A New Edition of Chesterton's Orthodoxy

If you haven’t read G. K. Chesterton, you should take the opportunity to do so.

He’s humorous, incisive, perceptive, witty, and a fierce defender of the Christian faith. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man is one of the volumes that contributed to the conversion of C. S. Lewis. Some find his contrariness and paradoxical thinking grating, but most sense the twinkle in the eye of a brilliant thinker who has been captured by a love of the truth.

Chesterton’s work is out of copyright, so I anticipate (if it hasn’t happened already) many cheap and barely readable versions of the text to pop up in online marketplaces. One of the challenges of reading old books in our age is finding a well-produced edition for a reasonable price.

B&H has produced a gorgeous printing of Orthodoxy, with an introduction, annotations, and guided reading from Trevin Wax. The annotations alone are worth the price of the book, because Chesterton drops many names of popular politicians, thinkers, and cultural fixtures without any context. It’s possible to get the general idea of the text without knowing who he is referring to, but the notes that Wax provides at the bottom of the page are very helpful. The guided reading is also useful for those who haven’t encountered Chesterton before, or who are unfamiliar with the conflict of Christianity and modernity. Chesterton is a very deep thinker, so the first trip through Orthodoxy can be tough slogging for the uninitiated. Wax scaffolds the content with a brief introduction to each chapter telling the reader what the gist is and what to look for; at the end of chapter there is a brief summary and some discussion questions. These are all helpful for engaging the book on its own terms.

Orthodoxy itself, of course, is a classic volume. There is a reason it has been in print for an extended period of time. This volume is a follow up to Chesterton’s book, Heretics, where he takes on Christianity’s modern critics directly, and often by name. However, some of those critics did not engage with Chesterton because, they said, he had not outlined his own position in the positive. They recognized that it is much easier to tear down opinions than it is to build them anew. Chesterton agreed and took them up on the challenge. The result was Orthodoxy.

Chesterton was, of course, a Roman Catholic, which shapes his approach to defending the faith. He also grossly misunderstood Calvinism—or at least, he has misrepresented every real version I have ever encountered in life or in print. And yet, Chesterton’s defense of Christianity from modernity is a defense that is appealing even for a low-church Baptist with Calvinistic tendencies. He makes the locus of his understanding of Christianity the Apostle’s Creed, which is a good place to start, if you ask me.

It’s challenging to sum up the contents simply, but it might be fair to say that, having looked at modernity’s answers to life’s most pressing questions, Chesterton is explaining why Christianity provides the best description for the world as it exists. He begins by showing the circularity of materialistic arguments for the world and the better answer he found in Christianity. The argument moves on from there. This isn’t a typical apologetics book, but trust me, it’s worth your while.

The latest edition of Orthodoxy from B&H is worth the money. It is a handsome edition and the notes add value rather than distracting from the quality of the text. If you haven’t read it at all, get some version of the book and pick it up. You’ll thank me later.

Orthodoxy: with annotations and guided reading by Trevin Wax

By Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, Wax, Trevin

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Another Sort of Learning - A Review

The Preacher who gave us Ecclesiastes famously wrote, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9)

This is true in many arenas, but those who read old books will find it true of controversies, antagonisms, and the general feel of cultural unrest. C. S. Lewis recommends reading old books “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.” (Lewis, “On Reading Old Books”) It is by reading old books that we gain a corrective to the characteristic blind spots of our own culture.

I’m not sure if James Schall’s book, Another Sort of Learning, counts as an old book, since it was published in 1988, but it had a revealing effect for me. Schall’s book is worth considering on its own, but it also provides evidence that today’s cultural battles are not really that new. More than thirty years ago, Schall was calling out the same problems that might be the source of concern in The American Conservative, First Things, or National Review today. That doesn’t mean that the concern is not warranted, but rather that we might be better served by recognizing that this election or this court case or this movie may not actually be the straw that broke the camels back. It may be, but that seems less and less likely the older I get. There is nothing new under the sun.

In Another Sort of Learning, Schall writes “about being a student, about reading, about the fact that each of us is called to understand. . . ‘the truth about our lives.’” This is a book that discusses other books that can help shape the mind. It is a book about thinking well, appreciation of the transcendentals, and recommendations of others who are thinking along the same vein.

Contents

The book is divided into three parts. The first is addressed to college students, pointing them toward what their goal as students ought to be. Schall expresses concern that students seek to answers to the big questions of life, rather than simply learning a trade. The whole of this section is framed around that. In his first essay, “Another Sort of Learning,” Schall commends used book stores for being able to find the right sorts of books that are often not in as regular circulation. A lovely way to begin an engaging book.

The second part of the volume recommends “Books You Will Never Be Assigned.” Here offers to “provide reviews of certain books that I think help us gain some insight into the heart of reality.” These are mainly modern books with an ancient soul. They are the sorts of secondary literature that take the Great Conversation seriously and try to engage it meaningfully rather than demonstrate why it is a foolish attempt. For those with a hefty book budget, these are chapters ripe with suggestion.

