Words from the Fire: Mohler’s Latest Challenges Church and Culture

Al Mohler has word out about his latest book, Words from the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the 10 Commandments (Moody, 2009).  On his website, he gives a teaser from the book’s introduction that caught my attention:

The great philosophical crisis of our day is an epistemological crisis – a crisis of knowing and a crisis of knowledge. It is a challenge for the Christian thinker, the Christian theologian, the Christian minister, the Christian preacher, and the Christian institution – the whole of Christianity. The crisis can be summed up in one question: How do we know and teach what we claim to know and teach?

Mohler continues in this vein:

The claim to know anything, certainly in terms of empirical and scientific observation and study and phenomenology, is audacious enough. But then to speak of the “immortal invisible God only wise”—that is a new leap of audacity altogether.

He concludes with reference to another theologian who took on the challenge of epistemology in his own day, Francis Schaeffer:

Dr. Schaeffer understood the epistemological problem that is silence – the claim and the implication that we can know nothing. And he understood that there is only one epistemological answer—revelation. Christianity depends upon a Christian epistemology, a Christian theory of knowledge based in revelation alone. There is no greater challenge than this—to make certain we know on what authority we speak, and know, and teach.

This a strong introduction for what looks like an excellent book.  I encourage you to make your way over to Amazon and buy it. Great to see Moody Publishers turning out another great title that simultaneously illumines the world and address the culture.  It’s short, readable, and, according to Tim Challies, perhaps Dr. Mohler’s best book yet.  Unlike many handlings of the Ten Words, it’s Christ-centered.  This one will work for a wide audience.

Words from the Fire will help you to understand one of the most important sections of scriptural content, the Ten Commandments, and it will also equip you to handle the challenging question, “How do we know what we know?”  The answer: look to the fire–and listen.