Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
Today, December 21, 2012, is the day the world did not end. For years now people have been predicting, blogging, writing dozens of books and making movies claiming the Mayan calendar tells us the world ends today. News flash: It didn’t.
For centuries Christians have also been notorious for setting dates when the world would end or Christ would return. News flash: They’ve all been wrong.
Continue reading “Today the World Did Not End”
Paul Johnson has a point of view. And in Modern Times he takes no pains to hide it. His narrative history of the twentieth century (see my first installment here) is replete with heroes and villains. The three enemies of the twentieth century that he vilifies throughout, roughly in the order he takes them up, are
Continue reading “Modern Times (3): Enemies of the Twentieth Century”
For many years, IVP and the InterVarsity student magazine known as HIS (published from 1941-88) were closely linked. HIS (so-called to emphasize that it was not IV’s but God’s) was always separate organizationally from IVP. But the two occupied the same offices from the 1950s onward, first in Chicago and later in Downers Grove, Illinois.
Continue reading “Paul W. Fromer, 1927-2012”
Twenty-five years ago friends of mine were talking about Paul Johnson’s Modern Times (now revised and expanded), telling me it was a must read. I was always daunted by the size. But this fall I realized that I had several long flights coming up when I knew I could make a big dent in it. So while others flashed their Kindles at me, I happily plowed into 800 pages of pulp, glue and ink.
Continue reading “Modern Times (2): Events That Obstinately Don’t Occur”
What makes Paul Johnson’s Modern Times so entertaining is that the guy is markedly opinionated. No dry history of the twentieth century this. No boring lists of dates and of names from around the world to memorize. No bland writing here. No indeed. His judgments pop out everywhere in his assessment of many key figures and events from the era. For Johnson, the received historical wisdom on these matters is just so much poppycock. Here’s a sampling:
Continue reading “Modern Times (1): Contrarian Historian”
On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.
Were there any limits on Stott’s influence? At least three can be mentioned.
Continue reading “Stott’s Influence (5): Limits and Legacy”
The saying goes (at least I say it) that as soon as a trend makes the cover of Time, it’s over. Well, self-publishing didn’t make the cover, but Time did give the topic a six-page article, highlighting a few writers who say they’ve made hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars self-publishing ebooks. Here’s just a few of my takeaways from the piece by Andrew Rice:
Continue reading “Millions in Ebooks”
On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.
The fifth and final influence is Stott’s commitment to emphasize what we have in common as evangelicals rather than pound on our differences. As an evangelical statesman, he was of a decidedly vanishing breed. He never sought to divide Christians, to win over people to the particulars of all his viewpoints. Rather he worked to unite Christians in the basic convictions of the faith. He never aimed to win so much as to be winsome. His book
Evangelical Truth (first published in 1999) is one example of this.
Continue reading “Stott’s Influence (4): Common Ground”
Say you’re at lunch and someone starts chatting casually about the aseity of the Son. Well, you don’t want to be caught short. No, you want to be part of the conversation. You want to act like you know what’s going on by doing more than making knowing grunts of approval. But you really haven’t a clue what aseity (uh-SEE-i-tee) is. What do you do?
Continue reading “A Theological App for That”
On November 15, 2012, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled “John Stott’s Influence Through Publishing.” I offer it here in five installments. The first installment can be found here.
This leads to Stott’s third influence. In addition to encouraging respectful engagement with the culture at large and encouraging the life of the mind, John Stott promoted an understanding and appreciation of world Christianity. In fact, Stott was a World Christian long before it was fashionable to be a World Christian. I already mentioned the many university missions around the world. He had made over 15 trips overseas to dozens of countries before the Berlin ’66 Congress on World Evangelization where he gave three plenary Scripture expositions.
Continue reading “Stott’s Influence (3): World Christianity”