Church History Books - Page 5

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

Donald S. Whitney, Don Whitney

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Freedom. The Reward Of Discipline.

It's not uncommon for an accomplished musician to be able to sit down in front of a new piece of music and play it through without a hitch. To make it seem easy, as if it required no effort. Yet, the "freedom" to play with such skills comes only after years of disciplined practice.

In the same way, the freedom to grow in godliness-to naturally express Christ's character through your own personality-is in large part dependent on a deliberate cultivation of the spiritual disciplines.

Far from being legalistic, restrictive, or binding, as they are often perceived, the spiritual disciplines are actually the means to unparalleled spiritual liberty.

So if you'd like to embark on a lifelong quest for godliness, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life will help you on your way. Drawn from a rich heritage left us by the early church fathers, the Puritan writers, and Jesus Christ Himself, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life will guide you through a carefully selected array of disciplines including Scripture reading, prayer, worship, Scripture meditation, evangelism, serving, stewardship, Scripture application, fasting, silence and solitude, journaling, and learning.

By illustrating why the disciplines are important, showing how each one will help you grown in godliness, and offering practical suggestions for cultivating them on a long-term basis, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life will provide you with a refreshing opportunity to embrace life's greatest pursuit-the pursuit of holiness-through a lifelong delight in the disciplines.

Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It

Julia, Duin

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Journalist Investigates Why Christians Are Leaving Church

Several recent studies reveal that churches across America are hemorrhaging--they are losing members at a life-threatening rate. Intrigued and disturbed by what appears to be an epidemic, Julia Duin, a religion reporter for the Washington Times, amassed research on the issue, interviewed many who have left church, and attended numerous churches in hopes of making sense of this phenomenon.

Quitting Church reveals the startling findings of her research. It explains to church leaders why this mass exodus is happening--and what can be done to reverse it. Beginning with the cold, hard facts, Duin then takes readers through a number of issues that influence a person's decision to leave the church, including irrelevancy, hidden suffering, family-centric programming that leaves singles out, impersonal or bland worship services, a lack of biblical literacy, and much more. This eye-opening book will be essential reading for pastors, ministry leaders, and churchgoers who wish to bring these disenchanted Christians back into their midst.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged

Matthew Henry

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Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Poorly Published... but still great writing 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a great commentary, a great tool to help study God's word. But I find it very difficult to read this with such small text. And to go back and forth from another book is almost impossible. I will be looking for a quality multi-volume set to replace this.

Deep insights into the scriptures 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Matthew Henry's deep insights into God's word are very useful food for thought. Its very difficult to find such deep thought and honest scholarship today. A very useful book to have, nicely bound in a hard cover. This is a very useful reference work.

Editorial Review:

Matthew Henry had the rare ability to express profound spiritual insights with simplicity and eloquence. Over the years his writings have been read for both their scholarship and devotion, and none more than the classic Commentary on the Whole Bible. Now you can read the very best of Matthew Henry in this new edition of his famous commentary.

A valuable source of reference and sermon material with a clear modern typeface, this classic is a treasure for pastors, students, Bible teachers, and devotional readers alike!

Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics

William Lane Craig

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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"Evangelicals have been living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as irrational or outmoded, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders have absorbed this viewpoint. This is a war which we cannot afford to lose....

"In addition to serving, like the rest of theology in general, as an expression of our loving God with all our minds, apologetics specifically serves to show to unbelievers the truth of the Christian faith, to confirm that faith to believers, and to reveal and explore the connections between Christian doctrine and other truths.... Apologetics... is a theoretical discipline that tries to answer the question, What rational defense can be given for the Christian faith?"

This book by respected philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig has been thoroughly revised and updated to equip believers in the successful proclamation of biblical truth claims. The author gives careful attention to crucial questions and concerns, including: How Do I Know Christianity Is True?, The Absurdity of Life Without God, The Existence of God, The Problem of Miracles, and The Resurrection of Jesus.

An invaluable scholarly resource for all committed defenders of the Christian faith.

Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire

Jim Cymbala

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Total reviews: 138 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Where the real thing is. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

You can't not believe this man. It is not the most impressive thing that he built up a huge Church starting with about 10 people in a dangerous area of New York.
It is not the most impressive thing that his wife, who has no training in music, helped to write, guide and direct, songs for one of the world's most loved groups, i.e. The Brooklyn Tablernacle Choir. What is a most impressive to me is that they have stayed right where they started about 25 years ago, continuing to be instrumental in thousands of changed lives of former drug addicts and pushers, prostitutes and pimps, gangs and gangsters, gays and lesbians in what is - except by the grace of the Holy Spirit - still in a dangerous area and with quite a few potentially very dangerous parishioners. People feel embraced by YHWH's welcoming Love in Cymbala's Church. And I believe it is His Love that protects them and moves them all.

