For the love of books

Anyone who knows me well, or who has read much of my blog, knows that I love books. I love to read them, to look at them, to hold and smell and feel them. I love the typesetting and layout, the covers and jackets, the thickness of the paper. I've even spent part of my life making a living off making books, first working for a religious publisher (Fortress Press) and now working freelance. And while I am of course interested in various technological advances regarding the dissemination of information (I love to read blogs, for instance), I would be panicked and grief-stricken if the book in its current form were to go away. So I was heartened (though not surprised) to read this great piece in the Chicago Tribune (HT: Scot McKnight at JesusCreed):
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-0420_bookfutureapr20,1,4796966.column

Enjoy.

New Commentary series from Cascade Books

On his blog, Euangelion, the prolific Michael Bird notes one of his own forthcoming titles as follows:
"Colossians: A New Covenant Commentary. Oregon: Cascade, July 2009. This will be my summer project (along with writing a course on "Reformed interpretation of Romans from Calvin to Cranfield"). I'm longing to write a commentary on my favourite epistle of the New Testament and dive into Markus Barth's own commentary as well as recent commentaries by M.M. Thompson, Ben Witherington, and Doug Moo too. It is part of a new commentary series edited by myself and Craig Keener with a line-up of great scholars from around the world (I mean Asia, Africa, America, Australia). I'll blog more on that in the future."

K. C. Hanson, the Editor-in-Chief at Wipf & Stock, has done quite a job of building up the Cascade imprint, and I look forward to this new and promising series. I can't find any info on the W&S web site about it yet, but just the brief comments above peak my interest. I guess now patience will be a virtue.

N. T. Wright on the Anglican Communion

The Anglican Evangelical Web magazine Fulcrum has a lecture recently given by N. T. Wright about the position the Anglican communion currently finds itself in the months before the upcoming Lambeth Conference. I am not Anglican myself, and don't have a full enough understanding of the polity of that communion to comment on the deep and tragic split that has been developing over especially the church's understanding of homosexual activity and the ordination of Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church in America. But I do commend to you N. T. Wright's lecture, which, in its second half, very helpfully uses 1 and 2 Corinthians as a way to illustrate how Paul himself dealt with difficult issues of unity, diversity, holiness, and love. I'm personally troubled by the direction the Episcopal Church has taken over the past decade in its open embrace of practicing homosexuals and in its open thwarting of the views of its own worldwide communion of Anglicans, not to mention the worldwide catholic church. And I continue to watch and hope and pray that biblical reflection can lead to a true, robust, biblical solution within the Anglican communion that can be a model for many other churches, such as the ELCA and the worldwide Lutheran World Feeration, can follow.

Book Reviews Index

One of my favorite activities is reading and reviewing books. So I'm working on putting together a list of the books I've reviewed. I'll try to keep this post updated as I keep on going.

Craig Allert, A High View of Scripture?
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Richard Bliese and Craig Van Gelder, The Evangelizing Church
Donald Bloesch, A Theology of Word and Spirit
Donald Bloesch, God the Almighty
Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy, Across the Spectrum
F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, pt 1, pt 2
Gordon Fee, Paul's Letter to the Philippians
Stanley Grenz, Prayer: The Cry for the Kingdom
Stanley Grenz, Renewing the Center
Gordon Kaufman, In the beginning . . . Creativity
Soren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity
Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith
I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration
Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology, vol. 1: Nature, vol. 2: Reality, vol. 3: Theory
Scot McKnight, Jesus and His Death
J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind
Leon Morris, Revelation (TNTC)
Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
Alan Padgett, Science and the Study of God
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book
Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, The Openness of God
Peter Schmiechen, Saving Power
Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology
Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
David Willis, Clues to the Nicene Creed
Albert Wolters, Creation Regained
Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God
N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective

Forthcoming book about Atheism

Fortress Press is coming out with the third volume in their series of books to accompany the Greer-Heard Point Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The new book, which is scheduled to release in October, is The Future of Atheism, and is a debate between Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett. I haven't had a chance to seek out a recording of the debate (I know you can buy one from NOBTS), nor have I looked over the list of respondents, but this promises to be an interesting book, even if this ground has been pretty well tread in the past year or two. McGrath is a very erudite respondent to the new influx of Atheist writing, as a former atheist himself, as a credentialed scientist, and as a historical theologian. I've enjoyed listening to him talk, especially about Dawkins' new book, and look forward to delving into this discussion.

Wright on the Resurrection

CT has a great article by N. T. Wright on Heaven and the resurrection. It is a great condensation of his numerous thoughts and studies on this topic. He advocates, to put it simply, that the common popular focus on life after death as simply consisting of going to heaven or hell, as too simplistic, failing to take into account that there is instead an intermediate state that will one day lead to "life after life after death," a bodily resurrection in the mold of Jesus' resurrection, with a renewed existence on earth. This means that the bifurcation of the "gospel" of going to heaven after you die from "doing good in the world" is a false choice that is instead united in a robust eschatology.

Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis is The Steven and Janice Brose Lectures in the Civil War Era, delivered at the University of North Carolina, and as a book that came out of a series of lectures, it has a relatively conversational and approachable tone. Mark Noll is an eminent historian of Christianity and specifically evangelicalism in America. In these lectures, Noll looks at the theological issues, which Noll argues in fact constituted a theological crisis, that shaped the Civil War and informed the views of politicians and the populace on both sides of the conflict. Noll begins by setting the stage with a look at the role of religion in American public life in the years leading up to the War, and especially at the role the Bible and its interpretation played. He then looks closely at "The Crisis over the Bible," the differing interpretations of various passages in the Bible, especially over the issue of slavery, that contributed so profoundly to the theological divide in the country. This chapter forms the core of the book, as he looks at competing interpretations of the Bible and the methods and assumptions that led to these conflicting interpretations. This then leads to a discussion of "the negro question," a look at the role race played in the discussions, either implicitly or explicitly. He shows that at the root, deep-seeded racism lay behind many of the defenses of slavery, and ignorance of the importance of the race issue weakened many of the opponents' arguments. It is crystal clear that the Civil War was a war with race issues at the center, though Noll emphasizes equally strongly that the picture is far more complex than a simple bifurcation of the country with the North fighting some type of righteous struggle on behalf of equality and the South fighting a bigoted battle to preserve the status quo.

