While I was working yesterday a tweet popped up from Adrian Warnock saying that he was starting a live chat session on his blog about his new book, Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything. I tuned in for a little while (though I was limited to text interaction since I had neither webcam or microphone with me), and enjoyed the discussion there. I was quite intrigued when I first heard about the book a short while ago. Here is Amazon's product description:

What impact should Jesus' resurrection have on individuals and churches? Popular Christian blogger and teacher Adrian Warnock urges Christians not to neglect the implications of the resurrection.

Jesus truly is alive today. But compared to his atoning death, Jesus' resurrection sparks relatively little discussion in the church. Inadvertently,we can become so focused on the good news that Christ died for our sins, that we almost forget he was "raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25).

In Raised with Christ, author Adrian Warnock exhorts Christians not to neglect the resurrection in their teaching and experience. Warnock takes his cue from Acts, where every recorded sermon focuses on Jesus' resurrection. He stresses that Christians who faithfully proclaim both the death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and live out the implications of that message in vibrant, grace-filled churches, will be enabled to reach a world that lives in death's dark shadow.

The power of the risen Christ is active in every true Christian, transforming our lives. Raised with Christ will help you discover afresh the massive implications of the empty tomb. Jesus' resurrection really has changed everything.

When I was in college, one of my professors, Jim Payton, was always very intentional about stressing the resurrection for similar reasons. Part of his interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (about which he has written a great introductory book) was owing to the fact that they place far more stress on the resurrection than Protestants do.

I think Warnock's concern is a legitimate one, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the book. There are a myriad of theological implications in the resurrection, and it is good to recognize that the work of Christ, and the gospel itself, is incomplete without it. Find out more about the book by visiting raisedwithchrist.net.

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As I was browsing some recent books the other day, I noticed one called Education for Human Flourishing, a recent book by Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis. It attempts to lay out a thoroughly Christian philosophy of education in response to the pervasive pragmatism of modern education. In the preface, they discuss the urgent need for us to rethink how we do education. We are thrown into the educational system at a very early age, the authors write, and because of the structure of that system,

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You might recall a post a few months ago with some tips and advice on reading from Gideon Strauss. I'm revisiting the reading tips again today, and these present tips concern those sorts of books which you may choose to mark up, those which you may have to read for school or just think are worth the time and effort to really delve into. Today's advice comes from the late Mortimer J. Adler (via Steve Bishop).

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the way I do it:

• Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
• Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.

Given that I'm a seminary student and have to work my way through a lot of different books, I found these tips especially helpful. It is always good to have your own system for marking up a book, something that works for you. I employ a lot of the same techniques Adler does, my weapons of choice being a 0.7mm mechanical pencil and a small ruler for underlining. I know some people are averse to marking up books, but I'm not. When I open the book and right away see certain things underlined or the various notes in the margins, I begin to quickly recollect the information I thought important on the pages.

Also, earlier today James K. A. Smith was asked some questions about reading which he posted on his blog. Be sure to check those out as well because he offers some good advice derived from his own reading habits.

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James K. A. Smith's new book, The Devil Reads Derrida, grabs you immediately—not only is it shod in a can't-turn-your-eyes-away red, but it bears a provocative title that compels you to drop whatever you're doing, pick it up, and scan the table of contents.

That is just how I reacted when I walked into the RTS Bookstore some time ago and saw it on the shelf of new featured items. At this point, I've only read the introduction and the first chapter, but it looks as if there will be lots of great material in this little volume; certainly some good material on which to blog.

Smith makes his overarching theme known within the first few pages of the introduction. Christian scholarship, he contends, is something done in public—that is, it is ultimately done in service to the Church, for the purposes of discipleship. When academics withdraw into the scholarly world, and the roads they travel never intersect with the laity, the latter will begin to look for wisdom and guidance wherever they can find it.

His intention, following the lead of Richard Mouw, is to work out of a hermeneutic of charity. He admittedly finds himself frustrated from time to time with "his people," the evangelical world, yet realizes that this is precisely the reason he can't withdraw from those circles even when he wants to. In his own words:

No matter how much I might disagree and be frustrated by their positions and interpretations, I know that above all my brothers and sisters want to be faithful disciples of Jesus. Even if I think they've bought into all sorts of questionable assumptions and causes; even if I think they've been co-opted by cynical political machines; even though I might think they've assimilated the worst sorts of cultural prejudices; even if I think God wants to invite them to 'higher' cultural passions—there is a sense in which I think they're just trying to make their way in the world the best they can. And if they've bought the paradigms sold to them by the voices on Christian radio that I think are problematic, then the burden is on me to show them otherwise. My responsibility is not to condescendingly look down upon them from my cushy ivory tower, but to take time to get out of the tower and speak to them—and, please note, learn from them. Christian scholars would do well to be slow to speak and quick to listen.

