John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist by Warren Carter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this to be a very helpful discussion of the Gospel of John. I've owned it and used it for years, but hadn't read through it, which I did this month as I've begun a sermon series on John that will last for a few months.

This is not a commentary, which explicates each chapter of the Gospel. Rather, it is an introduction to the gospel discussing its themes, characters, plots, images, style, authors/editors, audience, etc. Which means that if you are wanting to look up something about a particular passage, you have to jump around a lot, using the index. But I've still found it very useful in sermon preparation.

Carter believes that the question "What is the gospel according to John?" can be answered with:

"The good news according to John is that Jesus is the definitive revealer of God's life-giving purposes and that this mission continues in and through the alternative community, the church, an antisociety that is sustained by the Spirit, or Paraclete, in a hostile world until God's purposes are established in full."

"Jesus as revealer of God's life-giving purposes" preaches very well.

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On Epistemology (Philosopher by Linda T. Zagzebski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Didn't realize that I forgot to review this book last week when I finished it.

This is my kind of intro to the topic of epistemology. Linda, whom I know, begins her presentation with a discussion of what we care about and writes that we want to know things about those things we care about. She is also interested in topics like understanding, the intellectual virtues, and wisdom, which were hardly discussed in epistemology when I was a student.

There has been a paradigm shift in epistemology, with Linda as one of the leaders, away from the dry, analytical discussions which focused on the latest counter-example to the Gettier problem for justification. In fact, Linda isn't doesn't think that "justified true belief" is the best definition of knowledge.

She still reviews many of the issues and arguments of late-twentieth century epistemology, but never gets caught up in their concerns. She does explore them for anything of import that we can take from them.

I enjoyed reading the book and brushing up on a topic I hadn't brushed up on since the 1990's.

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Nelson Mandela. by Kadir Nelson by Kadir Nelson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Picked this children's book up on Monday at our Nebraska clergy's Winter Convocation. I couldn't resist the cover image.

The art in the book is beautiful, even if the text is a little weak. I'm glad to have this in our collection of children's books for our future children.

And I love this cover image so much, I've got the book propped up on the piano. Looking at it makes me smile and feel good. I can't wait to show this image to our children and say, "This is what dignity looks like. This is what wisdom looks like. This is also what real joy looks like."

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The Daily Beast has a good article on Inside Llewyn Davis, which I saw on Friday, and why it was generally snubbed by the Motion Picture Academy.  An excerpt:

Throughout, you feel the bone-chilling cold of the streets and Davis's loss. This isn't a film about conquering demons or surmounting impossible odds, it is a film about losing and losing more, the chipping away of character and of hope. It is about losing your dreams, not achieving them, life shrinking, hope diminishing, aspiration dissolving. 

You know that for the last few years I have been alarmed by the new line of argument on religious liberty being promoted by the Roman Catholic Church and some companies that would exempt people from general laws based upon religious beliefs.  We see this often in anti-gay movements, though it originated in the anti-choice movement.  The irrational responses to the Affordale Care Act have increased the rhetoric.

Here is a good essay in the Washington Post making the point that the exemptions from the contraception mandate are themselve the threat to religious liberty and not the other way around.  I completely agree.  Here is an excerpt:

These cases indeed pose a grave threat to religious liberty, but not to that of the owners of these businesses. Exempting ordinary, nonreligious, profit-seeking businesses from a general law because of the religious beliefs of their owners would be extraordinary, especially when doing so would shift the costs of observing those beliefs to those of other faiths or no faith. The threat to religious liberty, then, comes from the prospect that the court might permit a for-profit business to impose the costs of its owners’ anti-contraception beliefs on employees who do not share them — by forcing employees to pay hundreds of dollars or more out of pocket each year for what should be covered under the law.

The First Amendment’s establishment clause prevents the government from requiring people to bear the burden of religions to which they do not belong and whose teachings they do not practice. 

I'm quoted in an article discussing the impact of the Oklahoma and Utah rulings on the situation here in Nebraska.

Christianity: The First Three-Thousand Years by Diarmaid McCullough
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

MacCulloch's history of the Reformation, which I read a few years ago, was powerful, informative, engaging, and even inspiring in places. I had high hopes for his one-volume Christian history with its intriguing title.

He spends hundreds of pages on the roots of the Christian tradition (that first one thousand years) beginning in Greece and not the Ancient Near East. While it seemed a pretty standard presentation of these ancient histories, it was primarily a history of ideas, which intrigued me for the possibilities of what was to come -- was he going to focus on ideas, particularly the development of these concepts from Greek and Hebrew culture?

No, that's not what happened, leaving me to puzzle over why so much time and space were spent on these origins.

Increasingly church histories have devoted more attention to the non-European parts of our story. Ever since my first church history class in college, I've been interested in the little tidbits about these churches and with each new volume I'm pleased to see that the tidbits have turned into more full-scale treatments. Not only does this volume give a much fuller treatment of the Orthodox Churches, the Churches of the East are treated with more detail (though I still desire more), plus he followed their history first after the division of Christianity after Chalcedon. Later he gives much attention to the developments, particularly of indigenous movements in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

That said, there still seemed to be too much focus in the early sections on the development of Roman Christianity (as compared to the other versions) and in later sections he is very Anglican-focused, which is understandable since he is.

MacCulloch is a little less interested in dates and names and more in general movements and trends. So, I was glad I already knew some of that from previous books I'd read. I'm not sure for someone who came to this as their first church history if they would be lost or confused or would benefit from this lack of information.

Also, there were the things I missed seeing. Some of this is just picky or my own preferences or enjoyments. But there were at least two times it seemed really to hurt the narrative.

In particular, there is no discussion of the divisions in the Dutch Reformed Church around the theology of Arminius. This is strange given that Arminius is mentioned as an influence on Wesley and then the term Arminian is used multiple times in the narrative after that. But never was that story told.

The other absence was the development of the African-American church and religious experience. No mention of Nat Turner. No discussion of spirituals. No black liberation theology. The treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr. was piss poor.

Though there was discussion of race and slavery and its stain on the Christian story, I don't think it was given the attention it deserved. I'm influenced in that thinking by Willie Jennings and Kameron Carter and their books exposing the racism that pervades modern theology.

Finally, I was not sure of the overall theme that MacCulloch wanted me to take away from the book. LaTourette's church history was focused on the theme of missions. Paul Johnson highlighted figures who were more open and broad-minded struggling against forces in the opposite direction (Erasmus, Locke, and Voltaire were heroes in his volume). I'm not sure what the theme was here.

Opposite all that criticism is the praise for MacCulloch's writing style which is clear and enjoyable and not "academic" in a bad way. He also employs a good sense of humour now and then. And throughout the book draws attention to how old debates or turns of events continue to impact world politics and/or the Christian faith in the 21st century. This makes it an enjoyable enough read, as I have devoured little but it the last few weeks (and at 1016 pages it took a few weeks).

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