Reflections of the Kingdom

Engaging the Old Testament: How to Read Biblical Narrative, Poetry, and Prophecy Well by Dominick S. Hernández My rating: 5 of 5 stars There are a lot of approaches to reading the Old Testament and all of them have their limits. As a collection of text within a variety of genres and translated from a different language and culture, it is fairly easy to mistake the intended message of the original scribe, especially when you break in down into small pericopes that are divorced of the surrounding context and inserted directly into today’s culture. Engaging the Old Testament goes in the other direction, suggesting a holistic reading of each text in order to recover the original context and message as interpreted by the original audience. The book begins with instruction on How to read the Old Testament; which is to be humble and open to new interpretations as well as a commitment to reading the whole text as the original redactor intended in order to be how ea...

Ordinary Discipleship: How God Wires Us for the Adventure of Transformation by Jessie Cruickshank My rating: 3 of 5 stars I struggled with the book; however, I believe that was primarily because of the differences between my own experiences and interpretations sources against what was presented in the book, that it was difficult to connect to the material. Perhaps to most significance would be the decision to hand discipleship and disciple-making to Dr Campbell’s Hero’s Journey myth; of which I am actually a huge fan, but my understanding of what it is and how it is used seem to be at odds with how the author uses it. It would have worked better for me to simply acknowledge an inspiration before changing the name (eg. Disciple’s Journey) and steps involved (instead of just the latter). An example of a smaller irritant would be the brief discussion about iron “folding" and creating something from the inside out. While I am pretty sure the author ...

Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation by Robert Chao Romero My rating: 5 of 5 stars There has been a lot of discussion about Critical Race Theory (CRT) recently, and much of it starts with an inaccurate understanding of what it actually is and how it is used. Having just finished a course on Catholic Social Teaching, I was very much interested in a book that talks of the intersection of Christianity and CRT. This book begins with an introduction where the two authors share a little of their experience as BIPOC with regard to racism in the US and the church. It is important to note that as a member of the current majority, I do not share anything close to their experiences and recognize that most of what they talk about is very nearly invisible to me without closer examination. Ultimately that is where CRT comes it … to highlight those areas where our laws and institutions facilitate (sometimes unintentionally) the d...

The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for the Church's Apologetic Witness by Joshua D Chatraw My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book starts with the proposition that current day apologetics is not working because it is missing a spiritual/pastoral element. In other words, the goal is to win the argument and not convert the sinner. Ultimately this approach fails because the focus on attack just makes the target defensive (and at best unengaged). Anecdotally I find a lot of support for this idea and I was very curious as to how this book would tackle the problem. It does so by looking at two primary works of St Augustine: Confessions and City of God. Rather than a detailed interpretation of what Augustine actually said in each of these, the authors are more concerned with how he does it … the method he uses and how that method can be adapted to our current day circumstance. The basic idea is something of a trojan horse approach. First acknowledge that ...