Reading and Readers

Have you read those letters from John? He seems to repeat himself over and over again, love, truth, love, truth. Is it because he is old and can't remember what he just said or wrote? Or maybe, there is something deeper here that I don't get. It would be nice if someone could help me get into the meaning, help me understand the context so that I can apply it in my own life.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Letters of John" by Gary Burge. 280 pages, published by Zondervan Academic in October 2011. This is a volume from the NIV Application Commentary series.
NIVAC
I love this series. The unique format just stands out from other commentary series. It takes a Bible book -- or in today's commentary, it takes all three of John's letters -- and breaks down the text into chunks of verses expounded in chapters. So far, nothing new, that's what every commentary does.
The difference is every chapter starts with the Scripture passage followed by three sections:

1. Original Meaning,
2. Bridging Context and
3. Contemporary Significance.

Original Meaning looks at the text and asks, "What would this text mean to the original audience?" Let's get into the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, the grammar, the historical, geographical, social, cultural background.
Bridging Context makes explicit the transition from the people there and then, to us here and now. In those days, John was warning Christians of Gnostic teachers and their Gnostic ways. Okay, how do we bridge that to today when Gnostic people don't exist. Or do they?
The final section, Contemporary Significance takes what we learn from the Original Meaning and Bridging Context sections to bring the passage home. What does this mean for our family, work and church.
This is what I tell people, "Read any commentary from this series because it makes you a better Bible reader."
There are many 'good' preachers out there, great with the feels, ticks all the boxes in the Tiktok crowd. That's an awesome(?) sermon but that's not what the text says. And people don't like it when you tell them that the sermon which they enjoyed so much is problematic, it's like you are putting down their children or they just ignore your comment, they shrug and say, hey, to each his own.
But I am not commenting on the subjective experience which can be impressive, I am saying beneath all the boom-boom-boom, testimonies, dreams and visions is a faulty interpretation of the passage. If the passage was even expounded. Sometimes passages are just used in the beginning as a jumping point, somehow as a prop to legitimise it is a sermon. So we get feel-good emotions but we may not be getting the Truth of the passage.
And knowing what is the Truth is important. Just ask John. The Apostle of Love was not a hippie singing "love, love, love", he was driven by the deep deep conviction of Who he witnessed and Who he followed, the God-Man Christ Jesus.
Burge
And Gary M. Burge is here to tell us all about it.
Burge is the Adjunct Professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary. Before that, he was a professor at Wheaton College for 25 years. He wrote his dissertation under I. Howard Marshall on the title, "The Anointed Community: The Holy Spirit in the Johannine Tradition". Since then he has written a lot on John including the 965-page NIV Application series commentary on the Gospel of John.
And it's a good thing that Logos did not make that the free book for August, otherwise you wouldn't be getting a review from me. Instead today we get a review on the NIV Application Commentary on the "Letters of John" by Gary M. Burge.
John
The three epistles or letters, are named 1, 2 and 3 John, even though the writer did not sign off on his letters. Burge acknowledges that the identity of the author is contested but insists we should take the writer to be the Apostle John, who wrote both the gospels and the letters, unless we have evidence that says otherwise.
John is known as the Apostle of Love, yet, the Apostle of Love was not slow to condemn false teachers. In his letters, you can see how he warned Christians in the strongest terms of false teachers. This was how he showed love. But what was the dispute about?
Opponents
Burge writes:John says that his opponents hold the following beliefs:

• they deny the Son (1 John 2:23)
• they deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (4:2; 2 John 7)
• they deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22)

These statements may be compared with affirmations in the letters that buttress John’s own Christology. It is likely that these verses are also connected to the opponent’s Christological error.

• Jesus is the Christ (5:1)
• Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (4:2)
• Jesus is the Son (2:23; 3:23; 5:11) or the Son of God (1:3, 7; 3:8, 23; 4: 9, 10, 15, etc.)
• Jesus Christ came “by water and blood” (5:6)

From these statements a composite image of John’s opponents begins to emerge. They are no doubt Christians who have begun to deviate from the traditionally received understanding of Jesus Christ. They affirm the idea of Christ, but doubt whether Christ became flesh and whether the man Jesus was indeed the incarnation of God.
You might be thinking, "Oh, nothing for me to read here. I don't believe any of those false teachings and I don't know anybody who does."
But just because the false teachers of John's time have died nearly 2000 years ago, it does not mean their teachings have died. The warnings are still valid. We just need someone to build us a bridge.
In Short
Burge does that for us in 12 chapters for 1 John, and a chapter each for 2 and 3 John. 2 and 3 John are really short, they are the equivalent of tweets today.
You can read 1 John in one sitting, it's only 5 chapters long, and upon finishing 1 John (and perhaps 2 and 3 John), you can congratulate yourself for finishing 3 out of the 66 books of the Bible, that's 4.5%.
If you are like me, you will be slightly perplexed with 1 John. It's not that I don't understand what he is saying, it's just that it's so repetitious and sometimes there is these imageries that he assumes the readers know? You get a sense that this is an important heartfelt letter, the stakes are high but you need some help to understand it.
Burge divides the letter into two parts: "God is light" (1 John 1:5) and "God is love" (1 John 4:8). He makes a compelling connection with the Gospel of John which also has a two part structure, which is the first half is on the light that shined in the darkness and the second half is on Jesus caring and nurturing those who believe in him.
Sample
Now that we know how everything is laid out, I will attempt to bring out the essence of the book by taking one chapter as an example. I want a chapter that is self-contained so that we can understand it without referring to previous or next chapters. It should prove to you the usefulness of the three sections: Original Meaning, Bridging Context and Contemporary Significance, for this is the Unique Selling Point of the book. Other than these literary considerations, I want to offer you a biblical insight, a divine truth that you can take away from today's episode to pray, meditate, worship and delight in.
I've taken the chapter on 1 John 4:1-6. The chapter begins with the verses printed in full.
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
Today we have the same problem. We have false teachers on the pulpit. People claiming to be prophets and apostles, entering our homes, teaching our children, writing books and signing autographs. What should we do, how do we test the spirit? Read the Bible. That's the answer. Know Jesus. Pray more. Get myself into a proper Christian community.
Original MeaninWait... wait... wait... we have gone ahead of ourselves. Do you see what I did? As soon as I read the passage, I immediately thought of my situation today. And I can go on and on about the todays problems and how we should solve them.
But isn't that the way we should read the Bible? Make it relevant in our lives? Yes, but not so soon. Consider how Burge does it. In the Original Meaning section, he explains the problem of those who call themselves prophets, but were frauds.
Burge writes:
It is important to pause and gain some appreciation for this problem in the early church. House churches were isolated in cities throughout the Roman empire. In the early years there were few formal creeds (such as the later Creed of Nicea) to give doctrinal guidance, nor were the Scriptures available as we have them today. No one owned a “New Testament,” and at best the early Christians only had random collections of letters from the apostles and collections of stories about Jesus. Therefore oral communication was essential. Churches relied on emissaries from their leaders, who relayed information from other communities and taught. Paul sent out Timothy and Silas in this capacity, and John sent out elders as his spokespersons (3 John 5). But problems came when prophets or teachers arrived claiming an authority that was not rightfully theirs. Paul had to address the problem of unauthorized teachers in Galatia and Thessalonica. Because some churches received false letters (see 2 Thess. 2:2), he even decided to sign his correspondence with recognizable markings (Gal. 6:11; Col. 4:18; 2 Thess. 3:17). This phenomenon meant that churches could fall prey to unscrupulous itinerant prophets and teachers, and John’s churches were no exception (cf. 2 John 7). Consequently, Christians had to be ready to assess the message they heard and the spirit that inspired it.
So it's not about you (yet), it's about them. You need to travel back in time, and see the problems they faced. They didn't have Google. Not even a Bible. No seminary trained pastors with 2000 years of scholarship to back them up. In that situation, how can anyone know what is true? Without the Bible, with these prophets claiming divine inspiration, how can the early Christians test?
John tells us how. Read the passage. There are two tests. The first test is what do they say about Jesus. The second test is how does the church receive their teaching. Burge summarises:
If the incarnate Christ has been theologically removed, if Christology is not at the center of what someone says, we are right to be suspicious. In addition, if the community we have always trusted, if the church as the historic custodian of truth, refuses this prophesy, we should be warned. Moreover, if it finds a ready reception in the world, we should flee because it may be a message that has originated with the evil spirit that dominates that world.
"Okay. Now that I know what it means, tell me how to apply it in my life."
"Not so fast!"
Bridging Context
Before we leave the past and rush to the present, there is an intermediate state, called "Bridging Context".
In John's time, we have truth and falsehood. In our time, we have your truth, my truth, as many truths as we need and nothing is false.
In John's time, the false teachers taught that Jesus was not truly human. In our time, false teachers can affirm what John said but they also say that Jesus was not the only man who can be divine.
In John's time, he appealed to people who pursued truth. In our time, let me read what Burge writes:
Among the students I teach I find that most of them are eager to tell how they feel about a particular question, but few of them are capable of giving a coherent, objective, carefully reasoned argument for or against it.
The Bridging Context gives us space to consider what the text says and does not say. The last thing we want is to wrongly apply the lesson, and do something or believe something that is contrary to whatever John is saying. A spectacular example that Burge points out later in the book is how Oral Roberts healing ministry began from a misreading of 3 John 2.
Contemporary SignificancSo it is only after we know the original meaning and the bridging context, that we can move to the contemporary significance. For this "test the spirits" passage, Burge outlines four application points:

1. The church is called to the be custodian of the truth. He asks, "How do I cultivate a discerning spirit without becoming cynical?"
2. The centrality of Christology. He wonders if John's concern is alive in our church today?
3. How do we unmask false teachers? He writes:

He has at least two concerns: (a) False teachers should not have access to the church as a platform for their teachings, and (b) people should not be deceived by what they hear in the church. This means at least that the church should be a spiritual refuge where experimental teachings or controversial points of view are checked. Practically speaking, when I send my daughters to Sunday school, I deserve the assurance that the teacher in the class is not there simply because she is the only one who volunteered. The church must guarantee that those who teach are theologically and spiritually qualified to do so.

1. Where or who are these spirits today? Burge describes two types of spirits. One is spirits as in territorial spirits, demons, bondage and exorcism. He refers to Peter Wagner's book "Territorial Spirit: Insights on Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare from Nineteen Christian Leaders". The other is spirits as in spirit of the age, a world that has no use for truth, God becoming human is not simply rejected but now it is incomprehensible. He quotes David Well's "No Place for Truth".

Remember, there are as many application points from a verse as there are Christians in a church. Each could and should apply the verse in their own ways so what Burge does here are just helpful samples.
Alright. So that is one chapter and I hope that gives you a good idea of how this commentary series can train you to separate interpretation from application and how this book in particular can you train you to separate truth from falsehoods.
Burge vs Wagner
Let me share some reflections. When I finished the book, I realised that my take on this book was surprisingly influenced by the previous book I read. In the last episode, I read Peter Wagner's commentary on the book of Acts. I did not expect Burge to mention him and mention him in a positive light.
I don't know what is Burge's take on the controversial figure of Peter Wagner and his legacy but when I read the two books, they are so different.
Speaking only of Wagner's commentary on Acts, Wagner exults in creative interpretation which leads to questionable application, which comes at the reader with the force of a biblical rule. If you can't distinguish between interpretation and application, the reader could take as Gospel truth what is merely a speculation, or on the other extreme, because of all the guess-work the reader cannot extract the missions and power ministry insights Wagner offers.
You could overcome these problems if you can get to the original meaning, bridging context and contemporary significance of the passage. In contrast to Wagner, Burge is more careful, and I appreciate his prudence because it is a check on me that I don't make the text say what I want it to say or don't say.
One last difference between Wagner and Burge and this is on the content rather than the approach.
The main thesis of Wagner's book is that the best and perhaps the only way to evangelise is to through the indigenous community. According to Wagner when the Hellenistic Jews complained to the Hebrew Jews, there was an amicable church split. This insistence on a culture ministering to its own dominates his interpretation of events in Acts.
Then I read this passage from Burge. He did not write this in response to Wagner. He was merely commenting on 3 John, but I thought it was funny how it was a strong counter point to Wagner. Burge writes:
The names given in 3 John (Gaius, Diotrephes, and Demetrius) are all Greek; this fact suggests a cultural context far removed from Judea and Galilee. Thus when a traditional source of authority steps forward -— an apostolic elder -— some chafed at the thought of submission. “Our religion is working for us! It feels right! Why should we conform to a foreigner, someone who represents traditions and people we don’t even know?”
First, normally I would not have noticed the Greek names. They are all Greek to me.
Second, I would not have thought much of Burge's point here of how truth trumps culture.
These are just two of the many points of, I wouldn't say difference but, engagement after reading first Wagner than Burge's commentary.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the NIV Application Commentary series is a standout series. One volume from this series that I recommend is the commentary on Acts by Ajith Fernando. If you have to get a commentary on Acts get this Fernando's, not Wagner's.
Every student of the Bible should learn how to separate interpretation from application. Don't rush to application. Put more effort in understanding what the text says. Because Truth matters. God is light. God is love. How Great is Our God.
This is a Reading and Readers review of "Letters of John" by Gary Burge. 280 pages, published by Zondervan Academic in October 2011. This is a volume from the NIV Application Commentary series.
The commentary was available for free in August but if you miss out on that deal, don't miss out on September's free book. I am reading "The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel" by James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken. I hope to give you my review soon. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

