Casebolt’s book, Child of the Apocalypse: Ellen White, brings a new hypothe-sis to the field of Ellen White studies by claiming that twelve-year-old Ellen Harmon was not consciously prevaricating but was consistently wrong and deluded in an objectively clinical sense. While other Ellen White critics have doubted her genuineness and t…[Read more]

It seems a legitimate question whether this autobiographical book merits a review in Spes Christiana. It was written by an academic but that, in itself, does not mean that the book can be classified as “academic.” Nonetheless, I believe the book is of real interest to historians of Adventism – not primarily because of author’s role in recent…[Read more]

Writing Adventist history from an organizational and formal perspective is very ambitious. In general Protestant mission texts, this is a rarity. In Adventist circles, I have not come across any attempt to write a monograph about the involvement of the General Conference and its secretariat in the Christian missionary enterprise. Perhaps Barry…[Read more]

Mark Young has written an important book on the centrality of the gospel for the future of theological education in evangelicalism in the United States. The book was published in January 2022 by Eerdmans. It contains three major sections, the first entitled ‘what matters,’ the second ‘past matters’ and the third ‘future matters.’ The book is wel…[Read more]

There is not a plethora of books in the area of biblical studies dedicated exclu-sively to the topic of the Satan, and even among those that have recently emerged, most simply serve as a recapitulation of the available information. Ryan Stokes’ new monograph however changes this, boldly suggesting a new hypothesis regarding the meaning of the w…[Read more]

According to the promotion text on the jacket, Jehu Hanciles’ book provides “a magisterial sweep through 1500 years of Christian history.” The distin-guished church historian Philip Jenkins agrees, and, in his foreword, credits Hanciles with redrawing “the historical maps by which we understand the Christian story.” Jenkins just regrets that he d…[Read more]

In der Einleitung seines Werkes weist der Autor auf den zweiten Artikel der Glaubensüberzeugungen der Kirche der Siebenten-Tags-Adventisten aus dem Jahr 1980 hin: „Es ist ein Gott: Vater, Sohn und Heiliger Geist, eine Ein-heit von drei gleichermaßen ewigen Personen.“ Doch dieser Satz stehe bei manchen Adventisten so sehr in der Kritik, dass ganze…[Read more]

This is a very spiritual book. As a sequel to the author’s volume titled Longing for God: A Bible-Prayer Journal (Pacific Press, 2017), it continues its personal character and focus on practical piety. It is also a book with a personal back-ground. Hasel recounts numerous details of the tragic loss of his wife Ulrike, who died of cancer, and his s…[Read more]

What Richard Rice has essentially achieved in The Future of Open Theism is to appraise the prominent issues in the development of the open theism dis-course and to chart new paths for its future, especially since the publishing of The Openness of God twenty-eight years ago. Rice, a leading voice of the open theism theology, sums up its major…[Read more]

This book of 398 pages is a collection of papers presented at the Third International Symposium of the Institute of Adventist Studies at Friedensau Adventist University, held on April 23‒26, 2018. The book, published in 2020, gives a rich tour d’horizon of Adventist life on the European continent. In the global Adventist village, there might be…[Read more]

Right from the outset, it has to be said, that Divine Attributes is a follow up volume to Peckham’s The Doctrine of God, published last year, which was pitched at the level of an introductory textbook for the study of the doctrine of God. His current volume takes the discussion further into constructive space and as such moves his overall p…[Read more]

This book was born as an answer to an issue raised from the floor at the 2015 General Conference (GC) Session in San Antonio, Texas (pp. 2‒4). The discussion of women’s ordination led to the observation that Seventh-day Adventists are drawing different conclusions from the same Scriptures. In attempts to explain this reality, it was proposed tha…[Read more]

This book is a response to a commission by the officers of the Trans-European Division (TED) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) to take stock of the TED’s history. The occasion was the TED’s ninetieth anniversary (1929‒2019). The goal was to commemorate it and evaluate how the church’s leaders “tried to shape the development of Adventist…[Read more]

This book’s author calls it “an interpretive essay.” Following up on an interest of his which began when he was a seminary student, he wrote it after he retired to Austin, Texas after years of service as Dean at the Berkeley Divinity School. He is active today in Texas as an Episcopalian Priest. The Episcopalian denomination continues the legac…[Read more]

If ecotheology feels like an unfamiliar word, or worse ‒ like a theological fashion statement ‒ it might be good to begin this book by circling it overhead. First, look at the credentials of the editors and contributors. Of the editors, Alan G. Padgett, is Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Kiara A. Jor…[Read more]

Jacques Doukhan is both the author of Genesis and the editor of the Seventh-day Adventist International Bible Commentary. Genesis is the first release of this series and is intended as a model for all subsequent commentaries. Similar to other biblical commentaries, Genesis covers the entire book of Genesis. In this regard, the editors mention two…[Read more]

The Doctrine of God is an introductory textbook aiming to provide a clear and concise introduction to the doctrine of God by addressing some big questions concerning divine attributes and the God-world relationship in mainly recent Christian theology. More precisely the book provides an issue-focused presentation on selected contemporary…[Read more]

John Bolt, an emeritus professor at Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI) and an expert on Calvinism, endorsed James Eglinton’s new biography of Herman Bavinck with these words: “This will be the definitive Bavinck biography for generations.” Time will tell whether Bolt is correct in this assessment, but after reading this fascinating book I tend…[Read more]

Steve Daily, Ph.D., is a former Adventist pastor and chaplain who taught psy-chology at Loma Linda and La Sierra Universities for over twenty years. This is the fourth book by Daily about Seventh-day Adventism and its founder (cf. Adventism for a New Generation [Better Living Publications, 1993]; Prophetic Rift, 2 vols. [Better Living…[Read more]

This published version of Denis Kaiser’s Ph.D.-dissertation is a comprehensive treatment of what the subtitle promises: A thorough analysis of the understanding of divine inspiration in early Seventh-day Adventist history, mainly during the 50 years from 1880 to 1930. The author compiled material from many years of research, collecting even n…[Read more]