I read this book as part of the same theological mentoring program that I've read a bunch of other dense theological works with recently (The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke, People of the Spirit, Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul, among others). I really enjoyed this book quite a bit. It reads much less scholarly than the others listed there, and it addresses one of the major questions I'd been wrestling with for the last couple of years: why is it that we refer to Kingdom Theology as Inaugurated Eschatology? Where does the eschatology part come from? This book unpacks that powerfully.

König's main thesis in this book is that everything Jesus does is eschatological. That because Jesus is the End (Rev 22:13), then everything that Jesus does is by definition eschatology. The title of the book is powerful picture of his premise: Christ's work is eclipsed by eschatology–there is a complete overlap and identification. Once this premise is established, König continues to organize a systematic theology around this eschatological premise. He explores three main thrusts of God's activity–Christ Realizes the Goal For Us, Christ Realizes the Goal In Us, Christ Realizes the Goal With Us–and frames all the rest of theology around this basis.

I found this book incredibly interesting. I find myself chewing on the idea that Jesus is the End and that continuing to adjust the way I'm reading the Bible. One of my favorite books I've read so far in said program. It's certainly the best work I've read at addressing the eschatological connection in Kingdom Theology.

I found out about this book when I sent a friend of mine my recent Imaginary Number Day article. She (a math major in college) replied that it made her day and let me know that this book recently came out. I've been familiar with Monroe since my grad school days, and he creates a popular webcomic called xkcd, which has a strong following by the extreme-math-or-science-nerd niche. (Monroe left a job at NASA to write XKCD full-time).

What If? 2 is the second book along the same lines as the subtitle promises: "Additional serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions". That is precisely what this book is, a series of precise calculations and answers to ridiculous questions. As an example, here are a few questions I specifically enjoyed:

I picked this book up because I've been working to catch up with Jordan B. Peterson and his role as a public intellectual in our society. A friend of mine connected me to his The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories series and I decided to read his books as well. This is the first one I tackled and on the whole I found it really enjoyable.

Now, I think it's important to be clear about something up front–and this is something he is clear about as well. Peterson is not writing as a Christian voice in this book, he is writing as a public intellectual and drawing from biblical stories as he does so. That being said, Peterson also mixes in quite a bit of evolutionary theory and references other religious traditions as well. As long as you're willing to accept where he comes from: a public intellectual who is drawing off of Biblical stories for their psychological significance and value, I think you'll find this a good read.

Peterson is a careful and very well-read reader. He will frequently quote a range of philosophical thinkers, from Nietzsche to Solzhenitsyn to Freud and beyond. He not only references them, it's clear he's understood them at a deep level. He draws off of deep and profound thinkers and refracts his findings back against wisdom traditions, most frequently the biblical texts, and synthesizes principles for living. Peterson's bias is always towards responsibility and action, and I appreciate that about him and his writing. His call is to sacrifice, to "shoulder the burden of Being" as he calls it and I think that is an important call for our society today. I can see why he's popular.

As a bonus, I really enjoyed how casually he refers to dreams or visions from time to time in this book. Perhaps that feels less out-of-bounds as his academic field is psychology, but I was surprised by that. This dude is totally a prophet and I don't know if he even knows it at all.

I picked up this book as the result of a conversation with a theology mentor in which I was asking about helpful books about the intersection between the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit. I believe these two subjects are closely linked, but the precise relationship between the two has often come across a bit fuzzy as I interact with what the precise nature of the relationship between the two is. This book is working to explore exactly that.

I think it's quite likely that this book was a thesis in published form. It reads extremely academically, which was what I disliked about it. That being said, I did find the content really interesting.

In this text, Cho analyzes a number of facets of God's activity as described in Paul's writings and in Luke-Acts and comes to the conclusion that Paul's pneumatology (theology of the Holy Spirit) is indeed different from Luke's. Cho argues that Paul has taken the innovative step to ascribe what Luke terms the blessings of the kingdom–a sonship relationship with God, ethics, righteousness, wisdom, and more–as activity of the Spirit. Cho proposes that Luke understands the Spirit as the empowering force of proclamation of the kingdom, and then the kingdom results in these blessings in our lives, whereas Paul takes the activity of the Spirit a step further and sees the Spirit both as the empowering force of proclamation, along with the conduit through which the blessings of the kingdom come into our lives. It is precisely this distinction that results in some of the different positions on the Spirit all being able to argue "their case" from Scripture.

I found Cho's conclusion fascinating, and he does a good job arguing it. That being said, that last paragraph delivers most of the value of the book, and everything else is the argument to get there. I guess that's what I should expect from a published thesis! And that's what you should look for as well if you pick up this book.

I'm not quite sure how exactly I came across this book, other than I am generally wanting to learn about team building since our Phoenix adventure has made that more relevant than it's been in a while. I stumbled across it and the reviews sounded interesting–seemed like it could be one of those God-ordained books that he brings across my path. (I think it probably was, but time will tell on that).

In Dream Teams, Snow blends together clever story telling, recent neuroscience, and lots of discussion around facets of great teams. He is a clever and funny author, and the neuroscience he covers really is fascinating. I suspect his visual of the mountain range of potential solutions is probably something I'll carry with me from here forward, as is the model of creatively-productive tensions that he outlines. I thought his observation that great teams play-their-way-into-camaraderie to be quite an interesting idea as well. There were lots of parts I liked a lot; the only downside to the book was that Snow is clearly highly pro-liberal-agenda, and at times that comes across as almost preachy. If you can push that aside, the book has some really quality content.