• Grabbing the nearest book.
• Turning to page 123.
• Quoting the fifth sentence on the page.

I’m sitting in the front room near a bookshelf full of books. Strictly speaking, there are four books that are nearly equidistant from me, so I’m going to quote the requested passage from all four of them.

From Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible:

Thus the correspondence was to be first settled by a sensible appearance of the divine glory, which was afterwards to be carried on more silently by the ministry of Moses.

From the Reformed Expository Commentary on Galatians by Philip Graham Ryken:

Even though he did not use these precise words, Paul obviously believed that the Bible is infallible and inerrant from beginning to end.

From Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

Because there is some common knowledge of right and wrong, Christians can often find much consensus with non-Christians in matters of civil law, community standards, basic ethics for business and professional activity, and acceptable patterns of conduct in ordinary life.

And the wildcard in the bunch, from Richard Lyman Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling:

The revelation on the millennial gathering brought all the routine activities of everyday life into question.

I’ve been using LibraryThing to catalog my books since September 2005. All Things Considered on NPR recently featured LibraryThing in a story called “Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually” (listen).

I especially love the intro to this story:

You know that you’re a bibliophile if you check out peoples’ bookshelves when you visit their homes, if you never pass a used bookstore without going in, or if you have a giant wishlist on Amazon.com.

That fits me to a tee. If it fits you, you owe it to yourself to check out LibraryThing!

(hat tip: The LibraryThing Blog)

I read a controversial article the other day in TIME Magazine: “The Case for Teaching The Bible”, which makes a clear call for courses teaching about the Bible in public high schools. The author, David Van Biema, TIME’s senior religion writer, carefully couches his call with some guidelines, namely that such teaching must be entirely secular and constitutional. The emphasis within the teaching should be on the Bible’s impact on Western history, literature, and culture.

The article mentions a couple of groups producing texts for such classes, including The Bible Literacy Project, which, in cooperation with The First Amendment Center, published a document in 1999 called “The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide” and has more recently released a textbook called The Bible and Its Influence.

I think Van Biema makes a critical statement near the middle of his article, when he asks and answers his own question:

bq.. Doesn’t secular teaching about the Bible play into the hands of the religious right and the secular left?

Yes. Both. Which may suggest that each is exaggerating its claim.

p. In other words, the religious right wins by getting the Bible into schools, but loses because of the secular spin, and vice versa for the secular left. There are strong reasons why both groups should oppose this, and, on the other hand, good reasons why they should cooperate to make sure it happens.

Van Biema’s careful criteria for Bible literacy courses in public schools, as provided near the end of his article, goes something like this:

* The Bible literacy course shouldn’t be mandatory.
* The course should be coupled mandatorily with a world religions course, even if that would mean just a semester of each.
* No one should take the course but juniors and seniors.
* The Bible’s harmful as well as helpful uses must be addressed.
* The course should have a strong accompanying textbook. It shouldn’t use the Bible as its primary text.
* Teacher training is a must: at a bare minimum, about their constitutional obligations.

I personally agree with Van Biema’s criteria and his conclusion and would welcome the academic teaching of the Bible in public schools.

As an aside, in trying to think about this from the perspective of someone who is not Christian, I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to have secular teaching of the Quran in high schools. The more I think about that, the more I wish I could’ve taken such a class in high school. I think it would’ve prepared me better (and, if offered today, would prepare our children) to deal better with and think more rationally about current events in the middle east.

If I had to choose one of these books over the other, I think it would be Christian Beliefs. It follows the same major topics as most full-blown theology texts, and, in fact, is a condensation of Grudem’s 528 page Bible Doctrine, which is itself a condensation of Grudem’s 1,296 page Systematic Theology. As such, there is a wealth of information packed into this svelte volume. I especially found the Westminster Catechism, the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, and the ancient Christian creeds in the back of the book to be a nice touch. Grudem also provides a list of roughly 45 books for additional study from a variety of perspectives. I can’t think of a better, more easily digestible introduction to Christian theology than this book, and have already recommended it to several friends and others who have inquired about what I believe.

Basic Christianity is considered a modern classic, and I think it’s deserving of that reputation. It was written in 1958, and Stott is from England, so I found his manner of writing at times quirky and difficult to understand (it reminded me of Talmage, actually). That said, he offers a well-organized and cogent summary of Christian belief and duty. He divides his book into four major topics: (1) Christ’s person, (2) man’s need, (3) Christ’s work, and (4) man’s response. It was clear from the outset, and from several things he said throughout the volume, that Stott values concepts like the Sovereignty of God and Unconditional Election, but he spoke much and often about man’s duty, to the point that I wondered at times if he was not Arminian. In this respect, Stott reminded me a lot of Spurgeon, who was also clearly Calvinist but spoke at times like an Arminian. I think nowadays too many Christians shirk from anything resembling duty and I appreciated this new (or rather, old) perspective and insight from Stott.

Both these books are excellent introductions to the Christian faith, and I would commend them to anyone, especially if you are unfamiliar with the basic tenets of Evangelical Christianity and would like something you can read in one or two sittings.