Part Three seeks to provide an alternative viewpoint to the most common modern perspective. Schall states, “I want to discuss rather substantive things, both intellectual and spiritual. Here I want to say something about the humanities, about devotion, prayer, something more, again, about permanent things.” Here he again is recommending volumes that pull readers deeper into the idea of reality about the universe, rather than directing them to their own reality.

Conclusion

Another Sort of Learning is a deeply conservative book. Not the sort of conservatism that produces strong tweets or rages against the right enemies, but the sort of conservatism that digs deep into the intellectual realities of the world and seeks to find truth, goodness, and beauty. It is a sort of reactionary perspective that is revulsed by the evils of modernity, looking to the solidity of the past for a conversation of substance.

One of the interesting benefits of reading a book like this over thirty years old is that it skips a generation. The authors that I recognize are mainly the ones still being discussed today, so Schall’s reading lists can point us back to older books of substances that may further help clear away the cobwebs of the contemporary cacophony. There is nothing new under the sun, but Schall provides access to the ongoing debates that doesn’t include the gaps and blind spots of the latest cycle of blogs.

Another benefit of Another Sort of Learning is that Schall describes the same sorts of problems being lamented by thoughtful people today. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. On one hand, the continuance of this concern about the loss of the transcendentals is discouraging because we have not made much progress. On the other hand, the continuance of concern on this issue shows that we have not altogether lost the fight. This is an encouraging volume that is worth the time to read. The essays are no worse for being more than thirty years old. Maybe they are even better for it.  Overall, the collection is well-written and engaging, perfect for taking a chapter at a time after a long day at work.

Another Sort of Learning

By James V. Schall

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The Lynn White Thesis and American Christianity

Lynn Townsend White, Jr’s essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” is the essay that launched a thousand ships in the study of religious environmentalism. That essay, originally delivered as a conference talk and popularized because of its publication in Science magazine, has been a touchstone of discussions of the connection between Christianity and environmentalism in in the more than fifty years since it has been published.

The problem with the essay is that it is largely wrong.

White’s basic argument is that Western Christianity devalues creation, promoting a dualistic framework that treats the physical world as merely existing for human benefit. White puts the blame on Christianity for de-paganizing the world because, he argues, Christian missionaries chopped down the sacred groves, taught the barbarians that there was one true God in spirit form, and that the Nyads and Dryads of their mythologies were false gods. The solution, according to White, is to adapt a more pagan conception of reality, viewing the world as sacred and adapting Christianity to a more nature-centric worship.

This thesis should have been debunked simply because it relies on a basic misunderstanding of Christianity. While theologians like Augustine do argue that there are differences between spiritual things and physical things, they do not indicate that on that basis physical things may be abused. There are certainly dualistic Christians who devalue creation and view it as solely existing for humanity’s benefit, however, their perspective in not consistent with Scripture. The solution is not to modify Christianity, but to present a robust theological orthodoxy that points dualistic Christians back to Scripture, back to the creeds, and back to the proper worship of the creator.

In the same year that White’s infamous essay was published, there was another volume that also should have undermined his thesis. Clarence Glacken published his seminal work, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, in 1967. In roughly 700 pages, he shows from ancient literature through roughly the present that the common human condition has been an anthropocentric view of nature. That is, the view that White ascribes to Christianity is prevalent throughout Western culture from the ancient philosophers through the current ones. While Glacken does not absolve Christianity from all guilt related to environmental abuse, he does demonstrate the White’s simply cause and solution are off base. Glacken’s main failure was publishing the anecdote to an essay in a tome. White’s thesis has more power because it is concise and blames the right out-group. Glacken’s work is devastating to that thesis, but is dense, carefully researched, and lengthy. Thus it is often footnoted, but much less likely to have been read and digested.

More recently, a more direct rebuttal of White’s thesis has been published. In 2016, historian Evan Berry’s book, Devoted to Nature, was released into the wild. He argues that, “American environmentalism is related to religion, not out of serendipitous resemblance but by way of historically demonstrable genealogical affinity with Christian theological tradition.” (2) Moreover, “Theologically rooted notions of salvation, redemption, and spiritual progress provided a context for Americans enthusiastic about the outdoors and established the horizons of possibility for the national environmental imagination.” (5)

This, of course, does not take us directly to “orthodox Christianity is great for the environment” because a large piece of Berry’s account is how the bones of American environmentalism align to progressive ideas with a significantly middle-class flavor. Therefore, there is a Christian tinge to much of American environmentalism that is, to paraphrase Rauschenbusch, about as orthodox as the interests of the environmental movement will allow.

Still, Berry’s book is helpful in that it exposes the reality that Christian per se is not the problem with the environmental movement. While the versions of Christianity that have been most active in preserving the environment are not always particularly Christian, there is hope that with some focused attention and proper hermeneutics, we can see a robust pro-environment theology that is consistently orthodox. At least, as an orthodox Christian who believes caring for the environment is important, I hope that is true.

