church history ⁽¹²⁾

Smart, Robert Davis, Michael A. G. Haykin, and Ian High Clary, editors. Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and the Reformed Tradition. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2016. Paperback, 260 + xii pages. ISBN 978-1-6018-433-9. This is an excellent and edifying book. An effective combination of sound research, sustained scholarly reflection, solid Reformed theology, and strong pastoral focus on an all-of-life Christian piety that goes far beyond assent to correct doctrines, Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and…

Montgomery, John Warwick. History, Law and Christianity. Corona, CA: NRP Books, 2014 (prior edition copyrights were 1964, 1991, and 2002). Paperback. 102+xv pages. ISBN 978-1-945500-01-5. While my philosophical and theological commitment are not Montgomery’s—I am an increasingly committed presuppositionalist; he is the quintessential evidentialist—I still found History, Law and Christianity worthwhile, if occasionally disagreeable, reading. Though its evidentialist stance—which is blatant, persistent, and uncompromising—would make me uncomfortable giving the book to non-Christians,…

Saxton, David W. God’s Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2015. Paperback. 145+vii pages. ISBN 978-1-60178-371-4. Contemporary rediscovery of the intellectually rich yet rigorously practical work of Puritan thinkers continues. Pastor David W. Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation is a welcome addition to the growing body of works presenting aspects of Puritan thought and…

Hannula, Richard M. Samuel Rutherford: Lover of Christ. Bitesize Biographies. Darlington, England: EP Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-78397-018-6. Richard Hannula’s Samuel Rutherford Bitesize Biography is an excellent brief introduction to Rutherford’s life, thought, and place in history. Suitable either as an easy point of entry into fuller study of Rutherford or as a quick standalone overview for the merely curious, the brief, easy-reading Samuel Rutherford provides more edification and instruction than its brevity…

Shapira, Itzhak. The Return of the Kosher Pig: The Divine Messiah In Jewish Thought. Clarksville, MD: Lederer Books, 2013. xii+318 Pages. ISBN 978-1-936716-45-6. The author of The Return of the Kosher Pig (hereafter, Kosher Pig), Itzhak Shapira, is a Messianic [Jesus-accepting] Rabbi “born and raised in a traditional Sephardic Jewish home in Israel” who says that “he found the Messiah [Jesus] within the Hebrew writings,” meaning not just the Hebrew Bible but…

Gilson, Tom, and Carson Weitnauer, editors. True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8254-4338-1. Abridged versions of this review may be found on Amazon and Goodreads. Associated with such high-profile names in Christian apologetics as the Christian Apologetics Alliance and Ratio Christi, True Reason originated as an e-book response to the New Atheists' 24 March 2012 Reason Rally and is now reissued (with modifications)…

Note: Direct links to specific paragraphs may not work. Most of the anchors for these direct links were created by code I wrote for the Pious Eye site and had run when pages loaded. As my new site is static, dynamic coding from the old site has gone away. I apologize for any inconvenience. If and when time permits, I’ll manually fix some of these issues. — D.M.H. Swanson, Kevin. Apostate: The…

I’ve made a new post to the evangelicals-Mormons discussion group. Find the original, complete with any typos I’ve corrected below (but without added links), here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evangelicals_and_lds/message/3815. Sorry for the long delay in responding. Though the discussion has probably moved on without me, I thought I’d take a moment to respond anyway. Rather than try to address each point made by you [a Mormon group participant named Linda] and others who responded to…

J. I. Packer. Puritan Portraits: J. I. Packer on Selected Classic Pastors and Pastoral Classics . Ross-shire, Scotland, U.K.: Christian Focus Publications, 2012. Kindle (Mobi) Format. ISBN 978-1-78191-076-4. (Location numbers in the review are sometimes approximate.) For some years, an introduction by J. I. Packer has served among Protestant evangelicals a function roughly equivalent that of the nihil obstat among Roman Catholics. For a Protestant evangelical like myself to give a Packer…

On 01/06/2013, I posted the following question to a Yahoo discussion group for Mormon-Evangelical discussion. This group, by the way, is moderated by Christian apologist, Rob Bowman. Though I've not yet had the opportunity to read any of Rob's books (no book funds), I did take an online class from him at one point, and I've been favorably impressed with most of his answers (those that I've so far read) in this…

I just (Fri Jan 4, 2013, 11:47 pm) posted the message below to a Yahoo! discussion group hosted by apologist Rob Bowman, at this URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evangelicals_and_jws/message/40327. One thing I learned that will not be evident from the message below or the original post, is that a “curly” apostrophe, though it will be accepted if you paste it into the Yahoo! Groups editor and though it will display correctly in the online version of your post,…

Do Christians disagree in their interpretations of Scripture because Scripture is unclear, perhaps because spiritual truths transcend human language and so cannot be perfectly captured in words? Though many today would answer, “yes,” Samuel Hopkins, writing at the end of the 1700s, answers with a resounding (and pious) “no.” (By the way....Though the Kindle edition I'm reading has significant defects, such as numerous OCR errors and lack of an Active Table of Contents, an…