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There are 44 reviews in our database. Latest Listings | Category: Books
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 Title: Inspiration and Incarnation | views:3 |  Review by John L. Ng Jan 12
Inspiration and Incarnation
By Peter Enns, Baker Academic. 2005
I taught Basic Preaching in seminary for many years. The course purpose is to provide students a process through which they seek to understand the Biblical text and from it speak an understandable sermonic text. It is easier said than done. Most students, including seasoned pastors, struggle with hermeneutics (the methods of interpretation). Some treat the Bible as a formulaic manual for the Christian life; others treat it as a proof text for their personal bias. Many read it out of context. Few understand it as divine revelation given within its grammatical-historical contexts.
Peter Enns’ “Inspiration and Incarnation” provides a good introduction to hermeneutics. The book focuses on the Bible’s uniqueness, integrity and interpretation. Each concern presents challenges in how we read, understand and interpret the Biblical texts. First, the Bible is unique but not as a timeless book codified magically in a historical and culture vacuum. Rather it is divine revelation in which God expressed himself through human agents and human circumstances. Any student of the Bible must appreciate its human, as well as, divine nature.
Second, the Bible has an integrated theological framework. However, this does not mean that all sixty-six books share a common purpose and singular concern. Instead, the Bible is also a book of great diversity which, at times, can appear contradictory. Any student of the Bible must understand and accept these diversities not as contradictions, but as God speaking over a span of centuries to people living within the historical, cultural and theological contexts of their times.
Third, we Evangelicals have at least two hermeneutic concerns. First, any engagement of the Bible must be within its grammatical-historical context. The text must be understood in its literary syntax and historical context. Second, following the apostolic practices in the New Testament, we also need to ascertain the text’s understanding in its Christotelic purpose and meaning.
Christotelic is not to be confused with Christocentricity. Christocentricity sees Christ in every word, line and verse of the Bible. For example, a preacher turns to Genesis 31.22 and sees the resurrection of Christ because of its three days reference. Christotelic hermeneutics is not Christ-centered but Christ-purpose. The New Testament authors read the Old Testament (their Bible) in light of the reality of Christ’ life, death and resurrection. They recognize that all Scripture finds its completion in the person of Christ. To be sure, the tension in Christotelic hermeneutics is between the text’s grammatical-historical rubrics and its intended purpose of fulfillment in Christ.
Any earnest student of the Bible would value “Inspiration and Incarnation” as an adequate start as we grapple with the Bible’s purpose and meaning. Hermeneutics is messy and hard work. No student should approach it casually. We enter the words of God with humility, respect and longsuffering, engaging both our cognitive and emotive faculties. Ultimately we must ask: what difference does Christ make in how I understand the Bible and make it understandable to the faithful?
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| Review submitted: 2012/1/27
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| Category: Books
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Title: Book Review: Christian Spirituality: an introduction  | views:13 | Review by John L. Ng Dec 11
Christian Spirituality: an introduction
By Alister E. McGrath, Blackwell Publishing, 2004
By way of introduction, I have two nagging concerns. In recent years, the inflated use of the noun spirituality and the adjective spiritual has devalued their meanings. The muddled notion of spirituality enters our conversation indiscriminately. It can mean many things from the immaterial world to music genre to the affective soul. Second, the Evangelical churches speak of spiritual formation in their teaching. Yet their congregants understand it little and practice it even less. Many are not aware of its long history and traditional practices. Some assume mistakenly that it consists only of bible reading and prayer.
Alister E.McGrath’s Christian Spirituality (first published in 1999 with last reprint in 2004) alerts us back to the historical and practical significance of spirituality. He is the Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education, and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King's College, London. His introductory chapter immediately clarifies various terms and defines Christian spirituality as ‘the quest for a fulfilled and authentic Christian existence, involving the bringing together of the fundamental ideas of Christianity. . .’ The remains of the book unpack this definition.
The book continues with the main historical typologies of spirituality – the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant (including Evangelical) traditions. These traditions’ views of the world, culture and history obviously impact their theology of spirituality and their adherents’ practice of spirituality. The main sections of the book focus on four major concerns: 1. The different traditions’ theological foundations are presented and compared. Case studies are used to illustrate how their foundational doctrines are practiced. 2. The Biblical texts and images provide basic models for spiritual practices. Here McGrath emphasizes that our God-given imagination plays a significant role in spirituality in all traditions. 3. The notion of arts, spaces and time in spiritual practices are explained and cautioned. Being body people, we need to engage our multi-sensory capacity – like seeing, hearing, smelling – to enhance our spiritual exercises. 4. Finally the classic writings on spirituality, old and new and from all traditions, are introduced with samplings from the greats – like Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Teresa of Avila, John Henry Newman and James Packer. Each chapter is followed with resources for further inquiries. To accommodate the technological data generation, it also has an internet resources section. For the uninitiated, there is a glossary of terms used in the book.
