Book Reviews

PrintThe Wisdom Pyramid is modeled after the well-known food pyramid. While the food pyramid was developed as a guide for nutritional eating, the wisdom pyramid offers a plan for a “better diet of knowledge and better habits of information intake” (p. 12, cf. p. 17). The food pyramid suggests a balanced diet by dividing all types of food into five classes based on nutritional contributions, organizes them in a pyramid with the more wholesome food groups at the bottom of the pyramid and those of limited or little value at the top. The wisdom pyramid uses the same structure to identify six contributions to our level of thinking, with the most valuable at the base and those of lesser importance toward the top. Before Brett McCracken, a senior editor for the Gospel Coalition, unveils his pyramid, he spends about a third of the book demonstrating the need for a wisdom…(Read More)

PrintAs a longtime missionary in Spain, Frank Benoit has witnessed the encroachment of Pentecostal/charismatic views concerning the sign gifts since 1994. Not satisfied in his efforts to find a readable challenge to these views, nor an approachable explanation of cessationism for the average believer, he decided to write this book …(Read More)

PrintWhile many Christians are disappointed with, critical of, or apathetic toward the church (pp. 11-16), Megan Hill counters by claiming the great need today is to recapture the New Testament teaching on the church (p. 13).  Quoting Martin Lloyd-Jones she writes, “If only we could see ourselves in terms of …(Read More)

PrintVoddie Baucham titles his book Fault Lines because of the similarity he sees between the geological fault lines that result in physical earthquakes and the social/political/ecclesiastical fault lines that have been developing within our society for decades, and which are now erupting in numerous ways. Baucham is not writing in …(Read More)

PrintTom Ascol, in his recommendation of this short volume, writes that it will be “the first book I recommend to believers who want a trustworthy introduction to [the social justice] movement.” Ascol’s endorsement would summarize my thoughts as well. Jeffrey Johnson highlights many of the key issues in the social …(Read More)

PrintUsing the Puritans, especially Thomas Goodwin, as his guiding interpretive model (p. 14), Dane Ortlund sets out to write a book about the heart of Christ—who He really is (p. 13). The target audience is: “. . . The discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty. …(Read More)

PrintAllie Beth Stuckey is a writer, speaker and host of the podcast Relatable sponsored by Blaze Media.  In You’re Not Enough, Stuckey takes on the self-love culture which insists that people are perfect the way they are, that love of self is their primary obligation, and that lives should be …(Read More)

PrintCarl Trueman, well-known Orthodox Presbyterian scholar and, at the time this book was written, a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, has authored as fine of a book supportive of using creeds and confessions in the local church as one will likely find.  Reacting to the slogan “No …(Read More)

PrintAndrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry are both professors of sociology at respected American universities.  This co-authored volume reflects their scholarship and painstaking research on the subject of Christian nationalism, which they claim is “the first empirical examination in the United States” (p. xi).  The goal is to “thoroughly explore one …(Read More)

PrintEight authors contribute to this work published by the SBC Founders movement and dedicated to critiquing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in light of biblical understanding on Social Justice. Several authors explain CRT including excellent materials from Voddie Baucham and Tom Ascol.  Ascol lists three problematic principles of critical theory (pp. …(Read More)

PrintM. Craig Barns offers this fictionalized depiction of a pastor nearing retirement looking back over his years of ministry. Barnes, is currently the president of Princeton Theological Seminary and a professor of pastoral ministry. Coupling his 37 years of pastoral experience with stories from an untold number of pastors he …(Read More)