For those struggling with the Lynn White thesis, Evan Berry’s book, Devoted to Nature provides a strong anecdote. It is a helpful entry into the history of environmentalism in the US. It carefully debunks some of the strongest anti-Christian tropes of the environmental movement. It also points readers toward a hopeful engagement with Christianity that may lead to them finding the gospel. This isn’t a book for everyone, but it is a particularly important book for those doing scholarship on religion and the environmental.

Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism

By Berry, Evan

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Learning How to Learn - A Review

Learning how to learn has always been a struggle, I think. Ancient philosophers invested significant time and energy into thinking about pedagogy. Though we have advanced in many ways, our struggle to learn has not changed that much, since we are still humans with the same basic traits as the ancients.

The difference in our age is that everyone promises easy ways to learn with half the effort. Usually, those new ways to learn are ineffective in the long run. Meanwhile, the sheer number of distractions and their addictiveness have increased. While there is nothing new under the sun, I think that Nicholas Carr is on to something with his book, The Shallows.

As an instructor, I am seeing a generation rise that tends to struggle with focus and learning in ways that are changing. This is not as much as “kids these days” comment as it is an awareness that the ubiquity of digital entertainment and information overload has made it more difficult for people to make connections between concepts, retain that information, and see the value in knowing anything that can be looked up. Since by federal law the end of the training course I supervise is a closed book exam, there is no escape from the informational demands, just a greater struggle to get to the finish line.

My wife found and enjoyed Barbara Oakley’s 2014 book, A Mind for Numbers, in which she talks about how she went from being a very verbal person to an engineering professor over a number of years. In 2018, along with Terrence Sejnowski and Alistair McConville, she published a volume for kids, Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School without Spending All Your Time Studying.

As the subtitle hints, the selling point on this is instrumental. Read this book and you’ll get smarter faster. However, given that a book advertising the benefits of learning for its own sake is less likely to sell, I can’t really fault the publisher for their choice in titles. In the end, the book is helpful whether you are learning how to learn to get ahead or simply for the value of learning on its own.

Summary

The book opens with an introduction to the main authors. More significantly, the book tells students that “follow your passion” is bad advice. It’s a good way to start. Their point is that just because something is hard or unpleasant does not mean that it is not a good thing that you come to enjoy. In Chapter Two, the authors shift to describing types of thinking, noting that we need to practice both focused thinking when we are zeroed in on solving a problem or getting information, but we also need to use diffuse thinking, where we allow ideas to bounce around in the back of our head. A lot of creative thought and connection of ideas comes during diffuse thinking. The issue is that its not enough to try to blast through studying in one chunk, there has to be time for multiple focused hits and diffuse mulling to get things embedded. So this is not a book that simply tells you to work harder, it is intended to help teach how to study smarter for better results.

The third chapter wrestles with focus and procrastination. The authors provide some hints to help overcome the hard start as well as to increase focus. One big tip they recommend is the Pomodoro method. Chapter Four drills into some neuroscience, describing how many scientists believe information is stored and provided some tips on how to strengthen neural pathways. The visual aids in this chapter help with understanding, and the understanding can be useful in providing motivation for study. The fifth chapter offers an exhortation to take up subjects that are new, even at the risk of being bad at it. Chapter Six emphasizes the need for proper sleep so that the brain can be restored. It also introduces the concept of “spaced retrieval” where a learner looks at material multiple times, preferably with sleep in between. This is the anti-cramming chapter.

Chapter Seven deals with the way our memories work and describes the processes for getting things from short term (working) memory to long-term memory. This is an encouraging chapter for those that struggle with focus, as the authors highlight the potential for people with weaker working memories often have higher capabilities in creativity. The eighth chapter provides to tips and tricks for improving one’s memory. There is nothing earth shattering, but the techniques have been validated, which is encouraging. Chapter Nine talks about building brain links, which elsewhere is called chunking. This is the process of connecting ideas together to strengthen their hold in our minds. The authors recommend focus, repetition, and understanding as key means of retaining knowledge and skills.

The tenth chapter recommends learning in groups, especially exploring more in-depth topics beyond the typical curriculum. Chapter Eleven commends the benefits of both exercise and good nutrition as part of improved learning. The twelfth chapter returns to the construction of brain links and encourages practice over an extended period. The authors commend both deliberate practice (focused study) and interleaving (doing something different between practice or study sessions). Both can be helpful means of solidifying knowledge in the brain.  Chapter Thirteen recommends being truthful about how distractions affect a student and then eliminating them. The fourteenth chapter notes that tests are actually some of the best ways to learn and thus commends quizzing and self-testing as a means to ingrain knowledge.  Chapter Fifteen provides some helpful tips on being better prepared for tests. And the book concludes in the sixteenth chapter tying many of the concepts together.

Analysis and Conclusion

Learning has not changed drastically over the course of documented human history. There are no real shortcuts to learning, but Learning How to Learn helps to identify roadblocks so they can be removed. In other words, there is not a lot of original content in this volume, but it has been structured and presented in a way that it is accessible to kids.

The target audience of this volume is tweens and teens. There are cartoons and diagrams throughout. The language is simple and plain. On of my children didn’t appreciate the zombie cartoons or analogies, but others might find this makes the book more interesting.

