On Books

Fall 2021 Book Preview — Fiction and Non-fiction

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I don’t only read academic theology. I enjoy history, essays, discussions of current affairs, and of course, good fiction. All of that has arrived at my door in the last months. Many are new books published this year, but mixed in are also some older titles, mainly from authors I’ve discovered I liked.

In the Shadow of King Saul, Jerome Charyn. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2018. Recently, I reviewed Swimming to the Top of the Tide. The publisher included a bonus book in their mailing, this collection of essays by the author of Sergeant Salinger, which I had reviewed this spring. I’m intrigued with what he will say in his essay on Saul, a biblical character I happen to have been studying of late.

Absence of Mind, Marilynne Robinson. New Haven: Yale University of Press, 2011. I love Marilynne Robinson’s fiction and essays, and this was a collection I had not read, found while browsing Thriftbooks. Turned out I was able to use a free book credit! What fun. She writes about the relation of science and religion and the new atheism in this collection.

Notes from No Man’s Land, Eula Biss. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2009. I recently read this author’s Immunity and decided to pick up some of her other essays including this collection on race in America, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Having and Being Had, Eula Biss. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020. This is a more recent collection, examining middle class ethics.

After the Apocalypse, Andrew Bacevich. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2021. Argues for a different approach to U.S. foreign policy based on moral pragmatism and mutual coexistence with war as a last resort.

Devil in the White City, Erik Larson. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. I’ve discovered Erik Larson’s books and I’m looking forward to this one on the 1893 World’s Fair and a serial murderer!

Riding High in April, Jackie Townsend. Phoenix: Sparkpress, 2021. Just received this with LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program. The book is a tech thriller with a human element of love and friendship written by a former Silicon Valley management consultant.

Abundance Nature in Recovery, Karen Lloyd. New York: Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2021. This is a collection of essays on conservationist efforts in the face of biodiversity loss.

The Power of Us, Jay J. Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer. New York: Little, Brown, Spark, 2021. Builds on the idea that the groups we are part of shape identity and can enhance performance, cooperation and social harmony.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Louis Menand. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Menand is an intellectual historian whose Metaphysical Club was one of my great reads several summers ago. This one is on the art and thought trends that arose during the Cold War.

Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price. New York: Basic Books, 2020. The Vikings enter into the history of peoples from the Asian Steppes to North America. This birthday gift gives me a chance to read a history of these people who keep barging into so many others stories!

Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021. I thought All The Light We Cannot See was one of the best books I’ve read in the last decade. The writing voice I so appreciated in that work is here, but in a story occurring in three distinct times–as you can tell, I’m already into this book.

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles. New York: Viking, 2021. Towles is another novelist I’ve discovered in the past year, enjoying both of his deep dives into Jazz Age New York and a Russian hotel. This one is a cross-country flight to New York of several young fugitives on the title highway.

Along the way, I will be mixing in mysteries from Louise Penny, Ngaio Marsh and others. And what’s with the essays? Best I can figure is that blog posts are a version of essay, and I enjoy seeing how those who do it so well practice their craft–as well as the ideas they explore. Maybe this list will suggest some Christmas gift ideas–or not! At least you will know what not to buy me for Christmas if you are family! Whatever the case, you can look forward to hearing more about these books in the months ahead!

Fall 2021 Book Preview — Christian Academic

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At the end of May, I did a summer preview post. Looking back, I’ve reviewed most of those books as well as others. While I’ve heard reports of books being in short supply in some places, that hasn’t been the case at our house. So I am actually breaking this book preview into three–one on Christian books that are academically oriented, one on more “popular” Christian subjects and themes and a “general” category including both fiction and non-fiction. While most of the books are new, some are older books I ordered, usually because references to them in newer works suggested I might like reading them. So buckle up for the first (and longest) installment.

From Pentecost to Patmos, 2nd edition, Craig L. Blomberg and Darlene M. Seal with Alicia S. Dupree. Nashville: B & H Academic, 2021. A textbook introduction of the New Testament from Acts through Revelation.

The Federal Theology of Jonathan Edwards, Gilsun Ryu, Foreword by Douglas A. Sweeney. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2021. An exegetical study of Edward’s doctrine of the federal headship of Christ in our redemption.

From Plato to Christ, Louis Markos. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A study of the influence of Platonic thought on Christianity through history.

Reformed Public Theology, Edited by Matthew Kaemingk. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021. A collection of Reformed scholars address how Reformed theology bears on a number of public and global issues.

A Short History of Christian Zionism, Donald M. Lewis. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Explores the history of the idea, from the period of the Reformation to the present, that scripture mandates a Jewish return to Palestine.

Paul & The Power of Grace, John M. G. Barclay. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020. A pathbreaking study of the idea of grace in Paul’s writing, understanding grace as gift.

