book reviews

Recommended reading that could shed new light on our scholarly endeavours (updated Feb 2019)

Rudi Hayward reviews A Shot of Faith to the Head.

For Christmas a year ago I was given a book called ‘Wisdom for thinkers: An introduction to Christian philosophy’. It’s not a very thick book – under 200 pages – but fairly dense. So, having just finished it, I thought I’d tell you about it.

This week’s post takes the form of a brief book review, my first as a blogger here (but hopefully not my last; I’ve got a few other books in mind that I’d really like to share with you). I thought I’d start with one of my favourite books on the intersections between Christian thought and academic culture, James K. A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006). It’s a slim little volume, but don’t let its slight dimensions fool you: this is a lively, provocative book with a lot to say.

A guest post from Dr Xia Zhu.

At creation, the mandate that God gave to humanity was for people to reflect and mirror God’s stewardship… This involves far more than religious enterprises or the church. It has to do with how we engage with scientific endeavours, how we do business, how we treat each other, how we treat animals, and how we treat the environment.

Sproul, R. C. (2016), How Should I Think about Money? Reformation Trust Publishing, p23

While I was an academic astronomer, I probably spent most of my time not peering through a telescope, but typing away at a computer, wondering why my code didn’t work. Now, computer software wasn’t my area of research, so I didn’t give much attention to it from a Christian perspective. But is there a Christian approach to writing computer software? Should we be “coding for Christ”?

One of the things we are aiming to do through Faith-in-Scholarship is to direct Christian postgraduates (and others) to helpful resources and initiatives. This week I wanted to draw your attention to a book that helped me understand the academic task from a Christian worldview. This book is Cornelius Plantinga’s “Engaging God’s World: A Christian vision of faith, learning and living”.