Most of us have great stories of wonderful examples of eager disciples
who have learned to live with verve and passion for the sake of God’s
glory. We should relish these encouraging testimonies, telling stories
of God’s sanctifying work among us. Dramatic examples of one who
takes her faith to the marketplace, or of another who serves the poor
with abandon, or yet another of a hard-fought struggle to find hope amidst
painful circumstances are often unsung. We should, like Paul and his habit
of building up his younger disciples, rejoice in their faithful, real-world
discipleship and see what it is that makes them somewhat notable in their
faith development. (As I was going to print this month, the brand new
Dallas Willard book just arrived in the shop, which addresses this exact
theme. It is so important that it surely needs to be discussed in greater
detail here later.)

Taking Christ’s Lordship to heart doesn’t come naturally, of
course–we humans tend not to easily find our place in God’s
providence. We characteristically want to limit God’s call on the
whole of our lives;
we want to tame God, domesticate God. As one wonderful, recent book by
Mark Buchanan puts it, Your God is Too Safe.

Here’s how Eugene Peterson puts it, in his powerful introduction
to his important paraphrase of the Hebrew prophets (The Message)
which came out late last fall:

“One of the bad habits that we pick
up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and
sacred. We assume that the secular is what we are more or less in charge
of: our jobs, our time, our entertainment, our government, our social
relations. The sacred is what God has charge of: worship and the Bible,
heaven and hell, church and prayers. We then contrive to set aside a sacred
place for God, designed, we say, to honor God but really intended to keep
God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say about everything
else that goes on.

“Prophets will have none of this. They
contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred
ground. God has something to say about every aspect of our lives: the
way we feel and act in the so-called privacy of our hearts and homes,
the way we make our money and the way we spend it, the politics we embrace,
the wars we fight, the catastrophes we endure, the people we hurt and
help. Nothing is hidden from the scrutiny of God, nothing is exempt from
the rule of God, nothing escapes the purposes of God. Holy, holy, holy.

“Prophets make it impossible to evade
God or make detours around God. Prophets insist on receiving God in every
nook and cranny of life. For a prophet, God is more real than the next-door
neighbor.”

Certainly we need to help others and ourselves become more familiar
with and learn better to indwell the biblical story. To take in the prophets–those
that Peterson’s full rendering helps bring alive in their poetic
and historic context–and the rest of the Bible will help us to “receive
God in every nook and cranny of life.” Which is why we need to read
the Bible regularly, but also in a variety of versions and translations.
And The Message is stimulating, creative, thoughtful, and–dare
I say it?–fun. Eugene’s marvelous attention to the detail of
words–he reads poetry and novels, you know–helps us get the
phrases and sentences and timing just so (not just the wooden accuracy
of, say the New American Standard Bible, or the brand new,
precise English Standard Version.) The Message (all
of the Old Testament is done, now, with the recent release of the Pentateuch
and the historical books) captures the flow, texture and implication,
nuance and flavor of this massive array of genres, styles, and writing
we know as sacred Scripture. I know it is a colorful paraphrase, but I
heartily commend The Message to you, to supplement whatever other
Bibles you use. The whole one-volume thing will be out this summer, in
hardback or a high-grade leather, giving the summer blockbusters a run
for their money. Some think it to be the publishing event of the
year.

***

The new revised edition of the New International Version,
called Todays NIV, (New Testament only) has been in the
news
much this winter and spring, making it a publishing event in its own
right. I could write for pages or talk for hours (indeed, we have,
here at the shop) about the bizarre accusations against this new revision
and the meanness that has accompanied legitimate debate about the best
way to render into clear English specific Greek texts. Not unlike the
NRSV or the more recent NLT, (which, interestingly, did not raise a ruckus
among anyone) the TNIV New Testament attempts to be clear and accurate
in rendering words that have to do with men and women,
males and females. (For instance, anthropos is an often- used Greek
word that the old NIV translates as “men” and the TNIV renders
in the common contemporary usage of “humankind” or “people.”)
Hence, the translators and their publisher (Zondervan) have called it
“gender-accurate.” For instance, Romans 3:28 says (in the regular
NIV), “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart
from observing the law.” The TNIV translates it, “For we maintain
that a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.”
We are adopted as “children” of God, not as “sons.”
Etcetera. However, when the Greek word clearly means male persons (cf
2 Timothy 3:8), it retains the English word “men.” It certainly
doesn’t use feminine imagery for God, nor use inclusive language
if the text does not imply such a usage.

