10 Significant Books from 2021

It was a good, if different reading year. I read and reviewed many fewer books this year than in any past year. In large part this due to reading for a book that I am writing and trying to write said book, which is not going as fast as I would like. Also, the pace at work seems to get increasingly faster and consume more and more of my free mental space, which makes it much easier to pick up something light and fluffy or find a movie to watch than to work through some excellent, but challenging Christian non-fiction.

In any case, my apologies for flagging aside, my deeper apologies go to a number of books that my friends have obviously appreciated, but which I am unable to commend simply because I didn’t have time or energy to read them.

However, here is my imperfect list of good books I encountered in 2021 that I would commend to you for future reading. They are in no particular order.

You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World by Alan Noble

“This is a book I would recommend for people of every age, but especially for those about to be sent out into the world. Noble teaches undergraduates, so it has the marks of many conversations had behind an office door, with students who came for help with an essay, but needed assistance in putting life together. Would that many more young Christians would discover the central message of this volume before heading out into the world, making shipwreck of their health, their life, and perhaps their faith in attempt to become someone, do something, and belong to themselves in an inhuman world.”

The Glory Now Revealed: What We’ll Discover About God in Heaven by Andrew M. Davis

“If asked where to learn about heaven, this is the resource I will point people toward. It is clear, simple, and Christ-honoring. More importantly, the book minimizes speculation by focusing on what can be understood from Scripture plainly read. This is the sort of book that draws the reader’s mind beyond the pages themselves to the hope that the author is pointing toward. It is a hopeful book, which offers a healthy dose of encouragement in a world that seems to be bent on wearing us down and keeping our minds of the life to come. The Glory Now Revealed is the sort of book that helps us become more like Christ by imagining more vividly what our future life in the presence of the visible Christ will be like in heaven.”

Ethics as Worship: The Pursuit of Moral Discipleship by Mark Leiderbach and Evan Lenow

“Ethics as worship means that the Christian worldview is the beginning of the moral quest. The foundation of the Christian worldview is properly Scripture, which anchors the method and content in the reveal Word of God. But a purely “scriptural” ethic can lead to casuistry. After all, Scripture does not say that we cannot use cocaine or tell us precisely what to do about global warming. An alternative, which includes various forms of philosophical ethics attempts to get at truth apart from Scripture and then looks for passages that can illustrate. Still other forms of so-called Christian ethics are more like weather gauges that check the cultural climate and decide write and wrong to try to maintain respectability. Viewing ethics as worship puts God at the center, with Scripture as the foundation, and delight in God and holiness as primary signs of success.”

Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures by Matthew Mullins

‘This book is an academic text. The best audience will be those familiar with the basics of literary theory or hermeneutics. Enjoying the Bible would make an excellent text for a “Bible as literature” course at the undergraduate level or as a source of encouragement for English majors in universities trying to reconcile the value of a literary approach to the Bible with its spiritual authority. This is a volume that can serve to encourage the weary seminary student or studious pastor whose need to produce a paper or sermon sometimes stifles a thoroughgoing delight in Scripture. This is a good book that will help many faithful, orthodox believers grow in their love of God and his Word.’

The End of Our Exploring: A book about Questioning and the Confidence of Faith by Matthew Lee Anderson

“As a parent of children who “know all the answers” because we have spent a lot of time on discipleship, I find Anderson’s faithful but open approach to questioning helpful. This is a book that I will have my children read toward the end of high school. Sometimes it is frightening that my kids have the ready answers to theological questions. I worry that they have borrowed my authority, as it were, because they have seen me teach through an abbreviated systematic theology, several books of the Bible, and other topical lessons. They know that I have read the books and explored the questions, but it is important that they do some of their own exploring, too.”

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading: A Quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful by Leland Ryken and Glenda Mathes

“The self-description of the book is apt. The authors write, “[This is] a guidebook by two season and enthusiastic reading travelers, who show all readers . . . how to discover more delight in the reading journey.” This is not an academic volume, though it has academic value. It is not a prescriptive “how to” like Adler’s book. It is filled with instruction, but it is not purely didactic. It’s the sort of book that can be read piecemeal as someone tries to grow in the art of reading. It’s also the sort of book that can be used as a textbook in a high school or introductory college literature class. It would also be useful as a companion to a reading group. Most significantly, it’s a book that will help its reader grow in their love of the better things in life.”

Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers

“In response to the redefinitions and abandonment of the ancient Christian faith by progressive Christians, Childers points people toward “historic Christianity.” She doesn’t perfectly define this term either, but she describes it as a faith “deeply rooted in history. In fact, it is the only religious system I can think of that depends on a historical event (the resurrection of Jesus) being real—not fake—news.” She goes on to summarize her faith as understanding that, “The Bible is [God’s] Word, or it’s not. Jesus was raised from the dead, or he wasn’t. Christianity is true, or it isn’t. There is no ‘my truth’ when it comes to God.” What she defends through the book is the faith “once and for all delivered to the saints,” with the truthfulness of Scripture at the core and the necessary conclusions drawn from that about the nature of God, the importance of the cross, and the goodness of pursuing holiness as it is described in Scripture.”

Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into Reading the News by Jeffrey Bilbro

The core of the problem, as Bilbro presents it, is not necessarily the technology or the content of the news, but rather that too much of what we get that passes as news has very little to do with our lives, even though it is designed to rattle our cage. What we get angry or excited about often has little to do with what God is concerned about: “Perhaps we need to conduct an emotional audit and consider which issues or news items cause us to become angry, outraged, or excited: Are we grieving over what grieves God and rejoicing over what brings him joy? Or have we become emotionally invested in trivia while growing apathetic about matters of real import?”

Bilbro recognizes that a big part of the problem is the way we read the news. As a result, the fix is to change ourselves and what we value. This is a book that is timely and well suited for those looking for an off-ramp from the highway of partisan politics, misanthropy, and emotional turmoil that often goes with the news.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

This is the only one of the books which I have not reviewed this year. Actually, I did review it, but due to a tragic failure of autosave, my lovely review was lost and I have not recreated it yet. I will provide a mini-review here.

Trueman’s book is one of the most important books of the year and likely will remain significant for years to come. Rise and Triumph digs into the reality-denying world of identity confusion that surrounds us. How have we come to a place where a statement like, “I am a man trapped in a woman’s body,” is considered meaningful? “Gender Identity” wasn’t really a recognized term when the infamous Obergefell case redefined so much of reality. Trueman walks through the stages of modern philosophy and culture that have allowed that sweeping change to be made so quickly and so readily absorbed. The books moves from Rousseau, through the Romantic Poets, Nietzche, Marx, and Darwin, the into Freud, with Marcuse and some other contemporaries thrown in. It’s obvious Trueman has done his homework, though his reading may not agree with the most generous interpreters of those works. Rise and Triumph has explanatory power. The really good news is that a more accessible version is being published by Crossway in 2022.

Dispatches from the Front: Soties of Gospel Advance in the World’s Difficult Places by Tim Keesee

Each of these dispatches—quick vignettes of the gospel bearing fruit and increasing—reminds readers that we have a supernatural God who works in mighty ways to accomplish his vital work in the world. For the pastor weighed down by the constant bickering about pandemic protocols, selfishness of congregations, and mundane arrangements of life in the US, this book offers a vitamin shot of encouragement about the way God can work in hard places. For the average Christian whose vision of the faith is limited to a service that can be squeezed in between travel league games and vacations, this will reveal Christian faith that energizes all of life.

10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin

The usefulness of this book is that McLaughlin has transposed important apologetic arguments from the halls of the atheist/Christian debates and put it in language and terms that are absorbable for the average teen. McLaughlin uses illustrations from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a variety of Disney animated movies. She does this as someone who has obviously watched and enjoyed them, so they don’t come across as misplaced tinsel, but actually support the content of the book. This is a book that reads well without sacrificing the quality of the arguments.

Ten Significant Books I Read in 2020

The leading candidate for cliché of the year for 2020 has to be any phrase involving the term “unprecedented.” Whatever term we use for the year, it was a different year than I’ve ever experienced.

