Book Reviews

Summary: How out we to live? What really exists? How to we Know?

Very Short Introduction series has been pretty hit or miss, as are most short introductions. It is hard to introduce a subject that has thousands of books and thousands of professionals working in the areas.

Philosophy is one of the better ones. My background in philosophy was pretty weak. I have tended toward theology instead of philosophy and while there can be some overlap, as I am getting older I feel my lack of background more and more often as I am reading.

Craig made some good decisions in structuring the books. He focused on the three questions in the summary as three of the questions that have been a part of philosophy since the beginning and continue to be important. Then he looks at Plato, Hume and an unknown Buddhist philosopher to illustrate how those questions were handled.

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Takeaway: Someone that has found meaning in a new stream of Christianity may not be the best person to talk about the stream of Christianity that they walked away from.

Over the past couple years I have been intentionally trying to read books about Catholicism and part of that has been reading several stories of Evangelicals that have become Catholic, like Scott Hahn, Francis Beckwith, and Christian Smith. I have been less interested in stories of Catholics that have become Evangelicals but I did think I needed to read “˜the other side.’

Chris Castaldo, has a chapter in Journey of Faith, a book telling the story of people converting from one Stream of Christianity to another, so I was somewhat familiar with his story. Holy Ground, however, is not so much about Castaldo’s own story as it is a book about Catholicism for Evangelicals. And I think that is where my problem really started.

The overall approach was to explain Catholicism to Evangelicals primarily using the reasons that former Catholics became Evangelical. This is has the inherent problem of not looking at those that are happy with their Catholic faith, but looking at those that are unhappy (or in most cases just unaware of their Catholic faith because of a lack of participating in it.) Castaldo is a good example of that.  While he was baptized as an infant and seems to have participated fairly frequently as a young child, once he was confirmed neither he nor the rest of his family actively participated in the church. And from my experience, this seems to be common with Catholic converts. I honestly don’t know a single person that has become Evangelical as a former Catholic if they were active. (While most Evangelical converts to Catholicism that I know of are very active in their church, theologically trained and often clergy.)

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Takeaway: Beautiful dresses on the cover are not enough to carry a trilogy.

The best summary of the third book is this paraphrase of a conversation that felt like it happened about five times in the book. “œHow can I say “˜I love you’ if you have all of these other girls.” “œWell how can I dismiss all of these other girls if you won’t tell me that you love me.”

The Selection trilogy is a cross between the Hunger Games and the Bachelor. In a dystopian future, the Prince must choose a wife from among a selection of citizens. The first book in the trilogy was pretty dismissible. The story was fairly flat while entirely too much “˜I am not good enough’ internal dialogue.

But because the second book was at my library on audiobook, I went ahead and read the second, the Elite. The characters were much better fleshed out and the world suddenly was more than a dystopian movie set.

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Takeaway: Jesus’ life on earth was for more than just taking us to heaven.

Every once in a while I am truly surprised by a book. I have read several blog posts by Jonathan Martin (he is not currently blogging). And I generally have agreed with with what I read, especially when he was taking an uncomfortable position. So I was interested in reading his book, but did not really know much about him and assumed it would be another, not too much different from all the rest of Christian living books.

Prototype is different, primarily because of the theologically rich content, with virtually zero theological language, and no dumbing down. A lot of the great books that I read I am uncomfortable recommending to many because the language is too theological or the content is too dense to understand without some major background in theology or philosophy. Or if the book is intentionally trying to reach the masses, it is dumbed down and condescending. Prototype has all of the positives of theologically rich text, with none of the negatives of condescension, dumbing down or complicated theological language.

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