Blurbology

The old insult obscurum per obscurius means trying to explain one obscure thing by way of something even more obscure. Surely a study of the Trinity in the book of Revelation runs this risk, we might fear. But instead, Brandon Smith surprises us with clarity and calmness, a firm grasp of the main lines of Biblical truth and a compelling vision of the big picture of Christian doctrine. Highly recommended as an exercise in reading Scripture with classic doctrinal categories for the purpose of knowing God.

Irrevocable is a concise statement of the case for why Christian theology, in its Trinitarianism most of all, should “orbit the unspoken Tetragrammaton.” Soulen’s project has always been stimulating and provocative, but here he has refined and reformulated his arguments to make them more incisive, more constructive, and more immediately useful for theologians from many traditions. This book has helped me to theologize more faithfully, and even to read the Bible more accurately.

In content, this book is a profound study of the triune God and the incarnate Son. But in form and method, it’s a master class in how to read the Bible directly and accurately, aided by classic, doctrinal wisdom. Introducing readers to clear rules and proven tools, Jamieson and Wittman put theology where it belongs: in service of knowing God through his word. Biblical Reasoning is a triumph, a gift given to equip the saints for the work of interpretation.

This wonderfully helpful book shows how to take up the Bible’s passionate presentation of Jesus without needing to let go of the traditional, high doctrine of God. Patiently addressing recent worries while carefully engaging the full witness of Scripture, Duby reunites theological goods that have too often been sundered from each other.

This book is exactly what we have been needing: an even-handed introduction to Trinitarianism that displays the conceptual foundations, building up the doctrine precept on precept, in proper sequence. By organizing the material conceptually rather than historically, Butner frees himself to call on an exceptionally wide range of witnesses from all eras of theological history and all corners of the theological world. Trinitarian Dogmatics resources contemporary readers with much-needed clarity, breadth, and depth.

We need all kinds of invitations to theology, and in this book Kent Eilers extends a unique kind of welcome. Come in here, he beckons: unpack your bags, look around, and make yourself at home in the household of theological reading.

This is it: the ideal set of Summa selections for most classrooms, as well as for readers who wish they could take a class on Thomas Aquinas with a professor capable of paraphrasing the angelic doctor, explaining and illustrating his thought, while pointing to further readings both medieval and modern.

These chapters exhibit a Reformed theological self-understanding amply catholic enough for Christians of many confessions and traditions to find themselves implicated and interested in. Michael Allen asserts the definite orientation of his overall systematic project more clearly here than in any of his previous works.

The simple phrase “the Nicene Faith” is a helpful way of pointing to the doctrinal core of Christian belief. Yet the phrase condenses so much profound analysis, simplifies so many interpretive complexities, and summarizes so much historical controversy, that it requires some unpacking. Irving’s book is the perfect guide to the depths beneath the motto.

Books about theological interpretation often fail to engage the material content of the Christian doctrine of God; books on the doctrine of God sometimes fail to reflect on their own hermeneutical method, or to do actual exegesis. Scott Swain has put together the perfect combination here. This highly readable volume leads readers into Scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity simultaneously. It is deeply informed, cogently argued, and elegantly written.

Tseng accomplishes much in this little volume: He provides not only a brief overview of Barth’s theology, but also an account of its ongoing global significance, not least in Asia. Above all, Tseng is a confident interpreter who carries out a lively, constructive, evangelical engagement with Barth’s theology at a fundamental level.

Webster wrote very carefully, with the result that he is easy to quote but hard to paraphrase. In this excellent account of his theology, Jordan Senner has done the hard work of clarifying Webster’s crucial moves and key claims by way of alternative terms and different categories. Senner’s outlook is comprehensive and his judgments are keen. The result is an uncommonly helpful presentation of Webster’s thought, ideal for students and stimulating for contemporary theology.

The Paradox of Sonship illuminates the central Christological conundrum of Hebrews by reading the book in dialogue with classical theological categories. Conventional academic practice has long warned against allowing doctrine and exegesis to make such close contact, but here Jamieson demonstrates the sweeping benefits of reuniting them. The drama, the tension, and even the sheer literary suspense of Hebrews come to life in dialogue with Nicene and Chalcedonian categories. I hope to see many more books that follow the path opened up here.

In these essays, Oliver Crisp moves several steps deeper into the soteriological core of Christian doctrine. Always taking his bearings from the doctrines of God and Christ, he engages in free discussion with a wide range of classic and contemporary theological positions, clarifying not only his own views but those of his dialogue partners.

Resourceful is the word for this primer on the doctrine of God. Renihan has mastered a precious bibliography of Protestant theological sources, drawing especially on works originally written in English, and communicates their essential message through paraphrase, synthesis, summary, and judicious quotation. It is a procedure that works especially well for the foundational doctrines of God’s unity, trinity, and decree, because it is precisely here that contemporary theology stands in need of being catechized by the older, confessionally grounded theologians of previous generations.