For a heavy-handed critique of all this, claiming that an ungodly and
trendy feminist agenda drives the Zondervan men in charge, see (who
else?) World magazine’s Web site, www.worldmag.com.
For Zondervan’s response, visit www.tniv.info.
Both give specific examples of the translation process (and the presuppositions
involved–does one go for literal precision of orginal meaning or
a dynamic equivilence translated into a contemporay cultural idiom?) Although
the blistering World critique makes some serious charges, the TNIV
New Testament is only 7% different than the regular NIV (changing
words like “cloak” to “coat” and the old-fashioned
“with child” to “pregnant.”) Less than 2% of those
changes have to do with gender, but what a firestorm that has created.
Checking out both Web sites will allow you to enter the discussion yourself,
knowing that this will not be the end of the matter, as new translations
and paraphrases continue to appear and the struggle for integrity in such
renderings will remain contested.

Speaking of contested ground: Struggling With Scripture
(Westminster/John Knox) by Walter Brueggemann, William Placer & Brian
Blount is a new book which emerged from a conference among the liberal
wing of the Presbyterian Church (USA) which illustrates that the interpretation
and role of the Bible is truly contested territory. While some are debating
whether it makes sense to translate a certain word a certain way, others
are asking what it even means to say the Bible is God’s Word and
our authority. This book would be terribly savaged by conservative evangelicals
if they noticed it, and, try as I might to appreciate it, Dr. Blount’s
piece (he is an Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary)
nearly caused me to spit. Still, I immensely enjoyed Walter Brueggemann’s
very personal narrative of his own journey of faith and into the career
of biblical scholarship. As he describes his own operative assumptions,
his angle on the “endlessly beguiling” task of interpretation,
it is helpful to hear him share his candid sense of these things. With
two new books this spring, Ichobod Towards Home, on the
story of the ark of the covanant in 1Samuel 4, and Testimony to
Otherwise, on Elijah and Elisha, Brueggemann is one of our most
prolific and consistently interesting scholars, nearly a national treasure.
I would get this little book just for his tender chapter.

William Placher, too, is always worth reading. Here, he makes a powerful
case for progressives and moderates in the mainline churches to reclaim
the Bible as the source for their theological positions, wrestling with
Scripture not as a sign of distrust–which has too often been the
case of those schooled in the higher criticisms–but as a reflection
of religious faithfulness. This is not political posturing on his part,
but the sign of his considerable maturity in faith and his obviously deep
desire to honor God as well as the complexities of the texts. It is a
good chapter, even for those who may not end up exactly where he does.

Struggling With Scripture, complete with an introduction by William
Sloane Coffin, certainly is one example of how the wider church–UCCs,
United Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics–are in a quandary
about the role and authority of the Bible. The chapters are interesting
and heartfelt, but ends (in Blount’s final piece) with a strong sense
that, as he puts it, “the Bible does not have the last word on things.”
He insists that that is the case because the Bible is a living Word, so,
he says, it can never be the last word. (The whole while, he’s
sounding very much like a “last word.” If there are no final
fundamentals, no absolutes, then why take seriously his claim that there
are no absolutes? Hmmmm.)

***

Which takes us back to the need to celebrate and encourage those who
can emerge from these confusing times, not hardened into rigid ideologies
of a certain theological camp (right or left) or discouraged and perplexed
by it all, but thoughtful, engaged, well-informed and solidly rooted.
Vibrant faith comes, in part, from serious and wide reading, open-hearted
struggling with Scripture and–see my annotated list–a
clear working knowledge of the best of our faith traditions and theologies.
The best modern disciples and most serious Christians, it seems, know
Scripture and have done some reading in the basic theological questions.
Please read on.