When you read the Book of Acts, you can't help but think, "Why isn't the church today like that?" Well, maybe it can and it should.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "The Book of Acts: A Commentary" by C. Peter Wagner. 526 pages, published by Regal Publishers in 2008. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD16.99 but it was available for free, some time ago via Logos.com.
C. Peter Wagner was a Fuller Theological Seminary professor, specialising in missiology. He became famous, or infamous depending on your position, for the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a term he coined. Peter Wagner and the New Apostolic Reformation are big topics that go beyond the scope of today's book review. My review is focused on what is written here but first, let me explain my personal relationship with this book.
15 years ago, I read this book and my eyes were opened. At that time, I had just became a Christian, having placed my skepticism aside. To my amazement, I came to believe that Christ walked on water, Christ raised the dead, Christ was crucified, he was resurrected on the third day and ascended and one day Christ will return.
In those early days of my coming to faith, I read this book. And wow! I was electrified. Who said the Bible was boring! Not the way he tells it. Spiritual warfare. Gods and demons. What was true for Paul and the apostles is still true for us today. I can still remember the thrill of knowing all these things.
That was 15 years ago and a lot has happened since. For one, I have read the Bible cover to cover, I have read more books after this one, listen to more sermons and engaged in many a great conversations on the biggest questions of the faith.
For one thing, back then I had no opinion on the New Apostolic Reformation. Now, I do. As I review this book, I know that some love this book and treasure the life and ministry of Peter Wagner, who had passed way in October 2016. I can somewhat understand the enthusiasm because I had a taste of it 15 years ago. I take today's review as a sign of how far I have come and a wonder that I was so taken in by Peter Wagner's book.
With that, let's turn to the Book of Acts: A Commentary by C. Peter Wagner.
Chapter 1 is titled, "God's Training Manual for Modern Christians". Here he makes the case that the key verse to understand the book is Acts 1:8, which reads:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
In this chapter, he asks the question, "There are 1,398 commentaries on Acts, what will mine offer?"
He writes:
It is in these two areas—power ministry and missiology -- that I feel I can make enough of a contribution to justify adding yet another commentary on Acts to our library shelves. I bring a degree of expertise in these areas that few of the biblical scholars who have produced the classical works on Acts could provide. In doing so, I have no illusions of grandeur. The classical works have a well-deserved reputation as classics.
As a missiologist, Wagner brings out the cultural aspects that we may not fully appreciate in our first reading the Book of Acts.
For example, in Acts 6, when we read how the Hellenist Jews raised a complaint against the Hebrew Jews, Hellenist and Hebrew may not mean much to us. Wagner helpfully informs us of the historical and cultural background so that we can fully appreciate the underlying tension between the two groups. By highlighting the cultural barriers, we become more sensitive, more aware, of how culture impacts our evangelistic efforts.
The second major theme is Power Ministry. Wagner writes:
How do we know that the kingdom of God is authentically among us? One way is to see healings and demonic deliverances as part of the ongoing ministry of the church.
Even the most hardened cessationist, who believes the sensational acts of the apostles have ceased, even they would give pause as Wagner brings out passage after passage of signs and wonders, miracles and healings. These are all glorious events in Acts. And no Christian should be dismissed for wondering, "Why is it that our Christian life today does not resemble the days of the apostles?"
But it can. And it does. That is Wagner's exhortation throughout the book. What you read in Acts, the healing, deliverance, power and authority is happening in Latin America, in China, it's happening, it's expanding and you can be part of it too.
What Peter Wagner has set out to do with this commentary is to emphasise these two themes: Power Ministry and Missions. And he does it with style. He takes passages that we would just read through without a second thought and makes us see something that wasn't there before.
To take a trivial, deliciously enticing, example, Wagner's commentary on Acts 16 includes these words:
After many exciting events in Philippi, which we will see in detail shortly, the last place we find the missionaries, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke, is in the house of Lydia where they had been lodged. But when they leave Philippi, the “we” suddenly changes to “they”! Luke obviously had stayed behind. Did he stay lodged in Lydia’s house? Could they have decided to marry each other and help form the nucleus of that wonderful church in Philippi that later sent substantial financial gifts to Paul and his missionary team?
I bet you have never even considered that possibility. And you almost imagine the storyteller's eye twinkle and a massive grin. Just to be clear, Wagner doesn't make a big deal out of Luke's single or married status but it is a charming way to remind readers that the people we read about, Paul, Luke, Lydia were flesh and blood men and women much like we are.
Wagner has a great imagination. Imagination is a good thing for bible readers, for us to get into the drama of the dogma. But Wagner takes it too far. The phrase "It could have been" occurs 43 times in the 24 chapters of this book.
If those "could have beens" were limited to artistic license, suggestions to invoke wonder, nothing to be taken seriously, it would be okay. But Wagner goes too far.
Let's look at the heart of the book, the two themes that he draws from Acts 1:8, namely power ministry and missiology.
I appreciate how Wagner brings his expertise in missiology, the study of missions, to bring out the cultural aspects of Acts but he has allowed his expertise to bring his interpretations into the realm of fantasy or historical fiction.
It starts out innocently enough. Remember the Hellenist and Hebrew Jews in Acts 6? The common understanding is the apostles appointed Stephen and other Hellenistic Jews to minister to the widows and all ends well. Everybody stayed together in harmony right? Right?
Wagner writes:
Although the term “church split” is harsher than Luke would use, this passage is an account of the first major church split.
Now, it is a good church split. A harmonious one according to God's will. Stephen and the Hellenistic believers are now separate from the apostles. They have control over their own finances. They are free to minister to their own culture.
Wagner justifies this church split idea from the word deacon. He names scholars like Derek Tidball, John Stott, Hans Conzelmann who each say what Stephen and friends did is more than waiting at tables.
At this point, I did something which I did not do 15 years ago. I looked up the references. Sadly, two of the references were not available as ebooks so I couldn't get them with a click of the button. But I have John Stott's commentary on Acts. Without going into the details, Stott refutes Wagner's conclusion. At the end we still have one church.
Wagner has a tendency to read his own experiences of multi-cultural missions into the text such that he exaggerates the tensions between cultures so that it can only be reconciled with a split.
And he draws the lesson that the biblical way to do missions is to establish indigenous leaders to lead their own church. That is certainly a desire of every missionary but is that what happened in Jerusalem between the apostles and Stephen's group?
And it doesn't stop at Jerusalem.
Consider Antioch in Acts 13:1-3. Let me read from Acts:
Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Do you detect any tension in Antioch? I can't see any. Would you describe it as a united church? I would even wonder why you would suggest it.
You will note that there are foreigners named in the list.
Let's use our imagination of how that passage would look like. Maybe it would be something like how your church gathered together, everyone, rich, poor, young, old, men, women, black, white and every colour in between coming together to bless your church's mission team before they go off. There is a good chance someone would say you are doing the same thing that the church in Antioch did when they sent off Paul and Barnabas.
Except according to Wagner, that's not what happened.
The listing of foreigners in the passage gets Wagner to wildly speculate. He imagines these foreign missionaries served in the Cyprus and Cyrene Mission, or CCM for short. Because he can't seem to imagine two different cultures in the same church or mission organisation. He writes:
... it is inaccurate to say, as many attempt to do, that Paul and Barnabas were sent out by the church at Antioch.
Enough about culture. Let's hear what Wagner has to say about the other big theme of his book: Power Ministry. And we should, we must, hear what he says because God told him to say it.
In an earlier chapter, when he comments on God commissioning Paul, Wagner writes:
I myself can testify that receiving such commissioning words as these, directly from Jesus, brings powerful spiritual sustenance later on, especially when difficult times arise. Jesus told Paul “how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (9:16). In 1989, at the massive Lausanne II Congress on World Evangelization in Manila, Philippines, God spoke to me in as clear, although less dramatic, a way as He spoke to Paul. He said, “I want you to take international leadership in the field of territorial spirits.”
I want to say upfront that I don't believe Wagner is saying, "Thus says the Lord... This is what God says about spiritual warfare..." But I also want to say that by making such a big claim, it's not easy for Christians who want to be faithful to what the Lord says to ignore him. Or to question him.
And question him, I must.
Wagner says that Paul failed in Athens because there were so many idols there.
He writes:
I believe that Paul’s experience in Athens, although far from a success in evangelism and church planting, would have been a valuable learning experience for him, and by application for us as well. Paul learned important lessons about (1) the awesome power of the enemy, and (2) missionary methodology.
None of the commentators I have checked raises the question of whether the demonic powers behind the idols and the festivals and the sacrifices in Athens could have been strong enough to frustrate Paul’s evangelistic intentions in the city. I personally believe they could have been and they probably were more than Paul could handle. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ ministry in His hometown of Nazareth. It is said, “He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:58). Neither Jesus nor Paul did anything particularly wrong; they simply encountered powers that, at that particular time, were fortified enough to hold their position and to prevent the fullest penetration of the kingdom of God.
Oh boy... I am so upset by the suggestion that Jesus encountered powers that were too strong for him but this is a throwaway statement from Wagner so I won't spend time here. But the fact that he doesn't substantiate this, he just throws a remark like that without needing to defend, just shows how he plays fast and loose with basic doctrine. He throws the King of Kings out the window to fit his spiritual warfare narrative, which is often informed by what he sees, what his friends sees and goes beyond what the Bible actually says.
So anywhere, Athens is a failure because evil powers were too strong.
Paul goes to Corinth. He succeeds there. Wagner lists the differences between Athens and Corinth, he points to Acts 17:16 "[Paul's] spirit was provoked within him when he saw the city [Athens] was given over to idols."
Thus, Wagner concludes:
Even a novice spiritual mapper in the first century would have been able to recognise that darkness lingered over Athens more than either Berea, Paul's previous stop, or here in Corinth.
In short, Corinth is a success because the evil powers there were weak.
Okay, then Paul goes to Rome.
Wagner describes the strong Christian presence in Rome:
How many house churches might have been located in Rome by this time we have no way of knowing exactly, but it is likely there were quite a few. In the Epistle that Paul wrote to these Roman believers a few years previously, he mentioned some house churches by name.
Wagner describes Rome as "known for its extraordinary political power over a large part of the world."
And finally let me get to my spiritual warfare question. Wagner says that in spiritual warfare just as in normal swords and shields warfare, victory is won by the stronger army.
The Apostle Paul failed in Athens because the evil powers were too strong. The Apostle Paul succeeded in Corinth because the evil powers were too weak. Then how is it that a bunch of no-name Christians which suggests people without apostolic authority could have succeeded in establishing house churches in the very centre of Imperial religion.
Wagner does not explain. He does not even see Rome as the counter argument to his thesis.
And speaking of thesis, the central thesis of this book is flawed.
Early in the book, Wagner asserts that the theme of Acts is seen Acts 1:8.
Let me remind you of what it says:
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Right after this, Wagner writes:
Very simply, in His last recorded words spoken on this earth, Jesus highlights two themes: power ministries and missiology.
That seems to me an unshakeable fact. Then Wagner does the most peculiar thing. He skips over a third of Acts.
And he knows it.
According to my calculations, I am devoting only 8 percent of my full commentary on Acts to chapters 20 to 28, which in turn comprise 32 percent of Luke’s original work.
He explains why as follows:
Five years pass from the time Paul is arrested in Jerusalem to the end of the book of Acts. In the seven-and-one-half chapters Luke uses to tell of this experience (about 27 percent of Acts), explicit accounts of power ministries are few and far between in comparison to the other three-fourths of the book.
Wagner's commentary on Acts is short on last seven and a half chapters of Acts because it has too few power ministries. What does that tell us about the starting thesis of this commentary?
Does Acts 1:8 describe a central theme for Acts? How can it be a central theme when it does not fit with the last 32 percent of the book?
Let's say that it is the central theme because it is true. These were the last recorded words of Jesus. Let's read it again:
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
You shall be witnesses in Jerusalem to the end of the earth does fit with missions.
But let's re-look at what it means to receive power. Wagner understands Holy Spirit power to mean signs and wonders, miracles and healings, angels and demons.
I put to you that the power of the Holy Spirit also includes the power to preach.
Wagner does not give Paul much credit for his Mars Hill sermon. Sorry, I got it wrong, Wagner gives the Holy Spirit no credit for Paul's Mars Hill sermon. Wagner puts it like this:
In Athens Paul displayed brilliance in human wisdom; in Corinth he ministered with public displays of supernatural power.
Likewise, Wagner does not see Holy Spirit power in Paul's defence in his trials. After all, nothing miraculous happened.
But do you remember what Jesus said? Luke 12:11-12:
When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.
Rather than see Athens as a failure, it should be seen as the Holy Spirit's work through Paul.
And how do I know all this? Because the Holy Spirit told me. Wagner claims God spoke to him. I, too, say that God speaks to me.
I'll tell you now what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Word and this is what the Word says, in Acts 17:11:
Now these Jews [in Berea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
The Holy Bible commends believers to refer to the Holy Scripture to see if what is taught by others are true. So when I say the Holy Spirit speaks to me, the Holy Spirit speaks to you too, through illumination of the Bible.
And I put to you, if you read through Acts and if you consider that power from the Holy Spirit includes signs and wonders, yes, but also spiritual power to teach and receive the Word, if you do this, you will conclude as many Christians have, that we too live in the days of the apostles.
If you are looking for a book that takes the Book of Acts as a source material for "it could have beens", speculative non-fiction, then Wagner's commentary is one of a kind. The best I can say is Wagner makes vivid the reality of spiritual warfare and inter-cultural missions but he does it by over-reaching.
This is a Reading and Readers review of "The Book of Acts: A Commentary" by C. Peter Wagner. 526 pages, published by Regal Publishers in 2008. It's available in Amazon Kindle and logos.com.
Speaking of logos.com, they have another free commentary for this month:
It's the NIV Application Commentary (NIVAC) Letters of John by Gary M. Burge. In Burge's comments on 1 John, he writes:
... the problems in the church are essentially pneumatic. They stem from prophets who, under the alleged inspiration of the Spirit, are teaching false things. John’s first response when faced with such teachings is to train his followers that theology must be anchored objectively or else it will be shaped by any whim or inspiration.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
Book List

• "The Book of Acts: A Commentary" by C. Peter Wagner. Amazon. Logos.