This is the sort of book that will help a motivated student get better. For the kid that is convinced that everything is going to pan out and that video games are enough of a career goal that real learning can be foregone, this book will probably not cross the threshold of engagement. Learning How to Learn isn’t a promise of an easy path to success. For students that want to learn more effectively, this can be an excellent resource. For parents of kids who have some desire to improve, but whose kids are resistant to their input, this book offers a sly way to get good advice into the hands that need it.

I commend this book as a helpful resource. As we try to prepare out children to learn on their own, this sort of book has the potential to assist them in the quest to be successful in their studies and become lifelong learners. It may also begin to form habits of persistence and perseverance that transcend academic success, often bleeding over into so many other venues.

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 As a bonus, here is Barbara Oakley speaking at Google. This is based on her Mind for Numbers book, but it has basically the same content as the book translated for teens.

Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens

By Oakley PhD, Barbara, Sejnowski PhD, Terrence, McConville, Alistair

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Ultralearning - A Review

There is a temptation in our world to try to find a quicker, easier, and better way to do everything. How can I lose 20 pounds without actually dieting? How can I earn a huge income without working? How can I make everyone think I am more intelligent without actually studying? We are a culture of convenience that hasn’t eliminated our preference for appearance—we want microwave dinners that don’t really taste like it. It’s a form of dishonesty.

When I first picked up Scott Young’s book, Ultralearning, I expected to find a microwave dinner that advertised itself as fine cuisine. But what I actually found was a microwave dinner than that advertised accurately and notes the benefits and the drawbacks of what it is. The potatoes may be a little soggy and the meat a little tough, but it takes ok and is reasonably nutritious. A little candor is a good thing, because sometimes a microwave dinner is good enough.

Young’s book falls into the airport book genre, which I commented on in my review of Rolf Dobelli’s, The Art of Thinking Clearly. It is reasonably short, lucidly written, relies on the research of others, provides clear steps to success, and is the sort of self-improvement volume that can provide light conversation and make the reader sound intelligent.

That Young’s book is designed to sell well should not be considered a severe criticism, however, because he has put together some helpful advice in an easily absorbed presentation.

Young has done the round of podcasts and presented at a TEDx event and some other self-help, inspirational, big-idea sort of stages. His writing style, ideas, and approach fit well within that genre of thought.

The majority of what he advertises, though, is simply a way to become a better learner. The lack of originality is no sign of a lack of value. Every generation needs champions of ideas and contextualizers that can help translate older ideas for newer audiences. The weakness in Young’s approach is that he does not really recognize that what he is doing is translating older ideas, but presents much of what he offers as being derived from contemporary science, rather than simply repackaging older methologies.

Ultralearning is “a strategy for acquiring skills and knowledge that is both self-directed and intense.” It is, in essence, the process of becoming an efficient autodidact. It is an approach that Young has put to the test by working his way through MIT’s computer programming curriculum on his own and by learning four languages in a year. Ultralearning is about becoming competent quickly at a particular skill.

There are nine principles that Young recognizes for ultralearners:

• Principle #1 – Metalaerning – Figuring out the way that the subject or skill should be learned.

• Principle #2 – Focus – Zooming in on the subject to the neglect of many other things. Making a job of getting good at whatever the goal is.

• Principle #3 – Directness – Seeking to gain the information or skill in as close to the setting as it can be applied.

• Principle #4 – Drill – Figuring out where the choke points are in learning or proficiency, breaking those down, and practicing them until proficiency is achieved.

• Principle #5 – Retrieval – Using testing (of various sorts) to embed information well so that skills and knowledge are retained and progress can be made.

• Principle #6 – Feedback – Going through the discomfort of feedback so that problems can be corrected as quickly as possible.

• Principle #7 – Retention – Creating a plan to maintain important proficiencies, depending on the nature of the skill.

• Principle #8 – Intuition – Making the “why” connections on the topic to help make further learning on the subject easier.

• Principle #9 – Experimentation – Changing methods when something isn’t working, even if it worked earlier on.

As I noted, there is nothing that is truly remarkable about any of these steps for those that been engaged in the study of pedagogy. But Young packages them in a way that prevents having to dig through the literature of the field. He also shows some ways that some of the “quick fix” learning methods that are advertised are doomed to failure.

Ultralearning is not a “quick and easy” approach to becoming an expert in something. Rather, it is “hard and fast” approach to becoming reasonably proficient at something. It does not advertise cheap, fast, gourmet food. It advertises reasonably healthy, reasonably tasty, microwave food. On that front it delivers.

I think there is value in the Ultralearning approach for those that are trying to gain knowledge in a new field. For the pastor seeking to learn New Testament Greek without going to seminary, something like an ultralearning approach would probably work well. If someone could carve out three hours a day for a few months to jam through a common Koine textbook, memorize the most common vocabulary, and develop a plan to use it daily, they will be more likely to be successful than by trying to do Greek drills 20 minutes a day for years. There is a realism to Young’s approach that I find attractive.

