A couple of good purchases

I return to England tomorrow, and whilst here I must boast that I showed tremendous restraint in my book buying. I only bagged two from the LST bookshop (with one very near miss). Just two! Frigging miracle! (and Anja breathes a sigh of relief)

*Lucky Git Mode*

Admittedly I have numerous review books to get to work on for this blog, so many of the most exciting books I would have wanted to buy I already have.

*Mode Off*

The near miss, which I still intend to get soon, is Neil MacDonald’s new book, Metaphysics and the God of Israel: Systematic Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006). He seeks to write a systematic theology of God in light both the Old and New Testaments, in particular dialogue with such a variety of names as von Rad, Barth, Wright, Bauckham, Aristotle, Augustine etc. Mouth wateringly fascinating. But for another day. Jim West mentions an important link about this book here.

You may have heard of him before in relation to his monograph on Barth: Karl Barth and the Strange New World within the Bible: Barth, Wittgenstein, and the Metadilemmas of the Enlightenment 2nd edition (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2001).

Which leads me to my first buy: Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006). Being an evangelical enormously interested in all things Barth shaped, I snapped this up with less than a second thought. The book involves discussion on various theological themes by a variety of evangelical authors, themselves representing various evangelical perspectives. For example, John Bolt examines Barth’s eschatology in light of both academic evangelical eschatology but also its more popular face in writers such as Frank Peretti and the Left Behind series. A Pentecostal theologian examines Barth’s pneumatology, John Franke looks at Barth in terms of the ‘postmodern turn’, etc.

While he is certainly not to every evangelical’s taste, I try to read whatever Keith Ward writes. I find him to be one of the most engaging and creative Christian writers around, and he argues in a no nonsense manner which I most enjoy. His latest, Christianity: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: SPCK, 2007) was a definite and I’m already loving it.