Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Books

Ray Ortlund on Proverbs

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In 2010, Ray Ortlund preached a series on Proverbs, and it’s now available in Kent Hughes’s Preaching the Word series:

Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. Proverbs: Wisdom That Works. Preaching the Word. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 216 pp. (28-page sample PDF)

How do you preach the book of Proverbs? Chapters 1–9 form logical units that one may preach sequentially, but the logical arrangement is hard to discern for much of the rest (especially 10:1–22:16). [Read more…] about Ray Ortlund on Proverbs

Resources on Worldview

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The book I highlighted last Friday concludes with an annotated bibliography:

Douglas S. Huffman and Philip E. Lueck. “For the Biblical Worldview on Academic Disciplines.” Pages 171–223 in Christian Contours: How a Biblical Worldview Shapes the Mind and Heart. Edited by Douglas S. Huffman. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2011.

The first part is entitled “General Reading on the Biblical Worldview”  (pp. 172–76), and Kregel gave me permission to share it here. They explain, “The books we mark as classics in their fields (‡) need not represent what we think is the best perspective. Our goal for this bibliography is to encourage interactive reflection on the biblical worldview and not merely to list books we agree with.”

Bertrand, J. Mark. (Re)Thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in this World. Wheaton: Crossway, 2007.

A seminar leader on Christian worldview, Bertrand covers worldview as the story of creation, fall, and redemption (part 1). He focuses on wisdom (part 2) and witness (part 3) as essential for intentional living, including treatments on critical reading, apologetics, and cultural contribution. [Read more…] about Resources on Worldview

Worldview

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This book came out this month:

Douglas S. Huffman, ed. Christian Contours: How a Biblical Worldview Shapes the Mind and Heart. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2011.

Huffman explains,

For several decades, the integration of faith and learning has been a major topic for Christian higher education. Robert Harris argues correctly that Christians need to think about this intentionally. But such intentionality is actually artificial, made necessary only by our sinfulness. Humans naturally integrate everything, trying to make things fit into a coherent system.

If I told you that I had breakfast on Mars this morning, you would try to fit this claim into the beliefs you already hold about the universe. Perhaps you would select one of these options:

  • (a) Huffman had breakfast at a new restaurant called “Mars”;
  • (b) Huffman had breakfast while riding a horse named “Mars”; or
  • (c) Huffman is deluded.

Your set of beliefs about the world as you know it would not allow you to believe that I actually had breakfast on the planet called Mars.

This illustrates our propensity to combine all of our knowledge and beliefs into one overarching system. [Read more…] about Worldview

Lit!

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This book comes out later this month:

Tony Reinke. Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011. 202 pp.

You know it’s good when Leland Ryken, professor of English at Wheaton College, says this about it:

There is so much to commend about this book that it is hard to know where to start. The most obvious virtue is its scope. On the subject of reading, Reinke covers every possible topic. Each topic, in turn, is broken into all of its important subpoints. With a lesser writer, this could produce a tedious book, but the opposite is true here. Reinke says just enough, but not too much. The effect is like seeing a prism turned in the light. There is never a dull moment. Once I sensed that Reinke was going to cover all the important topics, and with unfailing good sense and Christian insight, I could hardly put it down. ‘What will Reinke say about that topic?’ I found myself asking. But to add yet another twist, he has read so widely in scholarly and religious sources that I do not hesitate to call the book a triumph of scholarship. Reinke writes with an infectious and winsome enthusiasm. It is hard to imagine a reader of this book who would not catch the spark for reading after encountering Reinke’s excitement about reading and his carefully reasoned defense of it.

Here’s the table of contents: [Read more…] about Lit!