One of my wife’s best friends calls this her favorite book on marriage:
Elisabeth D. Dodds. Marriage to a Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. Laurel, MN: Audubon, 2003. [Read more…] about The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards
I recently finished reading about 3,200 letters that C. S. Lewis wrote:
C. S. Lewis. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. Edited by Walter Hooper. 3 vols. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004–2007. 4,064 pp.
Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905–1931 (1072 pp.)
Volume 2: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931–1949 (1152 pp.)
Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963 (1840 pp.)
Highly recommended. What a delightful, insightful man. [Read more…] about The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis
After I heard Al Mohler interview Grant Wacker about his new book, I added it to my reading queue:
Grant Wacker. America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
I’m glad I read it. [Read more…] about America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation
Three Baptist historians recently teamed up to write a textbook on Baptist history:
Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn, and Michael A. G. Haykin. The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2015. 46-page PDF sample.
In the final chapter they unpack five Baptist distinctives:
Here’s a six-minute interview with the authors:
See also Jason Duesing’s review.
Logic on Fire is a 100-minute documentary on “The Doctor,” David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. 
Here’s a 4-minute preview:
People the documentary interviews include Christopher Catherwood, Elizabeth Catherwood, Jonathan Catherwood, Kevin DeYoung, Ligon Duncan, Sinclair Ferguson, John MacArthur, Iain Murray, R. C. Sproul, and Justin Taylor.
It also comes with over 4.5 hours of special features and a 128-page book. And you can watch some extra interview footage here.
My wife and I enjoyed watching the documentary. I read Carl Trueman’s review after I watched the documentary, and I agree with Carl.
Joe Tyrpak recently produced an edifying 57-minute documentary called The Life of David Brainerd. It introduces the most influential book on missions in modern history—the most popular book authored by American’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Joe also wrote a corresponding 44-page devotional. (If you order the DVD and devotional together, you save $2.)
Joe and I are close friends and accountability partners. He pastors Tri-County Bible Church in Madison, Ohio, and he is currently finishing his Doctor of Ministry in Applied Theology at Southern Seminary. His DMin thesis is on David Brainerd.
Joe’s a great guy, and his documentary is well done. My family enjoyed watching it together.
Joe did his homework. The people he interviewed include Ken Minkema and Doug Sweeney, both scholars on Jonathan Edwards. (He briefly interviewed me as well regarding spirituality, but the Edwards scholars are particularly helpful.)
Historian Nathan Finn reviewed the documentary very positively for the Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS.
Update on 8/18/2015: Here’s a trailer (3:19 min.):
“Calvin’s personal library has been estimated at three hundred to three hundred fifty volumes; after his death, his heirs sold the majority of the books to Geneva’s magistrates for inclusion in the library of the Academy.”
—Scott M. Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 222.
When I read that, I recalled how I concluded a review article in 2006: [Read more…] about John Calvin Had 300 Books in His Personal Library
The title of this book’s final chapter is “Four Criticisms”:
Dane C. Ortlund. Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God. Theologians on the Christian Life. Wheaton: Crossway, 2014.
Ortlund qualifies,
Jonathan Edwards is way out ahead of me, and probably you, both in living and in theologizing on the Christian life. But the student, standing on the teacher’s shoulders, may on occasion glimpse something the teacher doesn’t. Cautiously, we proceed. (p. 178)
Ortlund unpacks four criticisms (my paraphrases): [Read more…] about A Model of How to Critique a Theological Giant: Ortlund on Edwards