Miracles

This book by C.S. Lewis is a pull-no-punches logical apologetic about, as the title suggests, miracles. Often claimed by the non-religious as the most egregiously unbelievable aspect of religion, miracles are a philosophical sticking-point for many explorers of faiths that involve them. However - as Lewis argues - this is a misapprehension, applying assumptions of natural science to phenomena that are essentially supernatural. This is the crux of his argument throughout the book, the discontinuity between nature and "supernature", which having defined he goes on to explore and prod the logical interrelations between these two levels of reality for how knowable, probable, and believable they are. I won't do a full chapter-by-chapter breakdown for this book - simply conclude by saying that here is a book that is dazzlingly well-argued and difficult to refute without relying on unproveable assumptions that have nothing to do with science and everything to do with metaphysical faith. A great enlightening read for Christians who want to robustify their intellectual flexibility, and surely a challenging thought-provoker for those readers of no religion.

the Problem of Pain

This book by C.S. Lewis is a short but punchy apologetic for that ever-irksome question to the Christian - you know the one I mean, the theodicy, that is: "if God is perfectly good and totally powerful, why is there suffering?" His method of argument here is not theological in any meaningful sense; in fact he draws on existing Christian thought very little throughout, relying instead on rigorous resolute logical application and dissection of the concepts themselves as the appear at face value. This makes his points dazzlingly original, divorced as they are from the aggregated accumulation of two millennia of Christian philosophizing, and thoroughly compelling, as his arguments stand on their own two feet without dependence on a reader's acceptance or rejection of any particular orthodoxy (not to say that the theological implications of this book aren't in line with orthodox theology, but that simply isn't the line of argument taken).

   The first two chapters deal, in turn, with divine omnipotence and divine goodness; as stated there is very little here that could be described as serious or systematic theology, but Lewis's grasp of the logical implications around these concepts is on full display as he makes the case that neither of these presumed facts about God necessarily demand or even imply the total absence of suffering in said God's creation. In the following two chapters he discusses human wickedness (as a logically necessary possibility in a created order in which we assume human freedom, and as the source of much suffering) and the fallen nature of humankind (this is probably the most theological chapter of the book as it relies on The Fall as an existing theological framework - however, much to my surprise, this chapter also devotes considerable attention to the question of humanity's evolutionary history, and what a pre-Fall prehistoric homo sapiens may have been like in its relation to itself, God, and nature more widely). Then there is a pair of chapters about human pain (which largely consists of pretty basic logical inductions from the previous chapters) and the pain of animals (which I wasn't expecting much from given my critique of its related essay in this collection, but I take back my assumptions from that post that this probably wouldn't be a very strong chapter as I have to admit Lewis does actually have a nuanced and well-developed model of animal nature). This leads us up to a concluding pair of chapters in which we consider the eternal dimensions that lend either meaninglessness or meaningfulness to whatever degree of experienced pain the human life serves up - that is, Heaven and Hell. The Hell chapter walked territory that was very familiar to the concepts of Christianity that I've grown up with (much moreso than the universalism angled towards in Moltmann's theological system, even if I prefer that now) with a few key fresh insights - most especially, the notion that Hell is not imposed but chosen: its doors, Lewis states flatly, are locked from the inside. The Heaven chapter is reasonably speculative, as it is bound to have to be, but the picture he paints of eternal communion between God and His redeemed human creatures is devastatingly beautiful: the glorification of the Holy Trinity and the fulness of expressed and embodied freedom of people are one and the same thing, every unique individual who has ever lived and been brought into God's Kingdom finding their deepest and most everlasting joy in expressing their personal relationship to God in a way that only they could ever precisely manage, thus involving to the ultimate realness the diversity and unity of personhood. Finally there is an appendix wherein we are given a brief scientific overview of what physical and mental pain is understood to be; this adds virtually nothing to the arguments Lewis has been making, but it's nice to have for the possible reader who has, like the pre-enlightened Buddha, never experienced meaningful suffering.

   Overall this is an eminently readable and powerful intellectual-yet-accessible book about one of the thorniest issues in all of religion. Christian readers will find their faith sharpened and their apologetic capacities given a major leg-up; and non-Christians who rely on the issue of suffering to bolster their own rejection of the faith should find in here, if not absolutely guaranteed-to-be-convincing points, at least much challenging food for thought that should give even the most ardent atheist some humbling pause.

