Resources from the Trinity Forum
The Oracle of the Dog
By G. K. Chesterton
Foreword by P. Douglas Wilson
(2008)Discussion Guide Included
A Father Brown mystery story that addresses themes of character, listening, and false assumptions.
This entertaining short story is among the best of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries. In this case, by helping an eyewitness see his own evidence in a different light, the priest-detective solves the murder of Colonel Druce without leaving his desk. Common sense, Chesterton shows us, is not so common as we wish, and the story prompts us to take a fresh look at the assumptions that can cloud our vision.
The Reading features a Foreword by Senior Fellow Doug Wilson, whose career has focused on developing senior executive talent. Doug looks at lessons we can draw from the story, and particularly Father Brown’s method of questioning, for developing our own character, and fostering character in others, by learning truly to hear what others have to say.
Fiennes stared still more. “But you told me before that my feelings about the dog were all nonsense, and the dog had nothing to do with it.”
“The dog had everything to do with it,” said Father Brown, “as you’d have found out if you’d only treated the dog as a dog, and not as God Almighty judging the souls of men.”
The Reading includes a group discussion guide and suggestions for further reading. The outer cover of the booklet is slate gray with gold foil lettering.
Category: Featured Readings (No. 48)
The Rise of Global Civil Society
Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up
By Don Eberly
(Encounter Books, 2008)
A sweeping and hopeful overview of the extraordinary new forces that are prying open closed societies and cultivating democratic norms across the globe.
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The Delusion of Disbelief
Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness
By David Aikman
(SaltRiver/Tyndale, 2008)
Aikman offers a reasoned response to four writers at the forefront of today’s anti-faith movement: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.
250 pages.
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Prayers for People under Pressure
By Jonathan Aitken
(Crossway, 2008)
A practical spiritual handbook.
224 pages, paperback.
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The Case for Civility
And Why Our Future Depends on It
By Os Guinness
(HarperOne, 2008)
A proposal for restoring civility in America as a way to foster civility around the world.
In a world torn apart by religious extremism on the one side and a strident secularism on the other, no question is more urgent than how we live with our deepest differences—especially our religious and ideological differences. Guinness makes a passionate plea to end the polarization of American politics and culture that threatens to reverse the principles our founders set into motion and that have long preserved liberty, diversity, and unity in this country.
Guinness takes on the contemporary threat of the excesses of the Religious Right and the secular Left, arguing that we must find a middle ground between privileging one religion over another and attempting to make all public expression of faith illegal. Guinness puts forth a vision of a new, practical “civil and cosmopolitan public square” that speaks not only to America’s immediate concerns but to the long-term interests of the republic and the world.
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Brain, Mind and Soul in the Theological Psychology of Donald Mackay, 1922-1987
The Intellectual Legacy of a Brain Physicist
This work seeks to present a Post-Cartesian metaphysical anthropology that is consistent with both contemporary philosophy and Reformed Evangelical Christian Theology. It does so by examining the intellectual legacy of Donald M. MacKay, arguing that his concept of complementary descriptions leads us to a deeper understanding of both modern neurophysiology and the Christian hope for personal life beyond the grave. Covering a wide range of topics from the history of philosophy and theology to logic, the philosophy of language, information theory, freedom and determinism, and the philosophy of mind, this work attempts to present an updated form of the school of thought Donald MacKay founded and ambitiously named ‘Comprehensive Realism’. 352 pages, hardcover.By David Norman
(Edwin Mellen Press, 2008)
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Awaken the Dragon
A Novel
Part of the Richard Ireton series, this novel follows his investigation of a missing American in Hong Kong.By David Aikman
(B&H Books, 2008)
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Sovereignty
God, State, and Self
By Jean Bethke Elshtain
(Basic Books, 2008)
Elshtain examines the origins and meanings of “sovereignty” as it relates to the ways we attempt to explain our world: God, state, and self.
Examining the early modern ideas of God which formed the basis for the modern sovereign state, Elshtain carries her research from theology and philosophy into psychology, showing that political theories of state sovereignty fuel contemporary understandings of sovereignty of the self. As the basis of sovereign power shifts from God, to the state, to the self, Elshtain uncovers startling realities often hidden from view. Her thesis consists in nothing less than a thorough-going rethinking of our intellectual history through its keystone concept.
Based on her 2005–06 Gifford Lectures, this book is the culmination of over thirty years of critically applauded work in feminism, international relations, political thought, and religion and could open new ground for our understanding of our own culture and its past, present, and future.
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Faith-Based Diplomacy Trumping Realpolitik
This book looks at five intractable conflicts and explores the possibility of drawing on religion as a force for peace, building upon the insights of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft.By Douglas M. Johnston
(Oxford University Press, 2008)
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The Historical Foundations of World Order
The Tower and the Arena
A detailed and insightful account of the history of international law.By Douglas M. Johnston
(Hotei Publishing, 2008)
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Flesh-and-Blood Jesus
Learning to Be Fully Human from the Son of Man
By Dan Russ
(Baker Books, 2008)
Dan Russ helps readers get to know Jesus Christ more fully through reflecting on his humanity.
