Category: Books

I hadn’t really intended to let a few reflections on previously bought books grow into a series – but I now find it personally intriguing trying to trace some of my footprints through books bought years ago because they were significant at the time – and now might not be, or might still be. Apologies for what is therefore becoming self-indulgence!

1994 Joel Green (ed) Jesus of Nazareth Lord and Christ.

This is the sixtieth birthday collection of essays in honour of Howard Marshall. Thirty essays, and only one by a woman – Ruth Edwards, herself a careful, unassuming but deeply learned New Testament scholar, and dedicated Episcopal priest. But there are some important essays here – some of them heavy going. Such essays date quite quickly, and some of them have already been overtaken by scholarship, sometimes by the essay writer’s own developing thought. But most of Howard’s main areas of biblical interest (which are remarkably wide) are represented. I value the book for reasons of personal friendship, and because I think Howard Marshall’s contribution to New Testament scholarship and to Evangelical credibility in the academy, is in the same tradition, and on the same scale, as his mentor F. F. Bruce.

1995 S. M. Friedman, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Elie Wiesel: You are My Witnesses.

My view of the world, of faith, and of how faith and tragedy combine in the deep moments of personal and moral life, is long indebted to these two Jewish thinkers. Heschel (is that not a wonderful face on the book cover?) was a remarkable thinker, whose work on the prophets and the pathos of God represents some of the most profound theology and humane reflection I have ever read. It deeply influenced Moltmann. Elie Wiesel (pictured below) is a holocaust survivor whose writing is dedicated to ensuring that the world never forgets the story of mechanised evil and genocidal hatred that befell central Europe. Wiesel’s two volume autobiorgaphy, All Rivers Run to the Sea, and The Sea is Never Full, I read while on holiday in Yorkshire – they are a remarkable account of a human life lived in the shadow of great evil, and refusing to allow his humanity to be eclipsed by the memories of such moral horror.

Friedman’s book examines the life values of these two Jewish thinkers, one a devout philosopher, the other an agnostic novelist, both of them men whose writing glows with morally generated power. Reading this I was conscious of two people, whose life experience and intellectual legacies require those of us who are Christians to read them humbly, and thank God for their capacity to construe and construct a worldview lacking in that embittered hostility that inevitably ignites enmity. They represent the ethical genius of Judaism. They are the obvious riposte to those who say religion per se is inevitably the source of violence, hatred and enmity. As a book to commemorate my ordination to Christian ministry, it compelled searching reflection then, as now, on the relationship between God’s ancient people, and the Church of Jesus Christ, within the family of faith that traces its genealogy to Abraham. Shalom.

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.

The book I bought in 1990, to commemorate my ordination was, Paul Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God. This wasn’t the first of Paul’s books I bought, (it was – and remains, the dearest!), and it persuaded me that there is theological congruence in the notion of a God who suffers creatively, freely and redemptively. Not the easiest book – but how could it be with a subject which pierces to the core realities and mysteries of tragic yet creative suffering, faces honestly the bliss and anguish of human existence and the divine-human relationship, and does so by sweeping critically and constrcutively across a broad range of Christian theological proposals.

Inside my copy is a letter from someone whose life partner had died, tragically young, and had left a family still with much of its growing up to do. It is a note of gratitude to me, but more significantly the words cannot obscure the questions, the anger, the existential resentment that for one bewildered family, the defining relationship of life was ended. This is a book of rigorous sytematic and philosophical theology, but written by a theologian alert to the pastoral relevance of our deepest thinking about God, and who refused then, as now, to minimise questions for the sake of convenient answers. One reviewer pointed out how unfortunate that there was a second D in the surname – Fides = faith, which is what Paul’s life has been about, to the great enrichment of all of us.

This book helped me in the privacy of the study, to pray to a God who freely chooses to suffer in the creative, redemptive love that is divine, who became flesh and dwelt amongst us, and whose Being is an eternal communion and interchange of Love, giving, creating, sharing the Divine life, in the great lived out narrative of God’s eternal purpose. And it did so by making me think – hard – honestly – deeply, about the God I believe in.

The book I’ve just finished reading, The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne, has an essay in it by Fiddes which continues his reflection on what it might mean for God to freely create those who, in order to grow into divinely intended freedom of love and fullness, chooses to forego absolute control over ultimate outcomes. The work of love is that the Triune God will eternally, persistently, patiently, redemptively work, with creative passion and vulnerable self-giving, till all creation sings, in a performance that will never end and therefore need no final encore!

