Book Reviews

Here is another thought provoking book that deals with one of the most important issues facing the church today. How much latitude do we have in coming together with Christians who are not of the same theological stripe? Can we develop a unity in the body of Christ that transcends our particular denominational or theological persuasion? Can we do that in a way that does not finally compromise our theological integrity?

J. I. Packer, a noted theologian within the reformed tradition, and Thomas Oden, of Wesleyan Methodist lineage, have attempted to make an effort to define evangelicalism today. Is there a point of convergence where the ideas presented by the two authors come together in a meaningful way? One Faith answers that question in depth. I have had the privilege of participating in some of the conferences mentioned from which covenants and manifestos were drafted. These documents set the basic doctrines of the Christian faith together in a missional motif that could unify diverse groups of people.

Obviously, the concern is whether or not our Christianity, especially within the broader evangelical setting, is causing us to fragment into smaller and more isolated groups. On the other hand, are we coming together in ways that will allow us to express a common commitment to basic tenets of the Christian faith while allowing the freedom to adhere to our own theological and denominational distinctives?

Both authors write on the premise that there is a common theological consensus that draws us together into the broader movement of evangelicalism. They seek to develop a framework or foundation upon which the broader evangelical world can come together in a way that will give rise to a new ecumenical consensus. They cause us to identify what we are willing to give up to accomplish this.

Packer and Oden divide the broader evangelical community into two rails of the track. The Calvinists, Lutherans, and Baptists are on one part of the track while the Arminian, Wesleyan, Holiness, Charismatic and Pentecostals are on the other side. The purpose of this book, according to the authors, is not just to share information but also edify and determine whether there can be enough agreement to transcend those differences. “We decline to discuss secondary matters on which disagreements surface, such as variations on polity, modes and subjects of baptism, glossolalia, millennialism, theological epistemology and specifics of exegesis.” “This book celebrates the work of God in bringing evangelicals together in fundamentals, and that is the reality on which we labor to keep all eyes trained.”

One might be tempted to read up to this point and debate whether such a consensus could or should exist. However, whether we like it or not, we cannot dodge the issues raised in this book. If the question is not about us but about God, how much energy and effort does God want us to expend in focusing on the unity that transcends our particulars?

The authors begin by describing evangelicals as, “Those who read the Bible as God’s own Word, addressed personally to each of them here and now; and who live out a personal trust in, and love for Jesus Christ as the world’s only Lord and Saviour.” From there they state “historians categorize evangelicals as people who emphasize (1) the Bible as the Word of God, (2) the cross as the place where salvation is won, (3) conversion as a universal need and (4) missionary outreach as a universal task”

A plus of this book is it brings together in one place many of the statements, covenants, and declarations of the 20th century. These statements are in the missional genre, underscoring the global aspect of Christianity. Though they were produced in a missional setting, they challenge us to realize we are part of the one body of Christ worldwide and through all the ages.

The book contains sixteen chapters on the doctrines the authors believe are commonly held by evangelicals. They connect these doctrines to documents produced by the various evangelical movements of the 20th century, particularly the later part of that century. Naturally, they point to Billy Graham as the main catalyst behind the various movements within evangelicalism.

This book will push you out of your comfort zone at places, challenge you to focus on unity within the Body, and cause you to think seriously about how to experience and express our diversity and unity while respecting both. There is a wealth of information in this concise volume.

Though it was published first, Living On Purpose is promoted as a complement to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. Living On Purpose explores some of the implications of living with the values of God’s kingdom in view. It’s done against the backdrop of defining our purpose for living. With many, purpose is derived from work. Expectations of a community often define our purpose. And that is usually expressed in activities and things.

The Sine’s make a valiant attempt to get us to re-evaluate the culture of middle class America, which has basically been endorsed by the evangelical church. Tom is quoted as saying,
“I believe the hardest place to raise kids with Christian values is the affluent suburbs of America because in these communities the young are under relentless pressure to wear the same expensive designer brands, hit the resort ski slopes on the weekends and derive their sense of identity from deeply reinforced notions of style, image and status.”

It’s a challenge that needs to be taken seriously. However, consumer spending is the engine that keeps the United States’ economy running. It keeps people employed. If a large percentage of those who claim to be Christian began to live self-consciously with kingdom values it would have a negative affect on the most basic way this society functions. So apart from a revival-like spirit, the book’s message might take root in a life here or there. Not enough to begin to affect the Christian culture. The illustrations offered reinforce that and perhaps that’s enough. But if we are to go beyond the surface nature of much Christian commitment, the Sine’s thesis must be taken seriously.

