Review of PERSPECTIVES ON ETERNAL SECURITY Edited by Kirk MacGregor &Kevaugn Mattis

Photo Credit: Wipf and Stock

Whether or not a believer in Jesus can lose the salvation given to them has been a controversial topic for hundreds of years. There are many passages of Scripture that seem to speak clearly to the affirmation of eternal security, while other passages seem to indicate that apostasy, or falling away, is possible. It can be very confusing, and it has caused many divisions in church history. For the record, I personally believe that eternal life is truly eternal in that once it is given, it cannot be lost. But I was interested in reading other thoughts on the subject.

PERSPECTIVES ON ETERNAL SECURITY is a collection of essays on the topic of eternal security edited by Kirk R. MacGregor and Kevaughn Mattis. The essays, all affirming the eternal security of salvation, look at some of the key passages of the Bible that speak to the reality of eternal security. The arguments are compelling and illuminating. Eternal security as taught in the Gospel of John plays very prominently in the essays. The topic is also looked at from the angle of philosophical theology, and there's even an exploration of John Calvin's formulation of eternal security in the perseverance of the saints.

While the essays included argue the reality of eternal security well, I wish that the essays would have focused more on dealing with the passages of Scripture that seem to point in the opposite direction. However, the book is still a great resource for those wanting to know more about why so many affirm eternal security.

I received this book for free for review from Wipf & Stock

Ultimate Reality Through the Life of Jesus: My Review of KING'sCROSS by Timothy Keller

Photo Credit: Dutton Books

C.S. Lewis had a way of communicating some of the most foundational aspects of faith in Jesus in ways that were fresh, illuminating, and clearly connected to the real world Christ followers live in day in and day out. Lewis was an important thinker and writer, and though he's not with us, he's inspired countless authors. Timothy Keller, the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, is one such author who continues to be a voice like Lewis to illuminate the important things of faith and show how incredibly relevant Christianity is to our lives. But perhaps “relevant” isn't the right word to use. The idea of Christianity being relevant often communicates the idea that we have to make Christianity fit with our lives, as if it isn't naturally something that concerns our lives. We often come to Christianity, trying to make sense of it according to our uniquely individual lives. But according to Keller in his book KING'S CROSS, we make sense of the world and our individual lives by looking at the life of Jesus. It's us and our lives that need to be made to conform to “ultimate reality” as found in Christianity.

In KING'S CROSS Keller takes us on a breathtaking journey through the Gospel of Mark and shows how the story of Jesus makes sense of our world. Because God created the world, it only makes sense that the world's story would only make sense in light of the story of Jesus. From the ultimate reality as a dance of the three persons of the trinity to Jesus' claim to divinity in forgiving sins to the beginning of all sad things becoming untrue with the resurrection of Jesus, Keller explores some of the key moments Mark recorded in the life of Jesus. KING'S CROSS brilliantly communicates our desperate need for God's forgiveness and redemption and shows how the death of Jesus truly makes sense as the necessary path for Jesus to take in reconciling us to God. Keller does a stellar job at exposing our inner motivations and revealing Jesus as the cure to our self-centeredness.

I love how Timothy Keller seems to have his heart's affections drawn completely toward Jesus and that passion bleeds through the pages. Keller's writing makes much of Jesus, and any reading of Keller should inspire greater love for Jesus and a greater hunger for communicating with God through the Bible.

I received this book for free for review from Dutton Books

My Review of TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH by Thom Rainer & Ed Stetzer

How does your church measure success? For many churches, success is measured by the attendance numbers on Sunday mornings or attendance at any of the church's many programs. But this isn't a great standard of measurement because the Bible calls churches to make disciples, and attendance at a program or a worship service doesn't automatically mean that those in attendance are disciples. You can fill up a whole room full of people in a church sanctuary, and all of them could be as far away from Jesus as possible. In this case, attendance can hide the spiritual deadness of the members of the church.

Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer suggest a different way of measuring church success in their book TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH. They picture measuring success in a church as a scorecard. For churches that measure success by the number of people participating in its programs, Stetzer and Rainer suggest a new scorecard. Using the Bible as their foundation, they see the church as the context in which people experience God-initiated transformation. In fact, the church is meant to be a community of people who are being transformed by their relationship with Jesus.

In true Stetzer and Rainer style, TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH gives statistics and many examples of churches that are transformational. The authors cover important elements of a transformational church, such as leadership, dependence on prayer, an environment of worship, and community. They offer hope of being a church that is measured by changed lives.

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHURCH says much that should be common sense by now, but it's still important. It covers much of the great ideas Stetzer and Rainer have written about in the past. Ultimately, the book is a call to be the church God had in mind.

