Some Light Reading Before Bedtime

Yes, that really is a picture of my current night stand (click the picture for a larger version). I realized that a good portion of the library in my office has been migrating to my bedroom over the last few weeks. Is this an indication that I am undergoing a time of deep and intensive study, so as to prompt Festus to declare that my great learning is driving me mad? Unfortunately, no.

The reality is that my reading has been sorta schitzophrenic lately, and I've just been reading small portions of various books as I've tackled different issues of late. Some of those books I've already read, and some I am currently reading but have no plans to read in their entirety (like that thick Turretin book). However, I do plan on reading Dr. Clark's FV book and Venema NPP book all the way through. Anyway, I've been jumping back and forth between books in 'research mode' on a variety of disparate topics, skipping around trying to find relevant treatments. My office library has just over 230 volumes (in the theology section), and I've been gradually plucking them off the bookshelves and curling up with them in bed, only to fall asleep leaving each one on my night stand. Over the past weeks, I haven't bothered to put them back and they just keep piling up. Eventually, they stacked up high enough that it took some effort for me to keep the pile from teetering off to one side, and I thought I should snap a picture of what is essentially a monument to my laziness.

The 'odd man out' in the bunch is the Dr. Laura book. Hey, why not? She's got some really wise things to say for a non-Christian. She's got us guys pegged pretty good, and she has no time for feminism or PC psychobabble, so it gets the rare and coveted common grace thumbs up from me. I'm sure I'll re-gift it as a present for my future wife.

Notice that Peter Leithart's book is precariously in direct contact with Dr. Clark's anti-Federal Vision book. I actually thought I saw Dr. Clark's book levitating, mysteriously, a few centimeters above Leithart's in the middle of the night due to the repulsive theological/magnetic forces contained in the respective volumes.

Also notice that there are 3 versions of the ESV in the stack. So, yes, the votes are in. The ESV has my official seal of approval as Bible of choice. No offense intended to my beloved NASBs.

Now for something completely different....

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The Something That You Really Should Listen To Award, an award that I made up just now, goes to Kim Riddlebarger for his recent series on Francis Schaeffer. For those who don't know, he is a URC pastor at one of our sister churches, and also co-hosts the White Horse Inn radio program. He has been giving an overview of his apologetics at the Christ Reformed Academy in Anaheim, which I have been attending when I can, although he has kindly been making the audio available here.

The best stuff he has had to say actually isn't on Schaeffer himself, but rather on Schaeffer's sources. His discussions of Cornelius VanTil, Old Princeton (especially Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield), and the wars between "traditional" and presuppositional apologetics have been very enlightening. These are worth listening to from beginning to end if you have any interest in apologetics at all. His insights are keen, and he has some very balanced criticisms. He has even put himself in the unpopular place of saying some kind things about Scottish Common Sense. Scandalous!

I knew Dr. Riddlebarger was a good theologian, but I didn't know he knew his way around philosophy and apologetics so well. Turns out that the chap did his doctoral dissertation on B.B. Warfield's apologetics. Oh. That probably explains it.

Category: Blogging Ourselves