Some Book Notes

I can’t review all the books I purchase, am given or even read, so I want to mention a few that I have read or skimmed or dipped into here and there … beginning with

Graham Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom (New Studies in Biblical Theology). Few topics have gotten evangelical conservatives more riled up than atonement, so it is nice to see a robust defense of a Reformed-ish approach that combines both Christus Victor and penal substitution. Comprehensive, balanced, theological, and eminently useful. A good text for seminary students who know the issues.

Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Temple. This book contends Jesus saw himself over against his Jewish context as a counter-temple movement because he saw himself as the New Temple and that his mission can be — indeed must be — understood through this temple imagery. Against the inner-experience theory of kingdom, Perrin shows that kingdom is socio-economic and concrete and ecclesial. This is a major book that deserves a wide reading.

C.E. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy . It is so common today to hear from innocent people and to read in the media that the Gospels — scratch that, the whole NT — was voted on at Nicea and that it was really Constantine that imposed orthodox belief on a wildly diverse early Christianity. Well, C.E. Hill has literally squashed that idea by showing the Gospels were fully in play — all four of them — by the end of the 1st Century and no one had voted on them. They, in effect, arose by natural selection — the survival of the fittest from the very beginning. This is a well-written book and deserves to be in the library of churches and every college.