Some of the Books We've Been Reading

Welcome to the time of year when we are either wrapping up our previous classes or preparing for our next ones. If you are keeping score, I have now finished four classes. By the end of next week we will have finished our first preaching class as well. I still have to do one paper for the Anthropology class (more on that next week) and I still have to preach one sermon in Dr. Kalas' class (before I let him get back to being interim president of Asbury).

Here is a sample of the books I have enjoyed (more or less!) for the coming classes.
I'm a fan of Tom Wright. I just like his ability to examine a topic and then deliver a grass roots answer. When his books are by "N.T. Wright," they are more academic in nature. When they are by "Tom Wright," it means they have been written on a popular level. And so it is with The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today. This was an enjoyable read and a nice reminder of the gift I had in 1994 that allowed me to travel to the Middle East.

This book is for our Biblical Interpretation Class under Dr. Bill Arnold and was meant, I suppose, to give us a lay of the land that is so central to any interpretation of the Old Testament.
This book was packed full of academic insight by Pelikan, who was a professor at Yale and taught Grandview's own, Fred Norris. Pelikan is said to have loved language. Well . . . he seems to have loved language in the same way a hunter loves animals.

When writing about preaching great, John Chrysostom, Pelikan gives us this sentence: "He was a man of significantly less than infinite patience." Hmmm. I know it's not a big deal or anything, but if you love language then you love for things to be clear and concise--it communicates better. If it were one sentence I could easily dismiss it, but the book is shot through with significantly less than perfectly written prose. He has one sentence in which he gives us five commas by the time we get to the seventh word.

Enough, dear reader, of my sarcastic, though well-founded, and perfectly legitimate, somewhat pugnacious, attempts to give you a sample, minor though it may be, of the writing of a man who, though he had an amazing mind, was perhaps given to superfluous use of a less than necessary, and somewhat oblique, style.

Other than that . . . it's a fine book. He examines three of the churches great theologian/preachers: Augustine (Catholic tradition), John Chrysostom (Orthodox tradition), and Martin Luther (Protestant tradition). In his examination of them he highlights their use and recognition of the three main categories of rhetoric (the nature of the speaker, the nature of the audience, and the nature of the message).

This breakdown of rhetoric will serve as the syllabus, really, for our next preaching class under Dr. Tory Baucum.
And, lastly for the entry, we have Raniero Cantalamessa's The Mystery of God's Word. This little book (only 93 pages) is well-written and insightful. Cantalamessa used to be professor of early Christianity at the University of Milan. He is now the pastor to the papal household (And I thought preaching to Bob Hall was tough--even Bob isn't tougher than a German Pope!).

This book is bound to please people like me who want to take seriously the insight that the academic study of scripture has provided, but who are unwilling to walk away from a high view of God's inspiration and use of scripture.

He examines how God uses the Word in the lives of those who proclaim it, the nature of the Word, what the Word is meant to accomplish, and how God will hold accountable those who proclaim the message.

So, there is a sampling of the books I've been reading (and then writing about). In the next couple of weeks I hope to focus on my dissertation work as well. I promised to blog on that months ago . . . maybe next week!