1991 John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel.
Along with the likes of C. H. Dodd, John Robinson, Stephen Smalley and Raymond Brown, this massive monograph by Ashton holds its own on my shelves as an elegant and encylopeadic account of how John’s Gospel has been understood , especially through the lens of Bultmann. Ashton brilliantly commented that Bultmann asks all the right questions and usually gets all the wrong answers. But another master of Johannine scholarship, B. F. Wescott famously said that he would give a First Class Honours to a student who could write a first class examination paper which asks the right questions. This was the summer read the year that my own book on Evangelical Spirituality was published. Ashton on John provided a different scholarly landscape (and refreshing relief) from the history of Evangelicalism, biography and desk-loads of primary Evangelical literary outpourings.
1992 David Bosch, Transforming Mission.
This is one of the great Christian books of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Along with Newbigin, Bosch put missiology right up the theological agenda for many of us. I read this book throughout Advent and preached on Christmas and Mission for four Sundays. I still have the sermons, and I can still remember the mind expanding scale of this marvellous book. The pencil marks and comments are like footprints of a long satisfying journey. As a minister, preacher and Christian trying to get a sense of the scale of the Gospel / culture / church equation, this book provided an utterly dependable orientation.
1993 Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology.
After I bought this I was sent a review copy! So a pal got a freebie. There’s nothing else like this volume. For Scottish Christians interested in our own wee (but rich and influential) cluster of Christian traditions, this volume is all but indispensable. Now out of print – a casualty of a great Scottish Publisher, T&T Clark, being absorbed and assimilated by the globalising BORG – it can only be bought second-hand usually requiring a mini-mortgage. There’s hardly a week goes by but I have this book open. There are some gaps, and some of the articles reflect the views, even prejudices of the writers, but it’s a five star book nevertheless.
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