Elliot Ritzema

Tag: Books

  • Book Review: Death in Holy Orders

    I love the writers from the “Golden Age” of detective fiction, like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. P.D. James is a more modern (but still British) writer who has been compared to them, so I decided to give one of her books a try. This one features her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, investigating the mysterious death of a student at an Anglo-Catholic theological college on the remote East Anglian coast. Before he is there very long, an even more mysterious death takes place, and his investigation takes on more urgency. In the end, a conspiracy comes to light, and Dalgliesh is able to apprehend the murderer.

    Considering my interest in both murder mysteries and theology, I thought that I would really enjoy this book. And it is true that it got off to a very promising start. Also, James was very good at describing the scene in a way that put her readers there, and her presentation of the psychology of her characters was quite good. But for me, the plot moved too slowly, and the conclusion was ultimately unsatisfying. There was no chase, no sense of a race against time—even the capture of the murderer was a bit anticlimactic. I didn’t find myself heavily invested in the outcome, and didn’t find myself caring about the characters. It may be that this book is more “realistic” than the older mystery novels that I like so well, but I don’t read mystery novels for realism. I read them because they are a puzzle to be solved, and because they pit good against evil in clearly recognizable ways. I didn’t get that out of this book. I will probably give James another chance, though.

  • The Next Christians: Take Two

    The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons is built on one crucial insight, with two corollaries. The insight is that the culture wars are over. The corollaries are that 1) Christians lost, and 2) that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

    Sure, you sometimes hear people trying to whip up support for another offensive in the culture wars. There is no shortage of “Christian Nation” and “Take Back America” rhetoric, but generally speaking these salvos come from people who are over 50 or so years old. They grew up in a time and place where Christianity had more cultural power than it does now, and they think that because they experienced it in the past, it just takes a little wielding of political muscle to experience it again. However, those who are younger—those whom Lyons calls “the next Christians”—have a different perspective. They grew up in a time when Christianity had already started its slip away from the center of society, and they believe that fighting a culture war is a destructive response—and not just to the “other side.”

    This is my second go-round with The Next Christians. I read the hardcover version last year (here is my review), and picked up the paperback version when it came out earlier this month. I’m glad that I did; Lyons has made the book stronger with the addition of a new chapter.

    The paperback is mostly the same as the hardcover, but includes a new subtitle (“The Good News About the End of Christian America” is replaced by “Seven Ways You Can Live the Gospel and Restore the World”) and a new chapter on a seventh characteristic of the Next Christians: “Civil, Not Divisive.” That means the characteristics of the “next Christians” are that they are:

    Provoked, not Offended
    Creators, not Critics
    Called, not Employed
    Grounded, not Distracted
    In Community, not Alone
    Civil, not Divisive
    Countercultural, not “Relevant”

    The “Civil, not Divisive” chapter is a welcome addition. Too often, Christians in the public square subscribe to the “but they started it” school of political engagement, using fear-mongering and tit-for-tat tactics to gain support. Jesus calls us to a better, more gracious, way. The chapter also contains the important idea, which I originally heard from Tim Keller, that politics is downstream of culture (78). That is, it is changes in culture that make political change possible. Putting all of one’s eggs in the basket of political change is a short-sighted philosophy.

    Along with a different political outlook, the “next Christians” have a fuller understanding of the gospel. Lyons writes,

    The next Christians believe that Christ’s death and Resurrection were not only meant to save people from something. He wanted to save Christians to something. God longs to restore his image in them, and let them loose, freeing them to pursue his original dreams for the entire world. Here, now, today, tomorrow. They no longer feel bound to wait for heaven or spend all of their time telling people what they should believe. Instead, they are participating with God in his restoration project for the whole world (53).

    “Restoring the world” can sound a bit grandiose, but I think Lyons is merely trying to direct attention to the grand calling given to humans by Christ. He isn’t saying that restoration can happen apart from Christ, and he isn’t saying that evangelism isn’t important.

    My main critique is that Lyons’s cultural analysis can be a bit oversimplified at times, but I don’t think that is out-of-bounds for a popular level book. He has put his finger on a cultural shift among Christians in the West, and wants to help define and encourage it. I think he’s on the right track.

