Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement, edited by William D. Henard and Adam W. Greenway (B&H Academic, 2009)
Both editors teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Henard is a senior pastor as well, and Greenway is the Seminary associate v.p. for Extension Education and Applied Ministries. Bruce Waltke and Al Mohler are among those commending the book. Waltke says (back cover): “This collection of brilliant essays is a must read for contemporary church leaders and thoughtful Christians.” He adds that the essays critique both the doctrinally friendly Emergent “stream…toward cultural sensitivity and the weakness of the ‘doctrinally wary/averse’ stream’s penchant toward moral, biblical, and theological relativism.” Contributors represent: Beeson and Biola (one each); Dallas, Southern Evangelical, and Southeastern Baptist (two each); Southern Baptist (four including the two editors); as well as a Baptist pastor (besides Henard) and Ed Stetzer, Director of LifeWay Research and Missiologist in Residence at LifeWay Christian Resources (which from 1891 to 1998 was known as the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board; the publisher of this volume is a ministry of LifeWay, and changed its name from Broadman & Holman to B&H in 2006). Here are some samples.
William Henard leads off with a lengthy essay titled “The Emerging Church: One Movement, Two Streams.” He cites Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and Acts 29 as being in the “doctrine friendly” stream.
Of course one man’s marginalia is another man’s non-negotiable truth, but the first point here is to acknowledge, precisely for the defense of the gospel, the common interest all Evangelicals have in achieving optimal success in the distinguishing of primary, secondary, and tertiary issues. This task of discrimination is rarely easy and is never fully completed. But surely the desire to remove every unnecessary stumbling block to the advance of the gospel should be a goal all would share. [p. 45]
Ed Stetzer’s essay mentions Covenant in the context of defining: “Emergent Christianity”; “Emergent Church”; “The Emergents”; and “Emergent” (the last one he says refers to the relational network that formed first in 1997 and is also known as “Emergent Village”).
Prior to the release of [Tony] Jones’s book [The New Christians (Jossey-Bass, 2008)], others had offered lexicographic help….For example, Darrin Patrick of the Journey in St. Louis gave a presentation at Covenant Seminary in which one session was devoted to a lexicon for conversations about emergent. [p. 51, emphasis added]
Darrell L. Bock in “Emergent/Emerging Christologies” has a subheading “A Look at Brian McLaren” in which the latter’s “most recent work, Everything Must Change” (Thomas Nelson, 2007) is a focus because “it is made in light of past responses to him and has an overview of Christology.”
In “The Emerging Church and Salvation” Southern’s Robert Sagers notes that Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005), has seldom if ever identified with the Emerging Church but is popular with its adherents. Bell claims both heaven’s and hell’s sinners are forgiven, but choose to trust and live in different realities. “Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor go even further than Bell when they assert” that “we are already in unless we want to be out”—quoting their A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity (Jossey-Bass, 2006; Wiley, 2007). Later in his essay, Sagers finds B. McLaren’s “deemphasis on the future resurrection of the body, reminiscent of the kind of Gnosticism the apostles and the early church fathers anathematized.”
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary president Daniel Akin, in “The Emerging Church and Ethical Choices: The Corinthian Matrix,” describes Mark Driscoll as once labeled “the cussing pastor” for his frequent use of expletives in preaching. Driscoll also was “a teetotaler until shortly after his conversion and entrance into the ministry.” Tony Jones, former national coordinator of Emergent Village, “recently admitted that after years of having not made up his mind regarding homosexuality,” he now believes that “G[ay] L[esbian] B[isexual] T[ransgendered] Q[ueer] can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.” [p. 263]
Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again, by John Piper (Christian Focus, 2009)
The book received high compliments (back cover, and inside front cover) by people such as D.A. Carson, Bruce Ware, J.I. Packer and Timothy George. Iain Murray says:
Many will be thankful that John Piper is here addressing the key need of our times. Every awakening begins with the renewed discovery of Christ’s teaching on the new birth. Here is that amazing teaching in lucid yet comprehensive form; with a relevance to readers worldwide.
Carson says in part:
I cannot too strongly celebrate the publication of this book. Owing in part to several decades of dispute over justification and how a person is set right with God, we have tended to neglect another component of conversion no less important.
First Baptist (Grand Cayman) pastor Thabiti Anyabwile says in part: “One wonders why it’s taken so long for a book on the new birth to be written!”
Focus: The Art and Soul of Cinema, by Tony Watkins (Damaris, 2007)
The author is Managing Editor of www.culurewatch.org and works with the Damaris Trust. L’Abri Fellowship’s Jock McGregor claims (on page facing the title page): “There is no better channel [than movies] for engaging with the ideas of the culture or a more pressing area for Christian discernment. Tony Watkins has produced an excellent introduction to the whole subject—comprehensive, balanced, readable and immanently [sic] useful.”
