Online Bookstore: 2024

Although this volume comes out next month, I received an advanced copy for review and can enthusiastically recommend it to you as a masterful new exploration of the literary dimensions of the Old Testament, the fruit of over four decades of scholarly reflection. Longman, with his wide learning and profound exegetical expertise, offers readers an engaging journey through the narrative and poetic landscapes of the biblical texts. He shows how literary art is not merely ornamental but foundational to how biblical texts convey their meanings. His analysis is both scholarly and accessible, making this an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and church members alike. The book is not only a powerful testament to Longman’s deep understanding of the subject but also a vital guide for anyone seeking to deepen their appreciation and comprehension of the Old Testament as a rich literary treasure.

Gary A. Anderson’s Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament is a compelling exploration of how the Old Testament shapes and supports core Christian doctrines. In this insightful work, Anderson engages both Christian and Jewish perspectives to unpack the theological richness of the Old Testament. By tracing the development of key doctrines such as the apophatic side of God, creation ex nihilo, and the fall of humanity Anderson demonstrates the scriptural roots of beliefs that many contemporary pundits often claim developed and appeared only in later, post-Israelite theological thought. His rigorous yet accessible approach not only bridges the gap between biblical exegesis and constructive theological reflection but also fosters dialogue across Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish lines. This book is a treasure for those seeking to deepen their understanding of doctrine through the Scriptures, encouraging a harmonious reading that respects and enlivens both ancient texts and contemporary faith discussions.

I am part of a book group meeting monthly to discuss this insightful book, which illuminates the power of the Hebrew Bible to disarm violence perpetrated in God’s name, that is, what Sacks calls “altruistic violence.” The book appeared prior to the start of the current war in Gaza but has proven immensely helpful in reflecting on Israel/Palestine as well as on our own struggles here in the United States. Sacks identifies the core dynamic behind much modern religious violence as “sibling rivalry” and argues cogently that many texts of the Torah effectively wrestle with this dynamic and offer profound and relevant solutions. At multiple points, Sacks’s exegesis and exposition are fresh and effective. I would judge this book to be required reading for anyone involved in ministry in our partisan and conflicted times.

This imaginative volume is unlike any scholarly treatment of the biblical prophets that you are likely to have read. It represents enlightening “historical fiction,” highly creative but exegetically responsible journeys into the world of Israel’s “Minor Prophets.” Written as a series of letters addressed to figures like Hosea, Joel, and Micah, this book vividly reconstructs the historical and existential questions these prophets responded to in their scriptural messages. Each chapter begins with essential background, immerses you into a hypothetical correspondence that could have been directed at these prophets, and concludes with a prophetic response extracted from the biblical texts. Goldingay’s approach makes the prophets accessible and relatable, deepening our understanding and engagement. It is a great resource for those looking to connect more profoundly with the theological and social nuances of the prophets.

While contemporary conversations about colonialism, racism, identity, and statehood can sometimes feel dizzying, this book provides one of the most grounded analyses of these subjects I’ve encountered. For Mamdani, the historical connection between state and nationhood has led to manufacturing political majorities that depend upon harming political minorities (which are also manufactured), a habit that goes back to early European colonialism. Basing the book in examples as wide-ranging as the United States, South Africa, Sudan, and post-WWII Germany, Mamdani’s solution comes in disentangling our notion of state from nation. It’s a book with vital perspectives amid the dangerous nationalisms of today.

With schools renaming buildings and old confederate monuments coming down, many are asking how institutions should narrate and re-narrate their histories. Guth’s book provides a careful and compelling analysis of these questions, weaving careful ethical reflection with contemporary case studies. She shows how our contemporary questions are in fact old questions that Christian tradition has faced before, and she provides resources from our tradition that can improve our moral leadership today. VTS’s reparations initiative also makes an appearance in the book!

This book may not involve theology or social theory, but there’s plenty here that’ll preach. Sonny Rollins is the greatest living jazz improviser. His ability to craft a compelling improved solo from start to finish is, to my ear, unmatched. The beginning of the biography is especially enjoyable in its portrayal of Rollins’ childhood in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance; it’s biography not only as individual story but also the telling of a wider history. The book is full of wonderful anecdotes, like when Rollins’ life intersected with Episcopal priest Armen Jorjorian (a founder of the CPE movement) or when bassist Charles Mingus asked Rollins to end his sabbatical from public performance by telling him it was time to “hold your horn to let [God] speak.”