If ever there was a category called the Theologian's Favourite Mystery Novelist, a serious contender would be Dorothy Sayers for her Lord Peter Wimsey series.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. All 11 books reviewed in one episode.
The first book, "Whose Body?" was published in 1923. That's 100 years ago. The widespread acclaim led to more and more books, Sayers ditched her advertising day job to be a full-time writer. The Lord Peter Wimsey series concludes in 1937 with "Busman's Honeymoon".
Dorothy Sayers
Dorothy Sayers is a name that comes up often in the books I read. She seems to be a favourite for many theologians and Christian writers. But I didn't know anything about her or felt compelled to read her books until I listened to an Undeceptions episode where John Dickson interviewed Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, who studied Sayers for her PhD at Oxford University.
To my disbelief, in her day Dorothy Sayers was as famous, actually more famous, than Agatha Christie. Christie is my favourite detective writer so it shocks me to know there was someone better than her. Perhaps the reason for Christie's longevity is because she continued churning out detective novels while Sayers...
Sayers put her writing talents to the drama of Christianity. She had the cheek to put everyday English into the mouths of Jesus and the disciples. Many Christians protested, preferring their Saviour to speak in King James English. In an essay titled, "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged", Sayers responded:

[It’s as if] Christ wasn’t born into history – He was born into the Bible (Authorised Version) – a place where nobody makes love or gets drunk or cracks jokes, or talks slang, or cheats, or despises his neighbours ... no wonder the story makes so little impression on the common man.
Sayers wrote theological books including: "The Mind of the Maker" which explores the nature of God and creativity and another book is titled, "Are Women Human?" which addresses the role of women in society. Sayers was notably one of the first women to graduate from Oxford University.
Recognising the impact of her radio plays and books, the Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to award Sayers the prestigious Lambeth Doctorate of Divinity. She turned it down.
Dr. Amy in that Undeceptions episode suggests it's because Sayers the famous crime writer and public theologian felt unworthy because she hid a secret sin.
You see, Dorothy Sayers fell in love with a non-Christian who did not believe in marriage. Because of her faith, Sayers would not sleep with the man before marriage. Eventually they separated because the man told her that he would not get married on principle. A few months later, that man got married. She was devastated because she really, really loved him. Later, she got involved with a married man, slept with him, got pregnant, had the child. A child who was then brought up by her cousin.
For more on Sayers her life and work, please go to the Undeceptions episode. One day I hope to review the books of Dorothy Sayers the theologian but for today I review the books of Dorothy Sayers the crime writer.
LOTR of Detective Novels
Let us now turn to the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novel series.
Having finished the series, I would say that Lord Peter Wimsey is to mystery novels as the Lord of the Rings is to fantasy.
"Surely not! Nobody knows Lord Peter Wimsey, so how can it be at Lord of the Rings level?"
What I meant is you can see Tolkien's Christian faith bleed into Middle-Earth making the epic story seem real. In the same way, Sayer's faith bleeds into 20th century England and makes the people more real than the paper-thin characters you read or watch on TV.
Consider Agatha Christie's books which are also set in post World War 1 England. People go to church, they fundraise to repair the church roof, there is even a murder in the vicarage. But Christianity here is nominal. We read the inner thoughts of a murderer but we never read the inner thoughts of a believer.
Whereas in Sayer's world. Christianity is overt. It's almost in your face.
Detective Parker Reads Commentaries (to Relax)
In chapter 3 of the first novel, Lord Peter and Detective Parker are tracking a criminal through a little wood. Lord Peter says:
I say, I don't think the human frame is very thoughtfully constructed for this sleuth-hound business. If one could go on all-fours, or had eyes in one's knees, it would be a lot more practical.
Parker replies:
There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation.
When I read this I was laughing out loud with delight. For it is a line written by a theologian for readers who enjoy theology and mystery. No wonder, J.I. Packer lists Sayers among his favourite writers. No wonder, so many of the books I read cites Sayers.
How does Detective Parker relax after a long day of chasing murderers. I quote:
Parker was sitting in an elderly but affectionate armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece, relaxing his mind with a modern commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. He received Lord Peter with quiet pleasure, though without rapturous enthusiasm, and mixed him a whisky-and-soda. Peter took up the book his friend had laid down and glanced over the pages. "All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or other," he said, "they find what they are looking for."
Listen to Parker's response:
"Oh, they do but one learns to discount that almost automatically, you know. When I was at college, I was all on the other side -- Conybeare, Robertson and Drews and those people, you know, till I found they were all so busy looking for a burglar whose nobody had ever seen, that they couldn't recognise the footprints of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be cautious."
Lord Peter then concludes:
"Theology must be a good exercise for the brain."
Reading Sayers is a good tickle for the theologian's brain. That conversation is about eisegesis, reading into the text what you want it to say. And Parker's response is a detective's rebuke to a theologians fault.
Miss Climpson on Friendship and Idolatry
Let's have a look at another character. Miss Climpson is a spinster who helps Lord Peter dig things up. In the course of digging things up, she strikes a conversation with a young lady about friendship.
The young lady says:
A great friendship does make demands. It's got to be just everything to one. It's wonderful the way it seems to colour all one's thoughts. Instead of being centred in oneself, one's centred in the other person. That's what Christian love means -- one's ready to die for the other person."
Miss Climpson replies:
Well, I don't know. I once heard a sermon about that from a most splendid priest -- and he said that that kind of love might become idolatry if one wasn't very careful. He said that Milton's remark about Eve -- you know, 'he for God only, she for God in him' -- was not congruous with Catholic doctrine. One must get the proportions right, and it was out of proportion to see everything through the eyes of another fellow-creature.
Harriet Vane or Dorothy Sayers?
Another great strong character is Harriet Vane. She appears in the novel, "Strong Poison". The character is a writer of detective novels. And if you think this is a bit meta-, you haven't heard the rest. So Harriet is on trial for poisoning Philip Boyes. Philip is a man who does not believe in marriage. Harriet agrees to live with him without marrying. Philip later changes his mind and decides to marry Harriet after all. Harriet gets angry and breaks off the relationship. Was she angry enough to kill him?
I got a chill when I saw in Harriet Vane, the secret life of Dorothy Sayers. And the whole novel became a meta-mystery. Which is fiction and which is autobiographical?
Peter Unpredictable
They are side characters. Parker, Miss Climpson, Harriet. I would love to talk about Bunter the faithful servant or the Wimsey family, his mother, brother Gerald and Mary. They are all important in the series. But I must now turn to Lord Peter Wimsey.
British detectives are like superheroes. Sherlock Holmes, was after all, acted out by both Ironman and Dr. Strange. Armed with his smoking pipe and superior intelligence, Sherlock catches his man, "Elementary, my dear Watson".
Lord Peter Wimsey has his monocle but take away his noble birth, his immense wealth, his service in the war, he would be a fairly ordinary man. In one case, it was not even he who solved it. It just somehow ringed a bell. Just because he is less of a super hero does not make him boring.
Lord Peter Wimsey reminds me of another famously rash and unpredictable Peter. No, I don't mean the Apostle Peter. I mean, Peter Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, it might be a bad idea to watch that movie and do this review because I am in danger of reviewing both and neither.
If you have watched the movies, you have seen Peter Quill in the first movie. Despite every attempt to stop Ronan the Accuser, it looks like all is lost. The heroes are beaten. Ronan is giving his victory speech and then... Peter does the coolest thing ever... And if you have never watched the movie, you should watch it in disbelief. What is more, through out the movies we see in Peter Quill, beneath that devil may care cockiness, there is vulnerability and naivety that endears.
If I could choose one fictional detective to be a friend, I would choose Lord Peter Wimsey. He would make a good friend, he is funny, unpredictable, loyal and such a sensitive soul.
If you plan to pick up any of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, I suggest you read it in order. Otherwise you will miss out on the special events, the in-jokes, the callbacks.
Just to take one example: you will miss out on the Wimsey family growing as a family. Sherlock has a brother, Mycroft. But really, other than that freakish Holmes genes, the brothers might as well be friends, colleagues or total strangers.
Not so with Gerald and Peter Wimsey. Here we have history, undercurrents, family expectations and how they grow. They all grow. Parker. Climpson. Harriet. Bunter. Lord Peter Wimsey. That is what makes this such a compelling read.
Write What You Know
There is one thing that could keep people away from the series. While the language is a bit harder to get into for the casual reader, it is surpassable. A tougher barrier is the world she brings you into.
You know how kids complain about getting dragged by their parents to someplace that they insist is fun but is not. In other detective books, the world is incidental. You could easily transplant the plot into a modern world.
When Dorothy Sayers puts the story in Oxford University, we get the buildings, the dons, students, ceremony, the world is very real. In another book, the story is in an advertising agency. Again, we are immersed whether you like it or not into the nuts and bolts of advertising in 1920s England. Oh by the way, did I mention that Sayers studied at Oxford University and worked at an advertising agency?
She writes what she knows and sometimes that means the details get in the way of the plot. Sometimes she makes a reference, she quotes something, which I just don't understand. If you like world-building in your books, Sayers is your writer. There are moments I would have given up reading if not for the ensemble of characters that I have grown to love and respect.
Agatha vs. Dorothy
Let me conclude by putting Dorothy Sayers against her contemporary Agatha Christie. I have read all the Agatha Christie books. She wrote 66 detective novels, six times more than Sayers. Here is the difference between the two: Christie is plot-driven; Sayers is character-driven. Christie has a gimmick, the ABC murders, the Labours of Hercules, the Murder in the Orient Express. Sayers has Wimsey, Bunter, Harriet, Climpson and Parker. In Christie, it's "What will happen next?" In Sayers, it's "What will he do, what is she thinking, how does he feel?" In Christie, the world ends when the case is solved. In Sayers, the world seems to carry on.
Of the eleven books, I liked the early books. They succeeded in hooking me in. The middle books can be a bit hard going. Sayers seems more confident and expects the reader to be able to go the distance with her in her world building. The series ends well. And makes the whole journey worth it. Sayers treats her characters with a lot of respect. Maybe because there is too much of her in them. Her secret sin, her life in Oxford University, working in an advertising agency.
For Christians, the unique experience here is we get Dorothy Sayers the nascent theologian putting her faith into this world. A world that comes alive through the characters and the sincerity of their stories.
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Readers review of the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. I bought the 3 volume box set in Amazon Kindle for a hundred dollars.
As we just heard, what Detective Parker's hobby is to read a Bible commentary. And what do you know, for August, Logos is offering a free commentary on the Letters of John. This NIV Application Commentary is written by Gary M. Burge and the series is accessible, for the busy detective seeking to wind down after a hard day's work chasing murderers, and also for you. So get this free book, while it's still August. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.
Book List

• The Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. Amazon.

I know that Christ saved me. That happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. I know that Christ will save me. That may happen tomorrow, next year, or the next millennia. What I need to know is Christ is with me now. And he is because Jesus declared, "I AM". How do these two words, "I AM", assure us of his presence?
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "He Walks with Me: Enjoying the Abiding Presence of God" by Warren Wiersbe. 192 pages, published by David C. Cook in June 2016. You can get it via Amazon Kindle for USD9.99 or for the low, low price of USD1.99 via Faithlife and only in July.
Wiersbe
Warren W. Wiersbe is a famous Bible teacher and writer. He wrote that commentary series that proves you can summarise any book in the Bible into two words. The commentary on Psalms is titled, "Be Worshipful". Galatians, "Be Free". Nehemiah, "Be Determined" and this goes for all 50 books. It tickles me that the name Wiersbe gives birth to 50 "Be ..." books.
Today we are not looking at any of the "Be ..." books. Instead, we look an "I AM" book. Are you familiar with the seven "I AM" statements in the Gospel of John?
If yes, how many can you remember?

1. I am the Bread of Life.
2. I am the Light of the World.
3. I am the Door.
4. I am the Good Shepherd.
5. I am the Resurrection and the Life.
6. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
7. I am the True Vine.