I received this book for free from Broadman and Holman through NetGalley

Created For Community: A Review of COMMUNITY by Brad House

We were created for community. The triune God who is essentially community created humanity in his image to live in and grow in community. Realizing this, many churches promote small groups for their members to be intentional about providing a context for genuine Christian community. Small groups are a great idea, but how do you do it, and do it effectively? What does the ideal community look like? Brad House paints a picture of a transformational concept of community in his aptly titled book COMMUNITY.

In COMMUNITY House reveals that we're called to live in community with other believers not primarily as a way to keep members connected to a church, but because it is a response to the incredible grace that God poured out on us collectively as the body of Christ. House begins to present a model of community groups that takes the spiritual journey of its members very seriously. He proposes that community groups serve the three purposes of discipleship, pastoral care, and mission. In this way, House is essentially describing small churches within a larger church. I especially like the idea of pastoral care being provided by one's small group.

COMMUNITY suggests ways for community groups to impact whole neighborhoods and to be incarnational within the community's context. Community groups become a place for people to grow in their faith in Jesus, be taken care of, and carry the grace of Jesus to the world. Because community is something all people strive for, whether they believe in Jesus or not, House's strategy for community groups becomes an attractive picture of what being a part of the tribe of Jesus is like.

COMMUNITY is a great resource for churches wanting to do small groups effectively and transformationally. The examples from Mars Hill church throughout give hope and insight on how to put the book's ideas into practice.

I received this book for free for review from Crossway Books through NetGalley

Writing & Living Authentically: A Review of WORDSMITHY by Douglas Wilson

Photo Credit: Canon Press

The key to a great writing life is living a life that's worth writing about. This is one of the many reminders about the writing life that Douglas Wilson gives in his short and insightful book WORDSMITHY. There is an inherent temptation for some writers to live almost exclusively inside your own imagination. After all, it's pretty interesting up there. But genuine art has to connect with real life. It's our real-life experiences that inform the many creative ideas for our writing. So Douglas Wilson calls writers to live an authentic life, learn from it, and let it inspire story ideas.

Wilson offers a total of seven practical and helpful tips for the writing life …
1. Know something about the world
2. Read
3. Read mechanical helps
4. Stretch before your routines
5. Be at peace with being lousy for a while
6. Learn other languages
7. Keep a commonplace book

After a brief introduction of the seven tips in the introduction, Wilson begins to unpack each of the tips by giving us seven sub-tips. Knowing something about the world is about living the authentic life. Wilson echoes what perhaps the world's most well-known writer Stephen King says about the writing life in telling us to read a lot. In fact, Wilson encourages us to read a wide variety of books because even the things that we don't remember shape us and inform our personal writing style. Wilson also echoes King in telling us to write a lot. The more a writer writes, the better he gets.

WORDSMITHY is about growing and improving as a writer. Wilson writes with a very personable style as one who clearly practices what he's suggesting. WORDSMITHY is a short, but incredibly helpful guide to becoming a better writer.

I received this book for free from Canon Press

My Review of THE ADOLESCENT JOURNEY by Amy Jacober

David Kinnaman exposed the widespread inadequacy of many church youth ministries in his book YOU LOST ME. His research revealed that youth ministries struggle to develop teenagers into adults who know how to integrate their whole lives with their faith in Christ. Because of this, teens often become young adults who see their faith and church involvement as irrelevant to their lives. Youth ministries are often focused on being relevant and program-heavy, while youth pastors are rarely encouraged to take issues of practical theology seriously enough. Having been a youth pastor as well as an outside observer, it seems like church youth ministries are often focused on keeping teens entertained and kept out of trouble, while giving all the standard “Christian” rules to live by (i.e. don't cuss, don't drink, don't have premarital sex, and don't hang out with those who do). While some teens find a transformational relationship with Jesus during their stent in youth ministry, we've all seen far too many students graduate from the church at the same time they graduate from high school.

In her book THE ADOLESCENT JOURNEY, Amy Jacober elaborates on this current state of youth ministry and offers hope and encouragement for a better way. Specifically, Jacober reminds youth ministers that their students are on a journey of individuation and finding their identity. They can find that identity in Christ, or they can find it unsatisfyingly in the world. Youth ministry is about the ministry of reconciliation that God has called all believers to. It's about joining God in his reconciliatory work in students' lives.

Jacober walks us through some important findings in teen psychological development, the role of culture in identity formation, as well as issues in practical theology. She makes a great case for the importance of the Christian community in identity formation.

THE ADOLESCENT JOURNEY is about developing teens into young adults who have their identity clearly formed in Christ and make a transformational impact on the world.

