Reflections of the Kingdom

Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with St. Ignatius and Dallas Willard by Trevor Hudson My rating: 4 of 5 stars A practical guide to finding and living the [zoe] life that God wants for us. What we find within are the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) as they are applied by Trevor Hudson (a protestant minister) who learned them from Fr Andrew Norton (an Anglican Monk) and mapped them to every day living with the help of American philosopher Dallas Willard. Truly a fascinating mix. The book opens with an introduction to the two “Seekers” (Ignatius and Willard) that will illustrate what we should seek and how to seek it. Each chapter ends with an example prayer and notations. For chapters with practical applications details for the reader, there is also specific “Seeking Exercises” to put the concept into practice and to develop the appropriate habits. In my opinion, it was these exercises that made this work...

Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition by Jonathan Bernier My rating: 5 of 5 stars This an accessible academic book that builds on the previous work of John Robinson in “Redating the New Testament” as a quasi spiritual successor. As such it pretty much treads the same ideas, with slightly different analysis and opinion on the arguments presented for both an earlier and a later compositional date assignment (as well as a providing a benchmark of a nominal middle ground for comparison). For the most part, it doesn’t move the earlier dates much, but it does answer some of the criticisms advanced against the low chronology, as well as addressing some of the arguments for the later dating. The basic premises is that many of the arguments against are in fact inconclusive (aka non-probative) at best; however, the arguments for the earlier dates typically rest on a more likely than not (for best fit) analysis, so clearly there...

Quest 52: A Fifteen-Minute-A-Day Yearlong Pursuit of Jesus by Mark Moore My rating: 4 of 5 stars Quest 52 is billed as a year long study devotional designed to help the reader come into a better understanding of Christ Jesus; as such, it specifically targets Christians and assumes that is their ultimately goal. The book is extremely well organized with one (1) chapter for each week of the year. The chapters are grouped into four (4) sections: The Person of Jesus, The Power of Jesus, The Preaching of Jesus and The Passion of Jesus. These sections are further divided into three (3) topics each (Person: Beginning, Person: Purpose, Person: Relationships; Power: Wonders, Power: Signs, Power: Claims; Preaching: Teaching, Preaching: Stories, Preaching: Training; Passion: Preparation, Passion: Suffering, Passion: Victory). Each chapter is assigned a Biblical Concept and applicable Gospel readings before opening with a brief personal story leading into a ...

Common Callings and Ordinary Virtues: Christian Ethics for Everyday Life by Brent Waters My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was a rather ambitious book trying to make us see the value in the “ordinary” habits in the formation of [christian] character, making a premise that I was looking forward to exploring. The book is 16 chapters spread over three parts covering basic philosophical themes, relationships and activities. The author acknowledges several challenges in the preface, which were unfortunately the primary reason this book didn’t always work for me. In particular, the abstract language favored in philosophical discussions that make the work less accessible to those less “sophisticated” readers (such as me). I tend to favor more plain language and more direct examples. Instead we get frequent critiques of “later moderns” for what they are doing wrong before implying that they shouldn’t be doing that. It would have been much better to simply focus o...