This, of course, does not mean that someone can become an expert in something nearly instantly. While the internet tends to make people feel they can be experts on constitutional law one day, international politics another, and health sciences on the next, the reality is that most of us have a limited bandwidth to develop competencies. The ultralearning approach intentionally neglects a lot of the background work that is typical of more conventional learning approaches.

If you want to be able to paint something you find attractive and don’t expect to become a stellar artist, then it can be helpful to learn to paint from Bob Ross. If you want to become more proficient at a skill or in a limited area of knowledge that can develop you personally or improve your career options, then Scott Young’s approach is beneficial. In neither case will you be the best at something or the expert in a field, but it can certainly add tools to a toolbox that can make a huge difference.

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

By Young, Scott

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The Art of Thinking Clearly - A Review

If there is one skill I would like to improve in time on this earth, it is thinking well. Our affections and our actions follow what we think. Additionally, in the information-saturated world in which we live, individuals and companies are spending billions of dollars every year to keep us from thinking well.

In this quest to think better, I picked up Rolf Dobelli’s 2013 book, The Art of Thinking Clearly. The title makes it sound like it has some methods to clearer cognition, but as Dobelli announces in the introduction, “This is not a how-to book.” Instead, it is an illuminated list of biases and fallacies that people commonly buy into.

This book falls into the category that I like to categorize as “airport books.” These are the trade books that you will see if you browse one of the bookstores or newsstands in any American airport. The writing is clear, with simple language and frequent illustrations, but usually very skimmable. The chapters tend to be short and well titled so that one can pop in and out easily or simply skip some chapters and still understand the main flow. The books are designed to be read in about the time it takes to wait for and endure a domestic flight. The content is usually something in the self-improvement vein (usually with a business bias), alternative view of history, or interesting but lesser-known aspect of humanity.

Authors of this genre of book include Malcolm Gladwell, James Clear, Bill Bryson, Nassim Taleb and others. They are usually popularizers whose gift is in researching a topic, synthesizing some of the ideas, and writing about in a captivating way. Some of the books are quite good, and some even include very helpful ideas, but they are always derivative, typically non-controversial, and intended to make the reader look and sound more well-informed than he or she really is.

As I’ve fallen into a well of these books while reading on various topics, I’ve also come to discover that there is a lot of self-reference within the genre. For example, Dobelli probably should have listed Taleb as a contributor to his volume, given how frequently he cites him. There are many instances of each of them citing each other—whether in print or a Ted Talk someone else gives. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, it’s simply something that is evident when you read a clump of the books published around the same time.

Dobelli’s book is helpful in many ways. Each of the ninety-nine chapters covers a distinct error in thinking or method of misrepresentation we ought to watch out for. He tells us to watch out for mistakes in true remembrances, the paralysis of excessive options, attempts to attribute attitudes to an author based on characters in their novel, the psychological effect of scarcity, and more. There really area lot of different ways that we can think incorrectly and there is value in understanding how we might get tricked, so we can watch out for it.

The book seems to take a humanitarian approach by offering for the cost of a restaurant meal tips that could change your life and improve society. But the nature of social improvement is not entirely altruistic. As Dobelli notes, “If we could learn to recognize and evade the biggest errors in thinking––in our private lives, at work, or in government––we might experience a leap in prosperity. We need no extra cunning, no new ideas, no unnecessary gadgets, no frantic hyperactivity––all we need is less irrationality.”

Of course, what exactly constitutes irrationality in Dobelli’s mind? He does not state it, but it is clear from the text that he writes that irrationality is assumed to be any belief or idea that does not reduce all value to instrumentality and all reality to the material.

When considering causality, he dismisses the possibility of the supernatural. Those who believe in God’s intervention have simply been fooled by the randomness of the world and pieced together a fairy tale based on ignoring the details. At another point he dismisses as foolish someone holding onto a car he had refurbished when selling off possessions to pay a debt. There can be no value other than the dollar value in his mind.

None of these views are surprising. They are not atypical. However, they reflect the biases of his own thinking, which oddly enough he does not highlight as one of the fallacies. They are reflective of how people need to continually interrogate the baseline assumptions of authors as they read a book. Having assumptions does not invalidate the contents of a volume or its arguments, but it can inform us and help readers sift through the wheat and the chaff.

Overall, this was a useful book. It can serve as a reference when trying to label errors in thinking that we witness. It may also provide fodder for discussions of clear and critical thinking. Whether it will result in a jump in prosperity, as Dobelli hopes, is less clear. However, it will certainly provide an amusing way to spend a few hours, if one has the time.

The Art of Thinking Clearly

By Dobelli, Rolf

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Some Recommended Introductions to Christian Ethics

Sometimes the variety and range of options of books makes it difficult to know where to begin in the study of any given topic. Whereas a few years ago we would have had to rely on the personal recommendations of a friend or acquaintance, and what was available in our local library or bookstore, now the entire catalog of human knowledge is, seemingly, open to us at all points. This is really great, if you have a starting place in mind or an existing framework from which to begin. For those simply trying to get a toehold in a new topic, the options can be paralyzing.