The Paradox of Sonship (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture), R. B. Jamieson. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. What Hebrews means in calling Jesus “Son,” both as eternal and Incarnate.

Loving to Know, Esther Lightcap Meek. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011. A proposal that all knowing takes shape in an interpersonal, covenantal relationship, the basic idea in covenant epistemology.

T. F. Torrance as Missional Theologian (New Exporations in Theology), Joseph H. Sherrard, Foreword by Alan Torrence. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Addresses the overlooked area of Torrance’s missiology.

Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity, David Wenham. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995. I read a recent festschrift on Wenham’s pathbreaking work on the relationship of Paul’s thought to the life and teaching of Jesus.

Thriving with Stone Age Minds, Justine L. Barrett and Pamela Ebstyne King. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. What insights can we gain from both scripture and evolutionary psychology that contribute to human flourishing?

The Making of Biblical Women, Beth Allison Barr. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021. A study of how the idea of “biblical womanhood” actually subjugated women and the way forward.

Changed into His Likeness (New Studies in Biblical Theology), J. Gary Millar. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A study of the ongoing transformation of the Christian between conversion and the resurrection.

The Doctrine of Scripture, Brad East, Foreword by Katherine Sonderegger. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. A study of the doctrine of scripture that considers this through the lens of our liturgical affirmations around “hearing the Word of the Lord.”

Piercing Leviathan (New Studies in Biblical Theology), Eric Ortlund. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. After enduring terrible suffering and unhelpful counsel, God comes to Job speaking of Behemoth and Leviathan. What is that all about?

The Parables, Douglas Webster. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021. A careful study of the parables guiding us into understanding of each for personal transformation.

The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, William A. Simmons. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A Pentecostal approach to the study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

A History of Evangelism in North America, Thomas P. Johnston, ed. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2021. A collection of articles studying evangelism in the North American context from Wesley and camp meetings to the Twenty-first century.

Five Things Biblical Scholars Wish Theologians Knew, Scot McKnight, Foreword by Hans Boersma. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. What biblical scholars wish theologians understood about biblical studies.

Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew, Hans Boersma, Foreword by Scot McKnight. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A companion to the above volume, on what biblical scholars need to understand about theological scholarship. I may review these two together.

I’m sure some must scratch their heads and wonder at me for reading these academic works of theology, particularly at my age! Why not just kick back and just enjoy a diverting piece of fiction? As you will find if you scroll through this blog, I enjoy that as well. I guess part of it has been a lifelong apprehension that there are always greater depths to plumb in exploring the majesty of God, the glory of Christ, the working of the Spirit, and how we might align our lives with God’s purposes and intentions for his world. Certainly not all of this is in books, but read attentively, books and the book of scripture may turn ears and eyes and understanding to more deeply apprehend all that God has for us. I want to do that as long as eyes, ears, and mind work, which I believe is but a foretaste of the glories of eternity. I’ve never thought of eternity as boring as it seems an infinite time, or perhaps timelessness, is required to know an infinite and yet personal God, and to employ all my capacities without infirmity in the new creation for its flourishing and the pleasure of God. As C. S. Lewis wrote at the conclusion of The Last Battle, speaking of the newer, truer Narnia they had entered: “Come further up, come further in!“ I hope some of these works might encourage you on that journey and I look forward to writing about them in coming months.

Review: Every Leaf, Line, and Letter

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Every Leaf, Line, and Letter, Edited by Timothy Larsen, Introduction by Thomas S. Kidd. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: A collection of articles in honor of historian of evangelicalism, David Bebbington, exploring expressions of the “biblicism,” in Bebbington’s definition of evangelicalism, known as the “Bebbington Quadrilateral.”

Historian David Bebbington is most widely known for his description of the defining characteristics of evangelicalism: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism, which has become known as the “Bebbington Quadrilateral.” This collection of articles focuses on biblicism, an effort to honor Bebbington on his 70th birthday and retirement from his Chair. The articles cover a span of time from the 1730’s to the present and are organized by century. One of the main themes of the books is the variety of uses of the Bible and forms of expression of evangelicalism’s commitment to the Bible. In my review I will summarize the articles by century, noting salient points.

Eighteenth Century

Kristina Benham opens this collection considering American preaching during the Revolutionary War and the widespread invocation of Exodus and Independence as ascent to an American Zion. She notes how the exodus theme will later be used by slaves from within the American system. Bruce Hindmarsh takes some exception with Bebbington’s observation of Enlightenment influence in 18th century evangelicalism by noting the extensive examples of figural reading of the biblical text. Then Jonathan Yeager rounds out this section by contrasting the views of Jonathan Edwards and John Erskine on faith and free will. Yeager exposes Edward’s distinctiveness from the reformers on his views of the place of the will in the exercise of faith, contrasting him with the more traditionally reformed Erskine.

