Note

Opinions expressed in these resources are those of the authors and are not necessarily representative of Irish Bible Institute. 

     

Short 'book notes'

By Patrick Mitchel

These give a quick overview of the book and offer some comments. Mostly these will be recommendations of good books that we have found helpful. Sometimes fuller discussion of the book will have taken place at Patrick Mitchel’s blog www.faithinireland.wordpress. com

Most recent book notes uploaded are:
  • Larry Hurtado, God in New Testament Theology. Abingdon Press, Dec 2010
  • Keith Warrington, Discovering Jesus in the New Testament. Hendrikson, Peabody, Mass. 2009.
 Further Detail

     

Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-First Century Ireland

Abel Ugba, Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-First Century Ireland. 2009, Africa World Press.

Reviewed by Mimi Kelly

Abel Ugba’s Book Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-First Century Ireland was published in 2009 by Africa World Press as part of the Religion in Contemporary Africa Series, which aims to publish innovative research relevant to the diverse and changing religious scene in contemporary Africa. One of the principal objectives of the series is to facilitate the dissemination of research by young African scholars. The series includes research from a range of disciplines, such as: the academic study of religions, anthropology, sociology and related disciplines in the human and social sciences.

 Further Detail

     

Matters of Life and Death

Human dilemmas in the light of the Christian faith.
John Wyatt, Professor of Ethics and Perinatology, University College London

Reviewed by Elisabeth R Trimble MD

This excellently written book deals with the weighty issues of life and death that concern all of us, professional and lay person alike. It is written by a medical professor whose views are based on the highest of Christian principles, tested by the stark realities of modern medicine; it is not written from an ivory tower. It is a very informative book and will be very helpful to a wide variety of interested groups; the writing style makes it easily accessible to the layperson.

The overall theme is that recent concept-breaking changes in modern medical technology, which bring patient benefit when used wisely, have occurred during an era characterised by widespread erosion of the Judeo- Christian values, pervasive in most Western societies for generations.
 Further Detail

     

Meeting Jesus at University:

Rites of Passage and Student Evangelicals
Edward Dutton
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel

The genesis of this book comes from the author’s experience of evangelical Christians while reading theology in the University of Durham. He recounts how, on his corridor alone, at least four students had experiences like that of Naomi, a third year student. She had thought she was a Christian but, due to contact with the Christian Union, had come to realise that she was not and that she was going to ‘go to hell’. This crisis of identity led to her ‘meeting Jesus’, giving her life to him and knowing that her ‘place in heaven was secure’.  Further Detail

     

Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland

Gladys Ganiel
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel

Published within a series on the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion, this book is refreshing in a number of ways. The author, a sociolologist of religion and self-described evangelical, is Lecturer in Reconciliation Studies at the Belfast campus of the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. Familiar both academically and personally with complexities of ‘the North’ and its evangelical sub-culture, she offers a nuanced and constructive analysis of the role of evangelicalism in conflict resolution within the contested space that is Northern Ireland. Along the way, much light is shed on the changing and variegated nature of northern evangelicalism itself.
 Further Detail

     

The Consolations of Theology

Edited by Brian S. Rosner 
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel

Intentionally paralleling Alain de Botton’s popular Consolations of Philosophy, this book aims to show how theology at its best speaks powerful words of consolation into the midst of everyday life. Six authors (five from Moore Theological College, Sydney) choose a great theologian of the past and unpack, through a mixture of biography and discussion, how they continue to speak to specific human struggles, namely: anger (Lactantius); obsession (Augustine); despair (Luther); anxiety (Kierkegaard); disappointment (Bonhoeffer); and pain (Lewis).

 Further Detail

     

Everyday Theology

How to read cultural texts and interpret trends.
Edited by Kevin J Vanhoozer, Charles A Anderson, Michael J Sleasman

This is a serious, yet fun book. Serious because it sets about the important task of thinking with a Christian mind about the values and impact of everyday (Western) culture; fun because it is not often you read a theology book that engages creatively with as commonplace yet fascinating an array of subjects such as a supermarket checkout line, Eminem, megachurch architecture, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, busyness, blogging, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ‘Fantasy Funerals and Other Designer Ways of Going out in Style’.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel
 Further Detail

     

Mission and the Coming of God

Eschatology, the Trinity and Mission in the Theology of Jürgen Moltmann and Contemporary Evangelicalism
Tim Chester

As the title suggests, this is an ambitious book, engaging with intertwining themes of eschatology, the Trinity, mission, social involvement and evangelicalism through the lens of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology. It is based on the author’s doctoral thesis and is therefore packed with fairly technical discussion aimed at a theologically informed readership. The author’s ambition lies not only in engaging critically with Moltmann’s imposing body of work, but in connecting this discussion with developments in missiological thinking and practice among evangelicals and its relationship with eschatology.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel
 Further Detail

     

Embracing Grace: a gospel for all of us

Scot McKnight

The gospel, McKnight proposes, is best understood as a story. It begins with the triune God who himself is an ‘embrace’ of three persons in an eternal dynamic relationship of mutual love. It is God’s nature to create and to share his image with us (what McKnight, transliterating from the Greek, calls Eikon). Bearing God’s image, we are not individuals but Eikons, created for community with God and with one another.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel Further Detail

     

The Mission of God and Salvation Belongs to Our God

The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative and
 Salvation Belongs to Our God: Celebrating the Bible’s Central Story
Christopher J. H. Wright

Old Testament scholars tend not to write biblical theologies of mission, leaving this task to their New Testament counterparts or to missiologists.  No doubt a major reason for this is the paucity of overt missions activity on the part of ancient Israel.  But the fundamental principles for such action are all laid down in the Old Testament, so that these two books by Chris Wright, a premier evangelical Old Testament scholar, former lecturer and principal of All Nations College in Ware, England, and now the director of international ministries for the Langham Partnership, prove a most welcome addition to the literature on the topic.

