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Review: A Simply Healthy Life

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Cover image of "A Simply Healthy Life" by Caroline Fausel

A Simply Healthy Life, Caroline Fausel. Tyndale Refresh (ISBN: 9781496486905) 2025.

Summary: A guide to health focusing on our bodies, our homes, our relationships, and our spirituality.

Caroline Fausel was often sick as a child. As an adult, she figured out that food, for her, had been a big part of the problem, and could be the cure as well. This led to her becoming a certified health and wellness coach. One of her core convictions is that health begins with intentional choices. Either we choose or life chooses for us. Also, health is holistic, how we care for our bodies, our environment, beginning with our homes, our relationships, and our faith our spirituality. This book collects and distills the information and experiences collected from her coaching work.

Before getting into the four areas of health, she begins with a chapter on the power of habit. She offers tips for forming habits including starting small, and one thing I’ve not heard of before, habit-stacking, in which we add a habit to one already established, like focusing on something for which we are grateful whenever we wash our hands. She also addresses bad habits, inviting us to consider how we feel when we engage in a negative behavior and identifying a positive behavior to swap in when we feel that way. Gradually, as we cultivate good habits and stack them upon each other, Fausel suggests we might frame these as a “rule of life,” one of the most constructive ways I’ve seen for developing a rule.

She then turns to care for our bodies. Fausel looks at what makes food healthy or unhealthy. She is realistic in recognizing that we cannot easily eliminate all unhealthy foods and suggests thinking in terms of “all the time” and “sometimes” foods. In general, the less processing and additives the better, and she gives a number of specific suggestions (as well as recipes in the back!). One suggestion I would question is her commendation of raw milk, given the current bird flu epidemic and the health risks associated with raw milk consumption. However, this chapter is chock full of good ideas, particularly in reducing the amount of sugars and additives in our diets.

She moves on to exercise, making suggestions for the important triad of cardio, strength training, and stretching. And moving hard, as she puts it, helps us sleep hard. She offers helpful suggestions for sleep hygiene. Finally, in a chapter on optimal functioning, she addresses hydration, skin care, and our need for fiber. Hydration, fiber, and even sweating are important components of our body’s detoxification systems.

Fausel also believes our environment is important to health. She addresses the indoor air quality in our homes and how cleaners, VOCs, and plastics affect us, and suggests safe cleaning practices. Fausel also believes healthy homes are uncluttered and she offers helps for purging, room by room. Not only this, but she addresses the root of clutter in our consumerism and commends generosity as an alternative. Finally, she addresses the environmental implications of our home lives–transportation, the products we buy, and our energy use, and even composting as a way to lower our carbon footprint.

Our emotional and relational health is another piece of a healthy life. Fausel begins with practices for cultivating mental resilience and reducing stress. Good emotional health is also tied to good friendships. The author offers tips for building and prioritizing friendships as well as for knowing when to end a friendship. Lastly, in this section, is a discussion of building harmonious family relationships, including the time of intentional time together as a whole family, and with each child.

The last section of the book concerns healthy spirituality. While Fausel is openly Christiian, the material on sabbath and finding your purpose is widely applicable. She encourages the practice of setting aside one 24 hour period a week to rest and stop working and offers suggestions for how this can be a lifegiving practice. Finally, citing longevity studies, she advocates for having a clear sense of one’s purpose. She suggests journaling several questions:

  • What do you love?
  • What did you enjoy as a child?
  • What makes you angry about the world?
  • What are you good at?
  • What are the pain points in your life?

The challenge of this book is that it offers so many ideas about healthy living. But the author helps us in several ways. Each chapter concludes with three levels of challenges: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The foundation of habits and starting small is important. The author helps us take “baby steps” to a healthier life while offering us the big picture. This is a book to be lived with. With the turn of the year, this might be a good resource to acquire to sustain healthy living in 2025.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Way of Christ in Culture

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Cover image of "The Way of Christ in Culture" by Benjamin T. Quinn and Dennis T. Greeson

The Way of Christ in Culture, Benjamin T. Quinn & Dennis T. Greeson. B & H Academic (ISBN: 9781087775111) 2024.

Summary: How those walking in the way of Jesus might live faithfully in all aspects of our cultural life.