Forgiveness in a Wounded World: Jonah’s Dilemma, by Janet Howe Gaines, Studies in Biblical Literature (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003)
The author is Lecturer in English and former Executive Director of Hillel at the U of NM in Albuquerque. Forgiveness and its complexities form her central focus. A glance at the index shows wide-ranging references, from ancient sources including many OT passages (and Josephus, Ovid, Horace, etc.) to Rashi, Shakespeare, Melville, Jung, Mandela, and Nouwen [who’s not in the index but mentioned on the back cover]. In the section headed “Jonah and Jewish Liturgy” within chapter 6 titled “Jonah’s Legacy” a glance revealed not only description of the Yom Kippur use of the Book of Jonah, but the sentence: “In synagogue tradition, the book of Jonah is considered the peak of moral instruction.”
Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal, by Eric L. Johnson (IVP Academic, 2007)
The Preface begins: “There are only a few topics about which Christians have more disparate ideas and are more deeply divided than that of psychology and soul care.” The book early on “tries to offer an explanation.” But, mostly its focus is “on a more constructive agenda: a proposal for a fundamental framework for Christian soul care (a broad category that includes psychotherapy, counseling and spiritual direction, and in fact encompasses the main tasks of the church).” Four Parts comprise eighteen chapters. Here’s a small sample of chapter titles: “The Bible and Current Evangelical Soul-Care Paradigms” (chap. 3); “Interpreting the Bible for Christian Psychology and Soul Care” (chap. 6); “Translating the Texts of Other Communities for Christian Soul Care” (chap. 7); “Orders of Meaning: A Multilevel Analysis of Human Life” (chap. 10); “The Trinitarian Ground and Goal of Christian Well-Being and Soul Care: Union and Communion with God” (chap. 12); and “The Call to Outwardness: The Manifestation of Christlikeness” (chap. 17). The book has author, subject, and Scripture indexes and two appendixes, titled respectively: “A biblical Coherence Theory of Truth in Counseling” and “Toward a Christian Semiotics for a Christian Psychology.”
Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community, by Andrew Martin (IVP, 2009)
Brian McLaren writes the foreword. The author’s Marin Foundation “is conducting the largest-ever research study on religion in the gay community.” The author “was caught off-guard when his three best friends came out to him in three consecutive months. Suddenly the… [GLBT] people he’d always seen as “out there”…were up close and personal. How could he reconcile his friends to his faith? That question has become his life’s work.”
Negotiation Genius, by Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman (Bantam, 2007)
The authors are professors at the Harvard Business School. Steps, principles, strategies, etc. pepper the book—e.g., “Seek to reconcile interests, not demands” and “Negotiate multiple issues simultaneously” and “Build trust and share information” and “Appoint a devil’s advocate.” Part I, The Negotiator’s Toolkit, has 3 chapters covering claiming and creating value in negotiation, and “Investigative Negotiation.” Part II, The Psychology of Negotiation, has 3 chapters covering “When Rationality Fails” owing to biases of mind or of heart, and “Negotiating Rationally in an Irrational World.” Part III, Negotiating in the Real World, has 8 chapters covering influence, blind spots, confronting lies & deception, ethical dilemmas, working from a weak position, dealing with ugliness (distrust, anger, threats, ego issues, irrationality), when not to negotiate, and “The Path to Genius.” There’s a glossary, notes, and index. From the dustjacket: “An absolutely brilliant negotiation framework and tool kit…compellingly illustrated from…real…situations. It’s the most comprehensive, wise, practical nook on the subject I’ve ever seen.” – Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. David Gergen says: “…for a handful of dollars, you can buy a book that invites you into a classroom conversation at the Harvard Business School.” U of Southern CA professor Warren Bennis, author of Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, says this book “is the single, most essential source for the basic understanding of this increasingly important skill set.”
Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) and the Outward Instruments of Divine Grace, by Jason Zuidema, Reformed Historical Theology, vol. 4 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008)
Zuidema teaches in Montreal at McGill University and at the Farel Faculté de Théologie Réformeé. This book has a fine “Vermigli Studies Bibliography” as well as a “General Bibliography,” and there’s an index—in which Frank James, John Patrick Donnelly, and Joseph McLelland are by far the most cited of modern authors. From Preface:
Vermigli was one of the most high-profile international Reformers of the sixteenth-century. For almost the entirety of his adult life […] Vermigli engaged with the brightest and most important theological luminaries of Europe. Hence, even though largely forgotten by several centuries of scholarship, his life and thought are a good vantage point from which to see the totality of the Reformation.
