If you only read one book in 2018 (besides the Bible), read this one!

A few months ago, I mentioned to a friend how wonderfully, biblically, rich, Christ-exalting, and helpful one of my currently-being-read-books was. (I’m one of those people who usually has a PILE O’ BOOKS surrounding me, on every level, all the time.)

I told her that this might actually be one of my favorite books of all time (!!) and I was super excited to describe it to her. But then I told her the name of the book. Uh-oh. She was not impressed:

Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church: A Guide for Ministry

This dear, amazing woman. A hero of the faith in my book. One of the finest churchmen, bible teachers, evangelists, and peacemakers I have ever known rolled. her. eyes. 

I couldn’t believe it. Really. I didn’t know how to respond. What is an appropriate transition from “THIS MIGHT BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME!!” to an eye roll from one of your bestest (most godly) friends in the whole world? I mean! This book resonates with so much I know about her: she loves the Word! Prayer! God! People!

She is constantly lifting high Jesus, living for eternity, while studying, memorizing, and applying biblical truth to her own life and helping others to do the same. She lays down her life to fight injustice and wickedness and unbelief. Plus, she puts up with me as a friend! This is clearly a saint.

But the name of this book alone turned her off. So  it got me thinking about its packaging. It did. Because the content was phenomenal and needed. And the publisher is one of my dream publishers.

So what’s mucking up the communication flow? Sure. The title is, shall we say, a little dry. But I personally like dry! Give me a paragraph-long-dusty-ol’-Puritan-Title that actually communicates what it’s about and I LIKE IT. But clearly others do not. So what do you do with that? I have no idea. (So now I’m praying for the graphic design teams too because the cheesy robot-eyed-chick-in-the-kerchief-and-apron-holding-out-plates-o’-cookies-graphic in SOME women’s materials—-even when surrounded by rock-solid biblical theology that goes SO far beyond aprons and cookies (!!)—really grieves me.)

But back to the theology book at hand …

I don’t know for sure who made the final decisions, but my guess would be that somewhere, a group of people decided that this book is FOR THE GUYS. I say that because it’s cover has an oil-stained mechanic’s rag and nuts and bolts and whatever tools attach nuts and bolts (wrenches?? do-hickeys??) as its primary/sole graphic.

Seriously?

Just like I never understood why Baker plopped a vase of flowers on the cover of our “Peacemaking Women” book since I know I have never successfully arranged a vaseo of flowers. Plus, in a conflict among Christian women you are FAR more likely to see a vase of flowers being FLUNG AT SOMEONE ACROSS A ROOM rather than looking oh-so-lovely-in-a-happy-sunbeam, as the cover of our book, chosen by Baker, has placed it.

Who decided that an auto mechanic graphic would be the best way to communicate that the following (life-giving!) content:

• Exegetical Tools: Grammatical-Historical Method
• Biblical Tools: Covenants, Epochs, Canon; Prophecy, Typology, Continuity
• Systematical Theology Tools: How and Why to Think Theologically

I mean. C’mon! We are talking about the propositional nature of God’s Word here. The sufficiency of Scripture. The powerful and effectual work of God’s Word because it is “carried along by God’s Spirit” (p.17).

Don’t we want every single Christian (man, woman, child, handy-with-power-tools/handy-with-word-processors-and-thick-books) to understand THIS:

“Biblical theology: a theology that not only tried to systematically understand what the Bible teaches, but to do so in the context of the Bible’s own progressively revealed and progressively developing story line …

Scriptures are not an eclectic, chaotic, seemingly contradictory collection of religious writings, but rather a single story, a unified narrative that conveys a coherent and consistent message.“

“Biblical theology assumes and depends upon a number of things demonstrated by systematic theology: things like infallibility, inerrancy of revelation as it comes to us in Scripture, the objectivity of the knowledge of God through revelation, and the trustworthiness of inspiration.”

Seriously. If you only read one book (besdies the Bible) in 2018, you would be well served to read this one. Every single biblical theology point that I just typed above applies to every single aspect of our lives in our workplaces, schools, homes, churches, communities, world.

These are not gender-specific or formal profession-specific skills. These are Christian life skills. We all need to grow in the them and then we, who are influencing our children (both familial and spiritual familial) need to be not only equipped but actually IN THE BATTLE in helping them to grow too. 

