Reviews

On The New York Times’ Bestseller List for weeks, Eric Metaxas’ biography has introduced thousands to one of the most important chapters in church history since the Reformation and one of its most fascinating figures. Given most reviews, evangelicals seem the most enthusiastic about it. Many have discovered a friend they never knew they had.…

Does God Make a Difference? is a worthy book to which readers will react differently depending upon the extent to which they have been exposed to Warren Nord’s general arguments. In the foreword Charles Haynes reminds the reader that this is Nord’s final book. Nord in his opening remarks also seems to be aware that…

One of my more enjoyable duties as chief academic officer is to interview all finalist faculty candidates. Over the years I have developed a routine. First we spend time getting acquainted as persons. Colleges are, first and last, communities of people. Next we explore the candidate’s educational and professional stories, paying special attention to professional…

How does the work of Yale philosophic theologian Hans Frei contribute to questions within the vocation of the Christian scholar? Does Frei furnish original insights to the discourse maintained by Christian Scholar’s Review? How might Frei’s eccentric writing style, as well as his more philosophical tendencies within his theology, provide hope and remedies for Christian…

More than two decades ago, James M. McPherson’s landmark Battle Cry of Freedomhailed a new era of interest in American Civil War studies.James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Curiously missing, however, from the standard works on the Civil War before the mid-1990s was sustained…

Cultivating the Spirit is a book “...about the spiritual growth of college students” (1). This pithy description may lead some who work in faith-based institutions or in “religious” campus roles to add it quickly to their reading lists. After all, as the argument may go, students’ spiritual formation is central to what these folks prize.…

Simon LeVay’s book is the latest and most effective among the growing corpus of books and articles arguing for an exclusively biological explanation of sexual orientation. The broad and methodologically uneven array of evidence pointing to biological contributions to the origin of sexual orientation, heterosexual and homosexual, continues to amass, sprawling across diverse disciplinary areas…

Work is inescapable; individuals are either working or using the fruits of their (or another’s) labor. Christian theology has been surprisingly quiet concerning this pervasive subject of work. Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor is Ben Witherington’s contribution to the topic. Witherington, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, begins…

As a young lad, Gerbert Aurillac entered the monastery, receiving a Church education. He served as a schoolmaster teaching future bishops, became a tutor and counselor to kings and emperors, advanced to abbot, then to archbishop, and eventually was elected Pope Sylvester II in 999 A.D. With a resume like that in the tenth century,…

Each generation has the obligation to interpret the past for itself with the best tools that it has available, even if choosing to accept most of the views which it has inherited. Similarly, each scholar has the obligation to seek to find what the optimum blending is of his or her most important personal values…

Besides lecturing at the University of Bordeaux, Jacques Ellul opened his own home for seekers of many backgrounds to explore their questions about Scripture, faith, power, and the relation of the kingdom of God to the social and political order. Among those at Ellul’s dining room table was Willem Vanderburg, who, being blind, sought Ellul’s…

This is a good time for the history of missions. What once was a field dominated by devotional accounts of brave pioneer missionaries has now been enriched by academic historians who often have no stake in the missionary agenda itself. Instead, scholars interested in the histories of race and gender have realized that there were no more…

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham has been working toward a full treatment of Bible and ecology for some years, with articles appearing in a variety of peer-reviewed publications in the areas of biblical studies and theology. It is therefore noteworthy that he has chosen to make that fuller argument for the first time in a…

Writing in the January 2010 issue of Diversity, Ferdinando Boero declared that, “...the study of biological diversity is a mission from God.”Ferdinando Boero, “The Study of Species in the Era of Biodiversity: a Tale of Stupidity,” Diversity 2 (2010): 115-126. I must admit that on first reading, this declaration and Boero’s use of quotes from…

Efforts toward the integration of Christian theology and academic disciplines are not easy undertakings and can look quite disparate across the disciplines. What can be easily lost in these pursuits are the unique callings that drive integration efforts and the individuals that engage in them. Glendon Moriarty’s book provides a unique reflection on the “integration…

This book is an expanded version of the 2000 Psychology and Christianity: Four Views, edited by Stanton Jones and Eric Johnson. In this new version Stanton Jones has moved from coeditor to author of the integration position chapter, with Eric Johnson assuming the post as sole editor. From the new book title it is obvious…

Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May, in their book Listening to Children on the Spiritual Journey: Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture, have presented a very helpful analysis of children’s spiritual experiences based on several studies by the authors over a number of years. The purpose of the book is “to better understand the spirituality…

Few readers of Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory will read it from start to finish; instead, most are likely to begin by seeking out sections that align with their teaching and research interests. Certainly, such an approach seems appropriate for a collection of loosely linked conference…