It is not uncommon to hear Christians speak of Jesus as the Lord of all of life. But what does that mean? How does the biblical story intersect with all the ways we live life everyday? That is the question addressed in this book.

The authors begin by articulating the way of Christ in the biblical story. Then they ask the question of what is culture? Their simple definition is that “culture consists of the ways and products of creatures in creation.” This reflects an approach that sees culture as an expression of our God-created creaturely existence. Culture exists because God created humans in his image. But since the fall, culture can go either with or against God’s ways.

What was once a single story became divergent stories. Thus the question is how to relate to ways and products that do not always correspond to the way of Christ. The authors consider the classic typologies of how Christians have approached culture. After assessing various typologies, they draw upon Herman Bavinck to articulate a “Grace Infuses and Restores Nature.” approach. This means God is already at work in the world impelling Christians to join him in his restorative work.

In “Creator and Creatures,” the authors elaborate a theology of how we relate to the Creator. This means considering both who God is and who we are as God’s imagers. They conclude, “our purpose, our vocation, is to walk wisely in the world, at all times and in all places.” The following chapter considers the idea in scripture of walking in wisdom, concluding with loving obedience to Christ in community with his people.

The final two chapters offer practical questions to offer a framework of how we engage with our culture. They propose three questions that help us “triangulate.” First, we ask “When are we?”, understanding how we live between the times. Second, we ask “Where are we?”, discerning what is true, good and desirable. Third, we ask, “How do we get there?”, discerning how we walk and who we can follow. In particular, they offer examples of several figures who have engaged culture.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this book is the approach to culture. Specifically, grace infusing and restoring nature means God is at work in culture as well as in the Christian. He can guide us in the way of Christ, the way of wisdom. This book is the first in a “Christ in Everything” series, offering a solid and concise foundation for those that follow.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Why I Am Roman Catholic

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Cover image of "Why I Am Roman Catholic" by Matthew Levering

Why I Am Catholic, Matthew Levering. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514003145) 2024.

Summary: A Catholic theologian explains why he is Christian and Catholic and what it means to embrace this tradition.

At a time when many people are fleeing any organized religious tradition, theologian Matthew Levering unabashedly asserts “I love being Catholic”. In this book Levering explains how he came to faith and why he entered the Catholic Church. He describes the book as “an unfinished meditation on my Catholic life.” Throughout he weaves in his reading of Catholic saints and theologians with his own experience.

He begins by explaining how he came to Christian faith. For him, it was his sense of his own frailty and the reality of death that prompted his search. He was drawn by the cross of Christ, aware that he desperately needed it. Third, he was drawn by the awesomeness of the Triune God, a theme running through the book. Fourthly, the coherence and harmony of the two testaments was convincing.

He read himself into the Catholic Church, devouring works of John Paul II, von Balthasar, and Ratzinger. The unifying authority of the Petrine office drew him, Mary as Mother of the Lord Incarnate who intercedes, the beauty of the Eucharist, and Catholic teaching on marriage. The Church’s teaching on marriage is also one of the things he considers most beneficial as a context to nurture love and teach us the self-giving of Christ. In addition, he finds the Church’s teaching on humility and the providence of God beneficial.

However, being Catholic is not without its difficulties, which Levering admits with candor. He would be on the side of those troubled by accommodations to the secular world post-Vatican II. Yet he is even harder on himself, and the temptations to worldliness with which he struggles. Likewise, he finds the scandals of clerical sexual abuse disheartening. He forthrightly advocate support for victims, transparency, and believes turning to Christ’s saving power can bring real holiness out of the ruins.

While Levering warmly embraces Catholicism, he also speaks warmly of his ecumenical relationships. He acknowledges the polemics of the past. Likewise, he remains firm in his conviction that the Catholic Church is the one church founded by Christ. Thus, he opposes any ecumenism seeking to restore a lost unity. Rather, he sees ecumenism as an exchange of gifts, a means to foster warm relationships, and as a way to anticipate the unity of the church in the eschaton.

Finally, he concludes the book by offering an example of Catholic theological exegesis. He focuses on Genesis 1:1-3, weaving in all of scripture and drawing on theologians from Athanasius to his contemporaries. He concludes personally, speaking about how it is this God who has shown his light into Levering’s heart.