    Note: Thanks to Waterbrook/Multnomah for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • Book Review: Invitation to Biblical Interpretation

    First there was the hermeneutical circle. Then there was the hermeneutical spiral. Now, in Invitation to Biblical Interpretation: Exploring the Hermeneutical Triad of History, Literature and Theology, Andreas J. Kostenberger and Richard D. Patterson give us the hermeneutical triad.

    The hermeneutical triad, as the subtitle indicates, consists of history, literature and theology. History and literature are at the two lower points of the triangle, and they build up to theology. This book looks at each of them in turn, but spends the most time exploring three subsets of literature: canon, genre and language. It closes with a chapter on application and proclamation, since that is the ultimate goal of interpretation.

    The greatest strengths of this book are its readability and comprehensiveness. Though it is a mammoth textbook, I found that it was not a chore to read. It is well-organized and well-written. And it truly is a one-stop shop for anyone interested in biblical interpretation. The reader learns about historical backgrounds, different schools of interpretation, literary genres, exegetical fallacies, and more. It pulls together things that I was exposed to in different classes at different times of my seminary education.

    Negatively, some of the chapters (Like 12, on discourse analysis, and 15, on biblical theology) focused inordinately on the New Testament. Since this is an invitation to biblical interpretation, not just the New Testament, there should have been more balance here. I also wish the authors had spent a little more time interacting with other hermeneutical approaches—even approaches the authors disagree with. I understand that things must be left out even in such a large book, but it was a bit frustrating that in their brief overview of the history of hermeneutics, some approaches were dismissed without much discussion.

    In spite of that, this book is well worth the time spent reading it. It gives a solid method for interpretation of the biblical text, and it is so wide-ranging that it is almost a seminary education in itself. It is very well suited as a textbook for a college or seminary level biblical hermeneutics course. It includes key words, study questions, assignments and bibliographies at the end of every chapter.

    Note: Thanks to Kregel for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • Book Review: Our Favorite Sins

    There is a paradox at work in modern Christianity. On the one hand, it is popular to think that the gospel has primarily to do with how to handle sin (what Dallas Willard calls “the gospel of sin management”). On the other, we’re terrible at actually dealing with sin. All too often, the response to persistent sin is “try harder,” but this technique often leads to short-term results and long-term failure.

    Todd D. Hunter (author of The Accidental Anglican) has written a book about how to deal with temptations to sin that doesn’t begin and end with “try harder.” He begins by saying that at the root of persistent sins is disordered desire—the “tyranny of what we want.” Desires are good to have, but we are tempted to pursue them destructively. Overcoming temptation starts with recognizing those desires and learning how they can be directed in more positive ways.

    Hunter uses research from the Barna Group that indicates the top five temptations Americans deal with are anxiety, procrastination, overeating, overuse of media, and laziness. He spends a chapter each looking closely at these temptations, but these chapters are helpful even for people who do not struggle with those particular temptations. He spends each one talking about how to defeat temptation by reordering desires and becoming people who, “having feasted on God, his desires and purposes for us, would not entertain temptation” (63–4).

    In the latter part of the book, Hunter focuses on “ancient and fruitful” ways that the Church has historically dealt wit temptation by reordering desires. These include silence, solitude, liturgical prayers, sacraments, and the lectionary.

    This is a book on sin and temptation that I would recommend, for two reasons: First, since its goal is getting at the root of temptation rather than the symptoms. Second, it relies on the collected wisdom of the historic Christian Church to give guidance on reordering those desires that enslave us.

    Note: Thanks to Thomas Nelson for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

    Second note: Two of my fellow Regent alumni are thanked in the acknowledgements, so that is another point in the book’s favor!

  • Book Review: The Hunger Games and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

    In a post-apocalyptic future, 24 teenagers must participate in a reality show in which they must kill or be killed. That is the premise of The Hunger Games, a young adult (!) novel by Suzanne Collins.