Nineteenth Century

I found K. Elise Leal’s “Young People Are Actually Becoming Accurate Bible Theologians” one of the most interesting essays in the volume. She looks at children’s Bible education, including a heavy emphasis on memory work and the efforts of the Sunday school movement to form children into “Bible Theologians.” I saw echoes of these efforts in my own childhood Sunday school experience. Mark Noll explores the challenge that the debate to slavery posed to the belief in sola scriptura–the reality that pro-slavery and abolitionist preaching both invoked the same Bible. I’m convinced that evangelicalism in the U.S. bears the mark of this crisis down to the present day. I had not previously been acquainted with Josephine Butler, a crusader for women’s rights whose life was animated by her reading of scripture, particularly in its focus on the gospels and an almost mystical love for Jesus. Mary Riso offers a fascinating portrait of her as an example of the expression of biblicism in evangelical piety.

Twentieth Century

This section opens with David Bebbington’s own contribution to this volume: a study of the Bible crisis in British evangelicalism in the 1920’s, the fundamentalist reaction to critical studies that brought significant divides in the U.S. was more muted, in part because of the strong Anglican evangelical presence who refused to denounce or separate. I was fascinated to learn of the significant role the Bible league played in the student movement that became Inter-Varsity Fellowship in the UK, later spreading to Canada and the U.S. Timothy Larson follows up with a study of Liberal Evangelicals in the UK through a study of the ministry of Vernon Faithful Storr, a leader in the Anglican Evangelical Group Movement, the locus of liberal evangelicalism. It was telling that they were defined as much for their stance against Anglo-Catholicism and for the “central” churchman rather than doctrinal views, although Storrs moved to a position of believing neither in the plenary inspiration or final authority of the Bible. Sadly his efforts to be “on the right side of history” led to the eclipse of his movement by the evangelicals led by John Stott, much to his chagrin.

The next essay shifts the focus to the United States and the anti-lynching efforts of Francis Grimke and the biblical arguments he used, the lack of attention he received, and his developing arguments for the legitimacy of defensive resistance in the face of white tyranny and oppression. The section concludes with the rise of the charismatic movement, particularly in New Zealand and Britain, the rift between Michael Harper and John Stott over whether Spirit baptism was a second and distinct work to justification and how the charismatic renewal led to more democratic uses of scripture in personal and public devotion and ministry.

Twenty-first Century

This last part begins with what I thought a chilling study of the Patriot’s Bible, the interweaving of biblical text and American history laying groundwork for a kind of Christian nationalistic fervor and militarism in defense of country. It is interesting to trace how many problems in American Christianity trace to what is in the margins of our Bibles along with the Biblical text from C. I. Scofield to the present. I’ve often warned against treating the notes as inspired and that we may do better to read Bibles without such notes. Finally Brian Stanley, a global church historian considers the variety of forms biblicism takes in global evangelicalism, particularly in context where oral tradition or hymn-singing are important.

While this is a selective treatment of biblicism in evangelical history as any such treatment must be, this festschrift offers rich food for thought. The two articles on early twentieth century evangelicalism remind me of the challenge of avoiding either polemical dogmatism or liberal latitudinarianism. It was fascinating to think about the formation of children, which seems less important in many circles, than even in my youth. More striking is how often evangelicals have appropriated scripture for political ends, from revolution to slavery to making America great. It makes sense to me of the advocacy of some Christians that we need a new revolution. It seems to me instead that we need a better reading of scripture, perhaps one shaped by the other aspects of Bebbington’s Quadrilateral–the centrality of Christ and his cross, the necessity of conversion (rarely talked about these days) and activism like that of Josephine Butler, fueled by the biblical text and the love of Christ.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends

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Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends (Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics #1), Carmen Joy Imes. Wichita, KS: TUMI Press, 2021.

Summary: A collection of readings for all the Psalms drawn from the writings of Augustine and other classic spiritual writers from Origen to Calvin.

This is the first of the Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics series to be released. The Sacred Roots Project, in cooperation with The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI) and inspired by the brief but effective ministry of Samuel Morris, a Taylor University student, believes “fresh readings of Christian spiritual classics can lead Christian leaders into a deeper engagement with the God revealed in Scripture and into deeper relationships with one another” (p. 331). The larger dream is to equip a million Christian workers to serve the global poor and this series is driven by the premise that “leaders are readers.”

