Reflections of the Kingdom

Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature by Angus Fletcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very interesting review of several [25] literary devices that apparently have neurological explanations for why they are so effective. It is this physiological connection that I found most interesting. It opens strong with a quick nod to how the Illiad incorporated a revolutionary version of the paean or battle chorus to replicate an oxytocin boost to provide us with a "connection to the cosmic human community.” Then we move quickly to the story of Job, and how it was rewritten to have such a powerful impact on the human empathy. Some of the “inventions” are more of how previous inventions were combined to make them more effective … most of those seemed to be a stretch or something I just didn’t understand well enough to appreciate it. Regardless, it did give more a different take on a lot of the classic literature that ...

Evangelizing Catholics: A Mission Manual for the New Evangelization by Scott Hahn My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is the first book by Dr. Hahn that I have read. My first impression was that the book as a tad overly verbose with a dash of judgement in his preaching. In fact, most of the thirty-three (33) or so times he refers to Protestants, he does so in order to contrast what they do or believe with what Catholics should do or believe. The problem here is that there is really very little that is uniformly accepted within the hundreds of Protestant denominations, and his anecdotal experience was so different than mine that I frequently thought that if that is what you were doing as a Protestant, you were doing it wrong (which is of course why there are hundreds of Protestant denominations). Here is the thing … nearly all of these comparisons were not really needed to understand what he was trying to say, so they mostly just get in the way of the message. They...

A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope That Lies Within by Francis George My rating: 4 of 5 stars The preface makes it clear that this is a series of essays (30-45 mins ea.) meant for reflection and not for apologetic discourse and theology/philosophy.  While they contain a unifying theme and is directly targets to a relatively small audience of Catholic Intellectuals, it is useful for reflection by the laity as well.  In general, these essays identify a tension between modern secular culture, grounded in rational/intellectual ideals and the traditional culture of the church grounded in faith/spirituality.  These essay attempt to argue for the necessity of a synthesis between the two … without surrendering the putative authority of the magisterium … by appealing to the belief that [American] culture sees religion as the basis for communicating a moral code that tells us how to what we should  do [as well as what we should thi...

Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis by R B Jamieson My rating: 5 of 5 stars Over the past several years I have read a lot of books that attempt to explain the Christian concept of the Trinity and without fail I always ended up more confused about the idea at the end of the book than when I started … except with this book. Although the authors target the book at biblical scholars and theologians (the respective specialties of the authors), the material is presented in a highly organized and pedagogical process that will keep even casual readers engaged with good comprehension of the concepts. Perhaps what makes this book so exception is that the primary goal is not to explain the Trinity, but to provide the reader with a series of principles and rules with which to approach biblical study in order to understand what scripture is actually telling us … and then by way of example, applies these principles and rules to on...