That's 7 "I AMs". But the book has 12 chapters.
Chapter 1 is titled "Moses Asks a Question". Chapter 2 is "The Apostle John Provides Some Answers". Chapters 3 to 9 is the 7 "I AMs". Chapter 10 has the most enticing title of "The Neglected I AM". Chapter 11 is "I am Jesus". Chapter 12, the last chapter, is Living and Serving in the Present Tense. This title explains the purpose of the book.
A purpose Wiersbe states way early in the preface. He writes:
My past may discourage me and my future may frighten me, but “the life I now live” today can be enriching and encouraging because “Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
I Am The Door
I am familiar with the 7 "I AM" statements, having taught it in Youth Bible Studies. But I look forward to reading what Wiersbe has to offer. I hope to re-learn familiar truths and to discover new insights. And I did.
Let's look at one of the statements that is often neglected.
John 10:7-10 reads:
So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Twice Jesus says, "I am the door." But most people focus on what he says in verse 11, which is "I am the good shepherd."
The Good Shepherd is personal, picturesque, he is the assuring figure in Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd."
Whereas a door... everyday we open a door. Be it our bedroom door, house door, car door and we have doors that open themselves. Doors are commonplace, mundane, and so absent from our Christian meditation.
Yet Wiersbe dedicates a whole chapter to "I am the Door". Listen to this:
Let’s consider first the physical aspects of the sheepfold, and then we will better understand the spiritual lessons Jesus wants to convey to us. The sheepfold was an enclosure surrounded by a wall of rocks that was too high for the sheep to jump over. The shepherds sometimes put thorny branches on the tops of the walls to deter thieves from trying to climb over. An opening in the wall allowed the sheep to enter and exit; and at night, the shepherd lay across that opening and became the door of the sheepfold.
Just picture it. The Lord lies across that opening bordering life and death. The Lord has placed you and I on this side. He is the door of the sheepfold. Truth leads to praise. Praise the Lord!
Now, there are people who can take that picture and run amok with it. To them preaching is creative writing and "I am the door" is a passageway to wherever the mind brings. Jesus said, "I am the door". And we all know that a door must open for it to be useful. There Jesus is telling us to be open-minded to all sorts of teaching. That's not what it says and that's not what Jesus meant. You can't just pick any Bible verse to be a doorway into whatever you want to say.
By saying, "I am", Jesus is revealing who he is, and we can know who he is, by reading what else the Bible says.
And that's what Wiersbe did. He models it for us. After describing how a shepherd becomes a door for his sheep, tapping into what it means for people in those times, he draws upon more than 20 Bible verses to show how the door means separation.
John 7:43 reads:
Thus the people were divided because of Jesus.
Luke 12:51 reads:
Do you think I come to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
John 15:18-19 reads:
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
This is a Bible saturated book. You come away knowing that if you want to understand what the Bible says, you have to read more of the Bible and it is possible to access that understanding without specialist knowledge.
But enjoying the presence of God is not just about understanding the historical and cultural context or connecting multiple Bible verses together.
In the "I am the Door" chapter, he shares a children's Sunday School song:
One door and only one, and yet its sides are two. Inside and outside—on which side are you? One door and only one, and yet its sides are two. I’m on the inside—on which side are you?
I have never heard of this song before. There is no waffling. No ifs, buts, and maybes. On which side are you.
He closes that section by writing:
To stand before Jesus Christ, the Door, and make no decision at all is to stay on the outside of salvation! It means not entering the “one flock” of which Jesus is the Savior and the Good Shepherd. At the door you are in a place of decision, and to make no decision is to make a decision—the wrong one.
The message is received loud and clear. Wiersbe takes what the Bible says and brings it right out to you.
I Am a Worm
As I read the book, one chapter after another, I was in familiar territory up till chapter 10. The mysteriously titled, "The Neglected I AM".
The chapter opens with Psalm 22:6:
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
Wiersbe says it well:
Up to this point, the I AM statements we have considered have all carried some dignity. There is nothing dishonorable about bread or light, shepherds or sheepfolds, resurrection or life, truth or vines; but worms are quite another matter.
He then writes that he has meditated on this over the years and we have his thoughts in four sections: astonishment, adoration, shame and gratitude.
Before this book, I have never thought of this "I AM" statement. But now I cannot forget it. In Genesis, God says "I AM". In Psalms, our Saviour says, "I am a worm". One is so high, one is so low.
This is an example of what I love of the Bible and being a Christian. You can almost think you know enough of the Bible to no longer be surprised, but just by merely positioning one verse alongside the famous seven "I AM" verses and it opens up thought and wonder. Or as Wiersbe puts it astonishment, adoration, shame and gratitude.
Book Title
I wished I read this book when I was teaching that series on the "I am" statements to my youth group. It's a great resource for any Bible teacher and Wiersbe never fails to land the lesson with an exhortation towards Christ. Love it.
This is also an easy book for a group to read together. I think every Christian should study the "I am" statements. And this book might be the best book next to the Bible for that study.
However, if I can make one small criticism, the title of the book does not convey what the book is about. "He Walks with Me: Enjoying the Abiding Presence of God" is not wrong but it does not tell us that this is a book about the "I am" statements. The title fails to distinguish itself from the many devotional books around.
A better title is, "Jesus in the Present Tense: The I AM Statements of Christ". I didn't think of that title myself. That is the title of another Warren Wiersbe book, also published by David C. Cook. It's actually the same book with a different title. Can they do that? What happens if someone loved this book so much and he went out to buy another one, not realising it's the same book with a different title!
The title "He Walks with Me: Enjoying the Abiding Presence of God" appeals to a wide range of readers, Christian or non-Christian. It's good marketing.
On the other hand, "Jesus in the Present Tense: The I AM Statements of the Christ" is a title that only a Christian would love. I prefer this title. I think this title would attract the serious Christian who wants to dig deep into the I AM statements, because the life we live today is all the more richer, all the more encouraging because Christ lives in us.
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Readers review of "He Walks with Me: Enjoying the Abiding Presence of God" by Warren Wiersbe. 192 pages, published by David C. Cook in June 2016. You can get it via Amazon Kindle for USD9.99 or for the low, low price of USD1.99 via Faithlife and only in June.
I am a bit behind in my reviews. For the month of July, Logos is giving away Peter Wagner's commentary on Acts. I read this book more than ten years ago and was entranced, spellbound even!, by what I read. Re-reading it now, the spell has been broken. I am now somewhat annoyed, disturbed, with some of what he writes. After listening to my soon to come scathing review, you might want to read the book for yourself. So go download the July free book now in logos.com before August comes and takes it away.
Thank you for listening. Bye bye.
Book List"He Walks with Me: Enjoying the Abiding Presence of God" by Warren Wiersbe. Amazon. Faithlife.

As you listen to my voice, how do you know the real you is not hooked up to a machine feeding reality into your brain? Or when you go to bed at night how do you know that the world did not switch off and that when you woke up, the world switched back on. Today, dead philosophers tell us what is and what is not.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped our World" by R.C. Sproul. 224 pages, published by Crossway in 2000. In Amazon, it costs USD59.92 for the hardcover, USD19.99 for the paperback. I don't see a Kindle version. You can get it for free from Logos.com if you saw the deal last month in June. And if you didn't get the book then, I'm here to tell you what a great deal you missed.
The Growl and Chuckle Teacher
R.C. Sproul will be remembered in history for popularising Reformed Theology. Popularising not by bringing theology down to appeal to popular opinion but by bringing people up to gaze upon Heaven, to be in awe of the holiness of God.
There are teachers who can communicate deep theology, e.g. Martyn Lloyd Jones. J.I. Packer. John Piper. But no one who can communicate and teach like Sproul, with a growl and a chuckle. One minute a profound insight, the next minute a rousing zinger. His impish jokes are classic, unforgettable, moments in church history. All this is to explain why I come to this book as a child would to his favourite teacher.
Today's book is not about Theology but a close relative of it, Philosophy. In the past, I have tried to make sense of philosophy and failed. So I come to this book expecting Sproul to break it down, show us how philosophy relates to us today and all the while I want his trademark clarity and wit.
Let's open the book.
Hitler Does Not Want You to Read This Book
This is the introduction:

"The summer of 1959: ... My biggest concern was summer employment. Many friends who were engineering students had found lucrative summer jobs that paid well above the minimum wage. My prospects were bleak: I was a philosophy major. I did not find in the newspaper a single want ad calling for philosophers. My only real option was a job for unskilled labor paying the minimum wage. Even at that I was delighted to be offered work in the maintenance department of a hospital.
When the foreman heard I was a philosophy major, he handed me a broom and said, “Here, you can think all you want while you’re leaning on the broom.”
I can literally hear his voice and see his grinning face when I read this.
Let me continue to read from the introduction. Actually, are you interested in philosophy? Imagine that you are not. See how he hooks you in.
Sproul writes:
During my first week on the job, I was reaching the end of my sweeping territory. My zone ended where the main hospital driveway intersected the parking lot of the nurses’ home. I noticed another man sweeping the adjacent parking lot. He greeted me, and we exchanged names and pleasantries. When I told him I was a college student, he asked what I was studying. When I said philosophy, his face brightened and his eyes lit up. He fired a barrage of questions at me, inquiring about Descartes, Plato, Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, and others. I was astonished at this man’s knowledge. He obviously knew far more about philosophy than I did.
My new friend was from Germany. He had his Ph.D. in philosophy and had been a professor of philosophy in Berlin. When Adolf Hitler came to power, the Nazis were not content to find a “final solution” for Jews and Gypsies. They also sought to eliminate intellectuals whose ideas were at odds with the “values” of the Third Reich. My friend was removed from his position. When he spoke out against the Nazis, his wife and all but one of his children were arrested and executed. He escaped from Germany with his young daughter.
Sproul homes in to his point:
I mused on something else that morning, which is why I am recounting the tale here. I was pushing a broom because I lived in a culture that sees little value in philosophy and gives scant esteem to those who pursue it. My friend was pushing a broom, on the other hand, because he came from a culture that gave great weight to philosophy. His family was destroyed because Hitler understood that ideas are dangerous. Hitler so feared the consequences of my friend’s ideas that he did everything possible to eliminate him -- and his ideas.
As I did so often reading this book, I paused. I reflected on our own times. Sproul wrote this in the year 2000. At that time nobody knew critical theory or gender ideology. It was just an idea. Today, it seems to be the only thing everybody talks about. An idea with great consequence.
And if you think along those lines, you can see how Marxism and Darwinism are also ideas that have -- and this is such a trite way to put it -- changed the world. Karl Marx appears in Chapter 10 of the book, Darwin in chapter 14. Marx and Darwin are known influencers. How about the less well known but no less influential? It's not just bad ideas that have consequences, how about some good ones?
Who's Who of Ideas
The book starts from the First Philosophers: Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras. Then we continue in the next chapters:

• Chapter 2: Plato
• Chapter 3: Aristotle
• Chapter 4: Augustine
• Chapter 5: Thomas Aquinas
• Chapter 6: Rene Descartes
• Chapter 7: John Locke
• Chapter 8: David Hume
• Chapter 9: Immanuel Kant
• Chapter 10: Karl Marx
• Chapter 11: Soren Kiekegaard
• Chapter 12: Friedrich Nietzsche
• Chapter 13: Jean-Paul Sartre
• Chapter 14: Darwin and Freud
• Conclusion: Gilson's Choice

You will note that the book is organised around individuals rather than philosophical ideas. So it's Thomas Aquinas, not Thomism; Karl Marx, not Marxism; Friedrich Nietzsche, not nihilism.
And this way works. The best introduction to an idea is to understand the man. Why was Socrates forced to commit suicide? How did David Hume provoke Immanuel Kant? Soren Kierkegaard argued that in Denmark, (to quote Sproul) "the state church had reduced Christianity to an empty formalism and externalism, which in effect produces mere spectators to true Christianity." How did Kierkegaard go from here to be the father of modern existentialism?
Another thing we can learn from the Table of Contents -- and by the way, if you don't know this, let me tell you, one of the best ways to figure out what a book is about is to simply look at the Table of Contents. You can get a lot from well-written, well-thought out Table of Contents. If you can't judge a book by its cover, you could very well judge it by its Table of Contents.
So back to Sproul's book. From the Table of Contents we can also see that it is chronological. He starts from the Philosophers in Ancient Greece and stops at Darwin and Freud.
I suppose if Sproul was alive today he might be tempted to write about critical theory. How I wish Sproul was here to explain to us how we got from philosophy professors making unintelligible prose to police arresting parents for demanding boys be boys and girls be girls. This just goes to show how philosophy never stops, there will be more ideas ahead, more consequences, thus more reasons to understand where all this is coming from.
In merely 220 pages, you get a summary of this 2500 years conversation about god (small g) and reality. Some guy in Ancient Greece says something and Augustine refutes it and someone else refutes him and this continues all the way to our Postmodern World.
Philosophy, not Theology
So this long conversation involves some reality-bending, mind-twisting, concepts. R.C. Sproul goes into it. He is not content to tell you amusing anecdotes, he means to teach you philosophy.
He invites us to live the examined life. In Chapter 4, on Augustine, Sproul explains the big cultural influencers of the day: the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics and the Neoplatonist.
On Epicureans, Sproul writes:
Epicureans sought to escape the “hedonistic paradox”: The pursuit of pleasure alone ends in either frustration (if the pursuit fails) or boredom (if it succeeds). Both frustration and boredom are kinds of pain, the antithesis of pleasure. Thus Epicureans sought not the maximum pleasure but the optimum pleasure. They concluded that a wise man’s diet of bread and water will more likely bring happiness than a glutton’s diet of gourmet food.
Epicureans have understood what many don't and you may be one of them. This is the “hedonistic paradox”: The pursuit of pleasure alone ends in either frustration (if the pursuit fails) or boredom (if it succeeds).
If someone else wrote this book, he could at this point promote the Epicurean way of life. Epicureans have a solution to optimise pleasure and you can see their influence today in self-improvement books, gurus promote lifestyle changes, ancient wisdom packaged in bite-sized videos with click-bait titles.
Yet, Sproul does not engage with the Epicureans. He could. He is an apologist. He could easily tell us the only real solution to the hedonistic paradox is the Gospel. But he doesn't do that.
He introduces the Epicureans, not as a foil to tell us what we should believe and how we should live, but as the necessary background to understand Augustine, the man and his ideas. Sproul's focus throughout the book is to faithfully expound, not the Bible, but all these men and their ideas.
A Philosophy Book by A Christian
For example, it's easy to vilify Karl Marx. Marxist is a political slur. But name-calling does nothing to inform us of its attraction and frenzy-inducing power.
You see, Karl Marx, with his PhD in Philosophy, has this ideal vision of society. And as we read from this book, this society makes sense. It all sounds so wonderful. Sproul tells us all of that but he is also compelled to speak up else you join the millions of people sucked into Marxism. He writes:
Marx predicted that the condition of workers in capitalist societies would become steadily worse. The poor would become poorer while the rich would become richer, until the masses would revolt and take over the means of production for themselves. This was Marx’s greatest error. He assumed the myth that the rich can only get rich at the expense of the poor. One man’s gain must spell another man’s loss... No economic system has been as effective as capitalism in raising the human standard of living.
The interesting thing is not that Sproul is against Marxism. If you read this book because of Sproul, you expect more arguments from Scripture. But against Marxism, he brings not the crucifixion but capitalism.
This is a podcast dedicated to Christian book reviews. Surprise, surprise, today's book is not a Christian book. It is a book written by a Christian.
R.C. Sproul gives us this introductory book on philosophy and so it only makes sense to counter Marxism, with the other working economic system, which is capitalism. It would be illogical to inject Christianity into the discussion because Christianity is not an economic system.
However, Sproul is not conceding that Christianity should stay out of public discussions.
In the first chapter, Sproul quotes Protagoras the father of ancient humanism, "Man is the measure of all things." Sproul then says, "From a biblical perspective, of course, the honor of being the first humanist does not belong to Protagoras. Indeed, it is accorded not to a man, but to a serpent whose maxim was ... “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:4).
In chapter 12, Nietzsche distinguished between slave morality and master morality. The master is strong, the slave is weak. The master is his own judge, might makes right. The slave morality elevates sympathy, patience, kindness, humility and so forth. And Sproul makes a side remark that this sounds a lot like the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.
What I like about this book is how Sproul exemplifies how Christians can participate in public discourse. If you want to understand philosophy, you can get it from a Christian. You should not be worried that the author will invite you to say a word of prayer at the end of every chapter.
You should be able to read a book on politics, biology, medicine, astronomy, or any other subject from a Christian writer. The Christian just like any other person has an opinion. And the Atheist who insists that his books say nothing about God is likewise expressing an opinion, and this is a consequence of an idea, traceable to a philosophy.
Christian or not, you should give R.C. Sproul's book a try.
Sproul guides us through the history of philosophical thought using every trick in the book: stories, diagrams, reasoning, drama and humour. And once in a while, he lets us know what he thinks. But the side remarks do not detract from what is an excellent introduction to Western Philosophy.
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Readers review of "Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped our World" by R.C. Sproul. 224 pages, published by Crossway in 2000. USD59.92 for the hardcover, USD19.99 for the paperback, no Kindle version. It was free in Logos last month, and it's now USD13.99. Is it worth paying for it? Well, that really depends on how you see value and how you see value depends on how you see reality and that is where philosophy comes in.
Book List

• "Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped our World" by R.C. Sproul. Amazon. Logos.