The bulk of the book is taken up with reflections on each Psalm by Augustine or another classic spiritual writer, with Augustine in the predominance. Each of the reflections are 1-2 pages in length except for a few in verse that may be up to 3-4 pages. Readers are encouraged to read the Psalm in their Bible, then the reflection, and then re-read the Psalm The readings are organized into eight chapters for groups going through this together, which means two or three readings over the day, sometimes leaving one with “make up” days. At the end of each chapter, five discussion questions are offered that concern Habitat, Head, Heart, Hand, and Habits according to an explanation in the resource section.

The readings usually focus in on a verse or several verses from the Psalm. Augustine and Calvin, it seemed to me stayed closest to the text. Mary Sidney Herbert’s verses offered paraphrases of the text, often accompanied with notes on archaisms and what they mean. Others often began with the text and brought in other insights from scripture and the spiritual life. One theme developed in many of the readings is epitomized in John Calvin’s observation on Psalm 4: “David testifies that although he may lack all other good things, the fatherly love of God is sufficient to compensate for the loss of them all.” Throughout we are reminded that God’s most precious gift to us is the gift of God’s self. Caesarius of Arles reminds us from Psalm 41 that “Confession is the very beginning of restoration to health.” Reflecting on Psalm 55, Augustine proposes that “Perhaps the reason your heart is troubled is because you have forgotten him in whom you have believed.” And as the Psalms come to a close, Augustine urges us from Psalm 148 to “Praise with your whole selves: that is, do not let your tongue and your voice alone praise God, but your conscience also, your life, your deeds.”

Reading through the Psalms using this book reminded me of what a gift both the Psalms and the great figures of the church are to us. The Psalms remind us of what matters, God and his word and give us words when we have sinned, are in a great need, beset by enemies, discouraged personally or for our people, and for exultation in God. The saints in these pages testify from the Psalms to the truth of what is written. What a powerful combination.

The reader should not conclude without reading through the resource section which includes an afterword, and explanation of the purpose of this series and a variety of ways to do “Psalm work” and “Soul work including a wonderful chart on what Psalms to pray for particular purposes. Other sections give us brief biographies of Augustine and friends, place them on a timeline, show the Psalms each appear in, and provide for each Psalm, the source of the reading–many available for free online. Resources for further reading are offered as well.

My sense is that this book is well designed for the devotional and discipleship purposes for which it is intended with carefully curated readings, discussion questions for groups, and supporting resources. I might also mention that this may be a good resource for those who regularly read the Psalms as they follow a lectionary set of readings through the year (the one I follow, for example has morning and evening readings that go through the Psalms every two months). Saints through history have found that the Psalms give them language to express their longings for God and the turmoil in their souls. In this book, we get to accompany a number of them as we read the Psalms with them and each other.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Forty Days on Being a Five

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Forty Days on Being a Five, Morgan Harper Nichols (Suzanne Stabile series editor). Downers Grove: Formatio, 2021.

Summary: Forty short reflections with prayers and questions for those who are Enneagram Type Fives.

This is part of a collection of nine nicely bound books with forty reflections for each of the nine Enneagram types. Why am I reviewing the one for Fives? I could say random choice or because Five is halfway between One and Nine. But you’ve probably already figured out that it is because I am a Type Five, or as those into Enneagram would say, I’m a Five. We are variously described as the Investigator, the Thinker, the Observer. I actually think I am far more, but if the Type fits…

The introduction by series editor Suzanne Stabile encourages us to be generous with ourselves as we undergo change and transformation as we grow in self-understanding. Then Morgan Harper Nichols, a five begins with a chapter “On Being a Five.” I felt like she knew me when I read this description:

“The basic desire of the Five is to be capable and competent. We seek to understand and we fear being helpless. We are driven by a pursuit of knowledge that can at times, cause us to live in our heads. We find comfort in our safe places and reading nooks. We can spend a lot of our time thinking, compromising, and searching for insight” (p. 6).

The forty reflections that follow reflect an understanding of that desire and way of living. At different points, we are invited to notice and live in our bodies. We are invited to trust that we know enough and that God can meet us where we don’t. We’re invited to share our understanding rather than keep it to ourselves. We are encouraged to step away from being the removed observer all the time. We’re allowed to acknowledge our need to recharge and give up trying to control that and allow God to fill our cup.

Many of the reflections conclude with a prayer or a question or both. Space is allowed with the questions to jot down your own responses. One example of a question that recognizes how easily Fives compartmentalize life is “How have you compartmentalized your life? Are there ways you could zoom out and look at the whole?” A short prayer that spoke to me was this:

God,
Thank you for giving me this mind.
Thank you for the gift of wisdom.
Teach me today that to lean into your All-Knowingness
     more than I lean into my own understanding.
Give me strength to live with questions so that I
     may trust that in the space between what I have
     asked and your answer, there is abundant room
     to grow in faith.
Amen.