I spent one of the most remarkable hours of my life several years ago in an interview with Matthew Levering. I have rarely met someone who combined such theological learning with such passionate love for the Triune God. As he spoke of his faith, I was in awe and wonder, not of Levering, but of the Triune God of whom he spoke. And this is what I encountered afresh in this book. He did not persuade me to become Roman Catholic. But he clearly bore witness to how the Catholic Church is the place where he has encountered the living God, enriching all of his life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Pillars of Creation

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Cover image of "Pillars of Creation" by Richard Panek.

Pillars of Creation, Richard Panek. Little, Brown and Company (ISBN: 9780316570695) 2024.

Summary: The development of the James Webb Telescope and what scientists have discovered about the cosmos in its first years.

Perhaps it is fitting that this review posts on Christmas Day.  Heavenly events feature in the accounts of the birth of Christ. For millenia, human beings have been peering into the night skies, trying to understand our place in the cosmos. When telescopes extended what we could see, we saw further and more detail, beginning with Galileo’s instruments. Large earth based reflector telescopes saw further.  The Hubble, and now the James Webb telescopes see further yet. Each generation of telescopes have extended and expanded the horizons of our knowledge of the cosmos. Each has allowed us to see further back in time toward the beginning of everything. And each has revealed new details of the composition and physics of both near and distant objects.

In Pillars of Creation (a reference to one of the most spectacular images created by both the Hubble and Webb telescopes, a region that is a “star factory”), Richard Panek traces this history of our observational studies of the cosmos. He describes the twenty-five year process, beginning shortly after the Hubble launched, to plan for the next telescope. And it was decided that this would not only see deeper into the past, but to see spectra of light in the infrared region not previously observed. But this posed a tremendous engineering problem that involved separating the array that gathered sunlight to power the platform from instruments that needed to operate at close to absolute zero. Panek offers an account that gives one appreciation of the talent of scientists and engineers that built the Webb and planned its deployment–all of which worked!

On July 12, 2022, the Webb officially went into “science mode.” What Panek offers us is a preliminary report of what scientists have already discovered in the first two years. The most frequent comment of the scientists themselves seems to be “Wow.” Panek recounts some of the “wows” in terms of four horizons.

First Horizon: Close to Home: For Heidi Hammel, who first detected a ring around Neptune in Voyager’s 1989 flyby, it was an image of that ring captured thirty years later by the Webb. But the big deal was spectroscopy that could detect water within the solar system, including a giant plume being emitted by a moon of Saturn affecting the atmosphere of Saturn itself.

Second Horizon: Close to Homes. The Webb allows spectrographic observation of exoplanets outside our solar system. One of the most intriguing was the detection of possible evidence of dimethyl sulfide, a molecule that is a biomarker of life (at least on Earth). This was on K2-18 b, a planet 124 light years from earth. The search is for water on planets within habitable zones of stars. But Webb also explores the question of how, from the formation of stars onward, it got there.

Third Horizon: Across the Universe. One of the enigmas in cosmology is how much dust there is in the universe. Panek describes how a team of scientists studying the dust ejected by a supernova were detecting huge amounts. Some of the team didn’t believe it–an interesting study in the relentless pursuit of accuracy. After more data, comparisons with other supernovae, and more analysis, these scientist agreed–and found themselves closer to an explanation of all that dust.

Final Horizon: In the Beginning. Rebecca Larson was studying data looking far back in the universe and thought she detected spectra lines amid the ‘noise” of early elements where they should be on the electromagnetic spectrum. As others reviewed the data, it became increasingly clear that she had discovered the most distant object ever observed, from when the universe was 400 to 500 million years old.

And these are but beginnings. Scientists are sifting through mountains of data. Each new discovery brings with it new questions and more to investigate. And the Epilogue tantalizes us with discussions of the next telescope. How close to the beginning of the cosmos will it get us? And how much more will we learn about everything in between? What Panek does with both text and illustrations is to translate for the public what an amazing time it is for those who work in astrophysics. Wow.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Maigret and the Wine Merchant

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Cover image of "Maigret and the Wine Merchant" by Georges Simenon.

Maigret and the Wine Merchant (Inspector Maigret Number 71), Georges Simenon (Translated by Ros Scwartz). Penguin (ISBN: 9780241304280), 2020 (First published in 1970).

