The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation by Luke Timothy Johnson

by

The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation by Luke Timothy JohnsonSummary: Catholic theologian/historian recounts the history of the early church.

Luke Timothy Johnson is a professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He is a former Benedictine monk and priest before going back for his PhD. Since 1976 he has taught at several Catholic institutions as well as Indiana University, Yale and now Emory.

I have been interested in several of his books for a while, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them. So as is standard when I am interesting in an author I picked up books that go on sale, which often are books that are targeted toward a general audience.

The first book of Johnson’s I read was A Very Short Introduction to the New Testament. I thought it was a helpful introduction, primarily focusing on the content of the New Testament and not the scholarship around the New Testament as is common for the Oxford Press series.

I have read a number of History of Christianity surveys. Part of what is interesting in reading a number of survey’s of Christian history is the decisions that get made on what to include and what not to include. The big subjects will pretty much always get included (in this case, the councils, Constantine, the fall of Rome, the split between the East and West, etc.)

Read more

The Community of God: A Theology of the Church from a Reluctant Pastor by Douglas Bursch

by

The Community of God cover imageSummary: The church is essential, even if it is messy.

I am writing this way too long after I read it. When I finished it, I immediately purchased a copy for a friend that is a young pastor. I have been thinking about this book for several weeks now. For too many of us, myself included, the church as a local body or a universal body seems a bit unnecessary.

After all, what is important is my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, not anything that I do, like attend church. I have heard frequently (and I believe) that you are not a Christian because you attend church. It is not hard to get the understanding that the local church is a nice add-on, but not essential, especially if you don’t particularly enjoy the local body or don’t feel particularly close to anyone in the local body.

I attend a mega-church. Many things about the idea of a megachurch make me uncomfortable. Particularly when I read books like this about the importance of the local church. I have a real bias, in no small part because I feel like I have been called to this particular megachurch (or at least do not feel like I should leave it right now.)

But Doug Bursch and many others (particularly Eugene Peterson) have reminded me that the individualism of our world that emphasizes me and God against the world is foreign to the worldview of the New Testament. The church is far from perfect, and every local church is far from perfect. But there is something about the local church that is essential to our spiritual growth. We do not grow spiritually in the abstract. We grow because we are encouraged by (and struggle with) actual people.

Doug Bursch is a pastor who does not always like people in the church. (If I were ever to become a pastor, I am sure that I would be even more extreme version of that.) But he is a pastor that believes in the church; just one that have been convinced about his own inadequacy to lead (or change) the local body apart from Christ.

Read more

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carre

by

Takeaway: Being a spy, influencing the other side is difficult to do and prone to morally questionable decisions.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the book that first made John le Carre’s name (or made John le Carre, a pseudonym famous.) John le Carre was a spy who became a writer. At about the same time Ian Fleming was becoming famous with James Bond, he came to prominence. In many ways, he was the anti-Bond.

Bond is known for action and individualism. George Smiley is overweight and a bit dumpy. He is an intellectual and an analyst. Carre’s books are slow and have complex plots. Fleming’s books are much shorter, are much more action based, and idealize the work of a spy.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is the first of le Carre’s books I have re-read. And it reminds me much how soul-deadening le Carre makes intelligence work. There is some action and understanding of the west being on the right side of the cold war. But that doesn’t mean that the west is always right in its actions. John le Carre, if he had not read Niebuhr, he at least understood the basic concepts that Niebuhr wrote about in the Irony of American History.

Read more

An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story by Jeremy Sabella

by

An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story by Jeremy SabellaSummary: A companion book to the PBS documentary on Reinhold Niebuhr.

The past couple of months I keep running across Reinhold Niebuhr. While I read him in seminary, I have not directly read anything by him for several years. But Niebuhr has come back to the world again with modern politics.

The two strong points that Niebuhr makes to our current political and theological world is that systems are always broken. No matter how good the goals or purposes of any institution or organization is, that institution or organization is still made up of sinful humans and will eventually disappoint or harm.

The second related point, that primarily comes out in his Irony of American History, is that in addition to institutions be broken, organizations with good goals will often adopt bad means to accomplish those good goals and in some ways be more dangerous than the institutions that are openly negative. With good intentions, comes the thought that people working within good institutions to cut corners or harm people because of the greater good that accomplishing those good goals will bring.

Those two points keep coming up. So I picked up An American Conscience and then watched the documentary after I finished the book. This is a brief book, not even 200 pages. But it does a good job introducing Niebuhr to readers that were likely not even born when he passed away.

Read more

The Templars’ Last Secret by Martin Walker (Bruno Chief of Police #10)

by

The Templars' Last Secret by Martin Walker (Bruno Chief of Police #10)Summary: Seemingly unrelated events all come together in rural France (yet again.)

