What follows are the twenty most thought-provoking books I read this year. They are not necessarily in the order of those I would most happily commend to a general church audience. If that were the standard, then the two books by Hyde and Jones would be at the 1 and 2 slots. As it is, I wear more hats than that of a pastor. Needless to say, a book gets bumped down to the degree I disagree with it, even if it lights up my brain. The volume by Eire had that effect, and yet I couldn't help disagreeing on every page. Well, you get the idea. Lewis’s Space Trilogy counts as one spot even though it is three books. Likewise with Lloyd-Jones’ four-volumes on John 17. That said, here are those top twenty in ascending order.
#20 Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory, eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame, 2009)
August
While this reading was accompanied by several other similar volumes and more academic journal articles that I care to ever read again compressed into a few weeks, it was an eye-opener for the road ahead. Revolving around the method of “contextualism” and its founder Quentin Skinner, each chapter here pounds away at anachronisms, periodization, and any other tendency that inflates either single thinkers or ideas in ways that impose our minds on historical texts. All fair enough, but one detects a pendulum swing right past a healthy specialization of descriptive historiography to a place where one cannot ever say much worth saying. Having said that, well written and valuable insights.
#19 Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004)
October
McGrath’s writing style never disappoints. But ever the Anglican in search of a whole Protestantism of his own middle way, the distinctly soteriological Reformed doctrines are minimized as Luther’s own parochial issues. The significance of nominalism’s public relations victory over realism is also not handled as I would. But then only unabashed realist philosophers ever do. Although he does make it a point to show what is superficial about Marxist theories of historical causation around the Reformation event. In general the book is helpful in filling in more blanks in one’s grasp of both humanist and scholastic sources of the early Reformed mind.
#18 E. L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1965)
February-March
I have Michael Allen to thank for introducing me to the writings of Mascall in 2018. Before taking down the four on this list I had already made my way through Christian Theology and the Natural Sciences and The Openness of Being. Now this third one is the driest of the six Mascall books so far read, yet with an obvious parallel to Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism which redeemed it. Here we see an Anglo-Thomist version of taking on the same liberalism: a liberalism at a more developed stage of departure from classical Christian thought. No longer is anti-supernaturalism couched in “deeds not creeds” rubbish, but propositional formulations themselves must be slain to make way for the existential import of the gospel. All of that in his chief interlocutors, J. A. T. Robinson and Paul van Buren. Note that these are two names that we no longer know. Precisely. So-called “up to date” religion is entirely forgettable and its proponents, much to their eternal chagrin, will be just forward thinking enough to repackage the same old perennial nonsense in slightly different words. This book drones one in those nauseating details more than Mascall’s other works, but he hits all the right targets.
#17 Carlos M. N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1560 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016)
August / October
The title of Carlos Eire’s Reformations is suggestive from the beginning. There was not one “Reformation” but many. Moreover it was not only the Protestants who were reforming. A frustrated reforming spirit that had long existed in the Roman Church was finally unleashed at Trent, in response to the Protestant challenge. Eire is careful throughout to avoid simplistic monocausal explanations for complex phenomena. He depicts the humanists as self-consciously breaking from the medieval past and attempting to reform society through a kingdom of letters; though is careful to maintain that this was not a rejection of “religious darkness,” but rather one of “cultural achievements.” There is nevertheless a consistent superficial analysis of several Reformation distinctives. In various places he positions the Swiss focus on idolatry (approach to God) against Luther’s soteriological focus (getting right with God), as if these could be separated. Catholic miracles and missions are regarded not simply as the polemic of Rome, but are presented as if Eire’s own case. A few parallels are even made between Reformed social projects and modern statism. And he is yet one more thinker (Brad Gregory’s Unintended Reformation is another recent example) that plays on the disenchantment thesis of Weber as if supernature and nature constitute a zero-sum game. To offer a natural explanation is to debunk the supernatural (Eire interprets Calvin on idolatry in this way) as “magic,” or that to critique a Church’s emphasis on the sacramental is to critique divine immanence in the means of grace as such. All very superficial.
