In all, I read 100 books in 2022–finishing the last today actually. Same a last year. However, where in 2021 I read 24,746 pages, this year I read 28,232. I think I’ll keep the 100 books, 25,000 pages reading goal. But I do plan to tackle larger works this coming year (more on my reading and writing goals in another post).
Below are the best books I read in 2022 in each of the genres I read most. Some genres have more than others because I read more in some than others or because there just weren’t worthy options in some categories. The entire list comes to 50 (including the honorable mentions).
The top book of each of the categories together make up the best 10 books I read this year. If I was to assign one book as the best I read this year, it’d have to be the first one below.
Theology
Their Rock is not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions, Daniel Strange
I need to do a fuller review. But this is a red pill. Eye opening. Paradigm shifting. Best theology of religions I’ve come across. Not that no other is needed, but all others are lacking apart from this.
The Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards
What is Saving Faith: Reflections of Receiving Christ as a Treasure, John Piper
Reformed Dogmatics Volume I, Prolegomena, Herman Bavinck
Jesus and the God of Classical Theism, Steven J. Duby
Honorable Mention: Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle, Henri Blocher
Biblical studies
What Are Spiritual Gifts?: Rethinking the Conventional View, Kenneth Berding
This book, if Berding is correct and I think he’s convinced me he is, changes everything about the way we generally think about the spiritual gifts. This book would turn most of the churches on the planet completely upside down.
Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Their Complete Truthfulness, John Piper
Counterfeit Miracles, B.B. Warfield
Songs of the Servant: Isaiah's Good News, Henri Blocher
Empty and Evil: The Worship of Other Faiths in 1 Corinthians 8-10 and Today, Mody Keki Rohintan
Honorable Mention: The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, Robert Alter
History
Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church 1536-1609, Scott M. Manetsch
This was a reread and yet it remains one of the most helpful books I have ever read regarding pastoral ministry. It is a dense, slog of a history book and yet the practical value it holds is boundless. It shouldn’t work that way and yet Manetsch has achieved it. I almost put it as my number 1 book in the category below! But, alas, it is a history book.
A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Victoria Smolkin
Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, Alex Ryrie
Ministry/Missions
Workers for Your Joy: The Call of Christ on Christian Leaders, David Mathis
Just phenomenal. Mathis does an excellent job walking through the overseer requirements listed in the pastoral epistles and helpfully fleshes them out. This may now be THE book I give to those aspiring to be pastors.
An Introduction to the Science of Missions, J.H. Bavinck
Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challengers of Pastoral Ministry, Paul David Tripp
Godly Conversation: Rediscovering the Puritan Practice of Conference, Joann J. Jung
The Trellis and the Vine: The Ministry Mind-Shift that Changes Everything, Colin Marshall
Honorable Mention: Preaching with Spiritual Power: Calvin’s Understanding of Word and Spirit in Preaching, Ralph Cunnington
Apologetics
Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence of Early Composition, Jonathan Bernier
If Bernier’s theses stand, the NT was compiled before 70AD. This ought to revolutionize the field of NT studies.
Christian Theology of Science: Reimagining a Theological Vision of Natural Knowledge, Paul Tyson
God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil, Thaddeus Williams
The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation, Charlie Trimm
Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice, Larry Hurtado
Honorable Mention: Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism, Joseph Minich (reread)
Christian Life
Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation, D.A. Carson
Without question the best book I have read on prayer. Carson is simply a gift to the church. A book I will return to the rest of my life.
You Are Not Your own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble
The Bruised Reed, Charles Sibbes
The Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges
Christ our Salvation: Expositions and Proclamations, John Webster
Honorable Mention: Counterfeit Kingdom: The Dangers of New Revelation, New Prophets, and New Age Practices in the Church, Holly Pivec & R. Douglas Geivett
Ethics/Philosophy
The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, Abigail Favale
Oh my. This is a “red pill.” Favale, a former third-wave feminist of the common variety turned Catholic, takes gender ideology to task revealing why it is harmful to women. More importantly, she offers the Christian vision of sex and the body as the most freeing and beautiful in existence because it is the true one.
Awaiting the King: Reforming Political Theology, James K.A. Smith
Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God: The Evidential Force of Divine Encounters, Harold Netland
Human Embryos, Human Beings: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach, Samuel Condic & Maureen Condic
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt
Honorable Mention: War and the Christian Conscience How shall Modern War be Conducted Justly?, Paul Ramsey
Fiction
The Promise, Chaim Potok
If I had my way every seminary student would read this the summer going into their first semester. It largely takes place in a Jewish seminary & the main character is caught in between fundamentalism & academic criticism & seeks a third way. Just exceptional.
It deals w/ other pertinent issues: charting one’s own path while revering one’s teachers, the importance of choices especially in time management, fighting callousness towards those of different perspectives & seeking to understand them, & the value of tradition–to name a few.
Maybe it’s because I’m a relatively fresh seminary grad who attended a progressive Christian college for undergrad and a broadly evangelical one for grad school, but I’m truly blown away by its relevance. It really deserves an entire write up.
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
A History of Loneliness, John Boyne
Stoner, John Williams
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Honorable Mention: All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
Biography/Memoir
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity, Nabeel Qureshi
Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir, Charles Marsh
Miscellaneous
Allah: God in the Qur’an, Gabriel Said Reynolds
An excellent introduction to the somewhat conflicted presentation of Allah in the Qur’an.
In a Vision of the Night: Job, Cormac McCarthy, and the Challenge of Chaos, Philip S. Thomas
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, Norman Ogler
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My Year in Books, 2022
Some really helpful recommendations! All hard copy??