The reflections are short, between two and four pages. These easily may be read and reflected upon in fifteen minutes. Self-understanding and transformation are a journey of a lifetime. This little book covers just forty days of that–maybe 600 minutes. But the reflections can lead the five to trust that we are prepared enough, that we know enough, and that God is more than capable of meeting us in the gaps, and to step out on the dance floor rather than hug the wall.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Swimming to the Top of the Tide

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Swimming to the Top of The Tide, Patricia Hanlon. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2021.

Summary: A memoir of spending a year swimming the creeks and waters of the tidal estuary near her West Gloucester home, a portion of the Great Salt Marsh, and the critical role played in the Earth’s ecosystem by these places where land and water meet.

This book was a delightful surprise–a debut environmental book that holds its own with the works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. Like them, Hanlon brings to our attention a critical part of the Earth’s ecosystem through personal memoir. And she does this in a quiet but unusual fashion.

Hanlon and her husband Robert live north of Boston along a part of the New England coast known as the Great Salt Marsh. Beginning in July of 2008, they began swimming in the estuary and creeks near West Gloucester, where they were living at the time. What is interesting about this tidal basin is the flow of sea water in and out of the estuary and creeks with the tides, and their swims often followed these tides, floating up a creek when the tide was rising and the sea coming in, then reversing at “the top of the tide” and floating back down as the tide receded. They noticed the marsh grasses, uniquely designed to thrive when inundated by salt water, with dense, interwoven root systems that were like sponges, absorbing water and holding land. And they learned about the critical role this marsh grass plays in absorbing storm surges and providing habitat for marine and above ground species alike.

They decide to keep going, acquiring two different wet suits that enabled them to withstand the colder temperatures and they continued to swim through much of the winter, resuming in the spring, keeping a journal of their swims. The first half of the book is a kind of memoir of all these experiences, followed by reflections on this experience, including the importance of the Great Salt Marsh, environmental threats to this ecosystem, positive steps taken locally, and the longer view.

The writing at times gave this reader a sense of floating along with them, carried by the tide, taking in the meeting of sea, land, and sky.

“We were floating barely forward, watching the flecks of marsh grass and air bubbles on the water’s surface slow down and finally pause. All but the top foot or so of the marsh grass was flooded. The stillness pulsed with life sounds normally too faint to hear; the beating of birds’ wings, the drowsy hum of a jet, the slight tinnitus that has been with me as long as I can remember, a mind event that skates the edge between real and unreal” (p. 43).

One of the subthemes of this text is the quotidian beauty of a marriage that has grown, weathered, and flourished through many seasons. Hanlon not only describes their swims together (having a “buddy” is crucial for safety), but also their daily routines, their work spaces, helping each other suit up for a swim, a shared meal of mussels found on a swim. One of the delights of this book was to read a narrative of two people who had learned to live so companionably with each other. I found myself pausing over this parenthesis a few lines after the passage previously cited, after their bodies grazed each other:

“(A lot can be said about marriage, but fundamentally it has to do with two human bodies in close proximity over many years. From time to time as you’re borne along, you catch and hold a gaze, regarding each other from a foot away, twenty feet, an inch or less. Years ago, when we were courting, testing out the edges between friendship and romance, I could not hold the gaze for long. It was too soon. There was not enough “there” yet between us)” (p.43).

The beauty of this work is the integration of the ecology of a local household, a town, an estuary, the Great Salt Marsh, and the rest of the planet with its rising oceans and warming climate. The work gave me an appreciation for the tidal cycles that are such an ongoing part of life in this setting (and foreign to this landbound Midwesterner!). Most of all, it captures something all of us can begin doing–to become aware and attentive of our place–where our water comes from, where our sewage goes, the geology under our feet, the length of our growing season, the plants and creatures we share this space with, and where north is at any given moment. This work brings together observation, reflection, narrative, and science in a beautiful debut work.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: A Man Lay Dead

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A Man Lay Dead, (Roderick Alleyn #1), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2011 (originally published in 1934).

Summary: Sir Hubert Handesley hosts one of his famous weekend parties and Nigel Bathgate, a young reporter is invited to join his cousin Charles Rankin for the weekend’s entertainment, the Murder Game, which becomes serious when Rankin turns up the corpse–for real!

Charles Rankin, a man about town and his younger cousin Nigel Bathgate have been invited to one of Sir Hubert Handesley’s famous house parties. The are joined by Sir Handesley’s niece, Angela North, Arthur and Marjorie Wilde, Rosamund Grant, at one time enamored with Rankin and a Russian art expert, Foma Tokareff. The entertainment for the weekend is the Murder Game. Someone is given a card making them the murderer. They have so many hours to carry out the murder, whispering the words “You’re the corpse” in the ear of the victim. The murderer then bangs a gong, turns out the lights and blends in.