[one final thing I will say, that has nothing to do with the text of this book in itself - if you're going to read this, I would strongly recommend trying to find a physical version, as the Kindle version that I read it through (and that is linked above) is quite poorly formatted, with certain sections where there seem to be chunks missing, and them being missing means there could only have been a few words or perhaps whole pages that I didn't get included in the edition I read; it still held together as a book, but it would have been nice, having bought a book, to get the whole text]

the Reason for God

This book by Tim Keller is a reasonably accessibly-written but thoroughly intellectually-robust apologetic for the Christian faith. I recently read Francis Spufford's marvellous effort at proposing an entirely irrational apologetic, so I thought I'd balance it out with something that appeals more to the head than the gut - and this did not disappoint. I have read this book before, the summer before I started this blog, so retained a sense of its general gist, but it was truly a pleasure to revisit the concrete arguments.

   Keller splits the book into two sections of seven chapters each.* After a brief introduction exploring the helpfulness and limits of doubt in our contemporary skeptical culture, the first half digs into some of the biggest obstacles in the way of people coming into meaningful contact with the Christian faith, and for each shows how all of these hurdles are actually based on unprovable "faith" assumptions in themselves. These issues are:

1. the problem of Christianity's exclusivity when there are so many other competing religions
2. the problem of suffering, which exists despite God being supposedly purely good & all-powerful
3. the restrictive limitations following Christianity places upon a human life
4. the historical injustices & present hypocrisies of the Church
5. the thorny issue of Hell - surely a good God wouldn't be so extreme as to condemn people to an eternity of suffering?
6. the challenge supposedly posed by science, which many consider to have disproved religion for good
7. the logical and ethical snafus entailed in taking the Bible literally
   
   Having dealt with some of the strongest and commonest arguments against Christianity, we then have a short intermission chapter which considers the subjective nature of rationality itself. Then we head into the second set of seven chapters, which pose some of the strongest reasons for Christian belief.
   
   
8. the orderliness (and indeed existence) of the universe & meaningfulness
9. the innate sense of moral standards that seems essentially universal to humankind
10. the existential hole that sin leaves in the human heart, which we try to fill with idols but can only be satisfied by God
11. the radically distinctive nature of the Christian gospel as compared to other religions
12. the rationally revolting but emotionally intuitive core of Christianity - the incarnate God crucified for our sake
13. the resurrection of Jesus & the explosive emergence of the early Church being the simplest & best historical explanations for each other
14. God's Trinitarian nature providing a cogent & appealing explanation for the natures of creation & humankind

   Having dismantled some of the strongest arguments against and illumined some of the clearest arguments for Christianity, the concluding chapter is a gentle but confident prod for the reader of what to do if they feel themselves approaching a faith that they can truly call their own. After the philosophical and theological weight of the chief portion of the book this provides a comforting pastoral cool-down, though for non-Christian readers this may well be the most challenging part of the whole text.

   Overall I think this is a great book for making the case for Christianity in as best reasoned a way as possible. Keller never lands on absolute proof, but his earlier chapters show that nor do critiques of faith; and his points throughout cohere to short-circuit "absolute rationality" into a more pragmatic reasonability to which I think Christian belief is well-suited. A highly recommended book for Christians who want to supplement their own skillset in arguing for the Kingdom, and moreso a must-read for those whose curiosity about Christian faith is drowned out by overwhelming presumption that the case against it is too strong.

* Summarising the arguments Keller makes in each of these chapters is beyond the scope of this post, so you'll just have to take my word for it that his treatment of all matters discussed is intellectually humble but compellingly-put. And hey, I am a completely fallible blogger so if you don't want to take my word for it, you'll have to read the book and decide for yourself.

Unapologetic

This book by Francis Spufford is, despite his claims that it isn't an apologetic as it makes zero effort to engage with classic philosophical arguments for or against any particular theological claims, by far and away the best Christian apologetic I've ever read. I've literally just read the whole book in a single sitting* it's that good. The subtitle proclaims it as an exploration of "why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense" - and to say it achieves the goal of making a case for this with aplomb would be a grand disservice to the word aplomb. It runs its course over eight perfectly-structured chapters:

1. a general introduction; statement of intent for the book
2. the existential experience of sin, or as he translates it the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up
3. the frustrating ineffability of God in light of people's recurrent sense of needing, if not Him, then something to fill that gap
4. the confounding problem of suffering
5. the personality, teachings, mission and passion of one Yeshua from Nazareth
6. the historically improbable paradoxes surrounding the emergence of Christianity as a coherent religion
7. the complicated legacy and situational state of the Church
8. the subjective feeling entailed in having faith that one is forgiven, and the challenges and opportunity implied herein

   It's deeply insightfully clever without being scholarly**, bewilderingly matter-of-fact in what it says and completely down-to-earth in how it says it, balancing common-sense public presumption with personal but universally recognisable experiences and dazzlingly original points that lead him into compelling conclusions without ever making anything that so much as looks like a rational argument. Spufford not only doesn't avoid the prickly areas of conversation around Christianity in its contemporary context but actively leans into them and tries to give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and somehow still manages to wrangle cogent and meaningful ways of sidestepping or outright neutering them. He writes with a disarming simplicity and a refreshing honesty that if such style was wider emulated by Christian authors (and indeed everyday evangelising believers) I hazard to expect that we would see a great many more folks showing interest in the faith.

