On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers.
I asked Hans Madueme—professor of theological studies at Covenant College and author of Defending Sin: A Response to the Challenges of Evolution and the Natural Sciences—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, recommended books on creation, the last great book he read, and more.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
I’m rereading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business in preparation for an essay I was asked to write on the post-truth turn in the U.S. I’m also working through Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. In terms of fiction, I recently finished James McBride’s engrossing The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, and I’m currently reading Fredrik Backman’s whimsical Anxious People.
What are your favorite fiction books?
There are too many to answer in any meaningful way! Maybe I’ll mention a few spanning different genres that I’ve enjoyed in recent years.
Anything by David Mitchell or Lee Smith. Cixin Liu’s trilogy The Three-Body Problem was magisterial (and I’m avoiding the Netflix adaptation because it can’t possibly match the genius of the books). I have fond memories of reading Anthony Doerr’s brilliant Cloud Cuckoo Land. I would also mention William Kent Krueger’s Ordinary Grace, which isn’t a “religious” novel (despite its title) but just a fantastic story; his follow-up, This Tender Land, is also captivating and reminiscent of Leif Enger’s classic Peace like a River. Finally, I recently discovered Peter Heller’s novels, especially The River and The Guide—I’m not an outdoorsy guy, but Heller is unmatched in delivering rip-roaring thrillers with nature as the main setting.
What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?
It’s been years since I read a good biography. The ones that come to mind are of Jonathan Edwards. While several fine biographies of Edwards have come out over the past decade or so, as a younger Christian I was influenced by Iain Murray’s Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography and later by George Marsden’s Jonathan Edwards: A Life. It’s cliché to say this, but Edwards inspired me to pursue spiritual depth and seriousness in the Christian life.
I should also mention Murray’s two-volume biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones—everyone recommended those volumes back when I left medicine to pursue seminary training. It helped to know that someone of his stature didn’t think it was a crazy thing to do!
What are some books you regularly reread and why?
I often revisit Klaus Scholder’s The Birth of Modern Critical Theology: Origins and Problems of Biblical Criticism in the Seventeenth Century (translated from the original German). The story he tells uncovers much of what I find unsatisfying about modern theology. And when I want to read dogmatic theology written beautifully and pastorally, it’s hard to surpass Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics.
What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?
When I was first learning how to preach, John Piper’s 1990 book The Supremacy of God in Preaching was immensely helpful. His notion of “expository exultation” transformed my sense of what preachers are trying to do in the pulpit (I gather he published a book with that title in 2018).
And when it comes to the actual work of shepherding the people of God, I’m thankful for my friend Bill Massey who had me and other elders at our church read Timothy Witmer’s book The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church. While I will always fall short of what Witmer calls us to, his book woke me up to what it really looks like for elders to serve the church.
What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?
Rather than trot out one of the usual suspects, I nominate Bo Giertz’s little-known Hammer of God. It’s a Lutheran novel with an unusually perceptive understanding of the gospel. If you know it, you probably remember the first time reading this remarkable book.
What’s the last great book you read?
Abigail Favale’s The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory comes to mind. I read this book with my students in a course I recently taught at Covenant College. We devoured it; we discussed it; we debated it—in short, we loved it. Favale’s book is a well-written and insightful work, illuminating many baffling features of today’s upside-down world.
What books on creation and evolution have you found helpful or insightful?
For me, most of the books in this category are written by historians. For example, I’ve enjoyed David N. Livingstone’s scholarship on historical perspectives on evolution and human origins. Here I would mention his Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought and, more recently, his Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins. Similarly, I highly recommend the definitive monograph on the Old Princetonians and evolution: Bradley Gundlach’s Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845–1929.
I have also appreciated the work by the Australian historian Peter Harrison, especially The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. Speaking of Harrison, one of his students wrote an excellent book on the early chapters of Genesis: The Days of Creation: A History of Christian Interpretation of Genesis 1:1–2:3.
While I don’t always agree with these historians, I’m grateful to them for giving us a deeper and wider context to creation-evolution debates.
On the theological front, I should mention one monograph that significantly shaped my thinking. It came out decades ago from an obscure publisher: Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Biblical Higher Criticism and the Defense of Infallibilism in 19th Century Britain (1987). This essay was Cameron’s published dissertation. Don’t be put off by the book’s ugly font; its insights still apply to current debates about evolution and Scripture.
What are you learning about life and following Jesus?
As I get older, I keep coming back to the patience of our Heavenly Father, that he puts up with blockheads like us—like me! As it says in Lamentations 3:22–23 (NIV), “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (see also Ex. 34:6). The Lord’s patience with me is beyond reckoning.
I’m ashamed to say I don’t have enough of that patience with people in my own life, but I need it. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will keep producing more of that fruit in me.