With that background I knew I wanted to hear what this man has to say.
I wasn't disappointed. The message is simple as he would say himself:
Prayer, and lots of it, first. Everything else later.

Someone said, "Prayer is not preparation for the work. Prayer IS the work." Cymbala agrees.

Editorial Review:

This condensed audio version of the book is read by the author and includes musical selections by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. It describes what the Holy Spirit can do when believers get serious about prayer and the Gospel. Read by Jim Cymbala.

Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament

Bart D. Ehrman

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Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

While most people think that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are the only sacred writings of the early Christians, this is not at all the case. A companion volume to Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, this book offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the first centuries after Christ--texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia. Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically from our contemporary understanding. Readers will find Gospels supposedly authored by the apostle Philip, James the brother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, and others. There are Acts originally ascribed to John and to Thecla, Paul's female companion; there are Epistles allegedly written by Paul to the Roman philosopher Seneca. And there is an apocalypse by Simon Peter that offers a guided tour of the afterlife, both the glorious ecstasies of the saints and the horrendous torments of the damned, and an Epistle by Titus, a companion of Paul, which argues page after page against sexual love, even within marriage, on the grounds that physical intimacy leads to damnation. In all, the anthology includes fifteen Gospels, five non-canonical Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles, a number of Apocalypes and Secret Books, and several Canon lists. Ehrman has included a general introduction, plus brief introductions to each piece. This important anthology gives readers a vivid picture of the range of beliefs that battled each other in the first centuries of the Christian era.

Church History in Plain Language: Third Edition

Bruce L. Shelley

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Editorial Review:

With more than 275,000 copies sold, this is the story of the Church for today's readers.

This third edition improves the most engaging and readable single-volume history of the Church by bringing the story into the twenty-first century. Faced with some astonishing changes in the Islamic world, a global resurgence of Roman Catholicism, the decline of Christianity in the West coupled with the rapid growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in the southern and eastern hemispheres, readers need a current explanation with intellectual substance that will provide historical context and update readers on all these new developments. The new edition of Church History in Plain Language does that in a stimulating manner, and it promises to be the new standard for readable Church History.

Features include:

• Includes contemporary developments, such as the growth of Christianity in China and the rise of global Islam

The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus

Amy-jill Levine

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Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Jesus is Jewish! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This is the best book available today about the Jewishness of Jesus. Amy Jill Levine points out that many of the Gospel stories would hit home with more of us if we read the New Testament with the eyes of a first century Jewish person. She points out the Jewishness of each line of the Lord's Prayer and its similarities with the Mourner's Kaddish in Judaism. She also shows that the parable of the Good Samaritan will be more powerful when we realize that the role model of the story is the enemy of the Jews.

Similarly, the parable of the tax collector and the self-righteous Pharisee praying in the temple has a bigger punch when we remember how despised tax collectors were and how unlikely it would seem that a sinful, self-centered tax collector would repent and turn to the Jewish God.

There is also an important chapter about anti-Judaism in the New Testament. Levine feels that the issue of whether or not there is anti-Judaism in the NT cannot be decided by the historian, but by the individual. Some will see it in the text, some won't.

I wanted to argue at this point. I wanted to say "What about authorial intent? Can't we study the salient passages in their contexts to see if the authors intended an anti-Jewish polemic?"

But Levine would rightfully note that we all have different reactions to what we read. Even though she rejects this notion, I still see it as a family disagreement.

There is also an important chapter about the dangers of stereotyping Judaism. Levine notes that when we preach the gospels, we talk about the harsh legalism of the Pharisees, the strain of women under the law of Moses, the idea that the Jewish people rejected Jesus because he wasn't a warrior messiah, the idea that the Jewish people were obsessed with the idea of keeping pure from outsiders, and the impossibility of keeping the law of Moses. Levine points out that these are stereotypes, this is NOT the way the Jewish people looked at their lives.

Levine also calls for true interfaith dialogue. This means avoiding statements like "All Jews think ..." or "All Christians think ...." It also means recognizing that both Jewish and Christian traditions have texts that might rub the other dialogue partner the wrong way. Levine counsels us to speak out when someone makes a derogatory comment about Jewish people or Christian people. There is no room for hate at the table of faith. I agree.

And yet there is a clear message in the New Testament that Jesus Christ is superior to the institutions of Judaism, especially in the book of Hebrews and in certain texts from Galatians and the gospels. I think this is an important message. The Jewish writers of the New Testament were transformed by their faith in Jesus Christ. They felt so passionately about their Messiah that they even stated that faith in Him was superior to anything else Judaism could offer. As a Jewish believer in Jesus as Messiah, I wholeheartedly concur.