   Overall, this is a more-or-less perfect example of communicating Christianity effectively in a postmodern culture. If we are presumed by the world around us to be irrational, then give up on trying to convince people by reason - and talk about what it feels like to have one's messy spiritual life wrapped up in what never has been and never will be scientifically verifiable but is indisputably salient in its psychological cohesion to those who try to believe it. If you're a Christian, read this and be inspired to draw on your own emotional experience to communicate your own faith more fluidly, with less intellectual trumps and more confounding expressivity. If you're not a Christian - this book won't convince you to become one, but it may very well provoke you to give it a bloody good consideration.

* With minor breaks only to piss, smoke, and make more coffee.

** Spufford humbly boasts in a note at the end of the book that aside from checking to ensure the accuracy of certain factual claims and quotations used, he conducted exactly no research whatsoever throughout his writing process.

A Wilderness of Mirrors

This book by Mark Meynell is, as its subtitle puts it, a Christian apologetic via an exploration into "trusting again in a cynical world". And boy, is it timely. In fact maybe too timely - but we'll come back to that point later. First let's get a grip on what it actually talks about.

   The first part of the book looks into the legacy of fracturing trust in the modern age. In three heavily-endnoted chapters, Meynell talks about the failures on this front of our ruling authorities (although largely here drawing on historical examples, which is all very well, but I would have liked a bit more of a juicy socio-political analysis), our mediating authorities (informers and the like), and our personal authorities (or caregivers - though the chapter swiftly brushes aside both the medical and teaching professions within a single page and then is mainly charged with the failures of the church*).

   The second part is a short, theoretical pair of reflections on the loneliness-inducing alienation, lostness and paranoia that we can all-too-easily succumb to in such a climate. These chapters are fine enough I guess, but Meynell doesn't really say anything that hasn't already been said in far more insightful ways by both academics and meme-smiths, so I won't toot the horn for this middle section too much. I also think he entirely fails to address a few key factors that are driving our sense of alienation, betrayedness and paranoia - the rampantly shifting techno-social landscape, the death throes of late capitalism, the ecological crises, to name just three. You can probably think of more. A bit of legwork in talking about the sociology or political-economic theory of trust would also have been appreciated.

   But it is in part three that we get to the meat of the book - the Christian apologetic section. Firstly he deals with the biblical conception of original sin as both the starting-point and to-some-degree justification of such a culture of mistrust: this was an interesting chapter and made a lot of connections I hadn't seen before. The next three chapters are far more simply predictable: Jesus is the one we can trust; the Church is the society in which we can start to break away from patterns of cynicism; the gospel is the message and narrative we need to begin building a more trustful future. Nothing bad, but nothing original: especially in the final chapter, a few more pragmatic pointers about how to break through psychologically or socially into the cynical miasma of the postmodern world wouldn't have gone amiss.

   As I hinted in my opening paragraph, the real problem with this book is that it came out too soon. It was published in 2015, and while "post truth" was already a thing in certain academic circles at that time, it wasn't yet the predominant socio-political normativity - had this book been put together even three years later, let alone six and he'd have had all the Covid madness to break down to boot, it could have had a lot more to draw on and impactfully say. But that's a pretty cynical two cents to dig into a book which is a perfectly respectable Christian apologetic speaking into a vital issue in most of the contemporary western world. It's not great reading, but it's perfectly readable, if that makes sense. I'd probably only recommend this to you if you're already a Christian and you're specifically looking for a resource on how to engage the cynicism of our times; as exhortational as the final sections were for me as a believing reader, I really doubt they'd convince anyone who wasn't already convinced of the Truth beyond truth in a world where truth barely even exists anymore.

* Something I am all too familiar with, as the elder of my old church The Crowded House, one Steve Timmis (who, interestingly enough, wrote one of the blurb reviews on this very book - he describes it as "well researched, well written, and well worth reading" - I tentatively agree), was pushed to resign as CEO of global church-planting network Acts 29 and as leader of the church for persistent allegations of bullying behaviour and fostering a culture of spiritual abuse under his leadership. I have talked about my personal journey in all this in other posts which I'm not going to bother to link here, but if you're really interested feel free to search through my blog's (not inconsiderable, I know lols) history until you find the particularly long, whingy posts.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

This book, a collection of medical-theological reflections by eminent surgeon Dr Paul Brand edited together and fleshed out a bit by Philip Yancey, is an actually miraculous read. It will both make you appreciate the complex marvel that is the human body in ways you probably never knew if you're not in the medical profession, and further to this, its interwoven reflections (which I will talk about in a moment) really drive home the New Testament metaphor of the Church being the Body of Christ in fresh, compelling ways, that make this a powerful apologetic for the Church as the vehicle of witness in faith. It is also quite beautifully written, often dealing with intricate biological subjects but never getting bogged down in jargon; and when making its wider points it does so with a deftness and clarity that makes the book extremely easy reading. I finished it in two [not-even-that]-long sittings.