One of the most significant differences this year is how difficult I found it to read and write at my usual pace. Part of that had to do with the pandemic. I am a supervisor who had to shift to leading my team online and remotely while trying to complete a major team project. As it turns out that is a mentally and emotionally taxing experience, that left me exhausted in the evenings looking for a movie to watch or a light and fluffy book to read. It isn’t particularly conducive to reading new and sometimes challenging books attentively and quickly.

Additionally, this year I taught and developed a lot more curriculum than ever before in my life as part of my efforts outside of work. So, I created an Old Testament course for my daughter’s homeschool and recorded half of the lectures (I still have about half to go this year). I researched a “Great Books” reading list to go along with her history reading. I also taught through an overview of systematic theology in Sunday School, wrote and presented a series on Christian Contentment, and preached several times. I have no complaints about those investments, but they did consume a bunch of time.

In another shift, I’ve been listening to Ken Myers and his Mars Hill Audio Journal this year. I had been interested for years, but never gotten into it because I have a thing for not paying subscriptions when there is so much free content, and much of it very good. But the Mars Hill discussions were a treasure this year. On the weekly Friday features, Myers often interviewed people thinking about current events. The scheduled journals are enriching and tend to be timeless, helpful discussions that lead in a whole lot of interesting directions. Ken Myers is singularly responsible for an uptick in my spending on books and also for a shift to reading older books, which is, on balance probably a good thing (if C. S. Lewis is to be believed).

Who know what next year will be like. I just signed a contract for a book on Environmental Ethics and I’m hoping to be more productive on outlets that aren’t my own blog. It’s always good to have dreams.

The Beginning of the List

In any case, here are some of the more significant books I read this year (in no particular order). If there is any obvious selection criteria, it is that the first ten listed are books I read this year that I haven’t reviewed on my own website. There are some below in my “other” list that were also very significant.

1. Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund.

I read this one (along with a lot of other people this year) during the pandemic and it was a breath of fresh air. I need to re-read it again, and maybe once every year for the rest of my life. There are few books that rise to the level of Christian classic, but this is one. I mean that without any exaggeration. That is exactly why I haven’t reviewed it, because I need to re-read and more thoroughly digest it before I can share my thoughts. The essential thought of the book is that one of Jesus’ essential character traits is his gentleness. Not an earth-shattering concept, really, but in Puritan fashion, Dane Ortlund meditates on that thought through Scripture for a book-length essay. I’ve given a dozen copies away and it needs to be more widely read and distributed than it has been at this point. It is a phenomenal book.

2. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman.

This is not an easy book to read. Even with a background in theology, an increasing familiarity with philosophy, and significant reading on the question of modernity in the past few years, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self was, at times, tough sledding. But the book is an important one and worth the work (especially for pastors and educators). Trueman surveys a significant portion of the intellectual history of modernity. He traces the thought of Rousseau, the Romantics, Freud, Marcuse, Reich, and others into the 21st century. There is a lot of explanatory power in this book. Most significantly, the book is expository and not polemical, which means that it may be a helpful way to engage with a non-Christian immersed in the ethos of modernity. It has significant explanatory power.

3. Bavinck: A Critical Biography by James Eglinton.

I’ve officially fallen down the Bavinck rabbit-hole and it’s been a good thing. This year I’ve read most of Bavicnk’s Reformed Dogmatics as I prepared for my weekly teaching of Christian Doctrines in Sunday School. I also wrote and presented a paper on Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics for ETS. Meanwhile I found Bavinck’s Christian Worldview an excellent book for our day. Eglinton is one of the premier Bavinck scholars writing today. His biography of Bavinck corrects some misinterpretations of earlier scholarship and really sets Bavinck’s intellectual project in its context. The research for this project is impressive. This will be the definitive Bavinck biography for this generation. It is worth reading as a biography, but it is also a vital entry into Bavinck-studies.

4. Conspiracy Theories: A Primer by Joseph Uscinski.

Evangelical Christians in the U.S. have a conspiracy theory problem. There are contributing causes that have their roots in the lack of discipleship and, more particularly, the failure for discipleship programs to include a proper emphasis on epistemology—how we know things. This little book by a non-Christian provides an even-handed diagnosis of the nature and dangers of conspiracy theories, which are increasingly prevalent in our social media saturated world that is rife with political divisions. I reviewed this book at TGC and although this is only a primer, I think that it would be good for pastors and laypeople to pick up and digest as they think about their attitudes toward media consumption.

