Two Excellent Reads on Critical Christian Issues

Two new booklets in the Areopagus Critical Christian Issues Series (of which I am a co-editor) are now available for pre-order from the publisher:

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Benjamin J. Baxter, In the Original Text It Says: Word-Study Fallacies and How to Avoid Them.

When you hear the words "in the original text it says" or "in the original text this means," it's time to be wary. Those words often provide the introduction to misleading information. But how can the hearer discern just what is correct and what is misleading? How can pastors avoid giving their congregations misleading information?

"In the Original Text It Says" takes a look at word-study fallacies and how you can avoid them. Author Ben Baxter gives an introduction to word meaning and how word meaning differs between languages. He then examines a series of fallacies, errors that people make in assigning meaning to words in the original languages of the Bible.

The book is scheduled to be published on January 9th.

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Ant Greenham, The Questioning God: An Inquiry for Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

A questioning approach lies at the heart of our relationship with God. That's how God engages us. In fact, questioning (or free inquiry), is central to our being human. Yet the major monotheistic religions vary markedly on this matter. In The Questioning God, Dr. Greenham examines the three major monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, to see how they relate to questioning, including questions that God asks us and the questions that we ask about God. His goal is to develop a biblical theology of questioning, avoiding a loss of direction and focus that results from selective questioning, and also a loss of humanity that results from bypassing our questions through an inappropriate submission.

The examination is wide ranging, including chapters on questioning in Islam, Judaism, mainline and evangelical Christianity, along with an examination of the consequences of a non-questioning culture. He ends the book with a proposal for a biblical theology and a look at the practical implications–just what it means to pursue a questioning culture.

This book is scheduled to be released January 23rd.

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