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." That chilling -- or is it sobering -- quote comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and today we will learn more about the man and more importantly, what he believes and why we must listen.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Bonhoeffer Speaks Today: Following Jesus at All Costs" by Mark Devine. 192 pages, published by B&H Books in November 2005. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD7.99 and through Faithlife for free. Only free in June. So you only have a few more days left for this deal.
Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Mark Devine is a professor at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. He has taught at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City and also served as a missionary in Bangkok, Thailand.
In four words, who is Bonhoeffer? Bonhoeffer is a Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. That is the title from Eric Metaxas' biography on Bonhoeffer. I'll share more how Metaxas' book compares to Devine's later but for now those four words aptly describes the man Bonhoeffer. A man who should be more famous than James Bond.
Hopefully that whets your appetite to know more about him and you can read all about him in Chapter 1 of this book, from his early childhood years to his untimely execution ordered by Hitler a few weeks before World War 2 ended.
That's chapter one done so what are the rest of the chapters about?
What Does He Believe?
The book has five chapters:

1. At All Costs. A one chapter biography on the man.
2. Knowing and Doing the Will of God.
3. The Community of Believers
4. Witness and Relevance
5. Freedom, Suffering and Hope

The question this book answers is not "Who is Bonhoeffer?", for good biographies abound, the standard in the field being Eberhard Bethge's, who was Bonhoeffer's close friend, fellow conspirator and husband to Bonhoeffer's niece. So the book does not answer, "Who is Bonhoeffer?", the book answers the question, "What does Bonhoeffer believe and how does it matter for us today?"
This is primarily not a narrative. The narrative in chapter one serves as explanation and testimony for Bonhoeffer's belief, a belief which Devine analyses and calls the Church to listen.
Worth Listening To
This is Bonhoeffer's most famous quote:
Cheap Grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.
Cheap grace. When someone says Christianity is very easy, no sweat, no trials, just smooth sailing all the way to Heaven, that's cheap grace. There is a cost to discipleship. That is the title of Bonhoeffer's book where that quote is found.
Devine quotes this in Chapter 3: The Community of Believers. In that chapter, Devine also quotes from Bonhoeffer's booklet Creation and Fall:
In man God creates his image on earth. This means that man is like the Creator in that he is free. Actually he is free only by God's creation, by means of the Word of God; he is free for the worship of the Creator. In the language of the Bible, freedom is not something man has for himself but something he has for others. No man is free “as such,” that is, in a vacuum, in the way that he may be musical, intelligent or blind as such. Freedom is not a quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him. ... Freedom is not a quality which can be revealed—it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form of existence—but a relationship and nothing else . ... Being free means “being free for the other.”
I have not read Cost of Discipleship. I have not read Creation and Fall. But I know enough to know that when Bonhoeffer speaks, I should listen. Devine does not merely cut and paste the best bits from Bonhoeffer's writings. This is not a book of quotations.
A Pastor Plots To Kill Hitler
What is the sixth commandment? "Thou Shall Not Murder".
Pastor and theologian Bonhoeffer was in a plot to assassinate Hitler.
Some sought to cover Bonhoeffer by minimising his involvement in the plot. That might have worked if Bonhoeffer's own words did not incriminate him.
Devine writes:
When he speaks of having a clear conscience about his participation in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, he means something akin to the abandonment of self-justification in the matter. He means that he offers his decision to God for judgment. He means that he could no longer maintain a good conscience by attempting to keep his own hands “clean” while praying for the “success” of military and “secular” attempts to stop Hitler.
This is explosive stuff. And it's not even the main part of the chapter. Bonhoeffer lives only to follow the will of God. What does following Christ and resisting Hitler mean? And dangerously, can Christians sanction violence?
This assassination is just one example of how everything comes together. You have the dramatic background of Nazi Germany. You have the doctrinal rigour of a top theologian. You have the decision to follow Christ, no turning back, no turning back.
Devine integrates all of them to discuss for example, church as a community, and when you talk about community, about living together under God's Word, we read Bonhoeffer starting an underground seminary. We read about his prison ministry.
I quote:
It is right for the Christian prisoner or missionary or exiled apostle to yearn for contact with fellow believers. The absence, not the presence, of such longings would call into question one's relationship to Christ. We were made for one another, and our relationship with Christ includes our divinely created and sustained connection to one another. It is a life-giving, mutually interdependent connection as described in 1 Corinthians 12.
For Bonhoeffer, we misunderstand the constituent role of the community for the Christian life if we reduce it to a means for our individual enjoyment of other supposed blessings. Though not simply wrong, it is a distortion to think of the church as mainly the path to the benefits of knowing Christ.
If you have never heard of Bonhoeffer, this could be the book that sets you off to read Cost of Discipleship, Life Together and other books.
Whats The Problem With Bonhoeffer?
So why do evangelicals reluctantly welcome Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Often times I read something, it mentions Bonhoeffer, then it would quickly provide a disclaimer, "But we don't believe everything that Bonhoeffer believes". I also remember R.C. Sproul commending Bonhoeffer and issuing that same disclaimer. Bonhoeffer holds to certain doctrines that we don't believe.
When I came to Devine's book, I was hoping that a systematic analysis of Bonhoeffer's theology would answer this question, "Why are evangelicals so careful around Bonhoeffer?" Because this has been bugging me for a while.
Devine writes of the "disproportionate welcome Bonhoeffer has received among progressivist Christians" and often times in the book shows how Bonhoeffer would have responded to such welcome.
Devine writes:
Theological liberals and progressives may chafe at the exclusive claims of Christ belonging to ancient, orthodox, biblical, Christian witness, but Bonhoeffer did not.
Against sanguine and optimistic estimations of human nature so prominent within liberal and progressive theologies, Bonhoeffer took a dim view of humanity in its “natural” state.
If I may say so, I come away from the book knowing what Bonhoeffer firmly believes, but I don't know how or why there is a disproportionate welcome for Bonhoeffer among progressivist Christians than among evangelicals.
I feel that I have to read between the lines but it is not stated outright.
The Dogma is the Drama
I would have liked to be led down a garden path.
Give me a Bonhoeffer quote. Then give me a liberal take on that quote. Make me uneasy. If this is true, then imagine the consequences. Does Bonhoeffer truly believe this?
When the tension is at its peak, release me from my misery. Give me another word from Bonhoeffer that not just dismisses liberal theology but gives clear direction on how to resolve the tension.
Give me the drama. And to some who think this is ugly showmanship, I quote to you Dorothy Sayers, "It is the dogma that is the drama."
A writer who understands the drama of Bonhoeffer's life is Eric Metaxas. He wrote Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Why not Theologian? It would ruin the catchy title. I give Metaxas' book an A for storytelling. It was my first introduction to Bonhoeffer and it made me cry and love him for his life in obedience to our God.
I would give Devine a B or maybe a high C for storytelling. Having said that, Metaxas had a whole book to bring out the man's life, Devine had to do it in one chapter.
Here is the thing, whereas the focus in Metaxas book is on the man, the focus in Devine's book is on the man's belief. And that belief is our belief, maybe. But if it is, then we must listen. Devine has given us substance, well-written, well-argued substance, and I just wished there was just a little more drama, the weighty consequence expressed as cliffhangers, cliffhangers in the Bonhoeffer past and also in our present life.
Submersibles and James Bond
This could be too soon to use Oceangate's submersible tragedy as an illustration -- we don't even know the cause of the implosion -- but because it's so vivid, I will do it with some assumptions.
The tragedy illustrates how a man can have rock-solid conviction that innovation works, that his product is safe. Look, to prove that, he is in the submersible going down nearly 4000m under the sea. But all the talk, conviction and assurance is worth nothing when a flawed, untested, vehicle goes against the laws of physics.
Similarly, a man can have rock-solid conviction on an interpretation, that his teaching is safe before the throne of God. All the talk is worth nothing when it breaks under great pressure. The story of Bonhoeffer is compelling because his life and teaching integrated so well, tested under unimaginable pressure.
Before I end, I want to share with you a passage that provoked much thought in me:
Many aspiring scholars pursuing the doctorate chafed at the ministry requirement then prevailing at Berlin and found ways to check off the ministry box as quickly and painlessly as possible. Not Bonhoeffer. Once his catechetical students outgrew the Sunday class, Bonhoeffer started a Thursday reading and discussion group in order to maintain his ministry among them. Papers on religious, historical, economic, and political subjects were presented by Bonhoeffer. They enjoyed field trips together, spending hours together during which these youth, many from Jewish families including several atheists, would speak their minds and challenge their teacher who patiently answered their questions. Many of these students continued to correspond with Bonhoeffer across the years. Nearly all of these students would die in Hitler's war or in the concentration camps, as would their kind teacher.
How do you respond to that? Profound sadness, yes. But is it a tragedy? Or is it a triumph? Is this the outcome that we want our Sunday School teachers to aim for? Can you show me your lesson plan? Does it prepare our kids to die for Christ? If Bonhoeffer's teaching makes Christ's commands clear and compelling, do we want more of it? We are sad at the deaths of so few, but imagine if all of Germany at that time were as diligent in their Bible Study, and as committed to only Jesus is Lord. Hitler might never have been Hitler.
The world's most famous spy would be James Bond. In a just world, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be more famous than James Bond. Bond is make believe, Bonhoeffer is real. Bond got on machine gun cars against campy, creepy, sometimes even cool villains. Bonhoeffer got on radio and called Hitler a Verfuhrer, a misleader. Bond lives, dies, and comes back on screen. Bonhoeffer lives, dies and his reward for obedience is life forever more. So why does the world know and care about Bond when instead of listening to Dietrich Bonhoeffer? What more must a man do before the world will listen?
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Readers review of "Bonhoeffer Speaks Today: Following Jesus at All Costs" by Mark Devine. 192 pages, published by B&H Books in November 2005. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD7.99 and through Faithlife for free. Only free in June and there are only a few days left in June.
Another free book is from Logos and that is R.C. Spoul's "The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World". I won't be in time to release a review this month but I hope to do so next month. Wouldn't it be terrible if you heard my review and decided, "I would like to read that book" but the deal is over and I have to pay full price for it. Actually, that's not such a terrible thing.
Until next time. Bye bye.
Book List
"Bonhoeffer Speaks Today: Following Jesus at All Costs" by Mark Devine. Amazon. Faithlife.

The way we read the Bible can affect what we get from the Bible. And since there are five ways to read the Bible there are five ways to feast on what the Bible offers. Find out more in today's episode.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Five Models of Scripture" by Mark Reasoner. 311 pages, published by Eerdmans in August 2021. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD19.17 and it was free last month via Logos. If you missed the free book, shame on you, but you can always make up for it by getting this month's free book from Logos and Faithlife. I'll tell you more about it at the end of the review.
Roman Catholic and the Elephant
It has been said, "Seminary is where faith goes to die." There the Bible ceases to become a fount of comfort and becomes a document to dissect. Take heart, Mark Reasoner has written today's book to help everyone understand the five models of Scripture to nourish the faith.
And when I say everyone, I am thinking of Protestants, Roman Catholics and Orthodox.
Mark Reasoner got his MDiv and MA in New Testament from an evangelical Protestant Seminary. Then, tragically or fortunately, depending on where you stand, he became a Roman Catholic and is now teaching Scripture to undergraduates at a Roman Catholic university.
Reasoner writes:

I do my best to respect readers’ diverse ecclesiastical affiliations. It would have been easier to write this book simply for Catholic seminarians. But Scripture is too sumptuous a feast to limit a book like this to one branch of the family.
Later he writes:
Yes, I actually regard the Catholic hermeneutic, in which the Catholic Church’s teaching office provides the boundaries and referees on the field of exegesis, as preferable to the hermeneutic popularized by the Anabaptists during the Reformation, in which the individual believer marks the boundaries and functions as both player and referee. I also regard the Catholic hermeneutic with its millennia of tradition and conversations across time and cultures as preferable to approaches that have selected a single individual or limited body of believers as the arbiters of exegesis. And so there will be places where I point out the ecclesiastical stakes in a given approach to Scripture. It is better to name the elephant in the room than to proceed as if the church question does not matter in exegesis.
That is a big elephant and one that jumps up every so often in this book. We will talk more about it in the second half of this review.
Canon and Inspiration
This is my first Roman Catholic book review. I just generally don't come across them in my reading radar. And I'm happy to read what they believe straight from the horse's mouth.
For example, we know that the Roman Catholic bibles have extra books, the Apocrypha. Protestants removed them because they are not inspired. Roman Catholics and Orthodox know they are not inspired but have left them in. Why?
Reasoner goes through the history of the biblical canon, how the early church dealt with the Apocrypha and amongst many points, he notes how a familiarity with the fantastic, fictive elements helps readers to:
identify more non-historical elements in other narratives, such as the narrative of Jonah and the great fish or various episodes within the book of Daniel.
We'll come back to what Reasoner calls fantastic and fictive elements in the Bible later.
After explaining what is the Bible canon, Reasoner turns to the matter of biblical inspiration. And I like how he explains what biblical inspiration means for the Protestant (he was one before), the Catholic (who he is now) and the Orthodox. Reasoner wants to unite all Bible readers together. Is he successful? There are good reasons to be hopeful.
Five Models of Scripture
Having established what is the canon and inspiration from the perspective of Roman Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox, we go into the essence of the book: the five models of Scripture, which are:

