Adam Shields

Summary: An exploration of what the bible and Jewish and Christian traditions says about hell, and salvation.

I was talking to someone recently and they asked for a recommendation of a book about Christian universalism. I did not have a good suggestion for them. I am a soft universalist. By that, I mean that I think that Christian universalism is real, that by Christ death and resurrection all will be saved, whether in this life or in the next. But I describe it as soft universalism because I think that this is a hope based on my understanding of the character of God more than “definitive” biblical or theological evidence. And I reject an “all paths are a way to heaven” type of universalism. So going into the book, I thought that what I know of Jersak, this would be a book that I largely agree with, but was looking for good theological and biblical thinking on the matter.

What I appreciate most about Jersak’s style is that he is very clear about the limits of what we can know. There is obviously speculation in a book about hell and the afterlife. But as Jersak walks through the bible and what we know about Jewish tradition that contributed to the Old Testament and the first century culture of the New Testament, he is careful about talkings about the limits of our understanding. This is a book that is filled with intellectual humility.

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Summary: A smuggler tries to save her city.

I really liked The Martian and Project Hail Mary. And I have heard a lot of negative things about Artemis. So even thought I bought it on audiobook at some point in time when it was on sale, I had not previously started it.

Artemis is different for Andy Weir and I am glad he tried something new. I didn’t like it as much as his other two books, but I also didn’t think it was as bad as its reputation. The protagonist is a 26 year old woman. Her father immigrated to the moon when she was six and she has grown up there. Her father is a devote muslim man, a welder, and for a variety of reasons, Jazz Bashara did not want to follow in the steps of her father.

I think Weir does have some problems writing a female protagonist. And he is writing a crook with a strong moral streak which is hard to do well. And the setting of the Artemis city on the moon, a small town with about 2000 permanent residents, but a lot of tourists, is also a hard setting to write well. Any small town has a problem being known as the local smuggler and I think Jazz is both smart and doesn’t seem to worry about that.

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Summary: Novella length magical realism where you are not supposed to know what is going on for quite a while. 

I read The Queen of Ebenezer about three years ago when it first came out. If you want a review without spoilers, I would read that original one. I have been trying to read more fiction this year, I wanted to revisit this one to see if I thought my daughter was ready for it and the publisher, Owl’s Nest, has been expanding their audiobooks. So I picked this up on sale a couple weeks ago and listened to it in two sittings.

The audiobook is well done. A clear narration with good production values that communicated the feel of the book exactly as it should be narrated.

And now to the spoilers.

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Summary: A man who has fooled himself into thinking he has it all together, comes to understand himself once his wife leaves him.

I like novels that are about something. But I also don’t like novels “about something.” It is easy to joke about books that are doing the classic after school special, “on a very special episode of…”

The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell is a fiction book, but one that is largely about spiritual formation and counseling. I don’t object to fiction books dealing with harder things like a marriage falling apart or a man coming to deal with the ways he had repressed his emotions. I do object to the speed of the healing.

I don’t think it is suprising that Intervarsity Press, which also has a series of fiction books on spirituial formation with a group of women has another book that is similar, but written from a male perspective. The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell is different, but I have a similar objection to both, in that a fictional book often wants a cleaner ending and faster resolution than what happens in real life.

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Summary: A children’s book written by James Baldwin and illustrated by his friend.

I very much appreciated the biography of James Baldwin that Nicholas Boggs recently wrote. Part of how Boggs came to write the biography was coming across the out of print Little Man, Little Man and discovering eventually that the illustrator was not dead as he had been told, but very much alive.

Over a couple years Boggs was able to get a new edition of the book into print and interview Yoran Cazac and those around him several times. It was original research on an aspect of Baldwin’s life which had largely not been explored.

Once I finished the biography, I picked up a copy of Little Man, Little Man. It was Baldwin’s only children’s book. And it was written in large part because his young nephew asked James Baldwin to write a book about him. This was a book about a young boy and his community in Harlem in the mid 1970s.

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Summary: Part biography, part intellectual history. 

I have a lot of theological disagreements with Tim Keller even as I respect him and think the evangelical world would be much better off if there were more people like him. That is not to start with outlining of my disagreements, but to frame my thoughts here as largely those of an admirer who strongly disagrees.

I think my main issue, both with the book and with Keller is summed up in this quote.

