Book Review: “Christian Apologetics” by Douglas Groothuis

A few weeks ago I reviewed a book titled No Argu­ment for God. As you might have guessed if you didn’t read my review — and as my review makes plainly obvi­ous — I wasn’t a fan of this effort by John Wilkin­son — what was sup­posed to have been a return of rea­son to its proper place, ended up being a rejec­tion of apolo­get­ics. This week I’ll be review­ing a book which is the com­plete oppo­site of No Argu­ment for God — Dou­glas Groothuis’ Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith. What a breathe of fresh air.

Before I con­tinue I must note that the copy of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics sent to me by Inter­var­sity Press appears to be an uncor­rected man­u­script. Please keep that in mind while read­ing the review that fol­lows, as any short­com­ings I might note (if there are any) may be cor­rected before pub­li­ca­tion … (Read more)

Book Review: The Essential Edwards Collection

Pages: ~150 (x5)
Pub­lisher: Moody Pub­lish­ers
Year: 2010
Author: Owen Stra­chen and Doug Sweeny

As far as I can remem­ber, my first expe­ri­ence with Jonathan Edwards was shortly before one of my last grade 11 Eng­lish classes. You see, one of the require­ments for this class was an end of semes­ter, 40 minute group pre­sen­ta­tion. The pre­sen­ta­tion and topic were assigned at the begin­ning of the sec­ond week of the semes­ter, so my group and I had plenty of time to get ready. As things go, how­ever, we hadn’t both­ered to talk with each other until the day before the presentation.

Our assign­ment was to talk about a reli­gious per­son or group, and one of us (I for­get who), decided that the ‘Great Awak­en­ing’ would be a good topic to dis­cuss. Unfor­tu­nately, no one actu­ally pre­pared any­thing. When it was our turn to present, all we had with us were … (Read more)

Book Review: “No Argument for God” by John Wilkinson

Pages: 173
Pub­lisher: IVP Books
Year: 2011
Author: John Wilkinson

Intro­duc­tion

Before I say any­thing else, I have to say that chap­ter 11, “Dis­con­tents” (a ref­er­ence to Freud’s Soci­ety and its Dis­con­tents), is actu­ally alright — so what hap­pened to the rest of the book?

I want to be kind to this book. I want to be kind because a pas­tor with a doc­tor­ate, who is also a pro­fes­sor of the­ol­ogy, wrote it. I want to be kind because men like Tony Cam­polo and Scot McK­night endorsed it. I want to be kind because I don’t like crit­i­ciz­ing the writ­ings of those peo­ple more edu­cated than myself. I want to be kind, but I don’t think Wilkin­son has afforded me the opportunity.

I’m going to try my best to be kind, so I’ll begin with a brief syn­op­sis. No Argu­ment for God pur­ports to be an attempt to “return rea­son … (Read more)

Book Review: The Invisible World by Anthony Destefano

 Pages: 206
Pub­lisher: Dou­ble­Day
Year: 2011
Author: Anthony Destefano

This is a book I have been try­ing to review chapter-by-chapter, and I’ve decided that it just isn’t work­ing out. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why a per-chapter review isn’t work­ing (which I’ll get to below), but need­less to say that this will be my revised and final review of Anthony Destefano’s The Invis­i­ble World.

First things first, The Invis­i­ble World is a book on the spir­i­tual realm as con­ceived in Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy. As the front cover sug­gests, this is a book on angels and demons, but it is also a book on suf­fer­ing, grace, God, and eter­nity. Now you might be won­der­ing how a book of 206 pages could cover so much mate­r­ial, and the answer is it can’t. This is the first rea­son why my per-chapter review wasn’t work­ing out, and it’s my first big com­plaint … (Read more)

Book Review: Living As A Christian by A.W. Tozer

Pages: 222.
Pub­lisher: Regal Books.
Year: 2009
Author: A.W. Tozer, ed. James L. Snyder

A.W. Tozer’s Liv­ing as a Chris­t­ian is a book I received a while ago, and for one rea­son or another (i.e. irre­spon­si­bil­ity) didn’t set aside the time to review it. I regret that, as this is a book I wish I had read earlier.

Now the most obvi­ous thing about Liv­ing as a Chris­t­ian is that it is adver­tised as ‘never before pub­lished,’ and has in fact been com­piled and edited by James L. Sny­der. Out of curios­ity I tried to find out what this book was com­piled from — notes, record­ings, etc. — but couldn’t seem to find any rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. This is alright, though, as Tozer is as good as ever.

I must admit that the only other book I’ve read from Tozer is The Pur­suit of God, and in com­par­ing the writ­ing in … (Read more)

Book Reviews: Delirious? and Meet Mrs. Smith

Pages: (Deliri­ous) 223; (Meet Mrs. Smith) 240.
Pub­lisher: David Cook Pub­lish­ers
Year: 2011
Author: Mar­tin Smith (with Craig Bor­lase) and Anna Smith (with Car­olyn Johnson)

Well, this is cer­tainly a change — auto­bi­ogra­phies  aren’t the kind of book I’m much into, and to be per­fectly hon­est I wanted these more for my wife (who enjoyed them immensely) more-so than for myself. That said, as I still have to read these books, and they are meant to be read together (I think?) I’ll pro­vide a review of both of them here, I don’t think there’s any need for indi­vid­ual reviews.

Whichever book you read first, either Meet Mrs. Smith or Deliri­ous, you’ll be in for an inter­est­ing recount­ing of the lives of Anna and Mar­tin Smith: their strug­gles, desires, dreams. Both Anna and Mar­tin have writ­ten books which tell of their early lives (together) up until recently (for instance, Mar­tin … (Read more)

Book Review: The End of Evangelicalism? by David E. Fitch

Pages: 226
Pub­lisher: Wipf and Stock Pub­lish­ers
Year: 2010
Author: David E. Fitch

What has philoso­pher Slavoj Žižek have to do with Evan­gel­i­cal­ism? For those who have heard of Žižek, the answer — until now — is prob­a­bly very lit­tle (or per­haps, ‘noth­ing’). That’s why I was very intrigued when my wife asked me if I had heard of David Fitch and this book, and it was her push that led me to ask for a copy to review. While I’m not as famil­iar with Žižek as I should be, I never in a mil­lion years thought that any­one, let alone an Evan­gel­i­cal, would employ the phi­los­o­phy of Žižek to ana­lyze some of the main issues within Evan­gel­i­cal­ism and then, in part, pro­vide a means to oth­er­wise fix the ways Evan­gel­i­cal­ism has erred.

Fitch under­takes two tasks. The first is to exam­ine the rea­sons for the recent (and not so recent) neg­a­tive … (Read more)

Book Review: Glaen by Fred. R. Lybrand

Pages: 171
Pub­lisher: The Barn­abas Agency
Year: 2010
Author: Fred R. Lybrand

Accord­ing to a study released in 2008 by the Barna Group, 33% of all mar­riages end in divorce¹. For those com­mit­ted to mar­riage, how does one suc­ceed, both ‘in love and mar­riage’? This is the ques­tion Fred Lybrand tack­les in his book Glaen: A Novel Mes­sage On Romance, Love and Relating.

As the book’s title sug­gests (through a bit of word-play), Lybrand’s teach­ings on ‘love and mar­riage’ comes in the form of a novel. But before dis­cussing Lybrand’s teach­ings, or the novel, a quick word on the book’s pro­logue. I want to focus on two things, both of which left a bit­ter taste in my mouth. The first is a sug­ges­tion: “My sug­ges­tion is that you read this book through twice…once for the story, and again for the prin­ci­ples”. Fair enough, so I should assume the … (Read more)