1997 J R Watson, The English Hymn.
Another of those sumptuous Oxford hardbacks that cost more than my first car. This is the definitive literary history of the hymn, written elegantly and with both authority and lightness. One of my side interests is Evangelical hymnody and the role of hymns in the formation and re-formation of evangelical theology and culture. Watts and Wesley broke moulds as they expressed evangelical experience in lyrical poetry set to music; Newton and Cowper’s Olney Hymns set profound and personal experiences alongside ordinary piety in the Olney Hymn Book; Sankey showed the evangelistic possibilities of spiritual sentiment set to music, and Frances Ridley Havergal was the lyricist of Keswick consecrational praise….and so on.
1998 Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes.
The title is enough to commend this book. It is movingly written as a theology of the desert and the mountain and the wild places, where the only solace is the trust that God is not absent. Intermingled with Lane’s reflections on accompanying his mother through terminal illness, this theologian of desert spirituality writes a powerful and at times rather scary account of the love of God that is not always, even often, cushioning presence. God’s presence, loving yet at times severe in its mercy, can be aching absence or challenging call to follow into that place where, stripped of all the other things we humans cling to, we finally sense the presence and solace of God. I can’t describe this book easily – it was disturbing and refreshing. Bought in a huge bookshop in Hanover, New Hampshire while visiting my good friends Bob and Becky – Becky sometimes visits here, so leave a comment and say we behaved while we were there Becky!
1999 Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles (International Critical Commentary)
This book was self recommending, and on the Pastoral Epistles was an obvious choice for an ordination anniversary. Alongside Phil Towner’s Commentary in the New International Commentary on the NT Series, also on Timothy and Titus, I’m not sure much more has to be said (in English) beyond these two benchmarks. By the Way, Towner’s was the volume I bought in 2006 for an ordination present to myself!
2000 Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology
I can be quite smug about the fact that I was reading Brueggemann avidly long before he became the celebrated, opinionated, brilliant scholar-writer he now is. This is the culmination of a lifetime’s provocative, imaginative, bold and creative encounter with the Old Testament text, which he applies with razor sharp intelligence to the political structures, the social oppressions, the moral scandals of the ancient – and the modern – world. American Republicans are not amongst his most devoted admirers! His book of prayers and meditations, Inscribing the Text, is one of the best indicators of the spirituality, personal, liturgical, political and theological – of this Lutheran magister of Old Testament interpretation. I’ve got a shelf full of this man’s writing – and I doubt if there are three consecutive pages anywhere that don’t make you grab your Bible and see for yourself if you agree with him – and whether or not you do, how many other writers make you grab your Bible so fast, huh?
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