Why God Makes Sense In a World That Doesn’t

Categories: Book Reviews · Philosophy · ScienceLeave a comment

I’m excited to share the endorsements for my forthcoming book, Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn’t: The Beauty of Christian Theism. I’m deeply grateful to each of these seven people who were kind enough to read and endorse the book amidst their busy schedules. I don’t take that for granted! Thank you! If you’re interested in learning more about the book, I include the table of contents below. It releases in October and is available for pre-order now. “In a few short years, Ortlund has become one of the world’s leading Christian scholars. This book delivers on…

Discussion Questions for Finding the Right Hills to Die On

Categories: Book Reviews · Complementarianism · Continuationism · Creation Issues · Credobaptism · Gospel · Justification1 Comment

I’ve had a number of folks mention that they are taking a church board or ministry team or small group through Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage. So I am providing some discussion questions in case they are useful for groups to utilize in this process. Gregory the Great used to call himself “a servant of the servants of God.” That sums up what I have hoped for this book: that it would serve those who serve the church. I pray that these questions would play the same role. Introduction 1) Do you have…

Some Favorite Quotes from Confronting Christianity

Categories: Book Reviews · PhilosophyLeave a comment

I know I’m a little late to this, but I just finished Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion (Crossway, 2019), which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s similar in both style and content to Tim Keller’s Making Sense of God, which is the last book I read in my current research project on apologetics. Confronting Christianity tackles a wide variety of issues, from classical objections like “how could a loving God allow so much suffering?” (chapter 11) to the most immediately pressing questions of contemporary Western culture like “doesn’t Christianity denigrate women?” (chapter 8) and “Isn’t…

A Review of Adam and the Genome

Categories: Book Reviews · Creation Issues · Science27 Comments

Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture After Genetic Science (BrazosPress, 2017). $19.99. 224pp. The aim of Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight’s Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture After Genetic Science is to harmonize the Bible and evolution, particularly with a view to recent genetic evidence and the challenge it poses to traditional beliefs about Adam and Eve. The first four chapters deal with the scientific issues and are authored by Venema, a professor of biology at Trinity Western University associated with the BioLogos Foundation; the next four deal with the Bible and are…

The Overcoming of Prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird

Categories: Book Reviews · Literature2 Comments

When Harper Lee passed away a few weeks ago, I pulled out my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird (Grand Central 1960) and re-read it for the first time since 1999. I haven’t followed the controversy about Go Set a Watchman very closely, but I had to read To Kill a Mockingbird in 8th grade, and then again in 9th grade when my family moved. I liked it the first time, loved it the second time, and now appreciate it even more 17 years later. I was also surprised how much I remembered all these years later. How can you…

A Review of Bill Nye’s Undeniable

Categories: Book Reviews · Creation Issues · Science5 Comments

Bill Nye’s Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, ed. Corey S. Powell (New York: St. Martin’s, 2014) is a popularization of arguments for, and implications from, the theory of biological evolution. It is a unique kind of book, full of juxtapositions: often technical but without a single footnote, playful on one page and then heavy-handed on the next, full of Nye’s personality and style and yet written alongside an editor (and you always wonder what exactly that means). The strength of the book is the ease and simplicity with which Nye abstracts from more technical scientific discussions: in line…

The Incarnation and Union With Christ

Categories: Book Reviews · Incarnation8 Comments

A few weeks back I published an article on Christ’s saving work, looking at the various elements in the broader narrative arc that surround his atoning death. I’ve been continuing to reflect on how to seek out a healthy balance here, and especially as it relates to the incarnation. Is the incarnation itself saving? Is the very act by which God the Son assumed a human nature a redeeming act—or does it merely prepare for the redemptive work in his death and resurrection? I want to be careful here. On the one hand, the notion that the incarnation itself transformed…

Thoughts on Ross Douthat’s Privilege

Categories: Book Reviews4 Comments

This summer I’ve been deliberately trying to slow down and do some fun reading. I don’t have as much free time for reading these days, but its important to me that reading for fun never completely dry up, even if it becomes more of a slow trickle during certain seasons. So I recently ordered Ross Douthat’s Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (Hyperion 2005), which I started a few days ago and found myself unable to put down until I finished it. Ross is a conservative columnist at the New York Times (do such juxtapositions exist? apparently they…

Six Contemporary Theology Books That Deserve Wider Reading

Categories: Book Reviews · Theology1 Comment

I don’t read a whole lot of contemporary theology books these days. I tend to buy more “reference” books like commentaries when I have money for books. And when I have time for free reading, I tend to like reading older “classics” (like something in the Puritan Paperbacks or Popular Patristics series) or something outside of the field of theology altogether. Of course, there are some modern day theological books that I have benefited enormously from, as many others have—books like J.I. Packer’s Knowing God or Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, or so many of D.A. Carson’s expositions of…