#16 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in Jesus’ Prayer for His Own: Volumes I-IV (Wheaton: Crossway, 1987)
August-September
The Doctor, as he was called, is always a breath of fresh air. Like Spurgeon, he wrote like he was having a one-man audience for an experiential sermon, wasting no ink on anything that does not press home the gospel to the reader. I read these four volumes (sadly too much of it was skimming, for time sake) in my weekly sermon preparation for a series on John 17, which I called “What Does Jesus Pray for Us?” This is an example of the gracious balances put in my life, as I study academic material daily (with no apologies) and might otherwise drift into robotic data retrieval mode. To preach worth anything requires that one has been preached to. As the value of this reading was accomplished more by way of reminder—of truths long believed and yet often diffusing in my storehouse of affections—this book would be rated much higher if the list was primarily recommendations to the laity alone. I certainly do recommend this series as the best commentary on the High Priestly Prayer.
#15 Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956)
January
As part of a Hebrews to Revelation class taken at RTS, this small commentary is more thematic than exegetical. But it is masterful especially about the priestly office of Christ and the method of typology employed by the inspired author. Vos is downright Platonic in his explanation of those copies of heavenly realities, modeled after the eternal reality, such that the Old Testament type and the New Testament antitype are each in the realm of shadows, even though the old is a shadow of the new. But it is no mere Platonism after all, because the divine Artist makes a sketch in the old and then completes the picture in the new. So, unlike with the pagan’s idea of the forms, redemptive history sees the divine Ideas realized in history. The realization is eternally effective in history. This is really quite profound given what often passes for biblical theology, and it is in keeping with how respectful this father of modern biblical theology was in his other writings of the classical definition of theology. Anyone who would preach through Hebrews needs to add this to their study material.
#14 E. L. Mascall, The Christian Universe (New York: Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1966)
March
This was the title given to the collection of Boyle Lectures delivered in the fall of 1965 at one Church of St. James in Piccadilly. Their general framework was to show the superiority of the Christian worldview in both doctrine and life, and that over the alternatives of (i.) secular humanism and (ii.) liberal religion. “I shall not put before you many arguments … [but] to catch your imagination” (11). We might say that the driving argument of this work is that Christianity is better for the world than secularism. With objective morals and meaning debunked, modern man feels the need to invent his own. However the secularist is limited in both time and space. In the transition between old and new realities, his art can only revel in the loss of morals and meaning. The focus is reminiscent of a few of Schaeffer’s works. He moves from popular culture, to the arts, to the sciences, and even implications for extraterrestrial life and the attempts at immortality on this planet. In Christ, God has declared both man and cosmos good and subject of an ultimate restoration.
#13 Michael Kruger, Canon Revisited (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012)
January
Mixed reviews here. In the first place, Kruger’s classification system of canon-models is a very useful contribution to the study of apologetics and not simply to dogmatics. On the other hand, his reduction of the “evidentialist model” (as no presuppositionalist is likely to ever tell the difference between classicalism and evidentialism) is difficult to read straight through with a straight face. In this framework, modernist theologians (B. B. Warfield is a central example) are ever bound to the dictates of scholarly consensus in the confidence that the claims of the Scriptures will meet those demands. But if we can ignore that, the book is a worthy resource. There is a lesson in how to do apologetics in which both classicalist and presuppositionalist alike can form common cause. Defining the essence of that object that we are calling Scripture isn’t simply about asking historical questions about the when and where of mere writings. The moment one starts talking about exact criteria, one is drawing a metaphysical and spiritual line. This is irreducibly theological. Clear convictions for the apologist also rise to the surface. For instance, the inconceivability of there being no unanimous canons (at least regionally) before Nicaea is a point seldom considered. Kruger says, “In order to recognize a certain book as Scripture in the first place, an early Christian would have needed to be able to say another book in his library was not Scripture” (36). In short, the existence of Scripture per se proves a canon per se: some canon at least. Even where there is room for disagreement, this book forms categories to question the criteria that are so often assumed.
#12 Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume One (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003)
July - August
The first volume of Muller’s PRRD examines the matter of prolegomena. Previous scholarship was divided on the question of continuity and discontinuity in how seventeenth century Reformed Scholastics related both to the original Reformers and to the medieval background. The so-called “Calvin versus the Calvinists” thesis brought discontinuity to the forefront. The ambiguous charge of “rationalism” failed to distinguish between the Cartesian method and its superficial similarity to the “logical necessity” of a system allegedly driven by predestination. Muller has essentially exposed all of this as reductionistic. The section called the prolegomena first developed between 1585 and 1620, with four basic features emerging: (1) definition of theology, (2) division of its kinds, (3) distinction between true and false, and (4) the basic presuppositions or principia. This was the great white whale of my academic year. I wrestled with it from the moment I finished my RTS work to the end of this past semester only days ago. All else extended from it like spokes in a wheel from their hub. I would not be wrestling if I found perfect agreement. More will be said in connection to the works of van Asselt, Fesko, and the classic work of Junius.
