Best Christian Historical Theology
In this practice the spirit of prayer was regarded as of first importance and the best form of prayer, for living prayer is the characteristic of genuine spirituality.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I thought about Enoch walking with God when reading Valley of Vision, I read and see many who walked with God though likely not as Enoch, yet this masterful work by these servants of the Lord have allowed me to have a better understanding and desire to truly WALK WITH GOD."
"Beautiful bonded leather, one bookmark, gold gilded pages, very clear printing, and prayers/devotions that will make you learn and/or cry."
"I love the deep prayers of our forefathers."
"Frequently, I will choose a prayer on the basis of a specific need or feeling and then, after reviewing the lists of articulated reasons for praise, thanksgiving, and petition, come away both encouraged and educated."
"The book was delivered in mint condition, shrink wrapped and perfect in every way."
"Right up there with Pilgrim's Progress."
"I owned this book and remembered keeping it next to me even during my rest at night."
"With virtually every one of the prayers recorded in the book my heart cries out in agreement and with longing to know God as these men did."
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” ( Los Angeles Times ) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. A vivid, persuasive portrait.” — Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . Q. Yours is one of the few popular biographies of Jesus of Nazareth that does not rely on the gospels as your primary source of information for uncovering Jesus’ life. A. I certainly rely on the gospels to provide a narrative outline to my biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but my primary source in recreating Jesus’ life are historical writings about first century Palestine, like the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, as well as Roman documents of the time. In other words, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man. The gospels are of course extremely useful in revealing how the early Christians viewed Jesus. To get to the bottom of that mystery, which is what I try to do in the book, one must sift through the gospel stories to analyze their claims about Jesus in light of the historical facts we know about the time and world in which Jesus lived. But the more I read the Bible – especially in college, where I began my formal study of the New Testament – the more I uncovered a wide chasm between the Jesus of history and the Jesus I learned about in church. But the irony is that once I detached my academic study of Jesus from my faith in Christ, I became an even more fervent follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So in a way, this book is my attempt to spread the good news of Jesus the man with the same passion that I once applied to spreading the good news of Jesus the Christ. The key to understanding who Jesus was and what Jesus meant lies in understanding the times in which he lived.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"There's nothing in this book that would surprise a person (like myself) who has read pretty much all of the accessible scholarship on Jesus published in the last 30 or so years. 2) Aslan takes the position that Jesus was a zealot for God and God's Temple, but (and this is repeated several times in the book) he was not a member of the Zealot Party, which wouldn't arise until over 30 years after Jesus' death. 3) Aslan doesn't stop with the death of Jesus, and, as someone writing history, not hagiography, he carefully notes that he can't pass judgment on whether Jesus' resurrection occurred, because it is not a historical event but an event of faith. (For example, Luke 16:19 points out that the rich man in Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus wore purple and fine linen and all four gospels are agreed that Jesus was buried in linen.). Moreover, if Aslan was pushing Islam, you'd think that he'd make a point of saying, "Well, Islam considers Jesus a prophet," but he doesn't."
"I read this book primarily because some of the negative reviews were so hysterical in their fear that I was curious what the big deal is. His job as an academic is to present a thesis, develop it based on both evidence and his theories of meaning and then let the reading community judge it."
"Once I began reading it, I could not put this book down."
"An interesting book apparently well researched by a religion scholar."
"This is a book that explains why Jesus was a zealot in his time and how the stories in the Bible compare to the historical record."
"A thourogh and at times, painstaking, deconstruction of who we think we know as Jesus."
"The Aslan book struck me as lucid, unpretentious, coherent, and above all far. more plausible than anything else I have read in the area of organized religion. or religious history."
"It must have been difficult for the author to not exercise his opinions but for the most part he tried to present all sides of the life of Jesus."
In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. (. Gregory Koukl, President Stand to Reason, Speaker and author of Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing your Christian Convictions). "It's a fascinating process, with Jim drawing on his quarter century of police experience to explain how and why the evidence of history decisively tips the scales in favor of Christianity." (. Craig J. Hazen, Founder and Director of the Christian Apologetics Program, Biola University, author of the novel Five Sacred Crossings).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Years ago, a skeptic planted some seeds of doubts by asking me how I could believe the Bible that was hand-picked and assembled by people who clearly benefited and had a vested interest in seeing their movement continue and grow. When considered individually, the gospels may have holes, irregularities and unanswered questions, but when taken as a whole with support from the rest of the letters in the New Testament and other historic factors, they form a convincing proof of authenticity."
