Reading for a Lewis Summer

Summer Reading

As I continue my reading on John Calvin, I picked up an excellent work by Machiel A. Van den Berg, entitled Friends of Calvin. It contains twenty-four relatively short chapters on people who feature in Calvin's story, from friends of his youth like Claude d'Hangest to friends in study like Francois Daniel and Simon Grynaeus to friends in love like Idelette van Buren, to friends who became enemies, like Ami Perrin. The harsh caricature of Calvin is destroyed in these studies which show a more intimate, warm, character. Brilliant stuff.

Summer wouldn't be complete without biography, and last year I picked up Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg's biography of Aaron Burr. It's on my list for this Summer, along with Thomas Buergenthal's A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a young boy. I bought the latter after reading a printed excerpt, and being very moved by his reminiscence of a Holocaust and death camp childhood.

I have also picked up Greg Beale's We Become what we Worship A Biblical Theology of Worship, and am looking forward to this study. My theological reading over the Summer will also include J. van Genderen and W.H. Velema's Concise Reformed Dogmatics, which has already proved an excellent summary of theology; its introduction is worth the price of the book. "We appreciate the Reformed tradition", say the authors, "but we are in agreement with the Reformed confession". More brilliant stuff.

On a lighter note, I have also been dipping into Edward J. Cowan's 'For Freedom Alone': The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320, a stirring record of a remarkable document from medieval Europe, with its early assertion of Scottish independence, and on which the American Declaration of Independence may well have been modelled. Who would not want to don a kilt while reading its most famous clause: "For as long as a hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. For we fight not for glory nor riches nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life".

Of course, as many of you know, we are in the throes of moving to another congregation, so it is a battle just to ensure that my Summer reading books don't disappear into a box somewhere....