Mike Wittmer

Category: book review

  • Revelation

    The newest entry in Crossway’s “Preaching the Word” series is Revelation by Southern Seminary professor Jim Hamilton. Jim’s homiletical commentary will be a great help to anyone who is preaching or teaching through the book, or who just wants to study it for themselves. Jim deftly negotiates the numerous questions that swirl around this apocalyptic…

  • Plantinga’s latest

    Yesterday’s New York Times had a compelling story on Alvin Plantinga’s new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. One of the main differences between Reformed Epistemology and Presuppositionalism is that the former was content to play defense (it’s rational to believe in God) while the latter was always on offense (it is…

  • De gemeene gratie

    If you can’t read the title above, you’re in luck. Abraham Kuyper’s seminal work on common grace is now being translated into English, with the first book being launched tomorrow at Calvin Seminary at 10:00 A.M. If you live near Grand Rapids and the roads improve, consider coming by (Calvin is 5 minutes from the mall, so…

  • iParent

    My friend Don Pearson has written a frightening and exceedingly helpful book on parenting. Don has witnessed some disturbing trends in his decades of youth ministry, and he writes about them in iParent: Gender Trends, Online Friends, and the Soul of Your Child. Don’s main argument—and he has numerous first-hand stories and research to back…

  • God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment

    I met Jim Hamilton, associate professor of biblical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon earlier this summer. Jim loves guacamole, his “sweet wife Jill,” and his Lord, though not in that order. Jim exudes Southern warmth and charm that make me envy his congregation at Kenwood…

  • another good review

    Here is an insightful review from St. Andrews that makes one of the big points that I argue for in Christ Alone—i.e., that Rob Bell’s project is really a dated form of Christian existentialism that goes back to Tillich and Niebuhr. I think this is the key to understanding what Love Wins is up to, and I commend this…

  • Twain on Müller

    I skimmed through volume 1 of Mark Twain’s autobiography—it contains a few good anecdotes about the tribulations of publishing and public speaking—but overall it was not as interesting as I had hoped. Maybe volume 2 will be better. Twain, or Samuel Clemens, didn’t have much good to say about preachers or Christianity, so his short…

  • the question behind the question

    I don’t want to blog too much about Love Wins, as I already put my thoughts into Christ Alone and I don’t want to overly contribute to Rob Bell fatigue. But I do think it’s important to say that many discussions about LW miss the point. LW is dangerously wrong about hell and post-mortem salvation,…

  • give me that old time religion

    Another recent book that I was glad to read was Don’t Call It a Comeback, edited by Kevin DeYoung and with contributions from the young leaders of the Gospel Coalition. It can be strange living in Grand Rapids—the city which continues to push the boundaries of what it means to be an evangelical—and so I…

  • for pastors and those who hire them

    I’m finally able to get back to my normal reading schedule, and the first book I read was written by my good friend, Chris Brauns. Chris was my older brother in seminary—two years ahead of me and about ten years wiser—and I’ve always looked to him as a model for how to be a man…