This is the most well-written and accessible introduction to Christian theology that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I’m recommending this book not as a refresher to remind you of your days at VTS (!), but as an option for an adult forum in your parish or perhaps in confirmation class. The book began as a series of talks at Canterbury Cathedral during Holy Week of 2005. He keeps this conversational tone as he deftly navigates his way through the beliefs affirmed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds—How should we think about God the Father? What about creation? Why does the world contain so much evil? Can we believe in the Incarnation? The Crucifixion and Resurrection? What is the Church supposed to be? Can we reasonably hope for the resurrection of the dead? All these questions are treated with deft and sensitive prose, with one recurrent theme that undergirds Williams’s treatment of each question and ties them all together: that God is totally worthy of our trust. Despite the book’s easy accessibility, it is never simplistic, and it is abundantly clear that Williams has thought long and deeply about each of these questions. Though I’ve read many introductions to Christian thought over the years, it was still a blessing to read this one.

The Western tradition has seen discussions of self-deception, of one sort or another, since antiquity, and it has raised perennially vexing questions. Is it possible? If so, how exactly do we do it? Is it harmful? In the Christian tradition, it comes up in discussions of sin from the biblical writers through the patristics and Augustine through the reformers and into the modern period. But theological discussions of sin would do well to pay attention to recent philosophical discussions of self-deception. The last fifty years or so has seen a flowering of interesting and helpful philosophical discussion amongst analytic philosophers and, to a lesser extent, among thinkers in Europe. Most philosophers and psychologists (not all!) believe that people actually do deceive themselves. For them, the problem of self-deception is akin to Zeno’s paradoxes, such as the paradox of going half-way across a lake before we can go all the way: before we do that we must go a quarter of the way, etc., and on to infinity. These and other paradoxes seem to show that motion is impossible. Most philosophers, though, take self-deception actually to occur, but the challenge is knowing how it occurs and in what it consists.

Eric Funkhouser’s excellent work on self-deception crystalizes the basic problem of self-deception and gives clear explanations of the approaches taken by philosophers and psychologists to it. Funkhouser adeptly organizes the discussions of various sub-issues and relates the philosophical analyses to recent psychological research. For anyone interested in self-deception, it is the best survey of recent philosophical and psychological research on the topic. It does take more effort than Williams’s Tokens of Trust, but I take it to be accessible to an educated general reader, including clear and understandable explanations of psychological terms (e.g., hot and cold biases) and philosophical terms (e.g., a priori reasoning).

Many is the time when I have been doing something like taking a shower, all the while preoccupied by something I’m trying to write or something else that’s going on, and when I’m finished I’m not able to remember whether I washed my hair—something that, if it happened, it happened less than a minute ago! If you’ve ever wondered what’s up with that, this is a great book to read.

Psychologists have long noticed that there appear to be at least two different cognitive process that occur in the mind. They are often illustrated in the way Kahneman illustrates them, with two exercises. First, look quickly at the following picture:

Chances are that immediately, without any conscious deliberation, you knew that the woman in the picture was angry. You may have also sensed that she is alarmed, having heard or seen something that she feels is unjustified and is angering her. Most likely, you formed these opinions without ever having any conscious intention to assess her mood. Borrowing from the title of Kahneman’s book, this is an instance of thinking fast, and it is conducted by System 1. Contrast that exercise with the following problem: 18 x 47 = ? Unless you are a math genius, you probably are not able to solve the problem by thinking fast, though you probably know that you could solve it if you wanted to do so.

System 1, then, works automatically, quickly, and effortlessly, with no sense of voluntary control. System 2, on the other hand, allocates attention to operations that require conscious effort such as making a left turn into heavy traffic. With this structure in mind, Kahneman describes a myriad of things that affect our thought processes and decision making—things like heuristics and biases (e.g., confirmation bias, the halo effect, etc.), as well as things like priming that advertisers know well. I found the writing to be accessible, and it is replete with illustrative stories and descriptions of psychological experiments that were fascinating to me. The book is based on decades of research for which Kahneman (a psychologist) and his research partner, Amos Tversky, won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I should point out that a friend who is an extremely intelligent and well-read economist found the book to be a bit of a slog. I found it fascinating, though, and richly rewarding.

This is another book on the brain, but very different from Kahneman’s book. Gazzaniga is a prominent cognitive neuroscientist, and this book has much more on the physical processes of the brain. Yet the writing is easily accessible, no doubt because it is based on his Gifford Lectures, the most prestigious lecture series in religion, philosophy, and science. The Gifford Lectures are given to the general public, and the book retains the conversational style of the lectures.

