I have not updated my book blog in a while. I’m eager to write my thoughts about the book I just finished (Beyond the Salvation Wars, Matthew Bates) but I feel a responsibility to clear the baffles before I do, so here is what I’ve read since I last posted, in order of how glad I am to have read the work listed. I tried to write a little about each book and provide some interesting/representative quotes below.

Jesus and the Powers, NT Wright and Michael F. Bird (Zondervan, 2024)
Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, Edited by William R. Baker (IVP Academic, 2002)
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson (Inter-Varsity, 1980)
Exiles, Preson Sprinkle (Cook, 2024)
Article “The Little Messiah: Jesus as the (one) in small stature in Luke 19:3,” Isaac Soon (JBL 142 #1, 2023)
Baptism and the Remission of Sins, Edited by David W. Fletcher (College Press, 1990)
The Sermon on the Mount, W.D. Davies (Cambridge Press, 1966)
The Sermon on the Mount, Dale Allison (Crossroad Publishing, 2001)
Reckoning with Power, David Fitch (Brazos Press, 2024)
Matthew, Scot McKnight (HarperChristian Resources, 2025)

Jesus and the Powers, NT Wright and Michael F. Bird (Zondervan, 2024)

Leading up to the fall of 2024, I picked three books to read about the relationship between people in Jesus’ Kingdom and their earthly governments. Of course, the publishers knew this was a prime moment to sell books in that category (with the approaching U.S. presidential election), so there were a handful of freshly printed books to read. I found Wright & Brid’s book to be the most compelling of the three, as it most squarely dealt with the Bible’s teaching that human government is a God-ordained authority for our good.

Wright and Bird do not offer an uncritical endorsement of human government and participation in it by believers. They have much to say in criticism of the post-Constantinian Church for the way they have both misused and been corrupted by the power of civil governance. But they do eventually establish that part of living out the kingdom of Jesus well is advocating for and even helping to establish just civil governments. Some quotes:

The fact is that all Christians, whether as private citizens or as public figures, must be willing to ‘do God in public… to be clear, this is not about a Christian takeover. It is about Christian testimony in an age of troubles, terror, tyranny, and tragedy. (p. 76)
It can be a great service to one’s nation to have men and women of deep Christian conviction in public office. We should not be seeking to lord it over others, but to leaven society with Christian influence. (p. 90)
Christian nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. It pursues a victory without mercy. It acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love. (p.136)
God gives government as a gift to humanity to bring welfare, safety, order, and justice to human communities… The State is from God and for our Good. Now - as we’ve canvassed earlier - the State should not be blindly obeyed. That is because the type of authority that the State possesses is neither ultimate nor infallible. The State exists for the purpose of exercising ‘authority’, but that authority is derivative, not definitive. (p.152)

Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, Edited by William R. Baker (IVP Academic, 2002)

This book is a collection of essays on some common theological emphases within the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement (to which Madison Church of Christ belongs). Each section of essays is followed by a response from a mainline evangelical theologian. I gobbled this up while tearing through some books on the subject of baptism last fall. One essay really jumped out at me in this book. It was “The Role of Faith in Conversion” by John Mark Hicks which was ostensibly a historical examination of the Campbells’ relationship with a Ohio Baptist Assoication in the nascient days of the restoration movement, but spoke with incredible clarity on the theological subject which was addressed. It compelled me to pull up his books on Amazon and add several to my wish list. Here is an excerpt from his essay

Faith is trusting in Christ, depending upon God’s work, and showing a willingness to submit to God’s lordship. Baptism assumes both grace and faith and is the ordinary means by which God acts to fill his people with his Spirit. Baptism is that visible, communal moment when God sanctifies his people and makes them one holy community. (p.116)

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson (Inter-Varsity, 1980)

This short devotional is based on the Psalms of ascent in 120-134. It is one of the best devotional books I’ve ever read. Admittedly, that list is pretty short. Peterson takes these psalms and turns them into a roadmap for discipleship that is both simple and challenging.

“But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.” (p.48)
“The main difference between Christians and others is that we take God seriously and they do not. We really do believe that he is the central reality of all existence. We really do pay attention to what he is and what he does. We really do order our lives in response to that reality and not to some other.” (p. 102)

Exiles, Preson Sprinkle (Cook, 2024)

I’m a fan of Sprinkle’s podcast “Theology in the Raw,” where he very fearlessly interviews controversial and cutting-edge Biblical/theological writers about their works. I find his own reading of the New Testament compelling, and it was an easy choice to include his book in the small stack that I would read when preparing for my “Daniel” series at Church in the fall of 2024. Sprinkle is part of this emerging faction in New Testament studies that is increasingly pacifist and unwilling to participate in civil governance. I think that his treatment of the subject fails to address the scriptural reality that God ordained human governance for our good, making me prefer Wright and Bird’s presentation over what I found in this book.

