Suprised by Hope by Tom Wright (SPCK, 2007). I read this at the start of the year, so quite a while ago, and while I recall enjoying it at the time, I now can't remember the main thrust of the book, thus it is not a book that will have lasting memorable impact on me. I have do have a few pages marked in it including p. 83 on faith, in which Tom outlines how Christian faith is not blind belief that rejects history and science, but is a trust in the creator God, who promises to put all things right at the last.

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg (HarperCollins, 1995). Earlier this year, good friends of mine (a Methodist Presbyter forcibly retired due to a stroke, and his lay-preacher wife) recommended that I read up on the topic of Progressive Christianity. When searching that topic I came across the writings of Marcus Borg and Walter Brueggemann, both of whom I had heard positive mention of before, so realised I needed to become better acquainted with them. Meeting Jesus Again was the first of their books I read and I was stunned. It is easily the best book I read this year!

Borg is a member of the Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal academics who seek to find the Historical Jesus, that is, the actual Jesus who lived and died, not the biased (distorted) representation that arose in faith communities subsequent to Jesus death on the Cross. They produced a Bible in which Jesus sayings in the Gospel are coded in four different colours depending on the likelihood of the historical Jesus actually saying these things. While I applaud bringing the best scholarship to better understanding scripture, including better uncovering the actual historical Jesus, I ultimately find that such scholarship, in its rational materialistic worldview, ignores the working of the Spirit through faith communities, and consequently, throughs out the proverbial baby with the bath water. There are other strong reasons (aligned with the postmodern critique of modernity) why I contend that academic liberal Christianity provides us no way forward for Christian faith in the 21st century.

So I had a little trepidation when I read Borg was a member of the Jesus Seminar, but I need not have worried. In this book Borg distinguishes the Jesus before Easter (i.e. the historical Jesus) from the Jesus after Easter (the risen living Christ who calls us into His service). Borg admits that for much of his career he studied the historical Jesus he did not believe in Jesus, until he met the Jesus (after Easter) again for the first time! This book is a brilliant connection between expert rational biblical research and Christ centred spirituality---a subject that I have been thinking about a lot myself over the last couple of years and of which I hope to write more on.

The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann (40th Ann. Edn., Fortress, 2018). Another excellent book. Here Brueggemann develops the idea of the prophet, first with Moses, extending into the prophets who lived during the Kingdoms of Israel and Judaea, as an countercultural vision to the royal (establishment) programme. Moses challenged Pharoah, who would keep the Hebrews in subjugation to the advantage of Egypt, and presented an alternative consciousness rooted in freedom. Likewise the prophets of Israel and Judah. Inspirational stuff.

The Theology of the Book of Jeremiah by Walter Brueggemann (CUP, 2007). Having read The Prophetic Imagination, I was inspired to read Brueggemann's tome on Jeremiah (one of my favourite books of the Bible). This book, rather than taking the Book of Jeremiah apart verse by verse (as a commentary would do) looks at the book of Jeremiah as a whole, teasing out its historical context (the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire) and the struggle of the Jewish community to understand this unfathomable destruction despite the promises of God. Maybe this sentence from Brueggamann summarises it best: The Book of Jeremiah attests that loss in the city is the will of YHWH, who will not be mocked, that renewal in the city is the will of YHWH, who will not abandon either the world YHWH has created and governed or the peculiar people YHWH has rescued and commanded into existence.

The Theology of the Book of Genesis by R. W. L. Moberly (CUP, 2009). Having read the theology of Jeremiah I was inspired to read about Genesis from the same book series, but I did not find this book so inspiring. Moberly spends much of the text explaining a lot of background material including what is theology. I found that very frustrating and wished he got on to the actual subject matter, that is, the theology of Genesis, quicker. Nevertheless there is much insightful material in the book. One notable example is his exposition of the story of Cain.

The Grip of Culture by Andy A. West (GWPF, 2023). The thesis of this book is that belief in climate catastrophism is a cultural entity, that is, it is religiously held, not rationally held. West contends that this thesis holds whatever the truth on climate change (i.e. whether human activity is having a major impact on global climate or not). For the thesis to hold true West only requires the claim that the consensus science supports the notion of a climate crisis be false. For this West points to the latest IPCC report which apparently states that the amped-up claims of the media of a climate crisis is not supported by the science. (I have not read the IPCC reports so do not know how accurately West has represented the consensus science, but it would not surprise me if he is correct on this matter.)

West uses United Nations and other data collected across multiple countries to demonstrate the thesis. He argues that a cultural entity is evidenced by diverging responses to constrained and unconstrained questions, and then shows that surveys on the climate crisis demonstrate such behaviour, thus is evidence that beliefs on the climate crisis and its implications are essentially religiously held, not rationally held.

I had to read through much of the book before I got the basic argument of how the evidence works to demonstrate a cultural entity. Now that I get the argument I really need to reread the book from the start again to be able to ask critical questions. I am not sure I have the time to do that! Nevertheless an interesting read, and, no doubt, a book for debate.

Morality by Jonathan Sacks (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020). Sacks is a former chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. When I purchased the book I thought it would be a general treatise on morality and did not realise it is written from the perspective of religious faith, but nevertheless found it a fascinating read, particularly the insights from a Jewish perspective, much of which I was not aware of. Sacks makes some really insightful comments on modern society, the way it is headed and on what might be a better way for the future.