Matthew Barrett has the evangelical instinct for the classic, time-tested, deeply traditional biblical teaching about the Trinity. This book is the story of his joy in finding that doctrine, after having to clear aside some rubble and debris that had accumulated on top of it in recent years. Simply Trinity proclaims the good news of the unmanipulated doctrine of the Triune God.

This question, whether the human nature assumed by the Son is fallen or unfallen, is one of the most vexed and complicated questions in theology. Bello’s argument here is a fine piece of theological research, approaching modern discussions by bringing into play patristic (inseparable operations), medieval (the grace of union), and Protestant scholastic (federal headship) resources.

Contemporary theology has suffered from the absence of a careful, patient investigation of inseparable trinitarian operations. Any book meeting this need would be cause enough for gratitude. But we are especially fortunate to have such a book from Adonis Vidu, whose work combines analytic precision, scriptural depth, and a fully systematic scope of vision. The Same God who Works All Things is sure to rank among the most important studies in trinitarian theology published in this decade. I consider it required reading that will sharpen current thinking considerably.

Preaching in Oxford brought out the best in John Webster. Even as his academic theology grew in sophistication, subtlety, and scope, his sermons gave him space to hear and speak the very words of God. By his own admission, his work at Oxford was sometimes overly defensive, but in the pulpit he summoned the confidence to speak of God and the gospel defenselessly. Though these homilies have an elevated tone appropriate for college chapel, Webster’s voice here is more direct than allusive, more quotable than cautious, more wise than clever.

Patrick Schreiner tells how, beginning from the book of Acts, he started looking around and soon came to see the ascension everywhere. That is exactly how this doctrine is: easy enough to overlook, but astonishing in its scope and significance as soon as you start paying attention. This book is a great guide to the importance of Jesus’ ascension, and an invitation to start seeing it everywhere.

What a powerful instrument this little book is, meeting the need of our moment for clear and precise teaching on this most important subject. Would you rather read a book on the Trinity that invites you into the worship of God and gives profound insight into his ways, or a book that is guaranteed to provide safe, reliable, responsible instruction? There is no need to choose: this book does it all, and in admirably brief compass.

There are two levels at which you can read this book. At the first level, because Dale Tuggy and Chris Date are well-prepared advocates of their sharply contrasting positions, the book works as the document of a good debate with plenty of clarifying clash. At the second level, because Tuggy and Date are both very active online and in a range of media, the book works as a clearing house or index of the best sort of arguments scattered across the internet. The result is a reading experience well worth your time.

There is a certain lineage of southern Presbyterian theologians who, whatever their defects, nurtured a doctrine and devotion so intensely, pervasively, and uniquely trinitarian that they have long stood in need of closer study. What can account for this revival of excitement about the doctrine of the Trinity at this particular time and place? This book unlocks at least one part of the secret: these theologians and pastors knew themselves to be contending against an organized unitarian movement. By establishing this polemical context for their work, and then reading them sympathetically against this background, Nance has shed much light on an often ignored phase of American theological history.

Evangelical religion is still shaped by a view of conversion that reached its classic form in the eighteenth century. McGever’s patient analysis of the two leading preachers of conversion, Wesley and Whitefield, is especially helpful at showing the broad common ground they shared regarding what conversion is for, and how it is fulfilled. In doing so, it also clarifies their points of disagreement, especially regarding how conversion begins.

Ortlund argues compellingly that evangelicals can and should claim the classic theological heritage as their own. And then he actually does it, opening up the treasury of the great Christian tradition and dispensing theological wisdom with both hands. To look into this book is to look through a doorway into a world where there is such a thing as evangelical theology that is richly resourced, deeply informed, and ready for action.

I can’t recall the last time I read a new book that gave me so much insight into an event from the mission of Jesus Christ. In this retrieval of the doctrine of Christ’s descent to the dead, Emerson clears away misconceptions, corrects erroneous interpretations, establishes solid foundations, and explores the vast implications of this single line of the classic creed. This book deserves a wide readership, but will be especially helpful for evangelicals who have mumbled their way through, or have misunderstood, the credal descent clause.

This book invites readers to learn the craft of Christian theology from eleven of its master practitioners. Matt Jenson shows himself to be more than just an uncommonly deep and skillful reader of these theological classics, though that alone would make these chapters worth close study. He goes further, proving to be that rare guide who can teach others to read better by reading alongside him. Theology in the Democracy of the Dead is a rare opportunity for theological apprenticeship.

