One of the privileges of working at PRTS is the weekly arrival of new books to supplement our library of 70,000+ books. Here are the new picks this week.
Note: Inclusion in the library does not necessarily mean endorsement of contents. We often have to buy books to help students with specialist theses and also to train students to think critically. Also, a book new to the library does not necessarily mean a new book on the market.
Extraordinary Women of Christian History: What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs by Ruth A. Tucker
“Christianity has long been criticized as a patriarchal religion. But during its two-thousand-year history, the faith has been influenced and passed down by faithful women…These women are examples to us of faith, perseverance, forgiveness, and fortitude.”
Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century by John Frederick Martin
“Martin’s study will challenge historians to rethink not only social history but also the cultural history of early New England. Instead of taking sides in the long-standing debate between Puritan scholars and business historians, Martin identifies strains within Puritanism and the rest of the colonists’ culture that both discouraged and encouraged land commerce, both supported and undermined communalism, both hindered and hastened development of the wilderness.”
Faith of Our Fathers: God in Ancient China by Chan Kei Thong
“Due to the many similarities and belief in God as the only Creator, the author points out in detail how Chinese characters manifest historical evidences and many aspects recorded in the Bible. He claims China’s 4000 years of history as proof to support that God has never left this country.”
Critical Conversations: A Christian Parents’ Guide to Discussing Homosexuality with Teens by Tom Gilson
“This is perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue Christians face in today’s culture. Most churches are poorly equipped to handle it; parents are even less prepared. The good news is that parents need not have pat answers ready before they dive into conversations with their teens and preteens on this difficult topic. Learning together―parents struggling through these issues alongside their kids and leading them to biblical answers― has relational benefits.”
Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh
“How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities.”
Honest Evangelism by Rico Tice
“Short, clear, realistic and humorous, this book will challenge you to be honest in your conversations about Jesus, help you to know how to talk about him, and thrill you that God can and will use ordinary people to change eternal destinies.”
The Heart of Domestic Abuse: Gospel Solutions for Men Who Use Control and Violence in the Home by Chris Moles
“In The Heart of Domestic Abuse, Chris Moles uses his vast experience in battered intervention, and his training in biblical counseling to encourages godly men in the church to call abusive men to repentance and accountability through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The Miracles of Jesus: How the Savior’s Mighty Acts Serve as Signs of Redemption
“By explaining the meaning and significance of all 26 miracles recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, New Testament scholar Vern Poythress shows us their relevance for our lives today.”
Engaging with Muslims: Understanding their World; Sharing Good News by John Klaassen
“This short book is designed to help both Christians and whole churches understand more about the variety of Muslims there are living in the West, and to reach out to them with the good news of the gospel.”
Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture edited by David Loewenstein and John Marshall
“This interdisciplinary volume of essays brings together a team of leading early modern historians and literary scholars in order to examine the changing conceptions, character, and condemnation of ‘heresy’ in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.”
Philosophy in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic by Douglas Groothuis
“Douglas Groothuis unpacks seven pivotal sentences from the history of western philosophy―a few famous, all short, none trivial. Included are: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ ―Socrates; ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’―Augustine; ‘I think, therefore I am.’ ―Decartes; ‘The heart has reasons, that reason knows nothing of.’ ―Pascal”
Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature by Paul Cefalu
“Paul Cefalu’s study explores the relationship between moral character and religious conversion in the poetry and prose of Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and Milton, as well as in early modern English Conformist and Puritan sermons, theological tracts, and philosophical treatises.”
Christian Spirituality in Africa: Biblical, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives from Kenya by Sung Kyu Park
“Christian Spirituality in Africa holistically approaches the convergence of East/West, and Christian/Traditional African religions. Its theological, historical, and anthropological perspectives contribute to a balanced understanding of Christian spirituality/transformation in an African context.”
Fire Across the Water: Transatlantic Dimensions of the 18th Century Presbyterian Revivals by Anthony L. Blair
“In the mid-18th century a series of revivals flared within the colonies of British North America… Fire Across the Water looks at the dynamics of this Presbyterian revival among several frontier communities and their parish churches, noting how they split along socioeconomic lines.”
The Other Jonathan Edwards: Selected Writings on Society, Love, and Justice Edited by Gerald McDermott and Ronald Story
“Widely regarded as perhaps America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards still suffers the stereotype of hellfire preacher obsessed with God’s wrath. In this anthology, Gerald McDermott and Ronald Story seek to correct that common view by showing that Edwards was also a compassionate, socially conscious minister of the first order.”
The American Puritan Elegy: A Literary and Cultural Study by Jeffery A. Hammond
“Jeffrey Hammond’s study of the funeral elegies of early New England reassesses a body of poems whose importance in their own time has been obscured by almost total neglect in ours. Hammond reconstructs the historical, theological and cultural contexts of these poems to demonstrate how they responded to Puritan views on a specific process of mourning.”
Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority 1750-1800 by Jay Fliegelman
“The author traces a constellation of intimately related ideas – about the nature of parental authority and filial rights, of moral obligation of Scripture, of the growth of the mind and the nature of historical progress – from their most important English and continental expressions in a variety of literary and theological texts, to their transmission, reception and application in Revolutionary America and in the early national period of American culture.”
