Mark Noll is a very gifted church historian. This book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, came out about ten years ago. I read it due to my ongoing interest in matters pertaining to 20th Century Christian Worldview thinkers (presented in lecture form at the Christian Student Worldview Conference--see link to the left). There is much that I agreed with in this book. It is convicting to realize that there are no significant upper-level evangelical research universities. We have Christian colleges and smaller universities, but the academic world is somewhat closed to evangelicals. I am still questioning Noll's opposition to 6 day creation. He links the Creationinst position with Dispensational Premillennialism. No doubt, many like Henry Morris in the 6-day Creation camp were Premils, but Noll never addressed the involvement of Post- and A-millennial Calvinists with Creationism.
But a few questions and even some disagreements cannot offset so much in this fine book that is fodder for thought among us who are believed to not do much thinking.
Visiting Yorktown Battlefield last July prompted me to buy and read this thorough account of this climatic battle in our War for Independence. The author, Jerome Greene, is a National Park historian and he writes as such; meaning, he notes every embattlement, every trench, every fortification of the Americans, the French, and the British. This slows the reading a bit, but the audacity of General Washington, the commitment of the American and French troops, and the Providentially ordered turning of events at Yorktown makes this a thrilling book to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment