Greenville, Journey Forth: 2008, 194 pgs.

Summary: A brief, eloquent meditation on God’s use of the emotions within the human heart for sanctification, maturation, and edification. The book is gentle, wise and balanced. It takes its place in Christian literature somewhere between Lewis’ A Grief Observed and Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy.

In his pursuit of balance Dr. Horton creates a unique theological framework which embraces an Augustinian view of human love as ordered loves or eudemonic love (70-74), while shying away from Augustine’s view of human freedom (44) by drawing the veil of mystery over it. At the same time, Horton's view of God’s love toward humanity is most similar to Arminius’ construction—God’s love toward humanity can be thwarted (77) while God remains sovereign.

He very carefully and biblically corrects reactionary responses among conservative Christians to Freud, the self-esteem movement, secular psychology, and psychiatric medicine. Further, he provides edifying guidance on how to cope with high and low emotions and experiences.

Baker Academics, 2006, 240 pgs.

Summary: Suffering will come. For most of us grotesque and horrifying events will unfold in excruciating slowness or with the suddenness of a lightning strike. The suffering that enters our life will have a palatable weight in our hearts. It will feel as if the very ground has opened its mouth to hell; we are not yet immersed in the fire, but blasts of trauma will belch forth from the pit, and we will be shaken.

Having written so dramatically, allow me an anti-climatic suggestion. Prepare for future suffering, process past trauma, and be ready to counsel others by having a robustly biblical understanding of suffering and the problem of evil. The first step in preparation and processing is relentlessly striving to not be conformed to this world but to have your mind transformed by Scripture and the Spirit. The next step is likely to read How Long, O Lord?

The book is a clear, biblically and academically informed mediation on the problem of evil and suffering in this world. Concise, godly and covering the main philosophical and theological objections against compatibilism (God is exhaustively sovereign and man is responsible for his sin) at a thoughtful layman’s reading level.

Unusual Publications, Greenville: 1986, 457 pgs.

Summary: A clear, well-researched and documented history of Fundamentalism from the perspective of a scholarly separatist at Bob Jones University. The basic argument is that nonconformist Fundamentalism (1857-1920) progressed into separatist Fundamentalism (1920s to present) as the true Fundamentalists discovered that “a full-orbed holiness includes both personal and ecclesiastical aspects” (6). Thus the best Christians are separatists and the suspect Christians are New Evangelicals, Neo-fundamentalist, and Broad Evangelicals. There is a tentative admittance in a footnote that godliness exists among a category of conservative Christians that are neither Fundamentalist nor New Evangelicals (270) but who strictly maintain a confessional position through a doctrinal statement and denominational associations.

In Pursuit of Purity has the only academic introduction to the Free Presbyterians of Northern Ireland of which I am aware and contains a large amount original research from primary sources on the development of Dispensationalism in the United States and its relationship to separatist Fundamentalism. There is also a chapter on the Canadian Baptist Shields’ attempt to turn Des Moines University into a Fundamentalist Bible College and the resulting riot.

Bethany House Publishers, 2012, pgs. 220

Allow me to give a thumbnail sketch of an historical event, and then I’ll pull in some dates and names, and spin the whole thing about to a review of Dr. Mohler’s The Conviction to Lead.

There once was a reasonably sophisticated politician with some decidedly mediocre theology. He was a decent man who gave popular speeches that moved the masses. He recognized that the political and cultural elite were leading the people away from the wholesome traditions of the past. He began to poke about and discovered part of the intellectual source of the decline. It was a combination of English Epicureanism and a German philosopher. And so in all earnestness he began the public battle.

He bloodied his enemies enough through citation and critique that they took notice of him. Two in particular plotted against him—a lawyer and newspaperman. The lawyer had defended two rich wastrels who had read the German philosopher and murdered a youth in response. The newspaperman had written extensively on English Epicureanism and translated the German philosopher as well as wrote the first American introduction to his canon.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publising Company, 1923, 189 pgs.

Summary: Dr. Machen’s (1881-1937) trenchant review of Christian liberalism and a defense of historical orthodoxy written in 1923. Machen was born and buried in Baltimore. His grave is at Greenmount Cemetery.

Liberalism as a theological construct is an attempt to split the difference between the religion revealed in the Bible and modern Epicurean or materialistic interpretations of nature. Machen taught that liberalism was simply not “the faith once handed down to the saints.”

“The liberal preacher is really rejecting the whole basis of Christianity, which is a religion founded not on aspirations, but on facts. Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God” (47).

Christian Focus Publications, 2011, 127 pgs.

Summary: Four chapters originally delivered as lectures by Professor Trueman at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales in 2000. He lays out the importance of Luther’s theological insight at the Reformation and its relevance for today. Trueman is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Trueman argues that Luther brought Jesus Christ back into the center of theological discussion by recognizing that Roman Catholic theology was “cheapening God’s grace, trivializing sin and misleading the laity” (20). Further, “[c]orrupt belief and corrupt practice went hand-in-hand, and one could not be reformed without the reformation of the other” (21).

The lesson that the modern church must recognize is that the flesh is constantly attempting to drag good and even wicked things into the center of our doctrine and practice. The process of “cheapening God’s grace” and “trivializing sin” is a constant battle and not merely a onetime event. To overcome the pull of bad doctrine and practice, we must return to Paul, and Luther’s, theology of the cross that places Christ in the center.