Category: Theology

Here are two books I recommended when I was talking Christology on the Frank Pastore show on Jan 12. The single best book on the deity of Christ is Putting Jesus in His Place (Kregel, 2007). The authors, Bowman and Komoszewski, work through all the best arguments and even provide a handy mnemonic device, HANDS:…

Does God speak? Does he have a mouth that words come out of? Does God suffer? How does he feel the feelings he feels? Does God do things? Does he have hands that reach out and accomplish his will? Do we have a personal relationship with God? Is God somebody in particular, a center of…

On Friday, the Church celebrated the feast of Epiphany, reveling in Christ’s revelation to the Gentiles, and to the world. This day marks his going public, the laying bare of the secret long hid in the counsels of God and only whispered in the prophets. Isaiah looked forward to Epiphany: ‘The people who walked in…

Cultural critic Neil Postman wrote two books whose titles picked a fight with each other: Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1971), and Teaching as Conserving Activity (1982). Well, which is it, teacher, are you subverting or conserving? I ask because I’m coming to terms with Kevin Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology, which similarly looks in two directions…

Kevin Vanhoozer has developed a reputation for reflecting deeply and at length on theological and hermeneutical prolegomena; perhaps too much at length. In the Preface to Remythologizing Theology, he admits that he has been “as guilty as anyone of procrastinating in the prolegomenal fields,” but with this text he has succeeded in moving on from…

Kevin J. Vanhoozer published a very important book in 2010, entitled Remythologizing Theology. It’s a long book (500 pages), and though Vanhoozer is a clear writer, his target audience here is people who have already read a lot of recent theology. It’s also a very expensive hardcover from Cambridge University Press. Good news on that…

From the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (pages 740-741), here is my attempt to describe the second coming from the point of view of spirituality, in 400 words. For New Year’s Day. When Christ ascended into the clouds to take his seat at the right hand of the Father, the angels of the ascension said, “This…

For the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, I wrote a short essay about fundamentalism. It’s interesting that a spirituality reference work would include an entry on this topic; the normal associations of the term “fundamentalist” tend to be doctrinal or cultural, but not spiritual. Put another way, spirituality is a soft word, fundamentalist a hard word.…

Here’s a large and definitive reference work from Zondervan in 2011, the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. It’s a brick of a hardcover, but with such an ambitious title, it’s surprising to find it weighing in at just over 800 pages. The editors (Glen Scorgie, Simon Chan, Gordon Smith, and James D. Smith III) seem to…

This Christmas, a friend gave me an old book. It’s a pocket-sized catechism printed in 1818. Its original cover is missing, but somebody has lovingly hand-stitched a decorative long-grain paper cover to it. It measures 3.5 x 6 inches, and is 75 pages long. It is The Evangelical Primer, compiled by Rev. Joseph Emerson. Here’s…