What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
When I was in seminary, I heard a funny story about an event that took place before I got there with the professor’s wives talking to the wives of students at the seminary, since the overwhelming majority of us were male. Most of them were giving the same kind of generic advice that wives would give new wives. Nothing wrong with that advice, but you could hear it anywhere. One wife did give a piece of advice you won’t find in most marriage materials, but it is directly applicable to seminary students’ wives or the wives of anyone in ministry.
“Make peace with the books.”
Yes. If you marry someone in ministry, odds are you will have to deal with a lot of books being around the house. My own wife was so thrilled when I finally got a Kindle because then there would have to be fewer books around the house. Many of my fellow apologists were astounded when Marie Kondo in her Tidying Up series said to ideally have no more than 30 books. (At this, I really wondered if my Preterism might be false and she could be the antichrist.)
We love our books in this field. What do you expect? Naturally, with the rise of the internet, we have several bibliophiles all coming together. Book clubs rise up and people come to discuss what books they love and why. Also, we can discuss what books we don’t like and why. One such club was started by one of our favorite bibliophiles who has come on the show a number of times. Now he wants to tell you about his book club. His name is Rob Bowman and he runs the Apologetics Book Club.
So who is he?
According to his bio:
Robert M. Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. For over ten years (2008–2018) he served as the executive director at the Institute for Religious Research, based in Cedar Springs, Michigan (http://IRR.org). Rob has lectured on biblical studies, religion, and apologetics at Biola University, Cornerstone University, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of over sixty articles and the author or co-author of thirteen books including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski, and Faith Has Its Reasons: Integrative Approaches to Defending the Christian Faith, co-authored with Kenneth D. Boa. His newest book, Jesus’ Resurrection and Joseph’s Visions: Examining the Foundations of Christianity and Mormonism, is forthcoming in late 2019. He holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in biblical studies from Fuller Theological Seminary and South African Theological Seminary. Dr. Bowman is widely regarded as the leading evangelical scholar addressing the uses and interpretations of the Bible by Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/apologeticsbookclub/) and blogs at https://RobertBowman.net.
We’ll be talking about this book club. Why does it exist and why should an apologist join? Why should a man of the book be reading other books? Isn’t the Bible sufficient in itself?
We’ve got the mechanism for uploading podcasts up again and I have a new sound guy who will be starting soon doing work on editing. I hope to be up to date again on episodes soon. Thanks for being a supporter and I hope you’ll keep listening to the Deeper Waters Podcast and leave a positive review on iTunes.
In Christ,
Nick Peters