frame, William Lane Craig, Cornelius Van Til, R.C. Sproul, among many others, have contributed helpful volumes that introduce the reader to the foundations, methods, and arguments of particular perspectives within this discipline. Recently, I came across an older copy of E.J. (Edward John) Carnell’s classic An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. For many, Carnell doesn’t have the same name-notoriety as others. Yet, his contribution to the field is significant.
In a discipline that is often strongly divided between presuppositionalism and evidentialism, Carnell offers a middle ground to the argument. His method, which is on full display in the book, has been labeled as “combinationalist.” He presents the practical human predicament—a problem that may remind readers of Francis Schaeffer’s similar argument(s). From this predicament, Carnell lays a philosophical and theological foundation for dealing with issues like miracles, natural law, the problem of evil, ethics, the resurrection, and much more.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades: America in War and Peace, 1941-1960 (New York: Norton, 1988), 350 pages.
In this twentieth-century American history monograph, John Patrick Diggins tactfully interweaves the cultural, economic, ideological, and political aspects of America in the 1940s and 1950s. Underneath the calm cultural waters of these “Proud Decades,” he argues that American society contained several fault lines that contributed to the cultural strife of the 1960s. While the vast majority of Americans continued to hold traditional concepts of religion, economics, and politics, cultural changes began to seep into the neighborhoods of major cities and the emerging suburban landscape. Diggins succeeds most in his analysis of economic and political changes, but he adequately describes the foundations and development of modern pop culture. The result is a pleasant read that gives a sound introduction to the foundations of modern American culture.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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John Frame, The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdoms Theology (West Lake Village, CA: Whitefield, 2001), 381 pages.
I’ve always admired the work of theologian John Frame, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect with this book. Compared to his other well-known works this one went unnoticed by many when it was released. However, I found it a stimulating and interesting foray into theological method, biblical theology, Christianity and culture, and more. This book is a critique in the form of a collection of Frame’s sundry writings about Two Kingdoms theological adherents within the Reformed community.
As a former professor at Westminster Seminary California, the epicenter of Two Kingdoms thought within the Reformed community, Frame is well positioned to provide thorough assessment of the key figures and tenets of this unique school of theology. He interacts with figures as notable as the late Meredith Kline, Michael Horton, and David VanDrunen. Frame’s basic critique is that these theologians’ presentation of Reformed faith is unrecognizable in many respects. Moreover, Frame systematically challenges their dogmatic defense of these views as the expression of the Reformed perspective. For those interested in contemporary Reformed theology, warts and all, this might be a book for you.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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Gladys Hunt, Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 256 pages.
In this delightful book, Gladys Hunt makes a strong case for reading books together as a family. Books, she contends, are one of the best means for helping form children’s characters and for encouraging family bonding. Chapters focus on various aspects of family reading: different genres of literature, reading the Bible together, the many benefits of reading aloud, and practical advice on how to actually do it. The second half of the book is a handy annotated bibliography that separates books by ages and genres for quick reference and suggestions. If you don’t already read with your family, you almost certainly will after reading this excellent book.
—Recommended by Christa Hill
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Marvin Jones, The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contributions of Thomas Helwys (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017).
I always jump at the opportunity to ready anything about Thomas Helwys. So I was excited to hear about Marvin Jones’s new book on Thomas Helwys’s ecclesiology. Jones’s main thesis is that Thomas Helwys’s seminal work The Mystery of Iniquity isn’t primarily about religious liberty. Instead, it’s a polemic for Baptist ecclesiology. Jones maintains that Helwys does address the topic of religious liberty in the Mystery of Iniquity, but contrary to most scholarly treatments of the work, that isn’t the main point. Against the Roman Catholics, Anglican, Puritans, and even the Separatists Helwys argues, according to Marvin, for a true church that is based upon congregational government and believer’s baptism. Consequently, then, Helwys is one of the founding fathers of Baptist ecclesiology in the English context.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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Indra Kagis McEwen, Socrates’ Ancestor: An Essay on Architectural Beginnings (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1993), 130 pages.
Socrates’ Ancestor is a masterful work of architectural, philosophical, and cultural history that uses philology to argue that the Western worldview was born out of and preserved by Western architecture. According to Indra McEwen, Greek architecture and city planning represents a synthesis of Greek craftwork, including mapmaking (astronomical, nautical, and terrestrial), clock making, seamanship, labyrinth design, armor construction (especially shields), ship building, weaving, and dancing. As the culmination of craftsmanship, Greek architecture initiated and guided early theories about the harmonia (“close fitting” or “well ordered nature”) of the kosmos (“orders” of the universe) and polis. For this reason, McEwen concludes his essay by stating: “My claim is that not only metaphysics but all of Western thinking was first grounded in architecture and that, until the eighteenth century the legitimacy of architecture rested on the preservation of that memory” (130).
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Alister McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1990), 276 pages.