Summary: Maigret investigates the murder of a wealthy wine merchant, a womanizer and a ruthless employer.

Theo Stiernat is something of a pathetic young man. He bludgeoned his grandmother to death for a few francs. He “didn’t mean to do it” yet savagely beat her. While Maigret interrogates him Oscar Chabut, a wealthy wine merchant, also meets his death, gunned down in front of a high class brothel. Maigret knows the place, the Rue Fortuny and Madame Blanche, its proprietor.

He questions her and Chabut’s secretary, the latest of many lovers. Chabut was a notorious womanizer. Jeanne Chabut, his wife knows all about it. More than that, she furnishes Maigret with a list of all his known lovers. Many were married and it seems Chabut delighted in humiliating the husbands. No one is broken up over his death. But it is not clear who hated him enough to kill him.

All through the investigation, Maigret is down with the flu, frustrating his wife who cooks him magnificent meals, while trying to keep him in his bed.

Then the calls start coming. And the caller knows his whereabouts, but eludes attempts to capture him. Could this be the murderer? Maigret thinks so–in this case a troubled soul who wants to tell his story but has to be sure someone will listen without roughing him up. And so Maigret waits for the murderer to come to him.

There’s an interesting insight in this tightly written plot. The murderers are figures worth listening to and pitiable. But so are their victims, whether an old grandmother or a rich wine merchant. And it is this that drives Maigret, even when the victim is a wealthy man whose death no one mourned. He was a human being.

Review: Good Book

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Cover image of "Good Book" by Jill Hicks-Eaton.

Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves, Jill Hicks-Eaton. Fortress Press (ISBN: 9781506485850) 2023.

Summary: An argument that evangelicals try to explain away the misogyny and patriarchy that the author finds inherent in the biblical text.

Jill Hicks-Eaton subtitles this book “How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves.” In the interest of full disclosure, I am probably one of those “white evangelicals” the author has in mind. I’m a cisgender, white male, college and seminary educated, and a recently retired collegiate ministry whose career was spent working for a major evangelical campus ministry. I signed yearly, and still agree with, a statement that affirmed the ‘inspiration, authority, and trustworthiness” of the Bible. But I’ve also been sent a copy of the book for review and want to do due diligence with that obligation.

The author writes:

“The goodness of the Good Book is not a given.

The Bible’s goodness is also not an illusion. Better, its goodness is a construct. The Bible’s benevolence, like the Bible itself, is made and remade.”

Her contention is that evangelicals engage in a project to construct what is not a given, a Good Book out of a collection of texts that describe unspeakable violence, sometimes sanctioned by God, as well as misogyny and patriarchy. The latter is not merely described but prescribed. Furthermore, Hicks-Eaton contends that misogyny and patriarchy is evident in the lives and teaching of two major figures of Christianity: Jesus and Paul. But she not only makes this case, which others have made, but that evangelicals have made a concerted, and in her mind, a failed attempt, to distance themselves from these invidious realities. She engages the attempts to “make the Bible good” of apologist Paul Copan, pastor Dan Kimball, theologian Scot McKnight, and historian Beth Allison Barr among others.

She argues that this effort, which she also calls “the Bible benevolence project,” is insidious in upholding structures of misogyny and patriarchy within evangelicalism, either refusing to see the structurally embedded character of these, or justifying them. And women are hurt by this effort to make the Bible “good.”

First of all, her critique is not without warrant. Christians have often glossed over the hard passages. I’ve argued that Christian book banners ought to be careful because the Bible contains accounts of violence, including sexual violence that makes some of the books they want to ban look tame by comparison. I’ve also seen people use the Bible to defend slavery, patriarchy, racial injustice, environmental exploitation, conquest of indigenous peoples, and more. It does beg the question of how a book that can be used to support such things is “good.” With regard to women, I’ve not only seen gifts denied but women endangered and abused.

She raises an important question. The world is a place of violence, misogyny, and patriarchy. It was over the centuries that the Bible was composed. It is now. Is the Bible, as well as our attempts to interpret it, inescapably tainted by these persistent evils? And if it is, wouldn’t we do better to stop trying to justify it as “good”?

This review is not the place to address these questions. Unfortunately, there are problems with this book that make it an inadequate attempt to address these matters as well.