I really like the Bruno, Chief of Police series. Bruno, the late 30s, single chief of police (and only policeman) in small town French countryside believes in food, community, restorative justice and family. In the previous nine books, we have seen him fall in and out of love, solve a number of crimes, stop a few international incidents and contribute to the building of a local community.

In The Templars’ Last Secret, Bruno is being followed by a researcher in the Department of Justice to find out why he is such a successful policeman. She says at one point, “˜you are as much a social worker as a police officer.’ That is both true and the secret to his success. He sees people as part of systems and those systems can be encouraged toward health or they can be starved of humanity.

Read more

How to Survive the Apocalypse by Robert Jourstra and Alissa Wilkinson

by

Book Review: How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the WorldSummary: An exploration of how the stories that Movies and TV tell us teach us about what it means to be human in a secular world. (With lots of reference to Charles Taylor)

I have referenced the web magazine Christ and Pop Culture a number of times over the past couple years that I have been a subscriber. I am going to do it yet again. Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at Vox (formerly at Christianity Today) and a professor of English and Humanities at King’s College in New York City. She also is a member of the CAPC private Facebook group and I have learned a ton about good criticism from reading her movie reviews and other writing.

After my recent Great Course exploration of modern Philosophy I decided to pick up How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Faith and Politics at the End of the World. The title may not really describe it well, but this a perfect example of why the magazine Christ and Pop Culture exists.

Christianity can sometimes ignore the importance of stories, in spite of the fact that Jesus (and the bible) seem to have primarily taught through stories. The Great Courses lecture on modern philosophy was occationally hard to track because it did not ground the philosophy enough in experiential examples so that the listener could understand why a particular philosophical idea mattered.

Wilkinson and her co-writer Robert Joustra have grounded their discussion of philosophy in the recent TV and movie obsession with the apocalypse and dystopian stories. Long explorations of Battlestar Galactica, the Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and a number of other shows give context to philosophy so that the reader can understand not only the philosophy being explored but also can understand how good media criticism can give insights into the stories in a way that isn’t possible with just casual watching.

Read more

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

by

Aurora by Kim Stanley RobinsonSummary: A multi-generational starship is attempting to build a human colony on another world.

One of the reasons that science fiction has been historically popular is that it in general a hopeful genre. Science fiction dreams of new worlds being discovered, the expansion of humanity across the galaxy, technological progress. Or at least that has been a strong part of the world of science fiction.

More recently science fiction has been more concerned with dystopian worlds. There is often still a thread of hopefulness, at least some people will survive the destruction of most of humanity. Space exploration is no longer a significant theme of science fiction. There are occasional books about exploring or creating world. But even the few that are out there are likely to be like John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series that views humanity as a bit players in galactic politics.

Aurora is the story of an enormous starship. It can travel 10% of light speed, but that means it will take approximately 150 years to reach the planet Aurora (around Tau Ceti). The ship is an ark. It contains about 2000 people and as many different climate sections and animals and plants as can be squeezed onto the ship.

The books opens as they are in the last generation before the come into their new home. The ship is continually in need of maintenance and interventions. The interventions almost always have unintended consequence. But they are making it.

And that is about as happy as the book gets. The writing is well done, but this is “˜anti-science fiction’ (as one very spoiler filled review on Amazon put it.) The main theme of the book is why space colonies will never work. And tragedy and bad luck are continually present.

Read more

Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail by Robert Webber

by

Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail by Robert WebberSummary: An update to the 1985 book from Robert Webber.

I knew of Robert Webber more than I knew anything about Robert Webber as a college and seminary student. He had been a professor at Wheaton (where I was a college student). And a professor at Northern Baptist Seminary (where my father did his DMin and my brother got his MDiv). I was aware of his work in the area of “˜Ancient Future Faith’.

But other than hearing about Webber, I am not sure that I actually reading anything by him until two years ago. I read his first book (the 1978 Common Roots) and was struck by how much it felt like many books I read that have been written in the 5 to 10 years.

A few weeks ago I picked up an updated version of his second book, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail when it was briefly on sale. It is a very brief book. I read it in two short sittings. The first half of the book is Webber’s own story about coming to faith and then moving toward the Episcopal Church as an adult. The last half of the book are new stories about other Evangelicals also moving toward the Episcopal/Anglican church.

The new stories pay attention to the changes in the Episcopal church in the United States since the 1980s. Part of what Webber was interested in was finding a church that had a relationship to the ancient church (but he was theologically not Roman Catholic) and a church that was consciously “˜catholic’ (lower c). However, the worldwide Anglican communion has had difficulty maintaining that catholic stance, especially over the past 10-15 years.

Read more