   The book is split into four sections, though there is initially quite a long preface by Philip Yancey which is excellent reading in itself, mainly reflecting on his friendship with Brand and how the older man was a source of much inspiration to his faith and also just a marvellous human all-round, doing much great research that revolutionized leprosy treatment in the 20th-century.

   The first of the four main parts is about cells. Their central metaphor here is drawing on the imagery the apostle Paul uses (see 1 Corinthians 12, the second half of the chapter) to talk about individual members within the Body that is the Church, and how each needs to perform its duty to the benefit of the whole; cells are the perfect metaphor to carry this forward. Seven bitesize chapters (all the chapters in this book are bitesize, part of what makes it so readable) deal with: the nature of this membership as individual entities; the specialization of those members; the innate diversity of the individuals all working together; the intrinsic worth of each individual member; the total unity of all members as one collective; the duty of service to the whole demanded by the whole of its members; and finally "mutiny" - which in cell terms means cancer (and this chapter uses this metaphorical understanding of the Body of Christ to talk about the hoarding of wealth/food/time in the global context of the Church in a world where there is so much need with such adroitness that it alone is worth reading the book for).

   The next, bones. Metaphorically here Brand and Yancey are talking about the doctrinal elements that support Christianity from its core - the Law, the character of God, and such. Its chapters deal with: the notion of having a frame from which everything else either hangs or is contained; the hardness necessary to deal with knocks and turns of life; the freedom enabled the human body by the marvel that is its skeleton (also this chapter contains a "positive re-spin" of the Ten Commandments that are just brilliant); the essential capacity for growth and healing; the adaptability to new contexts and activities; and finally we get a brilliantly insightful chapter that talks about the dangers of legalism by inversing the metaphor and considering creatures that have exoskeletons.

   The third, skin. In the Christian metaphor this is all about love, as you'll hopefully see is fairly obvious from the brief sketches of each chapter. They talk about skin as: something visible, by which the world recognises our outward form; perceptive and sensitive in relation to its environment and other things and people; compliant in its flexibility and durability; full of an immensity of inner interconnections that transmit information; essential to the physical and emotive experience of embodied love; and lastly capable of confronting threats and protecting innards.

   And finally, the body's capacity for motion. The metaphorical application is somewhat looser here, ranging from reliance on the Holy Spirit to keep us tapped into "the Head" of the Body (that is of course Christ) to the need for the Church to be on its toes in responding to things around it. Chapters: the concert of muscle activity that is movement; the balance between all facets of moving parts; why dysfunction occurs and how it can be remedied; the need for a stable, trusted hierarchy for effective function (this makes the shift from muscles to nerves); the guidance of the whole by the executive operation of the Head (or the brain, depending on what side of the metaphor you're looking through); and the capacity of the whole to be real, meaningful, as a human presence in another's life.

   I would heartily recommend this book to Christian readers as an illuminating work on what it can, or should, or does, look like to be part of the Body of Christ; moreover from that gospel angle it will bring you to an incredible perspective on the magical sack of electric meat that is you, your own actual body. Brand's memories of his medical exploits, in particular those from among the leper communities whom he served so diligently, selflessly and effectively, will leave you breathless. Similarly I would recommend it to non-Christian readers who all think this is a pretty weird metaphor, and Brand and Yancey's brilliant collaboration here will leave you scratching your head in wonderment but substantively better informed about why we use this phrase to talk about the Church - and what a perfect metaphor it actually is.

Chameleon or Tribe?

This book by Richard Keyes is one of the most insightful books about church I've read in a while. He takes the fundamental that we are to be "in the world but not of the world" - and yet recognisable to the world; so where does that leave us as a community of Christians? Do we distinguish our own culture and cut ourselves off from all outside contact? Or do we adopt as many of the surrounding customs as we can to try to make ourselves more amenable to contact so that evangelism can occur?

   Well, both, and neither.

   Though this is a very short book its arguments are dense and wiry, and I don't think I could do half as good a job at summarising them as you could at understanding them by reading this book. It's a genuine life-raft in a post-Christian culture where half the church seems to becoming secular clubs with praise sessions and the other half insular Puritanical communities hostile to outsiders. Keyes does a great job of integrating the biblical theology of what church is and is meant to be with the practicalities of Christian life, and also the apologetic factors of how we make these very elements appealing and coherent to those people outside the Church - those we are called to win for Christ.