1986  Adrian Hastings, History of English Christianity, 1920-1985. A terrific survey of English church history in the volatile and challenging 20th Century. Now revised and updated to 2000, but I haven’t bothered replacing my first edition.

1987  Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 2 Vols. The best history of the Victorian Church by the best church historian I’ve ever read. Owen Chadwick exemplifies careful, witty and weighty judgement. His comment on Spurgeon’s spiritual confidence, ‘He approached the burning bush with cheerful aplomb’. Superb!

1988  Philip Toynbee, End of a Journey. This was the second volume of Toynbee’s Journal. The first, Part of a Journey, I read while on a caravan holiday in 1977! This volume is movingly written against the backdrop of his final illness, and his late-in-life journey to God. He is a crabbit saint, at times moody, at other times surprisingly reconciled to his own mortality, and most of the time on speaking terms with God.

1989 Gordon Rupp, Religion in England, 1688-1791. Vintage Rupp. He writes about the decades before the Evangelical Revival with far more historical reliability than a lot of stuff up till then. And his account of the Evangelical Revival itself is nuanced, fair and satisfying. This is one of those books that is also beautifully produced by Oxford – a bibliophile’s must have. And it aint cheap – but quality shows. You show me your BMW and I’ll show you my Rupp!

1985 – J A T Robinson, The Priority of John.

Bishop John Robinson was infamously famous for his book ‘Honest to God’. It was the book John MacQuarrie described as the result of taking three good German beers (Bonhoeffer, Bultmann and Tillich) and creating a lot of froth! That wasn’t fair, and it probably wasn’t MacQuarrie’s finest scholarly hour, but it is a brilliant sideswipe. When a book of theology becomes a bestseller, though, academic theologians need to pay attention, listen, and hear the sound of people’s longing, rather than rush into print scoffing at those who have touched the nerve of a public MacQuarrie could never have hoped to reach with such effectiveness.

Anyway, The Priority of John represents John Robinson’s legacy – he died before it was published, and did the final writing while suffering at the later stages of cancer. They were to be the prestigious Bampton Lectures, but were never delivered. The book is way out on a limb, arguing not only for the substantial historicity of John, but that John was the Gospel written first. Now I wasn’t persuaded by his arguments, but I was tempted to be, by the sheer ingenuity, passionate exposition, and oh so obvious love for this wonderful Gospel story as told by John the Evangelist and interpreted by John (Robinson). The book is a gem. I bought it hardback – it cost £19.50 – (Amazon have it ranging from £40 to £151!!). I read it slowly through Lent 1986 and appreciated the reverent scholarship of one who spoke deeply about the Passion of Jesus. All the more poignant that some of this writing was done in the full knowledge of his own terminal illness.

Here’s a very small extract which shows why this Bishop was also a trusted pastor to many. Commenting on Matthew 26.53 where Jesus says he could appeal to the Father to send 12 legions of angels to rescue him, Robinson observes:   

"There is no suggestion he could lay them on because he was God. He is a man of power because he is a man of prayer. But because he is a man of prayer, he knows that it is not the Faither’s will to win that way."

A good book to commemorate the vocational centre of ministry, which is abour prayerful obedience rather than charismatic power.

There is neither rhyme nor reason to the books I’ve bought myself around my ordination date. Looks like it was whatever volume I fancied at the time or whatever area I was interested in, or preaching on….

1981 – J Thompson, Jeremiah, (NICOT)

This book proved to be a solid, unexciting and traditionally conservative treatment of Jeremiah, whose passion, anguish, anger and sheer persistent in your face protests against political and religious stupidity, needs a much more imaginative and passionate commentator. Thompson was concerned about history and historicity, and sure his commentary is full of important detail – but the prophet’s message isn’t in the details. It’s in his outrage and courage, in his strangeness and stridency, in the tension between theological vision and political realities. Brueggemann and Fretheim (along with Patrick Miller in the New Interpreter’s Bible), quarry the theological depths and measure the seismic disturbances triggered by Jeremiah’s prophecy – they are now my preferred guides in this ‘dark valley’ of a book.

