Book Reviews

Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith By Rosaria Champagne Butterfield Pittsburgh, PA: Crown and Covenant, 2012 154 pages ISBN: 978 1 88452 738 8 (paperback) Rosaria Champagne Butterfield lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina, where her husband pastors the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham. HerSecret […]

Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic By Francis J. Beckwith Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2009 144 pages ISBN: 978 1 58743 247 7 (paperback) List price $15.00   The blurb on the front cover explains this book: ‘Why the President of the Evangelical Theological Society Left His Post and Returned to the […]

Calvin, Theologian and Reformer Edited by Joel R. Beeke and Garry J.Williams Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010 170 pages ISBN: 978 1 60178 091 1 (paperback) List price $16.00 In 2009, the John Owen Centre in London held a conference to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, with the speeches being published […]

Adam in the New Testament: Mere Teaching Model or First Historical Man? By J. P. Versteeg Translated and with a Foreword by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2012 96 pages ISBN: 978 1 59638 522 1 (paperback) List price $12.99 A comparison of Romans 14–15 with Galatians reveals that we need to […]

Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack By Rupert Shortt London: Rider Books, 2012 320 pages ISBN: 978 1 84604 275 1 (hardback) ISBN: 978 1 84604 276 8 (paperback) Christianophobia is such an ugly, awkward word. In an age when everything is treated as a brand, Islamophobia seems to roll off the tongue. This has perhaps […]

The Act of Uniformity of 1662 prescribed that any minister in England who refused to conform to the Book of Common Prayer by 14th August 1662 would be ejected from the Church of England. Over 2,000 evangelical ministers left their livings rather than conform to what they saw as extra-Biblical rules and regulations. It was a sad […]

The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded by John Owen is published by the Banner of Truth Trust in Volume 7 of The Works of John Owen, available from the Trust at £215 for the set of 16 volumes or £15 for a single one.1 Alternatively, a modern abridgement by R.J.K. Law entitled Spiritual-Mindedness (264 pages) is obtainable, also […]

Introduction At a time when Theological Liberalism was leading millions away from the true gospel into the pit of heresy, the Head of the Church raised up several defenders of the Faith to stand in the breach and repel the enemy. Not the least among these was John Gresham Machen, who, along with such stalwarts […]

The name of Princeton has an honoured place in the annals of Presbyterian history. Established in 1812 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and located in the township of the same name in west-central New Jersey, Princeton Theological Seminary began with three students and Archibald Alexander as […]

Like the two-volume set, Princeton and the Work of the Christian Ministry, this fine volume* commemorates the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Princeton Seminary in 1812. Professor Garretson has gathered together documents such as obituaries and memorial discourses, commemorating 12 professors in the Seminary, from Archibald Alexander to B. B. Warfield – and one […]

For years we had heard of Carson on Divine Providence (first published 1840) as a Christian classic but had never come across a copy. We always imagined it to be something like The Mystery of Divine Providence by the Puritan John Flavel. The two books could not be more different. We found Alexander Carson’s work most interesting […]

Matt Smethurst, who serves as associate editor for The Gospel Coalition and lives in Louisville, Kentucky, interviewed Dr. Joel Beeke and Dr. Mark Jones on their newly published A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life. The three introductory paragraphs are also written by Smethurst. In A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Reformation Heritage Books), Joel Beeke and Mark Jones offer […]

The life of Joseph has long been grist for the mill of Sunday School teachers, their pupils often hanging on every word of the story of his remarkable life. Now David Searle has lifted the narrative to a higher level with the publication of this sermon series, making it accessible to those who want to […]

I am puzzled. I served in Liverpool as a pastor for a little over four years and got to know the city and something of its spiritual legacy quite well and yet I never came across the name of Richard Hobson. Yet his life was, without doubt, one of the most remarkable ministerial careers the […]

Princeton and the Work of the Christian Ministry1 is a two-volume set consisting of addresses and articles by some of the most luminous names in the great galaxy of American Presbyterians who were connected with, or supported, the work of Princeton Theological Seminary. These excellent articles were selected and are introduced by James M Garretson and […]

David B. Calhoun is already the author of the highly-commended two volume history of Princeton Seminary, published by the Banner of Truth in 1996.1 He is a gifted theologian, a thorough historian, and a warm and devotionally-inspiring writer. The first six chapters of his latest work2 contain a kind of short biography of some of the most […]

‘undoubtedly one of the spiritual greats of our land, worthy of being honoured, and a reminder of the powerful impact of a godly life, lived by the grace of God, and committed to the preaching of the gospel of that grace, on the toughest and most godless environments.’ [John Brand has ‘discovered’ Richard Hobson of Liverpool!] […]

In the December 2012 issue (No. 591) of The Banner of Truth magazine, Iain Murray asked the question, ‘Where are the Best Tracts?’ As indicated in the February 2013 issue (No. 593), we received some very helpful responses to his question, although not all were included in the magazine. A number of pastors said that they wrote […]

Ernest Kevan is best known as the founding principal of London Bible College, or London School of Theology as it is now called. He was also the author of a significant work on the Puritan theology of the law, entitled, The Grace of Law. Beyond those two facts, I don’t suppose many readers will know much […]

This1 is a second volume of sermons on Genesis which Calvin preached in St Peter’s Church to the citizens of Geneva, from 24 January to 15 May 1560. They are numbered 50 to 97 and, as was the case with the first volume,2 they are here translated into English for the first time by Dr Rob Roy […]

The city of Columbia was created the capital of South Carolina by the state legislature in 1786. It was intentionally located near the geographic centre of the state to provide citizens equitable access to their government institutions. The town was laid out two miles square with ten blocks per mile; the streets were built one […]

Pastor-Teachers of Old Princeton1 has been published to mark the 200th anniversary of Princeton Theological Seminary. It spans the years from the appointment of Archibald Alexander as the Seminary’s first Professor in 1812 to the death of B. B. Warfield in 1921. The book comprises a series of memorial addresses and articles in honour of […]

It is said that the best sermons make good listening but poor reading. Why then should we read a volume of sermons1 that were preached in the early 1660’s and in very different times to our own? Read on! The Lord Jesus warned that persecution would come from the unbelieving world (eg. John 15:18) and […]

‘a cracking set of volumes . . . beautiful to behold, excellent in their quality, and outstanding in their substance . . . pastorally sound, eminently practical, thoroughly Christ-centred, happily straightforward expository thoughts, ideal for private or family worship, stimulating for preachers, instructive for pastors, models of earnest simplicity.’ [Jeremy Walker enthuses about the new […]

This is a difficult book to categorize. It is not a commentary and yet it deals with the Joseph saga in its Biblical order (for the most part) and there is much detailed commentary on the text. It is not a fictional account of ‘Joseph and his brothers’, or even a fact/fictional re-telling. There is […]