Regnum Caelorum

White-tailed Deer On Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 President Obama overturned legislation enacted at the end of the Bush Administration that weakened the Endangered Species Act. Bush's legislation allowed government agencies to launch projects without consulting government scientists if they deemed that those projects would cause no harm to endangered species. I completely agree with what Obama did. Government agencies are not qualified to say what projects might harm endangered species, and scientists, at least in principle, ought to be able to provide more guidance for what may or may not be harmful to endangered species Red-cockaded Woodpecker A threatened species due to habitat loss But what I found interesting was the following quote  from President Obama: "Throughout our history, there's been a tension between those who've sought to conserve our natural resources for the benefit of future generations and those who have sought to profit from these resources.

Mike Erre I finished this book a little while ago, but for some reason, I'm just getting around to blogging about it. The subtitle of this book asks the question, "Have we tamed the Son of God to fit our lifestyle?" I doubt a single book published on the subject has answered "no" to that question, so it's not surprising that the theme of this book is that we have taken the Jesus of the Scriptures and conformed him into the image of a nice, happy Jesus that fits into the values of suburban culture. There's really nothing ground breaking or revolutionary about this book. The ideas contained in it have been written by others for years, and many are common critiques of evangelicalism even from its staunchest defenders. For instance, the chapter entitled "The Danger of Theology" gives the same distinction between knowing God and knowing about God that has been explained by J. I. Packer and countless others within evangelicalism. At the same time

Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture Richard B. Hays R. B. Hays has written a book detailing the narrative substructure of Paul's letters. He argues with convincing clarity that when Paul quotes or cites Old Testament texts, he is not just prooftexting his own arguments. Rather, he is drawing them in, often quite subtly, to the narrative context of the Old Testament quotation. He may only cite one verse, but he will continue to use vocabulary from the Old Testament narrative to situate his readers within that narrative and give his audiences both identity and exhortation on the ground of their place in Israel's story. Hays has done a remarkable job, and reading this book ought to cause us to have our own imaginations "converted" as we read both Paul and the New Testament. Hays notes that Paul does not quote the Law to command his readers, even when those laws would seem applicable. Rather, he draws them in to Israel's story, situates them in their pr

I woke up this morning to the Today Show telling me that they found the tomb of Jesus, his wife and son. Wow. I waited for the historian or archaeologist who made this discovery and found out it was James Cameron, the movie director who made Titanic . This "new" discovery has been around since 1980, and never was thought to amount to anything until Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici got their hands on it. Here's my take on it: Suppose I'm looking for a guy by the name of John. I know he died a few decades ago, but I can't find his body. I know him to be a poor, unmarried man from Baltimore with no children. In my search I happen to find a family tomb in Washington D.C. where there's a casket with John's first name (I can barely make it out, but I think it's "John") and also the first name of his father. Then I find in the tomb another casket with his mother's first name on it as well as a casket with the name of one of his siblings. But the

A Memoir of Early Days Frederick Buechner I don't read many autobiographies; this is the first one I've read in years. A friend of mine recommended Buechner's memoirs to me, and this is the first in a series of books in which Buechner reflects on the meaning of his life. He's convinced that God speaks in our lives, and the task before us is to learn to hear His words in and to us. In reading of his life, Buechner hopes that we to will catch glimpses of God's words to us and in us. The Sacred Journey describes in vivid detail the first 27 years or so of his life, focusing mostly from about the time of his father's suicide to his conversion experience. In hearing his story, we have the opportunity see the wonder of how God works in us, beautifully narrated in elegent prose. I highly recommend this book.

The Covenant Story of Redemption Michael D. Williams This book is a fine introduction to reading the Bible as redemptive history, and it rightly focuses on God's plan of redemption for the entire cosmos, not just for human souls. It is good to see a book written for your average student of the Word that looks at redemptive history in that way. It is well written, relatively concise (for the breadth of what he's seeking to cover) and filled with good theology. I wrote of another book earlier, entitled The Drama of Scripture , that covers basically the same ground, but in far more detail. That book also gives a you a good history of the Bible, and is therefore a better book to book in that regard. Yet for a brief overview of the Bible's redemptive history, this may be the best place to turn.