The purpose of this present essay is […] to understand his theological outlook, his methodological presuppositions, the sources of his thought, and the goals of his life work. The quest is not new: it is a question the last several generations of Vermigli scholars have been asking and answering in a very detailed manner. Yet, there is still a great deal to learn.
Back cover: Vermigli “sought to steer a middle course between theological extremes […] Typical of this […] are his insights into the outward instruments of divine grace.”
Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens, by Bernd Wannenwetsch, translated by Margaret Kohl, Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics (Oxford, 2004)
From the dustjacket…
How does Christian ethics begin? This pioneering study explores the grammar of the Christian life as it is embodied and learned in worship as the formative experience of the ‘fellow citizens of God’s people.’ The book presents the first in-depth theological investigation of the phenomenon of ‘politlcal worship’ by exposing the political nature of worship and the worship dimensions of politics.
In a careful analysis of biblical and traditional conceptions of worship, Wannenwetsch demonstrates how the genuine political character of worship neutralizes attempts to politicize or de-politicize it. In the imprinting of the experience of divine reconciliation…worship challenges the deepest antagonisms of political theory and practice: antagonisms of ‘private and public’, ‘freedom and necessity’, and ‘action and contemplation’. At the same time, the ‘spillover’ of worship into every sphere of life installs a healthy suspicion of post-modern conceptualizations of role-mobility. In the experience of ‘hearing in commmunion’, an encounter with a word that does not deceive announces the end of the rule of the hermeneutics of suspicion.
Further questions are discussed …. Particular practices or dimensions of worship (confession, preaching, praising, intercession, observance of holy days) are examined and their heuristic and formative significance explored….
The book [involves]…a variety of traditions … and contemporary voices … [and] addresses systematic and practical theology as well as political theory, while indicating the essential interpenetration of these disciplines.
A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, by Paul E. Miller (NavPress, 2009)
The author is “director of seeJesus.net, an organization that develops interactive Bible studies for small groups.” J. I. Packer says the book (back cover) is “Honest, realistic, mature, wise, deep. Warmly recommended.” RTS prof Steve Brown also comments, and inside the front cover there’s commendation from Dan Allender, Tim Keller, Tremper Longman, Phil Ryken, Scotty Smith, Charlie Peacock, Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries, Cynthia Bezek (editor of Pray! Magazine), and Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church retired pastor Bob Russell.
Spiritual Resources in Family Therapy, edited by Froma Walsh, 2nd ed. (Guilford, 2009)
The author is a professor emeritus of the University of Chicago med school’s psychiatry dept. & the School of Social Service Administration. She’s a past president of the American Family Therapy Academy and past editor of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. Among books she wrote or edited, Strengthening Family Resilience and Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family are both into their second edition (as is also this book), and Natural Family Processes is in its third edition.
Theological Bible Commentary, edited by Gail R. O’Day and David L. Petersen (WJK, 2009)
The Introduction notes that although philology, history, cultural contexts, and the formation of biblical literature are still important (though not the way they were in the first 2/3 of the twentieth century), literary and social scientific analysis became prominent as did an acute awareness that “presuppositionless” scholarship was a chimera. Another important trend was “an interest in construing the Bible as canon.” The coalescence of all these “has now led to a blossoming of interest in theological readings of biblical texts.” “Nondenominational churches, retreat centers, spirituality and theology reading groups, for example, have generated new readers of the Bible and new forms of reading communities,” together with an “increase in denominationally based Bible study programs.”
This one-volume commentary on Genesis through Revelation (deutero-canonical books are not included) aims to put “the best of scholarship in conversation with the theological claims of the biblical text” as we have it, and to serve diverse communities of readers of the Bible. There are 41 commentators (all but a few from the USA), with several of them treating multiple books (Lancaster Theological Seminary’s Julia O’Brien does all twelve Minor Prophets, for example). Emory’s Candler School of Theology has by far the most contributors with a total of six, including Luke Timothy Johnson. The only ones in Missouri are Eden’s NT prof Deborah Krause (treating 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) and, from St. Paul School of Theology in KC, Prof of Hebrew Bible Harold C. Washington.
Last month, for Theological Libraries Month, we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as well as the entire history of English Bible translation. As part of that celebration, we challenged you with our English Bible History Quiz, and the results have now been tallied…
October is Theological Libraries Month, and this year the Covenant Library will be celebrating the history of the English Bible in honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version. Here are some of the ways we’ll be celebrating…
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