Introduction
Welcome to Christian Book Reviews. I began this site a few years ago for the purpose of providing book reviews and other items of interest to thinking Christians – lay and clergy – who adhere to the historic Christian faith. It is my hope that many will find material of interest in the reviews and will choose to add some of the books to their own library.
By “the historic Christian faith”, I am referring to the belief and practice of the Church as it developed from the time of the Apostles to the Ecumenical Councils. The site is not aimed at any one particular ecclesial affiliation but all who see the early undivided Church as a standard for orthodoxy. This would include Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed to varying degrees. Even those identified as “free church” or Evangelical Christians cannot be ruled out (as the writings of Tom Odem and D. H. Williams can attest).
Even with unity around a core of catholicity, there are obvious and divisive differences among those Christians who follow this path. Those issues that separate us are quite significant but there is still a unity among us in Christ through our baptisms. I can disagree with my Catholic and Lutheran brothers (for the record, I am an Anglican) on key issues but still see them as my brothers in our Lord Jesus Christ. Secondarily, the realization we share that Christianity is an historic faith and one that cannot be understood without reference to its history gives us roots and keeps us from blowing to and fro with the spirit of the age.
When faithful Christians speak of a church falling for the spirit of the age, the first thing to come to mind is the plight of mainline churches that embraced a revisionist agenda and the subsequent freefall of their membership rolls. Certainly this is part of it, but the disastrous consequences for these groups has been so well documented that there will be few takers in the future.
Yet as obvious as the problem seems now, it was not always so clear. At one point, the abandoning of theological traditions for a gospel of liberal political activism and skepticism for the supernatural was as “relevant” as seeker-sensitive worship is today. The mainline churches were respected and considered a positive force for change within Ameican society even as they abandoned once cherished beliefs. However, when the tumult of the 1960’s arose, the clamor for change became much more drastic and they were quickly condemned as “part of the establishment” and became an object of derision. As events spun out of control, their once cherished position as leading lights of progress was replaced by one of irrelevant borgeosie. Having been wedded to their age, they had become widows when the tide changed. In a panicked response, they were willing to surrender anything to recover any sense of intellectual respectability among revisionists even as the influence of revisionists among Christians began to dissipate.
This pattern of playing to the latest cultural trends only to be left abandoned as the cultural winds change direction seems destined to repeat itself again. Thus we should not confuse traditional Chistianity merely with commercially successful Christianity. While traditional Christian foms will generally survive better than those clinging to an outmoded cultural paradigm, theywill probably pale in compaison to those succesfully adapting themselves to the prevailing cultural norms – until the time when the cultural pendulum swings again.
In our current situation, we might as easily confuse the traditional with the merely conservative. Despite any professed adherence to “biblical innerancy”, “traditional Chrstian values”, and a host of other slogans designed to warm the heart of anyone wishing to return to the faith once delivered to the saints, much of what passes for age old beliefs and practices is of far more recent vintage. So much so, in fact, that a case can be made that it is more a product of contemporary culture than the liberal revisionism that preceded it as the dominant trend in Christianity.
What are we to make of those who see a need for a return to traditional Christian mores in sexuality but ignore their obligation to care for the downtrodden in society? How can one claim allegiance to scriptural norms in their personal lives while at the same time mangling Holy Writ to justify their desire for personal wealth? How can one claim to be giving God proper worship while ignoring our Lord’s commands for worship in favor of providing “seeker sensitive” entertainment to boost attendance? How is it possible to truly believe in bilical inerrancy when the Holy Scriptures are interpreted through the prism of a dispensational hermeneutic invented only a few centuries ago that removes passages from their proper context and forces a meaning into the words that no one would believe were they not already convinced of their factually misguided and historically inadequate system? Rather than exchange one version of contempoary culture clothed in Christian terminology for another, we need to put aside the allure of what appears relevant but is only transitory for wisdom that is eternal.
The Church of the early centuries treated the faith as a precious family heirloom to be handed on to future generations. The greatest argument one could give for a theological proposition was that it had been held by those who preceded them in the faith. Novelties were shunned in favor of traditional beliefs. Compare this attitude with that of modern revisionists both liberal and conservative: Overcome with a spirit of pride and a tenor of arrogance, they pat themselves on the back for discovering “truths” that had been hidden awaiting their arrival to educate the rest of us. That their exegesis often consists of circular reasoning with the system constucted beforehand and the passages fitted however clumsily into said system and then used to support it. Never mind that the given interpretation has absolutely no contextual warrant or historical support. The very novelty of the ideas presented and the cleverness of the effort expended to make the system work is worn as a badge of honor. They never consider the possibility that those who lived in the times following the writing of the Holy Scriptures and gave witness to the teaching of the Apostles might have some insight into the writings they recognized as divinely inspired.
Novelty has no place in the Christian Faith. New insights into existing truths will always have a place; new means of teaching eternal verities also is welcome; but these are questions of pedagogy – not doctrine. As a general rule, it is a safe bet that if the Church has never believed a proposed doctrine since its inception, then it is a bad idea to begin doing so now.
We must never allow our own cultural prejudices to cloud our judgment on this matter. Whatever our allegiance on cutural issues might be, the “health and wealth gospel” popular among many culturally conservative Christians is just as injurious to the faith as the “social gospel” of culturally libeal Christians a generation ago. Similarly, the view of the Church given in dispensational eschatology is no less corrosive than that given in such syncretistic works like the Da Vinci Code. There may be a surface allegiance to the Holy Sciptures in the former cases, but the end result is still a distorted view of Christ and His Church.
This is the perspective from which the material on this site will be published. If you find this site helpful, please consider using the links provided to purchase books from Amazon.com. A portion of your purchase will help fund this site.
