What’s So Great about Suffering?
A review of The Sweet Side of Suffering by M. Esther Lovejoy
Lovejoy has walked some hard roads, and she knows how the story ends. On each page, she takes her readers’ eyes off of themselves and turns them to the fullness of Christ. The sweetness of our suffering does not depend so much on our ability to cling to Christ, but in his sure and certain... Continue Reading
The Histories of the American South: A Caution against Hegemonies
Some Concerns with Doug Wilson's book, Black and Tan, and its Approach to History
Wilson tells us from the start that “to grasp the central issues, it is necessary to be steeped in a particular intellectual tradition” (p. 5). He has “the Southern conservative intellectual tradition” in mind. He doesn’t tell us why we must be “steeped” in that tradition. Instead, Wilson notes a deep hostility among some critics... Continue Reading
Did Luke Write Hebrews?
A Review of David Allen's Lukan Authorship of Hebrews
I have a whole new appreciation for Luke—doctor, historian, and linguistic master. “Both Luke and the author of Hebrews are described by most New Testament scholars as the most literary writers of the New Testament” (139). A writer would do well just studying the prologues of Luke, Acts, and Hebrews. Luke is doing so much... Continue Reading
The Redemptive Nature of Laughter
Or, Why an Atheist Can and Can’t Get Jokes
Our recognition that we are incongruent with ourselves and our longing for another world (one without pain) can be made sense of most fully by a Christian theological framework, one in which God’s redemption extends to God’s (incongruent) imagers but also to his (fallen) cosmos. When we laugh at ourselves and at our location in... Continue Reading
Why Does American Religion Increasingly Look So Weird?
A Review of Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
Douthat argues that two strategies were open to the mainline churches—“accommodation” and “resistance.” Many in both mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic circles sought to accommodate themselves and their churches to the new spirit of the age with naturalistic, political, this-worldly forms of Christianity. But this effort at accommodation largely failed in that there was no... Continue Reading
A New New Testament: Are You Serious?
A review of the "New New Testament" recently released
In short, the New New Testament is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The council that put these books forth is a farce. It has nothing to do with the councils of old, yet implicitly seeks to claim authority on the basis of concocted semblance. The books were selected by those who, though certainly having a... Continue Reading
The Christian World of the Hobbit by Devin Brown
A review of the book on the Christian influences in Tolkien's world
Brown explores the world Tolkien made in a new book The Christian World of the Hobbit (Abingdon Press, 2012). In this work, he demonstrates how Tolkien’s Christian worldview bleeds through his written works and permeates the world he made. This aspect of Tolkien’s work is puzzling to many. His books have almost no references to... Continue Reading
Review of a “New New Testament”: Part 1
While this book has the guise of neutral scholarship, it is, at its core, a book with a clear religious commitment of postmodernity.
Notice that right from the beginning these apocryphal writings are described as “lost scriptures.” Thus, it is already assumed from the outset that these books are scripture, but somehow they have been left out of the canon (no doubt by those pesky, narrow orthodox folks). The problem with this language, of course, is that the... Continue Reading
A New ‘New Testament’ is an Old, Old Idea
The idea of rewriting the canon according to one’s personal preferences goes back to the time of the early Church
But while such grandiose claims about the New Testament canon may seem entirely new, it is in fact a very, very old idea. For one, there are other modern examples of such activity. The book The Five Gospels (Harper One, 1996), effectively rewrote the 4-Gospel canon by adding a fifth gospel, The Gospel of Thomas.... Continue Reading
Getting history right: Responding to David Barton
Two professors respond to David Barton’s claim they made ‘mountains out of molehills’ in their critique of his research into Thomas Jefferson and his faith
The first order of a Christian scholar is not to present a polemic to help fight the culture war, but rather, the accurate presentation and careful analysis of all the facts, even if those facts show a person or event or theory in a less than favorable light. This is the third and final round... Continue Reading
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