Shelf Life

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...

Ian Ker. John Henry Newman: A Biography . 1988. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Due to his beatification by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, there is a renewed interest in the life and thought of John Henry Newman. Among Protestants especially John Henry Newman is enjoying something of a...

John W. O'Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press, 2013, 335pp. £20.00/$27.95 Trent looms. Trent looms over Roman Catholicism as a grand mother who bequeathed her enduring theological furniture. Trent looms among Protestant theology and spirituality as the abiding...

Before beginning this review, I should make a confession. Prior to Noah , I had never seen a Darren Aronofsky film before. Not Pi , not Requiem for a Dream , not Black Swan --none of them (though several of his films are high on my watch list). There may be those of you, true film aficionados, who...