#11 William J. Van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011)
August - September
This work (as well as his companion article the archetypal-ectypal distinction in Junius) is not to be understood as if he were Muller’s sidekick. I will say that if anyone wants a taste of what the whole field of study is about, and does not want to read Muller’s more massive work, this work of van Asselt is a much more manageable project. Having said that, there are subtle hints of difference. For instance, he wrote, “It may well be that Reformed thought holding up the salvation of mankind as the end of theology went too far. Theology ought, after all, to be concerned with God” (98). This was a reference to the tendency to side with the Scotist over Thomist definition of theology as sapientia rather than scientia. What may seem like a cosmetic difference at first glance issues forth into a soteriological critique of natural theology. The Reformed Scholastics all endorsed its use in apologetics with two qualifications: 1. it cannot save; 2. it cannot function as a foundation to dogmatics or faith. As to how Thomist categories may be reclaimed by the present Reformed, the extent of the Van Tillian misreading is ambiguous.
#10 Ed Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2014)
June
While I never did get to the last couple of chapters due to beginning PRTS coursework, what I did take in further solidified and refreshed the basic Thomist philosophy that I have taken to from the beginning of my study of philosophy in the late 90s. His arguments against scientism are as devastating as I remember them from reading The Last Superstition a few years earlier. Here there is a more developed blueprint for how realism undergirds not only theology and ethics, but also the physical sciences. He then circles back to some Aristotle 101 even more thoroughly than in his introductory Aquinas book: act, potency, and causal powers. What is especially helpful is his treatment of real and logical distinctions among the Scholastic schools. More could be said, but judging by my own experience, reading this alongside of the Five Proofs only reinforces one’s grasp of the arguments.
#9 Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014)
November - December
It may be that my own impressions of this classic are not the best guide for whether or not it should be read. Different readers are approaching for different material. What Junius contributes to the early Reformed tradition is not to be understated. One of the first problems Junius attempts to resolve is how different things can be called “theology” when one is infinite and another finite, or one is true and the other is false. He begins with archetypal theology, “the wisdom of God Himself … essential and uncreated,” or “the divine wisdom of divine matters.” Then there is ectypal theology, or that “nonessential and created” theology, “a certain copy and, rather, shadowy image of the formal, divine, and essential theological image.” He then subdivides the latter into three kinds of creaturely knowledge of God: (1) union - possessed by Christ alone; (2) vision - possessed by angels above and the perfected saints in glory; (3) revelation - that of we pilgrims in this age. While all of this provides opportunities for profound theologizing within different areas of dogmatics, the soteriological critique of natural theology looms large and stunts the growth of objective reason among the Reformed. I went in looking for some long covered passageway into objective philosophical theology among the Reformed, on those leads from Muller and van Asselt. I came away frankly disappointed.
#8 J. V. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019)
May
The first three chapters of this book are solid gold, as are the concluding chapters. Fesko’s material on what the Reformed believed about the light of nature and common notions takes the work of Muller and others right up to the doorstep of engaging with Van Til. But right as Thomas Aquinas meets those who are presently aware that the Van Tillians have misread (or not read) him, I have my own bone to pick. And this is true of the academic essay written by Fesko and Guy Richard more than a decade earlier, which in turn rests on a 1992 journal article written by Muller on the dogmatic function of Thomas’s Five Ways. Simply put, Thomas has been domesticated for the sensibilities of the presuppositionalist mind. Ever weary of letting “reason” back in “at the foundations” (whatever that means: and yes, I have read voluminously on what they all mean by it), long story short, no need for alarm—for Thomas only meant to argue for God's existence having already presupposed it by Scripture. After all, we are told, Question 2 of the Summa on God's existence is conveniently placed after Question 1 where sacred doctrine provides a supernatural revelation context for the truths of natural revelation. Now I have written elsewhere on what is wrong with this re-reading, and what Thomas was actually doing. Fesko’s following chapters on worldview and dualism, while careful to distinguish HWT (Historic Worldview Theory) from worldview thinking as such, nonetheless show signs of, shall we say, Escondidoizing (a word I coined while reading it). While the Van Tillians certainly had a tendency to encompass the whole of the “Christian worldview” simultaneously within Scripture and over all things, such that common grace could not speak with any authority, it would be a gross pendulum swing to deny that the dictates of right reason in general revelation are indeed all of one piece that we can call the proper “Christian way” to think about all things. Natural theology is not likely to be recovered by a generation that has known no other way to think about foundations that in the presuppositional mode. Natural law is not likely to be recovered by a generation steeped in the Lutheran-to-Anabaptist-level recasting of Two Kingdom ideas. That doesn't make Fesko’s book a disappointment. It was a valuable conversation starter. Quite a bit of low-lying fruit got shaken off the Van Tillian vine.