While the guests are dressing for dinner, in connecting rooms where they hear each other, they hear the gong and the lights go out. When they assemble, they discover the victim, Charles Rankin. In his back was a knife that had been under discussion the previous evening, a gift for services to Rankin. It had occasioned alarm among the Russians: the art expert and the Russian butler, Vassily. The knife evidences a sinister history with a “brotherhood” with which Vassily was connected, at least at one time. To possess this was to be accursed. Rankin laughs it off and makes out a “joke” will bequeathing the knife to Sir Handesley should Rankin die first. Sir Handesley had an avid interest in weaponry.

Enter Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, the first time we are introduced to him. He’s courteous, thorough, and has quickly ruled out Bathgate, who was witnessed by a maid in his room at the time of the murder. This sets him up to be Alleyn’s sounding board, the beginning of their friendship that runs through the books.. Things get more interesting when Vassily flees the scene. Was this a case where the butler really did it? At another point, Mr. Wilde comes forward but the facts don’t add up. It seems there is a house full of innocent people and yet a man who lay dead. Maybe an outsider really did it.

This being the first of the series, one can see how Ngaio Marsh caught on. The characters are fashionable and some are edgy, like Angela who has chemistry with Bathgate, and loves to drive excessively fast in her Bentley. There are enough red herrings both to interest and distract, and even a scene where Bathgate is deceived and subjected to torture! Marsh combines the leisure of a country house and the excitement of murders, fast cars, bits of this and that found about the premises and a climactic gathering of the suspects as they prepare to depart after the inquest. We turn to a book like this for both leisure and enough excitement to hold our interest and Marsh delivers this in her debut to the Alleyn series.

Review: Identity in Action

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Identity in Action, Perry L. Glanzer. Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2021.

Summary: Addresses the various different identities college students must negotiate and proposes a model of Christian excellence in these various identities.

College students must negotiate a variety of identities in their campus experience. Race, sexual orientation, and gender identity are the object of much public focus. But there are also a number of other identities one engages in everyday life that are no less real–academic work, friends and family, romantic relationships, one’s stewardship of time, talents and resources including one’s own body, and one’s civic identity. With all this, the question comes of how to juggle or prioritize these identities–all are important to who we are as persons.

One of the assertions the author makes is that colleges and universities offer little help in figuring this stuff out. For the author, Christ is central to this matter of identity, and this work assumes people who are Christ followers. He contends that Christ followers are new creations, restored from the sin and brokenness of human rebellion. He beautifully uses Fantine’s words to Cosette about her and her prostitute mother from Les Miserables: “She has the Lord. He is her Father….In his eyes you have never been anything but an innocent and beautiful woman.” But our identity is more than a “me and Jesus” thing. We are part of Christ’s body, and Glanzer considers this our most important human identity, and a place that forms us in loving virtue.

All of this lays the basis for what he advocates as “identity excellence” in our various roles. Subsequent chapters of the book work this out in our various identities with neighbors, our work as students, as friends, with enemies, as men or women, in romantic relationships, in stewarding our bodies and time, in the use of God’s gifts of money and possessions, in our race and ethnicity, and our loyalties to family and country. From work in collegiate ministry, I would agree that these are among the top student concerns.

The chapter on being a good neighbor helps ground other chapters on dealing with friends and enemies and focuses on how one may be excellent, regardless of the behavior of others. I did find it surprising that he would take on the matter of enemies. Yet this seems important because there is an idealism that denies the possibility of having enemies and leaves one ill-prepared when this arises. The counsel on stewardship, beginning with one’s body and his words about alcohol abuse on campuses and its connection with sexual assault is worth heeding.

I was more mixed in reading the chapters about “ladies” and “gentleman” and about romantic relationships. While I would affirm the emphasis on character and Christ-likeness, and challenging campus hook-up culture with chaste behavior toward one another and old-fashioned “dating,” I was concerned about the focus I saw on lingering gender stereotypes, for example “the strength, ambition, and character of men” versus “feminine beauty and the splendor of God’s glory.” This was more evident in the chapter on romance:

“A real man on campus must have the courage to be counter-cultural. He must use his strength wisely and pursue a woman with patience, self-control, and agape love. The true woman scandalously withholds her love for the man noble and faithful enough to win it. She must demonstrate confidence in God’s love to sustain her in the midst of the desire to be loved, and she must demonstrate patience and self-control as she develops a romantic friendship” (p. 140).