The book covers a range of topics, including neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and law. He argues, as the flyleaf states, that “human beings are responsible agents who should be held accountable for our actions, because responsibility is found in how people interact, not in brains.” Contrast this with Robert Sapolsky’s recent Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (New York: Penguin, 2023), whose thesis is found right in the title. Gazzaniga is not ready to go that far and argues that Sapolski’s thesis would have profound implications for ethics and the law (both criminal and civil, actually).

Since I’m not a scientist, I’m not aware of how much brain research has occurred in the last twelve years that might affect Gazzaniga’s argument. Nonetheless, for someone who’s not a scientist but is interested in learning about the science of the brain, Gazzaniga’s book is an excellent entry point.

Kwok Pul-lan has a track record of inviting us into the possibility of a post-colonial Anglicanism. The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective is her most recent invitation. It is a book that considers issues of decolonization; social thought and ethics beyond notions of benevolent globalizations (empires) and the capitalist status quo; contextualizations of liturgy; human sexuality in contexts of neocolonialisms; the leadership of women in the Global South; and the call to interreligious solidarity.

Post-colonial theology can often get bogged down in perplexing theorizing. Kwok Pui-lan demonstrates  through historical narrative, current issues, and accessible prose  this need not be the case. The analysis she offers is a useful place to begin. However, this book is not necessarily a place where the instabilities, porosities, and complexities of history, historiography, and inter-cultural discernment are explored in depth. If you are looking for that you may need to look elsewhere.

Walls provides a reading of the Protestant missionary movement especially in relation to British and U.S. American efforts. For those unfamiliar with his work certain themes may come as a surprise. For example, Walls argues that the missionary movement from North America was first a movement of Black Christian witness and that the planting of the church in Africa was largely the work of African missionaries.

Based on lectures given between 2005 and 2008, an obvious drawback of this text is that the scholarship has moved on in the last twenty years. This issue is mitigated by the editorial work of Brian Stanley who provides supplemental materials. Comprising of four parts and sixteen chapters, the reader is taken from the Jewish roots of mission (in the book of Acts) to the ways in which theology might be renewed and reshaped in the light of a world religion with a center far beyond Europe and North America. Concerning theology shaped by Western modernity, Walls writes, that it is “theology for a small-scale universe” (p.238). Such small-scale theology has not served the church in Africa and Asia well. We may be finding that it does not serve the church in the West very well either.

For Snow, part of the rationale for her study is to contribute to the “necessary work of developing missional theology and practice in relationship with the global church” (p.5). Such work cannot be done by avoiding the hard lessons of history. Rather, it is done through critical readings of the past and present.

Snow provides us with a history of The Episcopal Church through the lenses of empire and race. In doing so, she seeks to provide contextual and contemporary critique that foregrounds Native American, African American, Asian American, and LGBTQ+ witness.

Her work covers a span of history from 1600 to 2019. Many of the themes and much of the framing, I hope, will be familiar to students and alums of the Virginia Seminary. Here is a history, beginning in Virginia, that touches on both missional practice and malpractice.

Snow seeks to contextualize colonial practice and theology warning readers away from anachronistic ethics. Not all readers will be convinced that this approach is always warranted especially when other parts of the Christian tradition were making different decisions. There are other times in the text, not least in the reading of more recent history, when a more thoroughgoing postcolonial method might militate against an impression that a mission of “inclusion” is evidence of learning the lessons of the past. That conclusion, it seems to me, cannot yet be drawn.

For a Prof’s pick to include a New York Times bestseller, which is also an Apple TV series, might seem odd. But if you have missed this novel, then you have missed a gem. It tells the story of a talented woman who is striving to succeed in a deeply patriarchy age of the 1960s. The realism is disturbing (be warned there is a rape scene early on in the book). Yet the book reaches a climax when she ends up on a late afternoon cooking show, providing lessons in chemistry. Any dog lover will enjoy the role of six-thirty (the name of the dog). And theological themes are prominent: she is an atheist who engages with a priest friend of her partner.

It was Barney Hawkins who introduced me to this amazing writer. I recently used his short story “The Expert on God” in my sermon at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. It is a powerful reflection on theodicy. This short story is one of 28 found in this collection. L’Heureux was a Jesuit priest before leaving the order; and religious themes pervade his short stories. Often funny, always profound, L’Heureux is a genius who brings his own distinctive reflections on faith and life.

America is having a lively debate about the crisis facing men. Men are less likely to finish high school, less likely to go to college, more likely to commit suicide, and more likely to be unemployed than women. From the right, Josh Hawley has written Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. Reeves is a voice from the left. His critique is careful and balanced. Like many books on these complex problems, he is better at describing the problem than suggesting the solution. This is especially important for anyone involved in youth work.