Words

Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 20:38 Written by Greg Tuesday, 11 August 2009 19:15

Peru in Focus has been my waiting-in-line book for a while.  It's slim, so it wasn't too heavy to leave in my bag at all times, in case of Peruvian lines.  It took me a while to get through it that way, but I finally did.  I found the author was extremely familiar with the details of Peruvian culture.  Everything about the book is abbreviated, or perhaps the publishers would prefer that I say "focused."  That is, in fact, probably a good way of putting it, because the brevity did not leave me unsatisfied.  It is a quick and accurate portrayal of major aspects of Peruvian life.  I could wish that the series would update the volume, but that goes for most books with a few years on them.  While listed as a tourism book, only a few pages at the end really have that feel.  The commentary is much more astute than what I have usually found in other guide books, and the design is much less aesthetically pleasing.  I recommend it to anyone looking for easy access to the contours of Peruvian society, with the caveat that it's a little dated and not visually engaging.

A book club that recently formed at Cedar Lane was kind enough to let me participate via Skype, and the first book we read was The Secret Message of Jesus.  I've been itching to read McLaren since grad. school, where Emergent Church is all the buzz but has nothing to do with the reading assignments.  So, I got my chance to see what the fuss is about.  I have very mixed feelings about the movement as a whole, but I'll confine myself to a few comments on this specific book.  McLaren is clear at the start that his way of dealing with a number of issues will be frustrating for academic students of the Bible, and he doesn't disappoint.  Yet, the disclaimer is effective, and having braced myself, I appreciated McLaren's talent as an author aiming at a particular goal.  Though popular in approach, the book is not fluff.  There is no dearth of "back to Jesus" books in print, but I would recommend this one as quickly as most to those looking for a starting point.  While the "secret" aspect seemed gimmicky to me at first, it turned out to be a fine way of representing a number of things that I found refreshing.  I was also suspicious that a book written out of the highly apologetic (in both senses of the word) posture of the Emergent Church might be rather skewed.  Again, my expectations went unmet, and happily, the book nonetheless casts a vision--in its abbreviated, oversimplified way--of Jesus and his Kingdom that Postmoderns might find both gripping and still troublesome.  That's probably the most healthy combination for all of us.

Scripture and Discernment has been on my reading list even longer.  My copy was given to me in undergrad.  This book is fascinating.  Luke Timothy Johnson writes as a Catholic, but his thesis has made a significant impact on many Protestant readers.  It is not difficult reading, but it is not necessarily easy to understand either, because the proposal would amount to a paradigm shift for many readers.  Even without adopting the ideas wholesale, I think Johnson makes an undeniably valid point, which I take as the reason so many Protestants have found the book helpful.  Though I'm sure there are many reviews of the book by now (it was published in the 80s), I haven't read any, so my opinions are strictly my own.  In summary, I take the thesis to be a clear, Protestant-friendly articulation of a very Catholic understanding of the Spirit's role in hermeneutics.  To put it plainly, the idea is that the Spirit still works in all the church in its ongoing task of discernment.  The astute reader will realize that teaching is what lays behind the difference between Catholic and Protestant views of the Bible and "inspiration."  Johnson doesn't pick that fight directly, however.  Instead, he offers biblical exegesis in favor of his proposal and makes very clear that Scripture is still the norm with which the local congregation must constantly engage in the discernment process.  He also emphasizes the role of every member of the congregation, rather than allowing the point to distill into the caricatured authority structures that Protestants so fear.  Thus, the reader is assured that setting up some kind of church authority over against the Bible is not in view, and the author is able to make the point about spiritual discernment in hermeneutics.  I'll leave it to you to read for yourself and discern what to do with it.

These last two I read in tandem.  They are a dialogue of sorts.  John Piper wrote The Future of Justification both to and about N. T. Wright, and Wright responded with Justification.  Though I'm sure that they didn't write thinking quite in terms of competition--both are pretty kind-spirited about their disagreement--I think there is a clear winner.  I have deeply appreciated John Piper for his contributions to missiology and for his preaching.  He is a leading evangelical spokesperson for good reason.  But he is out of his depth in this discussion, to be blunt.  The two books are a wonderful contribution to the literature dealing with the so-called New Perspective, because Piper represents the traditional view every bit as much as he intends to do, which allows Wright the opportunity to articulate his views once more, in the context of Piper's concerns.  It is right that the church's understanding of justification (and its relation to the gospel) is of central importance, and so I'm thankful that Piper afforded the church another opportunity to hear the much-needed correctives of recent scholarship, not least that of N. T. Wright.  If that's not provocative enough, you probably wouldn't want to read these books anyway.