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Notables Books Worth Reading

Here are a few books I'm reading this Christmas season that you might also enjoy:



Sean Michael Lucas is Senior Pastor at First Presbyterian Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi and a wonderful church history scholar as well.  He taught at Covenant Seminary while I was there and his prior book on On Being Presbyterian is my go to book to introducing people to the historic Presbyterian faith.  This new book traces the roots of the PCA from early on in the 19th century, through the ruckus that was caused between the North and the South Presbyterian bodies and stretches toward today with the founding of the PCA in 1973.  With an eye toward the theological shakeup with the beginning of Union Seminary and the emergence of social gospel emphases, Lucas does a great job at identifying the roots that eventually came to be the PCA.  This is much more than a book on the PCA but a book on Reformed identity and the shaping of a story that affects a much broader Protestant evangelical contingent.



Jared Wilson, pastor and award winning author has written a wonderful book designed to bring us into the story of the Bible from the beginning.  He begins with the yearning that moderns feel in their search for significance in various ways and answers this yearning through a fully orbed understanding of God's work in history and this leading to his redemptive aims.  Accessible, engaging, and drawing us into what God has been doing in the world, this book will surely encourage your faith.



Widely thought of as one of the most significant theologians in our day, Jurgen Moltmann in his new book, The Living God and the Fullness of Life has written a provocative and engaging work.  In this new book, he first chronicles the aims of many in our culture who hold onto secular optimism through a secular story, also looking at materialism and the divorce today between those who hold onto a divorce between the body and the mind.  Moltmann counters this philosophies with his own version of how the living God invades our world.  Caution: Moltmann in this book as in others reinterprets and re-envisions many traditional views of God, including those seeking to look at God as impassible and immutable.  Moltmann sees a God who has suffered at Calvary and also one who repents at the ways in which God has looked upon sinful humanity.  Engaging and thought-provoking but not fully orthodox, you will find much to learn from in this book and some to disagree with.

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