   It's a relatively old book, this, so it might be hard to find - but if one pops up online for less than forty quid, or you stumble across a copy in a second-hand Christian bookstore - this is a must-buy! (and needless to say also then a must-read...)

Tramp for the Lord

This book by Corrie ten Boom is an unexpected delight. I grew up on occasional stories about Corrie ten Boom; how she and her Christian Dutch family sheltered Jewish families throughout the Holocaust for years, right up until the end where they were captured and she and her sister Betsy were taken to a concentration camp, where Betsy died, but Corrie survived just long enough to see the camp's liberation at the end of the war. They were inspiring stories, and form the backbone of her more famous work The Hiding Place - but I'd never read that myself. But somehow I found myself drawn to what she found herself doing with her life after so much trauma. And man, is it remarkable.

   The autobiographical chapters in this book span decades, recounting historical events as she grows up through and past them, all with an unshakeable faith in Christ that carries her through everything as she persists in a singular quest to share the joy and hope she has in Jesus with as many people in as many place as she can. It's truly inspiring. And not just the task of it - the bulk of these chapters is comprised of a variety of hindrances, from lost airline tickets to localised epidemics to terrorist attacks to you-name-it - but Corrie's immediate instinct is always to retreat and to pray, and to continue doing so, while blessing those around her however she can, until something rights itself. And in these chapters, it always seems to. A cynic may easily say these are the miraculous wishings of a senile woman with nothing in her head but the dregs of a meaningless faith. But I do not think a woman of her calibre could have been what she had without developing a hard shell of robustness and fortitude in telling what is mere coincidence or genuine miracle or both; and more often than not, both IS both - that's the point. Her faith and her prayer and her patience sees her through so many strange and stressful situations in this book that she not only makes her global tour appointments as a speaker to congregations more or less on time, but she touches and brightens the lives of many random folks around the world as she does so. I found this a genuinely inspiring book - if not necessarily for how I think my life could ever go, then insofar as I may have faith, patience and prayerfulness. Lord give me the strength to be the kind of tramp Corrie was.

Jesus: A Biography from a Believer

This book by Christian and biographical historian Paul Johnson is an interesting little creature. I've just speed-read it because I'm giving it to my mum for her birthday and I wanted to check it was the kind of thing she'd find interesting and edifying.

   Honestly I'm not really sure who this book is for. Pretty much all of the biographical details are lifted directly from the Gospels,* which is fine and all considering it was written by a Christian, but it makes the book of little apologetic value for non-believer readers who may well doubt the veracity of the New Testament texts at face value; and for Christian readers adds nothing that was not already present in those same texts except maybe a sprinkling of vaguely-insightful commentary here and there. There are several fairly helpful passages explicating historical bits of contextual culture or politics or norms, but none of these are things the average Christian reader couldn't find in a halfway-decent study Bible, and none of it really goes far enough to be again of much apologetic value to non-Christian readers.

   All that said, it is nice to have the life of the Messiah straightened out without having to dive chapter-and-verse between four different books trying to assemble a chronology; instead Jesus's life story is organised more by thematic blocks; early life, miracles, teaching, conflict with religious leaders, crucifixion, and afterwards. I don't know who I'd recommend this book to honestly, which is a shame because Paul Johnson's biography of Socrates was incredibly illuminating. Sorry mum, I hope you like it anyway.

* He does make good mention of the fact that Jesus is included in the official non-Christian histories by both Tacitus and Josephus, but doesn't dig into this a whole lot and it's more just an off-the-cuff reference.

Rumours of Another World

This book by Philip Yancey is a masterfully composed, Biblically grounded and refreshingly open-minded take on Christian apologetics. Instead of dealing directly with Christian claims and how the world tries to refute them, Yancey begins with the premise that there is more to life than the mundane material lets on. He then leads us through a winding series of arguments tackling some of the biggest blockages against our as natural beings' shortfalls in perception of life and the universe's supernatural elements: the false gods of money, sex and power cloud over much of this reality by demanding God-level attentiveness from their soul-sold devotees, and we get stuck in ruts of finite perception, ignorant of the infinite love and goodness on the "other side" - this despite all Scripture over its history aiming to create and maintain communities deeply rooted in the practice of perception of such Otherness - even believers construct walls to keep out the less-than-neat-or-easy elements of supernatural being.

