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Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis

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Total reviews: 439 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nothing "Mere" About It! 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Mere Chistianity is divided into 4 books: 1. Right & Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, 2. What Christians Believe, 3. Christian Behavior, and 4. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.

In Book 1, Lewis strikes an early, direct blow against relativistic thinking: "If anyone will take the time to compare the moral teaching of, say the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinesese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own" (p. 6). There are basic, universal moral standards: "men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey" (p.23). "I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way" (p. 25). Who but God wrote this law on my heart?

Personally, I've never met anyone who denied that Jesus was a great moral teacher. Yet, in one way or another, plenty of people try to deny His Divinity. In Book 2, Lewis tries "to prevent the really foolish thing that people often say about Him. `I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God'....A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic [sic]...or else he would be the Devil of Hell" (p. 52). Along these very same lines, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli present the options as "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar." "Now the Christian belief is that if we somehow share the humility and suffering of Christ we shall also share in His conquest of death and find a new life after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy creatures. This means something much more than our trying to follow His teaching" (p. 60).

In contrast to any notion that God's law is intrusive, oppressive, or stifling, Lewis starts 1943's Book 3 with the reminder that "moral rules are directions for running the human machine" (p. 69). Explaining the "cardinal virtues" (i.e., prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance), he notes that "a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of a `virtue'" (p. 80). Book 3 closes with chapters devoted to forgiveness and pride, as well as the "theological virtues" of faith, hope, and charity.

Considering that Lewis was a member of the Church of England, which had approved limited contraceptive use in 1930, much of his commentary on sexual morality is prophetic: "Contraceptives have made sexual indulgence far less costly in marriage and far safer outside it than ever before, and public opinion is less hostile to illicit unions and even to perversion than it has been since Pagan times....Christianity is almost [sic] the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven....Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion: and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once" (pp. 97, 98). "We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help....those who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality than anyone else....Virtue - even attempted virtue - brings light; indulgence brings fog" (pp. 101, 102).

I say that "much of his commentary on sexual morality is prophetic," because Lewis also offered some well-intentioned, yet poorly thought out, comments on marriage and sexuality:
* "If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than they should make vows that they do not mean to keep" (p. 106).
* "There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members" (p. 112).
I am among those who believe that, had Lewis lived longer, he would have embraced the fullness of the Truth which resides in Catholicism. How much his works would have been enhanced, were they informed by our generation's Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Compendium of the Catechism!

In book 4, Lewis acknowledges the attraction of "a vague religion - all about feeling God in nature, and so on" (p. 155). He warns that such touchy-feely, pseudo-religion cannot lead to "eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music....a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected" (p. 155). "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact." "The more we get what we now call `ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become....It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own....How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints....submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life" (pp. 225 - 227).

Editorial Review:

A forceful and accessible discussion of Christian belief that has become one of the most popular introductions to Christianity and one of the most popular of Lewis's books. Uncovers common ground upon which all Christians can stand together.

Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

Wayne Grudem

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 132 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good comprehensive statement of Christian Doctrine 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Fantasticly easy to read systematic theology with some challenging questions at the end of each chapter.
Can't say I liked the hymms section because I didn't really know any of them to be honest (pentecostal / charismatic background sorry) but would be helpful to some.

I've tried reading a few systematic theologies before like Berkhofs, Hodge, Torey and even Calvins Institutes. All hopeless complex and I found myself stuggling. Grudems book is great for students who want a good understanding of Christian theology, but don't want to spend hours struggling with Archaic language and overly scholarlised books.

Grudem has a gift for making complex assertions simple facts. The other guys seem to do things the other way around. Not that there isnt any value in the other authors, but for me I found this book most helpful.
He is quite conservative and rigoursly biblical. Its not an historical or philosophical theology either so it should be renamed biblical theology.

Well worth it, its a massive book and its heavy. make sure you get a hardcover version, softcovers just wont cut it!!

Editorial Review:

This introductory textbook has several distinctive features: a strong emphasis on the scriptural basis for each doctrine; clear writing, with technical terms kept to a minimum; and a contemporary approach.

St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)

Saint Augustine

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely personal narrative, Augustine relates his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of power at the imperial court in Milan, his struggle against the domination of his sexual nature, his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage, and the recovery of the faith his mother Monica had taught him during his childhood.
Now, Henry Chadwick, an eminent scholar of early Christianity, has given us the first new English translation in thirty years of this classic spiritual journey. Chadwick renders the details of Augustine's conversion in clear, modern English. We witness the future saint's fascination with astrology and with the Manichees, and then follow him through scepticism and disillusion with pagan myths until he finally reaches Christian faith. There are brilliant philosophical musings about Platonism and the nature of God, and touching portraits of Augustine's beloved mother, of St. Ambrose of Milan, and of other early Christians like Victorinus, who gave up a distinguished career as a rhetorician to adopt the orthodox faith. Augustine's concerns are often strikingly contemporary, yet his work contains many references and allusions that are easily understood only with background information about the ancient social and intellectual setting. To make The Confessions accessible to contemporary readers, Chadwick provides the most complete and informative notes of any recent translation, and includes an introduction to establish the context.
The religious and philosophical value of The Confessions is unquestionable--now modern readers will have easier access to St. Augustine's deeply personal meditations. Chadwick's lucid translation and helpful introduction clear the way for a new experience of this classic.