Real faith seeks deeper understanding, and when it does so, it inevitably reaches out for help. This book is that help. Treier has produced a tool for training the evangelical mind, and for training the mind evangelically. Introducing Evangelical Theology is an instrument of catechesis designed for our times.

The incarnation is such an overwhelming doctrine –so central in its immediacy, so vast in its implications, so deep in its importance– that we can almost excuse preachers and teachers who feel too intimidated to dwell on it in much detail. But there is a way to ponder the depths of this doctrine without falling into error or drifting into unprofitable speculation. This fine book points out that way: grounded in scripture, guided by the great creeds and confessions, nourished by spiritual experience, and always within easy distance of pastoral application, Veiled in Flesh is an invitation to deep reflection on the incarnation.

Confident that the voice of Karl Barth can reach, and teach, and theologically form Christians beyond the academy, Kimlyn Bender has put together a very welcoming guidebook to encourage people to read the Church Dogmatics for themselves. Bender is well aware of the obstacles readers will face in doing so; in this book he provides a set of tools to keep new readers out of the ruts of some settled misinterpretations, to find detours around those places where Barth’s own idiosyncracies distract from his main point, and to draw attention to the great things that Barth found in God’s revelation.

This is an excellent guide for students to the key terms, positions, and names in contemporary discussions of the doctrine of God. The book is so well organized that it will be immediately helpful as an introduction. Peckham is a clear writer with a sharp eye for big ideas, central claims, and definitive statements.

When people ask me to recommend a good book on the Trinity, I start with a couple of short books designed mainly for devotional and motivational effects. But when I discern that they’re ready to take the next step into the subject, and can handle a bigger book with more exegetical depth, more historical scope, and a fair discussion of the range of views on this doctrine, I always point to Letham’s The Holy Trinity. This second edition ensures that I can continue sending students to Letham for helpful guidance and confident teaching about this central doctrine.

Among all the mighty works of Bavinck, this shorter, one-volume theology stands out as something especially clear and vigorous, warm and readable. By skipping over most of the details of doctrinal history (so helpfully treated in his multi-volume Dogmatics), Bavinck managed to bring out the main lines of the Christian system of truth, and its character as a confession of God’s works. It is wonderful to have this classic back in print and readily available.

They say “well begun is half done,” and this introduction to biblical and theological studies will set students up for success from the start. Wilkins and Thoennes seem to be mind-readers as they skillfully anticipate so many of the topics, terms, and names that students will wonder about, and answer them here in advance. A great introduction to a vast field of learning.

Craig Carter’s Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition is a timely intervention into the contemporary conversation. I nearly called it an interruption because the book is so feisty, blunt, and urgent. But Carter avoids rudeness and rashness; he has obviously been listening very carefully to the major voices for some time, and now he makes his contribution: a strategic re-narrating of the standard account of premodern exegesis. In Carter’s account, key doctrines (Christology and Trinity) loom large, as do certain capital letters (Great Tradition; Christian Platonism). This is a stimulating and accessible account of how to carry on reading the Bible theologically.

When we think about the Christian life as union with Christ, we often turn to Paul’s letters where the doctrine is explained so clearly. But this book equips us to go one step further in: To take up the story of Jesus itself and find our salvation in each of the major moments of the Gospels. So richly traditional that it may strike some readers as novel, Brian Hedges’ new book is an invitation to a profound encounter with the saving life of Christ.

God is good, but how much more can we really say once we’ve said that? Holmes manages to say quite a lot more aobut it in this unique study, an extended conceptual gloss on the Psalms with help from Augustine, Aquinas, Barth, and Sonderegger among others. Crammed with suggestive ideas, well-resourced from the great tradition, and deeply edifying in tone and intent, Holmes’ book reinstalls divine goodness at the center of theological concerns.

Martin Luther never sat down to write a treatise on the Trinity in a format that modern systematic theologians would recognize, and sure enough, modern scholars have overlooked or misconstrued Luther’s understanding of the Trinity as a result. But he hid it in plain sight, in the unexpected genres of medieval-style academic disputations, hymns that echoed the Psalms, and wide-ranging expository sermons keyed to the liturgical calendar. Helmer’s book, ahead of its time when originally published and still on the leading edge of scholarship in this paperback edition, offers a very close reading of a handful of texts that surprise, illuminate, and suggest ways forward for theology today.

I wish I’d had this book when I first started graduate school. Veeneman picks out a large number of major theological movements and calmly rehearses their methodological commitments. She catalogs their sources, their orienting questions, and their starting points, sometimes comparing them to each other but rarely declaring her own judgments. The result is almost a cheat sheet, letting students know in advance what to look for as they go on to read these authors.