5.Histories and Fallacies by Carl Trueman.

This book was released in 2010, but Crossway had a sale and I’m working on homeschool curriculum, so I picked this book up. As it turns out, it was a good selection and is going to make it into the reading list for our Sophomore critical thinking or history curriculum. Most Christian teachers end up working in history at some point as non-specialists, so a book like this where a specialist discusses discipline-specific problems can be helpful. I found it so. Trueman shows why some approaches to history seem fair, but are actually bankrupt methodologically. They sell well, but at the same time are misleading. If you teach, whether in a school, at home, or in the church, this is book that will help you read and think better.

6. Walking through Infertility by Matthew Arbo.

Arbo published this in 2018 and it has lingered on my shelf for a while in the ever-growing to-be-read pile. I pulled it off the shelf some time this year because I wanted a short book on a topic adjacent to much of my reading list that I could read through and feel like I had accomplished something. What I found in Arbo’s book was a surprisingly pastoral approach to an intensely important ethical topic. Many people in the US struggle with infertility. There are a number of contributing causes, but they are less important than the unthinking ethical landmines folks step on in order to have kids. Because the topic is so personal (it involves the sex life of married couples) and because the pressure to have kids with your DNA at just the right time is so high, few people stop to think about the implications of invitro fertilization, surrogate “mothering,” and other fertility-adjacent technologies. Arbo manages to provide a sensitive, biblical, and ethically precise book that will help Christians avoid sinning while in pursuit of becoming parents. This is a book that belongs in every pastor’s library and should be a ready reference to distribute to those struggling with the question of fertility.

7. How do We Know? An Introduction to Epistemology (2nd ed) by James K. Dew and Mark Foreman

Francis Schaeffer once commented that the biggest danger to evangelicalism is epistemology. He was right, but one of the reason the topic is often neglected is because it’s hard to find an entry point. The term itself is hard to parse until you read it in context a whole bunch of times, but how we know is vitally important. How do We Know? provides one of the best entry-level presentations of the topic I’ve found. Readers do not need a background in philosophy to get the benefit from it. As a result, this will become part of our homeschool curriculum, and I feel confident in recommending it widely.

9. Work: Its Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation by Daniel M. Doriani.

At this point I’ve read most of the recently published material on work and vocation, so I didn’t expect much new or particularly helpful in Doriani’s book. I was pleasantly surprised and this will be my go-to book on the subject for the foreseeable future. The conversation on faith and work has evolved over the past few decades and Work reaps the blessings of the years of conversations. Doriani affirms the goodness of work without falling into the trap of arbeit mach frei, which characterizes some of the more blatant attempts to unquestioningly affirm capitalism as it exists in the US while also wrestling with the doctrine of work from Scripture. Doriani is critical of both the anti-work approach and some of the more zealous trends in the faith and work debate. As a result, he presents a biblical vision for work that takes into account the various critiques offered and presents a rich discussion on the topic. This is another resource that pastors should have ready for distribution for those struggling with deep career questions.

10. Learning the Virtues, Romano Guardini.

This is an older book that I came across as a result of Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio. It is also reflective of an effort that I’m making to read for my soul as well as my mind. I’m curating a list of volumes that I intend to read on a regular basis to point me toward healthy spiritual and mental habits. Guardini is Roman Catholic, so there are comments throughout his book that anticipate actual merit being accrued because of the pursuit of virtue. That misunderstanding of theology aside, however, the book is a sound meditation on what it means to live in the presence of God. It is the sort of book one should read a chapter at a time, perhaps in the evening, and spend a few minutes thinking about how that particular virtue can shape the reader in a more Christlike pattern. If you are struggling in dry patch spiritually, this is a book that may be a welcome relief.

Other Significant Books:

As I noted, the above ten books are listed in no particular order. As I look through the list of other volumes I read this year, there are a number of them that also belong on this list. After some thought, I put mainly books that I have read but not reviewed in the section above, since I am a bit behind in my reviewing. Some of the books below have already been reviewed but not posted and a few are also to be reviewed.