I received this book for free for review from Intervarsity Press

Why Does God Allow So Much Evil: My Thoughts on GOD, WHY THIS EVIL? byBruce Little

Any time spent observing our world quickly reveals that much evil takes place in our world, and much of it seems pointless. The question is, why does God allow all this evil? For several hundred years, many people have relied on something called the greater good theodicy. A theodicy is an explanation of why God allows evil. The greater good theodicy states that God only allows an evil to occur if he can bring about a greater good from the evil. Under this theodicy, every act of evil serves a purpose in the sovereign plan of God. The greater good theodicy is meant to be comforting to people as they try to find the greater good for which God allowed any given evil to occur in their life or the life of someone they love. However, if God only allows an act of evil to occur to bring about a greater good, then logically the evil act itself was necessary in order to bring about the greater good. Unless God could have brought about the greater good without the evil act occurring and just doesn't, the greater good theodicy unintentionally makes God dependent upon evil in order to bring about something good. No orthodox Christian believes that God needs evil in order to bring about good. So the traditional greater good theodicy fails to account for why God would allow evil.

This is the point that Bruce Little makes in his book GOD, WHY THIS EVIL? Little explores the different formulations of the greater good theodicy throughout history and exposes the inherent weaknesses in each of them. He makes the compelling case that the greater good theodicy actually does more harm than good in explaining why God allows evil. For example, if God allows an evil act in order to bring about a greater good, then by trying to stop the evil act, are we not trying to impede a greater good that God is trying to bring about? And isn't God's command to actively fight evil a command to actually work against what God is trying to accomplish through the evil?

After exposing the weaknesses of the greater good theodicy, Little suggests a new theodicy to describe why God allows evil. Little calls this the Creation Order Theodicy. Little stands firm in the camp of libertarian freedom, to which I agree with him. Within the Creation Order Theodicy, man is free, but in his freedom he introduces evil into the world and commits evil acts. According to Little, God allows these evil acts not primarily so he can use them to bring about a greater good, but because he is honoring man's free will to choose evil acts. Of course, God does sometimes use evil to bring about something good. However, it's the attribution of it being a “greater” good that is the problem. How is that measured? If God only allows an evil act to occur that he can bring about a greater good from, what does that say about God's power and character? If the good is only greater as a result of the evil, then isn't the evil act both necessary and in some way good because it's necessary to bring about a greater good? If evil is necessary for good, then this logically makes God the author of evil. Could the all-powerful and sovereign God not bring about a “greater” good without the use of an evil act? It seems quite clear that he could. So the greater good theodicy doesn't give us a good or even biblical answer for why God allows evil.

The Creation Order Theodicy states that God created the world with certain parameters or boundaries, so that man is free to the extent that he doesn't impede what God is ultimately trying to accomplish in human history. In other words, God planned out the world in such a way that he knows exactly where he wants the story to end up, but he allows humanity to have a significant level of freedom to make genuine choices, including evil choices, and the parameters act as boundaries in which God sovereignly and infallibly protects his divine plan. So God can allow the horrible evil of Herod slaughtering the innocents of Bethlehem because that is Herod's choice, but he won't allow Jesus to be there among the innocents because Jesus must live to be the savior of the world. Obviously, this isn't much more comforting than the greater good theodicy because it means that God allows an evil, but for no purpose whatsoever other than protecting one man's freedom to choose. It should be noted that God hated the slaughter of the innocents more than us. But that causes us to ask why he didn't stop it. He obviously was active in protecting Jesus, but why not the other little boys?

The Creation Order Theodicy has its flaws, but I land squarely with Little on the negative implications of relying on the greater good theodicy. The Creation Order Theodicy, I think, is a step in the right direction, but it still leaves us with God allowing evil with no good explanation of why. Little believes that this world, from beginning to finish, is the “best possible world” because God only does his best. However, if this world with all of its history of disgusting and alarming levels of evil is the best possible world, then it means that God was compelled to make the broken world we live in. He had no choice otherwise. Little appeals to a theological concept called middle knowledge, which attributes to God a deliberation of all the actions every single potential person would take under any set of circumstances and taking this into account to select the world history he will actualize. Though there have been many compelling cases for middle knowledge, I'm not sold on the evidence that God actually possesses this. One of the assumptions Little rests on, along with middle knowledge, is that God could not create a world of genuinely free creatures that at least one person didn't choose to do evil. But I think God who is all-wise was perfectly capable of creating a world of free creatures that would not choose evil. But that's not the world God created, which leaves us with more questions. Why did God create a world where evil was possible?

People often turn to Romans 8:28 in support of the greater good theodicy, but Little rightly points out that this only accounts for the evil actions being worked out for good for Christians. It doesn't account for evil across the whole human spectrum.

I think Little does a great job of showing the inadequacy of greater good theodicies, and he makes an important contribution with his Creation Order Theodicy. When it comes to why God allows evil, I think God has structured the universe in such a way that free beings, demons and humans, make free choices that have serious negative effects in our world. God promises that someday the evil will be over. Until then, the Scriptures frequently call upon God's people to actively stand against evil.

That leaves us with just as important of a question as why God allows so much evil? Why do we allow so much evil?

GOD, WHY THIS EVIL? is an important book to explore the difficult questions surrounding the existence of evil in our world.

I received this book for free for review from Hamilton Books