Three (Not) of a Kind
August 31, 2012
Three new books have crossed my desk this week, each of them worth looking at:
In the tradition of William Cunningham, B. B. Warfield and Helmut Thielicke, Kelly Kapic has published A Little Book for New Theologians (IVP USA) which looks like an excellent primer to give to anybody about to start theology. And given Luther's belief that no theologian ever really moves beyond the starting blocks in this life, a good one for all theologians.
A group of fine NT scholars have put together a collection of essays, The Perfect Saviour: Key Themes in Hebrews (IVP UK). Edited by Jonathan Griffiths, the other contributors are Peter O'Brien, Dick Gaffin, David Gooding, Tom Schreiner, Peter Walker, David Peterson and Bruce Winter. A stellar cast, as they say. The purpose of the book is to make key developments of New Testament scholarship accessible to busy pastors. I have not read every essay but those I have seem to fulfill the purpose well.
The third book is the mammoth tome, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton University Press). I have not read this yet but the author, Peter Brown, is a historian of breathtaking brilliance and I hope that this book will be typical of his output. His work on Augustine, now over forty years old, changed the landscape and remains a model of how to integrate intellectual, cultural, psychological and sociological factors in the genre of biography. Further, his work on the rise of the Holy Man in ancient Christianity should be required reading among those who dismiss the notion of celebrity and cults of personality within the contemporary church.
In the tradition of William Cunningham, B. B. Warfield and Helmut Thielicke, Kelly Kapic has published A Little Book for New Theologians (IVP USA) which looks like an excellent primer to give to anybody about to start theology. And given Luther's belief that no theologian ever really moves beyond the starting blocks in this life, a good one for all theologians.
A group of fine NT scholars have put together a collection of essays, The Perfect Saviour: Key Themes in Hebrews (IVP UK). Edited by Jonathan Griffiths, the other contributors are Peter O'Brien, Dick Gaffin, David Gooding, Tom Schreiner, Peter Walker, David Peterson and Bruce Winter. A stellar cast, as they say. The purpose of the book is to make key developments of New Testament scholarship accessible to busy pastors. I have not read every essay but those I have seem to fulfill the purpose well.
The third book is the mammoth tome, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton University Press). I have not read this yet but the author, Peter Brown, is a historian of breathtaking brilliance and I hope that this book will be typical of his output. His work on Augustine, now over forty years old, changed the landscape and remains a model of how to integrate intellectual, cultural, psychological and sociological factors in the genre of biography. Further, his work on the rise of the Holy Man in ancient Christianity should be required reading among those who dismiss the notion of celebrity and cults of personality within the contemporary church.
