There are not a lot of books available on the resurrection at the moment (although I know of several due to come out later this year), but I did have this volume in the Bible Speaks Today Themes series on my shelf, and decided to tackle it over the Easter period.

The approach Beasley-Murray takes is to work through the New Testament, expounding most of the key passages dealing with the resurrection. He starts with the gospels, devoting one chapter to each. He shows how each gospel author brings a different emphasis to the narrative, as well as being careful to show the unity within the diversity. He points out that many preachers end up preaching more or less exactly the same sermon every Easter Sunday, which perhaps is why the theme of the resurrection is underemphasised – it can be hard to present it in a fresh way. One good way to start is to preach from each gospel separately, and focus on the distinctives of that particular account.

Preaching the resurrection without the cross without the resurrection leads to triumphalism; but preaching the cross without the resurrection leads nowhere: it is a ‘dead’ end.

As for apologetics, he does not systematically set out a case for the historicity of the resurrection, but deals with the evidence and objections as they come up through the gospel accounts.

He then moves on to the writings of Paul, obviously starting with 1 Cor 15, but moving on to tackle 2 Cor 4:7-5:10, Col 1:3-4 and 1 Thess 4:13-18. This of course moves from teaching about the resurrected Christ to showing the implications of the resurrection for us as believers. Then follows a chapter on the witness to the resurrection of “Peter and his friends”. This starts by going through various proclamations on the resurrection in the book of Acts, and then on to passages in Hebrews, 1 Peter and Revelation.

The next chapter is entitled “the witness of other voices to the resurrection”. Interestingly this brings us back to various passages in Paul’s writings, but identifying those passages thought by commentators to be citing early Christian hymns and creeds (Phil 2 being perhaps the most famous example). By this he shows how central the resurrection was to even the earliest Christians. He particularly links it to the Lordship of Jesus – his resurrection is the basis for his exaltation as Lord. And not just Lord of individual believers (though he is that), but Lord of everything and everywhere – Lord of the world.

In confessing Jesus as Lord the early Christians were not in the first place declaring that ‘Jesus is Lord of my life’; they were declaring that Jesus was ‘Lord of the world’.

There is a final brief chapter on the response of various theologians to the resurrection. He starts by listing influential voices who denied or doubted the resurrection (from Rudolf Bultmann through to Bishop of Durham David Jenkins), before surveying those who have written in defence of its historicity (from George Beasley-Murray – perhaps the author’s father? through to Tom Wright).

The amount of material this book covers makes it a very useful comprehensive guide to the New Testament teaching on the resurrection and will be particularly helpful to those looking for fresh ideas for preaching on the resurrection. I’m not sure how well it works as a book to be read from cover to cover as I did. There were a few places in which I got a little bogged down. But it is certainly a valuable contribution to a topic that has been surprisingly under-represented in recent years.

Incomparable is comprised of 60 short chapters, each one a meditation on a name of God or aspect of God’s character. Each starts with a verse, followed by an explanation of the meaning, always kept interesting by the use of contemporary illustrations. The book is broken into four major sections: the being of God, the names of God, God in three persons and the attributes of God.

As you read this book, you can’t help wondering why no one thought of doing this before. It is brilliant for use as a daily devotional, and can also be a helpful starting point for small group discussions. Despite covering the same material that would be found in a typical systematic theology, the author manages to keep it from being dry and technical. His sense of humour and his love for God shine through in the way he writes.

Its format and style make it ideal for teenagers, or indeed anyone who can manage just 2 or 3 pages of reading a day. As I read each chapter I found myself provoked to worship. It also serves as a source of fresh ideas for those teaching on various aspects of God’s character.

Apparently the book has been so successful that a revised edition is already out. The original version can usually be picked up for under £5 which is an absolute bargain. Get one, read it, and give it away.

I decided I would like to read one of Tim Keller’s books this year, as he is clearly someone who is having a big influence in the whole realm of building gospel-centred missional churches, not to mention his significant contribution to apologetics in “The Reason for God”. I opted for his most recent publication, “The Prodigal God”.

It is shorter than I was expecting, weighing in at 130 pages with plenty of space between the lines! It took less than a week to read through. The book is subtitled “Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith”, and seeks to explain the core message of Christianity, the Gospel, using the famous parable of the “prodigal son”.

Now most Christians have heard countless expositions of this parable (as well as plenty of ropey re-enactments from the church drama team), as it has pride of place as the most powerful and moving of all Jesus’ parables. However, Tim Keller suspects that we have placed the emphasis in the wrong place. We focus entirely on the first son, who squandered everything and returned to be forgiven and accepted by his Father, and ignore the fact that the story involves two sons. It would be better named “the parable of the lost sons”.