The Sine’s note that the Enlightenment took the vertical value system of the Middle Ages and turned it on its side. So it’s not good enough to just do with less. Speaking of the American dream, they say, “We are called to biblically reinvent it. To create a more festive way of life where we not only cut back but also add celebration to our lives in a way that reflects some of the jubilation of God’s new order.” One illustration of the way that is fleshed out is a discussion of a celebration of the Sabbath. Another is community.

Each chapter has activities that could be used by groups studying the book. The suggestions are well thought out. I plan to use the book as the text for a Sunday school class. It could easily be used in a discipleship or home fellowship group. Perhaps with the encouragement and reinforcement of others, people in our churches will take more seriously the privileges and responsibilities of kingdom living.

Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi is an area director in northern Illinois for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He has written an exciting and encouraging book on a topic that has not received the emphasis it deserves. After all, as he points out, the kingdom of God is the very focus that Jesus talked about during his earthly ministry. He came preaching the kingdom.

One thing I find is that most Christians do not have a good solid view of the kingdom of God. If they think about it at all, they usually equate it with the church. While the church is the nucleus of the kingdom, the kingdom itself is much broader. While the church focuses on carrying out the great commission of Jesus in making disciples and thus preparing people to live in the kingdom, the kingdom’s focus touches all areas of life. As Christians are discipled with a kingdom view, they will see the challenge and opportunity to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. They will take part in fostering a transformation of life-the culture and society around them.

Wakabayashi gives personal testimony regarding the centrality of the Kingdom of God theme and its influence upon the Christian life. Jesus said, “Seek you first the kingdom of God…” If those are Jesus’ words regarding a Christian’s first priority, then it behooves us to pay attention. The author said, “…the kingdom of God has become the foundation for my whole philosophy of ministry and understanding of the Christian life.”

Wakabayashi raises this situation, if seeking first the kingdom of God is the priority of the Christian life, then how can that be done without understanding what the kingdom is all about? He wrote this book to help bridge the gap between what Jesus said and where Christians are in their understanding.

We have also observed, as this book underscores, the church is either silent in speaking God’s word to the whole of life, or the church moves beyond its role and begins to do kingdom tasks not appropriate to the church. The church’s role in disciple making is to help its people develop a biblical world and life view. A kingdom perspective will enable them not only to learn “all things whatsoever Jesus has commanded,” but also to apply those truths to all of life with the help of the Holy Spirit.

The author underscores some ideas that correlate with our research, observations, and conclusion. He writes, “I believe that our Western individualism has caused us to misperceive and misunderstand the gospel in a way that blunts the gospel’s world-transforming force. Furthermore, the tradition of the Western church, steeped in this individualism, has stamped its approval on narrow conceptions of the gospel that leave us living in ways that do little to change the society around us” (page 17). He further states, “Where the gospel is supposed to explode into our world with transforming power, it has been co-opted by aspects of our culture so that it blinds us into a quiet cultural conformity” (ibid).

If we understand what it means to be a citizen of God’s kingdom and to seek first his kingdom, then we will be empowered to serve as God’s agents of change in the world. God does not call us to be cultural transformers but as we live as kingdom people, we will definitely impact our culture and society. Not only that, while we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done,” we will have a greater understanding and appreciation for the petition we so often say. As the church trains its people to live with a focus on God’s kingdom, non-believers will see the difference between God’s way and the world’s way.

The book has six parts containing fifteen chapters. Each chapter offers good instruction and ideas for application of the Christian life within the kingdom context. Our desire is to encourage Christians to seek and develop a kingdom perspective regarding the Christian life that will keep them from withdrawing their influence. It will equip them, as they are going into the world, to apply God’s truth to every aspect of their lives. As we state over and over, the kingdom mindset reminds us “it is not about us, it is about God.”

Read this book now, and when our book, Making Kingdom Disciples is available you will have a better foundation to understand why that theme is the focus of CEP in its five-year strategic faith plan.

The name Alister McGrath may or may not be familiar to you. I try to read everything that he writes. For the last twenty years, McGrath has been known as a person with great acumen in evangelical circles. He writes as a scientist, a theologian, a philosopher, and a knowledgeable evangelical Christian scholar. We have reviewed a number of his writings over the years and highly recommended each one, including A Passion for Truth and a biography of J. I. Packer.

McGrath personifies our challenge to know the word, the world, our surroundings, and how to communicate to this generation. He shows that Christianity is indeed a religion of the mind and heart founded on the word of God. In this book, he attempts to help the reader understand the tremendous change that has taken place in twentieth century relating to Christianity, but also in religion in general.

