This is a doctoral thesis and it shows. A more popular, less technical approach would reach a wider audience. The author defines salafism as those Moslems basing their lives and beliefs upon the first three generations after Mohammed, a return to basics as it were. Then many variants are identified, some violent jihadis, some not. What one does learn is how the most outrageous behaviour like killing of non-combatants is justified by Salafist logic. One is also shown why these people will kill fellow Muslims and why martyrdom is a religious devotion. The logic of awful violence is related.
I found two errors relating to Christianity. Lex talionis, an eye for an eye, has never been a Christian law. It is Jewish and specifically changed by Jesus. Stating that some Protestant denominations teach that belief in the crucifixion alone is sufficient for salvation is erroneous. No Protestant church teaches this. The minimal faith would be in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that faith no mere intellectual assent but one that leads to action, works, too.
2. C H SPURGEON AND THE MODERN CHURCH by
You Can Do Greater Things Than Christ by
Death In The City by SCHAEFFER FRANCIS
My copy is of the 1969 British edition reprinted in 1972. In 1968 the late Francis Schaeffer lectured from Jeremiah in Wheaton, Illinois. He likened the message of Jeremiah to a Jerusalem about to be full of death, to sixties Western culture and a church failing to speak prophetically. This is a culture under judgement from God. We must put truth into practise and live with antithesis not Hegelian synthesis. No preaching peace when there is no peace. Witness even if costly. The Christian life is a life of continued faith and thankfulness. Modern man has to be convinced of true moral guilt before God, not mere guilt feelings. This distinction is most helpful pastorally also. Forgiven Christians may have guilt feelings but no guilt. The guilty sinner may dismiss real guilt as mere feeling. But man is a moral creature answerable to God's judgement. Man without the gospel will be judged according to the moral judgements he has made on others. So everyone will be judged guilty according to the measure they meted out. Man lives in one of two chairs, the natural or the supernatural. The former sees only the seen material world. The Christian knows that reality encompasses an unseen supernatural world also. The Christian is to live in the supernaturalist's chair.He gives striking testimony as a supernaturalist who was in a plane crashing into the Atlantic but saved through prayer.
5. Travel with C H Spurgeon: Exploring the World of C.H.Spurgeon by
The ‘Travel With’ series give both biography and travel guide and the same format is here. With Spurgeon it is Essex, Cambridgeshire and London. The life of England’s most remarkable preacher is recounted. Unique is the only applicable word. Never before or since has a preacher risen so fast and influenced so many. Biographers often ignore one aspect of Spurgeon but his taste for cigars is not omitted. Missing though is any reference to his Calvinism and also baptismal regeneration controversies. A good account though of a Victorian phenomenon.
6. Destiny: Learning to Live by Preparing to Die by
This is a book full of wisdom and wise counsel but though it is subtitled, learning to live by preparing to die, I found it lacking in one aspect. It does not mention that which is missing from Ecclesiastes, the salvation history of Israel. How could the wisest of men, the preacher, not mention that which distinguishes Israel from all the nations, God's saving acts in history? So my criticism is the failure to address what is not there, salvation history.
Christian Pipe-Smoking: An Introduction to Holy Incense by Uri Brito and Joffre Swait
To my surprise, while surfing through some old bookmarks I found I had this on my MacBook. What is more I had read and reviewed it thus over a year ago. 'A small booklet in praise of the present unfashionable habit of pipe smoking.I do not think it will encourage anyone to start puffing but it will give pleasure and some good quotes for aficionados.' I write this now from hospital where I have been deprived of this pleasure for a couple of weeks. But that is the thing about pipe smoking. Pick it up, put it down. Unlike cigarettes need not be an addiction. The doctors tell me to give it up completely. I will not. One thing not appreciated is that I cannot copy, cut and paste from the Kindle version.
9. Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe
This is the funniest book I have read in a very long time, a humorous classic. The plot has more twists than a mountain road. A Cambridge college steeped in tradition faces the challenge of a new Master who wants all manner of modernising change. He has an even more liberal wife. The college fellows and the porter are dead against change. But change is to come in the most unexpected of ways, an explosion to two gross of gas filled condoms stuffed up a chimney demolishes an ancient college tower. Funds must be raised, property sold.The porter is sacked but on live television denounces the corrupt ways of the college. A porterhouse blue is a stroke often fatal. I will not spoil the ending. I will look for more Sharpe to enjoy.
10. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by
This is a very important book. The author is no Christian but his analysis of the state of Europe today vis a vis immigration is devastating. For he looks beneath the surface of tensions over immigration and sees a collapsing culture which no longer has pride in its history. He shows the bankruptcy of multiculturalism which it seems even its political promoters now admit has failed. He shows the open borders policy of the EU, especially Germany and Sweden has altered these countries. He relates the horrors of Mediterranean sea crossings to Lampedusa and Lesbos. He shows how the African migrants are in the main economic ones, not usually refugees except from say Eritrea. Migrants from Turkey to Greece are not only Syrians but many other groups. Everyone want s ticket to Europe even at the cost of thousands of Euros to smugglers and the risk to life on the sea crossings. Get into Italy or Greece and you have arrived is the migrants motto. Only Eritreans do not want to stay in Italy. Europe welcomes one and all. Gulf Arab states welcome no-one. Europe will be changed out of all recognition and people seem not to care. They have not seen the trick the politicians have played on them. They do not care because that have lost pride in their historic culture. Everyone in the world wants their own culture but Europe seems not to have pride or to care about what is being lost. Murray shows how the art and literature of Europe proclaim the death of the culture.
All this is reminiscent of the Christian Francis Schaeffer in the sixties and seventies with his pessimism about western culture and its loss of moorings. He has a most perceptive analysis of why the churches lost confidence, higher criticism of the biblical text and the impact of Darwinism. Murray does not believe in Christian truth but he sees it gave European culture its roots. How long can one survive divorced from the tree that nourished your branches? Murray is great on diagnosis but admits to weakness on prescription. For a hopeful future I refer you to David Robertson's three piece review on his blog the Web Flea. I have blogged quotes form Murray to give a flavour of this excellent if disturbing book. Read this most significant of books today.
11. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by
The Valley of Vision - A Collection of Puritan...- Arthur Bennett
The late author was known to me as a lecturer at All Nations Christian College . His lectures were not memorable but his book is. This is a book I have read more than once. I recommend it as a devotional guide for Christian prayer. Puritans were usually against set forms of prayer. The prayers here are more according to Puritan theology than to their practise. A young Christian may have to study to understand them. The language is thee and thou but this is an excellent collection of reformed, Calvinistic spirituality. In language, Bennett is not Cranmer but he has given us a great aid to devotion. Ten years after I first reviewed this and 42 years since I first read it I have once again used it for daily devotions. The thees and thous seem more dated and I do now wonder if the truth of total depravity may sometimes here produce more a worm theology than that of a person raised with Christ to renewed life.
13. Promise and Deliverance - Volume II - the Failure of Israel's Theocracy by
Promise and Deliverance is simply the best tool to help the reader understand the Old Testament. Written to instruct Sunday School teachers in hermeneutics it gives consistent covenantal christocentric approach to understanding Judges to Esther plus Daniel. The main history books are harmonised.Never again will you see the Old Testament as a mere collection of moral tales. Here the living God speaks of his salvation in Christ.
14. The Broken Compass: How British Politics lost its way by
This was published while Brown basin Number 10 so in that respect is dated yet it was remarkably prescient concerning what was to follow in government. Hitchens is a true conservative so no Conservative. A former Trotskyist he knows the left well and is well positioned to show how left and right have come together with adverse effects in the loss of adversarial politics. What we now have are politics of the centre with the morals of a Christianity rejecting consensus. Politicians may profess to be Christian but it dies not bring Christian ethics into the public sphere. I have few basic dissensions from Hitchens but his approval of the decriminalisation of homosexual acts is a rare diversity. His exposure of the left from foreign affairs to education at home is real and true. He shows how journalists and politicians are fellow travellers in changing the life of the UK. He gives comprehensive analysis of recent political history. I wish I had read this earlier and that he had produced more volumes in the spirit of this one. He comes across as a truly independent Christian conservative voice. He has a consistently anti-EU stance together with a quote from Gaitskel which was the clearest warning of the perils Heath took us into with the then Common Market.
15. Housekeeping by
The Modigliani Scandal by Ken Follett
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