First Review of What Christians Ought To Believe

First Review of What Christians Ought To Believe May 24, 2016

Over at Theology in the Raw,  Josh Cramer  reviews my soon-to-be-released volume What Christians Ought To Believe: An introduction to Christian Doctrine through the Apostles’  Creed.

Bird writes well and accessibly, at home quoting Irenaus/Pannenberg/Balthasar and Stephen Colbert/Joan Osborne/Star Wars. He combines solid biblical scholarship with good historical, churchly theology to ground the Creed in the Scripture’s story. He gives practical and political suggestions for how the Creed might impact Church and world; for Bird, the Creed is not a doctrinal statement divorced from action but a guide to faith and life. Also, Bird is theologically deep, connected to God’s saving acts in history, and tied to our individual lives and collective Church life through time and space. Nearly every time I put What Christians Ought to Believe down, I felt firmly connected to the Scriptures and the Church’s traditions and pondered ways to use the book in my community. My current suggestions: use it in adult Sunday School classes, reading groups, and other adult studies, with new believers, as a textbook for a college theology course, with a church staff to shape the church’s theology and worship life. You would also enjoy and grow from using it for personal study, though I suspect it is used best in community to help Evangelicals shape our worship. The Creed is one of our rites of citizenship, good at forming us as we submit to it, and Bird’s book is a good, biblical, practical guide through it.


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