We are hearing the echoes of many disturbing yet challenging questions from numerous sources: Will Christianity survive and if so, what will it look like? What about religion in general and the church in particular? What does the future look like? Of course to answer those kinds of questions we need to understand not only where we have come from but also how we have arrived where we are. From that vantage, we can look at the trends and project where we might be headed.

For example, there is definitely a renewed or new interest in spiritual things. However, the interest is far different today from what we have seen in the past. It is multifaceted. Part of the resurgence stems from the rejection of the Enlightenment’s logical, rationalistic, and scientific approach to life. Another part of it stems from modernity’s attempt to privatize religion and remove it from the public square. Finally, some interest springs from a type of cynicism present in western civilization about all kinds of things: reason, logic, organized religion, televangelists, and distrust in church leaders.

McGrath poses a haunting question at the outset of his assessment. “Might the erosion of confidence in the institution of the church lead to a corresponding erosion of confidence in the Christian faith? Or might it open the door to new forms of Christianity emerging in the west, which deliberately play down the institutional aspects?” When coupled with the realization that the west is no longer the numerical center of the Christian faith because it has shifted to the developing world, we have to ask what is the future of Christianity, as we know it?

As McGrath so clearly points out, we must realize that “all is not well in the household of faith of the west, supremely the mainline Protestant denominations.” Though modernism subtly led us to either reject religion or to assign it to a private area of life, we cannot ignore religion today. One of the problems we face in dealing with people of Middle Eastern countries is they do not separate their religion from the rest of life. All is not simply political for them, as we attempt to make it in the west. As a result, many people who have responsibilities to fight evil and terror do not understand that strategy has to include religion as well as politics and economics.

What are some of the things we should anticipate and then how can we prepare to respond to them? For example, based on a present trend a global religion is rising which is an “amalgam, constructed to taste” of bits and pieces from different religions. There is a continued diminishing of Christian influence on culture, as demonstrated in European countries. Also, there’s a resurgence of Christianity in Africa countries. The global interface of Christianity-Islam is also an important dynamic.

From there McGrath talks about the death of American denominationalism. He quotes George Hunter who points out, “the real issue is how well churches are able to adapt to their host populations and communicate their faith in ways that connect with where people are.” This calls up the question, of “whether or not the denomination has any real future.” Since “evangelicalism” is transdenominational, should not the Christians of the future attempt to be transdenominational? Is there a valid place for denominations, as we have known them? He points out that we are seeing less and less demonstrated loyalty to denominations. Becoming like the culture in which we live has brought much of this about. The question is how far can we go with that? How can we keep it from leading us from the path of truth and the gospel? What should the standard of churches be today? The business model? The marketing strategies of the world around us? “The McDonaldization of Christianity” as McGrath calls it or the dumbing down of the Christian faith?

In chapter four, McGrath lists a number of challenges that are confronting Christianity. First there is the threat of fundamentalism, driven by the fear that secularism is out to eliminate religion. Also, there is the new fault line between Christianity and Islam. With Islam growing so rapidly globally, what will be its impact on Christianity? There is new ecumenical spirit that emphasizes putting aside differences, not only theological ones, but religious ones in general. Therefore, we face the challenge centered on “what forms of Christianity are likely to emerge from the complex forces that will shape the twenty-first century.”

With the widening gap between academic theology and the everyday life of the church, the danger is going to be, who is equipped to deal with all of these issues? How do we not throw out the baby with the bath water? How do we avoid a wholesale sellout of our Christian religion? How can biblical theology relate to the postmodern theology of today?

This is a must-read book for leaders and teachers. Part of our role is to help people understand the word in the context of today’s world. McGrath has plowed the ground for us. This book is more descriptive than prescriptive but that’s how the process works.

I define a kingdom disciple as a Christian who thinks God’s thoughts after him and seeks to apply those thoughts to every area of life. If that is true, that means we have a gauge for all of life. There are situations where it is so easy to put our brains in neutral and fail to apply hearts unto wisdom. Some say that many do that when they come to church, but we can definitely say that is true when the media comes into play. We are often tempted to put our thinking on hold while watching television or a movie. That’s one of the main reasons that the media has such a negative impact on our lives. That does not happen by design, but often because we do not have a good handle on how to think critically and with discernment.

In our local church, some of the men meet once a month for fellowship, pizza, movie viewing, and discussion of the film. Our emphasis is fourfold: to fellowship, to sensitize ourselves to the culture and society in which we live, to see what contributions films make to our thinking Christianly or non-Christianly, and to help one another think critically about what we see.