I’m thankful that the author calls for patience and self-control on the part of both. At the same time the man is described as one who “pursues” who has “strength” and “courage” while the woman “withholds” as she is being pursued, she needs to be sustained by God’s love in her “desire to be loved.” I think many women who have struggled with patriarchy in the church would be fearful that this counsel is setting them up for a patriarchal marriage.

I’m also surprised that these chapters seem to act as if LGBTQ+ students do not exist when approximately 20 percent of Harvard and Yale students identify as LGBTQ+ and 11 percent of students at Christian colleges identify as non-heterosexual. Needless to say, for the Christian student who does not identify as heterosexual or cisgender, the silence of this book speaks loudly. Granted, almost anything that might be said may be contentious, but some word for these students seems necessary in a book on identity.

There are a number of good things in the chapter on race. In particular, the author traces his own growing racial awareness, the way both the country and the church are implicated in race. He cites his own institution of Baylor as an example of systemic racism in its historic discrimination against black students. However in moving so quickly to the avoidance of bitterness, the practice of forgiveness, and holding up the example of a black man who joins and serves in a white church, I suspect many students of color will be put off. Where is there room for godly anger at four hundred years of oppression, where is the unqualified repentance by the white church for the ways we are implicated in that oppression, and where is the counter example of whites submitting to black leadership?

The work concludes with the question of how we deal with conflicting priorities between our identities. I appreciate that the author didn’t offer a formula but urged the pursuit of faithfulness to Christ, attention to his words, and being yielded to the leading of the Holy Spirit, in community with other Christians. While we would like a GPS or a formula, what Glanzer describes rings true with experience. There is much wisdom like this throughout this work, my critique of several chapters notwithstanding. It may save the student who wants to follow Christ much grief and position that student for great growth and delight in the person he or she is discovering themselves to be through the critical years of college.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Magician

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The Magician, Colm Tóibín. New York: Scribner, 2021.

Summary: A fictionalized biography of German writer Thomas Mann, his bourgeois beginnings, his lifelong homoeroticism, his rise as a writer, flight from Germany, ambivalence about denouncing Nazism, and alienation from his children.

Colm Tóibín has done this before. His 2004 The Master is a fictionalized portrayal of Henry James. Now he applies his narrative skills to the life of Thomas Mann. What he gives us, apart from Mann’s inner mental life, reads like a biography. It might almost be said this is fictional autobiography because Tóibín explores what it was to be Thomas Mann, as well as his impact upon those around him, siblings, wife, and children.

We begin with Mann’s boyhood in Lubeck, with a father who is both senator and businessman. Yet his sons Heinrich and Thomas both have literary dreams, as much as Thomas wants to please his father. He discovers upon his father’s early death that he has not inherited the business and begins to embark on a writerly career.

One of the early elements that runs through this story is Mann’s closeted homoeroticism. Apart from a couple of youthful encounters, the second of which may have propelled his proposal to Katia Pringsheim, Tóibín portrays this as consisting of admiring gazes and unconsummated attractions, confided to his diaries, which only came to light in 1975 (although the narrative describes Mann on tenterhooks as he tries to secure the safe shipping of the diaries out of Germany, when his haste to leave forced him to leave them behind at the house). Katia is portrayed in somewhat masculine terms in his thoughts, and they stay together, having six children. He agrees not to embarrass the family and she lives with his wayward glances, explaining at one point that having grown up with a father who was a philanderer, she wanted to marry someone who wouldn’t be.

Her support of his writing, shielding him in his study from the troubles of his children lead to singularly written works, winning him the Nobel in literature. Tóibín traces the inspiration of his works–a homoerotic attraction to a boy (Death in Venice), his and his wife’s experience at a mountaintop sanatorium (The Magic Mountain), and his own bourgeois family (Buddenbrooks). While he eventually gains global acclaim, he loses the respect, although never the loyalty, of his children. After the suicide death of Klaus, his eldest, troubled by what seems like manic depression exacerbated by substance abuse, his son Michael, having attended the funeral Thomas shunned, writes, “I am sure the world is grateful to you for the undivided attention you have given to your books, but we, your children, do not feel any gratitude to you, or indeed to our mother, who sat by your side.”

Another layer of this portrayal is Thomas’s struggle to believe that Germany would embrace Nazism. Unlike both his brother Heinrich and son Klaus, he was moderate in political views, a Social Democrat. Tóibín traces his slow progress (too slow for Klaus and eldest daughter Erika) in speaking against Nazism from his “Appeal to Reason” in 1930 to his BBC broadcasts beginning in 1939. He remained in publication in Germany much longer than many other anti-Nazi writers because of his guarded statements, both out of deference to his publisher, and out of concern for family still in Germany, which he had fled in 1933, first for Switzerland, then Czechoslovakia, and finally, along with Einstein to the U.S. He then used his stature to help secure the emigration of family and other close associates.