In any event, here are some other profitable books from my reading this year:

11. Back to Virtue by Peter Kreeft.

12. How to Win the Culture War by Peter Kreeft.

13. In Search of the Common Good by Jake Meador.

14. Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver.

15. The Humane Economy by Willhelm Ropke.

16. The Possibility of Prayer by John Starke.

17. Christian Worldview by Herman Bavinck.

18. Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs.

19. Technopoly by Neil Postman.

20. Pagans and Christians in the City by Stephen D. Smith.

21. He Descended to the Dead by Matthew Emerson.

22. Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals by Gavin Ortlund.

I’ll stop there before I drag the list on any further, but there is a lot of good stuff out there and there is a lot of very good material being produced right now, too.

Ten Significant Books from 2019

As a reading year, this year was somewhat slower than many other years because I was editing a book for publication. That required me to spend a lot of time staring at sentences, looking up words, checking quotations, and reading them in context. As a result, my tally of recent books was somewhat lower.

Of course, as I learned from Alan Jacobs in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, the point in reading is not maximum consumption. However, as a serial reviewer of books, my lower productivity was, at times, weird, even when it did not rise to the level of distressing.

From among the books that I read that were published in the past year or so, here is a list of ten that I found especially helpful. The list is in no particular order.

Reformed Ethics, vol. 1, by Herman Bavinck.

The first volume of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics provides an example of an ethical system with its roots in an unchanging greatest good. Although the contents of the volume are more than a century old, they appear to have aged very little; indeed, this initial volume of Bavinck’s ethics is remarkably fresh and invigorating. This is because, for Bavinck, ethics is about loving God by living rightly through the power of the Holy Spirit. More than that, the center of Christian ethics is the character of God. As such, Bavinck’s ethics are explicitly theological in the deepest meaning of the term. That is, right living must begin by understanding who God is.

Your Future Self Will Thank You, Drew Dyck.

The basic formula laid out in Your Future Self Will Thank You is that we need to incrementally build new habits. Dyck sifts through research that shows that the problem with most of our self-improvement attempts is that we try to change too much too quickly and without the appropriate incentive structures. Dyck uses recent scientific research to show that will power is a finite resource. It can be developed over time. However, our self-control is subject to fatigue. When we are tired, stressed, or distracted we are much more likely to fail in our attempts at self-control. Not coincidentally, this happens to match what Scripture teaches. This is why Sabbath is built into the pattern of Scripture. This is why Proverbs focuses so much on patterns of life.

Scientism and Secularism, J. P. Moreland

In popular culture, scientism has overtaken other religious systems as a dominant plausibility structure. In other words, it is how many people make sense of the world around them. Not only does this often displace belief in God, but it undermines the ability of those who hold to scientism to accurately evaluate competing, non-scientistic perspectives that might provide better access to truth.

Scientism has influenced several of the shifts our culture has witnessed in recent decades. The first is that it has taught people that science sums up the totality of accessible knowledge, while religion is blind faith divorced from reality. This myth may help people coexist, but it does much less to encourage the pursuit of truths that cannot be known empirically, much less fairly evaluate those that haven’t adopted the current orthodoxy of scientism.

Transhumanism and the Image of God, Jacob Shatzer.

Our smartphones are changing the way that we focus, constantly dragging our attention away from more significant things to the trivial. Social media is functionally altering the way that we socialize with one another. We tend to focus on documentable events rather than companionable experiences. The internet and the availability of search engines are modifying how we value knowledge of facts.

In his recent book, Transhumanism and the Image of God, Jacob Shatzer shows that transhumanism is with us now and, to some degree, inescapable. At the same time, it is our responsibility as Christians to begin to ask questions about to what degree we can accept the changes demanded by technology and to what degree we ought to resist them.

