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Reviews

Revelation and Reason: Prolegomena to Systematic Theology

Colin Gunton’s career in theology at King’s College, London spanned a period of just over 40 years and his untimely passing in 2003 has left British theology without one of its leading voices. Fortunately for those of us who did not have the privilege of being present in his taught courses, we have the benefit…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic

The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue by Mark Noll and James Turner, edited and with an introductory essay by Thomas A. Howard, was born out of a lecture series at Gordon College. Howard situates the conversation optimistically within a developing rapprochement between Evangelicals and Catholics. Past Protestant-Catholic hostilities took place against…
Reviews

Christian Faith and Scholarship: An Exploration of Contemporary Developments

All are influenced by something, from their culture to their political ideals to their faith, and Todd Ream and Perry Glanzer in Christian Faith and Scholarship insist that such influences, particularly faith, should be embraced instead of ignored. With prolific references andsources, Ream and Glanzer demonstrate the reasonableness of wedding Christian faith and scholarship in…
Reviews

The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?

The most recent installment of Slavoj Zizek’s “Short Circuits” series presents a thought-experiment that “cross wires that do not usually touch” (vii). Editor Creston Davis introduces the electricians who dare to cross wires: on one side, the “militant Marxist” (4) and cultural theorist Zizek grasps the wire of secular atheism, while on the other side…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

From Achilles to Christ & Classics and the Bible

Having been struck by the title of the former book, I was reading it with a view to reviewing it when I came across the latter, and decided after a preliminary perusal that a review of both together would be more fruitful. As a teacher of the Classics (mostly in translation) at a Christian College,…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Incorrectly Political: Augustine and Thomas More

The contributions of Augustine and Thomas More to the development of the Western Intellectual Tradition certainly have been the subject of more than their fair share of scholarly evaluation. But usually such examinations focus on one or more of the sometimes slippery positions of the two authors, hidden often in allusion or late-career retractions, and…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Providence Lost

In the introduction to American Providence (2004), theologian Stephen H. Webb observes, “The cultural elite dismiss the doctrine of providence as the illusory product of fundamentalist fantasies. Providence is caricatured as a theological version of hide-and-seek.” He concedes, “There is some truth to this caricature. When history is treated like a secret message, theology becomes…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935

Conventional historical opinion depicts late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anti-obscenity moral reformers as sanctimonious Puritans who considered sex an unpleasant necessity and open discussions of it loathsome and harmful. Yet this small band of self-righteous prigs exerted a disproportionately large amount of influence over the American public by manipulating the legal system successfully through federal…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution

Denis Lamoureux’s goal in this book is to demonstrate that Christians in general and conservative Christians in particular should have no hesitation in accepting evolution as a potentially complete scientific account of the origin and development of biological life. Lamoureux’s view would be described usually as “theistic evolution” but Lamoureux objects to this description of…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

The Shack: A Novel

I became aware of The Shack by William Young (Windblown Media, 2007) the way I learn about many new books that I would probably never hear about otherwise: the father of one of my students sent me the novel via his daughter along with a request for an evaluation of its contents. It had not…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Reinventign English Evangelicalism, 1966-2001: A Theological and Sociological Study

Rob Warner, sociologist and head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at University of Wales, Lampeter, produces an intriguing analysis of the evolution of English pan-Evangelicalism during the latter half of the 20th century in his recent work Reinventing English Evangelicalism. Following Callum Brown’s advocacy of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities

What does it mean to be an evangelical Christian? This is the question explored by a collection of prominent Christian scholars in The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities. The book was released first as a British imprint under the title: The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Apollos, 2008). The impetus for this collection…
July 15, 2009
Reviews

Anthropology’s Debt to Missionaries

The relationship between anthropologists and missionaries is a particularly intriguing one. It is full of the stuff that is fertile ground for academic engagement, not least because of a certain overlap of interests coupled with long-standing tension. The collection of articles found in Anthropology’s Debt to Missionaries, written predominantly by anthropologists, provides a valuable, though…
April 15, 2009
Reviews

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement

My prolific bookseller friend has insisted that Beyond Homelessness is one of the most important books of 2008.Byron Borger, review of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement, by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh, http://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/review/beyond_homelessness_christian/ (accessed November 2008). I find it hard to disagree. Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh assert that…
April 15, 2009