A nuanced examination of conflicting Christian interpretations of God’s nature.
A scholar reevaluates Christian debates about the Trinity and nature of God.
Just as the Earth can project shadows upward on the sky when the sun’s rays strike a large geographical body such as a mountain, so can a person risk “projecting his own conceptions and theories upward onto God instead of receiving the image of God through revelation from above,” Hopgood cautions. This risk can lead to “misconceptions of God’s nature” that limit definitions of the Trinity through “anthropocentric reasoning.” Hopgood, a professor at Andersonville Theological Seminary, argues that “a Christian must never imagine that he knows God in his entirety” and pays particular attention to the dichotomous positions of 18th-century theologians Charles Chauncy and John Gill. As a liberal Protestant, Chauncy espoused a universalist theology that would serve as the basis of the Unitarian movement, while Gill, his contemporary, reflected conservative “hyper-Calvinist leanings.” Too often, the book argues, theologians from the 1700s through today have attacked both men with ad hominem critiques that dismiss them as zealots rather than honestly appraising their arguments. In his analyses of both Chauncy and Gill, Hopgood suggests that despite their opposite conclusions, the two men interpreted Scripture through a newly emergent rationalist lens characteristic of the Enlightenment era. This lens, he contends, reflects a humanistic approach to Christianity that continues to influence doctrine. “Modern evangelicals,” for instance, are still “man-centered, focusing on those who are to be saved instead of who Christ is.” At around 150 pages, this book isn’t particularly long, but its seven chapters are fairly dense and esoteric in their writing style. Backed by ample footnotes that engage with both ancient and contemporary Christian writers, as well as a healthy bibliography, this well-researched book will have its highest appeal for theologians and other scholars. For lay readers interested in exploring niche corners of Protestant theology, it includes a helpful glossary and appendix. Either group, however, may disagree with Hopgood’s conclusions or with his use of the gender-exclusive term man to refer to humanity.
A nuanced examination of conflicting Christian interpretations of God’s nature.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72527-533-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Wipf and Stock
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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