A learned, illuminating, and highly personal exploration of a crucial text from St. Paul.
A pastor’s ambitious examination of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians in the New Testament.
Petrus, since 1994 the pastor of Oakdale Missionary Baptist Church in Lonoke, Arkansas, takes as the subject of his nonfiction debut one of the cornerstones of Christian dogma, Paul’s letter to the Philippians. The author analyzes and lays out the letter in 21 segments hinging on two interpretative axes, both central to Pauline doctrine: the delight in serving God (“a church should have great joy of service and joy in doing the pleasing things of their heavenly Father,” he writes) and the essential importance of harmony in the assembly (“unity of mind is our rightful manner of operation”). Petrus goes line by line through the epistle, grounding his readings in both a sharp historical contextualization of Paul’s world and a broader spiritual interpretation. For example, after reading “Moreover, since the result is to be living in flesh, then this is fruit of work for me,” Petrus enjoyably expounds, “Old-timers used to use the term good pickin’ as an exclamation about the goodness of a crop. Planting has a reward, a glorious side to it for the beneficiary. Surely there is satisfaction in seeing a plant grow from a seed.” Elaborations like this are scattered throughout the book, helping newcomers to understand Paul's sometimes-tangled Christology and fleshing out familiar issues and meanings for believers—and always to skillful pedagogical effect (“very little joy comes without a foundation of teaching,” he writes). Petrus follows Paul in downplaying individual egotism (“The self must be crucified! Selfishness must be thrown out and replaced”) and stressing community (“A church is in great need of more than just good organization, it needs true cohesion in unity, as the Bible expresses”). The thrust of the text is toward reinforcement; the target audience is obviously Christians, for whom—in both New Testament Bible study groups and seminaries—it will be an honest, invaluable guide.
A learned, illuminating, and highly personal exploration of a crucial text from St. Paul.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0707-6
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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