If a Christian is interested in pursuing spirituality beyond conversational prayers and Bible reading, McGrath’s introduction is a good place to start. Its exposition clearly and concisely introduces spiritual formation as an important missing element in our faith and practice. Depending on congregational maturity and congregants’ needs, I make two recommendations for the use of this book. We can use this book as our text for teaching a class on spirituality. We can also use this book as a resource for group studies and conversations.
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| Review submitted: 2011/12/28
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| Category: Movies
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| Title: Film Review: The Debt | views:21 | Review by John L Ng Oct11
“The Debt,” a remake of a 2007 Israeli film “Ha-Hov,” tells the story of three Mossad (Israel’s Intelligence Agency) agents on a secret mission in East Berlin during the cold war. They were to abduct a Nazi war criminal to stand trial in Israel. Their daring mission becomes the subject of a book by Sarah Gold, the daughter of two of the agents, Rachel and Stephan. The third agent is David whose brooding melancholy provides the moral center of the story. The movie opens with the debut celebration of Sarah’s book. The audience soon senses that what is portrayed in the book may not be entirely what has happened. This doubt hanging over the film is a study of the psychology of conscience. By shuttling back and forth between their dilapidated Berlin apartment and their privileged middle class life in Tel Aviv today, we enter the agents’ struggles of conscience, then and now.
Sarah’s book illuminates Rachel’s heroics in capturing the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ hiding in Eastern Berlin as an obstetrician. During a gynecological examination, Rachel subdued and drugged her criminal doctor. After a botched transfer, the prisoner was forced to stay in their apartment until an opportune time. While there the prisoner engaged the three in dialogues about morality and being human. His clever queries outmaneuvered their sense of conscience. The three in their own ways began to lose sight of their moral center. When their prisoner attempted to escape, Rachel was wounded but had enough presence of mind to shoot him dead on the street.
Several issues of conscience emerge as the story unfolds between the agents’ past realities and present choices. What is the conscience of truth telling? The pervasive psychology throughout the film is should their past have an imperative on their present responsibility to speak the truth? In an imperfect world, where right does not make might either, is lie telling justifiable? In a broken world, where truth does not always triumph, is living a lie the best choice? In an evil world, where evildoers often out smart the good-doers, is perpetrating a lie the only means to overcome evil?
Another issue the film deals with is the conscience of morality. In his banters with David, the criminal doctor observed that innocent people are not necessarily on the side of morality. How was it possible for a few Nazi guards to herd thousands of prisoners into the gas chambers without resistance, he chided. Innocent people become victims because they are weak in their selfishness. Are they anymore moral than those who victimized them? Then there is the conscience of revenge. In another encounter of relentless taunt, Stephan viscerally sought to inflict physical pain on the one taunting him. But David in a fit of angst stopped him and wondered out loud that when good people avenge evil with evil, are they not reduced to the same evil they oppose.
Our human conscience is the concern of the film. In the real world, the differences between human good and inhumane evil is often smudged. What is the difference between the consciences of the evil doctor and the three agents? What is more humanly unconscionable – telling a lie to secure the intended good or clinging onto the truth at the risk to the good intended? Our humanity is too complex and the world too conflicted to have neat answers. At the end of the day, what is left is our conscience before God.
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| Review submitted: 2011/10/26
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| Title: The Social Animal: the hidden sources of love, character and achievement | views:63 | Review by John L Ng May 11
The Social Animal: the hidden sources of love, character and achievement
By David Brooks, Random House 2011
In high praise of the Creator God that ancient king of Israel, David, mused how we mere humans are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139.14). The divine work in the human person is indeed wonder-full. David Brooks’ “The Social Animal” explores this fearful creation. We may know Brooks from his New York Times Op-Ed column or as a PBS commentator. Imitating Rousseau’s literary devise of using an imaginary character in his novel “Emile” to explore a philosophical discourse, Brooks hangs his research on being human on two imaginary people.
Harold and Erica find their life paths along the six stages of human development – childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, retirement, old age. As he promised, Brooks’ narrative, although at times wooden and other times contrived, does make its reading fun and relevant. Using diverse resources from social science, he paints the possibility, complexity and pathology of being human. His central focus is the two-tier human mind, the unconscious and the conscious. Much goes on in the unconscious. Brooks contends that what goes on there is much more significant than what is in the conscious. With that take, he argues that the conscious is over-confident and perhaps over-rated. It takes too much credit for what it does and over-estimates what it knows and understands. To help us appreciate the unconscious, Brooks takes great fun and length to plot through the life stations of Harold and Erica.