Brain Godawa helps us practice discernment and gain wisdom about our world and life. He is well equipped to write this book. He is a Christian and a screenwriter who has been influenced by at least a couple of PCA pastors. He understands that each movie contains a story and that story was good enough to result in a movie. Often, the story falls into one of two categories, the way life should be lived or the way life should not be lived. Stories contain ideas and ideas do have consequences.

Godawa says that Christians need balance in their lives. For example, they either become “cultural gluttons” who watch too many movies, or they become “cultural anorexics” who avoid them altogether. Whichever we chose, says Godawa, we generally rationalize our choice. He also reminds us that one person’s tolerance may be another person’s indulgence.

In the style of the late Francis Schaeffer, Godawa reminds us that the arts, including film, are “our God-given means of expressing our humanity.” “To reject the arts in toto is to reject the imago Dei, the image of God in humanity.” However, he also reminds us that we are a fallen people and our sinful nature has not yet been fully destroyed. He writes, “I will show in the following chapters that most movies follow a main character who seeks a specific goal and in so doing learns something about himself or herself and the world in a way that inevitably results in this person’s redemption-or lack thereof.”

I could write much about this book. I have found it to be both challenging and helpful in knowing how to view a film critically. I have also found it to be a reminder that we cannot afford to anesthetize our thinking capabilities, even when our goal is entertainment. Entertainment, according to the writer, “reinforces certain values over others, namely those that reflect the current fashion of the creative community.”

Godawa takes us through movie after movie to demonstrate the truth of his premise. He helps us identity the character and the story and then suggests ways to think about and evaluate the message. Each chapter contains a “watch and learn” section at the end that stimulates discussion questions.

One example you will want to think much about centers on the often-heard criticism that movies are full of sex, violence, and profanity. That they are! But Godawa challenges us to see how much of that is in the Bible. He helps us understand the importance of identifying the context where they are used. As we do that, we find that some are destructive while others are of a redemptive nature. I hope that will challenge you to read this book.

Pastors, teachers, parents need to understand how to be discerning in what we see in the media. We need to teach our covenant children and adults how to be discerning. We must help those to whom we have some responsibility know how to have a godly view of human life. This includes seeing through redemptive eyes how God’s plan and will contrast so drastically with the world’s. One way this seems to play out in recent films is the attempt to blur reality with virtual reality. Godawa points out that “the illusion/reality dilemma is a great story telling tool to challenge our assumptions about reality and truth, but taken to its extreme (that of denying all reality), it suffers under the weight of its own contradiction.”

In conclusion I would remind you of our beginning comments, the challenge for balance, discerning (thinking biblically), and understanding our world. This book will be of value in doing just that.

Here is a book that any Christian should have as a reference. There are other similar books which attempt to answer key questions regarding God, the Bible, theology, etc. Often Christians find themselves in difficult and embarrassing situations because they are asked hard questions and do not know how to respond. You know some of the questions: Where did the Bible come from? Who wrote the Bible? Where did the universe come from? What is God’s ultimate purpose in allowing evil? Why is Islam growing among black Americans?

We could go on with the topics covered in this helpful book. Because of the diversity of authors, some responses are better than others. Yet each one will give you some points to consider when faced with difficult questions. I agree with Ravi Zacharias that we are living in a time in which the church needs to be able to respond with intelligent answers to the questions being raised. This would be a helpful book for college students to have available.

I’ll site two or three excerpts from the responses to various questions to give you an idea of how the answers go. Question: Why does God not immediately do away with evil? Answer, in part: “Even though God’s ultimate solution to the problem of evil awaits the future, as I have argued, God has even now taken steps to ensure that evil doesn’t run utterly amok. God has given us human government to withstand lawlessness. God founded the church to be a light in the midst of darkness…”

“Are the copies of the Bible reliable? The biblical scribes were meticulous in how they copied Scripture. The overall reliability has been measured in several ways. First, with regard to any major doctrine in the Bible, there has been no loss whatsoever…. The Bible claims to be the Word of God. Both the internal and external evidence overwhelmingly reveal the accuracy…”

A third question: How might the church reach out to black Muslims? “Before the church can reach black Muslims, the church must first seek to mend the rift that exists between black and white Christians in America…. Once the black and white churches have buried the hatchet of divisiveness, they must collectively engage in local Islamic organizations in dialogue about the problems of race and make a good-faith effort to assist in rebuilding the black community.”

Those are some samples of the expanded answers in the book to those and many other questions. Contributors to this volume are William Lane Craig, Ronald Rhodes, L. T. Jeyachandran, Lee Strobel, and Robert White, along with Zacharias and Geisler.