As a Protestant theologian I have been surprised to see how, in the best modern accounts of the doctrine of revelation, all roads lead, if not to Rome, at least to Vatican II’s Dei Verbum. On display in that document are all the crucial issues relevant for a constructive Christian account of divine revelation. Echeverria’s book is an interpretation of Dei Verbum, but not the kind that remains satisfied with just parsing the text. He places the council’s Lérinian hermeneutics of retrieval in dialogue with historical consciousness, traces its connection to the nouvelle théologie, and draws the conclusions for an account of the development of doctrine. There is much here to inform and stimulate theologians of any confession. I especially appreciated how conversant Echeverria is with Protestant thinkers like Berkouwer and Vanhoozer; how nimbly he dismantles the false dichotomy between personal and propositional revelation; and how well he illuminates the distinction between the deposit of faith and the mode in which it is expressed.

Conventional wisdom holds that just as Protestantism supposedly fractured the church into churches, so it fractured ecclesiology into ecclesiologies. This spirited volume argues the opposite: that the magisterial reformers in fact advanced a single, powerful, coherent, and biblical account of the essence of the church, focused on the gospel. With remarkable restraint, the authors of People of the Promise decline to be distracted as they retrieve Protestantism’s core ecclesiology. Readers may experience the shock of recognition to find that not only have they seen this ecclesiology before, they are inhabiting it. This retrieval should strengthen us to inhabit it more amply.

There’s a public conversation about human sexuality happening nearly everywhere today, but this book helpfully locates it right at the intersection of the pastoral and the theological. Beauty, Order, and Mystery provides a remarkably easy introduction to a vexed set of issues because the chapters are approachable and accessible even as they display deep reflection and up-to-date learning. In this particular multitude of counselors there is much wisdom.

Scripture commands us to contend for the faith and also to avoid foolish controversies: Lee Gatiss walks that fine line from which obedience in both directions remains possible, and shows us how often holy wisdom takes the form of a strategist choosing the right battles. In a collection that starts with Luther’s decision to pick a fight with Erasmus and ends with Wesley’s decision to pick a fight with Whitefield, Gatiss revisits some key contested places of Protestant history. Concise and crisply written, these are fine companion pieces to the history of soteriology in the Reformed tradition. Disagreeing heartily at several key points, I nonetheless recommend it highly as a lively, informative, and clarifying examination of things that matter.

Barrett’s work is a helpful contribution to the ongoing task of the critical retrieval of the doctrine of divine simplicity, with a definite emphasis on “retrieval” over “critical.” In order to put this classical doctrine back to work in the Christian theological system, Barrett canvasses recent objections and then draws on trinitarian conceptual resources to solve some of simplicity’s alleged problems. Barrett’s diligent attention to Scripture’s direct witness for the elaboration of a doctrine of divine simplicity brings to bear considerable exegetical resources previously neglected.

Here is a carefully-wrought work which re-organizes much of the material we expect to find in a doctrine of the Holy Spirit, connecting things too often bifurcated while distinguishing things too often conflated. This pneumatology pushes and pulls on some of our habitual categories because it attends so carefully to the Holy Spirit as the one who not only reconciles and perfects (the sections on the Spirit in creation and eschatology stand out), but also sanctifies and separates (the Spirit’s role in judgment and consecration is strikingly accented). It is wonderful that Horton says considerably more here about the Holy Spirit than we have heard from him in previous books, but it is equally wonderful that what he says is in keeping with the main lines of his theological project: Anchored in the Trinity, spanning redemptive history, and directly connected to the ordinary ministry of the church.

If you disconnect the Bible from God’s glory, you lose your grip on both. What terrible things we hear people say about each of them, taken in isolation. John

Piper puts them together, and finds himself preaching an astonishingly high doctrine of Scripture, right alongside an intimately experiencable doctrine of God’s glory. Reading the Bible is not just one of the helpful activities that make up the Christian life. Kept in proper context, seen in full perspective, and received in wide-awake recognition of the living voice of the Triune God, reading the Bible is the central act of Christian existence. This book, a kind of extended Christian Hedonist gloss on Psalm 119, is an invitation to the miracle of Bible reading.

When I looked into Koukl’s Story of Reality, I thought, “This is not how I would say this.” I would have used more technical terms, added quite a bit of history, expanded it by a couple hundred pages, and put in about a thousand footnotes. So readers can rejoice that instead, Greg Koukl is the right man to tell the story in such a clear, concise, and conversational way. This book explains the central ideas of Christianity and answers questions people are really asking.

Here are the new ground rules for how to think well about God’s effectual call. The deep structure of conversion may remain a holy mystery, but this book rescues it from being a theological muddle or the source of needless conflict. Hoglund’s approach to the triune God’s rhetoric of salvation is exegetically clarifying, ecumenically helpful, and evangelistically useful. This is a deeply persuasive book about the deepest kind of persuasion.