1982 Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church

Long before Anglicans ordained women into ministry, people like Evelyn Underhill exemplified pastoral care as spiritual direction. This wise, likeable, well-off middle class scholar of mysticism was the real thing. This book introduces various key figures in Christian spirituality – and it’s written by one who was herself a key influence in 20th Century spirituality. Her book, Mysticism, and the later volume Worship, are now classics in their field. But her best writing is in her retreat addresses. The School of Charity is a beautifully written meditation on the Apostle’s Creed, that once ‘restored my soul’.

1983 Gordon Rupp, The Righteousness of God

I won a prize with an essay on Luther in 1984! It was entitled, "Luther’s Tower Experience; A Theological Evolution?" I’ve still got the laboriously type-written copy in the days before computer word documents made every essay look like publisher’s copy. I remember being captivated by Rupp’s account of Luther’s theological discoveries through his work as Bible expositor. It created an interest in Luther and Reformation spirituality that lasts to this day

1984 F F Bruce, Galatians (New International Commentary on the Greek NT)

No Evangelical biblical scholar did more to instil respect and gain a hearing for Evangelical biblical scholarship than Frederick Fyvie Bruce. From a north east Scotland Christian Brethren background, and a grounding in classics, he became a universally esteemed NT scholar, eventually Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism at Manchester. Bruce’s work was characterised by sober judgement, researched historical detail documented and fairly interpreted, and by an underlying faith commitment that ensured his tone was respectful of the text and aware of its spiritual significance. This commentary, along with his book Paul. Apostle of the Heart Set Free, and his classic commentary on Hebrews, are now dated, but are still revered and faithfully visited presences on my shelf.

For an affectionate pen portrait of this attractive Christian scholar, written by David Clines, also Brethren, one time student under Bruce, now himself a global class OT scholar, see Clines’ tribute here. Any of you readers whose background is in the Bretheren should read this delightful but positive account of Brethren culture, its ‘Bible conferences’, ‘meetings’ and the dangers of ‘mixing’ with the world!

Below are the titles of the books I bought to mark my ordination date, August 30, years 1976-1980. And some of the reasons I bought them.

1976, W D Davies, Setting of the Sermon on the Mount.

I’ve always taken an interest in the critical appropriation and existential demands of the Sermon on the Mount, and Davies’ massive study set the benchmark for exploring the background of the Sermon in 1st century Palestine. He went on to write with D C Allison the second best commentary on Matthew,[ in the International Critical Commentary (3 vols)] – I agree with Sean, Luz on Matthew is a masterpiece – also three volumes, but I don’t know a commentary like it.

1977, Leslie Allen, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, (NICOT)

This volume includes Allen’s take on Jonah as a short story, presenting a deeply ironical reading,  replete with theological insight. Some conservative minded folk took umbrage at his unconcern about historicity in Jonah. It’s still my preferred commentary on these books because it takes God seriously, and it allows the genre of this little masterpiece to fly beneath our self-righteous radars and realise that God’s mercy, and God’s ideas are bigger than ours – mercifully. I used the volume in 1978 when I took a week’s Bible Studies at WEC Kilcreggan on Mission and the Love of God.

1978, Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, SPCK.

I still remember reading this book chapter by chapter, aware that I was reading theological construction and reflection of a high order. Newbigin’s later stature as a leading missiologist and interpreter of the Gospel in a pluralist society, for me begins with this book. Details here and there are dated – but this is still a key text in understanding the why as well as the how of the church’s mission as God’s mission.

1979, C E B Cranfield, Romans, Volume 2, ICC.

I bought the first volume of Cranfield’s Romans, volume 1 in mint condition for 10 pence (That was 1/60th of its cover price then), in a University book-sale in 1976 – a review copy some blessed liberal didn’t want to keep. I say blessed because the book blessed me, and I’ve blessed the person who donated it, many a time. So in 1979 there was no discussion – the book to buy was the just released volume 2. Cranfield pre-dated the New Perspective on Paul, and so is now dated – but it remains a thorough, balanced, exegetical commentary in the classic enlightened Reformed tradition. The two volumes will be on my shortest short list of books to keep when life means downsizing my library.

1980, R E O White, Christian Ethics, Volume Two. Changing Continuities.

Again a second volume. The first was biblical, this second volume historical. They’ve since been combined in a chunky softback. They are dated now of course – but the attraction for me was that the books were based on lecture notes, and reading them I could hear the loved voice of a stern, authoritative teacher who had done his own thinking. Buying this book was a way of paying tribute to a former Principal of the College, one who’s influence went beyond what he taught.