Books on Marriage

Steve McCoy continues his series of posts on Big 5 book recommendations. His latest entry is on parenting and the one before that was on marriage (at which I chimed in with my picks).

Related, today I came across Paul Buckley's pointer to a helpful comparative chart rating 30 Christian books on marriage in various areas. It came as no surprise to me that two of the most popular volumes fared poorly in the areas of biblical support and theological soundness. Full reviews of each of the books are available here.

What Would Keller Read?

Westminster Bookstore is running a sale on titles on Tim Keller's summer reading list.

My Big 5

Steve McCoy has launched a series he's calling the Big 5 in which he'll be asking readers for book recommendations on select topics. In his first post he asks for five titles for a church's book table and gives the following guidelines: "Your 5 should be somewhat diverse. In other words, don't give me 5 books on theology only. Mix it up. And I know you want to list more than 5, but no cheating! Don't necessarily suggest your best 5. Get creative. Mention some others won't mention."

Boy, did I have a rough time whittling my list down to five (I was stuck at six for the longest!) but here, at last, are my picks. Check out Reformissionary to see what others recommend and add your own Big 5.

Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman (I reviewed this one here)

Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey

Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp

Decision Making and the Will of God by Garry Friesen

Will Medicine Stop the Pain? by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Laura Hendrickson, M.D. (I gave a synopsis here)

Groothuis on Guinness

Doug Groothuis reviews Os Guinness's The Case for Civility in The Denver Post. Some comments about relativism didn't make the final but can be read at Dr. G.'s blog.

ESV Study Bible Preview

The introduction to Luke's gospel from the forthcoming ESV Study Bible is available online. Time's running out to pre-order the volume at a 35% discount. Tomorrow's the last day!

Cornelius Van Til: The Man and His Influence

John Muether answers questions about his new biography, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman at Westminster Bookstore's blog. You can read the book's introduction here.

Another interesting interview with a presuppositionalist is this one with Tim Keller and Monergism about Keller's The Reason for God. In it Keller recommends the writings of John Frame (one of Van Til's students) on apologetics and theology "for giving somebody the basic framework for what I do in my book."

Breakfast Links

Thabiti Anyabwile, author of The Decline of African American Theology, talks with Christianity Today's Collin Hansen about Jeremiah Wright, black theology, and the African American church.

Speaking of CT, they recently announced the winners of their 2008 Book Awards.

Good thoughts from John Mark Reynolds on the difficulty of married love.


Kyle Vaughn at Resurgence asks whether considers whether the digital age is in fact a new Dark Age and suggests how the church can minister to those burdened and heavy laden with information:

As Christians, we need to deeply understand how the gospel impacts and gives us a responsibility concerning knowledge as well as understand how a lost world around us is drowning in a storm of information that they don't know what to do with. We live in a unique time in terms of knowledge. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people had the ability to learn (literacy) and had the access to such a vast array of information and even other cultures. With a vast network of libraries and information systems, particularly the internet, one only needs to travel one block over or click a button to access just about everything mankind has ever known or experienced. But mankind is adrift in its thinking. This boom of knowledge it would seem has led to only more despair.

Daniel J. Solove, associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, examines another facet of information technology's societal impact in his book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, 2007). Its full text is available online for free. (HT: Question Technology)

The Decline of African American Theology

Boundless Webzine features an excerpt from Thabiti Anyawile's book by that title. Here's a sample:

There is a place in Christian theology — stemming from a deep reflection on the Person and work of Christ — for radical jeremiads against bigotry, injustice, and oppression of all kinds. The earliest African Americans understood this and, consequently, were able to hold both a conventional Christology and an active political praxis. The two are not mutually exclusive, and yet, the theological trajectory followed in the last seventy-five years seems to treat them as such.

To the extent that African American thinkers obfuscated the centrality of Jesus' spiritual mission to purchase a special people for Himself, then they participated in that grand lie of the serpent in the garden that promised knowledge beyond imagination but only ended in the destruction of souls.

This is no victimless crime. Materialism and black nationalism masquerading as Christology overthrow the faith of many — shrouding the cross of Jesus in the temporal affairs of this world, which in turn choke the seeds of the Gospel.

Thabiti's article is a poignant reminder of how our cultural-historical contexts can serve to both sensitize and blind us to biblical truths, thus making it imperative that we humbly listen to saints from ethnic groups and times beyond our own.

Snow on What's So Great About Christianity

Tony Snow reviews Dinesh D'Souza's latest book and concludes:

D'Souza calls atheists cowards. Not quite: They're like the man who perishes in a fire because he refuses to believe the net below will hold. What's So Great About Christianity performs a wonderful and overdue service. It engages atheists exhaustively and carefully, exposing atheism more as a bundle of sentiments than a coherent doctrine.

You can see Dinesh in action debating Christopher Hitchens on "Is Christianity the Problem?" at his website.

