New Books–September 2010

Complete New Book List

September 2010

Christ Among the Dragons: Finding Our Way Through Cultural Challenges, by James Emery White. Finding our way through uncharted territory as we stray from core ideas and differ on key issues.

Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, by Nancy Pearcey. Chesterton said the danger when men stop believing in God is not that they’ll believe in nothing, but that they will believe in anything. Pearcey shows where believing in anything leads. Leland Ryken says Pearcey, a former agnostic, is “unsurpassed in the current generation of Christian thinkers”.

The Passionate Intellect: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind, by Alister McGrath. McGrath brings his intellect and broad learning to bear on a number of topics, including apologetics, science and religion, and the new atheism.

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, by Fred Sanders. Gerald Bray says this is a practical guide to “the most fundamental doctrine of all”, the doctrine of the Trinity. The author reminds us that “the gospel is Trinitarian, and the Trinity is the gospel”. Christian salvation “comes from the Trinity, happens through the Trinity, and brings us home to the Trinity”.

Life in the Balance: Biblical Answers for the Issues of our Day, by Joni Eareckson Tada & Friends. Covers current issues from autism, end of life issues, eugenics, and genocide, to the stem cell debate.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes. How did we get out of the Great Depression of the 1930s? Was it government spending? The New Deal? In recommending this new history of the period, Al Mohler says the author makes a “remarkable yet compelling argument, that the real heroes were the ordinary Americans who forged a new economy out of the rubble and confusion”.

William F. Buckley: Christian Encounters, by Jeremy Lott. Hosting the long-running television show, Firing Line, Buckley was a highly influential voice in conservative politics. The author makes a nuanced case for the profound influence of Buckley’s faith—he was a Catholic with Irish-Protestant roots—on his emergence as a “modern day Jonah, warning of the doom to come if America did not change its course”. Buckley viewed the challenges of his era as ultimately religious in nature.

Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: a William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus, by William F. Buckely, Jr., edited by Linda Bridges and Roger Kimball. An anthology of writings by the conservative intellectual and commentator who died in 2008.

Mystically Wired: Exploring New Realms in Prayer, by Ken Wilson. The author says our brains are wired and waiting to pray in new ways, enabled by a fresh understanding of some ancient prayer disciplines.

The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life: Psalms 1-12, by Dale Ralph Davis.

Boost Your Brain Power: Proven Ways to Keep Your Mind Young, by Frank Minirth, MD. Proven techniques and exercises to use more of your brain’s potential and avoid cognitive decline due to aging. The author is president of the Minirth Clinic in Richardson, TX.

Slave of Christ: A New Testament Metaphor for Total Devotion to Christ, by Murray J. Harris (New Studies in Biblical Theology). The NT finds many ways to depict Christians’ relationship to their Lord. They are his disciples, sons, daughters, friends. But it is perhaps too little recognized that they are also his slaves. This study sets out to uncover what it means to be a slave of Christ.

Golda, by Elinor Burkett. Biography of Golda Mier, who served as Israel’s Prime Minister from 1969-1974, and whose iron will and grandmotherly manner were indispensable during critical days in the nation’s history. Al Mohler calls the book “an incredible story about an indomitable power”.

Off the Record with Martin Luther: An Original Translation of the Table Talks, translated and edited by Charles Daudert. The first authentic translation of the original conversations of Luther with his students and colleagues around the dinner table. NOTE: The Medieval language used by Luther was blunt, explosive, sometimes abusive, and many times coarse.

Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877, by Walter A. McDougall. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian. Al Mohler says McDougall has the ability to “make the reader think about a familiar era in a new perspective”, and he says this book is a “truly important reconsideration of how America entered and emerged out of the Civil War”.

Facing Grief: Counsel for Mourners, by John Flavel (Puritan Paperbacks). First published in 1674 upon the death of his second wife. A meditation upon Luke 7:13, distinguishing what is appropriate for a Christian mourner from what is not.

The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy: Drifting from the Truth in Confessional Scottish Churches, by Ian Hamilton. 19^th century Scotland was seen as a Presbyterian nation composed of church-going people. But the erosion that occurred did not happen overnight, as church leaders and congregations were blind to the warning signs that pointed to the decline and sidelining of the confessional voice that had become sadly evident in recent years. In highly recommending this book, Sinclair Ferguson says “ignorance of the past often leads to repetition of its mistakes”.

Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible, by Stephen G. Dempster (New Studies in Biblical Theology). Despite its undoubted literary diversity, the author says the Hebrew Bible possesses a remarkable structural and conceptual unity, with the overall story of “dominion and dynasty” ranging from Adam to the Son of Man and from David to a coming Davidic king. His closing chapter points to some of the links that bind the OT and NT together.

Catholicism: East of Eden, by Richard Bennett. Insights into Catholicism for the 21^st century.

The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant, edited by Bryan D. Estelle, J.V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen.

Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, edited by Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, and Roberta Green Ahmanson. The contributors argue that too frequently journalists and commentators do not take religion seriously, and fail to grasp the religious context of current events and the news.

Text-Driven Preaching: God’s Word at the Heart of Every Sermon, edited by Daniel L. Akin, David L. Allen and Ned L. Mathews. Various contributors exhort preachers to make sure that the biblical text drives the sermon, not illustrations from television shows or bursts from pop psychology, so that the pulpit may once again be a place of clarity rather than confusion.

Test, Train, Affirm, and Send Into Ministry: Recovering the Local Church’s Responsibility in the External Call, by Brian Croft.

Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion, by David W. Chapman. Pays special attention to Jewish interpretations of key OT texts, and early Christian literature that reflects on Jewish perceptions of the cross in antiquity.

Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1-3 with the Christ of Eschatology, by J.V. Fesko. We know that Genesis 1-3 deals with creation and the fall. But have we stopped to consider that in Revelation, Jesus is called the “the last Adam”? Should this make a difference to how we look at early Genesis? Dr. Fesko says it should. If you are tangled up on origins in Genesis, this may be a way through the maze.

Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, by Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk).

Dare to Drop the Pose: Ten Things Christians Think But Are Afraid to Say, by Craig Groeschel.

Theophilos: A Novel, by Michael D. O’Brien. Luke addressed his Gospel and Acts to a man named Theophilos. Who was this individual? Scholars don’t know, which makes him a fit subject for Michael O’Brien’s vivid imagination. In this fictional narrative, Theophilos is a Greek physician and agnostic who is the beloved adoptive father of Luke, and who begins a quest for truth about the one called Messiah. This book is meticulously researched, and Peter Kreeft says it gives readers an opportunity to “get into a time machine and actually live in the first century world”.

COMMENTARIES: The Book of Hosea, by J. Andrew Dearman (NICOT).

YOUTH BOOKS: Living 4 God: Learning from the Lives of William Tyndale, John Newton, David Brainerd, and Eric Liddell, by Kath Dredge.

ADULT FICTION: Brink of Death, Stain of Guilt, Dead of Night, and Web of Lies, by Brandilynn Collins (Hidden Faces #1-4); Claim, by Lisa T. Bergen (Homeward Trilogy #3).