Besides the unconscious, the mind also has emotive and cognitive faculties. It can feel and think. To find our path in life, the emotive and cognitive have to work in partnership. But being human that we are, they do not always interact to empower us in decision making. Our irrational can impede our rationale. For example, if a surgeon tells us that a procedure has a 15 percent failure rate, we most likely will decide against it. If told the procedure has an 85 percent successful rate, we will highly likely take it. Of course, this kind of psychology is not profound. The market place has employed this for years to sell us something. Nevertheless, it shows how powerful our unconscious can be in our daily encounters, be they big or small.
Brooks notes that we know more about the human mind in the past 30 years than in the previous 3,000 years. That may be true. But the wonder-full human mind is still a deep mystery. Even with all the insights of modern social science, we cannot fathom the mind’s complexity. Here Brooks seems to trust solely on social sciences for his conclusions. He uses and quotes these resources almost indiscriminately. I wonder if his unconscious is more the determinative than his conscious’s intentionality to make a point. I find myself diffident whether his many noted scientific surveys can really plumb the depth of our dark mind.
It is still entertaining and informative to plow through the almost 400 pages. In spite of all his references, it is a breezy read. His narrative of Harold and Erica helps me appreciate more how fearfully and wonderfully God has made us. Even with our pathology, our mind is a wonderful creation. We are who we are, do what we do and become what we have become because our minds are engaged in the paths God has carved out for us, whether we want to admit it or not.
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| Review submitted: 2011/6/22
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| Title: Saint Augustine’s Childhood: Confessions Book One | views:72 | Review by John L. Ng Apr 11
Saint Augustine’s Childhood: Confessions Book One
By Garry Wills, Penguin Books. 2001
This small gem of a book brings together two of my favorite writers. Both are prolific and profound. Garry Wills is the professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University. His writings include diverse topics: Venice: Lion City, Lincoln At Gettysburg, What Jesus Meant and Why I am a Catholic. Augustine was a small church pastor in Hippo of Africa and a giant in history as a great church teacher. His extensive writings include The City of God, Enchiridion on Faith, Hope & Love, The Trinity and The Confessions.
This small book is a translation and commentary of Book One (of 13) in Augustine’s The Confessions (397 AD). The traditional title is a transliteration of Augustine’s Latin: Confessio. Others refer to it as meditative or autobiographical. Augustine’s original genre is difficult to define. Wills prefers to call it The Testimony, noting that the both the Confessio’s subject and object is God. That is, it is Augustine’s contemplative prayer with and of God. The readers are listening bystanders to this great testimony of Augustine’s informed imagination of God to God. Listen in on how he begins: Vast are you, Lord, and as vast should be your praise. . . .
Book One of The Testimony is structured along the first two stages of the patristic scheme of human life: infantia (non-speaking) and pueritia (speaking). What divides our childhood is the development of speech – our ability to use sounds as human language. Augustine uses this divine gift of language to contemplate what it means to be human before the divine.
Immediately in the first paragraph, he confesses to God: You prompt us yourself to find satisfaction in appraising you, since you made us tilted toward you, and our heart is unstable until stabilized in you. (emphasis mine) Shortly after his conversion, Augustine entered into prayer with these words: that I may know me, that I may know you. This great intellect had enough great sense to realize that to be aware of God we need first to be self aware. Augustine’s self awareness leads him to confess that we are forever restless and weightless until we find rest and gravity in God.
Augustine, in great self awareness, marvels how wonderfully and fearfully we are made. Even in our initial speechlessness, the human creation is a divine miracle. First he is in awe of our multi-sensory perception – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Second, the ingenious symmetry of our bodily functions also impresses him. Third, the organic wholeness of who we are as body and soul is a testimony to God’s creativity.
Finally, what is worthy of praise is our innate ability to retrieve meanings out of human sounds. Our capacity to converse substantively defines who we are before God. Augustine recognizes the wonders of our environment in our ability to learn language. There is the divine provision. Psalm 35.10 affirms that divine illumination in every human person’s sensory capacity. John 1.9 further points to Jesus, the Word of God, as God’s illumination personified. In an appendix, Wills uses a delightful dialogue between Augustine and his son to illustrate this great church father’s delight in human conversation. It has warmth, intellect, humor and potential for enlightenment. Their exchange testifies to God’s presence and provision in our lives.
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| Review submitted: 2011/6/2
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