"But, there are also a few "A-List" folks who have respectable education, write books, teach at Christian Colleges/Seminaries, debate Bart Ehrman or Richard Dawkins (two resume-making debaters for Christian apologists) and put on Alaskan cruises devoted to apologetics and worship via buffet. All that being said, when I started reading "Cold Case Christianity" by J. Warner Wallace, I already had an idea what to expect: Card-carrying evidentialist apologetics, mainly philosophical defense of Christianity, plenty of party-line towing with regards to the evidentialist apologists (i.e. Craig, Licona, Geisler, Habermas, Strobel, McDowell, Koukl, etc. The book has a very broad scope and serves as a great introduction to a wide variety of apologetic issues (i.e. the resurrection, the arguments for the existence of God, textual criticism, the problem of evil, etc.). His responses are clear and concise, and one gets the feeling from reading Wallace that he has had a lot of practical conversations with people regarding the issues under discussion. Wallace usually gives good explanations of the concepts he discusses, like philosophical naturalism (page 25), abductive reasoning (page 33), reasonable doubt (age 131), etc. Pages 135-136 give 2 good responses to the problem of evil: Wallace points to the presuppositional philosophical inconsistencies of the problem of evil (if objective evil exists for the problem to have substance in the first place, there must be a universal standard of "good" by which evil is judged), and also gives what I call the "Ten Trillion Year" response (God is eternal and judges good and evil from his eternal perspective; i.e. ten trillion years from now, the ten thousand years of evil that mankind endured will be considered inconsequential to the 9.9999999 trillion years of comprehensive and continuous good of paradise earth). I was also really pleased to see Wallace reference Edwin Yamauchi (page 209) and give a brief discussion of the actual problematic nature of archeological evidence; how most items from history don't actually survive as evidence and our picture of the past, as based on archeological artifacts, is actually amazingly incomplete and inaccurate. His list of books for further reading was great; 2 or 3 books per topic and not too overwhelming, though I did think that some of his books might be significantly above the reading level of someone who might find "Cold Case Christianity" a bit challenging. Going from a 5 page discussion of textual criticism to reading Metzger, Wallace and Comfort is a leap that will likely leave a lot people on their faces. On page 41 Wallace presents the Habermas/Licona "minimal facts" argument for the resurrection. I was sad that on page 66 Wallace includes the transcendental argument for the existence of God in his list of arguments, but doesn't present it to his readers. On page 136 he gives the "love" defense to the practical problem of evil: A world with love is better than a world without love, love requires freedom and in that freedom many choose not to love. That whole idea is simply assumed, and I've found that many an atheist/skeptic sees the flaw in this argument instinctively: if a world with love has a world where a majority of people don't experience that love but rather experience war, disease, abuse, suffering, etc., that doesn't actually seem better for most people than alternatives (i.e. not existing at all, being a mentally deficient creature that experiences comfort but not love, etc.). Everyone who is in apologetics circles for any amount of time hears the scary numbers: 80% (or more) of kids that grow up in church leave the church when they get to college and most apologists (including Wallace) think that the reason is a lack of apologetic instruction. I would suggest that this whole paradigm is mistaken and this leads me to my 2 serious points of disagreement with Wallace in the book: 5. Wallace seems to argue that the reason people disbelieve the scriptures is because of philosophical naturalism. He comments on this on pages 25-26, and he points to this idea throughout the book (like on page 208 where he suggests that skeptics disbelieve the Bible because of the presumption [without evidence] that the account is false unless corroborated, and this doubt stems from philosophical naturalism.). As a Christian apologist, I don't want people to abandon philosophical naturalism; I want people to repent of their sin and believe the gospel. This also manifests in Wallace's one strange idea; the "2 decision Christian" idea. On pages 253-255, Wallace talks about a criminal named Santiago who got saved at a crusade and then became a bank robber for several years but finally got caught by Wallace. What is shocking is Wallace's interpretation of the events: " Santiago made a decision to trust Jesus for his salvation, but he never made a decision to examine the life and teaching of Jesus evidentially. (page 255). Now this is the description of a guy who was a career criminal: "he made a decision to trust Jesus for his salvation" and Wallace says the problem was that " Santiago was a one-decision Christian". FINAL THOUGHTS: - I know that this review has a longer "con" than "pro" section, but I wanted to give a fair and critical review of a book that was deserving of a serious interaction (and I do so out of respect for Wallace as a co-laborer in the gospel and an effort to give helpful feedback, not out of some effort to belittle him). Wallace and I have some serious theological differences, but those differences don't really manifest with an overwhelming majority of the material in the book. I admitted that I had read it and had already reviewed it, and we got into a quick discussion about some of my issues with the book (as well as discussed some of the harsh responses from certain Calvinists, a category in which Wallace apparently places himself). I mentioned several of my personal questions that I had when I read the book (i.e. whether he gave the book of Revelation a late date...and he admitted that he wasn't informed enough on that issue to have an opinion) and then I basically focused on my serious question; the "two decision Christian" issue."
