Years ago for my first year theology class, I read Four Views On Hell. The alternatives offered were literal flames, metaphoric flames but eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, and a Catholic explanation of purgatory. I was convinced by Clark Pinnock’s idea of annihilationism or conditional immortality. It contends that we are only made immortal through God’s [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘book review’
September 4, 2009
Consuming Jesus : A Review
Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church (Eerdmans, 2007) Available from Koorong for about $20
In this book, Metzger argues that evangelical churches are consumer orientated and this perpetuates the race and class divisions of the world. The gospel, he insists, is the good news that these divisions have been broken down [...]
May 3, 2009
Is God to blame?
When something bad happens, is it God’s will? And even if it wasn’t, why didn’t he intervene? Gregory Boyd’s book Is God to blame? moving beyond pat answers to the problem of suffering discusses these questions and offers some helpful responses.
Boyd starts by critiquing what he calls ‘the blueprint’ view of the world. According to [...]
March 27, 2009
The Shack : theological fiction for the disenchanted
Love it or hate it, in the last year it seems everyone in the evangelical world has had an opinion on William P. Young’s bestselling novel, The Shack. Whatever its failings, it has moved a lot of people deeply and has them talking about the problem of pain, the doctrine of the Trinity and many [...]
November 8, 2008
Boff’s JESUS CRISTO LIBERTADOR: a review
I found this review I wrote in 2002 for a Christology unit.
L.Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Christology of Our Time (Petropolis:Vozes, 1972) ET: P. Hughes (London: SPCK, this edn 1990; first edn Orbis: Maryknoll, 1978)
1. Introduction – Jesus Christ in 1972
Leonardo Boff’s Jesus Christ Liberator is an important Christological work. It carries with it [...]
September 21, 2008
Sweet: the novel all Baptists should read
Tracy Ryan, Sweet, Fremantle Press: 2008. RRP: $26.95
Tracy Ryan’s third novel, Sweet, is the story of three women caught in the thrall of a manipulative pastor of a conservative Baptist church in the outer-suburbs of Perth circa 1986. The Reverend William King is a complex figure, genuinely caring but always controlling.
Cody is seventeen and [...]
May 6, 2008
Know your story, people!
Reading this history of the Vineyard movement made me remember how important history is. Evangelicals and Charismatics are mostly ignorant of their own history, and are poorer for it. Or I know I am. So many things we take for granted have historical reasons and interesting stories behind them. This book connected the dots of [...]
April 9, 2008
Strange encounters with mainstream evangelicalism 4 : Yancey
My thoughts on reading Philip Yancey’s Reaching for the invisible God
I’ve been avoiding Yancey for years. He’s so popular I thought he’d be insipid. I was wrong. I repent of being so dismissive. In one way I’m surprised he’s so popular; in another way I understand and think it’s great. He reads so widely and [...]
March 26, 2008
Book review – Evaluating the church growth movement : 5 views
This is an important book for me to have read. Throughout the book, several references are made to common misunderstandings of the church growth movement. The problem is that people like me associate it with megachurches and seeker-sensitive services and don’t know the historical roots.
This book starts with a good historical sketch to correct such [...]
March 8, 2008
Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety
‘Status anxiety’ is a condition we all suffer from to different degrees. It’s about comparing yourselves to others, wishing to have more attention or more fame or more money or more power. De Botton doesn’t think things were always quite like this. He sees a lot of it brought on by the competitive, socially mobile [...]
