Shelf Life

Hughes Oliphant Old, Holy Communion: In the Piety of the Reformed Church . Powder Springs: Tolle Lege Press, 2013. Hardback. 919 pp. $39.95 Introduction When I was in seminary I was introduced to what is perhaps the standard taxonomy of the different views of the Lord's Supper: Zwingli's...

Matthew S. Hedstrom. The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century . Oxford, 2013.288 pp. $39.99/£29.99 Reformed Christians pride themselves in being well informed of major eras in the development of Christian theology. They can articulate the...

Marcus Peter Johnson, One with Christ: An Evangelical Theology of Salvation . Wheaton: Crossway, 2013. 256 pp. $19.99/£12.99 Though I am not a Calvin scholar, there are few theologians who have influenced me as much, and consistently help me more than the great Reformer from Noyon. In his book, One...

Eric S. Gregory. Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 417 pp. $28.99/£20.99 This is not a book to be undertaken lightly by the unsuspecting reader, lured in by the enticing buzzwords on the cover: "Politics"--"...

Alexander S. Jensen, Divine Providence and Human Agency: Trinity, Creation and Freedom . Farnham, Surrey, Ashgate, 2014. 215 pp. $104.99/£57.99 How would you go about developing the theme that is the title of this book? The typical reader of Reformation 21 would - I guess and hope - turn at once to...

James K. A. Smith. Who's Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood . Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2014. 192 pp. Softcover: $19.99/£11.99 James K. A. Smith's latest book is the follow-up to Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? (2006) and continues his longstanding project of...

David F. Wells, God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World . Wheaton: Crossway, 2014. 266 pp. $19.99/£14.99 Over the last twenty years, David Wells has established himself as the insider chronicler-in-chief of how the self-centered trivialization of life in wider Western...

Tom Nettles, Living By Revealed Truth: The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon . Christian Focus, 2013, 700pp, £29.99/$38.00 It would be going over the top to declare an interest, but perhaps an admission of sorts would be in order: I yield the palm to none in my admiration for...

Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God--The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee . New York: HarperOne, 2014. 404 pp., $27.99/£17.99 Over the years, I have had the opportunity to review a number of Bart Ehrman's books, including, most recently, his volume Forged: Writing in the Name of God--...

Transcendence is the latest in a long line of films which peer into the shadows of the technological future and try to prefigure the darkness and/or wonderment that could wait for us there. It stars Johnny Depp as Will Caster, a leading developer of artificial intelligence who is more interested in...