Top Ten Reads of 2008

I had a friend in university who prided himself on his Portuguese heritage. He used to quote this Portuguese proverb to me: "A donkey loaded with books is not a philosopher." It's stuck with me, and chastened me, over the years. A donkey loaded with books is no pastor, either; but then a pastor's library is one of his or her richest resources-- for ministry and spiritual formation. So I try to read as much, as broadly and as deeply as I can. In the interest of unloading the donkey, I offer my top ten reads of 2008:

10. Portofino. Frank Schaeffer.
A coming-of-age story about a boy growing up in an evangelical missionary family in Europe. No Catcher in the Rye, but it did have its humorous and touching moments. Frank Schaeffer, son of envangelical icon Francis Schaeffer, has some pretty negative issues with the evangelical tradition that he's put in more explicit terms in other books.

9. Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics. Oliver O'Donovan.
A really tough read, but worth it for the way it forces you to wrestle with the implications of the resurrection for the Christian life. O'Donovan is convinced that to be truly evangelical,we must make the resurrection the ground of all ethical action.


8. Fear and Trembling. Soren Kierkegaard.
A theological and philosophical meditation on God's command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Lots of existential stuff in there about the absurd "leap of faith" typified in Abraham's "teleological suspension of the ethical" when he offered his son.



7. The Koran.
There was lots I didn't follow, but two things I took away from the Koran: 1) I have a new appreciation for Christian convictions about the imminence of Christ through the Spirit; 2) I will probably not talk about Christian revelation as propositional the same way any more, after getting a glimpse of what "propositional" really looks like.

6. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis. J. Richard Middleton.
An OT biblical scholar's look at what the idea that God created men and women in his image might have meant in its historical context. He argues that the idea is a radical democratization of the ancient Mesopotamian ideology of kingship, where the king alone was the "image of the god" on earth. Lots of healthy food for thought in there.

5. The Everlasting Man. G. K. Chesterton
I have a good friend who is a Chesterton aficionado; this is only my third sip from the deep cup of Chesterton's profound work (after Orthodoxy and Man who was Thursday). In substance, content and theme, it reminded me a lot of Augustine's City of God, looking at all of history in light of the person of Christ.

4. Unmasking the Powers. Walter Wink.
Building on his linguisitic/exegetical work in Naming the Powers, Wink shows how the "invisible structures" that humans create and participate in to control our reality, actually in turn exert control over us. A kind of theological version of Golding's Lord of the Flies.

3. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care. Steven Bouma-Prediger.
I read a lot of books on ecology and faith this fall working on my research project for my M.Div. Steven Bouma-Prediger's book was by far the most thoughtful, creative and well-written.


2. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill McKibben.
Transformed my thinking about economics, food, consumerism and ecology. You can see some of these transformed thoughts here.



1. The Climax of the Covenant. N. T. Wright.
N. T. Wright has had a huge influence on how I think, talk and preach about Jesus. Climax of the Covenant is a pretty technical analysis of Paul's Christology, and shows his considerable gifts for offering exegetically and historically incisive readings of familiar texts.