Adam Shields

Takeaway:  Yes, this book is about celebration of women’s genitalia.

If you have a book review blog you get asked to review all kinds of books.  Some I review, some I do not.  But I decided to review this book for a couple reasons.  First, although I am a guy, I am married, I am the nanny for two little girls and my wife and I lead a small group for newly married couples.  So I regularly read and think about marriage and sex issues.  If you look through my archive, you will find a number of books about sex and marriage.  In general, I have not been a huge fan of any of them.  All books on sex, gender and/or marriage seem to have several common problems.  1) They try to address too large of an audience.  Issues that are appropriate to talk about in one context are not appropriate in another context.  2) They either suggest marriage/sex are really difficult, or really easy and tend to lack balance.  3) They are either Christian focused and tend not to address issues that confront real people, or they are non-Christian focused and tend to not have any moral guide.

After the jump, the review will be more on the rated R side. (Mom you may want to stop reading now.)

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Takeaway: Theology does not exist in a vacuum. 

Historical Theology is a massive and far reaching undertaking.  All theology has a history and a context for when and why it first came to prominence.  My personal learning style is such that I tend to learn best when I understand the context of why.

My frustration with my seminary Historical Theology class was that it was focused on the thought and theology, but rarely talked about they history and the why around the thought.

Gregg Allison is writing a Historical Theology to accompany Wayne Grudem‘s Systematic Theology.  I have not read Grudem, I used Erickson’s Systematic Theology text in college.  But regardless, Allison is writing on the history of the basic points of theology that would be included in any systematic theology.

Obviously this is not a short book.  And even at almost 800 pages, I still want more history and more wide ranging discussion.  Allison says in the beginning that he is not dealing with Orthodox Historical Theology.  So this is a historical theology of the western church, and as you read, you will see that it is a historical theology that is focused on providing context to Evangelical readers.  I understand why he is fairly narrow in his wide-ranging task (in part because this book intended to be a partner to Grudem’s Systematic Theology), but I think that Allison’s conservative Evangelical understanding of theology would be better served if he was a bit wider ranging in his understanding of history.  And I am sure that the general Evangelical student would be better served by a work that showed them that they are not the center of the Christian world.

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