***

Those who, to use Steve Garber’s memorable phrase, “weave together
belief and behavior” (Fabric of Faithfulness), are
those, quite often, who read serious books. Of course, as a bookseller
in a rather ordinary small town, it would be silly to think that everyone
must be a scholar, read academic tomes, act like some kind of brainiac.
But serious people do care about their times, dig deep wells, become life-long
learners, stay in communities of discourse about the big questions of
life–but that doesn’t imply an abstract or obscure fascination
with the arcane. Christian faith is lived with both feet on the ground
(again, which is why I like Peterson’s commonplace rendering of The
Message) in the midst of the perplexing ordinary.

But–I say this time and again, and invite you to, as well–we
must know what we believe and why we believe it. We need to read theology,
church history, and even the history of theology to have a biblically-based,
theologically-informed vision of the good and faithful life. Humans need
to think about God; God is revealed to us in the Bible and creation, and
we formulate ways in which that (more or less) coheres into a pattern
called a worldview. Some call it doing theology. Doing good theology undoubtedly
helps us to know God better, respond to God more appropriately and to
live a good life.

So here is a list where I describe some of my favorite introductory
theological books. I think it is a very important list. Please forgive
the list’s Presbyterian denominational bias but–as you surely
must know, and as I said in the First Presbyterian (York, PA) Sunday school
class for which this bibliography was developed–theology is a task
of the local congregation; we do our thinking, reflecting, formulating
and systematizing our doctrinal ideas in a particular community, standing
in a certain historical tradition, in a certain place and time. This happened
to be a course on Reformed theology for a diverse mainline congregation
of eager adult learners, from across the theological spectrum. Not all
of us knew what we believed, nor why we did or didn’t believe it.
(And, some of us still don’t!) Such gracious openness makes for a
great environment to teach and learn, and I hope these book descriptions
inspire you to want to learn more. After teaching the class, I know I
want to learn more, and I have committed myself to study more in this
important field.

So, for the record: I realize that I didn’t list books here about
the role of the Bible (which necessarily informs good theology) or the
communal and ecclesiastical locus of theological reflection, but it is
presumed in all that I recommend.

Please print out the list. Pass it around. Forward it to others. Order
some of these books from us and while you’re at it, get some of “Ëœem
into your parish library. Most are not at all hard to read! If you are
Presbyterian, especially, show the list to you pastor or Christian educator.
If you are not part of a reformed congregation, use those that seem helpful,
as some of them really are ecumenical. (Or call us, and we’ll recommend
some equivelent writings from your denominaitonal heritage.) We need to
deepen our knowledge of things that really matter, and this list is a
great, great place to start.

Consider also checking out the
syllabus for the Sunday school course–
“Reformed Theology 101″–as it shows how theological reflection
can be done in a local setting and how these particular books came to
be recommended. I hope the course may serve as some sort of model for
your Christian ed. programs and that the list of books may be used as
a resource for church libraries, Sunday school classes, college Bible
studies or theological retreats. (We are now meeting for an evening or
two, with our pastoral staff included, to further discuss over dessert
the implications of this foray into doctrine. Gotta have food and conversation
for really good theology.) For what it’s worth, the lectures were
audio-taped, so email
me if you want to order a set. I’m quite passionate about
serious adult education, but also have a generally up-beat presentation
style that is a bit silly at times, so I’m told that the tapes are
worth listening to.

For instance. In talking about the dangers that many of the Reformation-era
leaders endured (from Luther to Zwingli to Menno Simmons to Thomas Cranmer,
who all paid dearly for their courageous commitment to theological truth)
I noted that John Calvin, the father of the Presbyterians, often had to
appear in disguises to hide his identity. 

Rather than merely suggest that this may be a good sign of true doctrine–it
gets you in trouble with the powers that be–I suggested that it also
might enliven our congregation if some of our church leaders came in wearing
those Groucho Marx glasses and noses. In fact, come to think of it, maybe
some of those guys arguing about the TNIV ought to get a pair for themselves.
It might help us keep it all in perspective.