Shelf Life

Matthew Barrett. Salvation By Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration . Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2014. 388 pp. $19.99/₤13.99 As a Wesleyan-Arminian Christian (and thus only "Reformed" in a fairly broad sense), I am keenly interested in the doctrine of the new birth. It...

Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life . Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: OUP, 2012) xii +280. $117.00 hb. $34.00 pb The reception of Origen is nothing if not tumultuous. Unquestionably one of the greatest minds of church history, Origen's ideas were...

Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So ...: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It. New York: Harper Collins, 2014. $17.99/£10.99 This is not an easy book to review because a review calling into question the accuracy of statements or the cogency of arguments could easily be accused of...

Alister E. McGrath. Emil Brunner: A Reappraisal . Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. XIV, 246 pp. $99.95/£45.99 The needs and purposes of scholarship, along with the peculiarities of the history of theology, have resulted in a hodge-podge collection of secondary literature on 20th century Swiss...

Peter J. Leithart, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press, 2014), 340 pages. $49.95/₤29.99 The latest book from the prolific Peter Leithart is another installment of what we have come to expect: an accessibly written synthesis of specialist research advancing a deceptively...

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , translated from the first French Edition by Robert White. Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa., Banner of Truth Trust, 2014, pp. xxxvi + 882. Not only is there the much-publicized question of Calvin and the Calvinists, there is also that of Calvin's...

Gil Anidjar, Blood: A Critique of Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xvii + 441pp. $36.99/₤24.99 Gil Anidjar's book is, as the subtitle indicates, a critique of Christianity: not some aspect of Christianity, or an inquiry into some part of Christian history, but a critique of...

Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak. The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul's Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World . Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014. 201 pp. $18.00. Paul Copan and Kenneth Litwak have provided Christians with an interesting book describing the apostle Paul's Mars...

At the end of one of Christopher Nolan's most memorable films, The Prestige , one of the duelling magicians, Robert Angier, lies dying, and reproaches his rival, "You never understood why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through. But if...

James D. Bratt. Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat . Library of Religious Biography. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. 455 pages. $24.99/₤19.99 Abraham Kuyper must be one of the most quoted figures in Evangelical churches, and it is usually the same quote: "There is not a square inch...