This post was written because I have had several people ask me what books I would recommend to begin the study of Christian ethics. The list is based on my own preferences and those that I would recommend to people who are reasonably well-read and who share at least some of my presuppositions about the nature of Scripture and the truthfulness of orthodox Christianity. In other words, I am going to make recommendations that are consistent with an orthodox, evangelical Christianity. There may be significant books on philosophical ethics, Roman Catholic ethics, or some sort of modernistic Christianity that others might see as invaluable. However, my point is to lead people deeper into the mystery of faith in Christ Jesus, not toward the apparent brilliance of writers in another faith. There are many books about particular topics within ethics that are useful, too. I have selected these as introductions, not endpoints.

Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis

This in not a textbook on Christian Ethics, per se. However, in his defense of a basic, orthodox Christianity, Lewis writes about ninety pages of his apologetic work—about a quarter of it—on what amounts to Christian Ethics. This is helpful, because it demonstrates the integration of Christian Ethics into the broader theological ideas of Christianity. The way we live is an apologetic and it is a demonstration of what we truly believe. For those new in the faith, Mere Christianity is an excellent place to start when trying to figure out how to live morally.

An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, by David W. Jones

Biblical Ethics is a subset of Christian Ethics, but this is the place that many evangelical Christians would do well to begin. Absent from the book are discussions of the categories of philosophical ethics, because the assumption behind this volume is that the reader believes Scripture to be trustworthy as a source of moral authority. This is a volume that teaches readers to reason well from Scripture to moral application. Jones writes with clarity and grace, with a fine balance between demonstrated research and transparency to make this useful for beginners who are primarily interested in how to read Scripture better. This is lean on particular application to current events, but long on methodology.

Invitation to Christian Ethics, by Ken Magnuson

This 2020 volume is a good, current survey of the field of Christian Ethics from an evangelical perspective. Magnuson introduces various philosophical and theological frameworks for moral reasoning, but the focus is on reasoning well from Scripture. This is a book that is helpful if a reader is trying to figure out why different systems of moral reasoning end up with different ideas. After laying out his basic framework, Magnuson then moves on to discuss various contemporary ethical issues, working through them from a scriptural foundation.

The Doctrine of the Christian Life, by John Frame

Frame’s book is a hefty volume, but it is a solid way to begin an ethical journey. I love John Frame’s approach and have been deeply influenced by it. However, his triperspectivalism is distinct from many other approaches and likely to be less common in future years. I have a deep attachment to DCL and all of Frame’s work, but his approach will retain popularity primarily among conservative Presbyterians in the years to come. At the same time, if a reader is looking for a different approach to complement their understanding of Christian Ethics, Frame provides a deeply theological, Scripture-saturated book written from a Reformed perspective.

Ethics as Worship, by Mark Liederbach and Evan Lenow

This book is a 2021 volume that combines some features that I really like. It is a full introduction to Christian Ethics textbook, with a survey of various philosophical approaches. It is primarily driven by Scripture as the source of morally authoritative guidance for our age. Ethics as Worship includes application to many of the major, contemporary moral issues. All of this puts it in the solidly introductory camp and makes it quite useful. In addition, Liederbach and Lenow also have an explicit focus of living the moral life as an act of worship. This is a subtext in most evangelical ethics texts, but this book makes it overt. I’ve read it once and enjoyed it. I need to read it and use it more to fully evaluate it, but it is a good, useful book that I commend for its faithfulness, readability, and doxological emphasis.

Reformed Ethics, by Herman Bavinck

Volume 2 just released a few months ago. I haven’t finished it. However, volume 1 is clearly a treasure and I anticipate that the final two volume will continue the legacy. Bavinck is one of my favorite theologians. He does ethics from a theological framework in the Reformed tradition. His approach will connect well to Jones, Frame, and, to a reasonable degree, with Liederbach and Lenow. Bavinck is not going to cover contemporary issues, since he wrote a century ago. However, what you see is non-performative reasoning from someone who was grappling with modernity, outside our specific culture, and dealing with the same source text—Scripture—that we are using. His application requires a little translation, but this is helpful. Bavinck’s Reformed Ethics are a good historical approach that can be used to encourage thoughtful application of orthodox theology and scriptural reasoning in our day.

Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics, by Oliver O’Donovan

This is the last book on this list for a reason. It is a very difficult book to read, but it is also very important. O’Donovan’s work is essential for a full understanding of what it means to think morally as a gospel-focused, theologically orthodox believer. This is a book that demands slow reading and often repeated reading. It was not until the third time through the book that it made sense to me, but once it ‘clicked’ everything fell into place and it helped unlock a more complete process of moral reasoning through Scripture. This is the Brothers Karamazov of Christian ethics; it is very hard work, but it is very much worth the effort.

This is not an evaluation of all the ethics books on the market. There are certainly others that are good and helpful. This is where I think someone should start as they seek to understand Christian ethics better.

