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Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Mark Noll (Eerdmans)
More than 15 years ago, Noll fired a shot across the bow of the evangelical ship with his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In those pages, he critiqued what he perceived to be a serious flaw in rigorous evangelical scholarship: that there wasn’t much rigorous evangelical scholarship. With this work, Noll offers a more hopeful assessment as he charts the way for intellectuals to practice their vocation in ways that emerge from a central commitment to Jesus Christ.
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Not Sure: A Pastor’s Journey from Faith to Doubt, John Suk (Eerdmans)
Reading a story about a pastor’s struggle with doubt catches my attention. That’s my own story that I tell in my first book, Restless Faith. It’s almost cliché now to read a younger person of faith fire off a rant on leaving faith or church and extolling the virtues of the skeptic. It’s another thing to read a well-written reflection emerging from years on the journey, pages narrating a textured story touching the mind and the heart. Hats off to Suk.
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Gregory of Nyssa: Sermons on the Beatitudes, Paraphrased by Michael Glerup (IVP)
Far too few of us in the Western church have read Gregory of Nyssa. This is a travesty. In this collection, Glerup paraphrases Nyssa’s Beatitude reflections. Read it to connect to the teachings of the church fathers. Hear it to discern how those before us read Scripture
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Winn Collier is pastor of All Souls, a congregation with Baptist ties in Charlottesville, Va. (www.winncollier.com)