Book Recommendations from Worldview/Apologetics Teacher, Or, Mount Calvary Baptist Church Usher Reads The Following Books When Not Ushing
My friend Brent Cook, BJU apologetics and worldview teacher, gave me permission to post the following list. This is what he wrote to introduce it:
Several have asked for book recommendations related to the classes I’ve taught this semester. Here is a partial list I threw together last night. (“Recommendation” does not imply endorsement of all content.) I’ve also include a general section of fun reads. —B. Cook
All of the following links go to Amazon except the ten or so which were carried by Westminster Books.
Apologetics, Science, and Worldview
- Alfred Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament
- Andrew Hoffecker, Revolutions in Worldview
- Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
- Beauregard & O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain
- C.S. Lewis, Miracles
- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
- David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept
- Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity
- Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics
- Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay
- Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
- Francis Schaeffer, Trilogy
- G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
- Gavin Hyman, A Short History of Atheism
- Geisler & Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist
- James Sire, The Universe Next Door
- John Byl, The Divine Challenge
- John McRay, Archeology and the New Testament
- Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box
- Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
- N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God
- Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial
- Robert Spencer, The Truth about Muhammad
- Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention
- Ron Horton, Mood Tides
- Ronald Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
- Ronald Numbers, The Creationists
- Thomas Woodward, Doubts about Darwin
- William Dembski, Uncommon Dissent
- Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faiths
- Ed.: How John Frame’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God or Apologetics to the Glory of God were left off this list, I am not sure. Perhaps Dr. Cook is saying that Frame transcends this list.
Philosophy
- Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.
- Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher
- David Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought
- Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy (8 vols.)
- Neil Postman, The End of Education
- Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences
- Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy
- Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Church History
- Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore
- David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
- Earle Cairns, Christianity through the Centuries
- Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards
- George Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism
- Herman Selderhuis, John Calvin
- Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England (3 vols.)
- Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile
- Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
- Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity
- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (8 vols.)
- Roland Bainton, Here I Stand
- Thomas Kidd, The Great Awakening
- Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church
General
- Alex Kershaw, The Envoy
- Alfred Lansing, Endurance
- Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street
- Charles Mann, 1491
- Dan Porat, The Boy: A Holocaust Story
- David Howarth, We Die Alone
- Diana Preston, A First Rate Tragedy
- Edward Champlin, Nero
- Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers
- Hampton Sides, Hellhound on His Trail
- Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
- James Bradley, Flyboys
- James Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal
- Jeff Shaara, The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II
- Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
- Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken
- Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics
- Mark Lee Gardner, To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett…
- Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea
- Neal Bascomb, Hunting Eichmann
- Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War
- Philip Freeman, Julius Caesar
- Stanley and Danko, The Millionaire Next Door
- Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat
- Thor Heyerdahl, Kon Tiki
Some Positive Peer Pressure For Our Children, Or, Is It Wrong to Pray for Toddler-Onset Narcolepsy?
Two possible captions for this image:
- My wife would do this if she could.
- My wife would do this if only our children would.
BibleWorks 7 for $150
I’m selling one copy of BibleWorks 7 for $150. It’s not mine, but it’s all legit (the seller is buying BW9; he is not selling his old version off after getting the upgrade price).
BW7 was a major advance over BW6. The two upgrades since then include a few nice new features, but nothing most people can’t live without—mostly textual critical stuff. BibleWorks 7 still does extremely well the three things that I think make BibleWorks worth having:
- Fast searching in multiple languages, including morphological and lemma (root-word) searches.
- A notes system even brain-dead people can use.
- The ability to quickly and easily compare multiple translations.*
BibleWorks does all of these things better than Logos does. It’s worth far more than $150.
If you’re interested, please write out a note, address it to me, attach it to a red balloon, and release balloon toward Taylors, SC.
*Logos can, of course, do this, and Logos 4 comes very close to the functionality in BibleWorks. I still like the set-up in BibleWorks a bit better, because it allows me to set version order permanently, and it’s slightly easier to change verses with keyboard shortcuts (e.g., I can scroll through a passage a verse at a time with the arrow keys). I admit, however, that Logos 4 has made this point much weaker than it used to be.
Add to Instapaper
A quick, must-read New York Times article about one of today’s foremost Christian philosophers.
I prefer John Frame for my epistemology, but I’ve made a little bit of progress in Warranted Christian Belief.