First, while the author would have us believe she is engaging in a fresh reading of the texts, unencumbered by “Bible benevolence,” I found her treatment of texts guilty of eisegesis that would be flagged in any seminary class. One example is her reading of Mark 5 and the story of the woman with the flow of blood. She’s dismissive of interpreters who note Jesus anti-patriarchal actions. He makes a male synagogue leader wait while listening to the woman’s twelve year affliction, he speaks tenderly to her as “daughter” and pronounces her healed. Had she been allowed to slip away, she may have doubted whether something had really happened to heal her. But the author reads all this through a patriarchal lens. No hermeneutic is neutral, but the question I would pose, is our hermeneutic generous or suspicious?

Second, I found her selective in who she chose to engage with, often choosing more popular authors but not addressing the extensive scholarship on the many texts she deals with. On the question of biblical violence, she cites popular apologist Paul Copan, ignoring serious scholars like Peter Craigie and Daniel Hawk who have addressed these questions. This is not a scholarly work, although written by a university professor.

Third, I felt she engaged in a form of chronological snobbery that looked judgmentally on figures like Paul, planting churches in a culturally hostile context. She doesn’t reckon with someone who was nearly murdered several times. Simply believing that Jesus, and not Caesar, was king was radical enough. Paul’s household instructions can be argued to subvert, if not overturn patriarchy. But nothing less than a frontal assault on patriarchy seems sufficient for the author, even though it would have spelled the death of the nascent movement. And Hicks-Eaton doesn’t even consider the popularity of Christianity among women and slaves in the early centuries that may say more about its real character.

Lastly, the author only offers what I would propose is a “hermeneutic of suspicion” in her treatment of the biblical text. She says nothing about how churches, evangelical or otherwise, ought use scripture. From what I can tell, she has engaged in a journey out of Southern evangelicalism. I find myself wondering what she has replaced this with in her own life. Or is this a deconstruction still in process? She mentions “what kinds of reading are promising for tackling the hard parts of the bible without rejecting or dismissing it entirely.” But I did not find that in this book–perhaps the next one!

I’ve been more critical than I usually am in reviews because I had hoped for a better book. The author asks important questions and offers an important critique of at least some of the efforts to try to make the Bible a “good book.” But I would have liked better textual analysis, better scholarly engagement, and constructive proposals for those who do care about the Bible.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Speakeasy for review.

Review: Eight Million Exiles

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Cover image of "Eight Million Exiles" by Christopher M. Hays

Eight Million Exiles, Christopher M. Hayes (foreword by Robert Chao Romero). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802882394) 2024.

Summary: How theologians, researchers, and local church leaders teamed up to support Columbia’s internally displaced persons.

Eight Million Exiles. That is how many people have fled from one part of Columbia to another as a result of violence throughout the land. They’ve lost loved ones, been assaulted, given up homes, possessions, and assets, and separated from families and communities.

In 2014, Christopher Hayes, who had recently joined the faculty of the Biblical Seminary of Columbia, accepted an invitation to participate in a Faith and Displacement Project, convened by Milton Acosta, and advised by sociologist Laura Cadavid. Acosta eventually recruited disciplinary specialists in a number of fields as well as pastors and other church leaders to join the effort. That effort was to empower and equip local congregations to support internally displaced persons (IDPs) as they sought to rebuild their lives.

They were committed to three core values, rigorous application of the social sciences, strong biblical foundations, and learning through and from experience. This book describes their process, and the results in mobilizing congregations to support IDPs. They began by identifying their approach, Missional Action Research. Through this approach, a variant on Participant Action Research, they combined research rigor with “getting off the balcony.” This approach emphasized learning through action, learning cycles, and returning knowledge to the community. In addition, they form interdisciplinary teams of theologians and disciplinary specialists. These included economists, sociologists, psychologists, teaching specialists, those skilled in public sector work, and missiologists.

The curriculum they developed focused on four areas: trauma informed mental health care, mobilizing unrecognized skills and resources in the community, empowering people to launch microenterprises, and support with spiritual and pastoral care. Then they identified six test sites at which to implement the curriculum.

They found the curriculum was generally well received. Specifically, the inventory that helped churches identify the gifts and resources in their community was incredibly affirming–when the didn’t skip this step. They found the inventory, at twenty pages, was daunting.

