On My Shelf helps you get to know numerous writers by a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers.

I requested N. Grey Sutanto—assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, and writer, editor, or translator of varied books together with Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction—about what’s on his bedside desk, favourite fiction, favourite neo-Calvinism books, and way more.

What’s in your nightstand proper now?

Alistair McFayden’s Sure to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust and the Christian Doctrine of Sin—since I’m writing on the doctrine of sin.

What are your favourite fiction books?

In latest reminiscence, I deeply loved Stephen King’s The Institute, however I attempt to not learn in my spare time as a result of the exercise jogs my memory a lot of labor, so I sustain with some motion pictures from trusted studios for storytelling. A24’s Previous Lives not too long ago was, to me, an ideal film.

What biographies or autobiographies have most affected you and why?

Augustine’s Confessions, as a result of it’s a mannequin of the way to replicate theologically on one’s life; John A. D’Elia’s A Place on the Desk: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America, to remind me that it’s the church that nurtures theology and to not idolize tutorial work; and, after all, James Eglinton’s Bavinck: A Essential Biography—it was cathartic to learn this work and to see in full shade the individual behind the writings with which I’ve been working.

What are some books you recurrently reread and why?

I reread Herman Bavinck’s earlier essays very often, particularly his 1894 “Widespread Grace” and his 1888 “Catholicity of Christianity and the Church”—his logic of why it’s that Christianity is actually common and the way to interact and look after the world with out sacrificing distinctly Christian convictions are formative for me. As a 3rd tradition child, I’ve all the time grown up with a way of the cultural contingencies and localized intuitions of every new place, and Bavinck taught me that one generally is a trustworthy Christian in several contexts and in several methods.

We are likely to mistake cultural variations for theological variations and thus find yourself antagonizing each other. His imaginative and prescient of the way to distinguish between tradition and sin—and his level that grace is simply towards sin and never towards tradition as such—spoke deeply to my very own expertise and the way I envision Christian theology and ministry.

What books have most profoundly formed the way you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?

The Westminster Requirements—a really holistic Reformed confession that I feel the church wants, which conveys a abstract of the entire Bible in a persuasive vogue. I feel good preaching requires the exposition and persuasive demonstration of our confessional requirements in order that our church buildings can see the wonder and concord of studying the Bible in mild of church historical past and custom.

Darryl Hart and John Muether’s In search of a Higher Nation—although a historical past of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, its refined theological message therein is that one ought to by no means dilute one’s theological or confessional commitments for the sake of some secondary subject.

Tim Keller’s Making Sense of God and Preaching—he fashions, in each of those, an affective method to preaching and apologetics that doesn’t merely inform us what to imagine but additionally reveals us why Christian beliefs aren’t solely true however stunning.

Bavinck’s many reflections on the picture of God and the doctrine of revelation—that we’re affective creatures uncovered to God’s revelation, and that the picture of God refers not simply to people however to humanity as a complete in all of its variety. Because of this I ended up writing on the subjects of theological epistemology for my first e book and anthropology for my second (forthcoming) work. I’d level to quantity 2 of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics right here and chapter 3 in his 1908 The Philosophy of Revelation.

What’s one e book you would like each pastor learn?

I’m going to cheat right here and point out six texts.

Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, particularly quantity 1, and particularly the sections on the doctrines of God, Trinity, and windfall and human freedom. I nonetheless keep in mind the primary time I pored over Turretin throughout seminary; it was life-giving as he went by profound distinctions that helped me perceive the wholeness of Scripture.

Matthew Kaemingk’s Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Worry—which is a potent, Kuyperian introduction to the problem of Christianity, pluralism, and tradition. I assign this recurrently once I train lessons on apologetics and Islam, and it’s a wanted work that invitations us to drink deeply from the wells of our Reformed custom and, concurrently, to apply hospitality towards those that have deep variations with us.

Hart and Muether’s In search of a Higher Nation—to point out us that our confessional commitments should stay the guts of our ministries.

Bavinck’s 1894 “Widespread Grace” and 1888 “Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” to develop that holistic imaginative and prescient of the universality of the Christian religion.

Bonaventure’s Discount of the Arts to Theology, as a result of he fashions for us how contemplation and motion go collectively, and the way all domains of life are “reducible” or “traceable” again to God. John Webster’s essay “Regina Artium: Theology and the Humanities” in his The Area of the Phrase can also be the one greatest essay on Bonaventure’s textual content and theology’s relation to the opposite sciences that, I feel, anticipates a number of the strikes we see in Bavinck’s Christianity and Science. No area of life is separable from the revelatory stress of God’s Phrase.

What are your prime three books on neo-Calvinism?

Go to the first sources: the 2 essays I discussed above from Bavinck, Bavinck’s Christian Worldview, and Bavinck’s Christianity and Science.

What are you studying about life and following Jesus?

Jesus is nice, even when life goes up and down, and thru the unpredictability of life. I discover myself usually considering of Jonathan Gibson’s great e book for kids The Moon Is All the time Spherical—the moon is all the time spherical, even once we can’t see it. God is all the time good, even once I don’t really feel it, can’t see it, or don’t understand it. What a consolation.