Keller argues that the parable uses the two brothers to show two ways of being lost. Each brother represents a different way to be alienated from God – both the religious and the irreligious are spiritually lost. And the sad truth was, that while Jesus’ teaching was attractive to the irreligious, the religious folk (in particular the Pharisees) were offended by it. Therefore the real climax of the story was not the welcoming home of the younger brother, but the cliff-hanger ending where the elder brother’s alienation from the father is revealed, and we are left wondering whether he will come to the feast.

Keller then shows how Jesus uses this parable to redefine sin as putting yourself in the place of God (neither son wanted the father himself, rather they wanted his money). The elder brother’s predicament is especially dire as, unlike the younger brother, he is blind to his need. The parable also redefines lostness. The elder brother has a sense of moral superiority, resulting in an unforgiving, judgmental spirit, and a joyless fear-based compliance with his father’s rules. There are some very provoking and powerful challenges here to Christians who all too easily fall into “elder-brotherness”. Keller suggests that a dry prayer-life is a warning sign that you are falling into this trap.

Everybody knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realise that it also condemns moralistic elder brotherness.  … Would you please be open to the possibility that the gospel, real Christianity, is something very different to religion.”

Keller presents Jesus as the true elder brother, doing what the elder brother should have done, that is going after his younger brother to bring him back, not worrying about the cost of forgiveness (in the parable, loss of inheritance). The parable also points to the fact that as a human race, we long for home, yet find it elusive. The message of the Bible is that humanity is a band of exiles, trying to come home, yet a brokenness within and around us prevents that from happening. It is Jesus, who came and experienced our exile who is ultimately our means of salvation. Salvation is represented in the parable as a homecoming feast. He unpacks a variety of aspects of salvation, including the fact that it is experiential, and not just objective, it is material in that God’s plan is to renew his creation, not to destroy it, and it is communal – the feast is not made to be eaten in isolation.

In conclusion, I would thoroughly recommend this as a fresh and powerful insight into not just the parable of the prodigal son, but the gospel itself. Keller has done a great service to the church by reminding us of the need not just to point people away from immorality, but from moral religious hypocrisy, which may be an even greater need in many of our congregations. It is written in a very accessible way, making it suitable for new believers or seekers. But equally those involved in preaching or teaching the gospel would benefit from reflecting on this refreshingly clear articulation of the gospel message. I fully expect this book to set a new trend in the way the parable of the prodigal son is preached in churches everywhere. (Whether or not church drama teams dare to continue beyond the “happy ending” remains to be seen!)

In this book Shane Claiborne tells his story and makes a case for a different way to live as a Christian – the way of the “ordinary radical”. Whilst Claiborne has had a lot of contact with traditional evangelicalism, including an internship at Bill Hybel’s Willow Creek mega-church, he found himself disillusioned with the way that Christians have become conformed to the middle class, and wants to promote an alternative to the “religious right”, which he is strongly critical of.

His passions are obvious – he cares deeply for the poor, for social justice, for the environment and for pacifism. I felt the tone of the book was very positive – he writes with humility, and avoids sneering and hostility towards evangelicals (although I expect those who identify strongly with the “religious right” will not enjoy this book).

He tells of how as a young man he was introduced to a brand of Christianity that had plenty of “do not”s, but was left wondering what, if anything, Christians were supposed to do. A brief stint in the charismatic movement left him equally disillusioned. It was at this point that he began to get to know some homeless people, and soon befriended them. Chapter 2 tells a moving story of how he mobilised many people to prevent a group of homeless families from being evicted from a disused church building.

He then tells of his time with Mother Teresa, where he learned the importance of being faithful above being successful, and to do “small things with great love”. Most importantly, he learned to see the image of God in the poor. It was after his time with Mother Teresa that he headed back to Willow Creek, and found it hard to stomach the totally different culture. He offers a gracious yet provocative critique of the “seeker-sensitive” approach – arguing that when we remove the cross, we end up with cheap grace. He was also very concerned that our churches make it all to easy for rich Christians to not know any poor people.

The remainder of the book unpacks his vision for being an “ordinary radical”. It is not acceptable for Christians to live like everyone else. It is not acceptable for Christians to help the poor at arms length, via agencies of professionals. We need to be willing to get to know the poor, and “shout the gospel with our lives”. He makes some very good points about the significance of baptism and the nature of repentance – we have died to an old way of life – we need to continually live a new way.

