Since 2015, I have reviewed over 300 books for various publications, online and print. These posts collect some of the more notable reviews that are available online.
Some people are afraid of the idea of studying the Bible as literature. Admittedly, you can use the idea to view the Bible as just a human book, not divine revelation. However it's also important to understand the Bible does use literary techniques and cover various genres. Understanding those genres and their techniques allows you …
Although I'm past the age where most people read children's picture books, I enjoy picking one up occasionally. I find the best ones have something in them that adults need to remember. Sometimes they remind me not to be so concerned about being in control and looking dignified. Sometimes they simply present things in a …
I have an odd relationship with the book of Acts. I was initially exposed to Acts in a fourth-grade Sunday School class. The teacher in charge of the class liked to show a 3-hour movie made in the 80's which told the story verbatim from the NIV translation. There were a few occasions where the …
Continue reading The Mission of the Body of Christ by Russ Ramsey
Of you're seeking an accessible yet deep book on finding beauty in unexpected places, even in hard times, I highly recommend checking this one out: https://eclalibraries.org/2020/03/26/searching-for-spring-how-god-makes-all-things-beautiful-in-time/
It's interesting how often Western churches describe Jesus as gentle, basically inoffensive. The idea he had other sides, including the ability to get angry and shock people, doesn't come up very often. Yet you could argue it's vital we talk about that side of Jesus, because until we do so we're missing the fully story …
Some of you may have read a paper I presented at the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends in 2019 that compared The Call of Cthulhu and The Lord of the Rings. Around that same time, I reviewed a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories for Aphotic Realm, a fiction magazine that …
Russ Ramsey's take on Biblical fiction (in this case, the Four Gospels) may not be dramatic enough for everyone's tastes, but it's certainly entertaining and orthodox: https://eclalibraries.org/2018/10/16/the-passion-of-the-king-of-glory/
If you're like me, you've probably wondered a few times why there are four separate accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible. What do they each do differently? How are they similar? Why not just create a combined Gospel that covers all the material in one place? What about the so-called later Gospels that Gnostics …
Continue reading Review: Four Portraits, One Jesus by Mark L. Strauss
I stated my book reviewing career in an interesting way. I received a book to review after doing a course at Taylor University in 2014. The review was supposed to be published in a Christian library magazine, which unfortunately went out of print. Two years later I was a full-time student at Taylor and the …
Continue reading Twice A Slave by Sammy Tippit and Randy Willis
Can a movie really capture what it feels like to have a spiritual encounter? Plenty of movies have certainly tried (Biblical epics and so forth), but have they ever really worked? One writer who's done some seminal work on this subject is film critic and filmmaker Paul Schrader. In the 1970s, Schrader wrote Transcendental Style in …
Continue reading Review: Transcendental Style in Film by Paul Schrader
G. Connor Salter 