That means you and I. Right now. Busy in our professions or formal education or just-pay-the-bills-jobs. Busy in new marriage or child-rearing or empty-nesting on mountains with bird-watching/flower-watching cameras galore. We are blowing it if our relationships with young people fail to go beyond, “I hope you can avoid porn and sex and somehow you make it though your education and skill development to earn enough money to function as adults one day and, hopefully, attend a church and “be a good Christian,” blah, blah, blah “moralistic therapeutic deism.”

No. No. No.

What we need is LIFE! (Jesus says HE is the Way and the Truth and the Life!) Purpose. A clear sense of (and an ability to articulate) our entire worldview:

1. Origin: from where did we come?
2. Purpose: why are we here?
3. Morality: how are we to live?
4. Destiny: where will we end up?

I talk about this with my five year-old. And I REALLY talk about this with my eleven year-old. And the pre-teens, teens, and twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings who so graciously, generously, honestly give me the gift of getting to be their friends and process this together.

How do we do it? Of course! We need the ordinary means of grace!

• “Do not neglect meeting together!” (Hebrews 10) — We go to church.
• We listen to the preaching of the Word by our ordained leaders.
• We are fed by the Lord’s Supper.
• We pray corporately and privately.

And yes. We learn things like hermeneutics (theories of interpretation) and we purposefully stand against the “modern approach” and its insidious little sister “postmodernism” and together we say (with joy! humility! gratitude!):

“In fact, there is such a thing as a correct meaning of a text, precisely because God, who created the world, our brains, and thus our ability to use language, is himself a speaking God.”

“It was God who created rationality and language so that language could accurately convey meaning from one mind to another mind … We see this again and again in the pages of Scriptures. God speaks and explains what he’s about to do and why.”

“Words, when placed in sentences and paragraphs convey meaning.”

And THAT, my friends, leads us to EXEGESIS. Are you jumping up and down with me by now? Because I surely am! Exegesis!

“Exegesis is the disciplined attempt to lead out of a text the author’s original intent, rather than my own preference or experience or opinion … “

And THAT means we need to at least understand what “The Grammatical-Historical” Method of exegesis is …

Which leads us into “the exploration and study of grammar, syntax, and literary and historical context of the words we are reading” …

And before you know it! We better be on the watch against “intentional fallacy” (the fallacy of presuming intentions) …

So “CONTEXT IS KEY.” And we’d better have at least a rudimentary understanding of the text. The whole text. A basic grammatical and structural analysis of the text (units, arguments, diagram of sentences and how they relate) + the larger context (the book, the historical context, the cultural context, the issues of geography/peolitics/history that inform the meaning) + other biblical references (rest of entire book is on that) …

AND we need to know the literary forms/genres/types. The rules or patterns for communicating in these forms differ and they matter: narrative, parable, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, epistles apocalyptic …

So that all of these exegetical tools and biblical theology and systematic theology will help us to read the Bible to help us to KNOW GOD. Which is our whole  goal all along, right? To know God and make Him known!

Okey-dokey, so let’s talk covenants, epochs, and canon because:

 “The three horizons of Scripture are the textual horizon, the epochal horizon, and the canonical horizon.”

‘Recognizing where the passage you’re studying fits in that development is crucial to its interpretation.”

“We need to understand each passage in its epochal context.”

We do? We do!

Do you? Do our children? The women we teach in our women’s studies?

I know I’m really feeling the lack as I’m gearing up for my Theology/Worldview/Logic course this year. But I’m feeling the lack just in my life (the internal sermons I tell myself every single day) and in how I parent too.

All of these ideas, verses, catechism questions. This whole Christian way of living. The routines. The lingo. The patterns.

“True theology, worthy of the name, can never be mere abstract, academic, theoretical language.”

“Our knowledge of God through his normative Word confronts us with knowledge of ourselves as simultaneously noble image-bearers and ignoble rebels of the Most High.”

Truer words have never been said.

Thank you, Crossway, and Michael Lawrence, for this wonderful, wonderful book. I want to understand, memorize, and internalize it so that I can help others to Sharpie out the title if they don’t like it and glue on a better graphic if that motivates them to get past the cover and DIVE IN.

This is a great book, ladies. a GREAT book. I pray you will joyfully embrace its life-giving, Christ-exalting, desperately needed, truths.

A grateful sister in Christ,
Tara Barthel

[A re-post from 2014]