“Practical writings have a strong tendency to only reinforce burnout,” recognizing his own helpful book will do just this if we take it as “do more get better” and not grasp his greater message of gospel application. I was glad that he added this important part, and think it may have done well for him... Continue Reading

If it is true that there is nothing qualitatively distinctive about the books we include in the New Testament, then the whole concept of a New Testament evaporates.  The whole idea of a “canon” is that some books are in, and some books are out, and that there is a reason for such distinctions.  But,... Continue Reading

It is unbelievable, but this monster literally thinks that to give men new knowledge is to gain power(!) over them. The cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity!….So Bacon is a “magician” – but Christ performing miracles is, of course, a spectacle of pure, rational knowledge!! This monstrosity is not opposed to science – oh no! – not to pure science,... Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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