The cyclical process incorporated all the feedback and welcomed criticism, a key to building ownership. Discussions of scaling up the Faith and Displacement Project intersected with the COVID pandemic. This created the unexpected opportunity to create an online diploma version of the curriculum, extending the training to more congregations in more locations.

Vignettes after each chapter underscore the impact of the project, softening the research report character of the book. I also appreciated the combination of academic rigor and biblical reflection by the author. The candor with which he admits shortcomings and the realization that the perfect is the enemy of the good is refreshing. Equally, while not perfect in implementation, the determination to integrate theology and disciplinary praxis, and researchers and laity offers a model of what needs to occur in any development effort. Finally, whereas many efforts reflect a “Ready, Fire, Aim!” approach, the rigor and thoroughness, the impact evaluation and revision contributed to the effectiveness of this project.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Thunder Bay

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Cover image for "Thunder Bay" by William Kent Krueger

Thunder Bay (Cork O’Connor Number 7), William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781439157824) 2009

Summary: A search for Henry Meloux’s son leads to an attempt on Meloux’s life and a love story from the 1920’s.

This is a novel where Cork O’Connor learns things about people close to him that he had not known before. For one, that his studious, college-bound daughter, Jenny, is pregnant. And he learns that his wise advisor, Henry Meloux, has a son.

The latter revelation comes to light when Henry suddenly is afflicted with a heart condition, threatening his life. But the doctors can’t find a problem. When he tells Cork about his son and wanting to find him and Cork agrees to search, he suddenly gets better. Cork tracks him down to Thunder Bay, Canada, and tries to see him, using a watch with a picture of his son’s mother Henry gave him, as an entree.

There’s a problem. Henry’s son is a hermit, living on an island. But Cork makes a convincing case to be seen with his half-brother who had taken over the profitable mining business Henry’s son had formerly presided over. He gets the meeting, but not without a dustup with Hank’s bodyguard, Morrissey. And Henry’s son does not want to see his father.

Cork returns and assumes its all over and turns to deal with Jenny’s situation together with Jo. Until, that is, someone makes an attempt on Henry’s life, which costs the assailant his life. The assailant was Morrissey.

Why would someone try to kill Henry for wanting to see his long lost son? Cork, although no longer sheriff, wants to understand. He assumes Henry is still in danger. So Henry tells him the story, one that runs for 85 pages of the novel. As a young man, Henry had agreed to serve as a guide for a couple of prospectors, one of whom brought along his beautiful daughter. They fall in love beside a scenic lake in the north woods in Canada. They meet a Black man, Maurice, living in the woods who they befriend. He has a huge stash of gold, what the prospectors were seeking.

Sadly, the love affair between Henry and the girl is discovered. In a confrontation with her father, the father is fatally hurt. Things end badly, with Henry wounded and Maurice dead. Somehow, Henry survives and walks out of the wilderness, discovering his calling as a spiritual guide. The girl, Maria is pregnant, and marries the surviving prospector, Wellington, naming her son Henry. She dies a few years later and Wellington remarries and has another son, the half-brother running the company.

Despite the threat on his life, Henry wants to go to his son. Cork agrees and they take retired sheriff, Wally Schanno with them as backup. They discover the “hermit” is a front and locate where the real Henry is living. But murder pursues as well. Why the attempt to kill an old man? And will Henry see his son?

Obviously, the big feature of this novel is the development of the Meloux character, with an explanation of how he became a mide. And we also learn how Stevie gets a dog and what happens to Jenny. In it all, Krueger portrays the bittersweetness of life — of love and wonder and violence and loss — and that we must hold onto the former to sustain us when facing the latter.

Review: The China Governess

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Cover image of "The China Governess" by Margery Allingham

The China Governess (Albert Campion Number 17), Margery Allingham. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504087247) 2023 (First published in 1962).

Summary: An engaged orphan adopted by the Kinnits hires Campion to find his roots, stirring up a crime spree and a family secret.

Tim Kinnit is engaged to marry Julia, the daughter of a wealthy tycoon. There is one problem. Tim is a war orphan, rescued from a district of “ill repute,” the Turk Street Mile, during the war and adopted by the Kinnits, another well-to-do family. The worry is that there may be some mental defect in his background, whatever it is. He recruits Albert to investigate.