He is particularly provocative concerning how churches spend their money. The early church considered their money to be primarily for the feeding of the hungry. They would even fast to enable themselves to feed the poor on occasions. He does not accept the claim that large churches are able to give more to the poor than the same number of people in smaller churches. Claiborne argues that rather than a prosperity theology on one hand or an ascetic poverty theology on the other, we should believe in abundance that is rooted in a “theology of enough”. He likes to quote the saying that God wants to meet our needs but not our greeds, and promotes living a lifestyle that is simple (though not easy).

A number of chapters touch on the subject of pacifism, and it is perhaps here that he will offend many American evangelicals. He speaks out against the “myth of redemptive violence” – the idea that we can bring peace through violent means. The gospel is something worth dying for, but nothing is worth killing for. He is respectful towards Christians in the military, but clearly would prefer them to find alternative employment. I felt that though he made many good points in favour of pacifism, I was still left wanting to know his response to some of the obvious objections that may be made. (Although to be fair, that was probably beyond the scope of this book).

He warns us against tiptoeing through life, avoiding danger and dares us to step out and take some risks on behalf of the poor and oppressed. He speaks out against being cool (which is a little ironic, since at the moment, he is the among coolest Christians out there, but he is at least aware of this irony, and clearly wishes he had fewer fans, and more people who shared his passion enough to actually do something).

I appreciated some of the insights in chapter nine – as humans we are beautiful and wretched at the same time. We cannot carry the cross and the sword. There is a tragic self-righteousness found on both liberal and conservative sides of Christianity, that must be overcome.

Chapter 10 is perhaps the most overtly critical of evangelicals, suggesting that most are following an opposite way to that of Jesus and calls us to be “extremists for love and grace”. There is a third way to approach suffering and evil in the world that is not passivity and is not violence.

He reminds us that the goal is not finding an “issue” to fight for, rather it is about connecting with, and caring for people. He regularly seems to get himself arrested for various protests and acts of civil disobedience, but he desires to be a prophet not a protestor. Like the Old Testament prophets, he certainly is provocative, shocking, controversial and more right than many of us might like to admit. I appreciated his defence of the concept of church towards the end of the book. For all its faults, it is still our family, and leaving it will not do us any good. The church is like Noah’s ark – it stinks, but if you get out you’ll drown.

My Response

So what did I make of this book? First of all, its very well written and accessible. He is humble, funny, interesting and inspiring as well as being provocative. Second, the things he is passionate about – ending poverty, social justice, peace, and care for the environment are all things that as evangelicals we should be more than happy to get excited about. In every evangelical church I have been part of, there have been many people who share these passions and are sacrificially involved in hands-on mercy ministries both locally and abroad. But the uncomfortable truth is that this is often seen as just a small part of what it means to be the church. It is far too easy to leave all that to the specialists and focus entirely on other concerns.

What about our favourite evangelical concern – good doctrine? Well Claiborne rather shrewdly avoids bringing up potentially explosive issues. He seems to take an ecumenical approach, clearly preferring orthopraxy to orthodoxy. But that is a debate for another day. The issues raised in this book are worthy of being taken seriously even if we suspect we may disagree with him on a whole host of other issues.

In a similar way to N T Wright and Rob Bell, he likes to define the gospel being a conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar – Jesus versus the Empire. It does seem to me that certain anachronistic liberties are taken to squeeze modern day America (under Bush) into the image of the Roman Empire. I do agree with his critique of rampant nationalism within the church though.

I have a lot of sympathy for his criticisms of the seeker sensitive movement, and the way that our modern churches require huge sums of money to service their own running costs. Does this mean we should go back to house churches and non-salaried pastors and elders? I’m not sure it would be a bad thing. But equally, I wonder if we could find ways to spend less on ourselves and more on others (check out what Jared Wilson is doing at Element as an example).

Finally, this book cannot fail to inspire some reflection on what way you and your church can do more to advance the cause of the poor. He calls for imagination and tells many moving and powerful stories, but I suspect that many readers like myself will find themselves frustratedly wondering what the next step is. Not everyone can drop everything and head off to Calcutta on a whim. And not everyone has the infectious personality and creative imagination of Shane Claiborne. Many of us deeply want to see the poor welcomed in to our churches, but simply don’t know how or where to begin. I guess we need God to raise up prophets and creative thinkers within our local communities who will not just provoke and inspire us, but initiate and demonstrate ways of engaging with the poor and championing the cause of the oppressed.

Its been some time since I read a biography, and though I have heard plenty of anecdotes about Hudson Taylor, I have never read a complete account of his life. There are, I think, several biographies available and I am not sure whether this is the best available. This one has 19 relatively short chapters, and seems to have been written with younger readers in mind.

But whatever shortcomings the book may have, the life story of Hudson Taylor is a remarkable and fascinating one. What first impacted me was his incredible devotion to his life’s calling, and his willingness to make great sacrifices in order to do what God had called him to do.

