David H.C. Read (John McTavish, editor) Wipf & Stock, 272 pages Teachers of homiletics debate whether or not preaching can be taught. It is possible to teach techniques, of course: here’s how you prepare; here’s how you start and end; use your voice, your hands. What cannot be taught so easily is imagination: how to discern a relationship between an ancient text and the contemporary moment. But that can be learned, too, for those who truly want to learn it. One of the best ways is learning by example. David H.C. Read is one fine model. Born in 1910, Read grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. On a scholarship from New College, he studied theology at the three seminaries of the French Reformed Church where he was introduced to the theology of Karl Barth, a major influence. Ordained in 1936, Read became a military chaplain, eventually taken prisoner by the Germans. After the war, he served in various positions in Scotland. He became pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in … [Read more...]

  Larry W. Hurtado Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas. 304 pages It has to be a very different experience to be part of a small minority group than to belong to a dominant majority. Members of a minority, particularly one held in disregard, must surely have a clear idea of who they are and why it is worth paying the costs of nonconformity. Majorities may have a more relaxed view, inclined to take their identity for granted since it would seem to require no clarification and is likely to cost them nothing. Christians today, even in post-Christian societies, still tend to think of themselves as majorities, which, when technically true, is not necessarily culturally true. Many otherwise educated people presume that the secularized certainties of the post-Christian culture are self-evident and autonomous, their Christian origins obscured. “Even modern atheists presume there is only one God to doubt!” Should there actually be such a God, the presumption is that the unlikely … [Read more...]