"I don't want to give away the details of the book in my review, but I'll use a few examples without specific details of why this book increased my faith: 1) Mr. Wallace connects, from an investigative aspect, seemingly unimportant pieces of various stories shared across multiple gospels and then shows how those pieces increase the likelihood that the gospels are authentic eye witness accounts. 2) Mr. Wallace makes it clear that the case for the truthfulness of a claim whether that claim be that the gospels are authentic eyewitness accounts or whether a particular perpetrator committed a murder is rarely made on one piece of evidence. After reading, I believe that one would be hard pressed to claim that Christ was not who he claimed and/or that the gospels aren't reliable evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity."
Best Ethics in Christian Theology
"Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life." The Cost of Discipleship , first published in German in 1937, was Bonhoeffer's answer to the questions, "What did Jesus mean to say to us?
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Bonhoeffer presents a completely different view of discipleship that anyone who really believes in the power of faith should consider and absorb."
"This book is a reminder of who God is and who we are called to be, in relation to our response of the great commission... just as Jesus explains in Luke 21:12-19."
"I got this to listen as I read along with the book, which I also bought."
"This is an excellent book full of the principles of being a disciple of Yeshua."
"Awesome book that gives an insight into walking with God."
"It's difficult, not just to take in (although you may sometimes need to read a paragraph two or three times to really comprehend its meaning), but to accept, because it's hard to imagine who can really live up to what Bonhoeffer shows us Christ is really asking of us."
"My book group chose this for a summer read."
"Being authentically christian is not always easy or lacking in peril."
Best Christology
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” ( Los Angeles Times ) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. A vivid, persuasive portrait.” — Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.” — San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . Q. Yours is one of the few popular biographies of Jesus of Nazareth that does not rely on the gospels as your primary source of information for uncovering Jesus’ life. A. I certainly rely on the gospels to provide a narrative outline to my biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but my primary source in recreating Jesus’ life are historical writings about first century Palestine, like the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, as well as Roman documents of the time. In other words, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man. The gospels are of course extremely useful in revealing how the early Christians viewed Jesus. To get to the bottom of that mystery, which is what I try to do in the book, one must sift through the gospel stories to analyze their claims about Jesus in light of the historical facts we know about the time and world in which Jesus lived. But the more I read the Bible – especially in college, where I began my formal study of the New Testament – the more I uncovered a wide chasm between the Jesus of history and the Jesus I learned about in church. But the irony is that once I detached my academic study of Jesus from my faith in Christ, I became an even more fervent follower of Jesus of Nazareth. So in a way, this book is my attempt to spread the good news of Jesus the man with the same passion that I once applied to spreading the good news of Jesus the Christ. The key to understanding who Jesus was and what Jesus meant lies in understanding the times in which he lived.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"There's nothing in this book that would surprise a person (like myself) who has read pretty much all of the accessible scholarship on Jesus published in the last 30 or so years. 2) Aslan takes the position that Jesus was a zealot for God and God's Temple, but (and this is repeated several times in the book) he was not a member of the Zealot Party, which wouldn't arise until over 30 years after Jesus' death. 3) Aslan doesn't stop with the death of Jesus, and, as someone writing history, not hagiography, he carefully notes that he can't pass judgment on whether Jesus' resurrection occurred, because it is not a historical event but an event of faith. (For example, Luke 16:19 points out that the rich man in Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus wore purple and fine linen and all four gospels are agreed that Jesus was buried in linen.). Moreover, if Aslan was pushing Islam, you'd think that he'd make a point of saying, "Well, Islam considers Jesus a prophet," but he doesn't."
