Book Recommendations / Resources

kelly1

Hello all, I just finished this book and found it to be quite good. The debates between himself and the experts aren't exactly exhaustive but convincing enough for me and I don't think it would have been wise to explore each and every little detail which could have made the book tedious. He discusses the following areas which build up a sound case for faith in Christ:

The book is in three parts.

The first discusses the reliability of Scripture from an historical perspecitive and discusses the reliability of the writers. There are also chapters on extra-biblical documentation and archaeological proof.

The seconds part discusses the character of Jesus under such headings as "Did He really believe himself to be the Son of God" and "Was Jesus crazy to make these claims". He asks the question, did Jesus demonstrate the attributes of God and then there a very good section of Jesus' fulfilment of the OT Messianic prophesies.

The third part discusses eveidence for the post-resurrection empty tomb and eye-witness accounts of those who saw Jesus. There is a chapter on the possibility that Jesus survived His flogging and crucifixion and it was news to me to read that crucifixion caused death by asphyxiation. In order to breate Jesus would have had to push Himself up with His legs every time He wanted to exhale. Breaking the legs of victims was therefore a way to ensure that they died rapidly. It's also interesting that the OT prophesied Jesus' method of execution 700 years before crucifixion had been invented!

He also discusses the fact that the disciple had basically lost faith in Jesus after the crucifixion because it was such a shameful way to die and they believe it was unfit for the Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to destroy the Romans, not the other way round. So the fact that they suddenly regained faith and started preaching about the Resurrection is powerful testimony to the fact that they actually say the Risen Jesus.

God bless,
Noel.

PDN

Last week I was reading Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization by Lars Brownworth.

For those who are rather hazy about Christianity in the East, particularly the development of Orthodox Christianity and the clash with Islam, this would provide a very readable antidote to erroneous theories of Church History that are based solely on the Western world.

Great stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Full of witty little historical tidbits and asides as well.

RAMADAN

I have been reading Opening to God by Thomas Green. It is a fantastic introduction to prayer and one I found very beneficial.

mags345

Worship the Lord your God and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, I will give you a full life span. Ex 23:25-26


keep it in mind when you're sick!

Luke Kelly

Life after death and jesus the story of enlightenment by Deepak Chopra the world renowned author and lecturer !
in these two book's he talk's about science and religon , near death experience and the on going battle between science and god and the question every man and woman want's to know , does conciseness survive when the physical world end's !

Mairtinh

I originally bought this book by Thomas E. Woods, Jr because of the section on science and religion but the whole book is fascinating and a refreshing antidote to all those books that try to present the Catholic Church as a constant impediment to development and progress over the centuries.

There is a useful précis of the book here by the author

chozometroid

Mairtinh wrote: »

I originally bought this book by Thomas E. Woods, Jr because of the section on science and religion but the whole book is fascinating and a refreshing antidote to all those books that try to present the Catholic Church as a constant impediment to development and progress over the centuries.

There is a useful précis of the book here by the author

Wow, that's pretty deep. I'll add that to my "to read" list.

philologos

It's been a while since I have posted here, but I am currently reading "Shining Like Stars - The power of the gospel in the world's universities" by Lindsay Brown former General Secretary of the IFES International movement.

As the title makes clear it is about the growth of the international movement of Christian Union's worldwide which as of 2006 consisted of 150 national movements which include persecuted countries.

The book goes through real life experiences of how students are changing the societies that they live in by setting up student movements to honour God. I've only started it, but it's hard not to be inspired particularly as a student as to what God can do through universities.

PDN

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - by Donald Miller

The latest offering from the author of Blue Like Jazz compares life to writing a story. You make many of the choices as to whether your story will be a meaningful one or not.

