Bookwi.se

I am reposting this review because A Life Together is on sale for $2.99 for Kindle until March 1.

Takeaway: Community, like all great Christian paradoxes, is both here, with what we really experience, and potential, with what we might imagine.

I have been thinking about our theological isolation as I have been reading the two books For Calvinism (my review) and Against Calvinism (my review).  It is interesting to interact with other Christians that cannot comprehend thinking about a theological issue in any other way than the way they conceive of it.  It is not that it is wrong to be sure of our faith.  But if we are sure of our faith because we have never thought of our faith or understood that there are other ways to think of our faith, then are we really sure of our faith?

So I think it is important to read works outside our theological comfort zone.  If you are a Calvinist, you need to read John Wesley.  If you are a Baptist, you should read Pope John Paul II.  If you are Methodist, you should read Bonhoeffer or Barth.

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I am reposting this review because How (Not) to Speak of God is on sale for $2.99 for Kindle until March 1.

I have read one other Peter Rollins book, The Orthodox Heretic.  My opinion of How (Not) to Speak of God is very much the same. Rollins is very bright.  He knows what he is talking about (although I don’t always understand), and in this book where he is more directly talking about philosophy and epistemology, he is way beyond my ability.  I consider this one of those books that I read outside my comfort zone (both theologically and philosophically) to help expand my horizons.

I am not alway sure what he is talking about, and even when I am, I do not always agree with it.  But there are three ideas that I pulled out of this book that I do think are useful and/or are a different way of approaching how to speak of God.

His first tack is to take on the traditional idea of idolatry.  Not many modern people literally worship physical stone or wood idols.  But Rollins wants to move away from a concept of idol as thing.  That is common.  We have all heard sermons about turning money or security into idols.  But Rollins takes it a step further.

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Takeaway: The Holy Spirit is with us today just as he was with the apostles in Acts.

Who is the Holy Spirit uses the parallel books of Luke and Acts to illustrate how the Holy Spirit empowers Christians to do God’s work in the world.

For the last six months of last year I was focused on reading and reading about the gospel of Luke.  Spending that much time in Luke really helped to focus me on how intentional the parallels from the gospel of Luke and the books of Acts are.  This book takes the parallels and focuses on how the Holy Spirit not only is God, in the same way that Jesus was God in person on the earth, but shows how the Apostles, through the power of the Holy Spirit, worked to fulfill the mission of God just as Christ did.

This is a wide ranging book.  And if anything, that would be my main criticism.  I almost wish it was more focused.  But Yong wants to hit all the major themes and actions of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts.  So there is a very good section on the power of the spirit in salvation and empowering the apostles while they were in Jerusalem.

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Takeaway: We as Christians need to continually search for meaning in scriptures.

This was a free book on kindle a couple months ago.  It has 33 short stories/parables with a page or so of explanation.  These are intentionally attempting to retell Jesus’ parables (or at least follow the form) in a modern form.  Some of them are good.  Some of them seem to be intentionally unorthodox to try get a reaction.

In general I approve of trying to find meaning in scripture. But there does not seem to be a lot of focus on trying to be true to the story as much as being true to the form.  When I finally got past the fact that Rollins was intentionally trying to give new meaning I got a lot more out of them.

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