1. Documents
2. Stories
3. Prayers
4. Laws
5. Oracles

Without knowing it, you actually employ one of those models every time you read the Bible. Reasoner tells you which model you are using. I quote:
You know that someone is using the documents model when they seek to identify and argue that a specific human authored a book of the Bible ..., when they emphasise that eyewitness testimony is behind a given book of the Bible ..., when they seek to discover and prove the date(s) when a given book of the Bible was written or edited ..., when they seek to discover and prove what sources were used in the composition of a biblical book ..., when they seek to harmonise Scripture's differing accounts of the same event.
Isn't that how everyone reads the Bible? No, that's how scholars read them. Children read the Bible as a story. Not just children but adults too!
When you read the Bible as stories, which is the second model, you pay attention to the plot or the literary style. Even if what you are reading is not a story. What do I mean by that? The models Reasoner describes are not genres. Genres are categories of literature, they are fixed, e.g. Genesis is narrative, it is not poetry. Psalms is poetry, it is not narrative.
Reasoner's models are about the way you read, while genres are about what you read. Adopting a Stories model, you can read Psalms as part of the bigger story of Israel relationship with God.
The third model makes this quite clear. Everything in the Bible can be turned into prayer. If you read the Bible with that frame of mind, then you are using Reasoner's third model, the prayer model. You are not asking who wrote Psalms, when and where (that would be using the Documents model) nor are you wondering what is the plot (that's the Stories model) but rather you read the Bible in order to pray, to evoke the gift of God's revelation to touch the divine.
Next is the fourth model, the laws model. Here, you think about what is right and what is wrong, you look for the moral lesson in what you read.
The fifth and final model is oracles. The Fortune Cookie model. You open the Bible and a verse pops up and that verse is the answer to the problem of the day. Yes, it smacks of superstition and it breeds a consumer mentality. Initially, I rejected this as a valid model to read Scripture.
But Reasoner addresses the abuses of this model. And he gently corrects me by pointing out that we all, at some point, read Scripture using the oracles model. Augustine's life was changed by one verse. You and I have stories of how that perfect verse was the answer in our time of need. I appreciate it when a book changes my mind, especially when it's backed by strong reasoning.
These five "Models of Scripture" chapters are models of clarity. For each chapter, Reasoner starts with a definition and characteristics and specific applications of the model. If you still fail to understand what the definitions and characteristic means, his examples from the Old Testament and New Testament will clear everything up. Then he discusses the key issues of the model, the strengths and limitations of the model, before concluding the chapter with helpful suggestions, making a helpful distinction between the classroom and ministry.
But that's only half the book! He then spends a chapter to discuss about literal and spiritual senses, another chapter on Sola Scriptura - a Roman Catholic speaking about Sola Scriptura, so much to say here but I will resist the temptation - and another chapter on metanarratives. There is - surprise, surprise! - more than one way to outline the grand story of the Bible. But these are controversial chapters.
The least controversial chapters are the last, chapters 11 and 12. Scripture in Worship and Devotional, Academic and Professional Uses of Scripture. These are mild chapters in comparison and most of the time easily agreeable to all Christians.
As he wrote in the introduction, Reasoner did not set out to write a book to defend the Roman Catholic faith but rather to share different ways of reading the Bible to enrich all Christians. Nevertheless, he does not shy away from asserting Roman Catholic views over Protestant's.
I Beg To Disagree
I wonder whether does his interpretation of certain verses reflect the official Roman Catholic view or whether his views are even within the boundaries of acceptable Roman Catholic thought.
Reasoner says that there was no big fish in Jonah, there are events in Daniel that are fictional, there was no conquest of Canaan and the list goes on.
Let me pick an easy one to dismiss. Reasoner empathises with Origen's dilemma with Matthew 5:39, which reads "if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."
Consider the problem. Since most people are right-handers, a slap would land on the left cheek, not on the right. Origen concludes that this means the command was not meant to be taken literally but spiritually.
But I ask you, wouldn't it be easier to interpret the slap as a backhand slap, or that Jesus was looking at a left-hander when he was preaching, or maybe people that time used their left hand because they sneered, "you don't even deserve to be slapped by my right hand." Why take this command in the spiritual sense when the rest of the sermon is understood in the literal sense?
At another point of the book, he writes:
But once one has learned of some of the historical questions behind Scripture, such as the lack of any evidence for camels in the land of Canaan during the time of Abraham, the lack of any sign of military conquest of Canaan in the Iron Age, or the fact that Quirinius was not governor of Syria when Jesus was born (cf. Luke 2:2), then it is difficult to read the Bible simply as a compilation of time capsules. Indeed, if we are to love God with all our minds, then for those of us who have studied the Bible academically, we must read it both as scriptural time capsules and as artifacts of others’ faith. If we turn our minds off and seek to read it only as scriptural time capsules, we are not fully loving God with our minds (Deut 6:5).
In Reasoner's mind, this is the best way to handle the difficulties in the Bible. If it doesn't make sense, just change the way we read it. The documents model does not fit so read it with a stories model. But Luke writes his gospel claiming it is an accurate historical record. We can't just ignore his claim, can we?
So many seemingly historical inaccuracies in the Bible were later proven to be accurate! Archaeologists dig up pots, jugs and bullas, a shepherd boy throws stones into a cave and together they silence Bible sceptics everywhere.
Who Shall Come To Our Aid?
Looking at my long list of disagreements with Reasoner, how can we resolve this? The best way is to refer to the Roman Catholic Church.
Listen to this:
The Council of Trent responds to Protestant developments, and so begins its section on Scripture with an insistence that the gospel Christ proclaimed, described as “the source of all saving truth and rule of conduct,” is “contained in the written books and unwritten traditions that have come down to us, having been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself.” Thus there is an emphasis that the inspiration of Scripture is not sufficient as a guide to all truth but is complemented by the traditions that have come down to us.
Trent also emphasized the significance of reading Scripture with the church, instead of trying to interpret it on one’s own in ways that depart from what the church, including the church fathers, has taught.
To me, this begs the question, if a church father or a pope flatly dismisses Reasoner's interpretation, what will Reasoner do? Does he meekly submit to tradition even though those people in the past never thought of or considered Reasoner's points? Or does Reasoner hold on to his convictions that depart from what the church, including the church fathers, has taught? Come on, did the early church believe that the conquest of Canaan was fiction, or that Jonah's big fish was a fisherman's exaggeration for spiritual effect?
Reasoner mentions at one point that everyone, including Protestants have their own body of authority, their own traditions and church fathers to appeal to. Yes, but Protestants are brought up to believe that if any of our authorities got it wrong, then they are wrong! Are popes infallible?
Smart Enough to Solve a Jigsaw Puzzle
Although Reasoner does not say so in this book, I think Roman Catholics believes so. And Roman Catholics have a reason to believe that people in the past got things perfectly right. After all, they were wise enough to assemble the Bible together.
Reasoner writes:
It was the church that selected and canonized Scripture. And as we will see in the sola Scriptura chapter, the church is necessary for guiding our reading of Scripture. Catholic and Orthodox theologians are more likely to include the church in their discussion of the origin of Scripture’s authority. They emphasize that it is the church that has recognized Scripture as inspired and therefore invested it with authority. This leads to a more tradition-conscious way of reading Scripture. If one views Scripture as simply falling out of heaven, there is more of a tendency to use one interpretation of it as the only legitimate interpretation, which all people must heed. If one by contrast views Scripture as the church’s book, one will not accept only one interpretation as legitimate until one has considered how the tradition has handled the passage.
Both Catholic and Orthodox churches view Scripture as the creation of the church. In their consciousness, Scripture was composed by, collected by, and canonized by the church. Protestants by contrast, ..., are more prone to treat God’s word as its own category, closer to the doctrine of God and not inside the doctrine of the church.
Later on Reasoner writes:
Catholic and Orthodox theologians prioritize the church over Scripture, emphasizing that this priority occurs in history and in logic. By “history” I mean the fact that the church came into being first, and then centuries later defined its canon of Scripture. By “logic” I mean the idea that the text of Scripture only functions as Scripture when it is read and interpreted within the church.
In response, I quote Charles Spurgeon who said, "The church does not determine what the Bible teaches, the Bible determines what the church must teach."
To illustrate, I ask that you imagine in front of you a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces. A big glorious mess. Your job is to assemble the puzzle but there are some pieces that don't actually belong there. So you set to work. And you solved the puzzle.
You deserve some credit for solving the puzzle, but you could only solve it because you recognised the colour, the lines and how each piece connects to one another, so that you can assemble it the whole thing, right? So the key to assembling the puzzle is because there was a final picture fixed beforehand, correct?
Imagine another person who grew weary solving the puzzle. He decides to glue the pieces together, oh never mind if it doesn't fit, or if the picture doesn't make sense, just as long as I get something to fit the picture frame. At the end, he declares, "This is the final picture because I got it to fit into the frame!"
If you believe that people can be smart enough, wise enough, to put together the Holy Word of God, then of course it is reasonable to give weight to tradition.
But if you believe that God first established the Bible and it is a miracle of the first order that the early church recognised the pieces for what they were, the same Holy Spirit wrought miracle that got us to recognise the Word for what it is, then you would also believe that priority goes to that shining beacon of Truth, Scripture, not the Church. And we would be less inclined to see the Church and tradition as infallible or even as helpful as others do.
A Better Book?
How did we get here?
We started with the problem that people only knew how to read the Bible in one way and didn't get the full nourishment it offers. Reasoner gives us five models with some discussions on how to read the Bible.
Alongside the good, he gives what I think are bad interpretations. I make a list.
He says interpretations should be subject to church and tradition. I say, "Oh dear".
He says it was the church who established the Bible. I say "Ah, that's why everything is wrong."
Would this be a better book if Reasoner wrote it without these Roman Catholic hot takes? You see, anybody could have written a book on the five models of Scripture and gave it a different spin.
Instead of saying, "We should consider changing the model when things don't make sense", we could say, "Let's consider the genre of the book, does the genre demand from us to take it as a historical document?" By the way, this book really needs a discussion on literary genre.
Instead of saying, "This doesn't make sense let us read it allegorically or spiritually", we could say, "Have we dug deep enough? Are we humble enough to wait?" Science, history, linguistics and divine intervention have made Bible skeptics eat humble pie.
In conclusion, Reasoner's book is great as an introduction to this five models of Scripture. He seeks to unite but the thoughtful Protestant will meet resistance. What I tried to do in today's review is to identify the root cause of this resistance. It's ironic that the reason we differ so much is, ultimately, we hold to a different model of Scripture.
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Reader's review of "Five Models of Scripture" by Mark Reasoner. 311 pages, published by Eerdmans in August 2021. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD19.17 and it was free last month via Logos.
For the month of June, the Logos free book is "The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World" by R.C. Sproul. And in Faithlife, their free book for June is "Bonhoeffer Speaks Today: Following Jesus at All Costs" by Mark Devine. I'm a big fan of Sproul and of Bonhoeffer so I really hope I can review these two books before the deal ends. But really, why take that risk. Just get the two books now and figure out later whether you will actually read it. Go on. This episode is finished, so that you can get those free books. Bye bye!
Book List

• Five Models of Scripture by Mark Reasoner. Amazon. Logos.

If you are a Christian, have you ever wondered how life would be if you chose to an Atheist or if you were born in a Muslim family? If you are not a Christian, what would change if you had embraced Jesus as Lord and Saviour?
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions" by James N. Anderson. 112 pages. Published by Crossway in January 2014. This book was awarded World Magazine's 2014 Popular Theology Book of the Year. It's available for USD7.99 via Amazon Kindle and free via Faithlife for the month of May. Yes, for a limited time, you can get this book for free through Faithlife, so just stop whatever you are doing and do that.
Before There Were Game Machines
Before Gameboys, I played game books. Game books are page turners, literally.
You are a warrior searching for treasure in the forest. A troll ambushes you. What do you do? To fight, turn to page 10; to flee, turn to page 37. You turn pages to eventually know how your story ends.
Story books give you immersion. Game books give you immersion and decisions. Can we use game books, not to explore a make-believe world, but to explore beliefs and worldviews?
You are a man, a woman, searching for meaning in the world. A Professor of Theology and Philosophy ambushes you. What do you believe? Is there a God? If you say yes, turn to page 10; if you say no turn to page 37. You turn pages to eventually discover your worldview.
Who was that Professor of Theology and Philosophy who ambushed you? The writer of today's book, Dr. James Anderson, a Professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, is also an ordained minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. He has two PhDs. The first PhD was in computer simulation. The second PhD explored the paradoxical nature of certain Christian doctrines and the implications for the rationality of Christian faith.
With the power of his two PhDs, Dr. Anderson has seen a million possible worlds, a multiverse of madness, and reveals that there is only one worldview that truly explains the reality you and I live in.
A Million Possible Worlds But Only One Is True
The first cosmic question he throws at you is: "Do you have the Power to Make Free Choices?" In just 200 or so words, Anderson takes is a head-spinning philosophical question and breaks it down to a street level. The chapter begins: "Chips or salad? Diet Coke or Dr Pepper? Dine-in or take-out?" He continues to give us just enough background for us to understand and attempt the question, "Do you have the Power to Make Free Choices?" Yes or no. Turn to the corresponding page.
Once you have made your choice, you are set on a pre-determined path that branches off into more and more questions until you reach a destination. That destination is 1 of 21 listed worldviews. Based on your choices, this is what you believe. Or is it?
Let's do one question in depth to see how this book works. Let's consider: "The Knowledge Question". "Is it possible to know the truth?"
Anderson sets up the question:

