• Light in Scots' darkness
• The Commentary
  You never know...
• The 12 myths of Christmas
  Norman Wells guides us through the tinsel to the truth
• The Book that made your world
  How the Bible created the soul of Western civilisation
• Take up your cross and follow me
  Don Carson at Grace Baptist Mission's 150th
• Alcoholism: best left to experts?
  Paul Witter asks if the church can still help drunkards
• Finding a new pastor?
• John Martin - Apocalypse
  An exhibition at Tate Britain
• Crossing the culture
  Relatively easy love?
• The Music Exchange
  Regulative principle
• Unapologetic Christianity
  Soft-edge apologetics
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Do you love th YP?
• Letter from America
  Occupied?
• Notes to growing Christians
  Redeeming Christians

other articles

• The Minister's Wife - An edited extract
• The adventures of Tintin
• Machine Gun Preacher
• The human condition - Secular shelf life
• Word and Spirit
• Did Jesus really die? - Or did someone else die in his place?
• The secret of contentment
• The incredible journey - Christmas from Genesis to Jesus
• Ten myths about Calvinism
• Presence, power and promise - The role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament
• Faces of Christ
• Hearing the Spirit - Knowing the Father through the Son
• The pastor as scholar and the scholar as pastor
• John MacArthur - Servant of the Word and flock
• God the peacemaker - How atonement brings shalom
• Good news about injustice - A witness of courage in a hurting world

Confidence in Scripture

HEARING THE SPIRIT
Knowing the Father through the Son
By Christopher Ash
Christian Focus Publications. 171 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 845 507 251

One of the benefits of not judging a book by its cover is that you may actually read it!

My advice, straight off the bat, is to ignore the title cover and read on. This a book about the way we understand the Bible, how we hear the Trinitarian God speak definitively in Jesus and authoritatively in Scripture.

As such, it is an important contribution to a key debate which continues to shape the landscape and culture of evangelicalism.

It demonstrates how Christ, through his words, that is the New Testament record of him, and by his Spirit, continues to reveal the Father. Mainly using material from John’s Gospel, the author shows himself as familiar with Martin Luther as he is with Rob Bell, adept at interacting with postmodern theories of textual interpretation and unafraid of taking on such theological luminaries as N.T. Wright and I. Howard Marshall.

It’s rare to read a book which, within the span of a single page, can quote Chrysostom, the New Atheists and Gotthold Lessing without becoming superficial! So you come away positively with a sense that, throughout the entire piece, the author is both living in the 21st century and yet knows how we got here. Helped by study and discussion questions at the end of each chapter, Hearing the Spirit, might be a useful resource for small group study.

It would certainly give those who preach the word publicly a stimulating reminder of the challenge of hearing and proclaiming the message of the Bible with confidence and dependence on the Spirit.

Peter Baker,
senior pastor, Highfields Church, Cardiff