    The book is set in the country of Panem, which occupies what was once North America. In Panem, 12 districts surround the Capitol, the seat of government and power. The protagonist of the book is 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in District 12 (formerly Appalachia), one of the poorest districts. Her father has died five years before, and her family now consists of her younger sister Prim—whom she loves—and her mother,whom she has contempt for. In fact, with a few exceptions, Katniss has contempt for most people she meets.

    For the benefit of those who would like to read the book, I won’t get into many plot details. I will say that Collins is a skillful storyteller, and it was easy to keep reading. I will also say that, for reasons other than Collins’s storytelling skills, the book was a disappointment for me. I felt that Katniss was not a likable protagonist from the beginning, and she did not change significantly over the course of the book. The book comes across as deterministic in the way that it presents the world. There are no surprising twists (Actually, let me clarify that. I shouldn’t say that there are no surprising twists; I should say that I was not surprised by the twists that were there. I don’t want to ruin it for people who haven’t read the book, so I won’t go into details. But there were a few points in the book where it seemed like Collins wanted the reader to be surprised, and I wasn’t.) The Capitol is in charge and no one can do anything about it. The only thing anyone can do is look out for the welfare of themselves and the people they care about. In this way, it reminded me of Thomas Hobbes’s description of the state of nature, where it is a war of all against all, and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes says this condition obtains where there is no single power to keep everyone in awe. I heard Collins saying, through her story, that this condition also obtains where there is a single power, but it is in that power’s interest to deprive others of any kind of security.

    One positive aspect of this book is that, although there is lots of violence, it isn’t glorified. Violence–even violence that is “necessary”—is terrible, and that comes through loud and clear in The Hunger Games. There seems to be no myth of redemptive violence at work here. For those unfamiliar with the concept, here is Walter Wink:

    The belief that violence “saves” is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god. What people overlook, then, is the religious character of violence. It demands from its devotees an absolute obedience- unto-death.

    This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today….

    No other religious system has even remotely rivalled the myth of redemptive violence in its ability to catechise its young so totally. From the earliest age, children are awash in depictions of violence as the ultimate solution to human conflicts. Nor does saturation in the myth end with the close of adolescence. There is no rite of passage from adolescent to adult status in the national cult of violence, but rather a years-long assimilation to adult television and movie fare….

    Redemptive violence gives way to violence as an end in itself. It is no longer a religion that uses violence in the pursuit of order and salvation, but one in which violence has become an aphrodisiac, sheer titillation, an addictive high, a substitute for relationships. Violence is no longer the means to a higher good, namely order; violence becomes the end.

    While the myth of redemptive violence pervades our world, it is not present in the world of The Hunger Games. There is no sense that violence from the “good guys” is an adequate response to violence from the “bad guys.” All violence in The Hunger Games is disturbing, and that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, though it does not glorify violence, the world in The Hunger Games is presented as a hopeless place. The cycle of violence cannot be broken, even though violence isn’t presented in a positive way. If I were the parent of young adults who read this book, I would probably want to help them appreciate the negative presentation of violence, but also talk to them about the deterministic (or possibly fatalistic?) worldview of the books, and whether it accurately depicted the world as it is. I don’t believe that it does, but I do believe that there are many determinists among us. Collins, apparently, is one.

  • Book Review: The Me I Want to Be

    Popular-level books on Christian living are not my favorite genre. Partially this is because I just prefer to read books on theology and biblical studies, and partially because a lot of what some of them have to say has been said better elsewhere by someone like C.S. Lewis. But I like John Ortberg a lot—maybe because we have a similar personality type (INFP, according to the Myers-Briggs temperament sorter). He is able to write straightforwardly about complex realities without over-simplifying, and he has a good sense of humor.

    The idea behind this book is that each person is made by God in a certain way, and that it is our task to find out how to flourish given the way we are made. Different things make us grow, and different things give us life. We don’t find out what makes us grow and gives us life by imitating other people. For example, although prayer is something that all people need to flourish, different people flourish most by praying at different times, in different ways, and in different places.

    The negative side of this is that each of has “signature sins,” ways of sinning that are connected to the ways we are gifted. Just as different things make each of us grow, different things keep each of us from growing and becoming the “me” we were meant to be. A temptation that one person finds very difficult to resist will be easy to resist for someone else. For example, people with great leadership abilities are tempted to use others.