   I'm using lots of hyperlinks to make points in this post as the themes of this book tie into a lot of things I've read already, but moreso since Yancey's writing style is itself full of "hyperlinks" - he writes extremely accessibly, this is far from an academic slog of a book, and references to previous chapters or other things he's written criss-cross almost every page as he builds us a picture of the unseen Coming Kingdom of Christ - a picture rooted not in human institutions but the communications of a great and absolute God who loves us and desires us to know His goodness first hand. Through the intimations of poetry and work of the imagination we can take steps toward this all-filling spark of creativity and mystery that is the eternal Godhead, who is far closer than most presume to the beating heart of pop culture just as much as the dried-out flakes of gnostic "faith" in what we do not yet know fully - perhaps never will or can know. Some things are God's knowledge and no human mind ever needs to be big or complex enough to comprehend them, and as beings of an amphibious nature, that is we have both bodies and souls - we should be okay with this reality. Only obedience in faith ultimately helps us find the spiritual oases - and only grace will redeem us at the end of history, whenever that may be for us personally.

   This book is a powerful communication of the Christian faith, but philosophically speaking there is a lot in here to pique the interest of skeptics too. I would commend this book to those who are maybe new to spirituality and have no intrinsic reason to doubt or distrust the Jesus traditions - not that there aren't sometimes good reasons to be wary of such - but on the whole it is my experience that life with Christ in it is richer and realer and more enthralling than life without, and so I would hope that in the spirit of receptivity people would not dismiss the supernatural things in our world without at least trying to taste-test them to see what sticks.

the Prodigal God

This book by Tim Keller is an explosively insightful and well-considered re-exploration of the parable commonly misknown as the story about a prodigal son - when in fact, as Keller so adeptly points out, the story is a story about God's family, skewing its various three members narratively in ways that totally upend conventional contemporary wisdom about societal and religious norms. As a singular book I can only think of one or two that effectively provide a comprehensive theological overview of Christianity's core point more concisely and powerfully than this. Highly recommended as an apologetic evangelistic primer for believers looking to share their faith simply and authentically.

the Book of the People

This book by A. N. Wilson is a masterfully woven deep dive into how to read the Bible as emergent from its contained truth claims unpacked from history, context and intention. It is written with a poetic eye for detail and a rigorously pragmatic approach to problem-solving the tangles and conflicts of meta-historical academic considerations of Scripture - instead, Wilson is bent on showing us how Scripture comes alive when it is lived in, understood by meaningful participation in the story of God's people, and that is an immensely reinvigorating view of the Bible: regardless of your religious belief I think you would find this book a stimulating and freshly thought-provoking take on the tenets of biblical thinking. Highly recommended for apologetic reading if you're already a believer or an explorer.

the Tale of Three Trees

This book by Angela Hunt is a powerful short story about ambition, hope, competitiveness and nature versus nurture... The prides of each of our three protreegonists is thwarted, but then totally vindicated, when they're turned into, respectively, a manger, a fishing boat, and a Roman cross: the threesome had always wanted to be of usage deeply important and treasurable; and now because the Jesus story happens to these trees they have eternal significance for their part in the saga. Touching, if not the most theologically compelling of stories, but this is not a book designed to convert non-Christian children so much as to stimulate the humble imagination of all possible readers to the transcendent truths of the Crucifixion as it happened.

Talking about Jesus without Sounding Religious

This book by Rebecca Manley Pippert is a fantastic pocket-size readable-in-an-hour kind of sort of a book - if you're an evangelist who struggles to "evangelize" in, on the fences around, or outside of your own Comfort Zone - this book may really help you to seize the joy of Christian living by the throat and gargle your own bloody song along to its tune; you will be challenged and exhorted by this book & all to your blessing by the empowerments as Gospel Truth undermines all that is crooked around us.

Phoebe

This book, a story* worked out of some hardcore biblical scholarship by Paula Gooder, is an innovative imagining of a snapshot of life in the early church, told through the eyes of a woman called Phoebe, who was a deacon of the church in Corinth and widely accepted as the person entrusted with the task of delivering Paul's letter to the Roman christians.

   I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped, largely down to the writing style. It has a chronic case of telling-not-showing, repeats chunks of character and plot information so often that in places it feels almost patronizing to readers' presumed memory or capacities for reading fiction, is painfully bland in places despite clear efforts to inject humour into some parts, and to top it all off the only character who doesn't come across as totally 2-D is Paul - who doesn't even feature in any single scene of the book** and is left as an enigmatic figure of communal who-know & hearsay.

   All that lit-snob pedantic savagery aside, I do completely understand and support her scholarly choice to minimize creative license in reconstructing a navigable 1st-century Rome & hypothesizing the personal history and context of Phoebe, and despite the poor execution of it in text I do think Paula Gooder has successfully spun a wholesome, believable, gospel-centred tale out of all her academic notes.**** I'd recommend this book to some folks - in fact having finished it I'm lending it straight to my mum - only if going into it with open expectations. I'm pretty confident that most people going in looking for a novel-type story will be rather disappointed, but people looking for a resource that helps engagingly flesh out Christian life in the context of the very young church, in particular the impact of Paul's pastoral theology on relationships across social divisions (slaves and freefolk, Jews and gentiles, etcetera) within the Christian community, then I think this book does actually provide a unique resource to help deeper imagine oneself into that.