I had a hard-time putting down the one book I was able to read over the Christmas holiday. Though McGrath’s Genesis of Doctrine is dense at points, it is simultaneously compelling and significant. McGrath explores doctrine as a historical, theological, and socio-religious phenomenon. Additionally, he provides extensive analysis and evaluation of George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine, arguably the most discussed (and controversial) book on Christian doctrine in the last thirty years. This chapter should be read and digested by all evangelical theologians. McGrath’s book is valuable for other reasons, including extensive attention to the role of history in influencing and formulating contemporary doctrinal proposals. This title was one of my three or four favorite books from 2017.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (New York: Basic, 2009), 270 pages.
The name Richard John Neuhaus might sound familiar. He was editor-in-chief of First Things, as well as served as an unofficial advisor to George W. Bush. Throughout his life, Neuhaus advocated for social conservatism, and was particularly outspoken on the topic of abortion. American Babylon was his last book before his death in 2009.
Concerning cultural engagement, Neuhaus writes this book to survey the tension of being “in the world, but not of it.” Arguably Neuhaus’ magnum opus, he wrestles with how all Christians are in a particular place and time, yet we live as pilgrims, in a place that is not our ultimate home. He notes, “I write for those who belong; for those who accept, and accept with gratitude, their creaturely existence within the scandal of particularity that is their place in a world far short of the best of all possible worlds” (3). Neuhaus offers a very balanced argument, avoiding an anti-patriotic tone that may be easy in such a book, but instead explains how our culture, and nation, are deeply connected to our identity as people.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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K. Scott Oliphint, Thomas Aquinas, Great Thinkers (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2017), 145 pages.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on Thomas Aquinas. There are even more divergent interpretations of his understanding of ontology and epistemology, because these areas of thought are quite complicated. Some interpreters have adopted a traditional view of Thomas, holding that he believed nature/philosophy to precede faith/theology, the former standing epistemologically autonomous to the latter. Thomists such as Ralph McInerny and Protestants such as Herman Dooyeweerd and Carl F. H. Henry hold this position. On the other hand, others such as Thomist Étienne Gilson and Protestants like Norman Geisler and R. C. Sproul have adopted a new interpretation of Thomas’s views, namely that nature and philosophy are not independent from faith and theology.
Which group is right, the traditional or the new? These discussions are complicated yet fascinating, and K. Scott Oliphint does a wonderful job summarizing and analyzing this history. What did Thomas believe about the so-called natural light of reason? How did he interpret passages such as John 1:9, Acts 17:24-27, and Romans 1:19-20? What did he say about the quinque viæ? These are the sorts of questions Oliphint considers, ultimately holding that the traditional interpretation is more consistent with the overall text of Thomas. If you’re interested in this broader discussion, I recommend Oliphint’s book.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Michael R. Reeves, The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering the Heart of the Reformation (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), 208 pages.
I know of no other concise resource that would rival The Unquenchable Flame as a primer on the Protestant Reformation. In the span of 191 pages Michael Reeves addresses the major figures and issues of the Reformation with incredible precision and brevity. What sparked the Protestant Reformation? According to Reeves, the Bible, in the common languages of the people. Erasmus played a key role with his new Latin translation of the Bible (1516) based upon the Greek text. Luther stoked the flames of Reformation by translating the Bible into German, writing theological hymns based on the Bible, and by lecturing and writing commentaries on the Bible. Calvin furthered the Reformation cause by systematically preaching from and writing commentaries on the Bible. Tyndale helped spread the Reformation by smuggling English translations of the Bible into England. Anabaptists such as Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel sought to further reform the Church on the issue of baptism according to the Bible. The heart of the Protestant Reformation, Reeves powerfully argues, was, at its core a Bible-centered critique of Christianity.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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J. R. R. Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham (1949; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 127 pages.
Most people know Tolkien for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps even The Silmarillion if they’ve dialed up their geekiness (something I recommend, by the way). However, some of his lesser-known works also have a certain charm. I recently reread Farmer Giles of Ham, and it is delightful. It is about a farmer, his talking dog Garm, and their interactions with a dragon named Chrysophylax Dives.
In many ways, some of the characters and themes prefigure themes Tolkien would explore more deeply in the mythos of Middle Earth (although the book was published in 1949, Tolkien wrote it in 1937). Still, Farmer Giles stands on its own. It’s short, it’s fun, and it’s pleasant.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Edward T. Welch, Side by Side: Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 160 pages.
There will be no shortage of hardships in our lives. Thankfully, we do not have to face problems on our own. In Side by Side, Edward Welch encourages people to follow the example of Christ and move towards people who are struggling. Compassion should always lean in to comfort. One helpful piece of advice I appreciated from the books is how Welch discouraged matching stories with other people. We should intently listen to the other person’s story. Follow their story and try to draw out what is most important in what they are trying to tell you. Can you notice any sense of regret or discouragement? These are key opportunities to minister to someone. This is a great read for anyone interested in how to frame helpful conversations with those who are struggling.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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