Personal Reflections: A Dozen Interesting Reads (Listens) in 2024

 

Personal Reflections: A Dozen or So Interesting Reads (Listens) in 2024

Though I prefer old-fashioned reading of a book to listening I did break down and subscribe to Audible last year and this helped me get back on track for meeting my annual reading goals. I’ve recorded something similar the last couple years (2021, 2022, 2023). Here is a dozen or so highlights from 2024 (in no particular order):

1.    Keith Underhill, Planted by the Providence of God (Broken Wharfe, 2023).

This is three books in one: A memoir of Underhill, a pioneer RB missionary in Kenya; a history of the RB movement in Kenya; and a manual on church planting. Underhill shares transparently and forthrightly about time of peace and conflict, highs and lows, over decades of cross-cultural ministry. I’ve written an extended review which I hope will be published in 2025.

2.    Ibrahim Ag Mohamed, God’s Love for Muslims: Communicating Bible Grace and New Life (Metropolitan Tabernacle, 2015, 2016).

This brief, clearly written booklet is the best and most accessible resource I have found on Christian understanding of and ministry to Muslims.

3.    Hercules Collins, An Orthodox Catechism: Being the Sum of Christian Religion Contained in the Law and Gospel (PBHB, 2020).

Collins was an English Particular Baptist Pastor who penned this Baptistic version of the Heidelberg Catechism in 1680. I used this beautiful hardback edition with KJV Proofs, along with the paperback edition published by RBAP in 2014, as a supplement as I preached through the Heidelberg Catechism at CRBC in 2024.

4.    P. Gardner-Smith, Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels (Cambridge, 1938).

Finally got to read this year this influential little book, which argues that the Fourth Gospel does not demonstrate any knowledge of or dependence upon the so-called Synoptic Gospels. I totally disagree with the thesis.

5.    Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Seputagint, Second Edition (Baker Academic, 2000, 2015).

I was greatly helped by reading this introduction to the status questionis in modern Septuagintal studies, in preparation for the 2024 Reformation Bible Society conference on “The Reformation Text and the Septuagint.” I was also helped by reading Edmund Gallagher’s Translation of the Seventy: History, Reception, and Contemporary Use of the Septuagint (Abilene Christian University Press, 2021).

6.    John T. McNeil, The Celtic Churches: A History, A.D. 200 to 1200 (University of Chicago Press, 1974).

I started reading this in preparation for a trip to Cornwall and a desire to understand better my own Celtic roots. Solid and intriguing history of Celtic Christianity from Brittany to Cornwall to Wales to Ireland and Scotland. This also sent me on a listening spree, including Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization (Anchor, 1996); Jim Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (Crown, 2005); and J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (Harper Collins, 2026), as well as reading Janet Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospel (The British Library, 2000).

7.    Pierre Viret, A Simple Exposition of the Christian Faith (Zurich Publications, 2013, 2017).

I appreciated this devotional instrument of discipleship, under the guise of a dialogue or conversation between two men, Matthew and Peter, originally written in French by Viret, the Reformer of Lausanne. I also enjoyed learning more about the author by reading Jean-Marc Berthoud, Pierre Viret: A Forgotten Giant of the Reformation (Zurich Publications, 2010).

8.    Nicholas P. Lunn, The Gospels Through Old Testament Eyes: Exploring Extended Allusions (Apollos/IVP Academic, 2023).

This book is a creative and fascinating study not of direct quotations or citations but allusions to OT passages and backgrounds in the canonical Gospels. It brought to light various connections I had not previously seen. I plan to write a review of this book, DV, in 2025.

9.    Richard J. Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eermans, 2002); and David J. Engelsma, Common Grace Revisited: A Response to Richard J. Mouw’s He Shines in All That’s Fair (RFPA, 2003).

I picked up both these slim volumes for a song at the used section of the Baker bookstore while I was in Grand Rapids in November and got started reading them on the plane ride home. This is an old controversy among the Dutch Reformed that resulted in a cordial public debate between the two men, attended by thousands in Grand Rapids, in the early 2000s regarding “common grace.” Engelsma carries the day in this pamphlet war, IMHO.

10.                        Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death (Baker Academic, 2021).

There are not too many academic NT books available on Audible. I found this one to be a stimulating listen and now must get the book to read. Thiessen challenges conventional readings of “ritual purity” in contemporary NT scholarship. I did not always agree with him but especially want to chase down his sources suggesting that Biblical leprosy (lepra) is not the same as Hansen’s disease.

11.                       Nicholas Orme, The History of England’s Cathedrals (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2017).

I ordered this after my visit to Salisbury Cathedral in October. Not just a history of Cathedrals but really a history of Christianity in England. Of late I’ve also gotten interested in reading about Anglicanism. I’ve gotten a couple works underway but did finish last year Arthur Middleton, Reforming the Anglican Mind (Gracewing, 2008), as well as the somewhat related work, Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, Why Do Protestants Convert? (Davenant Press, 2023).

12.                       Stephen J. Nichols, R. C. Sproul: A Life (Crossway, 2021).

This was one of my beach reads on summer vacation last year. It was easy to read, full of anecdotes. Enjoyed especially the inside account of Sproul’s work in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I had a harder time getting through Collin Hanson, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual Life and Intellectual Formation, 2023). At the start of the year, I finished Allen C. Guelzo, Robert E. Lee: A Life (Knopf, 2021) and had an animated discussion at a wedding reception with a friend who is also (like Guelzo) a Christian and a Lincoln scholar about the book’s presentation of Lee.

“when thou comest, bring with thee… the books” (2 Timothy 4:13).

JTR