“By his 1975 graduation from Gordon-Conwell, most of Keller’s enduring theological commitments had been settled. He subscribed to the Westminster Standards and Presbyterian-Reformed theology. He advocated for penal substitution, classic covenant theology, amillennialism, and what would later come to be known as a “complementarian” view of gender roles in the home and church. He believed in a historic, specially created Adam and Eve, in an old earth, and in the reality of biological evolution. He aligned with the neo-Calvinist approach to culture that combined evangelism and social justice. He resisted tying the church to one political agenda. He wanted the church to approach homosexuality with pastoral care without compromising the biblical sexual ethic. He prayed for the kind of revival Edwards saw in his day. The popularity of these beliefs might wax and wane, both inside and outside the church. But Keller didn’t do anything more than tweak some of these views after 1975.” (p103)

For every aspect that I really appriciate about Keller, his focus on ecumenical activity and evangelism and his advocacy of justice and a robust understanding of culture, there are others that are not just sometime I find problematic, but heralded here. For example, just after a long exploration of Keller’s understanding of the relationship to preaching about grace and not turning the Old Testament into moralism, Hansen talks about Keller promoting Jay Adams and biblical counseling, which expressly is about moralism. Or in the sections about how Kathy Keller became convinced that women should not be in church leadership, it was largely because of the teaching of Elizabeth Elliot that Kathy changed her position from being in favor of the ordination of women to being opposed to the ordination of women. But it was because of the seminary teaching and missionary experience of Elliot that Kathy and then Timothy Keller changed their minds. (Experience they would not have had if they were at a school that was more complementarian.)

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Summary: A look at the early church’s view of wealth.

I would not have picked this up except it was part of a book group. I was not completely new to the topic. I have read Peter Brown’s book on the early church’s view of wealth. And I have read a bit of the early church fathers and general Christian histories and was broadly aware of the early church’s teaching against wealth.

The oversimplification of the early church’s teaching was that if you had wealth, it was for the purpose of caring for others. So if you hoarded wealth, then it was a misuse of wealth, and therefore sin.

The main task of the book is to document that not only hoarded wealth, but many of the aspects of our modern capitalistic system were viewed as either sin or at least it was viewed skeptically by the early church. I think broadly that point is well made. Although it is a bit repetitive because it uses the same or similar quote multiple times to make slightly different points.

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Summary: A significant biography of James Baldwin.

There have been several biographies of James Baldwin. David Leemings’ biography is well worth reading, but Leeming was close to Baldwin, working at times as his secretary, travel companion and corespondent. That type of closeness has a benefit to a biographer, but it also has some weaknesses. I tend to think that we get a lot from biographies written by people close to the subject, but we also need a good biography from someone that isn’t personally close to the subject.

Nicholas Boggs is fulfilling that role for Baldwin. Leeming’s biography came out in 1995, but since that time there has not been a full biography of James Baldwin. Boggs main focus is connecting Baldwin’s writing to his life and his life to his writing. And at the same time showing how the fiction informed the non-fiction and how the non-fiction informed the fiction. Lemming discussed the writing as well, you can’t be a biographer of an author like Baldwin without discussing the writing, but I think Boggs made the writing a more central feature of the biography.

It is at the end of the book, one of the main contributions of this biography is a long exploration of Baldwin’s relationship with Yoran Cazac, a french painter that he originally met in Baldwin’s early days in Paris, but with whom they reconnected in the last 1960s. Baldwin had a “type”. He seemed to be attracted to men who were primarily attracted to women but still related well to him. There was a pattern with Lucien Happersberger, Engin Cezzar, David Leeming and Yoran Cazac and others. These men may not have had sexual relationships with Baldwin, but they were relationally intimate. Boggs suggests that Yoran Cazac was the last significant relationship that Baldwin had. Cazac was likely originally introduced to Baldwin through Baldwin’s mentor Beauford Delaney. And it is also likely that it was through Delaney that they became reacquainted.

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Summary: Funny, sort of scifi novel, set during the covid pandemic.

I first read John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars and then read a number of his other books over a couple of years. Then I moved on and I didn’t pick up a Scalzi novel for about six years or so. Last year there was a 2 for 1 sale and I saw one book I wanted and Scalzi’s Starter Villain was essentially free. And a year later I actually picked up Starter Villain on a whim and remembered why I like Scalzi.

He is funny. He takes ideas that have been well done and then gives it a new spin that both stands alone as a story, but also is even better if you know the original. Redshirts was told from the perspective of the crew where the crew knew something was going on and if they went on an away mission they would probably die. Fuzzy Nation  is a spin on Henry Beam Piper’s 1962 Little Fuzzy. Old Man’s War is inspired by Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. There are a number of other books that are original, but it is often the “inspired by” book that are the most funny. And while I like the more serious scifi, I tend to use Scalzi’s funny novels to help break me out of reading slumps.

Kaiju Preservation Society is a covid novel. Jamie Gray left his English PhD program to work in communications for a start up. He gets fired, unfairly, just before covid hits NYC and he spends months working as a food delivery person before being offered a job by someone he knew from his grad program. Jamie is desperate for a job, his friend Tom is desperate to get someone at the last minute because he is leaving on a project and one of his team members has covid.

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