Between Life and Death, Kathryn Butler

Kathryn Butler’s book, Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-Of-Life Medical Care, is an extremely helpful volume in learning about various critical medical treatments, which can help make the cost/benefit analysis for choosing to continue with interventions. She also carefully sorts through the biblical data to consider whether an ethic of life, which is demanded by Scripture, entails pursuing every medical treatment possible no matter the cost, the low likelihood of success, or the trauma to the patient. Butler, a trauma and critical-care surgeon, has worked at several significant medical facilities and brings her experience and expertise to bear in a compassionate manner in this book.

Radical Help, Hilary Cottam

In her recent book, Radical Help, Hilary Cottam challenges the expansion of centrally planned model of government poverty alleviation. Writing from progressive perspective, Cottam makes an argument that will sound familiar and welcome to conservative ears: The most effective means of poverty alleviation is the development of community.

Determined to do something practical about the problem of poverty, Cottam set to work redesigning portions of the welfare system in the United Kingdom. She challenged the status quo by asking a profound question of workers within a number of social programs: Who has been helped by your social program so that they are no longer enmeshed in the welfare system?

The Power of Christian Contentment, Andrew M. Davis

One of the central elements of The Power of Christian Contentment is that our satisfaction in Christ is a primary tool for evangelism. Everyone is unhappy about something. Our political climate is entirely structured on creating unhappiness that only abolishing the other party can possibly fix. Economically, no matter how much we have, one side reminds us that someone else has more (which is unfair, they say) and the other side reminds us that some people are keeping us from getting more (also inherently unjust, in the eyes of some). Davis’s argument is that when we have Christ, we have everything we need. When we are satisfied in Christ’s provision, that shows and that satisfaction is attractive to the harried masses around us who are convinced that fewer social restrictions or a larger bank balance are the keys to eternal satisfaction.

Becoming Whole, Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic

Becoming Whole is an excellent tool to get people inside the local church to rethink poverty alleviation and, en route to that reconsideration, to think about the value structures in their own lives. I have read dozens of books on poverty and the American dream in my studies of wealth and poverty, environmental ethics, and the like. I did not want to put this book down. Each page offered new ways of explaining Christian theology in a way that is relevant to people in a dominant culture that is both gnostic and excessively materialistic.

This is volume that, along with When Helping Hearts and Practicing the King’s Economy, ministry leaders should read as they seek to form people and outline a vision for human flourishing among their own congregants and in the world around them.

The Gospel of Our King, Bruce Ashford and Heath Thomas

The Gospel of Our King affirms the reality that we were not made for ourselves, but to serve the King of the Universe.

I have read dozens of books on worldview, the gospel, and mission. I found The Gospel of Our King to be a refreshing presentation of this topic. This is a book that I am glad to recommend. Above all, this is a volume that helped to remind me of the central purpose of the Christian life: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever

God and Galileo, David Block and Kenneth Freeman.

It’s hard to characterize this book simply, to put it into a clear category. Usually that is a criticism, but in the case of God and Galileo it is because the book does a great deal well. Are you seeking a resource to disrupt a materialist’s view that faith and science are mutually exclusive? This book can help do that. Are you interested in the contours of the faith and science debate as a Christian? This book will inform you. Are you looking for an enjoyable read for a quiet evening? This book offers it. Are you longing for a volume that encourages you to enjoy God through both his special and general revelation? This book calls you into a sense of wonder at both.

And, as a bonus, because I found this book so paradigm shaping. I am linking to my review of a book that is a a couple of decades old, but likely belongs in the camp of classics.

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, Cornelius Plantinga

The tragedy of much contemporary and theologically orthodox Christianity, particular among evangelical Protestants, is that a faulty definition of sin has led to thin ethics. Sin is sometimes popularly perceived of as something that is paid for by the cross and then entirely behind the Christian. To a degree this is true, Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross provided a path for the elect to be redeemed. Forgiveness for sin is now available for those that repent and put their faith in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection as the hope for eternal life. All of this is true, but it neglects some of the ongoing effects of sin in even the lives of Christians and especially in the world around us.

Cornelius Plantinga’s book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, is an important book for understanding the nature and effects of sin. The book was originally published in 1995, and won multiple awards. It is both excellently written and exceedingly positive. This is the sort of book that should remain in print because of its enduring value as an accessible and theologically precise systematization of the doctrine of sin.