Jim Hamilton has become quite the prolific commentator and biblical theologian, and he has a new commentary out on Ezra-Nehemiah that I highly recommend to you. It appears in Broadman & Holman’s new “Christ-Centered Exposition” series edited by Danny Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida. Thus, the aim of the commentary is not only exegetical precision but also explaining how the message of Ezra-Nehemiah fits into the entire storyline of scripture—a story which has its culminating moment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hamilton argues that Ezra-Nehemiah are enormously relevant, though many pastors only preach sermons on them during church building programs. This is unfortunate. Instead, Jim encourages…
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The Rescue at Dunkirk
Today marks the 74th anniversary of the great rescue at Dunkirk. On May 27, 1940, the British army had fallen back to the beaches of Dunkirk in the north of France. In front of them was the German army, and behind them was the sea. These British soldiers and their French allies were the last line of defense between England and Hitler, and they were about to be crushed. There were over 300,000 of them trapped on the beach. What happened next is the stuff of legend. Some say it was nothing short of a miracle. In his biography of Winston Churchill, William Manchester narrates it best:
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Recommended Children’s Book: “Great Kings of the Bible”
Deepak Reju is a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. He is also the author of a new children’s book titled Great Kings of the Bible: How Jesus is greater than Saul, David and Solomon. As the title indicates, the book is a condensed biography of the first three kings of Israel. The narrative highlights key events in each of these kings’s lives and includes illustrations of the stories. Two things I like most about this book: 1. It’s a great way to engage young readers in the biblical storyline. Anything with battles and swords and kings and armies is bound to capture the attention of a…
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Jesus or Nothing
Dan Dewitt has a brand new book out titled Jesus or Nothing. It’s a book that talks about the clash between theism and nihilism, and it’s very well done and accessible. I was pleased to write an endorsement of this book, which I will share below along with some others. “Jesus or Nothing is a little book about a big God. If you are a skeptic or a minister to skeptics, you should read this book about the God who is conspicuously there and who aims to reconcile sinners to himself through Christ.”—Denny Burk, author, What Is the Meaning of Sex? “To be alive today is to be at the intersection of worldviews.…
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The Final Days of Jesus
Justin Taylor and Andreas Köstenberger have produced a little gem of a book in The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived. The book aims to set forth from scripture just what the title suggests. The authors explain exactly how the last week of Jesus’ ministry unfolded, from Palm Sunday through Resurrection Sunday. They write, “This book covers Jesus’ final days. In these pages you will read the eyewitness accounts of what the most important person who ever lived said and did during the most important week of his life… We will put the accounts together in roughly chronological order” (p.…
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The New Calvinism Considered
Jeremy Walker, New Calvinism Considered: A Personal and Pastoral Assessment (EP Books, 2014). 126pp. $10.99. If you are wondering what the so-called “New Calvinism” is, Jeremy Walker has just written a short book trying to explain it. In The New Calvinism Considered: A Personal and Pastoral Assessment, Walker explains what the theological hubbub is all about. Walker identifies four characteristics of this movement. First, and most obviously, it is Calvinistic. But its Calvinism tends to be limited to soteriology as there is a good bit of diversity on other aspects of Reformed faith.
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A word on translation theory
I’ve been reading Dave Brunn’s stimulating book One Bible, Many Versions—a work discussing the translation philosophy of various English Bible versions. This is a fine book in many ways. It engages an old controversy with an irenic tone. But if the book does anything, it shows that there is some confusion among evangelicals about what Formal Equivalence (FE) translators are aiming to do in their work. Brunn’s book shows that all translations—including FE translations like the NASB and the ESV—resort to Dynamic Equivalence (DE). His point is that not even FE translations practice their theory consistently, and he illustrates this fact with voluminous examples.
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“The Little Way of Ruthie Leming” by Rod Dreher
I just finished one of the most remarkable books that I’ve ever “read”—Rod Dreher’s The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life. Many good reviews have already been written since the book appeared last Spring, so I will not try to redo what’s already been done. But I do want to take a few moments to share some of my impressions from this very moving work. The book focuses on the life and times of Ruthie Leming—Rod Dreher’s younger sister—who died in 2011 from lung cancer. But the book is more than that. It’s the story of Dreher’s sojourn…
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Van Neste critiques Joel Green’s ethics dictionary
In the Fall issue of JBMW, Ray Van Neste has a hard-hitting review of Joel Green’s Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Baker, 2011). He observes that the volume is weak on biblical authority and biblical sexuality. In his conclusion, Van Neste writes, The volume as a whole is alarming and disappointing. I’ve focused primarily on entries concerning sexual ethics since they illustrate the dictionary’s general approach to scripture and since these issues are some of the most significant ethical issues facing the church today. The value of a tool is seen in how it works at the point of greatest pressure. At such points, Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics fails.
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My favorite book of 2013
Someone just asked me on Twitter about my favorite book that I read this year. I didn’t even have to think about it because there was one book that for me was head and shoulders above anything else that I’ve seen all year. The book actually came out in 2012, but I didn’t read it until this past April. It’s The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield. The book is a memoir of Butterfield’s conversion to Christ. Her story is by all accounts a traumatic one. She was a tenured faculty member at Syracuse University, and she was a lesbian who specialized in feminist studies. In other…