It’s easy for most Christians to accept the Jesus who walked on water and rose from the dead. But what about the Jesus who got angry, doubted, struggled with fears, and faced tension with his mother? Flesh-and-Blood Jesus carefully examines the humanity of Jesus throughout his childhood, adulthood, death, and resurrection, exploring themes such as frailty, the need for companionship, feasting, dying, living with wounds, and responding to authority. By delving into areas of Jesus’s life that are often overlooked, you will emerge with a deeper understanding of how Jesus embraced his humanity. And you will learn how to embrace your own humanity with all its messiness and joy.
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Ex Tenebris
By Russell Kirk
Foreword by Vigen Guroian
(2007)Discussion Guide Included
“Ex Tenebris” is a ghostly tale by Russell Kirk with a Foreword by Senior Fellow Vigen Guroian.
Russell Kirk (1918–1994) was a leading social critic, thinker, and writer best known for his work to define and energize the conservative movement in the United States with such books as The Roots of American Order and The Conservative Mind. But he also wrote fiction, including novels and several short stories, mostly gothic tales of horror and suspense; he won the 1977 World Fantasy Award for short fiction. Dr. Guroian’s edition of Kirk’s collected short stories, Ancestral Shadows, was released in 2004.
“Ex Tenebris,” an early Kirk story, tells the tale of elderly Mrs. Oliver, who retires to a cottage in the now-abandoned English village of her childhood. She is harassed by the local planning officer until someone emerges from the shadows to intervene on her behalf. This story will amuse you—and perhaps cause the hairs to rise on the back of your neck—and will leave you thinking about architecture, tradition, what human beings really want, and how best to help our neighbors.
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A Practical View of Real Christianity
By William Wilberforce
Foreword by Chuck Stetson
(2007)Discussion Guide Included
This Reading is an Executive Summary of A Practical View of Real Christianity by William Wilberforce with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson.
William Wilberforce is justly honored for his work to end the Atlantic slave trade. Less well known is the second of his “great objects”—the transformation of culture, which Wilberforce knew was a prerequisite for abolition.
With the summer 2007 Trinity Forum Reading, we join the celebration of the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade with an executive summary of Wilberforce’s electrifying 1797 manifesto on the Christian life and its role in society.
A Practical View of Real Christianity (to use its short title) was a best-seller for fifty years and contributed directly to the Second Great Awakening. Our edition is abridged and with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson, who is, among other things, a Manhattan investment banker, chair of the Wilberforce Central alliance, chair of the Bible Literacy Project, and producer of the upcoming documentary film on Wilberforce, The Better Hour.
The Reading focuses on the chapters Wilberforce himself emphasized as particularly critical for leaders. In a letter to his friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, Wilberforce wrote,
I am not unreasonable enough to ask you to read my book: but as it is more likely that when you are extremely busy than at any other time you may take it up for ten minutes, let me recommend it to you in that case to open on the last section of the fourth chapter, wherein you will see wherein the religion which I espouse differs practically from the common orthodox system. Also the sixth chapter has almost a right to a perusal, being the basis of all politics, and particularly addressed to such as you.
Stetson’s Foreword gives us an overview of the book in its historic setting, addressing its themes, influence, and the personal habits and faith of Wilberforce that made it such a powerful force for cultural transformation in his day—and in ours.
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A Spiritual Pilgrimage
By Malcolm Muggeridge
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(2007)Discussion Guide Included.
A life in perspective, offering questions to consider and a path worth exploring.
This reading by Malcolm Muggeridge features two chapters from Conversion: The Spiritual Journey of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim—his final autobiography—introduced by Alonzo L. McDonald, Senior Fellow and Founding Chairman of The Trinity Forum.
Muggeridge (1903–1990) was, at various points in his life, a teacher, journalist, soldier-spy, foreign correspondent, television personality, pilgrim, and public voice for Jesus. McDonald summarizes the story of a full life—often excessive, generally unconventional, with adventures on every continent—and presents Muggeridge to us as a twentieth-century “everyman” following a path as old as Solomon’s in Ecclesiastes.
Muggeridge’s Conversion is an autobiography written largely in the third person and in a style that evokes Augustine’s Confessions. In it, he looks back on his life from the perspective of a late convert to the Christian faith, retelling his journey and some of the lessons learned. Our selections focus on his conversion as well as on his deeply moving and provocative meditations on the prospect of death. This brief Reading offers an opportunity to step back and see one life in full perspective, which may offer us not only questions to consider but a glimpse of a path we might want to explore.
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Billy Graham
His Life and Influence
By David Aikman
(Thomas Nelson, 2007)
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