There are no links to scientific articles and challenging theological debates here. This is merely an attempt to get to know some of you a little better. I’ve found that generally helps in keeping a disagreement at the conversational level. Towards that end, I have 2 questions.
What is the last, current, or planned non-fiction book you have/are/will read?
What is the last, current, or planned fiction book you have/are/will read?
I’m currently making my way through Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy. Its good, but more than a little challenging to fully grasp. So far, I’m about halfway through, he is using the Sermon on the Mount as his main point of illustration and seeks to clarify God’s plan intentions for the human condition.
Next on my list if David Webb’s Honor Harrington series. By ‘next,’ I mean I couldn’t wait and started it last night. Willard may get extended into the fall. Enjoying it so far. He doesn’t spend a lot of time easing the reading to the finer points of space combat and politics. (Think 18th Century ships-of-the-line…in space…) But he is nowhere near as immersive as Patrick O’Brian so I’m not concerned.
I am reading and writing chapter summaries and discussion questions for Timothy Tennant’s Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the 21st Century. It is for work more than for fun, since it is guiding some organizational changes and some of us are trying to keep up with what’s going on. It is really long and I am half-way done, but I’ve learned some less-focused on majority world church history. I recently finished Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism. I tried to read Michael Horton’s For Calvinism, but I got bored and quit. I’m going to try to read at least some of Kevin VanHoozer’s Is There Meaning in this Text? on the long three-day road trip that we have coming up in about a week, if I’m not too carsick or doped up on Dramamine. I’ve seen it cited about a dozen times, and seeing that he combines speech-act theory with hermeneutics, (my two favorite things: linguistics and theology) how could it not be interesting?
I alternate back and forth between trying to finish Brothers K (not the Dostoevsky one, the Duncan one) and trying to finish A Prayer for Owen Meaney. I go back and forth between thinking maybe these are worth my time, and thinking maybe not. Obviously I am not as cool and profound as my hipster Christian friends who said I simply must read them because they are the best novels ever. I think the last fiction book I actually finished was Lila by Marilynne Robinson, who I love. I am reading The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander to my kids. It feels to me like a Tolkien rip-off, but my kids are too young to be critical.
@jlockDivine Conspiracy is on my read before I die list. It’s one that comes up all the time. That and Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship. Before we left the country a few years ago, this lady at my church tried to start a book club and I was her loyal sidekick. But nobody really wanted to read the nerdy books we wanted to read. They wanted to read Francine Rivers and Beth Moore. So it was a bit of a disappointment. Some books you need a little bit of a push to make the effort.
As noted in post below, I just finished Thomas Nagel’s, “Mind and Cosmos” and am now in the middle of Gregory Chaitin’s, “The Unknowable”, on the limits of mathematics and why mathematics is a “quasi-empirical” science. As far as non-fiction goes, I’ve started (don’t know whether I’ll finish) Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Aurora”, about interstellar colonization. And every week or so I go back for the nth time to an Agatha Christie. Last one was “Towards Zero”.
I asked my husband the other night whether it is more a comment on him or me that if I had to pick a tv character to marry, I’d pick Chuck Bartowski or Ben Wyatt.
Aurora looks interesting. Is Robinson comparable to Neil Stephenson? My wife keeps wanting me to try him. Looks like a similar kind of fun with some very heavy theoretical science.
Crichton is on my list and has been for awhile. Just can’t seem to get started. So how much heresy is it to suggest that ‘Jurassic World’ is better than the original Jurassic Park?
I haven’t seen Jurassic World. I saw the original Jurassic Park a long time ago, and Jurassic Park 3 in theaters. I don’t remember much of either movie, which (I think) makes reading the books more enjoyable.
I don’t know about Neil Stephenson, but I liked Robinson’s Mars series–Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars–about the terraforming and colonization of Mars. He’s a little too PC for my taste, but the stories are good.
I am finding Missional Entrepreneurism by Mark Russell very rich in a good theological foundation for Business as Mission, as well as, good practical examples. I am also reading a short book by Peter Greer and Chris Horst (of HOPE International) entitled Sharing Capital for Human Flourishing. Basically about micro finance, and a good read about really helps the underserved in the world. Also re-reading Bonhoeffer, Ethics and Life Together this summer. The centrality of Christ is refreshing, the living out of Christ in community is at time hard to fully grasp.
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. It is both disgusting and boring. I read it because I want to understand why more than 80% of the Germans believed in him and many stil regret that he lost. And nobody seems to notice that it had been cheaper to buy western Europe instead starting a war.
I have three boxes on our attic, full with books written by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov and I look forward to read them again.
but I’ve learned some less-focused on majority world church history. I recently finished Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism. I tried to read Michael Horton’s For Calvinism, but I got bored and quit. I’m going to try to read at least some of Kevin VanHoozer’s Is There Meaning in this Text? on the long three-day road trip that we have coming up in about a week, if I’m not too carsick or doped up on Dramamine. I’ve seen it cited about a dozen times, and seeing that he combines speech-act theory with hermeneutics, (my two favorite things: linguistics and theology) how could it not be interesting?
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