Heaven

Randy Alcorn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 144 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Have any of you read The Bible all the way through? 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

So, have any of you read The Bible all the way through? Are you reading this book, and not The Bible? Are you waiting for somebody else to tell you what it says, again. (Get a good NIV you can read). And yes, I have read The Bible through quite a few times, since I never stop, and read at least a chapter a night. I realized several years ago that I was taking other's word for what it said, and in the case of this book, it scares me. It sure sounds like other reviewers just read other's thoughts, and have none of their own?
I found some reviews on another site, and they sum up what I think about this book, almost exactly: It cheapens heaven down to the same STUFF we have. I include those reviews below.

anoninva, on April 2nd, 2006 at 4:34 pm Said:
I read most of this book, and I felt the first part was good. But somewhere past the middle, I stopped reading it for this reason: To me, Alcorn is too wrapped up in this world. He seems to be saying (I am paraphrasing), "Hey, you love Doritos? Then there will be Doritos in heaven. Do you love your dog? then your dog will be in heaven. Do you love sports? Then there's no reason why you can't have that in heaven too!" I feel like he trivializes heaven. By the time he finished portraying his version of heaven, I felt like I was envisioning Mayberry, USA, instead of the heaven described for us in the Scriptures. Instead of focusing the believer's heart and eyes on the Lord Jesus as our great treasure, he seems to want to comfort us by telling us that everything on earth that we love will be in heaven (short of sin).

It's almost as if heaven and the Lord are not enough, but we Americans, in order to really desire heaven, have to have every earthly pleasure promised to us as well. Though those things may very well be there (Scripture is silent) I really am not drawn to such a heaven, personally. If you are interested in reading about heaven, I would instead recommend any book or essay written by the puritans on the subject of heaven. They draw the believer's heart to heavenly joys, not earthly ones.

Baseball may be in heaven, but it really doesn't make me desire heaven more, or make heaven more beautiful to me if it is. And the Lord didn't promise us these types of manmade things, either. It's Him and the wedding supper of the Lamb and worship that the Lord expounds upon in His word. This to me is heaven.

Anonymous, on April 20th, 2006 at 7:02 pm Said:
anoninva - well spoken. I know a lot of folks that insist on earthly pleasures being a part of heaven. I have a suspicion that my glorified body will not crave Doritos.

I appreciate your insight.

Dan Traxler, on October 11th, 2006 at 7:26 pm Said:
Heaven is not a place to play, it is the eternal GLORY OF GOD. We will glorify God in heaven which by the way is the reason we are here in this earth today.
Chips and cheese eating, if it glorifies God, my be on the plate but one has to wonder if this is what our God requires of us.
Dan Traxler
Just another sinner in California

Editorial Review:

What will heaven be like? Randy Alcorn presents a thoroughly biblical answer, based on years of careful study, presented in an engaging, reader-friendly style. His conclusions will surprise readers and stretch their thinking about this important subject. Heaven will inspire readers to long for heaven while they're living on earth.

The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Lee Strobel

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Total reviews: 629 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

The Case for seriers is great. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

1 July 2008 - Great Book...a friend gave me this book years ago but after reading The Case for a Creator I read it and thought it was amazing. It was the abridged version.

if I could give this book less than one star, I would 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is presented in the guise of addressed serious questions of the Christian faith in an objective, thorough manner; as a lawyer would defend a case. Listen, if Lee Strobel was defending Christ in a court of law, Christ would be in trouble. No offense. This book may work well for the naive, but is doesn't answer any serious questions regarding the validity of Christianity. Also, notice how everyone he interviews is a "Dr." Something. That's to help him prop up his side of the argument. He's hoping that the reader will see the "Dr." and not question the evidence. It's downright insulting. If he had good evidence to answer the questions posed, he would need someone with a "Dr." in front of their name. He could just use the evidence.

Editorial Review:

The Case for Christ records Lee Strobel's attempt to "determine if there's credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God." The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Parker J. Palmer

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Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The old Quaker adage, "Let your life speak," spoke to author Parker J. Palmer when he was in his early 30s. It summoned him to a higher purpose, so he decided that henceforth he would live a nobler life. "I lined up the most elevated ideals I could find and set out to achieve them," he writes. "The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque.... I had simply found a 'noble' way of living a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart."