Doors in the Walls of the World - A Review

At some stage in their career, if they are any good, an author gets to the point where their work will be enough of a commercial success that they gain freedom from publishers to write books that a less well-known author would not be able to get in print. Peter Kreeft hit that status quite a while ago and the freedom he has found to experiment and explore is a wonderful thing. Whenever Kreeft publishes a book, buy it and read it.

Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story is the sort of volume that probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if Kreeft were less well-known, but it is just the sort of book that many people need at just this moment. This is a book that is much needed in this age of scientism and materialism. It is, fundamentally, an apologetic for a supernatural understanding of this world.

The introduction begins by considering several kinds of wonder. Wonder may be found in surprise. It may be found in intellectual exploration and curiosity. Wonder also results in awe. It is this third form of wonder that is the main grist of this book. This is a book about finding something beyond the world as we see it. It is about finding a door in the wall of the world, as the title indicates. This world is the material reality that we sense—the cave in Plato’s myth—and the doors in the cave wall are gateways to the supernatural reality that lies beyond.

Kreeft proceeds to show that life, in many ways, is a story. There is a Storyteller beyond the story. There is plot, setting, characters, theme, and style. These are, in plain English, history, physical science, psychology, religion and philosophy, and art. All of these are doors in the walls of the world, through which we can pass to wonder at the supernatural. They are clues to help us understand the transcendent.

Each of the chapters is a brief discussion on one of the five elements of story. Kreeft uses fictionalized illustrations, literary examples, and plain prose writing to make his case. His case is that there is something beyond the world that we can see and we would be foolish to think that the shadows on the cave walls are all there is.

Doors in the Walls of the World is the sort of book that does not dazzle with its purple prose or overwhelm with a logical argument. It is like a short film that carries a powerful message that is vitally important and, perhaps, couldn’t be told in another way. This is the sort of volume that should be read quickly, and maybe repeatedly, to be digested in wonder of the goodness of the hope it points toward. It’s a rest stop that refreshes with a surprising garden in the middle of a journey. This book is a testament to wonder and deserves to be read for those of us in a dry and weary cave who could use a little magic, mystery, and joy.

Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story

By Kreeft, Peter

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Knowledge and Christian Belief - A Review

Is being a Christian at all intellectually defensible?

To many Christians, this seems like an obvious answer. Especially those who have been taught to begin debates with an assertion, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

That quote, which opens Psalm 14, is no doubt true. However, it is not helpful and often falls short of the mark. First, fool is a moral category in Scripture, not “doofus” or “idiot” as we might think in our own culture. Second, the logic doesn’t flow the way the Christian would like. A fool may say there is no God, but it does not follow that someone who says there is no God is a fool. At least, it does not follow by that statement alone.

Setting that digression aside, it is more apt to this discussion to note that there are many atheists and agnostics that would argue that it is foolish to believe in God, or at least to have any confidence that there is a God. Some have gone as far as to say that it is morally repugnant to believe in God. The arguments along those lines generally flow from the problem of evil, which was really aptly stated by Epicurus and oft repeated since then: If there is a God in the world and there is evil in the world, then that God must be evil, since an omniscient, omnipotent God (the sort of God that matters) would stop evil. It’s been a knotty problem for generations of Christian philosophers.

Unfortunately, some Christians do a pretty poor job of dealing with the problem of evil, especially those Christians equipped with a semester of philosophy.

Alvin Plantinga remains one of the foremost Christian philosophers. He was a winsome and potent advocate for orthodox Christianity and his arguments take on all challengers. His book, Knowledge and Christian Belief is an example of the quality of work he does and he makes his arguments accessible to well read individuals, who may not have extensive backgrounds in philosophy.

Plantinga’s style of argument is to take the strongest objections to his position, state them as strongly as possible, and then topple them like a house of cards.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but his succinct volume takes on some of the most significant defeaters to the Christian faith and demonstrates pretty clearly that not only is faith in Christ possible, it’s a good explanation for the world as it is.

One of the surprising ways that Plantinga makes this argument is to take on the challenge that Christians cannot have warranted belief for God. He states the objection about as well as it can be and then shows why the strength of those objections depends on the assumption the Christianity is false. In fact, if one does not make that assumption, then the better conclusion (especially given the sense of transcendence) is that Christianity is, more probably than not, true. (Absolute certainty in this logical sense is not the primary goal or a likely outcome of this sort of argument.)

At the end of the volume, Plantinga takes on the major challenges of historical biblical criticism, pluralism, and evil. The chapter on historical biblical criticism is worth the cost of the book, as Plantinga shows that neither of the two main approaches to historical biblical criticism offer much of a challenge to traditional Christianity, because the assumptions that underly the methodology are fundamentally foreign to the system it is challenging, and thus incapable of actually undermining the faith it intends to undermine. Plantinga concludes, “The traditional Christian can rest easy with the claims of HBC [Historical Biblical Criticism]; she need feel no obligation, intellectual or otherwise, to modify her belief in the light of its claims and alleged results.” (106)

The argumentation leading to that conclusion is tight. It is not the sort of gun-slinging, sloppy  argumentation that sometimes occurs on YouTube. Despite the fact that Knowledge and Christian Belief is a somewhat simplified version of a more academic work, the argument still requires great care in reading to follow it accurately. But the end result is an encouragement to believe Christianity as it has been passed on, without modification, and without a sense of intellectual inferiority.

