Shelf Life

"What is this love that loves us?" asks Marina, the lead character, in one of the many voice-overs that stand in for dialogue in this spectral, mesmerizing, maddeningly unorthodox film. To the Wonder takes as its starting point this fundamental mystery of human existence, the realization that life...

Matthew Barrett. Salvation By Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration . Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2014. 388 pp. $19.99/₤13.99 As a Wesleyan-Arminian Christian (and thus only "Reformed" in a fairly broad sense), I am keenly interested in the doctrine of the new birth. It...

Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life . Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: OUP, 2012) xii +280. $117.00 hb. $34.00 pb The reception of Origen is nothing if not tumultuous. Unquestionably one of the greatest minds of church history, Origen's ideas were...

Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So ...: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It. New York: Harper Collins, 2014. $17.99/£10.99 This is not an easy book to review because a review calling into question the accuracy of statements or the cogency of arguments could easily be accused of...

Alister E. McGrath. Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal . Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. XIV, 246 pp. $99.95/£45.99 The needs and purposes of scholarship, along with the peculiarities of the history of theology, have resulted in a hodge-podge collection of secondary literature on 20th century Swiss...

Peter J. Leithart, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press, 2014), 340 pages. $49.95/₤29.99 The latest book from the prolific Peter Leithart is another installment of what we have come to expect: an accessibly written synthesis of specialist research advancing a deceptively...

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , translated from the first French Edition by Robert White. Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa., Banner of Truth Trust, 2014, pp. xxxvi + 882. Not only is there the much-publicized question of Calvin and the Calvinists, there is also that of Calvin's...

Gil Anidjar, Blood: A Critique of Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xvii + 441pp. $36.99/₤24.99 Gil Anidjar's book is, as the subtitle indicates, a critique of Christianity: not some aspect of Christianity, or an inquiry into some part of Christian history, but a critique of...

Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak. The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul's Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World . Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014. 201 pp. $18.00. Paul Copan and Kenneth Litwak have provided Christians with an interesting book describing the apostle Paul's Mars...

At the end of one of Christopher Nolan's most memorable films, The Prestige , one of the duelling magicians, Robert Angier, lies dying, and reproaches his rival, "You never understood why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through. But if...