Books We Enjoyed in 2024

Once again, we asked our Western Seminary faculty members to share some of the books they enjoyed reading this past year. The following list reflects a wide range of topics covering books both old and new. You may want to consider adding a couple of these to your reading list in 2025:

Gerry Breshears

Steven D. Mathewson, The Art of Preaching Old Testament Poetry (Baker, 2024)

“This new book is a great companion to his Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative. Steve has been a part of the Western team for a long time as well as being a regular professor in many Doctor of Mininistry programs. If you want a full life, you may want to read his The Fly Fisher's Book of Lists: Life is short. Catch more fish.”

Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary (Crossway, 2024)

“This is a must-read if you want to grasp the Psalms in canonical context. The first volume explains reading Psalms in a Christ centered way while the other three volumes are wonderful examinations of all 150 Psalms. His knowledge of the literature across the millennia enriches the biblical wisdom.”

Daniel K. Eng

Preston Sprinkle, Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire (David C. Cook, 2024)

“There have been many conversations about how the church is involved in politics in an election year. Through solid research, Preston Sprinkle makes the case that the first-century church was intensely political. The early Christ-followers saw themselves as exiles: foreigners with a leader whose teachings were politically subversive. This book calls for the church to engage with the empire, but to be loyal to our King alone.”

Josh Mathews

Kevin S. Chen, Wonders from Your Law: Nexus Passages and the Promise of an Exegetical Intertextual Old Testament Theology (IVP Academic, 2024)

“Kevin Chen’s earlier work, The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch, proposed that if we read the first part of the Bible on its own terms, attentive to the intentional design of the author, we will see that its message is thoroughly eschatological and messianic. He expands his argument in this next book, Wonders from your Law, and surveys several representative passages in the OT that he calls “nexus passages.” These are important intertextual hubs of links to and from other key OT texts. The ten passages he covers (Genesis 1–3; Exod. 15:1–18; Numbers 24; Deuteronomy 32; 2 Samuel 7; Isa. 52:13–53:12; Jonah 2; Psalm 72; Prov. 8:22–31; and Daniel 9) are representative of a phenomenon Chen argues is integral to the composition of the Hebrew Bible. Not only does the book provide a treasure trove of careful exegetical work, but it also makes a compelling case for a way of conceiving of and doing Biblical Theology. He argues this approach accounts best for the details of the inspired text, and it makes the most sense of the claims of Jesus and the NT writers about the message of the OT. An eschatological message of a coming Messiah is what comes through most prominently when we pay attention to the connective textual features of these nexus passages.”

Todd Miles

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically (Zondervan, 2024)

“Students who have taken my hermeneutics class know my deep appreciation for Kevin Vanhoozer. This book is not, as the title suggests, a basic primer on how to interpret the Bible. Instead, it is Vanhoozer’s much needed contribution to theological interpretation of Scripture. In it, Vanhoozer argues for reading the Bible transfigurally, paying close attention to the letter of the text (reading forwards), but knowing that the glory of Christ permeates every page of the Bible (reading backwards). A transfigural reading of Scripture will recognize that glory. Look for Mere Christian Hermeneutics to be required reading in my Advanced Hermeneutics course.”

Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God’s People: Becoming Faith Communities that Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded (Brazos Press, 2024)

“There is no better teacher on spiritual abuse alive today than Diane Langberg. Her theological presuppositions are evangelical and her passion for Jesus Christ and his church are evident. In short, she is to be trusted. Her clarion call for the church to be a place that embodies the character and mission of Jesus Christ means that there is no place for sexual abuse in the church and when it takes place, proper light is to be shed on it - period. There is no legitimate reason to excuse or cover up. I cannot recommend this book (and Langberg’s Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church) highly enough. It should be must reading by all who minister in the church, both lay and vocational.”

Jeremiah L. Peck

N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan, 2024)

“I don’t like politics. This was the posture I have embodied in increasing measure over the last several years as a pastor navigating how to shepherd the church through polarized elections, dichotomous social discourse, and extreme conspiracy theories. Despite my aversion to politics, I still often found myself vacillating between having strong convictions for biblical truth, while also having passion for topics which related to justice and human dignity, and frustration over an apparent lack of dialogue among groups with opposing views. All this said, Jesus and the Powers proved to be a challenging and thought-provoking journey which has helped me reframe the contemporary political climate in view of biblical and church history, as well as develop a Kingdom-focused basis of evaluation. Wright and Bird guide their readers on building a foundational understanding without any apparent underlying agenda. The book explores the precedence of how Scripture reveals themes of God’s people interacting with empire in various forms, how institutions of human authority are installed by God, and how followers of Jesus can conduct themselves with a posture of building for the Kingdom of God through public witness.”

Stephen Stallard

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin Press, 2024)

“In his book The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has crafted a work that is sure to shape the conversation for the next decade or more. He wants us to put down our phones. Specifically, he wants adults to help young people to stay off of social media. His is not the approach of an old codger who tells young people to get off of his lawn. Instead, he marshals empirical evidence to demonstrate that screen time can be dangerous to developing adolescents. Every Christian parent should read this book. Every youth pastor and teaching pastor should read this book. And we should respond with real-world discipleship, the kind that can only be found in the embodied people of God – the local church. Here, anxious adolescents can discover hope again.”

Jan Verbruggen

Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (HarperOne, 2012)

“In Triumph of Christianity, Rodney Stark, a sociologist, examines the rise and success of Christianity. In this book and his earlier book, The Rise of Christianity, Stark comes up with startling findings. One of the statements in the current book is that Christianity was not a religion of the down and out and the underprivileged but had more traction with the well-to-do city dwellers. He also doesn’t accept the figures of converts in the Book of Acts as accurate. He thinks they are inflated, otherwise the church would have grown a lot faster. Because Christians did not discard female infants and did not practice abortion, women were represented in much higher numbers among Christians than among non-Christians. Stark also thinks that when Christianity became accepted by the Roman Empire and even favored by Constantine, with him granting the church a huge amount of property, it brought in a lot of people who were more after power than were committed to their faith. Also, paganism didn’t just die after Constantine but lingered on for centuries. Stark argues that the Dark Ages are not well named because lots of inventions from the Renaissance were based on the progress made during the “Dark Ages”. Also, he thinks that the effects of the Spanish Inquisition were overblown by English and Dutch protestants trying to put the Spanish Kingdom in a bad light, as they were involved in armed conflict with the Spanish. There are many other interesting conclusions that he tries to back up with tables and figures when possible. While I would not agree with everything he concludes, it was still a very interesting read. ”