The Reading Life

With the new year at hand, permit me to share some of my best reads from 2021 with you. I don’t claim that these are the best books of the year, just that they are books that I particularly enjoyed and that I think you might as well. My reading focuses on three broad areas–history (especially Christian history), theology, and Christian formation. I need to read more novels and hopefully 2022 will be the year I get to some of those on my shelves. So here are my top eight for 2020-21, not in any particular order.

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Free at Last

This year, I found a new biography that looks at MLKs life from a fresh perspective–that of Martin Luther King’s Christian faith and the philosophical and theological impulses that shaped his convictions and his work: Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. In this post, I explore a fascinating subnarrative, MLKs what ministry leadership lessons we can learn from his work.

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Some Reflections On John’s Prologue (Of the Father’s Love Begotten)

This time of year I am drawn again and again to the prologue of John’s Gospel. I never get tired reading through it slowly, contemplatively and prayerfully. At times I try to imagine what it must have been like for those early first and second century Christians to have heard it read in their assemblies for the first time or to have had the great gift of setting their eyes on a copy of it. What no doubt would have immediately caught their attention was the phrase “En archē ēn ho logos” (In the beginning was the Word). The Logos would have been somewhat familiar to both Jewish and Gentile believers.

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All I Want For Christmas

As I write this, I agonize over the painstaking task of sending my wife, Robin, Amazon links to things I’d like her to buy me for Christmas. What’s on my list? Beard balm, beard conditioner, beard shampoo, an ESV Omega Thinline in Royal Purple, and mini statues of dead theologians to put on my bookshelf to make me look more cultured than I truly am.

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Dirt Roads

I've begun to view theology much in the same way. Admiration is a term that comes to mind in describing those who've come before me. The church fathers such as Augustine, the Gregorys, Athanasius, Basil, and Didymus are all crucial thinkers of the Christian thought with whom we should be acquainted. These men helped build roads for the Church to understand God more deeply and fully as they compacted the dirt underneath their tires, forming routes with their faithful exposition of God's Word.

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The Dark Night Of The Soul

Perhaps, this is just who I am, mood, depressive, short-tempered, and exhausted. Is this what the rest of my life is? Fighting back irritability and tears of frustration when all I want to do is to be left alone is a recurring sense that can last hours, days, or weeks. These feelings come and go as months pass with no episodes, but then the dread and existential crisis return as it seeks to overcome me once more.

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The Law and the Gospel

As you read the New Testament there are times when it seems that the Law is viewed negatively and there are times when it seems to be viewed positively. We can use Paul’s letter to the Romans to make this point. He sees the law as something under which the unbeliever is in bondage. Those who come to faith in Christ are not under law but under grace (Romans 4:14, 7:6). So in some sense the law is something from which we need to be delivered or set free.

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One Millerite Virtue

William Miller and his followers look like a pack of fools - an example of what not to do. However, I would contend that assessing the merits of the movement is a bit more complex. To be clear, date-setting is absolutely not commendable. No, what I have in mind far more basic and entirely orthodox. The virtue I have observed is this…

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