    This book contains a lot of good advice, and each copy contains an access code to a spiritual assessment tool at Monvee.com. I’d recommend it especially for young people who are just beginning to figure out how they have been wired, but older adults can benefit from it as well.

  • Book Review: Jesus and the Victory of God

    I started reading this about a year ago, and finally finished it early in December. N.T. (Tom) Wright has become a book machine over the last few years, sometimes publishing three or four per year. Some of these are popular level re-workings of ideas that he has written about elsewhere, but Jesus and the Victory of God is one of his more massive and academic works. Published in 1996, it is the second volume in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series (the first is The New Testament and the People of God, the third is The Resurrection of the Son of God, and the fourth, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, is forthcoming).

    The underlying argument of the book is that the “historical Jesus” and the “Jesus of faith” don’t have to be separated, as they have been in so much recent scholarship. You can do rigorous historical study and end up knowing something about how Jesus presented himself to his contemporaries. That’s not to say that the book is devotional in tone. It is academic through and through. Wright simply says that it is possible to know with some degree of confidence who Jesus believed himself to be, and who his earliest followers believed him to be. This means that he invites criticism from two sides: scholars who think that he is too confident that historical questions have answers, and believers who don’t like historical studies that seek to fit Jesus into a first-century milieu. Wright begins with an overview of Jesus studies over the past 100 or so years. Then he argues that Jesus’ public persona was that of a prophet, and the content of his proclamation was the kingdom of God. Then he looks at what Jesus believed his role was with regard to Israel, and the reasons for his crucifixion. Finally, he argues that Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem was intended to act out symbolically YHWH’s return to Zion.

    This is a fascinating book, and well worth the time and effort spent in reading it. Those less academically minded may find especially the initial review of Jesus studies tedious, but those already familiar with the likes of Schweitzer, Wrede and Bultmann will find it interesting. There are things about this book that I love and things that I am not sure about (e.g., that some of Jesus’ parables that the Church has traditionally thought are about his second coming are really about YHWH’s return to Zion as enacted by Jesus). Wright doesn’t talk much about Jesus’ resurrection in this book, but not because he doesn’t think it is important. It is because there was too much material to deal with it in one book, so he wrote The Resurrection of the Son of God over the next seven years. I’d recommend this book to anyone seeking to gain a greater understanding of how Jesus fit into first-century Judaism, and especially those who may be either enamored or troubled by proclamations from the likes of the Jesus Seminar or Bart Ehrman.

  • Book Review: Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics

    This is the second edition of Steve Wilkens’s introductory survey of ethical theories. Wilkens, who teaches at Azusa Pacific University in southern California, devotes chapters to cultural relativism, ethical egoism, utilitarianism, behaviorism, evolutionary ethics, situation ethics, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, narrative ethics, natural law ethics and divine command theory. The chapters on evolutionary ethics and narrative ethics are new in this edition.

    The idea behind this book is that various ethical theories can be summarized in short slogans, or “bumper stickers.” Even people who do not think about ethical systems organize their lives around one or more of these slogans, and Wilkens wants to bring the theories behind the bumper stickers out into the open so they can be evaluated. Wilkens writes from a Christian perspective, and places the ethical theories in the book into three categories: first he looks at ethical theories that contradict aspects of the Christian worldview, then theories that can be compatible with, but do not require, a Christian worldview, and finally theories that begin from a Christian standpoint.

    In each chapter, Wilkens introduces the reader to an ethical theory, primarily interacting with one or two proponents of that theory. For example, in his chapter on ethical egoism he interacts with Ayn Rand, in his chapter on evolutionary ethics he interacts with E.O. Wilson, and in his chapter on narrative ethics he interacts with Stanley Hauerwas. Then he gives the positive aspects of each theory—he believes that all of them have some truth; otherwise they would not be so attractive to so many people—and potential weaknesses.

    One potential weakness of the book is that dealing with just one or two proponents of an ethical theory can lead to oversimplification. Wilkens is conscious of that risk, but believes that it is a risk that must be taken in an introductory survey (217). Also, in the chapter on natural law, Wilkens talks about the U.S. Constitution setting forth the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He means the Declaration of Independence (185).