Thirty years later, Palmer now understands that learning to let his life speak means "living the life that wants to live in me." It involves creating the kind of quiet, trusting conditions that allow a soul to speak its truth. It also means tuning out the noisy preconceived ideas about what a vocation should and shouldn't be so that we can better hear the call of our wild souls. There are no how-to formulas in this extremely unpretentious and well-written book, just fireside wisdom from an elder who is willing to share his mistakes and stories as he learned to live a life worth speaking about. --Gail Hudson

The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

James W. Sire

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Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When The Universe Next Door was first introduced nearly thirty years ago, it set the standard for a clear, readable introduction to worldviews. In concise, easily understood prose, James W. Sire explained the basics of theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism and the new consciousness. The second edition was updated and expanded to include sections on Marxism and secular humanism, as well as a completely reworked chapter on what is now widely known as New Age philosophy rather than new consciousness. And the third edition offered further updating and revisions, including a thoroughly revised chapter on New Age philosophy and, perhaps most importantly, a new chapter on postmodernism. Now the fourth edition refines the definition of worldview itself, incorporating Sire's thinking and teaching during the past decade. (His recent work is showcased in a new book, Naming the Elephant, also published by IVP.) The Universe Next Door has been translated into several languages and has been used as a text at over one hundred colleges and universities in courses ranging from apologetics and world religions to history and English literature. With the publication of the fourth edition, this book will continue to aid students, teachers and anyone who wants to understand the variety of worldviews that compete with Christianity for the allegiance of our minds and hearts.

What's So Great About Christianity

Dinesh D'Souza

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Total reviews: 128 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hollow 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Anyone looking for valid arguments for the existence of god had best look elsewhere. D'Souza makes plenty of decent arguments for why he personally likes Christianity, but never builds a valid case for why Christianity is true. In fact, he contradicts himself regularly.

The most irritating feature of this book its misleading nature. Dinesh makes a number of good points regarding bad logic or false assumptions made by famous atheists attempting to show that god doesn't exist, then turns around and uses the very arguments he just refuted to "prove" that god does!

A prime example is how he uses Kant's logic to show that atheists can't say that science shows us the truth about reality because we can't really know the truth of anything; he then continues on to say that Christianity offers us truth.

Huh?

Or that science can't tell us anything about god, but that science clearly demonstrates god's existence.

What?

Time and again he does this, and he is more blatantly deceptive when he tries to show that if Christianity must be held accountable for the crimes of Christians, atheism must held accountable for the crimes of atheists. For one, a more fair comparison would be atheism vs all theism, or Christians vs Communists (or Humanists, or social Darwinists, or some other subdivision of atheists). For another, while he tries to imply that the higher body count of atheists compared to Christians (numbers he arrives at by a highly misleading analysis of history) indicates that atheism is invalid, he never addresses what the body count of Christianity must represent.

As a love letter to Christianity, this book does just fine. As an argument for Christianity, it is a complete failure.

Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God

Elizabeth A. Johnson

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the author's introduction: Since the middle of the twentieth century there has been a renaissance of new insights into God in the Christian tradition. On different continents, under pressure from historical events and social conditions, people of faith have glimpsed the living God in fresh ways. It is not that a wholly different God is discovered from the One believed in by previous generations. Christian faith does not believe in a new God but, finding itself in new situations, seeks the presence of God there. Aspects long-forgotten are brought into new relationships with current events, and the depths of divine compassion are appreciated in ways not previously imagined.

This book further explores these discoveries. After the first chapter describes Elizabeth Johnson's point of departure and the rules of engagement, each succeeding chapter distills a discrete idea of God. Featured are transcendental, political, liberation, feminist, black, hispanic, interreligious, and ecological theologies, ending with the particular Christian idea of the one God as Trinity. The aim of the book is to increase the light of theological knowledge, "ever ancient, ever new," among a wide circle of people, including students, pastoral ministers, and everyone who questions, wonders, or thinks about their faith.

Knowing God

J. I. Packer

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Editorial Review:

A lifelong pursuit of knowing God should embody the Christian's existence. According to eminent theologian J.I. Packer, however, Christians have become enchanted by modern skepticism and have joined the "gigantic conspiracy of misdirection" by failing to put first things first. Knowing God aims to redirect our attention to the simple, deep truth that to know God is to love His Word. What began as a number of consecutive articles angled for "honest, no-nonsense readers who were fed up with facile Christian verbiage" in 1973, Knowing God has become a contemporary classic by creating "small studies out of great subjects." Each chapter is so specific in focus (covering topics such as the trinity, election, God's wrath, and God's sovereignty), that each succeeding chapter's theology seems to rival the next, until one's mind is so expanded that one's entire view of God has changed. Author Elizabeth Eliot wrote that amid the lofty content Packer "puts the hay where the sheep can reach it--plainly shows us ordinary folks what it means to know God." Having rescued us from the individual hunches of our ultra-tolerant theological age, Packer points the reader to the true character of God with his theological competence and compassionate heart. The lazy and faint-hearted should be warned about this timeless work--God is magnified, the sinner is humbled, and the saint encouraged. --Jill Heatherly