“Pocket Dictionary” Series from IVP

InterVarsity Press has done something that publishers love to do: find a niche and fill it with a book series. Who hasn’t heard of the “Dummies” series of books (IDG), for example? (I pitched one myself back when I was writing computer books years ago and almost landed it). Well, InterVarsity has found a nifty little niche with their “Pocket Dictionary” series. Check out their list at www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=2700. They kindly sent me three for this review.

Pocket Dictionary of Church History

This a handy little volume by Nathan Feldmeth. It’s one of the few dictionaries one might actually just sit down and read straight through. It’s also, of course, a quick reference for people, places, events, movements, and ideas that have occurred through the ages. With more than 300 definitions, it includes: terms from ad fontes to via media; leaders and theologians from Abelard to Zwingli; “isms” from Arminianism to Unitarianism; places and events from the Azusa Street Mission to the White Horse Inn; and councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. It also includes a nice chronology of the Church History on the back pages.

Picking a few of my personal interests that I’ve researched and written on, I found pretty good summaries of Athanasius, Calvin, Cranmer, Huss, Luther, Machen, Savonarola, and Tyndale, but only fair ones of Finney (soft on his horrendous weaknesses), Gottschalk (uses the unfortunate term “double predestination”) and Wyclife (omits that his remains were dug up and burned). Appallingly, Spurgeon is not even mentioned while Barth, Freud, Plato, and Billy Graham are!

A few other oddities include that while “dispensationalism,” “covenant theology,” “fundamentalism” and “liberalism” do appear, there is no entry for other movements, such as: reformation (shocking!), ecumenism, evangelicalism, modernism, neo-orthodoxy, charismatic movement, and others. This is only a 150-page book (4-1/4 x 7 inches), so another 25, or even 50, pages could have easily been added.

Bottom line, for only $8.00 retail, this is a handy volume. Even with its weaknesses, it does a fairly good job as a quick reference or basic overview of Church History.

(In a future post, I will review and recommend one of my favorite Church History texts.)

Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition

There is no question as to the richness of the Reformed tradition of Christianity. Whether one is reformed or not, he cannot ignore its influence and critical relationship to biblical doctrine.

Written by Kelly Kapic and Wesley Vander Lugt, this excellent little reference provides quick access to more than 300 entries, including: Latin terms such as ad fontes and the five solas; theologians from Calvin to Torrance; confessions such as the Belgic and Westminster; doctrines such as atonement and sanctification; and apologists such as Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van Til. It, too, like the above, could actually be read through at one’s leisure.

Other critical terms covered in this reference are: Arminianism, Baptists (Reformed), Calvinism, common grace, grace, lapsarian views, doctrines of grace, federal vision, Pelagianism, presuppositionalism, Puritanism, Reformed Theology, TULIP, and of course all the key individuals.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the “dispensationalism” entry; while containing the typical Reformed rhetoric of its introducing “discontinuity into the biblical story,” it is honest enough to add that even some Reformed theologians are dispensational. This pleased me since I am mildly dispensational but also reformed (little “r”), not Reformed (capital “R”).

In many ways, this volume is a must-have companion to the above book. What is not in one is often in the other. For example, while “ecumenism,” “evangelicalism,” “neo-orthodoxy,” “reformation,” and “Spurgeon” are not in the above, they are all here. In fact, IMHO, instead of separate volumes at $8.00 each, these two should be a single volume for $12.00. Nonetheless, I recommend it.

Pocket Dictionary for the Study of New Testament Greek

Penned by Matthew DeMoss, there is only one word for this book: excellent. Now, to be clear, this is not a dictionary of Greek vocabulary (as some users have misunderstood). Rather, it is dictionary of the technical terms of the language. For example, you can quickly lookup “case” or any one of the cases, “tense” or any one of them, and so forth. If I may interject, there could have been a little more concerning the “definite article.”

This is not only great for the beginner but also for those whose seminary days are past and they just need a quick reminder. For example: “I just can’t remember the contrast between the perfect and imperfect”; or, “What is that pesky predicate nominative?”; or “What’s that Granville Sharp Rule again?” or, “Don’t even get me started on all those genitives!”

I was also pleasantly surprised by the usually non-partisan definition of terms related to textual criticism, such as: Byzantine text type, codexes, conflation, critical text, eclectic text, majority text, and Textus Receptus. For the most part, it is just the facts with no agenda, although bias does show through in the pericope adulterae (Jn. 7:53–8:11) and the Johannine Comma (1 Jn. 5:7-8).

Because of my passion for the critical importance of the biblical languages for proper “exegesis” (yes, that’s in there, along with “eisegesis”), I highly recommend this little reference.