Most people would agree that we have intellectual faculties, such as reason and perception, that allow us to investigate matters of interest to us and to discover the truth about those matters. Even if we don’t have absolute certainty about most things, we can still know a great deal about ourselves and the world around us by using our intellectual faculties in responsible ways.
Later he writes:
Other people, however, take a much lower view of the human mind. They insist that even if there is objective truth about important matters, no one can really know what it is. Everyone has his own opinions, and some of those opinions may happen to be true, but no one’s opinions are more or less reasonable than anyone else’s. Certainly no one has any right to say she knows the truth. We’re all mired in ignorance, and the sooner we accept that the better.
The question is: "Is it possible to know the truth -- at least some truth?"
If you say yes, go to this page. If you say no, go to that page.
What is your answer? I know your answer is yes, of course it's possible to know the truth or some truth, but just for fun, out of curiousity, let's explore the other answer. What if it's not possible to know the truth.
I turn to that page and I am greeted in big letters, "Worldview: Skepticism". Anderson explains that Skepticism is attractive because it's humble to say, "I don't know" but skepticism is wrong because it's hubris to say, "Nothing can be known".
First, what you say is not consistent with how you live. If you truly believe that there is no possibility to know things, then "our everyday decisions and actions would be pointless and worthless".
Second, it is self-defeating. "If you want to be a consistent Skeptic, you should be as doubtful about Skepticism as you are about everything else."
Do you want to re-consider your answer? That's easy because every worldview ends with an invitation to go back to the earlier question. Before I knew it, I finished the book, meaning I went through every possible path in the book. It's been a long time since I finished 100% of a game.
Choose Your Worldview
I could read out all the questions you would encounter in the book but that will just spoil it, it would kill the fun. Not knowing what questions will come up is part of the reading experience. The experience of surprise and delight.
"Oh, I didn't expect him to ask this question." "Hmm... if I answer it this way, what will be the outcome?" "I didn't realise if I believe in this, then it also means I believe in that."
Anderson is giving me enough rope to hang myself with, meaning his questions prompts answers where I incriminate myself. What I claim to believe is inconsistent with how I live.
In the hands of another author, you might feel bullied by the incessant questions and manic compulsion to take a position but in the hands of James Anderson, it is all in good fun. It is a game. An intellectually satisfying puzzle where you can trace the logical cause and effect every step of the way. When he asks a question, he doesn't stack the deck to make you choose 'the correct answer', the Christian answer, but he poses it in such a way that all the choices are reasonable.
Clear Christian Bias
But reasonable does not mean it's true. People have reasons to believe that the Earth is flat, that doesn't mean it's true. If you are worried that Anderson's book ends up like one of those small group session where everyone shares an opinion but nobody has a conclusion, then be assured that Anderson has a conclusion.
As Anderson tells us upfront, everyone has biases. Anderson is a seminary professor and an ordained minister, but more importantly he is a Christian so he can't and mustn't end on all religions are true, all paths lead to God. That's pluralism, by the way, not Christianity.
His Christian bias shows up not just in what he considers as the correct worldview, it also comes up when he evaluates other worldviews.
Anderson asks, "Can a God that is less than purely good be worthy of the title 'God'?" In another place, he asks, "Would a God who is neither personal nor perfect be worthy of our love and our worship?" These are Christian presuppositions.
If I was a non-Christian, I would argue, "Why not? Why can't God be flawed like the Greek or Norse gods. Why should God desire our love or worship? It is what it is."
Hang on, would a non-Christian even open this book? It's so obviously a Christian book designed to challenge our worldviews. That sounds as enticing as jumping into a pool of thumbtacks.
Boundary Markers For Non-Bigots
The appeal to non-Christians here is truth packaged in an interactive back and forth with a friendly tone and intellectual honesty.
He sets up the question as briefly and as fairly as he can, then responds to your answer by admitting the attractiveness of the position but also the problems that arises.
If you are not a Christian, you might object that Anderson has exaggerated the problems. But you can't expect too much from a short 100 page book that covers Atheism to Unitarianism. Or you might object that it's too simplistic or your worldview is not covered or some other objections. To his credit, Anderson pre-empts many of these objections in the Appendix of the book including a straightforward answer to those who question the Christian bias in the book.
The intellectual honesty is not just in how he brings out opposing views and at the same time asserting his own convictions. That is hard to do but perhaps harder now than ever is being able to set boundary markers without being called a bigot. Is it possible to draw a battle line without engaging in battles?
Yes, if you role play it. The same way how gamers can take turns playing Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. So in a unique way, the format of the book allows non-Christians to explore worldviews, maybe discovering their own and understanding others, without being defensive or antagonistic about it.
After finishing the book, I wondered whether a "Choose Your Adventure" approach could be used to explore the different cults and denominations within Christianity. But how would you arrange the cults and denominations so that you could separate them with one big question after another. What is the one question that would separate Roman Catholics from Baptist? Or one question to distinguish Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons. It's not easy to design a series of questions that would gradually put each group in its rightful place.
After thinking how difficult, if not impossible to do it for groups within Christianity, I gained a new appreciation for Anderson's success here. He makes it look so easy.
For The Explorers Among You
I mentioned at length how non-Christians would receive this book because I think the book's format makes it a curious novelty for even the most hostile reader. Let's turn now to the Christian.
Christians in general will like the book because it affirms what you always believed to be true and it's always nice to have our Christian biases confirmed by err... other Christians.
But I want to zoom in to a particular sub-group of Christians that I think will greatly benefit from this book. The people who grew up in Christian homes, Sunday schools, youth meetings, and churches who feel like they never had a real choice in what to believe. They are taught, some would say brainwashed, that other worldviews, beliefs and religions are not just wrong, but evil.
Then they meet people outside of church who are kinder, smarter, more sincere and more open than the people they know in church. Maybe they have a reverse Road to Damascus encounter, a pagan epiphany. There is no progress for the pilgrim. They deconstruct their faith. They conclude that Christianity is irrational. They come out of the church and celebrate their de-conversion.
What if before all that happened, they were able to explore other worldviews without feeling conflicted about reading the Quran or listening to Richard Dawkins. Maybe by making it forbidden, the church has also made those worldviews attractive and more powerful than they really are.
This book allows you to enter so-called forbidden worldviews. You pick up a worldview, just as you would play a role in a game. And as you run through this simulation, you see how it ends and thus you save yourself from what was at first an enticing worldview, but in reality an intellectual, spiritual anti-climatic dead end.
This book is good for the Non-Christian to enter the worldview of the Christian and see how Christianity does make sense and it is beautiful. It is also good for the Christian to simulate an alternate worldview without losing the soul.
Conclusion
This is a Reading and Reader's review of "What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions" by James N. Anderson. 112 pages. Published by Crossway in January 2014. This book was awarded World Magazine's 2014 Popular Theology Book of the Year. It's available for USD7.99 via Amazon Kindle and free via Faithlife for the month of May.
If you like another book to share with non-Christians, turn to Episode 47 of Reading and Readers and listen to my review of "Why Believe?" by Neil Shenvi.
If you want a big book answer to the Free Choice question, you can turn to Episode 7: "Providence" by John Piper.
If you want to read something different, perhaps how to read the Bible in more than one way, subscribe to Reading and Readers to get the next episode where I review "Five Models of Scripture" by Mark Reasoner, a book free from Logos for May. So get in May, without delay.
Thank you for listening. Bye bye.
Book List

• "What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions" by James N. Anderson. Amazon. Faithlife.

The loudest alarm clock, the most inspiring motivation speaker, even a world-ending earthquake can do nothing to get a tired, overwhelmed, sad soul out of bed. What all of them can't do, a humble, gentle, book can.
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review, "On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living" by Alan O. Noble. 120 pages. Published by Inter-Varsity Press in April 2023. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD14.99.
If not for this podcast, I never would have come across this gem. Last year, I reviewed "The Care of Souls" by Harold Senkbeil. Good book. Check out my review. I then followed Senkbeil in Twitter. March this year, he tweeted and brought to my attention Alan Noble's new book. In that tweet, I listened to Noble read the introduction.
As soon as it came out, I got out of bed, I got out my wallet, I got out my device to read it. What a great chapter. I shared it. This is another great chapter and I shared that too. And I had to stop myself before I copied the whole book and get arrested for copyright.
The book is so good that the professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Siang-Yang Tan, writes:

Alan Noble has given us another great gift in writing this short, honest, and deeply moving book on the powerful witness to the goodness of life and of God of simply getting out of bed each day, especially when we experience mental suffering or affliction. It contains many gems of wisdom and profound truth, such as living one day at a time, one step at a time, accepting God's love and grace and the help of others -- including mental health professionals and lay people -- and reaching out to others in community. Highly recommended.
I might as well end the review here right? You already know what I think of the book, but stay so that I can tell you more about the book.
This might be the book you never knew you needed to read.
The Author's Great Existential Question For You
Be honest with yourself, there are days when you don't want to get out of bed. Maybe it's today! And you don't have to have a diagnosed debilitating disease to feel that way. You could have some something unnamed, probably trivial in the eyes of some people, and it's weighing heavily on you. It's nothing you need to see a doctor for, it's just the everyday stress and pressure of life. But sometimes it can be too much and you just want to stay in bed, hide under the covers and hope that the storm will pass. Bring a torchlight and take this book with you.
Listen to Alan Noble. He knows what he is talking about. Alan Noble is a professor and professors know their stuff. He is an author of many books and articles. And I'll have you know that his dissertation title was, "Manifestations of transcendence in twentieth-century American fiction: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carson McCullers, J.D. Salinger, and Cormac McCarthy."
"Wait. What? Did you just say F. Scott Fitzgerald? American fiction?"
Yeah! Alan Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University. He has two other books on Amazon, "You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World" and "Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age". And his latest book is on mental suffering.
I know what you are thinking. If you have a plumbing problem you find a plumber. If you have a car problem, you ask a mechanic. If you have a mental problem, you need a mental health professional. What can one get from an English professor?
Well, one hopes for a well-written book. And we have that. It's not high brow literature. It's eight chapters of soul food written for the common man. For the common man has a common ailment.
Listen to this, I quote:
We have many terms for the different types of mental affliction that humans experience: depression, anxiety, clinical depression, melancholy, despair, low self-esteem, trauma, lethargy, boredom, guilt, lack of ambition, laziness, mourning, a failure to launch, exhaustion, burnout, mental illness, mental disorder and so on. We have a massive medical field devoted to treating the problem through medication and therapy. We have a million self-help books and life coaches and social media mindset influencers to inspire us. But here's the thing: each morning it's you. Each morning you must choose to get out of bed or not. All the medication and cognitive therapy and latest research and self-care in the world can't replace your choice. This decision can be aided by these resources but never replaced by them. Which means that you have to have an answer to a fundamental question: Why get out of bed? Or, more bluntly, why live?
There are so many ways to answer that question: Why live? Take any person, real or fictional, and imagine asking that question to him or her. Some dismiss it. Some get drunk. Some seize the day. Others hide in their beds.
"Why live?" is the great existential question. And Noble answers it in a series of essays, or chapters. I don't want to quote too much from the book because it's only a hundred page long. So I'll give you my impression of the book without spoiling your potential enjoyment of it.
Biblical Wisdom
One way to describe it is to refer to the Bible's different genres. The Bible has historical narratives. This book is not telling a story of the author, of his struggles with mental suffering, and it's refreshing to read a book where someone does not feel the need to put himself in the book to make a point.
The Bible also have epistles, letters written to the person or to the church. Noble writes in a conversational style, not in a dry detached voice of the lecturer. And like Paul, Peter and the epistle writers, Noble's intention are noble, he writes for the good of the readers.
However, if we were to fit this book to a biblical genre, it would be the wisdom literature.
It's like a cross between Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job, the quintessential book on suffering. Generally, the epistles start from theological truths and move towards praxis, how the believer lives according to the Word. If the epistles are top down, then Ecclesiastes and Job are bottom up.
The readers meet them where they are hurting, where they are confounded. They bring up human observations, sometimes flawed, into the discourse. God and His Revelation is still above human thoughts, but you can see in the text people grappling with how to make sense of the world.
I bring up the Bible genres because I want to show how the Bible itself validates an honest wrestling with the Word and the world.
We know that the Gospel is the answer to all our suffering. Convinced of this great truth, some think that the only way to speak life to another is to preach and preach and preach until the pain is exorcised away.
Alan Noble does not start at Genesis, then the Gospels, to end at Revelation. And how ironic it would be to comfort a suffering friend by preaching from Job. Job, of course, asked his preachy friends to be quiet, for that is wisdom.
Unlike Job's friends, Alan Noble has better bedside manners. Whether you rely on psychologists or psychiatrists, or think of suicide or seek attention, he does not blame or accuse. A safe book for sensitive souls.
American Fiction
Another unique strand of this book is the American Fiction aspect. For a book on suffering, Noble does not tell Job's story, he mentions Job once, and assumes you know it. Instead, Noble tells us the story from Cormac McCarthy's book, "The Road".
In chapter three, Noble writes that things can get so bad that "it feels rational to give up on life." And while friends "will remind you that you are wrong, that it's the illness talking and life is worth living," it is difficult to trust others because it's you who is suffering not them.
Noble then writes:
This is precisely the situation the nameless wife in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road finds herself in. By every rational materialist calculation, suicide is the most ethical and appropriate response to a world of evil and suffering. She, her husband, and their young son are alive at the end of civilization. The sun is darkened by ash. Nothing grows. Everything and everyone has died or is dying. Every day brings a new horror. There is every reason to believe that even if they manage to fight off starvation and the elements, they will eventually be captured, raped and eaten alive by cannibals. When she lays out the case for suicide to her husband, he can offer no rebuttal -- because there is none. The facts are the facts. Staying alive will lead to greater agony. When you no longer have hope for a pleasurable life, when you have every expectation of increased suffering, suicide is logical -- unless the reason we choose to go on living is something greater than pleasure, or freedom from pain, or even hope for a better tomorrow.
I was thinking of stopping here. But that would be an unbearable cliffhanger, and you should in this episode get a resolution, a partial one at least, for the full one, you would have to get Noble's book, or read the McCarthy novel.
Noble continues:
And yet her husband refuses to join her, and he prevents her from taking their son with her. Despite the persuasiveness of his wife's argument, despite all the evidence that seems to confirm her decision (the man and his son are very nearly caught by cannibals at least twice after she dies), the father chooses to keep his son alive.
McCarthy forces us, through the father, to grapple with the question at the heart of life: Why is life worth all this agony? And while the father cannot verbally respond to his wife's argument that suicide is the least harmful response to suffering, his embodied answer is powerful and is validated by the ending of the novel.
Thankfully, I didn't have to read the novel to know how it resolves. Through this book, Noble has kind of spoiled the ending. But he must reveal it. Because he uses that story as one of the vehicle to explore the question of "Why live?" and Noble must give us an answer or risk the wrath of his readers.
And so he does. And his answer is familiar to Christians. It's familiar to anyone who reads the Bible. And yet, even though we know it, the truth remains comforting, lovely, motivating, sufficient for us to get out of bed, to do the next thing, to worship God in the small act of living.
Semantic Differences Aside
Before I end this review, I do have one criticism, and it's the only one. And I will even say upfront that it's a difference in semantics. Noble uses a particular word with a particular meaning, while I use the same word in a different way. Otherwise, Noble and I should be in total agreement, I cannot imagine him disagreeing with me.
I just have to point this out because some readers may walk away with a wrong understanding.
Let me read and you try to detect what I see is the problem.
This comes from chapter eight, where he wants to end the book by assuring the reader that God's love is not conditional on your usefulness. I quote:
Usefulness is the sole criterion for the World, the Flesh, or the Devil. But you have no use value to God. You can't. There is nothing He needs. You can't cease being useful to God because you were never useful to begin with. That's not why He created you, and it's not why He continues to sustain your existence in the world. His creation of you was gratuitious, prodigal. He made you just because He loves you and for His own good pleasure.
If Noble was only attacking usefulness as defined by the World, the Flesh and the Devil, then I would cheer him on. But when he claims that there is no aspect or sense of our usefulness to God, I say this is a marked contradiction of what Scripture teaches.
2 Timothy 2:20–21 (ESV) reads:
Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.
I cannot imagine Alan Noble rejecting the clear teaching of Scripture so I emphasise that he is directing his fire against our need to feel useful, to be useful, in order to be of worth, in order to be worthy to live. This is the deadly mind virus going around. And it harms people created in God's image: old people, sick people, depressed people.
However, there is such a thing as godly usefulness. And it's not preaching, serving, church-planting, teaching, helping, doing whatever deeds great and small, because what then can we say to people who can't do any of them. We have merely listed all the things they cannot do, and have made them more worse off than ever.
But if we read 2 Timothy carefully, receiving it to teach, reprove, correct and train us for righteousness, we see that what is needed to be useful is to be cleansed from what is dishonourable. That is what the text says. Later, we also read that what we need to be equipped for every good work is Scripture.
And if I define usefulness in these terms, which I believe is how the Bible defines usefulness, then Noble and I are in total agreement because all the advice that he gives, all the reasons that he gives to carry on the burden and gift of living, are rooted in Scripture. In a way, he is using Scripture to cleanse us from dishonourable thoughts, dishonourable thoughts we have of God and of ourselves so that we can worship God for his goodness, and the goodness that he created in us.
As I said earlier, Noble and I are not in disagreement, but the way he explains usefulness only considers worldly usefulness and not Biblical or godly usefulness.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this is a book that I wished I had read when I was younger, going through my own existential demons. It's a book I am glad to read now, for there have been days, and there will be days, when I would say, "The bed is my refuge", when it should be God.
I share Alan Noble's confidence that:
suffering -- even profound mental affliction and personal tragedy -- is a normal part of human life.
And since suffering is here to stay, will you not consider some wisdom to face it?
This is a Reading and Readers review of "On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living" by Alan O. Noble. 120 pages. Published by Inter-Varsity Press in April 2023. It's available in Amazon Kindle for USD14.99.
My next book review will be on "What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions" by James N. Anderson. This book won the World Magazine 2014 Popular Theology Book of the Year. It's free for May from Faithlife. So please get it before the deal is off.
I have the book. I have finished the book but it's so good that I bought ten hard copies just to give them away. I can't wait to tell you more about this interactive approach to life's big questions. Until then, bye bye.
Book List