All of a sudden, a crime spree arises on Turk Street, now renovated. An apartment is ransacked and someone commits arson. Meanwhile, Campion’s investigations uncover a skeleton in the Kinnits’ closet. Thyrza Caleb was a governess to the family in the nineteenth century, accused of murder, and who reputedly took her own life.

Campion and inspector Luke try to figure out how the crimes on Turk Street are connected to Tim’s paternity, And what further danger does the criminal pose? Amid all the puzzlement, one thing is sure. Tim’s childhood nanny, Nanny Broome, believes in him and that he’ll make a good husband to Julia.

Allingham has always had complicated plots, but I found this one particularly hard to follow. The “China Governess” part of the plot seemed extraneous. And Campion, once eccentric, seems muted and uninteresting, in contrast to Lugg and Luke who seem to grow more interesting as the stories go on.

Review: Answering the Psalmist’s Perplexity

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Cover image of "Answering the Psalmist's Perplexity" by James Hely Hutchinson

Answering the Psalmist’s Perplexity (New Studies in Biblical Theology Number 62), James Hely Hutchinson. IVP Academic/Apollos (ISBN: 9781514008867) 2024 (Apollos-IVP UK website).

Summary: How would God fulfill the promise of an everlasting Davidic throne when the kingship had ended in exile?

Psalm 89 poses an agonizing question. God had promised (Psalm 89:3-4):

You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one,
    I have sworn to David my servant,
‘I will establish your line forever
    and make your throne firm through all generations.

Yet with the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the line of kings had ended and the throne had fallen (Psalm 89:38-39):

But you have rejected, you have spurned,
    you have been very angry with your anointed one.
You have renounced the covenant with your servant
    and have defiled his crown in the dust.

And so the psalmist asks (v. 46):

How long, Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?
    How long will your wrath burn like fire?

This is the psalmist’s perplexity alluded to in the title of this work. How would God keep his covenant, when by exile it appeared null and void? The question is one set against the backdrop of prior covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and at Sinai. And there is the question of whether and how these covenants find fulfillment in the new covenant.

James Hely Hutchinson believes the Psalms have much to contribute to our understanding of a question that spans the whole of scripture. After laying out his approach, Hutchinson reviews the spectrum of covenant-relationships. This spans a continuum of seven positions from Westminster covenantalism to classic dispensationalism.

Then over three chapters, he elaborates how the Psalms reflect the covenant relationships. Chapter three covers Psalms 1-89, setting the stage for the perplexing conclusion of book three of the psalms in Psalm 89. He begins with Psalm 2, key, he believes, in setting a new covenant agenda. Chapter 4 then shows how Book four of the Psalms (90-106) provides building blocks to answer that complexity, particularly in envisioning the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant closely tied to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Chapter five shows how Book five (Psalms 107-150) reflects the outworking of the answer in the convergence of all the covenants and their fulfillment in the new covenant.

Hutchinson proceeds to consider the import of the law for the new-covenant believer. He argues for continuity without seeing the new covenant as a renewal of the Sinaitic legislation. From here he proceeds to summarize his argument and how the covenant relationships answer the Psalmist’s perplexity. He summarizes his argument in twenty-eight statements and evaluates the seven models from Chapter 2, concluding that progressive covenantalism most closely corresponds to his study of the Psalms. Five appendices expand on particular details in his study.

There were several aspects of the work I especially appreciated. One was looking at the Psalms through the ‘hinge point” of the question in Psalm 89. His discussion suggestion a structure to the psalter I had not previously seen. And his discussions of the transitions between books three, four, and five were especially interesting.

At the same time, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. spoke of “the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” In this case, I felt Hutchinson never got to a “simplicity on the other side of perplexity.” His discussion proceeds from one intertextual discussion to the next. The fact that he needed to summarize his argument in 28 statements that he distills into two abstractions (eschatological satisfaction and transcendent inauguration) suggests to me that he never quite got there. I suspect that all but the most acute readers will find the argument in this book difficult to track.

That’s unfortunate, because the big idea of new covenant fulfillment of the prior covenants offers so much in helping the reader of scripture grasp the big story. In this case, I felt we spent so much time looking at all the trees that it was difficult to glimpse the overstory of the whole forest. I hope this author will keep working on unpacking that story.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.