One aspect that I want to pick on here was Sprinkle’s assertion that “Jesus was crucified because he was perceived to be subverting the empire” (p.68), which is a point he uses frequently in the book to portray the Early Church as completely opposed to empire which he equates with cival governance. This, however, is not the story that the Gospels tell about Jesus’ crucifixion. Empire plays no role in their* narrative of what was happening. The Roman figure in the story, Pilate, bears no guilt in the narrative and is not personally desirous of Jesus’ death. He has reshaped the Gospel accounts to provide rationale for the position he wishes to advocate for, which is complete Christian withdrawal from participation in ‘empire’ i.e. civil governance.

“When the Church becomes entangled with political power… it loses its prophetic potential… Whatever involvement Christians have with the kingdoms of this world, we must live as people who belong to a different kingdom empowered by sacrifice, forgiveness, reconciliation, and enemy love. We can’t seek to defeat the dragon using dragon-like power, nor should we put our trust in earthly rulers who look more like the beast than the lamb. (p.143)

Article “The Little Messiah: Jesus as the (one) in small stature in Luke 19:3,” Isaac Soon (JBL 142 #1, 2023)

What if Jesus is actually the short person in the Zacchaeus story?? That is the suggestion in this article! The author clearly establishes that the modifier “small in stature” could belong to either Jesus or Zacchaeus grammatically, and then makes a modestly compelling case that Luke describes Jesus as the short one based on ancient aesopic and physiognomic literature.

I have taken a break from reading an SBL article in between every book because I have substituted chapters from The State of New Testament Studies in their place. But I attended a conference where I knew that I would have some downtime, so I brought this little gem with me and had a blast reading in otherwise boring keynote sessions.

“It is just as likely that Jesus is short but is unable to be seen by Zacchaeus because of the crowd as it is that Zacchaeus is short and from the crowd is not able to see a “regularly” sized Jesus”

Baptism and the Remission of Sins, Edited by David W. Fletcher (College Press, 1990)

This was a read that jumped into my list from exigent circumstances. It is a series of articles on the history of the understanding and practice of baptism through the history of the Church, with a focus on the Stone-Campbell Restoration movement. The most helpful article was Jack Cottrell’s account of baptism through the Protestant Reformation, which was especially critical of the extremely novel position of Huldreich Zwingli, which was adopted by John Calvin and has become the majority position in modern Evangelicalism. Cottrell points to the “incipient philosophical dualism” of the 16th century as the primary reason for Zwingli and Calvin’s confusion.

The Sermon on the Mount, W.D. Davies (Cambridge Press, 1966)

I ordered this commentary on the Sermon on the Mount because Davies was in the footnotes of other commentaries I was reading when they were discussing Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as a new Moses figure. Davie’s presentation of this background model was delightful and enlightening. This is a tiny little book.

The Sermon on the Mount, Dale Allison (Crossroad Publishing, 2001)

Dale Allison’s book was another I found in the footnotes of a Matthew commentary. He also explores the new-Moses angle of Matthew’s gospel, and his verse-by-verse commentary on the Sermon on the Mount was probably the most helpful resource that I had for the sermon series that I preached at Madison. I had never heard of Dale Allison before I got this book, but since I did, I have spotted his name in the footnotes of two different books that I’ve been reading.

Reckoning with Power, David Fitch (Brazos Press, 2024)

Fitch’s book on power is one of the three books that I read in the fall of 2024, leading up to the U.S. Presidential election and a sermon series that I preached on Daniel. I found this book to be the least of the three. Like Sprinkle, Fitch fails to incorporate the scriptural truth that God established human governance for our good. Additionally, Fitch is critical of all forms of power in any setting. His critiques of the use of power by Christians and the Church are a fresh and welcome challenge, but his alternative path is a nightmarish pit of confusion and subjectivity. His critique of power requires him to take a pretty low view of inspiration and assert some pretty confused theology when it comes to the Old Testament nation of Israel and their God-ordered conquests and governance. I’m probably being too harsh on this book because of the last 60 or so pages. I LOVED Fitch’s critiques of worldly power-wielding Christians and Churches, and I thought his case study on how to love and minister to the LGBTQ community was very well done. But his alternative world was so directionless and subjective. He essentially advocates for a leaderless model that makes no decisions and is subject to a subjective perception of where and how ‘the Spirit is working,’ which I find to be a profoundly unbiblical construction. You will find the word “trash” written into the margins of this book three times on the last 50 pages.

“And this is where the rubber meets the road, where the ultimate temptation is revealed. It is at this point that Christians are tempted to believe they know best how to run the world. Because of their unique relation to God, they can wield worldly power best for His purposes. This is the gateway drug to the blurring of the two powers and to the abuse that most often follows. (p. 115)

Matthew, Scot McKnight (HarperChristian Resources, 2025)

This commentary was just not written for me. I found it not to be inquisitive of the text and thus a boring read. There is a place for a work like this as an introductory Bible Study for beginning Bible readers who are intentionally examining their relationship to the world around them more than the world of the text, but that place is not in my library.

Fall '24 - Spring '25 Books