Reviewed by Craig Blomberg

 Further Detail

     

Atheist Delusions:The Christian Revolution And Its Fashionable Enemies

The Christian Revolution And Its Fashionable Enemies
David Bently Hart

David Bentley Hart is an American theologian working in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. He has come to prominence in recent years based on a systematic theology of aesthetics called The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 2003) and a theodicy in response to the tragic St. Stephen's Day tsunami of 2004, The Doors of the Sea (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 2005). Adored by some sections of the Christian "blogosphere", Hart has now entered the fray against the new-atheism with his latest treatise, Atheist Delusions.
Reviewed by Kevin Hargaden Further Detail

     

A Community Called Atonement

Scot McKnight

In his introduction Scot McKnight describes the atonement as the good news of Christianity in that it explains how the gospel works. He also speaks of “the bad news, the anti-gospel as it were,” which refers to the atonement not making enough difference in the real lives of enough Christians. McKnight believes passionately that the atonement is much more than an abstract theory. A biblically authentic atonement will ‘work’ in real life, transforming lives and transforming the church. It is this conviction which explains the title of his book.
Reviewed by Ruth Burns
 Further Detail

     

Re:Mission:

Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church
Andrew Perriman

If Andrew Perriman is right in the eschatological framework of the New Testament presented in this book, an awful lot of Christians have been, and are, profoundly wrong in what they believe about the message of Jesus and his return. This is not, of course, reason enough to disagree with his arguments, but it is an indication of the radical scope of Re: Mission.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel Further Detail

     

The Reason for God:

Belief in an Age of Scepticism
Timothy Keller

In Part One Keller sets out the seven most common objections to Christianity, tackling such issues as ‘There can’t be just one true religion’ and ‘The church is responsible for so much injustice.’ In each chapter he states the case for the opposition fairly and without prejudice. I can see why my atheist friend would have liked this. He cites a wide variety of sources from Michel Foucault to Dan Brown as evidence on behalf of the objectors. His statement of the case for the objection is brief – he is after all an objector to the objection - but fair. He then goes on in each case to set out clear arguments against the objections, engaging with a diverse range of sources from Dostoevsky to C.S. Lewis.

Reviewed by Séan Mullan

 Further Detail

     

Creation or Evolution -

Do we have to choose?
Denis Alexander, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

All Christians are, by definition, creationists.’ So reads the opening line of this timely (if controversial) book by Dr Denis Alexander, a highly respected biological researcher in the field of molecular immunology- who also happens to be a committed Christian. But does the fact that we Christians are creationists force us to reject the scientific theory of evolution?
Reviewed by Claire Tuttlebee  Further Detail

     

What are we waiting for?

Christian Hope and Contemporary Culture
Stephen Holmes and Russell Rook (Eds.)

In the opening chapter (‘The Danger of Being Left Behind’) Stephen Holmes candidly outlines the editors’ thinking behind this book: namely, to offer the fruits of recent academic thinking in realm of eschatology to evangelical churches (the specific focus being Britain). These ideas are needed because they are ‘well-founded biblically and profoundly useful for Christian thinking and living’. They also offer a constructive alternative to either the popular mythology of the Left Behind series or an ‘embarrassed silence’ where virtually nothing is said about the Bible’s teaching on End Things for fear of the sterile and unproductive debates that might follow.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel
 Further Detail

     

Jesus of Nazareth

From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration
Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI)

“It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search 'for the face of the Lord' (cf. Ps 27:8). Everyone is free, then, to contradict me. I would only ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding" (pp. xxiii-xxiv). Remarkable words from a sitting pope, who signs his Foreword like the cover and title page with his birth name before his papal name.
Reviewed by Craig Blomberg
 Further Detail

     

Pauline Christology

An exegetical-theological study
Gordon D. Fee

Double honour to Gordon Fee! His magnificent and influential God’s Empowering Presence: the Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (1994) remains unparalleled as a reference book on the crucial place of the Holy Spirit in Paul’s theology and in the life of the first churches. As with Empowering Presence, so with Pauline Christology: an exegetical-theological study. The structure is broadly the same: the scale similarly ambitious; the learning equally impressive; the results as compelling and important.
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel
 Further Detail

     

Surprised by Hope

Rethinking heaven, the resurrection, and the mission of the church
Tom Wright

It is an indication of how good Surprised by Hope is that it left me not only hopeful, but spiritually refreshed. I imagine Wright can write dull prose, but there is little evidence of it here. He really does have an outstanding gift of moving between the worlds of biblical scholarship (this book is developed out of his magisterial The Resurrection of the Son of God) and ‘the thinking Christian’ - while simultaneously engaging with a sceptical secular audience.

The big questions being addressed here are ‘What actually do Christians hope for?’ and ‘What are the practical implications of this future hope in the here and now?’ Wright answers these big questions by....
Reviewed by Patrick Mitchel
 Further Detail