Miller writes beautifully. His simple style sometimes makes him sound a bit naive, and then he comes out with something that is wonderfully poetic or surprisingly profound.

hivizman

Alister McGrath is an Ulsterman and he is currently Professor of Theology at King's College London. Among theologians writing in the English language, McGrath is possibly rivalled only by Tom Wright in terms of the number of books that he brings out every year. His most recent book is Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (London: SPCK, 2009, ISBN 978-0-281-06215-7). This book discusses what heresy means and how an understanding of heresy helps us to strengthen our grasp on orthodox Christian doctrine. McGrath reviews the "classic" heresies, such as Ebionitism, Docetism, Arianism and Pelagianism, explaining what they preached and how they fell short in providing an adequate account of the nature of God and Christ, and other central beliefs of the Christian Church. He addresses, and rejects, the commonly held view that what ends up as orthodoxy is a matter of power rather than truth, explores the issue of why protestantism is not heretical (it shares the same fundamental creedal beliefs as other versions of Christianity, even though it maintains doctrinal differences), and discusses the extent to which Muslim understandings of Christianity are based on heretical views widespread in the Middle East rather than on orthodox Christian doctrine.

Heretical views often crop up on this forum. For example, many posts reflect a form of Pelagianism by rejecting the concept of original sin and believing that we can be saved through works alone, while in the current thread Jesus on the cross, some posters appear to be proposing Docetic views that Jesus was not really fully human and that therefore he did not suffer on the cross.

At the end of the book, McGrath warns readers against the attitude that orthodoxy is dull and academic, while heresy is exciting and innovative. He asks "can orthodoxy once more be sprinkled with stardust?", and challenges Christian churches of all denominations "to demonstrate that orthodoxy is imaginatively compelling, emotionally engaging, aesthetically enhancing, and personally liberating."

PDN

I've been doing a lot of travellling over the last 3 weeks (50 hours in the air!) so my Amazon Kindle is a welcome accessory. It can hold over 1500 books in your pocket - but at the moment I've only downloaded about 80 books onto mine.

Last week I read The Climax of the Covenant by NT Wright, and The Future of Justification by John Piper (a criticism of NT Wright's work). It was interesting reading them together. I thought some of Piper's criticisms were unfair, and maybe he didn't understand Wright at every point? But he also made some valid criticisms of where Wright comes very close to advocating justification by works.

BTW, hivizman, I just bought and downloaded McGrath's book for this evening's flight based on your recommendation. If it's crap then I'm going to blame you!

philologos

I'm currently reading "Dig Deeper! Tools to unearth the Bible's treasure" by Nigel Beynon and Andrew Sach. The book provides useful techniques in order to try and get to the bottom of the message of the Bible. So far I've found it quite useful, so useful I wish I had started reading it nearer the time when I was first reading the Bible as it would have helped me to get more of the real picture that God has for us.

Fanny Cradock

On a completely different note, people who find it tedious to read text off the screen should try this handy text enhancer called Readability.

There is no installation required. After initially selecting the parameters you want - text size etc. - (10 second job) you then left click and drag the Readability icon onto your tool bar. Now, any time you want to dispense with all the distracting pictures, small text and the other crap that clutters your screen, you simply hit the tab you dropped into your tool bar! Returning to the original format is a one click job.


Sorry about the size of the attached images, but you go from

to

PDN

hivizman wrote: »

Alister McGrath is an Ulsterman and he is currently Professor of Theology at King's College London. Among theologians writing in the English language, McGrath is possibly rivalled only by Tom Wright in terms of the number of books that he brings out every year. His most recent book is Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (London: SPCK, 2009, ISBN 978-0-281-06215-7). This book discusses what heresy means and how an understanding of heresy helps us to strengthen our grasp on orthodox Christian doctrine. McGrath reviews the "classic" heresies, such as Ebionitism, Docetism, Arianism and Pelagianism, explaining what they preached and how they fell short in providing an adequate account of the nature of God and Christ, and other central beliefs of the Christian Church. He addresses, and rejects, the commonly held view that what ends up as orthodoxy is a matter of power rather than truth, explores the issue of why protestantism is not heretical (it shares the same fundamental creedal beliefs as other versions of Christianity, even though it maintains doctrinal differences), and discusses the extent to which Muslim understandings of Christianity are based on heretical views widespread in the Middle East rather than on orthodox Christian doctrine.

Heretical views often crop up on this forum. For example, many posts reflect a form of Pelagianism by rejecting the concept of original sin and believing that we can be saved through works alone, while in the current thread Jesus on the cross, some posters appear to be proposing Docetic views that Jesus was not really fully human and that therefore he did not suffer on the cross.