"I read this book primarily because some of the negative reviews were so hysterical in their fear that I was curious what the big deal is. His job as an academic is to present a thesis, develop it based on both evidence and his theories of meaning and then let the reading community judge it."
"Once I began reading it, I could not put this book down."
"If you've gone to seminary, you are probably aware of everything in this book."
"Well written and provides the reader with a great background on the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth."
"An interesting book apparently well researched by a religion scholar."
Best Calvinist Christianity
At the age of twenty-six, Calvin published several revisions of his Institutes of the Christian Religion , a seminal work in Christian theology that altered the course of Western history and that is still read by theological students today. This book was written as a theological introduction to the Bible and a vindication of Reformation principles.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I am in the midst of it."
"I never thought about reading anything about Calvin and his commentaries."
"If someone can can either modify the source file or comment, telling me how to mod it for my own download, I will update this review to the five stars the text itself deserves."
"I read of this book but never read it."
"Great book that explains the fundamentals of the Christian religion from the time of the Reformation."
"Good price, great condition."
"Great source for graduate seminarians!"
Best Lutheran Christianity
The Lutheran Book of Prayer has assured and guided generations of Christians in their personal prayer life.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This book is full of wonderful prayers that would be suitable for many different faiths, not just Lutherans."
"There's nothing like holding it in my hands and flipping through different prayers that you never knew you needed THAT day."
"It makes me sad they did not decide to keep it, but I guess I can benefit from Logan's (the name on the cover and inside) book!"
"There are daily prayers that include a morning prayer and an evening prayer. If you are looking for something to help you in your daily prayer life the Lutheran Book of Prayer is a way to do that."
"This is a small book with a comprehensive prayer offering as well as liturgical material."
"The prayers themselves have been a great comfort to me as well, as I am reminded of how very much my Heavenly Farher loves all His children."
"I use this book everyday for my prayers!"
"How can you give a book of prayer a bad review?"
Best Prayer
In this practice the spirit of prayer was regarded as of first importance and the best form of prayer, for living prayer is the characteristic of genuine spirituality. 'When used slowly, for meditation and prayer, these pages have often been used by God's Spirit to kindle my dry heart.'. ' The Valley of Vision is a wonderful collection of Puritan prayers which both help to shape and inform our own private devotions and, perhaps more importantly, aid pastors as they seek to lead their congregations in prayer and into the presence of God.'. 'I cannot commend enough The Valley of Vision , which is a compilation of over two-hundred pages of Puritan prayers (each of which are one page in length). Indeed, these prayers will also teach one how to pray, and, at the same time, they teach theological truth.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I thought about Enoch walking with God when reading Valley of Vision, I read and see many who walked with God though likely not as Enoch, yet this masterful work by these servants of the Lord have allowed me to have a better understanding and desire to truly WALK WITH GOD."
"Beautiful bonded leather, one bookmark, gold gilded pages, very clear printing, and prayers/devotions that will make you learn and/or cry."
"I love the deep prayers of our forefathers."
"Frequently, I will choose a prayer on the basis of a specific need or feeling and then, after reviewing the lists of articulated reasons for praise, thanksgiving, and petition, come away both encouraged and educated."
"The book was delivered in mint condition, shrink wrapped and perfect in every way."
"Right up there with Pilgrim's Progress."
"I owned this book and remembered keeping it next to me even during my rest at night."
"With virtually every one of the prayers recorded in the book my heart cries out in agreement and with longing to know God as these men did."