    In spite of small weaknesses, I highly recommend this book. All people organize their lives according to some ethical system, and relatively few people take time to reflect on where their ethical system came from and what its implications are. After reading this book, some Christians may realize that the ethical system they have adopted is not as rooted in a Christian worldview as it ought to be. This is a book that is especially well suited as a textbook for an introductory ethics class in a Christian high school or university.

  • Book Review: The King Jesus Gospel

    The problem that Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel is intended to address is that the way evangelical Christians preach the gospel doesn’t often lead to lives characterized by discipleship. Evangelical evangelism has been geared toward getting people to make decisions (“accepting Jesus into your heart”), but “we lose at least 50 percent of those who make decisions” (20, italics in original). People become “saved,” but they don’t become disciples of Jesus. Clearly, the evangelical understanding of gospel and evangelism is not leading to changed lives as often as it should.

    After calling attention to this problem, McKnight asks, “What is the gospel?” He turns to the New Testament–Paul, Jesus, and Peter–and concludes that the gospel “is declaring the story of Israel as resolved in the Story of Jesus” (79). He argues that Christianity left behind the emphasis on story in favor of an emphasis on salvation during the Reformation; the story-formed Creeds were de-emphasized in favor of confessions (McKnight mentions in particular the Augsburg Confession and the Genevan Confession). He takes pains to point out that the Reformers can’t be blamed for the “salvation culture” that we’ve ended up with. However, the seeds of a salvation culture were planted during the Reformation’s shift from an emphasis on story (of which salvation is a part) to an emphasis on salvation (without the rest of the gospel).

    McKnight closes the book with five things that are necessary to regaining a gospel culture:

    1. We have to become people of the Story (153).
    2. We need to immerse ourselves even more into the Story of Jesus (153).
    3. We need to see how the apostles’ writings take the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus into the next generation and into a different culture, and how this generation led all the way to our generation (155).
    4. We need to counter the stories that bracket and reframe our story (157).
    5. We need to embrace this story so that we are saved and can be transformed by the gospel story (158).

    I would recommend this book, but not on its own. It needs other books to flesh out the full picture. It does a good job of arguing that evangelical understandings of the gospel have led to a salvation culture rather than a gospel culture, but doesn’t go into detail about what a gospel culture looks like when it is lived out (McKnight himself has written a book on that subject called One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow). Also, and this is not really a fault of the book, but I am concerned that as a result of McKnight’s argument there may be people who get an impression that the gospel is “either/or”: that is, it is either the story of Jesus fulfilling the story of Israel, or it is salvation. In reality, salvation is part of the gospel. McKnight makes that point (88), and I think it is very important that we do not lose sight of it.

  • Book Review: Job 38-42

    This is the third volume in David J.A. Clines’s monumental study of Job. The first volume came out in 1989, the second in 2006, and though the final volume was delivered to the publisher in 2008, it has finally seen the light of day here at the end of 2011. It consists of commentary on Job 38-42 (God’s response to Job, and the epilogue) in the first half of the book, and an extensive bibliography takes up the second half.

    The great strength of this commentary is its comprehensiveness. Perhaps no reader will agree with all of Clines’s interpretive decisions, but he does a good job of laying out the possibilities before he settles on a solution. While some readers might wish that Clines would “get to the point” a bit sooner (I did feel this way on occasion), the helpful aspect is that he leaves no stone unturned. Rather than offering a conclusion without justification, he interacts with other opinions. I came away with a much deeper knowledge of these five chapters, and how they have been interpreted, than I had before.

    Finally, a note about the format of the commentary. I’ve read several reviews of various volumes in the Word series that are critical of the format. For each passage (e.g, Job 38:1-40:2), there is a bibliography, the author’s translation, textual notes, notes on the form/structure/setting, verse-by-verse comment, and a final summary explanation. While the format is idiosyncratic, I think it is not so bad once you get used to it. If you are uninterested, for example, in the textual notes, they are all collected together so you can feel free to skip that section. Even if you don’t care for the format, this is still a commentary worth consulting.