#7 E. L. Mascall, Christ, the Christian, & the Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2017)
April
This is sadly the only of Mascall’s works that has been republished in our generation. It is formed on the basis of “three unions” connecting God to Christ to man. Classical distinctions are made the basis of Christology: “The Person of Christ is thus in one sense simple, and in another sense composite” (18). This is because the Person of Christ may be viewed in two ways: (i) as it is in itself, the Word, and thus altogether simple; (ii) as Person subsisting in a nature, as the Word subsists in two natures, and is thus composite. While the first union is the Son with the Trinity, the second is the Word with the human nature. Mascall’s idea of the humanity of Christ becomes the real link between theological reflection and the destiny of mankind. His third union is between Christ and the church. Other unions emerge within this third: as the church is united to Christ, so also is the humanity of each participating in the life of God. Thus when God and man are reconciled, so are the individual and the communal. Mascall turns in this direction with an illuminating description of the church as “the sphere of the New Humanity, of human beings remade by incorporation into Christ” (135). All very profound, and yet there is the same straw man critique of a “Reformed view” of grace and nature as in his other book (see below on Via Media).
#6 E. L. Mascall, Via Media (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956)
February
As the title might suggest, this is Mascall’s middle way between “the vulgar flamboyance of Rome and the dismal severity of Geneva” (xi). He strikes four balances, signified by the headings: (1) dependent reality, (2) derived equality, (3) unconfused union, and (4) deified creaturehood. To the first, two fundamental cosmological truths must be balanced: finite being genuinely exists; and it exists with an existence that is altogether derived. Short of this balance, we are liable to gravitate to one or another extreme about the cosmos: either it is real and independent (Rationalism / Deism), or else dependent but unreal, or illusory (Irrationalism / Pantheism). “Derived equality” is his via media concerning the Son and the Spirit in the Trinity. At the extremes are “equality without derivation” and “derivation without equality.” Two ways to land on equality without derivation are modalism, conceiving that the persons are identical, and tritheism, conceiving that they are entirely independent. On the other hand, when derivation is emphasized at the expense of the equality, what results is subordinationism. The implications of that third middle way, at one extreme is such a divorce of the two natures that we conceive of two persons, whereas at the other is such a confusion of the two natures that one is absorbed in the other. The former is Nestorianism and the latter Eutychianism (or monophysitism). Anyone familiar with the doctrine of theosis will know his basic proof text (2 Pet. 1:4) and roughly where he is going with the last via middle way. This is meant to steer between the undue exaltation of nature and the undue limitations on grace. At the latter, he faults the Reformed only by taking on Barth and Brunner. Here is the basic reason I cannot rate Mascall higher. His works made for the most mind-bending reading this year. But alas, he contents himself with a straw man at this point. Having said that, he should be reintroduced among the Reformed.
#5 Daniel Hyde, Grace Worth Fighting For (Davenant Institute, 2019)
October - December
I used this book as my basic study material for the Sunday evening series I am still finishing up on the Canons of Dort. It is a welcome antidote for our contemporary church culture where truth and love are too much at odds. Each article and refutation of that historic Synod are explained here from a pastoral point of view, with great attention to the relevant texts of Scripture. Along the way, we are introduced to the wider catholic tradition where doctrines like unconditional election, or satisfaction of divine justice by Christ for a particular people, were already believed long before the Reformation. Persistent myths about historic Calvinism are slain and practical nuance in matters of assurance and evangelism abounds. This book is a treasure for pastors, seminarians, and laypeople alike who want to get a fresh perspective on why the doctrines of grace matter.
