 |
The Fire that Consumes, Edward Fudge (Cascade). Before there was Rob Bell, there was Edward Fudge. Of course, before Bell, there were numerous voices (stretching back to the Patristic Fathers) questioning how we are to understand Scripture’s teaching on Hell. In recent years, Fudge’s work has been a standard conversation partner for anyone wrestling through these issues. Now in an updated third edition, Fudge offers his read on the “biblical and historical study of the doctrine of final punishment,” concluding that Scripture affirms hell as a place of annihilation but not never-ending torment. Whether or not one agrees, Fudge provides an important view to be considered.
 |
The Resurrection of the Messiah, Christopher Bryan (Oxford). Bryan, a retired scholar whose teaching career spanned appointments at Oxford and University of the South, offers a wide-sweeping engagement with the many issues surrounding the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The book follows three trails. First, Bryan provides a historical overview of Jewish and pagan understandings of resurrection as well as the early Christian claims of the particular event of Jesus’ resurrection. Second, Bryan digs into the apostolic witness to Jesus’ resurrection. Finally, Bryan surveys the many theories that have taken shape in response to the Christian claim. Bryan delves into dense water, but he does so “with an occasional touch of whimsy.”
 |
The Senator and the Sharecropper, Chris Myers Asch (UNC Press). Sunflower County, Miss., was center stage for a number of the most vicious moments of the Civil Rights struggle. Asch narrates the story of two of the prime actors on this stage: Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper “who rose to become the spiritual leader of the Mississippi freedom struggle” and Senator James Eastland, a plantation owner who wielded financial and political power to propagate segregation. If we want to move into the future, we have to reckon with our past. Asch helps us do this.
 |
Winn Collier (www.winncollier.com) is pastor of All Souls, a Baptist congregation in Charlottesville, Va., the author of three books and a columnist.