He lived first in Princeton, then in California, but even then found his speech constrained by Agnes Meyer, the wife of the publisher of the Washington Post and a conduit from Roosevelt, who made sure Mann’s speeches didn’t damage Roosevelt’s political efforts to marshal support for the war. Only in the post-war era where Mann cannot shed a Communist label, does he say what he truly thinks, moving back to Switzerland. Oddly, in these later years it is Erika, who shared Klaus’s views (and sometimes his lovers–it was an interesting brother-sister relationship), who handled her father’s affairs as he finally came closer to her outspokenness.

Tóibín portrays Mann in all his complexity–his brilliance as a writer, his rich interior life, and his measured courage. We marvel at a marriage, fraught with challenges, that works and of two people, Thomas and Katia who are fierce intellectual and emotional life partners. We ache with the pain of others who live around Mann, the two sisters and the son who commit suicide, the brother whose writing career is overshadowed, and the children hurt in different ways. One wonders if the closeted homoeroticism of Mann fueled his writing and whether it all would have been different today. Or what would have happened had Katia Pringsheim not consented to marry him?

I read a couple of Mann’s works twenty years or so ago. This portrayal and the connections between his books and his life make me want to return to them. I know I will read them with different eyes.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: An Introduction to Ecclesiology

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An Introduction to Ecclesiology, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: An introduction to different historical theologies of the church, contemporary theologies from throughout the world, the mission and practices of the church, and the church and other religious communities.

At one time, an introduction to ecclesiology would be complete with parts one and three of this work. It would be sufficient to discuss the historical theologies of the church from the major church traditions, and the liturgy, sacraments or ordinances of the church and the mission of the church from the West, from where these theologies arose, to the rest of the world. The changes, even from an earlier edition of this work, reflect the growth of indigenously led Christianity on every continent engaged in the theological task as well as the increasing awareness of Christianity’s intersection with, points of contact and difference with, and need to engage the other major religious communities of the world. These latter two form parts two and four of the present work.

Part one then discusses the major traditions of the church and what these have meant by confessing one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. A chapter each is devoted to six major traditions, featuring a representative theologian and a key theme. In order, they are:

  1. Eastern Orthodoxy, “The Church as an Icon of the Trinity” (John Zizioulos)
  2. Roman Catholic, “The Church as the People of God” (Hans Kung)
  3. Lutheran, “The Church Around the Word and Sacraments, Part One” (Wolfhart Pannenberg)
  4. Reformed, “The Church Around the Word and Sacraments, Part Two” (Jurgen Moltmann)
  5. Free Church, “The Church as Fellowship of Believers” (James William McClendon, Jr.)
  6. Pentecostal/Charismatic, “The Church in the Power of the Spirit” (no representative theologian)

It is surprising that no separate chapters address Anglicanism and its Wesleyan offshoots and that German theologians are representative of three of these traditions. Might not Herman Bavinck or Abraham Kuyper be more representative of the Reformed movement?

Part two turns to global theologies. Latin American theology turns to theologies of liberation and the idea of base communities. Africa has a long church history from early Christianity, to Catholic and colonial missions efforts , and the rise of the African Initiated Churches, the latter with a significant emphasis on the Spirit in the churches. The chapter on Asian ecclesiology was surprisingly short, focusing on “church-less” Christianity and Pentecostal and indigenous churches. Greater attention is given to global feminist ecclesiologies, particularly the confrontation of patriarchy, womanist black theology, and mujerista Latina theology. The North American church is treated as a mosaic of historic traditions, the Black church, immigrant communities and emergent churches.

Liturgy, order, and mission are the focus of part three. It traces a development of a multi-dimensional focus on mission shared by the whole church as a response to colonialism Subsequent chapters outline different understandings of ministry, liturgy and worship, and the sacraments or ordinances. The final chapter focuses on what the unity of the church can mean amid such diversity and various ecumenical efforts as well as the resistance to such. On this last, I would like to have seen more discussion of this in a global context as the predominance of the church has shifted from Europe and North America to the rest of the world.

The last part consider Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism with regard to community among these religions. Probably most significant for me are the connections of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as people of the book, as well as the Sangha communities of Buddhism. I felt this section somewhat cursory, addressed much better in texts on world or comparative religions. Still, to consider the counterparts to the communal nature of Christianity, and even what the individualistic West might learn from these counterparts is worthwhile.

This is an introductory text that doesn’t attempt to formulate a distinctive ecclesiology but rather survey how theologians have understood the nature of the church through history and around the world. It’s useful as part of a doctrine or theological survey course and points people to the contributions of key theologians in the field. It is written with clarity and concision, and if in some place, one may want more coverage, in no place will one want less.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.