At the end of the book, McGrath warns readers against the attitude that orthodoxy is dull and academic, while heresy is exciting and innovative. He asks "can orthodoxy once more be sprinkled with stardust?", and challenges Christian churches of all denominations "to demonstrate that orthodoxy is imaginatively compelling, emotionally engaging, aesthetically enhancing, and personally liberating."

I read this and found it to be a great book. Very informative and engaging. Thanks for the recommendation!

philologos

I've just finished "Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer" by Bryan A. Follis. A really good introduction into the need of the love of the Gospel with the rational emphasis of it's ultimate truth as expressed by the ministry of Francis Schaeffer in his writings and in his ministry in Switzerland. Inspiring stuff.

Follis himself provides his own assessment and defence of Schaeffer and says although a 20th century apologist, Schaeffer in his approach has much to teach us.

It'd certainly encourage me to read some of Schaeffers own work.

Reesy

'God's Secretaries' by Adam Nicolson. It's about the creation of the King James Bible. I'm not a christian but I (and my Mum, who is) enjoyed it.

PDN

I've just finished 'Cities of God' by Rodney Stark. Stark uses a copious amount of data and statistics to demonstrate that the early Church (from the time of Christ up to Christianity becoming the majority religion of the Roman Empire) was primarily an urban faith - flourishing in major cities, particularly in ports or in cities with a large Jewish diaspora.

We often think of that early growth as being extremely rapid - but Stark points out that the nature of exponential growth means that the Church only had to increase at an average rate of 3% a year to develop from an unruly stirring of faith in Jerusalem, to becoming the dominant faith in the known world.

hivizman

PDN wrote: »

We often think of that early growth as being extremely rapid - but Stark points out that the nature of exponential growth means that the Church only had to increase at an average rate of 3% a year to develop from an unruly stirring of faith in Jerusalem, to becoming the dominant faith in the known world.

That's quite correct -if we take the starting point as the crucifixion in 30AD (some put it in 33AD, but I think the earlier date is more popular) and the end date as the Council of Chalcedon in 451AD (in his recent book A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCulloch uses this date to separate the early church from the medieval church), an annual growth rate of 3% compounded is equivalent to multiplying the population of early believers by a factor of just under 250,000. If we take the number of those to whom the risen Christ appeared as given by Paul in I Corinthians 15:6 (more than 500) as the base number of Christians in 30AD, that implies over 120 million Christians by 451AD.

PDN

Seaneh wrote: »

Probably said already but I'm currently reading "The Shack".

Anything that Bear Grylls recommends is worth a go IMHO!

I finished this a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed it. It's not that well-written (in terms of style and use of language) but I found it to be a good story.

I think many of those who have criticised it are missing the point somewhat. It's not a work of systematic theology - just a story that tries to make you think about some of the big questions (theodicy, grace and legalism, omniscience and human freedom, the Trinity, how can Jesus be human and divine etc.) In fact, if I didn't know better, I could have thought that the author had scouted this forum to find the hot topics of debate!

philologos

I just finished "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller. A very comprehensive and interesting overview of the Christian faith, and an interesting apologetic. It is a book that is accessible to people who are Christians and non-Christians.

hinault

Currently reading an excellent book called "Michael Faraday : Sandemanian and Scientist"

Faraday is regarded as one of the great scientist of all time.
The Father of Electro Magnetism!

However Faraday was also a man of God and was a member of an obscure Scottish Christian sect called the Sandemanian's.
The Sandemanians were a sect that split from the Presbyterian church and who's beliefs were based upon the New Testament.
Faraday, although an intellectual giant was a humble, God-fearing man and the following sums up his view

"here [in Faraday's Sandemanian faith] lay the key to so much of Faraday's character-his joyful renunciation of wealth and social distinction, his ability to stride ahead of his contemporaries untrammelled by religious controversies of his day; above all, perhaps, the abounding humility in which he saw himself, not as a man raised by genius above his fellows but as one turning the pages of a book which is already written and finding therein order, pattern and design worthy of the Great Creator. To Faraday the ultimate sucmm of the "scientific adventure" was assured. It remained merely to read the signs aright and hear the music of the spheres"

The book, which cost €135.00, is both a superb scientific and religious read.