There is no compromise intellectually in being a Christian, as Plantinga shows.

If there was a way to dial this down just a little more, this would be an amazing book to put into the hands of a high school senior, ready to head out in the world. As it is, a careful parent or friend with a little rereading could work through this slowly and patiently with a teen and give them a gift of confidence. Even if one cannot articulate everything that Plantinga argues, it is reassuring to know that the argument can be made.

Knowledge and Christian Belief is a short book, but it is a good one, especially for those seeking greater confidence in the basic truthfulness of Christianity. Alvin Plantinga makes a convincing case that one stands on solid ground when one holds to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Knowledge and Christian Belief

By Plantinga, Alvin

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The God of the Garden - A Review

Although I lived in the same house for my entire childhood, I have since moved many times. First, off to college. Then to different duty stations up and down the East Coast while I was in the United States Navy. When I got out, I went to seminary, stayed for a while, then bounced to a couple of other jobs. There has been a lot of moving in that time, as my patient wife reminds me.

There were good reasons for every move, but the constant bouncing from place to place leaves a mark on the psyche, especially for the kids who have lived in either three or four states. Some of the places we have lived we knew were temporary. When we were newly married, living in an apartment on the Thames River in Connecticut, we knew that that was not a final destination because my boat was going to move to the West Coast in a couple of years. Besides, neither of us had any roots in Connecticut.

It is that rootlessness that characterizes much of modern society. Ben Sasse’s book, Them, addresses that concept, especially as it impacts the way we think about economics and politics. It’s a feature of much of our culture. Most of us do not expect to live in one place for very long––people move about 11 times in their lifetime on average. Many of those moves are in town––from one apartment to another. However, many of those involve significant disruptions of life.

Andrew Peterson’s recent book, The God of the Garden, is about moving. Or, more accurately, it’s about a sense of place and investment in permanence despite moving. It’s also about trees, because they are the sort of permaculture that remains long after moving trucks have come and gone. It’s also about beauty, hope, and a desire to see creation flourish.

For those unfamiliar, Andrew Peterson is best known as a singer/song writer who lives in Nashville, TN. He’s well beyond the stage of waiting tables at Olive Garden to afford rent between gigs, and has become a favorite among a subset of Christians who are generally reformed and committedly orthodox. His Behold the Lamb of God album is also a recurring tour that celebrates the incarnation of Christ every year around advent, and which captures the essence of biblical theology well. It’s a CD that my family listens to frequently from November through January. He’s also recorded various other albums, which all carry a sense of longing for the resurrection and a hope in the present situation, with Peterson pouring out his heart through his fingers and with his somewhat reedy voice. While recording those albums, Peterson also managed to write and publish a quatrain of children’s fantasy novels that point readers (kids and adults) to some big ideas while telling a good story and celebrating the wonder and beauty of the world. His first non-fiction book, Adorning the Dark, is a somewhat autobiographical book, which talks about seeking to create a God-honoring beauty in the midst of a dark and crooked world.

The God of the Garden shares some similarities with his previous book, Adorning the Dark. There is a heavy autobiographical feel to the volume, with Peterson relating in more detail some of the stories that inspired some of his songs. So, for those of us who have sung along with Peterson about being buried beneath the rows of corn in the land of Lincoln where he was born, we now get some more information about what was happening during that time.

In this book, Peterson focuses on trees as the semi-permanent form of agriculture that indicates a sense of personal rootedness. So, we hear a story about a couple of maples in Illinois. The story is kind of about Maples, but it’s really about family routines and a way of living that lasted for a little while. To some degree that way of life continues to exist because the celebrated maples are still there as markers of the past. He talks about the various trees he has planted on his own homeplace—combination forest and English garden—that includes markers for his children. This is a book about place, people, and putting down roots. There is also a chapter reflecting on the likely changes in his neighborhood. Changes that are more likely to commercialize than harmonize with the beauty and wonder. It is with longing for a retention of beauty that Peterson lays out a vision of flourishing and hope for the future.

Those that are fans of Peterson will be delighted by this book. There are many phrases and ideas in his other work that come to life through this volume. But it isn’t necessary to already like Peterson’s work to appreciate the volume. Folks who understand what Sensucht is, who are votaries of the blue flower, or who understand what it means to be a bearer of the sacred flame will find much that resonates in The God of the Garden. For folks that are looking for a reason why a call to better environmental stewardship and putting down roots resonates, this book helps tie a lot of those things together, too.

This is a good read. The prose is clear and simple. The stories are engaging. One need not have a deep and abiding interest in any of the things I’ve listed above to enjoy the book. This book is a quick read that would be enjoyable for someone simply looking for a little patch of beauty on a plane flight or at the end of a long day.

The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom

By Peterson, Andrew

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