Make A List; Check It Twice
This is a good time of year for me to remind you and you of an important principle: don’t listen to Logos when they let their marketing folks write the following:
The sheer volume of content in Logos base packages makes them incredibly valuable.
There’s a fundamental error here—or at least a faulty assumption: quantity and quality are not the same thing, even in products from an excellent company like Logos. In a given year I use a relatively small percentage of my Logos resources. Here’s what I use most frequently:
- Commentaries
- Bibles: ESV, NIrV, GNT, BHS
- Commentaries
- Bible Dictionaries (like the NDBT, NDT, NBD, etc.)
- Commentaries
- A number of journals
- Systematics (like Grudem and Hodge)
- Assorted individual books (Piper, Schreiner, Levinsohn, etc.)
The money I spent on the above resources also purchased for me a great quantity of other materials, much of which is simply of lower quality than the stuff I do use. I simply don’t have the time or inclination to check everything my library has to say about a given passage—much as it would be a waste of time to check everything my school’s library says about it. When I have top-level resources, I don’t generally need to check low-level ones. So I’ve “hidden” the following resources:
- The Pulpit Commentary (not helpful; out of date)
- Semeia (typically too liberal and arcane)
- Wilmington’s Bible Handbook
- Wilmington’s Book of Bible Lists
- Preach for a Year #s 1 and 2 (sermon outlines; yech)
- Bob Utley’s various commentaries
There may come a time when introductory level works are useful for me if I teach a discipleship class, but for now the NICOT, NICNT, NIGTC, NAC, WBC, TOTC, PNTC, and BST series (plus a few more) are more than adequate for my research needs. I paid good money for what I use, but I paid for quality, not quantity. Don’t get a baseball-card mentality when it comes to buying books. Your collection’s value may actually decrease with size; it can be hard to wade through junk.
So make a list of what you’ll actually use and check it twice against “analog” book prices before you buy. Your list will likely look different from mine (for example, I use BDAG and notes in BibleWorks, not Logos), but you’ve got to make one or you may waste money.
Grudem on Selfishness
I think the following comments from Grudem’s Systematic Theology are very insightful—and needful for preachers. It’s easy to preach so hard against selfishness that one erases part of the image of God!
Other definitions of the essential character of sin have been suggested. Probably the most common definition is to say that the essence of sin is selfishness.1 However, such a definition is unsatisfactory because
- Scripture itself does not define sin this way.
- Much self-interest is good and approved by Scripture, as when Jesus commands us to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:20), or when we seek to grow in sanctification and Christian maturity (1 Thess. 4:3), or even when we come to God through Christ for salvation. God certainly appeals to the self-interest of sinful people when he says, “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11). To define the essential character of sin as selfishness will lead many people to think that they should abandon all desire for their own personal benefit, which is certainly contrary to Scripture.
- Much sin is not selfishness in the ordinary sense of the term—people can show selfless devotion to a false religion or to secular and humanistic educational or political goals that are contrary to Scripture, yet these would not be due to “selfishness” in any ordinary sense of the word. Moreover, hatred of God, idolatry, and unbelief are not generally due to selfishness, but they are very serious sins.
- Such a definition could suggest that there was wrongdoing or sinfulness even on God’s part, since God’s highest goal is to seek his own glory (Isa. 42:8; 43:7, 21; Eph. 1:12).
Likewise, Jonathan Edwards asked, “[Why] make any promises of happiness, or denounce any threatenings of misery, to him who neither loved his own happiness nor hated his own misery?” (Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 in WJE (New Haven: Yale, 1989), 254–255.) In the same work, Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards lists multiple passages of Scripture in both testaments which motivate good deeds with offers of reward:
“What is bestowed in doing good to others is not lost, as if a man throws what he had into the sea. But see what Solomon says, Ecclesiastes 11:1, ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it….’ What is so given is lent and committed … to the Lord, who no doubt will pay. Proverbs 19:17, ‘He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.’ He will not only pay, but with great increase. Luke 6:38, ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you.’” Ibid., 216.
We who care about our own and others’ sanctification have to draw the line between selfishness and a biblically oriented self-interest, a self-interest which points ultimately to God, the only one who can satisfy the desires He created in us.
Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in Thee.
Truth and Beauty
Derek Kidner is a commentator who writes not just insightfully but beautifully. Don’t miss his commentaries on Genesis, Psalms (vol. 1 and vol. 2), Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. They are gifts to the church.