* Not a novel. For which I'm happy to broadly forgive all complaints listed above regarding her narrative style.

** For both theological & historical reasons, I'm very glad this happened to also be the sole redeeming feature*** of the prose in and of itself.

*** Other than the gospel, obviously, which needless to say the story itself and numerous characters within it do strive to convey clearly and properly. But as great as evangelism in prose form is, Gooder can't take creative credit for coming up with the nub of that bit.

**** The story's 216 pages long for 85 pages of notes/references/etc. Hearty enough a ratio to wipe away any last expectations that this was a novel, don't you reckon?

A Secret History of Christianity

This book by Mark Vernon is a fascinatingly erudite, mindblowingly holistically-applicable and thoroughly thought-provoking exploration of the work of Owen Barfield - probably the least well-known of the main Oxford literary threesome of the inklings, though the other two better known members of this club both cited him as of key inspiration early on in their artistic and intellectual careers.* In it, we're taken on an invigorating mystical romp across the history of an element absolutely central to the metaphysical efficacy of this predominant world religion: that all good, true and proper parts of one's life have their root and essence in the shared life of God - something as bafflingly simple as endlessly complex, a perennial truism that lies at the heart-core of all religions, if not in doctrine then I believe in pragmatic reality; yet it's a notion the sincere realisation of doesn't seem to have been very far up the pastoral or otherwise priority lists of most Christian leaders across the history of the Church and its faith.

   Barfield's work is incredibly potent, drawing on language, psychology, social and historical and cultural considerations, philosophy and poetry in its purest sense - Vernon re-examines the person and teachings of Christ through the lens of Barfield's analysis of said mystical truth; and the theological and practical out-worked upshots herein are massive. World-shaking. The raw powers of inner reflectivity and the human imagination, when enthralled to True Goodness & Beauty, as given in the gospels, is incredible - but to see the scope of such raging paradoxes in their fullness one must accept the mystical element for what it is: once discovered and thusly inhabited, it is not something, I don't think, one can easily then just step back from, if at all, as it is of a profundity, breadth, joy, seriousness, playfulness, creativity and noisy silence that to enter the psychospiritual headspace, the lived consciousness talked about by Christ and Barfield and Vernon, utterly transforms everything about who you think you are and how you think you can be in the world. Which shouldn't sound like much of a surprise, as this is the core promise of Christianity as a faith: but I hope it doesn't sound like a callous barb to say that my gradual apprehension of my lived experience of this fact, the secret hiding in plain sight in Christ's apostolic succession, has been far more like the 'second birth' of a transformative, actual conversion than the course of personally walking with God that led to my being baptised as a pre-teen. Can you become a Christian twice? I'm not even sure the answer to that matters. I've been very lucky to have grown up with such exposure to the faith, but in all the honesty of my heart and mind - I feel luckier to have meandered to the extents I have on that walk so that Jesus found me all the more truly and powerfully somewhere on the border-lands.

   I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in consciousness and the human experience, regardless of what credence you may or may not lend to the Christian faith. Vernon's writing is accessible, entertaining and illuminating, and while readers who come at this book from within a church may find it opens up some strange wondrous new doors, it may also be for you very hard going because the perspective of gospel reality in here is so wild: and for that reason I think readers who remain skeptical of most organized forms of Christian community and faith will find this a refreshingly original, and starkly eye-opening take on the whole matter. I'm going to add some of Owen Barfield's stuff onto my reading pile, then probably read this again relatively soon...

* These being of course J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis - and it shows.

Truth and Authority in Modernity

This book is a fantastic little submachine-gun-magazine of pragmatic ecumenical twenty-first century theology done as close to perfectly as we're likely to get - by Lesslie Newbigin, who I definitely need to check out more by. I'm going to hammer this one out really briefly because Newbigin is so kindly deft a writer that even a work as philosophically insightful as this 83-page banger can, I'd hazard to think, be summarized properly in a post short enough that I won't even need to scroll down during its composition. Though I've thought that before...

   Enough rambling!

   In part one, we are walked through the theological basics of God's authoritativeness; as well as various factors in modernity's suspicion of this. He then further explicates the external and internal means by which authority can be 'knowingly' affirmed; as well as linking concepts, faith, and grace - and by far the best Christian perspective on postmodernism that I have seen or read anywhere, hands down.

   In part two, he takes us through the conceptual & actual mediation of divine authority, which happens through four chief channels: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience; none of these can be fully ignored through conglomerations of the others, nor can anyone rightly expect divine authority mediated only through one or two to hold much sway.