Noll's discussion then turns to a look at what role providence played in the preaching and thinking about America's destiny and the racism and slavery that were at issue. He writes that "confidence in the human ability to fathom God's providential actions rose to new heights." Many on both side presumed to know God's will and intention in and for America. By the end of the war, this view was strongly chastened, and Noll points to a connection between arguments concerning providence before and during the war and the movement of religion to the "private" sphere after the war. After these substantive discussions, Noll takes an informative look at views of Protestants and Catholics abroad, and takes stock of these perspectives that give a different view point on the happenings in America.

I found Noll's book to be compelling and important reading. I think his careful appraisal of this important conflict over the role and interpretation of the Bible needs to inform evangelical approaches to Scripture today. I think one of the clearest lessons needs to be a chastening of our American and Protestant impulse to read and interpret the Bible on our own, without recourse to church or magisterium, and often without regard for history. Along with this goes a strong warning against assumptions of the simplicity of the Bible's message. Throughout the era leading up to and including the Civil War, defenses of slavery had an easier time convincing much of the American public, often largely because of the simplicity of its arguments and the fact that it drew on "plain" and surface readings of the Biblical text. Readings that opposed slavery often incorporated more nuanced and historically couched arguments. For many, this went against their protestant and American sensibilities and assumptions.

It would seem that this book, and this historic situation, has much to say to our modern-day church, and to the evangelical church in particular. Issues such as the church's stance on women in ministry or the status of homosexuals can be well informed by this discussion. That is certainly not to say that the historic move to condemn slavery should or could be directly applied to the acceptance of women in ministry or the full acceptance of homosexual activity, but this careful historical discussion provides some important context in which to judge our approaches to Scripture. It also rightly calls us to examine our assumptions that we bring to the Bible. I highly recommend it.

Craig Allert, A High View of Scripture?

In A High View of Scripture?, Craig Allert, Professor at Trinity Western University in British Colombia, takes a considered look at the formation of the New Testament canon with a view to what it says about the evangelical doctrine of Scripture. Many evengelicals have what he describes as a "dropped out of the sky" view of Scripture, and Allert undertakes a careful historical investigation into the formation of the New Testament that takes seriously its development. It would be difficult to rehearse all of the discussions that Allert sets out on in a brief review, but after a very short lay of the land he covers, we'll look at a couple of important points he repeatedly stresses.

Allert begins by looking at how canon plays a role in evangelical doctrines of scripture, and what understandings of canon formation are utilized for this task. He then drills down and discusses the process of canon formation over the first centuries of the church, focusing in turn on the criteria that were in evidence as the various books were selected, the various heresies that brought challenges to the developing orthodoxy, and the various "canon lists" that evidenced the growing consensus. He then concludes with a discussion of how the process of canon formation as it is thus brought to light bears on the understanding of inspiration.

A few important insights are worth mentioning. First and most basic is the recurring theme throughout the book (and also of the series, Evangelical Resourcement, to which the book belongs) that the Bible came into being in the context of and for the use of the church. Thus, a doctrine of "sola scriptura" must be carefully formulated to maintain the Bible as the foundation of theology without divorcing the Bible from its rightful place in the community of believers past and present. A second important insight is methodological: often in canon discussions, "Scripture" is equated with "canon." Because the church fathers may have referred to various books as Scripture does not require that they were viewed as canonical. In fact, he demonstrates that there wasn't really a "canon consciousness," that is, an understanding that there was an authoritative list of normative Christian Scriptures, until the fourth century. Instead, "Scripture" designated something important about viewing a document as authoritative and normative, but not necessarily in the more restricted sense of canonical. In fact, the term and idea behind "canon" instead functioned in the early church with regard to a body of teaching or standard of behavior. A third insight has to do with the often assumed role of heresies in the formation of the canon. It is usually argued that the church developed canon lists in response to heresies that challenged the church's orthodoxy, but Allert shows that while this may have been a minor stimulus, there isn't found an increase in canon lists in response to early heresies. And he further shows that more at issue than which documents were authoritative was how to understand and interpret them. It was the church asserting the centrality of orthodoxy and apostolic teaching, not the selection of some documents over others, that formed the core of the church's response.

Allert strongly asserts that the process of canon formation as it actually occurred doesn't undermine the inspiration of Scripture. But his historical investigation does show that the early church didn't restrict "inspiration" to documents alone, and thus didn't restrict inspiration to the documents that later became the Bible. This doesn't undermine understanding the Bible as a collection of inspired documents (Allert emphasizes that this understanding is certainly true) but it does call evangelicals to have a broader and more nuanced understanding of what inspiration is and what that means for the Bible as an inspired document. I highly recommend this book as a great historical discussion of the issues surrounding canon (issues far too often ignored or caricatured in many discussions), and also a well-reasoned reflection on the implications of this discussion for how we understand the Bible. Allert has demonstrated great commitment to discovering the historical realities surrounding the New Testament's collection, and he has also showed that the truth is not something we have to fear, for instead of undermining our view of Scripture, it can reinvigorate it. For if the Bible is in fact the Word of God, understanding the truth about how it came to be can only help us to better understand it better.