I’m not familiar with Stephen Motyer (a relation to J. Alec, I presume?), but perhaps there’s something in the British blood he shares with Kidner that adds beauty to his truth. I can’t think of easy American parallels…
While studying Jacob’s wrestling match with God this evening, I read the following from Motyer in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology article entitled “Israel (Nation)” (emphasis mine):
Malachi is the saddest, as well as the latest, book in the OT. Malachi accuses the post-exilic community of the same sins which caused the exile 150 years previously: half-hearted worship conceived as mere performance of the cult (1:6–14); corruption among the priests (2:1–9); social and sexual unfaithfulness (2:10–17). The people have not changed (3:7). But Malachi insists also that Yahweh is unchanging: ‘I, Yahweh, do not change: therefore you, children of Jacob, are not finished!’ (3:6, author’s translation). Yahweh is still wrestling with Jacob, determined to make the new name stick. And Malachi looks forward to the coming of ‘the messenger of the covenant’, who will refine and purify Israel’s worship and bring judgment on the corrupt (3:1–5).
So the OT ends on a note of paradox: Israel is still Jacob, but Jacob is still Israel. The covenant stands, but the covenant promises both salvation and judgment, both a blessing and a curse (Deut. 28). How will Yahweh’s commitment to save Israel be realized, in the face of the nation’s constant failure to respond to him?
NIV Books of the Bible
Biblica now has an edition of The Books of the Bible set in the NIV, though it’s just the New Testament (at least I can’t find an entire Bible on their website). The new edition is set in a serif typeface rather than the odd, hybrid typeface used for the TNIV editions I blogged about some time ago. I’m assuming that this is the NIV2011, but I’m not certain.
Click to see pages from the new "The Books of the Bible" NIV edition.
Share
Tweet
Wikipedia’s Fundraising Scare Tactics
Okay, okay, Wikipedia! Just stop showing faces brim-full of opprobrium toward us cheapskate users and I’ll give you money!
I have actually given money to Wikipedia in the past, something that’s rare for me, I confess; do I really deserve this?
Maybe you readers should consider donating in my name. Even if each of you gives only one mite, you’ll at least equal what the widow gave in Mark 12.
Quick Thought on Social Media
I’ve been on Facebook pretty much since it became available to me. I tried MySpace briefly. I have an obligatory Google Plus account.
But the one piece of social media I most enjoy is Goodreads. Here’s why: in the world of book reading, things don’t happen fast. Even my most bibliophilic friends have real jobs, so they don’t read more than a book a week. Each of their posts—writing out thoughts on books they’ve read—marks a significant investment of time.
So I have fewer posts to deal with than on Facebook, and they’re all of higher quality. Goodreads marshals the power of social media to share information quickly, but helps me in my battle to keep my head above the cloud. It’s very structure makes it an information filter, which Neil Postman has wisely warned us that we will need as the speed limit on the information superhighway continues to rise into the stratosphere.
“God’s Purpose According to Election”
“Be not highminded, but fear” (Rom 11:20 KJV). That’s the verse I think of as I anticipate posting the following little thought that came to me as I studied Genesis for Bible Truths B, the 8th grade Bible textbook I’m now rewriting:
If you think about it, God could have easily given Abraham lots of sons. Seven would not be impossible. Seventy would not even be impossible for the God who gave a child to a woman past childbearing age. Instead, He gives both Abraham and Isaac two sons each. And in each set of two brothers, only one gets picked. It’s really as if God organized the family tree of the patriarchs to make a point: I choose Abraham, and no one else in the world. And even within Abraham’s line of descendants, I choose some and not others.
This is not going beyond the Scripture; this is exactly what Paul concludes in Romans 9. Neither Isaac nor Jacob earned their election by good works—Jacob wasn’t even born when he was elected.
Be not highminded, but fear.
Bible Typography Manifesto
I’ve released a manifesto, and I invite you to sign it. “Manifesto” sounds a whole lot nicer than “private opinion,” and that’s my only excuse for using such a grandiose word.
The format is slightly tongue in cheek, but the upshot is serious. I’m a Bible curriculum author by day and, often, a graphic designer by night. I care about the intersection of those two sciences/arts. And I decided to do something about a significant problem I see at that intersection—a ten-car pile-up caused by drivers too old to keep their licenses, if you ask me. So I’m offering a constructive solution.
Recent Comments