Briefly Noted: In the latest issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Tom Schreiner has a brief but helpful review of Douglas Campbell’s mammoth work on justification, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans, 2009). Even though the book is a massive work of scholarship, Schreiner is critical. I’ve been [...]

I have been using Olive Tree’s BibleReader app on my iPhone since late last year. Without question, Olive Tree’s Reader is the best Bible app that I have ever used on a mobile device. For what I use it for, it simply has better features than any of its competitors. So here are my six [...]

I just read an extremely disturbing review article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper titled “The truth about the porn industry.” It’s about a sociology professor and feminist named Gail Dines who is crusading against pornography in her new book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. [I have to warn readers that this article is [...]

I mentioned a while back that I’ve been reading through Rob Plummer’s new hermeneutics primer 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible. It has been an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a smart, introductory-level text on biblical interpretation. I’ll wager it’s the only hermeneutics book in history with endorsements as [...]

The Gospel Coalition has published an interesting exchange between Kevin DeYoung and David Platt about Platt’s new book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. DeYoung provides a critical review of the book, and then Platt follows with his response. Here’s an excerpt to give you an idea of DeYoung’s approach:

When the iPad first came out, Tim Challies gave it a scathing review, calling it “the greatest disappointment in all of human history.” Well, that was then, and this is now. In that earlier review, Challies said that the Kindle did one thing, and it did it better than the iPad. In his latest review, [...]

I’ve been enjoying Kevin DeYoung’s popular introduction and commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. The book is titled The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism, and it is a gem. After a brief introduction, the book is divided into fifty-two chapters, corresponding to the Catechism’s own weekly schedule for [...]

[PDF version of the following review.]

Gina Welch’s In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church is the narrative of the author’s two-year sojourn in the late Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC) in Lynchburg, Virginia. As a life-long liberal atheist, Welch had always regarded evangelicals with [...]

Rose Kennedy buried four of her own children–all of whom met tragic ends. Her oldest son Joe was killed in action in World War 2. Her daughter Kathleen died in a plane crash in Europe. Her sons John and Bobby died by the assassin’s bullet. At the end of her life she wrote this:
“It has [...]

If you haven’t done so already, you need to buy and read Russell Moore’s new book Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches. Not only is this book is a real page-turner, it also makes a compelling case for the cultivation of an adoption culture within churches for the sake [...]