Top 11 Reads of 2022
Are you really reading the top 11 reads of a first year seminary student? Hey, you did it to yourself. Either way, I hope you’ll add some of these to your 2023 reading list, and chat with me a bit about any of them. The re-reads of the year included Life Together by Bonhoeffer, On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius (an advent read until I die DV), and A Little Book for New Theologians by Kelly M. Kapic. My list turned from 10 to 11 upon reading Christopher Hanna’s wonderful work on Dr. Timothy George. An honorable mention is Kingdom Come: The Amillenial Alternative by Sam Storms — a well-argued book for Amillenialism.
11. Retrieval for the Sake of Renewal: Timothy George as a Historical Theologian by Christopher R. Hanna
From the moment I knew about Chris Hanna’s dissertation I hoped for a book.
Here is a thoroughly researched book of one of if not the most prominent Baptist historical theologian alive. It stands as a great guide for beginner historical theologians like myself.
10. 21 Servants of Sovereign Joy by John Piper
What a treasure of a book! Great introductory biographical material of the lives of various saints of the last 2000 years. I was glad to read and discuss it with my good friend, Parker Consolo.
Piper’s perspective is always considerate and worshipful. I also don’t want to ever hear that he is a boring writer. His prose is explosive and budding with beauty too often. Could he make the points of his other books more shortly? Sure. But this is a man who is not lazy in his thinking and prose. He “sees and says beautifully” as he wrote of Herbert, Whitefield, and Lewis
9. No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions by Matt Rhodes
This was needed writing for current missiological and ecclesiological dialogue. I encourage those who are church planting and are practicing disciple-making strategies to read part I of this book and reconsider their practices if they come from CPM and DMM strategies.
“We can’t afford to take shortcuts under the assumption that the Holy Spirit will ‘correct our flawed… church planting’ approaches. In reality, God may not be pleased to pick up the pieces if we naively depend on methods that promise success while bypassing scriptural responsibilities” (106–107).
8. The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnaski
This was my nightly reading, and I felt like a kid watching baseball with dad while I read the essays of the baseball heroes I watched growing up. What I appreciated most was Posnaski’s well-researched and honorable writing concerning the negro league players. Perhaps a whole essay should reflect on Posnaski’s wonderfully written stories of these amazing players who most likely had the best stats ever, but were not as well-documented as white players.
My favorite story is about Cool Papa Bell who was considered the fastest man to have ever played baseball. He was so fast that Moulton native and 4 time Olympic Gold-medalist Jesse Owens refused to race him.
7. The Temple: The Poetry of George Herbert by George Herbert
Piper led me here per his biography of Herbert. Just beautiful. Here’s one of my favorites:
“Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I, as wine.”
From The Agony
6. Mission Between the Times: Essays on the Kingdom by René Padilla
What a treasure of essays!
Padilla is balanced. He stands between liberation theologians and those who would have nothing to do with the social dimensions of the gospel and points them to Jesus. I have many more Latin American theologians to read in the coming year.
“…the kingdom of God is neither ‘the progressive social improvement of mankind whereby the task of the church is to transform earth like unto heaven and do it now’ nor ‘the present inner rule of God in the moral and spiritual dispositions of the soul with its seat in the heart.’ Rather it is God’s redemptive power released in history, bringing good news to the poor, freedom to prisoners, sight to the blind, and liberation to the oppressed” (197).
“Salvation is man’s return to God, but at the same time is man’s return to his neighbor” (20).
5. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes of Racial Reform by Derrick Bell
A great critique of Brown v. Board that shows that desegregation was not the final solution. Racial justice is much more than that.
“Color blindness, now as a century ago, is adopted as the easy resolution of issues of race with which the Nation would rather not wrestle, much less try seriously to resolve. It is an attractive veneer obscuring flaws in the octet that are not corrected by being hidden from view. Brown v. Board of Education was a dramatic instance of a remedy that promised to correct deficiencies in justice far deeper than the Supreme Court was able to understand. Understanding those deficiencies more fully an suggesting how we should address them is the challenge of this book” (10).
People of color must refuse to accept white dominance — even from their own friends.
4. Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross by Martin Hengel
Recommended by Dr. Sydney Park herself.
“This book is a survey of the use of crucifixion as a penalty in the Graeco-Roman world, as a contribution towards a better understanding of Paul’s remark about the μωρια of the λόγος του σταυρου” (folly of the word of the cross).
A short, but dense book about historical context about just why the message of the cross is folly. I imagine this read would be well suited for Good Friday.
3. The Bible Told Them So: How Southern White Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy by J. Russell Hawkins
A powerful book filled with primary sources from Southern Baptists and Methodists from Brown to the late 70s to show that “white evangelicals who champion racial justice through individual heart changes, or reconciled relationships, or appeals to color blindness are using tools fashioned and utilized by their segregationist forbears precisely to avoid racial justice their descendants now seek.”
Therefore, “it should not surprise us that studies find these latter-say racial reconciliation efforts fall speculator short of their goals” (166–7).
Until one understands segregationist theology and how blasphemous it is, one will not understand why the church in America is still so racially divided. This book helps introduce readers to the haunting truth of segregationist theology that is still very much at work in our day.
2. The Mother of Jesus: Her Problems and Glory by A.T. Robertson
“If Roman Catholics have deified Mary, Protestants, as a rule, have neglected her.”
This one was certainly near my favorite of 2022, though it was first published in 1925. Short books tend to be better. This one is no exception. It is dense, of a timeless discussion, and a balanced take of Mary from a historic Baptist evangelical perspective.
Robertson’s imagination concerning Jesus’s boyhood was my favorite part.
- The Path to Being a Pastor: A Guide for the Aspiring by Bobby Jamieson
This book changed the trajectory of my year. I read it alongside my friend Parker, and came to the conclusion that 1.) Aspiring to be an elder is the most proper language (rather than “calling”). 2.) Aspiring often takes longer than expected but it is wisest that way. 3.) You will be more pastorally formed as a member of a healthy church than on staff at an unhealthy church.
Here’s to a another year of reading and re-reading!