#4 Ed Feser, Five Proofs for the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2017)
June
Feser writes the way Lewis used to, except with less British understatement. It is way that conservative Evangelicals would speak if we were to get over much of our false humility. This is not a book about the Five Ways of Aquinas. It does not even take what I take to be the five broad categories of natural theology, dealing with being (ontological), cause (cosmological), mind (epistemological), moral (axiological), and design (teleological). Although all of these are touched upon at one point or another. Instead he introduces us to an Aristotelian, NeoPlatonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and “Rationalist” set of arguments. Feser has two-stage approach for each of these five arguments. It is first an argument for the existence of something such as “an uncaused cause of the existence of things.” It is second, an argument that such a thing must possess certain divine attributes. Finally there will be a more formal statement of each argument in each chapter. If anyone is truly interested in recovering natural theology, this is a better required text than anything that my fellow Reformed are putting out. It should be required reading in seminary apologetics classes until we can do better.
#3 Keith Mathison, Christianity & Van Tillianism, Table Talk, August 2019
September
Yes, I realize that this was not a book. Perhaps it should be published as a book, or even expanded into one. The reason is that this was the most lucid, hard-hitting, and yet charitable exposé of presuppositionalist thinking since the standard work, Classical Apologetics, by Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley in 1984. He does three things that Fesko fell short of but which all have to be done: (1) Link classical apologetics to realism; (2) Defend the use of reason at the foundations of thought without conflating such a ground in some competition with divine revelation; (3) Link the rejection of classical philosophical foundations to the undermining of classical divine attributes. Note how (2) is a critical feature of the Reformed Scholastic prolegomena, filtered down through Bavinck and Kuyper, into the present through Muller et all. It is not clear in the present scholarship how presuppositionalists cannot claim this heritage, even if everyone agrees to gang up on Van Til. Thus the celebrations of my fellow Reformed Thomists are premature, unless or until the foundational status of natural theology is clearly distinguished from “autonomous” or “pagan” thought. Mathison’s thoughts here show themselves to be superior to where the rest of scholarship has left off. If anyone thinks that (3) is a kind of guilt by association or slippery slope argument, the connection is simple. To deny natural theology any kind of foundational place is to at least be conflicted about appealing to logical coherence when relating the various divine attributes. That is the surest way to stare oblivious at the “extra-biblical” nature of those classical attributes like pure actuality, impassibility, simplicity, and so forth.
#2 Mark Jones, Knowing Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2015)
December
I do not know how many books like this I will be able to read in the next year or so. It is hardly expected that a book written in our day will read like those of the Puritan era and mindset. But this is exactly what we get from Knowing Christ. Each chapter is somewhat self-contained. It flows less like a portion of dogmatics and more like a life of Jesus. Yet the depth of that Christological reflection never misses a beat and reveals that much of what we have been reading about Jesus in contemporary books is simply, well, at least a little heretical. If we take Lewis’s advice to read two old books for every one from today, and if we could only read three books total in the next year: make this that one book from our day.
#1 C. S. Lewis, Space Trilogy
February - March
How I went these two decades without reading this is owing to the fact that I have little time for fiction. But it was required for one of my final RTS classes, so there I was eating it up. Out of the Silent Planet is the first installment. The antagonist Weston represented scientism, and Ransom was quite obviously Lewis’s own alter-ego. As the washed up literature professor is drugged and kidnapped to outer space, the goal of his captors is man's mastery of nature: in this case to exploit whatever can be from some other planet. The whole universe he deals with is given a history, its beings all put in their place in a way one would expect from Lewis (or Tolkien). The second book, Perelandra, picks up on this, but through the lens of the struggle for the origins of a planet. Whereas Malacandra (its Mars) was an old world, Perelandra (it Venus) was in its Eden, where the central character, the Green Lady (its Eve) was to be tempted by Weston, who returns from his curse in the first episode. He becomes the "UnMan," a serpent character to undo that world, as one had succeeded to do on Thulcandra (its Earth). Here the nature of the lie, the good, and spiritual warfare is unveiled. All of it leads to that third book which is least like science fiction and more like Lewis’s own domain of university life. It is called That Hideous Strength. It is based upon a principle that Lewis held to (and one realizes that it was a principle held to by Owen and Edwards and Machen and Schaeffer). If it is held to today, it is held close to the chest, as a potentially winning hand of cards. None dares call it reality, or at least not out loud, lest one blows cover. Every world comes to a point: and worlds within worlds too. Every social sphere—whether a family, a school, a nation, or a church—comes to such a point. Each is under siege at every moment. And that is all for now. There is nothing I can say about Lewis’s use of myth and magic, or the character development, the search for truth, or the many profound things useful for our present struggles over gender roles and sexuality. What else can I say, but that you have to read it for yourself.
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