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Best Christian Book of All Time

ESN Update: Survey with Prizes! Links . . .

Update: ESN Survey closes 2/18 at mid-night (Eastern). 175 responses already received. Winners will be announced on 2/21. 

I can’t wait to prayerfully consider all your feedback! 

The Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) is called to identify, encourage, and equip the next generation of Christian scholars who will be a redeeming influence within higher education.

Note: Adapted from an email sent to members of the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN). If you did not receive a copy and desire to be on the cutting edge of ESN, then I encourage you to become a member of ESN. If you are a member, but did not receive the email due to your contact information having changed, then please email me updated material so that we can stay connected. Thank-you. ~ Tom.

————

Thank you for your partnership with the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) before and over this past year and your continuing commitment as we seek to increase our online publications/conversation and personal communication. This month we’re looking forward to learning how to serve each of you better through a survey.

As part of our thank you for completing the survey, we will randomly select two winners to receive their choice of InterVarsity Press books with a retail value of up to $100 per winner! We will announce the winner on February 21st. To participate in the survey, please follow this link. Note: to be eligible for the drawing one must be a member of ESN.

Also this month we are featuring the following blog posts and webpages for you to visit: [Read more…] about ESN Update: Survey with Prizes! Links . . .

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Review of Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis — A Life. Part I

C.S. Lewis — A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet by Alister McGrath. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2013.

Review of Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis — A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2013) for the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN). Part I. Click here for Part II.

Alister McGrath is, like many of us, a fan of C.S. Lewis who never had the opportunity to study under or even met him. Although McGrath probably shares more similarities with Lewis than you or I, as someone raised in the same part of Ireland as Lewis and educated in Oxford, he thinks this distance will allow him the opportunity to do what previous biographers have not been able to do, objectively write about Lewis as someone who lacks personal connection. With this as his goal, he sets out to write a definitive biography of Lewis. As with any piece of academic writing, there are going to be good and not-so-good aspects of the work. There is no work which will meet with full approval of the entire academic community and McGrath’s biography of Lewis is no different. There are aspects of this biography that will undoubtedly please many and there are some issues which have the potential to change the nature of the discussion about Lewis for a long time. Ultimately however, I believe that McGrath’s biography, while certainly important, has several aspects to it which make it still lacking. There are many ways to come at a review of a new book, but since I am writing for ESN, I decided to group things under two broad categories which I think will be helpful for grad student readers considering how to spend their meager time and resources.

Why you should buy/read this book

Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.

As I read the book for the first time (full disclosure – the first time I “read” it was listening to the book as I drove back and forth to Washington D.C.) there were several things that stood out to me as especially helpful, particularly as an evangelical in America who is also working toward a life in academia. The first was the final chapter of the book which recounts the re-introduction and reception of Lewis in America after his death and the fallow years where Lewis was nearly forgotten in his homeland. McGrath gives several reasons for this shift in interest to Lewis, but two stand out to me. First, he says, “Engaging both heart and mind, Lewis opened up the intellectual and imaginative depths of the Christian faith like nobody else” (369). Second, he points to Lewis’ emphasis on ‘mere Christianity’ as fitting into a particularly American ecclesial concept which was devoid of the denominational loyalties compared to the British context with its connection between State and Church. McGrath makes a connection between Lewis’ rise to fame in the early 1960’s as coinciding with an American cultural and church context which was dropping traditional denominational connections (cf. 370). He also looks at the reception Lewis had among American Catholics, particularly through the work of Peter Kreeft and Avery Cardinal Dulles, in connection to Lewis’ status as an outsider to the American religious scene and his mere Christian emphasis. It is worth noting that Kreeft is a Catholic convert, and a Lewis scholar, who has published several books on Lewis’ thought. Among his published works is a book that ESN readers might find interesting, Between Heaven and Hell (InterVarsity Press, 2008) which is a fictionalized account of a meeting between Lewis, John Kennedy and Aldous Huxley after they all died on the same day in 1963. [Read more…] about Review of Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis — A Life. Part I

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An invitation to support ESN at year end . . .

Advent candles provide a restful place as I consider the gift of Jesus the Messiah.

The Emerging Scholars Network provides encouragement, vision, and connections that are vital to Christian students and faculty. In isolation, we wither; in community, we flourish. — David A. Vosburg, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Harvey Mudd College

As we continue to await the coming of the Christ-child in these hopeful days of Advent, we are reminded of our call towards generosity in this season of gifts. InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) could not exist without the generous efforts of its members and donors. If you have found yourself encouraged, challenged, and closer to Christ through the labors of ESN this year, please consider contributing an end-of-the-year gift today! [1]

Day by Day by His grace,

Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director, Emerging Scholars Network

PS. A taste of how ESN will begin 2014 . . .

[Read more…] about An invitation to support ESN at year end . . .

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What is a Christian Devotional Classic?

Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968). Picture from Thomas Merton’s Biography at The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.

Yesterday, inspired by a final exam for Christian Devotional Classics (Evangelical Seminary), I kicked off a series on Receiving from the Christian Devotional Classics with a post on Thomas Merton & the Desert Fathers. Before going further with the series I thought that it would be helpful to wrestle with the question, “What is a Christian Devotional Classic?”

Maybe this reminds you of the larger conversation regarding What IS a Christian Book? (A Working Definition), a topic we broached when launching The Best Christian Book of All Time March Madness.

A Christian book is written with the intention (explicit or implicit) of expressing Christian truth (that is, truth drawn from God’s revelation through Scripture, Christ, and the Spirit) and in such a way that a reader can participate in this truth. — Micheal Hickerson. What IS a Christian Book? (A Working Definition). Emerging Scholars Network Blog. 3/13/2013.

But this is more focused. Before reading further, I encourage you to take a few minutes to write a draft/rough definition (or framework) of your own, give a representative title (or two), and briefly consider “Why bother with and how to interact with Christian Devotional Classics?” Bonus: What one Christian Devotional Classic do I desire to incorporate into my fall reading list? [Read more…] about What is a Christian Devotional Classic?

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Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. I

Knowing God, J.I. Packer

During the month of March, here at InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Blog, we offered a distraction away from the tomfoolery of the NCAA and held a little tournament of our own. “What are the best Christian books of all time?” we asked. And you answered. We had hundreds of nominations for works of poetry, fiction, romance. You name it. Some of the books that made it to the bracket surprised me, but what really caught my attention were some of the outcomes of the early rounds. Several of the first round losers were my favorites. Over the next few weeks I’ll write reviews of a few of the early losers in hopes of bringing some of you into the marvelous light of Christian literature, J.I. Packer and N.T. Wright.

Today’s review features Knowing God by J.I. Packer. Now I must point out that this classic of lay theology–although having sold over one million copies–was ousted by Blaise Pascal’s Pensees. Really? I find it very difficult to imagine that more of our Facebook voters have read Pensees than Packer’s Knowing God. Maybe the French title was just more intriguing for those who hadn’t read either one. Who knows.

But I do know this: Some of the wisdom in J.I. Packer’s Knowing God has profoundly impacted me. Not only the ways in which I think about God in the abstract sense, as the title might suggest, but my daily life; and the book has even had a hand in altering the outcomes of some of my major life decisions. My decision about which grad school to attend, for example. [Read more…] about Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. I

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