This hermeneutic of charity is not just romantic or utopian; in my experience, the wisdom of this stance has been confirmed. When I take the time to teach an adult Sunday School class, I find Christians who are hungry for wisdom. And though ultimately I might be trying to induce a paradigm shift in their thinking, hoping to basically de-program the way Christian radio has got them thinking about gender or justice, I find that so long as I begin from the assumption that we want to bring all of our thinking and doing under the Lordship of Christ and the light of the biblical narrative, my brothers and sisters are quite happy to hear a different take on their settled convictions—as long as it is offered in charity and humility, not with scolding and condescension (xv-xvi).

Reading this last night was refreshing; it was as if Smith was taking my own thoughts and neatly putting them in paragraph form. Next to glorifying God, the deepest desire I have is to take my abilities as an academic (well, that's rather audacious—perhaps an aspiring academic, or maybe a pseudo-academic) and use them in service to His people in order that they might come to know and serve Him better, and to love Him more. That is one of the reasons I love teaching the adult Sunday School at our local church, and why I see myself being involved in the educational ministry of the church for years to come.

Smith rightly points out that in the family of faith, there is no "us" and "them." It's only "us," bound together by the name of Jesus Christ. If those whom God has gifted with intellectual and academic abilities make primary use of their gifts outside of the Church, we can only expect churches full of people who lack wisdom and discernment.

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In the last few days I have finally gotten around to reading Andy Crouch's award-winning book, Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling. Toward the end of the third chapter he addresses the topic of worldview, one I enjoy discussing, and points out that our calling as Christians in regards to culture goes beyond the abstract tendencies of worldview thinking:

The language of worldview tends to imply, to paraphrase the Catholic writer Richard Rohr, that we can think ourselves into new ways of behaving. But that is not the way culture works. Culture helps us behave ourselves into new ways of thinking. The risk in thinking 'worldviewishly' is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it. We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books. These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods. And they will subtly tend to produce philosophers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers instead of artists and artisans. They can create a cultural niche in which 'worldview thinkers' are privileged while other kinds of culture makers are shunted aside.

But culture is not changed simply by thinking (64).

For someone like myself who has a tendency toward this kind of abstract thinking, this is a key point. It's not that worldview thinking is unimportant, but that it is only one part of our larger calling as Christians. Culture making requires action.

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Several years ago, I emailed Gideon Strauss—friend, former professor, and recently appointed director of the Center for Public Justice—asking for some advice on how to read better. Below, slightly edited and abridged, is his reply:

I have three 'secrets':

1. I am almost always reading. I'd guess I am busy with about five books at any given time. I always have a novel on the go, for two reasons: novels calm me and comfort me, and novels are like reading speed exercise equipment for me—when I read novels, my reading speed goes way up. This is true for the non-novel reading I am doing as well. I read whenever I can get an opportunity—other than movies on DVD, I watch no television. I scan a lot of magazines and web stuff, and I am always looking out for books on the many topics that interest me. I put an enormous amount of books on hold at the library via their internet catalogue.
2. I scan most books quickly, and I retain a lot of what I've scanned. So I'd look at the inside cover summary, the contents page, the introduction and the conclusion. Only if it really, really grips me will I read more than that.
3. If I am going to read a non-novel book thoroughly, then I make a real performance of it. I buy my own copy, I fold and mutilate the pages, I underline and annotate the book in pen, and then I write down the best bits (summaries, quotes, references, etc.) on 4x6 cards that I store in little boxes for future reference. Very few books get this treatment.

Over the last few years, I have found his suggestions very helpful, although I've employed them with varying degrees of success. And if I am going to get really involved in a book, I wouldn't fold pages or use pen to make notes (I prefer a 0.5mm pencil), but that is just personal preference.

What do you think? Are these helpful suggestions? Do you have any additional tips that you use when reading?

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In a comment to this past Monday's post on mortifying modernity, Wayne Sparkman, who is the director the historical center of the Presbyterian Church in America, posted a portion of an introduction C. S. Lewis wrote for a translation of Athanasius' On the Incarnation. What Lewis says in this introduction is so important that I had to reproduce it almost in full here. Please note that this is quite a lengthy quotation, but it is well worth your time to consider the wisdom of Lewis on this point.

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about 'isms' and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o'clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ('mere Christianity' as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, 'But how could they have thought that?'—lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

I myself was first led into reading the Christian classics, almost accidentally, as a result of my English studies. Some, such as Hooker, Herbert, Traherne, Taylor and Bunyan, I read because they are themselves great English writers; others, such as Boethius, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, because they were 'influences.' George Macdonald I had found for myself at the age of sixteen and never wavered in my allegiance, though I tried for a long time to ignore his Christianity. They are, you will note, a mixed bag, representative of many Churches, climates and ages. And that brings me to yet another reason for reading them. The divisions of Christendom are undeniable and are by some of these writers most fiercely expressed. But if any man is tempted to think—as one might be tempted who read only con- temporaries—that 'Christianity' is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so. Measured against the ages 'mere Christianity' turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible. I know it, indeed, to my cost. In the days when I still hated Christianity, I learned to recognise, like some all too familiar smell, that almost unvarying something which met me, now in Puritan Bunyan, now in Anglican Hooker, now in Thomist Dante. It was there (honeyed and floral) in François de Sales; it was there (grave and homely) in Spenser and Walton; it was there (grim but manful) in Pascal and Johnson; there again, with a mild, frightening, Paradisial flavour, in Vaughan and Boehme and Traherne. In the urban sobriety of the eighteenth century one was not safe—Law and Butler were two lions in the path. The supposed 'Paganism' of the Elizabethans could not keep it out; it lay in wait where a man might have supposed himself safest, in the very centre of The Faerie Queene and the Arcadia. It was, of course, varied; and yet—after all—so unmistakably the same; recognisable, not to be evaded, the odour which is death to us until we allow it to become life:

an air that kills
From yon far country blows.

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep-tracks.

The present book, [On the Incarnation], is something of an experiment. The translation is intended for the world at large, not only for theological students. If it succeeds, other translations of other great Christian books will presumably follow. In one sense, of course, it is not the first in the field. Translations of the Theologia Germanica, the Imitation, the Scale of Perfection, and the Revelations of Lady Julian of Norwich, are already on the market, and are very valuable, though some of them are not very scholarly. But it will be noticed that these are all books of devotion rather than of doctrine. Now the layman or amateur needs to be instructed as well as to be exhorted. In this age his need for knowledge is particularly pressing. Nor would I admit any sharp division between the two kinds of book. For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

What do you think? Does this prompt you to head over to the local library and start reading some classics?

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Byron Borger has followed up his last post (which I mentioned here) with another post today building on what he previously said. I highly recommend you read his latest post as well, in which he speaks extensively and encouragingly of Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew's latest book, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview. I have yet to read it myself, but having studied under Goheen I have already been deeply impacted by many of the ideas in this book. Borger, in the middle of the post, again speaks of why worldview study is so important.

[Worldview study] is not just for eggheads or intellectuals. We all long for coherence and integrated lives. We are not content with a narrow faith and the more attentive we are to the Bible, the more we come away informed by this comprehensive claim that Christ makes over all of life. Such coherence and integrity leads to joy. It is as simple as that: life lived out of a distinctively and intentional Christian worldview is more complicated (everything matters) and demanding (we cannot conform to the ways of the world, not in voting, or shopping, in sexual matters or business matters or recreational matters.) Yet, in that cost of discipleship comes joy. I think Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life touched something deep about all this, and it is revealing just how popular that was a few years back. In this postmodern world, we sense things unravelling, and we yearn for meaning, purpose, direction. A comprehensive framework for understanding things makes for a purposeful life. It makes for a joyful life. It makes for a righteous life.

Click here to read the rest of his post, and here to read another review of the book. Borger's last two posts are well worth your time, and his recommendations are well worth the space on your bookshelves.

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For quite a while now I have been following the BookNotes blog, authored by Byron Borger, who runs a bookstore up in Dallastown, Pennsylvania, called Hearts & Minds. The bookstore stocks books on all kinds of topics with the intent of helping people learn how to live out the truth of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of their life. Borger's latest post focuses on what lies at the root of learning how to live in that way. He says,

The fruitful way to integrate and live out a robust, multi-faceted, culture-making, spiritually-alive and Biblically faithful way of life in the world is to be intentional about studying how we see. Yes, our view of things, our imaginative constructs, our assumptions and attitudes, our underlying values, all shape how we think about all of life. The glasses we wear colors our interpretation of everything, and our subsequent views of discipleship—what to do and what not to do, and how to do the most ordinary things, how to make sense out of life, and how to live—are informed by our vision, the glasses we wear. The most effective, lasting and radical way to get church folks equipped for a life of service before God in the real world is to focus a bit from time to time on seeing life Christianly, from God's viewpoint. That is, we must study the topic of worldview.

What Borger says here is crucial, and I could not agree more. Click here to go read the rest of the post, because he follows this discussion with a recommendation of a number of books on the topic, some of which I have read and have impacted me tremendously, others of which I know are excellent and look forward to reading as soon as I can.

I encourage you to read BookNotes on a regular basis if you, like myself, are always in the market for good books. Borger's recommendations are always thoughtful, carefully selected, and thoroughly reviewed. In addition, all his recommendations usually come with a special discount offer you can access through the website.

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Even though a couple stories in the news in the past while are reminding us of the destructive power of water, most people are still drawn to water by some mysterious force, one which Herman Melville, spoken through the character of Ishmael, seemed to recognize:

Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

Who has not enjoyed a few hours spent sitting on a riverbank watching the rippling water drift by, or on the beach listening to the gentle lull of the waves, or on a dock by a small lake in the country? It has a powerful calming effect, a way of bringing peace, and an opportunity for allowing thoughts to run. I don't think it's coincidence that David placed these two clauses next to each other either:

He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.

I am convinced that both Melville and David knew exactly what they were talking about.

*Photo is "Contemplating about this place..." by maurice flower.

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