   So then in part three, he finishes with some reflections on how Christians can attest to the truths of Christianity by mediating God's divine authority through these four channels, with some fantastically practical pointers given as to how to do this effectively in our post/modern contexts.

   Hey! I did it! A post that thought it would be short and was short! Seriously though, this should be compulsory reading for all pastors, preachers, Christian thought-leaders and whoever else. It's just jam-packed with applicable truth, and you can read it in a couple of hours. So you may as well take the full afternoon, and read it thrice.

Jesus: Ph.D. Psychologist

This book by Tom Bruno was a hard and highly rewarding read. Regular followers of this blog may know my mental health isn't always great and neither is my faith, so reading a book that basically lays out my personal Lord and Saviour as being the perfect archetype of psychological wellbeing was a bit too close to like conducting rather aggressively on-the-nose theological therapy on myself. Needless to say I made lots of notes, had lots of arguments with God, prayed a lot, cried a lot, and came out the other side somewhat less lost in my own head and somewhere closer to stability of thought and feeling rooted in a more settled personal effort to offer my life to Christ each day, each moment. Which, my goodness, I probably can't credit this book alone as having done because lots of other shit has been kicking off in my life during the span of reading this, and I've been reading lots of other stuff too, but I may as well give credit where credit's due.

   Bruno writes clearly, using actual psychology alongside stories of Jesus' life and teaching to illuminate the wholesome principles laid out in each chapter - which explore how Jesus (despite being a mere carpenter from a backwater town under Roman occupation 2000 years ago) may be deserving of an honorary doctorate in psychotherapy for the following pointers:

• Take the inward journey
• Focus
• It is up to us
• Have purpose in life
• Keep the inner child alive
• Work through your fears
• Know yourself
• Ask for what you want
• Stay in touch with your feelings
• Don't worry
• Keep your heart pure
• Learn how to transcend the valleys
• Stop blaming others
• Work a program
• Retain a dynamic view of life
• Use your gifts wisely
• Manage your anger
• Retreat before you charge
• Take control of your life
• Believe that you can change your life
• Stop searching for happiness
• Be thankful
• Plant
• Love may be difficult
• Empower people (especially women)
• Love is the priority
• Speak as a man to men
• Forgiveness must be a part of your life
• Accept people where they are, and challenge them
• Seek truth and freedom
• Keep in contact with the highest power
• Know how to listen
• Stop chasing what you can't keep
• Loosen up and laugh
• No quick-fixes

   After these digestible chapter-insights, there's a final chapter exploring the nature of discipleship on the sinner's human psyche and how liberating it can be to love, be loved by and imitate Jesus Christ, who acts as the catalyst for all growth into mental and spiritual health. There's an appendix helping programmatize this for a flexible range of personal struggles too, though I haven't used this. It looks similar to what Alcoholics Anonymous use though so it's probably got a strong track-record.

   Overall, the book is a treasure trove of practical insight into how being better attuned to, and in control of, one's own behaviour and reactions, in the flux of feelings and ideas and relationships and an ever-changing sinful world, can help us not only draw nearer to God but achieve deeper and sturdier mental wellbeing. Each chapter has a few really helpful reflection questions at the end of it too, so you can work your shit out in real time as you read through. And no, you can't borrow my copy, it's full of far too much of exactly this.

Wonderful Earth!

This book by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen* follows almost exactly the same gist as this one, and I read it for basically the same reason. However - it is notably better in three main ways:

1. The illustrations are far richer and funnier (and some of them even pop out, fold or move, which is just well exciting for young readers),
2. Instead of just saying "and God made the animals etc" it goes into a great deal of fun and idiosyncratic detail about the sheer crazy variety of these animals,
3. The final two pages lead into a reflection on humanity's created role as the stewards of God's Earth, and how badly we've fucked this up through rapacious industry.

So yeh, on an indoctrinating-children-into-religious-metaphysics level, I'd recommend this one more than most comparable products because it will turn kids into depressed nature-loving radicals like me. Maybe. Who can say?

* The same bestselling duo behind Percy the Park-keeper and Kipper respectively, for all you late-20th-century British children's books aficionados.

The World that God Made

This book, by Jan Godfrey and illustrated by Peter Adderley, is essentially a child-friendly paraphrase of Genesis chapter 1 (albeit with better or at least more colourful pictures than most Bibles). I've recently moved back into my family home and was surprised to see it's still here, and read it in two minutes out of pure nostalgia. It's alright I guess, for its target audience, and if compared to similar books long-sat upon the same stretch of shelf it sticks to the gist without trying too hard to indoctrinate small children into anti-science views, so I can't really decry it too much.