• "On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living" by Alan O. Noble. Amazon.

Do you know how to pray? In one of his books, A.W. Tozer wrote:

Some of the churches now advertise courses on how to pray. How ridiculous! That is like giving a course on how to fall in love.
And I got that quote from his book on prayer! How ridiculous!
Hi, my name is Terence and I'm your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today I review "Prayer: Communing with God in Everything - Collected Insights from A.W. Tozer" compiled by W.L. Seaver. 224 pages, published by Moody Publishers in February 2016. It's available for USD1.99 in Amazon Kindle and it was the Free Book for April in Faithlife. And it's now May. Oops!
Writing on Tozer and Cats
If you asked me, "Who is A.W. Tozer?" One answer would be, "He is your grandfather's Paul Washer." By that I don't mean that they hold the same doctrine. It's that they both don't pull their punches. Their words are daggers plunging into the all-too-comfortable Christian soul.
Today's book is a collection of Tozer's writings compiled by W.L. Seaver. Seaver has another book on Tozer titled, "Fiery Faith: Ignite Your Passion for God" but, far more curious is a three book series titled, "Purring in God's Ears".
Seaver, good man that he is, rescues wild and dumped cats. He writes:
God used the cats I was caring for to care for me in this difficult time just as He used the ravens with Elijah. I felt as though the feral cats ministered to me more than I helped them.
As I became acquainted with each cat, their unique purr, and their special story that covers many years, I was inspired to write about them.
Cat-lovers out there, these three books are for you. I'm a dog-person myself so I will satisfy myself with Seaver's other great love, the writings of A.W. Tozer.
So, let's turn to today's book, "Prayer: Communing with God in Everything - Collected Insights from A.W. Tozer" by W.L. Seaver.
Seaver begins his introduction with these words:
With fear and trembling, I approached this task of compiling Tozer’s words on prayer and praying. I tried to avoid it, but the Spirit kept drawing me back to the riches of the topic for myself and others.
Later, Seaver explains how the book is structured:
the first twenty-two chapters of this book focus on Tozer’s writings from sixteen books that deal with some aspect of prayer. The next three chapters are snippets from some sermons that deal with prayer and related topics. The last three chapters are excerpts from two major sermons that Tozer gave on prayer. To help us reflect and respond, each chapter concludes with a response section, “To Reflect and Apply,” which includes questions and action steps. In addition, chapters one through twenty-five have a transition section, “Exploring with Tozer,” that amplifies on Tozer’s thoughts on the specific prayer topic.
Prayer Changes People
For today's review, let me read from Chapter 13, titled, "Prayer Changes People -- And Things". This is one of the shorter chapters in the book, so I will read it out in full.
No one who has read the Bible with any perception can fail to see that to God, men and women are more important than things. A human being is of more value than a thousand galaxies of stars or a million worlds like ours. God made man in His own image and He made things to serve man. His concern is with intelligent moral beings, not with lifeless matter.

However, since every person has a material body and must live out his days in an environment of matter, time, and space, things are important to him. His earthly life is to a large degree interwoven with matter and the laws that control matter. He is often deeply affected by the report his senses bring him from the world around him. Situations sometimes develop where the welfare of the inner man is for the time allowed to depend somewhat upon outward circumstances. At such times it is altogether proper that he should pray to God to alter those circumstances and “change things” to afford a more favorable climate for the growth of the Spirit. A thousand promises are recorded in the Scriptures to encourage him to ask and seek and knock to the end so that unfavorable things might be changed or removed altogether. And the history of Israel and the church abundantly demonstrates that God does hear and answer prayer.

In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and “move His arm.” God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly.

God’s love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.

What the praying man does is to bring His will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man’s prayer.
That was a selected extract from Tozer's book, "The Price of Neglect". And with that reading you have a sense of Tozer's way with words. He speaks plainly, meaningfully, powerfully. He makes us ponder on our spiritual life. It made Seaver ponder on prayer so much so that he collected those sayings and compiled a book on them. And he adds his own thoughts to the mix.
Seaver reads "Prayer Changes People" and Abraham comes to mind. How Abraham lingered before the Lord and prayed for Sodom and Gomorrah. Seaver concludes this chapter's reflection by writing:
This whole prayer experience changed Abraham, Lot, Lot’s family, and all the people in Abraham’s sphere of influence. But even more, it changed not only Abraham’s walk with the Lord but his prayer life (see Gen. 20:7, 17). May we be willing to embrace such change to further God’s glory!
After we read Seaver's reflection, he invites us to join him, as if saying, "You have seen me do it, now it's your turn."
He gives you a quote from Tozer, and asks: what do you think of this statement, how can you apply it, what is your experience in living out what Tozer said and so on. These questions are suitable for small groups and for the individual reader.
And that's it. That's how each of the chapters are like. Let me now give you my thoughts on the book as a whole.
Ridiculous! Ridiculous!
If you know Tozer, you know that he gets quoted for outrageous things. The crowd roars with approval but some of us take a hesitant step back.
Take that quote at the start of this episode. Is it so ridiculous to teach people to pray? Isn't it harsh to say that teaching people to pray is like teaching people to fall in love? If falling in love happens naturally, is Tozer saying that prayer should not be taught?
But didn't a barber write to Martin Luther asking how to pray? Luther didn't rebuke him! Don't we have early church writings that instructed early Christians on how to pray? Wait a minute, the disciples themselves asked Jesus, 'Teach us how to pray' and Jesus did! How can Tozer say it is ridiculous to teach people how to pray, when the Master did so?
And that is the thing with Tozer quotes -- and I should know, I have two books of Tozer quotes -- they are easily taken out of context.
Do you know what he wrote before he ridiculed churches for advertising courses on prayer? He quoted Luke 11:1. He tells us that we need to learn how to pray from Jesus. Jesus was on his mind when he ridiculed what those churches were doing.
And if you read the sentences that follow after, you will see that Tozer is not against teaching on prayer, he is for teaching on prayer with the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit takes the things of God, translates them into language our hearts understand. Even if we do not know the will of God, the Holy Spirit does know and He prays "with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Romans 8:26).
Modernism and Post-Modernism
When you read Tozer, you need to remember that he is a man of his time. He lived back when Modernism was emerging. Modernism says that we can manage our faith like how we manage our factories. We just need the practical steps, an effective technique to teach them, an attractive way to advertise them, and all will be well.
Today, Modernism is bankrupt like some banks we know. Broken cisterns without water. Churches without the Holy Spirit. Surely, now people will turn to the Truth.
That didn't happen. After Modernism is Post-modernism.
Whereas before, truth was material, practical and manageable, now, there is no Truth or Everything is Truth. The Lie is Dead. Long Live the Lie.
This explains why Tozer still reads well today. We are children of Modernism living in a Post-Modern age. And Tozer calls out the delusion of both.
Tozer vs. Classic Books on Prayer
Tozer didn't write today's book. Seaver selected and annotated Tozer's works.
Therefore, by design, this is not a cohesive, focused, guide on prayer. For that you could read Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God by Tim Keller or The Hidden Life of Prayer by David McIntyre or Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney.
If you are looking to be inspired you can read Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans, a collection edited by Robert Elmer. My personal favourite book on prayer would be the classic Power through Prayer by E.M. Bounds.
So when stacked against classic books on prayer, masterfully written, is Tozer worth reading? If yes, why settle for a hodgepodge book instead of a real Tozer book?
The Worth of a Collected Tozer
To the first question, is it worth reading Tozer? If your prayer life has grown cold, then you need this book like a vampire needs a stake in the heart. Piercingly painful but a release from a tortured life is better than the alternative.
See what I did there? That was my own Tozerism. A shocking line easily misunderstood without the follow up.
There are many great writers on prayers and Tozer should be included among them. Tozer at his best shakes the Christian out of his spiritual slump.
Then to the second question, if you decide to give Tozer a try, why not just pick up one of his books? The problem is you may not know where to start. And for that reason, I would recommend today's book.
In this one book, you have extracts from sixteen Tozer books and two of his sermons. This is as good a place as any to start your journey with Tozer on prayer.
And you have a good guide in Seaver. He has done more than cut-and-paste pages of Tozer together. He also includes his own personal thoughts. But why would anyone want to read what a 'nobody' like Seaver thinks when you can read the thoughts of great men like E.M. Bounds or the Puritans?
Rather than comment on the writing quality of Seaver, and I think he would prefer I focus your attention on Tozer than on him, I want to commend the practice of engaging with what you read.
This is what Seaver did: "I read what Tozer wrote and I thought of Abraham. Let me collect my thoughts and write them down."
These written thoughts of his will not win Seaver any literary prizes. Perhaps he might win one in a Christian Cat-Lovers Convention. But I think the important point is he engages and shows us you don't have to be fancy to digest on what you read.
How many of us can write a bestseller or a classic? But all of us can read and engage with what we read. Your reflections on your reading will probably not get you published. But if sharing your thoughts fires you up, then post it in social media, start a blog, or try your hand at a Christian book review podcast.
I see in this book, a man who has gained much on prayer from Tozer and wants to introduce these good things to new readers or even those who know Tozer but have never seen his writings on prayer compiled together like this.
Tozer was a plain-speaking man. I don't know whether Tozer liked cats but if he did, that would be an extra bonus that a cat-loving, plain-speaking man got the chance to write a book on Tozer and prayer.
This is a Reading and Readers review of "Prayer: Communing with God in Everything - Collected Insights from A.W. Tozer" compiled by W.L. Seaver. 224 pages, published by Moody Publishers in February 2016. It's available for USD1.99 in Amazon Kindle and it's the Free Book for April in Faithlife.
My next book review is "On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift Of Living" by Alan O. Noble. I know it's a good book when I find myself spamming screenshot after screenshot of the book.
Book List

• "Prayer: Communing with God in Everything - Collected Insights from A.W. Tozer" compiled by W.L. Seaver. Amazon. Faithlife.