Adam Shields

With the new Kindle Lending Library, you can borrow one book from Amazon per month if you are a Amazon Prime Member.

I have decided that I am going to experiment with books that I might not otherwise read.  But I am also going to take advantage of the 1 book per month rule and if I have not finished it the book is going back to Amazon.

So I returned The Origin of the Bible at the end of December even though I only read about a quarter of the book.  I often spend two or three weeks reading a book because I read between 5 and 7 books at a time.  I am going to try to read a few less books at once, but that is just part of my reading style.

I just did not get into this book.  I was looking for a traditional defense of the theology of scripture.  This book does that, but I was unconvinced.  I am convinced that scripture is important and that we as Christians need to be seeped in it.  But I think debate over the term inerrency is missing the point.  NT Wright’s book on scripture was right, scripture has authority because God has authority, and it is his word.

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This is the one of the first books I read in 2011.  And it actually came out in 2010, but still I think it is a book that more people need to read.  The evangelical church needs to recover a sense of secular vocation and Culture Making presents that better than most that I have read.  Andy Crouch is one of the most innovated thinkers of the modern Evangelical world and his new project with Christianity Today on the City and the Church continues to show that.  You can see the roots of Culture Making in his current project.  Culture Making is currently on sale for $3.99 on kindle, so pick it up.

Takeaway: If you work in a creative field inside or outside the church and you have not read this book, you are doing yourself a disservice.

It is common for me to recommend books that I am currently reading.  After all they are in my head, I am thinking about them.  I think everyone else should be thinking about them so I can talk about the ideas that are in them.  But this is a book that I honestly think most Christian need to read.

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Takeaway: If you are going to respond to another author, it is best to deal with their actual arguments.

GK Beale opens the book with a fictional discussion between two Evangelicals.  This fictional discussion was one of the better parts of the book. It actually took both the conservative and more moderate evangelical students seriously.

Beale is directly responding to Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation.  I was interested in reading a good conservative response to Enns.  It is not that I think that Enns’ book was perfect, it was far from it.  But Beale’s problems with Enns’ book seem to rely less on the evidence that Enns’ presents than on the defense of what Beale views as an Evangelical view of inerrancy and the doctrine of scripture.

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