Indifferent Theologians

In his introduction to Don Benedetto's On the Benefit of Jesus Christ Crucified, Leon Morris praises the Italian Reformer for stressing joy as a result of justification and sounds a necessary caution:

Joy runs through and through the New Testament but theologians for the most part have muted this happy note...Theologians as a race tend to be solemn folk, and it is good to see this emphasis on the sheer merriment of being a Christian. We are indifferent theologians if we have lost the song in the heart. (Because of Christ: Living Out the Gift of God Through Faith, pp. 28,29)

You can read Benedetto's work here thanks to Shane Rosenthal who offers this introduction:

The following treatise was arguably the most popular book of the short lived Italian Reformation. It is estimated that 40,000 - 80,000 copies were printed between 1541-1548, of which very few remain today due to the fact that most were burned once the title was placed on the list of prohibited books during the Inquisition. The treatise was originally published anonymously under the title Trattato Ultilissimo Del Beneficio Di Geisu Christo Crocifisso, and was for a few hundred years mistakenly attributed to Aonio Paleario (1503-1570), a martyr for the Reformation cause in Italy. But most scholars now agree, based on records from the Inquisition itself, that the "Trattato" was written by Don Benedetto, a student of the Spanish Reformer Juan de Valdes (1498?-1541) and friend of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562).

Schaeffer - Guinness Exchange

Frank Schaeffer responds to Os Guinness's less than favorable review of his book Crazy for God, followed by a brief reply from Guinness that concludes as follows:

I replied to his book for one reason only: His portrait of his parents was wrong and destructive. It left me alternately grieved and outraged,and I wanted to witness to the truth as I see it before God. I hope one day we can sit down and talk it over amicably.

Ten Indispensable Resources for Bible Study

Chad Knudson at The Road to Emmaus has assembled a helpul annotated list.

Addition to the Poythress Online Library

Vern Poythress's The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses is the latest of the author's works offered in free,electronic form. The other titles are: The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy (with Wayne Grudem), God-Centered Biblical Interpretation, The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation, Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach, Symphonic Theology, and Understanding Dispensationalists. (HT: The Works of John Frame and Vern Poythress)

Tim Keller and First Things

First Things' Anthony Sacramone interviews Tim Keller about his new book, The Reason for God (already #18 on the New York Times bestseller list (HT: Steve McCoy).

Why They're Not Emergent

Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks reviews Kevin DeYoung's & Ted Kluck's new book, Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be).

Technorati Tags: Emerging Church, Emergent Church, Christian books, theology, postmodernism, Why We're Not Emergent

Why Should You Read Good Christian Books?

Colin Adams gives 20 reasons (HT: Justin Taylor)

Theology Links

Sovereign Grace Ministries has started a blog with contributions from C. J. Mahaney.

CT editor-at-large, Collin Hansen interviews Greg Beale and D. A. Carson, editors of the recently published Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (available from Westminster Bookstore at 40% off!)

Fred Sanders shares the Top Twelve Theology Books of Christian History, a list he compiled with fellow Torrey Honors Institute faculty members for their class "On Knowing God." In a follow-up post he points to where you can find the works online for free. (HT: Evangelical Outpost)

Monergism.com has created a free downloadable Puritan resource library appropriately called puritanlibrary.com

Thinking Biblically about Life's Problems

Two new publications are forthcoming from Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation faculty members Paul David Tripp and Ed Welch. Click on the pics for more details. (HT: Mark Combs)

Girl Talk's Carolyn Mahaney interviews Elyse Fitzpatrick, author of Love to Eat Hate to Eat: Breaking the Bondage of Destructive Eating Habits, about a biblical perspective on anorexia and bulimia (Part 1| Part 2).

Recommended Reading for Cultivating a Christian Mind

Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds BookNotes lists his top picks for books on the Christian mind. I join him in wishing that "every church library and Christian leader's bookshelf included a few of these." Of course, I'd add Harry Blamires' The Christian Mind. (HT: Steve Bishop)

The Primary Emphasis When Interpreting Biblical Narratives

....biblical narratives are primarily about God and God's redemptive activity among humanity, and their authors' claim to reveal God truthfully. This may seem like a truism, but we often focus our attention on the ethical dimensions of narrative rather than on its theological dimension. In other words, it is too easy to ask the question of narratives, What should I be like? rather than, What is God like? or, What is God doing? The ethical question is not inappropriate. Yet, our primary interpretive emphasis should be theological. Our first question ought to be the "God question." As John Goldingay asserts, "The shaping of character is rarely the direct aim of biblical narrative; we are not told stories about Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or Paul chiefly in order that we might let our characters be shaped by theirs. The primary concern of biblical narrative is to expound the gospel, to talk about God and what God has done, rather than to talk about the human characters who appear in God's story." By centering our attention on the theological question, we will be in a better position to hear well the ethical stance of the text.


Our tendency to derive ethics apart from theology in the narratives of Scripture is nowhere more pervasive than in teaching the Bible to our children. We routinely teach Bible stories to children to make an ethical point: "Be like Samson, Ruth, and David. Be like Joseph and share with others just as he distributed food among the Egyptians." The latter point was expressly made in a curriculum I was to teach to the Sunday school class of my three-year-old daughter. What a marvelous lesson for self-centered three-year-olds: share! the problem, of course, is that Joseph also "shares" food with his long-lost family, while in the process not only hiding his identity from them, but also putting his own silver cup in their food bags, so that he can drag them back to Egypt and deceive them a bit longer (Gen. 44). This is not exactly the kind of sharing we want to inculcate in our children! In contrast, if we make our first question the theological question, not only will we teach that God is good even when human beings fail, but we will also provide the right point of view from which to evaluate the human characters of the Bible's narratives. 

               - Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics, pp. 162-163