Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World - a long overdue book review


A couple of weeks ago I finished reading a collection of essays that was edited by John Piper. All of these essays centered around the idea of Christ's supremacy in the postmodern/relativistic culture in which we live.

These essays are the product of a conference in which these different theologians gathered together to talk about this exact issue.

The contributers to this collections are:
David Wells
Voddie Baucham Jr.
John Piper
D.A. Carson
Tim Keller
Mark Driscoll

When I first opened this book and jumped into David Wells essay my head began hurting. I felt a little bit of nausea. Things became blurry. Then I realized that David Wells is much much smarter than I will ever be. His essay is very thoughtful but hard to follow. However, his essay lays the groundwork for the remaining essays.

Voddie Baucham's essay is much more readable and deals with the concept of truth in a postmodern world. The idea of truth is something that only a few people claim to have knowledge to, but everyone's actions point to what kind of truth they hold. It was also nice to hear from Voddie that I am still a good person even if I am not as black as he is.

John Piper's essay is on joy. What a shocker. The Christian Hedonist writing an essay on joy. However, his essay is probably the easiest to follow although his thought process is just as "deep" or "challenging" as any of the other authors. I really enjoyed this essay and was challenged by reading it.

D.A. Carson & Tim Keller both have very interesting essays on the topics of Love and the Gospel. These essays were not my favorite but still very informative.

Mark Driscoll finishes out the essays in this book with one that rivals Piper's essay to be my favorite. It is interesting to hear from a guy who was at the forefront of the postmodern movement just a few years ago but took a step back when he saw there was a lot of theological compromises that were being made for the sake of "being enlightened" or "seeker sensitivity".

The book closes out with a transcript of a dialog between the different authors. This book is worth the purchase for this reason if for no other.

I would recommend that anybody who deals with people in this culture of "truth is whatever you want it to be" read this book.

I have also finished another book since this one. I hope to review it in a couple of days.

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