His passion to see China evangelised saw him take remarkable steps to prepare himself as he lived in self-imposed frugality, and tried to teach himself to trust God rather than taking his own initiative. Some of this methods might seem unwise or at least a little quaint to our more sophisticated modern ideas about evangelism, and yet his unwavering simple faith in God is a sobering challenge.

The story of his life in China is a humbling tale of perseverance and endurance through much suffering and adversity. Many of his family members and missionary colleagues died of various illnesses, he was often in great danger through persecution, and money was in extremely short supply. It would have been quite understandable if he had given up at any point. Yet he remained single-mindedly devoted to reaching the lost millions of China.

It is interesting to read of a spiritual breakthrough he had in 1869, 15 years after he had first visited China, where he grasps the gospel in greater depth, and learned to rest in Jesus, rather than striving and toiling to be accepted by him. And yet, there was no let-up in his diligence as a result of this. He learned to refresh his own soul in prayer, so he could continue to give of himself to others.

The book is honest about the criticisms he faced, as well as the internal conflicts within the mission society CIM that he founded. It seems to me that a love for God, and a love for the people of China were the prime motivators that enabled him to lose so much and yet still persevere joyfully.

I recommend that anyone who has not read a biography of Hudson Taylor get hold of a copy and allow yourself to be provoked by his example. Let me know in the comments if you know of a particularly good biography, as I suspect that some of the others might be better than this one.

This book is part of the "Contours of Christian Philosophy" series from IVP, and offers an introduction to Epistemology, from a Christian viewpoint. This volume is subtitled, "Becoming Intellectually Virtuous".

Wood argues that the "intellectual virtues" (e.g. wisdom, understanding, foresight, love of truth) are foundational to our pursuit of the truth. The ancient philosophers made a link between intellectual life and character, and the Bible repeatedly praises various intellectual virtues.

"Epistemology, then, is not (or ought not to be) concerned merely with the piecemeal appraisal of individual beliefs but with what kinds of persons we are becoming: whether we are intellectually humble rather than arrogant, studious rather than merely idly curious, insightful rather than dull, wise and not fools."

He then devotes several chapters to exploring different intellectual virtues (and their corresponding vices). There are virtues that motivate us to find truth, virtues that help us to maintain and defend our beliefs, virtues that enable us to communicate our beliefs, and virtues that enable us to apply our beliefs. A person of integrity is both morally and intellectually virtuous, and uses their intellect to promote human flourishing. As well as virtues to cultivate, there are intellectual vices to avoid. For example, obtuseness, gullibility, superstitiousness, close-mindedness, willful naiveté, and superstition.

Knowledge, like wealth, cannot be sought at any cost, but is subject to moral restraints.

There are very helpful sections on intellectual honesty and dishonesty, wisdom and prudence. Prudence is about practical wisdom – a prudent person learns about their strengths and weaknesses, and knows what actions to take to achieve a morally good end.

The philosophically isolated and aseptic manner in which many contemporary epistemological issues are discussed gives them all the lure of a good puzzle, with rewards commensurate to those that come from successfully tackling a tough brain-teaser. But seeing epistemological issues, and the academic life in general, as contributing factors to a well-lived virtuous life imbues them with much greater significance.

The next section of the book covers some of the more standard topics for an epistemology textbook. There is a chapter on foundationalism, where he critiques strong foundationalism – which ultimately ignores the problem of sin.

A chapter on epistemic justification sees him discuss and critique evidentialism and coherentism, before moving on to reliabilism. On the whole, I found these sections a little heavy going as a reader without much knowledge of philosophy, but the author does use plenty of example scenarios that help to ground some of the abstract language that is inevitably used in these sort of discussions.

It is at this point that the intellectual virtues are brought back into the picture, and the subject of religious belief is examined. How can we be justified in holding religious beliefs? He interacts with Plantinga and claims that internalist (evidentialism, coherentist) models of epistemic justification have problems when dealing with religious beliefs.

The book then closes with a very interesting look at the role of emotions in proper cognitive function. It is not enough to be simply intellectually capable, we must have right emotions and morals in order to think correctly. Though emotions can negatively affect reasoning, the lack of appropriate passions can do the same.

Whether or not this is the best book for explaining all the current epsitemological theories out there I do not know, but for me, the primary benefit of this book is to show the importance of the intellectual virtues, and demonstrate how interconnected with epistemic justification they really are. It is not enough for us to be impassive, correctly functioning thinking machines (i.e. computers), in fact, due to our fallen nature, we can never operate that way anyway. Rather, we are to seek wisdom, prudence, integrity that we may not only know the truth, but live it and communicate it.