This month, from Doug Jones:
Of late, I’ve been reading all sorts of books on Jesus’ Beatitudes—”Blessed are the…”—and this small book by James Howell stands out very nicely from the crowd. It’s written for humans, not academics, and it invokes all sorts of creative comparisons and challenges. Where other treatments get wordy, this one stays succinct, earthy, and pointed. The opening chapter, “What Jesus Didn’t Say,” by itself is worth the price of the book.

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This month, from Doug Wilson:
A number of years I must have encountered the principle directly, and I believe it was in Herbert Schlossberg’s magnificent book Idols for Destruction. But it really struck me the second time through that book a year or two ago. The principle is this—you become what you worship. In Psalm 115, the psalmist tells us that the idols have mouths that cannot speak, ears that cannot hear, eyes that cannot see, and so forth. Those that make them are like unto them. And of course, we see the positive side of this principle in Scripture as well. As we worship the Lord, beholding Him, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). John tells us that when we finally see Him we will become like Him, because we will see Him as He is. The principle is clear therefore—you become increasingly like your object of worship.

Convinced as I was of the truth of this principle, I was astonished recently to discover that this is not only a scriptural truth, but should rightly be called a major scriptural theme. A recent book by New Testament scholar G.K. Beale, entitled We Become What We Worship, is a magnificent treatment of this theme. Beale demonstrates in passage after passage that the Old Testament prophets harped on the theme constantly, and that the New Testament writers picked up on it repeatedly. Anyone who is interested in really studying the mainspring of all our sanctification needs to obtain and study this book. This is simply a good business.

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This month, from Doug Jones:
Before Warren Carter’s “Essential Guide,” all the crucial info for understanding the ominous pressure of the Roman Empire on New Testament life was scattered among numerous scholars and papers. This wonderfully easy-to-read text brings readers much closer to grasping that empire that Daniel described as “exceedingly dreadful” and “pompous,” that “devoured the whole earth” to “trample it and break it in pieces.” In the midst of that world, Jesus and the apostles came along and established a very different kind of kingdom. A deadly clash had to follow. Sure, Carter has some goofy, modernist moments that are readily evident, but the vast majority of the book provides an extremely helpful guide for understanding the New Testament community.

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This month, from Doug Wilson:
Peter Jones is a professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary West. He has written numerous books on the encroachments of gnostic spirituality in the modern Church, and in this book, The God of Sex, he shows how theological assumptions are a driving force in the formation of sexuality. Christians need to come to grips with the fact that polytheism will necessarily result in polysexuality—what I have elsewhere called pomosexuality. We now have five “genders,” and no doubt our secularist R&D department is working on more. But this is a necessary outgrowth of our basic faith assumptions. The gods of a pluralistic society have decided opinions on what is okay in the bedroom—pretty much anything—just as the triune God of Scripture has given us His (very different) word on the subject. In this book, Peter Jones addresses one of the fundamental issues of our time.

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This month, from Doug Jones:
To modern ears, so many New Testament arguments seem abstract, strange, and disconnected. This book provides their home. DeSilva examines the dominant contexts of honor/shame, patronage/reciprocity, kinship/household, and purity/pollution, themes that shape so much of the New Testament. For years, anthropologists and New Testament scholars have written about these crucial topics in difficult prose scattered all over the academic landscape, but deSilva gathers these topics in one, clear, popular, delightful place. Read it before you try to understand any more of the New Testament. The lights will come on.

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