Nevertheless, Ben Witherington is surely right when he calls this book the best book written on the Jewishness of Jesus. I personally need to be careful in the future about making sure I don't stereotype Judaism in my treatment of the Gospels.

Editorial Review:

In the The Misunderstood Jew, scholar Amy-Jill Levine helps Christians and Jews understand the "Jewishness" of Jesus so that their appreciation of him deepens and a greater interfaith dialogue can take place. Levine's humor and informed truth-telling provokes honest conversation and debate about how Christians and Jews should understand Jesus, the New Testament, and each other.

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith

Marcus J. Borg

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Of the many recent books on the historical Jesus, none has explored what the latest biblical scholarship means for personal faith. Now, in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg addresses the yearnings of those who want a fully contemporary faith that welcomes rather than oppresses our critical intelligence and openness to the best of historical scholarship. Borg shows how a rigorous examination of historical findings can lead to a new faith in Christ, one that is critical and, at the same time, sustaining.

"Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him," Borg writes. "Rather, it means to give one's heart, one's self at its deepest level, to . . . the living Lord."

Drawing on his own journey from a naive, unquestioning belief in Christ through collegiate skepticism to a mature and contemporary Christian faith, Borg illustrates how an understanding of the historical Jesus can actually lead to a more authentic Christian life--one not rooted in creeds or dogma, but in a life of spiritual challenge, compassion, and community.

In straightforward, accessible prose, Borg looks at the major findings of modern Jesus scholarship from the perspective of faith, bringing alive the many levels of Jesus' character: spirit person, teacher of alternative wisdom, social prophet, and movement founder. He also reexamines the major stories of the Old Testament vital to an authentic understanding of Jesus, showing how an enriched understanding of these stories can uncover new truths and new pathways to faith.

For questioning believers, doubters, and reluctant unbelievers alike, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time frees our understanding of Jesus' life and message from popular misconceptions and outlines the way to a sound and contemporary faith: "For ultimately, Jesus is not simply a figure of the past, but a figure of the present. Meeting that Jesus--the living one who comes to us even now--will be like meeting Jesus again for the first time."

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire

Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker

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When Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker began traveling the Mediterranean world in search of art depicting the dead, crucified Jesus, they discovered something that traditional histories of Christianity and Christian art had underplayed or sought to explain away: it took Jesus Christ a thousand years to die.

During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as a shepherd, a teacher, a healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a youth, and a bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with the cross, he stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world around him is ablaze with beauty. These are images of paradise—paradise in this world, permeated and blessed by the presence of God.

But once Jesus perished, dying was virtually all he seemed able to do.

Saving Paradise offers a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, and asks how its early vision of beauty evolved into one of torture. In tracing the changes in society and theology that marked the medieval emergence of images of Christ crucified, Saving Paradise exposes the imperial strategies embedded in theologies of redemptive violence and sheds new light on Christianity's turn to holy war. It reveals how the New World, established through Christian conquest and colonization, is haunted by the loss of a spiritual understanding of paradise here and now.

Brock and Parker reconstruct the idea that salvation is paradise in this world and in this life, and they offer a bold new theology for saving paradise. They ground justice and peace for humanity in love for the earth and open a new future for Christianity through a theology of redemptive beauty.

"Only rarely is a single book an event. This book is such a rarity. Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker show that solid scholarship can be expressed with passion and literary grace as they recover the beauty of an earth-loving Christianity lost for a thousand years beneath dry creeds and formulae and poisonous myths of sacralized violence."
—Professor Daniel C. Maguire, author of A Moral Creed For All Christians

"Every Christian theologian and preacher should read this book and be profoundly challenged."
—Professor James H. Cone, author of Malcolm & Martin & America

"Saving Paradise challenges us to recover an ancient world view which is life transforming and earth affirming. It reminds us of a biblical perspective which does not reserve paradise for the dead, but invites the living to find grace, justice, peace and compassion--here and now--amid the jangling discords of violence and war. It may mark the beginning of a paradigm shift in contemporary Christian understanding and interfaith dialogue."
—Reverend James A. Forbes, Jr., President and Founder of the Healing of the Nations Foundation, Senior Minister Emeritus of the Riverside Church of New York City

"The message of Early Christian art is about God's miraculous intervention in the daily lives of Christian believers. How then did Christianity become a religion of finitude and guilt rather than one of promise and celebration? Brock and Parker ran with the evidence, showing us the importance of art, ritual, devotional practices, and liturgical space for early Christians. This tangible past transformed their research and led them to see that paradise in this world lies at the heart of Christianity."
—Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, author of Dictionary of Christian Art

"This powerful, unprecedented, and compelling book brings real Christianity out of the shadows. It lights up the religious roots of American society at a time when progressives need to challenge conservative politicians who use Christianity as a false prop for their ideology."
—George Lakoff, author of Don't Think of an Elephant!