Fanny Cradock

You should check out the Faraday Institute for science and religion.

hinault

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

You should check out the Faraday Institute for science and religion.

Thanks for this link.

It is especially pleasing to read that an Institute to discuss Science and Religion has been setup in Faraday's name.

He was a great great man, in my opinion.

Fanny Cradock

I don't know a great deal about the man, but the site is a great resource, especially the multimedia section. I notice that they will be doing some talks in DCU later this year. £60 for 2.5 days of talks (meals + drinks included) sounds very reasonable. I might see if I can rope somebody in.

hinault

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I don't know a great deal about the man, but the site is a great resource, especially the multimedia section. I notice that they will be doing some talks in DCU later this year. £60 for 2.5 days of talks (meals + drinks included) sounds very reasonable. I might see if I can rope somebody in.

Farady is one of the towering figures of Science.

The man who discovered the laws and explained the Laws of Electro Magnetism, and Electrochemistry.
Effectively, Faraday is the father of electricity.
Everything that you see around you, from the flicking of a light switch to the production of electricity through huge generators, is down to the work of Michael Faraday.

However Faraday always stressed that these processes and discoveries were always there, as set out by Providence and that he had only managed to interpret what was already engineered by God.

Faraday had a lovely metaphor which I will paraphrase.

"I am like the child who, seeks to see what lies under the carpet (God's universe). My discoveries are a result of my looking under one corner of that carpet. As mankind rolls the carpet back further, he will get to understand more fully God's divine mechanism"

wolfsbane

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

You should check out the Faraday Institute for science and religion.

Sadly, it promotes theistic evolution, as far as I can see. Denis Alexander seems to be a key figure.

I wonder what Faraday would have thought? Or that great Irishman, the father of modern chemistry, Robert Boyle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle

I have recently read a book rebutting Denis Alexander's book promoting TE:
http://shouldchristiansembraceevolution.com/

Christians should be aware of the importance of the issue, and the fact that evolution is being accorded the same level of certainty as any Biblical truth. Indeed, evolution is being made the touchstone for interpreting the Bible in TE circles.

Fanny Cradock

I'm not sure they have an official stance on evolution. However, I would be surprised if there were many YEC's amongst the staff or speakers. Thankfully the institute doesn't focus primarily on this issue.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Christians should be aware of the importance of the issue, and the fact that evolution is being accorded the same level of certainty as any Biblical truth. Indeed, evolution is being made the touchstone for interpreting the Bible in TE circles.

Well, that is only a problem if you pit biblical knowledge against other types of knowledge. But all this is better suited to another thread, no?

Fanny Cradock

Specific Denominations

• Catholic Church

• www.Catholicscomehome.org - "Great site for those who have fallen away from the Catholic Church and are pondering the idea of coming home".

• www.vatican.va - Official website of the RCC

• Calvinism

• www.soundofgrace.com - Magazine and discussion list on New Covenant Theology.

Special Interest

• SEXUAL ABUSE: Resources for Survivors & those who wish to protect their churches

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  www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/

• Roman Catholic
  www.bishop-accountability.org

• Orthodox
  www.pokrov.org/default.asp

• Protestant
  http://www.reformation.com/

• One of the oldest and largest support groups
  www.snapnetwork.org/

• Patrick J. Wall blog
  http://patrickjwall.wordpress.com

• Thomas P. Doyle essays 7 articles
  www.richardsipe.com/doyle/index.html

• Richard Sipe
  www.richardsipe.com

Fanny Cradock

I would heartily recommend the Autobiography of Martin Luther King. It really is interesting to see how central his faith was to guiding his personal convictions. It was also interesting to see how he not only used Christ as a role model for non-violence, but also Gandhi. I feel that there is an important lesson in there lest we forget that God uses good to achieve his ends irrespective of whether it comes from Christians or non-Christians.

Vinny-Chase

Curious to hear if any one else here has read The Good Man Jesus & The Scoundrel Christ?

Fairly light reading, would easily finish it in a couple of hours. Enjoyable take on the usual Jesus.