So What Are You Reading?

Les Miserables
By Victor Hugo, Translated by Christine Donougher (2013)
One of my favorite books!
I've read Charles Wilbour's 1862 edition many times (his was the first translation).
I'm really enjoying the fresh translation.


Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle
By Henri Blocher (1999)
I can digest about 10 pages a day. it is packed with thought provoking information.

"The path to be travelled by this volume is fairly easy to mark out. Once the biblical survey is completed, we shall turn to the ‘origin’ passage, Genesis 3, asking whether we should read it as history or as myth, saga or symbol (chapter 2). Then the other scripture upon which the doctrine of original sin was founded, Romans 5, will engage our scrutiny (chapter 3); against all the odds, will a new proposal break through the deadlock of interpretations ancient and modern? In the next chapter (4), we shall observe how the doctrine of ‘original sin’ unveils human experience, unlocks the enigmas of life and sets them in proper perspective. Finally, we shall confront the core difficulty of Augustine’s construction: the hereditary transmission of what is a most personal exercise of freedom, namely, sin.

First, though, we need some idea of just what it is we are talking about. Calvin’s definition offers as good a starting-point as any. Original sin, he writes in the Institutes, is that ‘hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls “works of the flesh” (Gal. 5:19)’ (II.i.8). By way of developing and commenting on that definition, we may note the following four points. First, original sin is universal sinfulness, consisting of attitudes, orientations, propensities and tendencies which are contrary to God’s law, incompatible with his holiness, and found in all people, in all areas of their lives. Secondly, it belongs to the nature of human beings (it is also called peccatum naturale), ‘nature’ being that stable complex of characteristics typical of the class of creatures known as ‘human’, and present from birth (natura comes from nasci, ‘to be born’). Thirdly, since it belongs to our nature, it is inherited; hence its usual name in German, Erbsünde, literally ‘hereditary sin’. Fourthly, it stems from Adam, whose disobedience gave original sin a historical beginning, so that the present sinfulness of all can be traced back through the generations, to the first man and progenitor of the race."
Henri Blocher, Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 5, New Studies in Biblical Theology (England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 1997), 17-18.​

Recently finished,
Where the Crawdad's Sing
By Delia Owens
The book reads almost like poetry. Quite complex in its construction. The main character draws her philosophy of life from the marsh where she grew up.

Next in the TBR (to be read) list
My SIL gifted me with a $50 Amazon gift card and I picked up a two-volume set of books on Hudson Taylor that I read many, many years ago.

Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God

Rob

 

I FaceTimed an old friend earlier this week.
I haven’t seen him face-to-face for 40 years.
He was excited about reading Revelation too.
He encouraged me to study it again.

Asbury???

Rob

 

Offense to Reason, the Theology of Sin
by Bernard Ramm 1985

His bibliography lead me to three more, now on my long TBR list

With Willful Intent, a Theology of Sin
by David L. Smith

The Problem of Pain (hopefully I can borrow this from the church library)
by C. S. Lewis 1962

Church Dogmatics vol 3. part 2,
The Doctrine of Creation
by Karl Barth

Rob