Words of truth and life: seven books

Christian History

Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ

T.C. Schmidt
Oxford University Press, 336 pages

T.C. Schmidt’s Josephus and Jesus is a thrilling gift for Christians, offering robust historical evidence for the historicity of Jesus and the authenticity of the New Testament writings about Him. Freely accessible as a PDF, this work transforms the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum into a cornerstone for defending the Gospel accounts. The text confirms Jesus as a historical figure—a wise man, miracle-worker, and crucified leader whose followers persisted—offering Christians the earliest non-Christian testimony to Christ’s life, documented just decades after the Crucifixion. Contrary to skeptics’ claims of Christian tampering, Schmidt demonstrates the authenticity of the Testimonium, a first-century passage in Antiquities of the Jews. Most exciting for believers, Schmidt reveals Josephus likely knew Sanhedrin members involved in Jesus’ trial, making the Testimonium a near-primary source. This bolsters the Gospels’ reliability, showing a Jewish historian corroborating Christ’s crucifixion under Pilate. Schmidt’s appraisal of Jesus’ extraordinary deeds and resurrection in light of contemporary reports strengthens our confidence in the historical reality of Christ’s miracles and victory over death. Endorsed by major scholars in academia, this accessible book equips evangelicals to proclaim the historical Jesus with boldness. Josephus and Jesus is a must-read, affirming Christ as the undeniable truth of history and faith. —A.S. Ibrahim

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Theology

The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics

Collin Hansen, Skyler R. Flowers, & Ivan Mesa, eds.
Zondervan, 224 pages

Tim Keller’s approach to preaching and persuasive presentation of the Christian faith to a skeptical world has inspired this book’s contributors. They seek to emphasize the utility of Keller’s approach to defending Christianity as an effective form of “preevangelism,” preparing hearts and minds in a post-­Christian world to more clearly perceive the gospel as the most satisfying answer to life’s problems. The book focuses on the theoretical aspect of cultural apologetics, and it also explores the disposition and motivation of cultural apologetics as fundamentally evangelical, focusing primarily on helping individuals come to know the fullness of joy in Christ rather than simply vindicating Biblical truths for their own sake. What is most refreshing about these essays is their insistence on time­liness and applicability. The authors consider the various contexts for cultural apologetics, stretching from the church itself to the neighborhood and the workplace. Trying to decide how best to present the faith to a diverse world can quickly become overwhelming. Thankfully, each of the contributors appreciates the importance of what must remain central when trying to explain Christianity to anyone: It’s the ultimate story that best depicts our greatest needs, which can be met only in the divine drama consummated in Christ alone. —Flynn Evans

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Literary Fiction

To Go On Living

Narine Abgaryan
Plough, 220 pages

Berd is a small Armenian town near the border of Azerbaijan. This collection of 31 linked short stories focuses on Berd’s inhabitants and how they fared when the decades-long war between the two countries reached their area. Each family in each story has been touched by loss. Loss of homes. Loss of fathers and sons. Loss of mothers and daughters. Despite the losses, those who remain find a way to keep living in the shadow of violence. Abgaryan’s prose is quiet and understated with a beauty that complements Berd’s old-world pastoral existence and highlights the Armenian suffering. The stories contain few direct descriptions of the horrors of war. Instead we see the characters grappling with the aftermath of conflict, either searching for a way forward or staring into the abyss of grief. Abgaryan writes with a bracing moral clarity. Her work contains no prevarication over questions of whether both sides are to blame. Azerbaijanis shattered the tranquility of Berd, and she testifies to her people’s pain. But even more importantly, she testifies to their resilience. —Collin Garbarino

Political History

The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission To Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature

Charlie English
Random House, 384 pages

Charlie English’s The CIA Book Club reveals a remarkable Cold War operation. The CIA smuggled banned books across the Iron Curtain to undermine Communist regimes. This book centers on 1980s Poland. Official CIA files remain classified, but English reconstructs Operation QRHELPFUL through interviews with dissidents, publishers, and resistance figures. He chronicles how sophisticated smuggling networks put books by Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, and others into the hands of intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain. Polish underground publisher Mirosław Chojecki emerges as a key figure. So does Mazovia Weekly editor Helena Łuczywo. Imported literature became powerful resistance tools. English argues books proved more effective than traditional espionage. They eroded Communist legitimacy from within. Smuggled literature provided “fresh air” to imprisoned minds. The operation contributed to Solidarity’s rise and ultimately helped topple the Soviet Empire. English combines thorough investigation with compelling storytelling, illustrating how cultural warfare succeeded where military action failed. Essentially, smuggling books into Eastern Europe rewired thought from within. The story is more than a historic account. In many ways, it’s a warning. The same battles over truth, control, and resistance rage on. Only the platforms have changed. —John Mac Ghlionn

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Practical Theology

The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

Joe Rigney
Canon Press, 164 pages

Christians must embody the virtue of compassion if they want to be Christ-like, but this book highlights two key ways we tend to miss the mark: being deficiently compassionate and being excessively compassionate. Rigney defines excessive compassion as empathy. He argues that we commit the sin of empathy when we allow the negative emotions of other people to “overthrow other ­virtues, such as charity, honesty, and ­justice.” Some readers might dismiss the book based on its title and definition of empathy, but Rigney is preeminently concerned about the phenomena in which the fear of man leads to infidelity in parents, pastors, and church leaders. When secular therapists and doctors ask, “Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?” Rigney calls this “a hostage situation, filled with manipulation.” This book aims to add steel to the spine of those who want to walk in fear of the Lord without undue regard for what anyone has to say about it. —Seth Troutt

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Fiction

My Beloved

Jan Karon
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 432 pages

Jan Karon has proved for decades that cozy, Christian novels don’t have to be didactic sermons in fiction form. My Beloved, Karon’s 15th book in the Mitford series, begins in November as retired Father Tim anxiously ponders a Christmas gift for his wife Cynthia. He decides on a sincere, intimate love letter and addresses it to his “Beloved.” It’s a sweet gesture, but then the letter goes missing, and no one can identify who it was intended for. Even though it wasn’t meant for them, the letter imparts profound lessons to the neighbors who read it. As characters agonize over things like how to avoid overdoing the ­holiday carbs and carving spoon racks, My Beloved has plenty of the inflated, small-town drama that Mitford readers have long loved. The book doesn’t spend much time on backstory, so those new to the series may have trouble keeping up. There’s some mild profanity, a discussion of suicide, and one character’s brief admission that she might be gay. My Beloved doesn’t include any of the sermons that main character Father Tim is known for. But, as Karon told me in an interview, “The book is the sermon.” —Bekah McCallum

Theology

Making It Plain: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church

Drew G.I. Hart
Herald Press, 240 pages

Making It Plain reads like a manifesto. Hart writes with passion and urgency, but also with a narrowness that distorts the faith he seeks to renew. From the first page, he frames “mainstream Christianity” as nothing more than MAGA sloganeering—anti-BLM, anti-LGBTQ, pro-birth but anti-family. This caricature sets the stage. Faithfulness, for Hart, is measured by progressive policy commitments. Disagree, and you’ve failed Christ. Here lies the central flaw: The gospel becomes activism, and salvation becomes social programs. Hart judges the Christian life by one’s alignment with movements of the moment, and he dismisses what he calls “liberation-of-the-soul Christianity.” Accepting Christ, he says, isn’t enough. Faith must manifest in structural change. The Christian life truly involves more than private piety, but Hart sets up a false choice: either personal salvation or social transformation. History shows otherwise. John Wesley preached conversion and fought slavery. William Wilberforce opposed the slave trade precisely because of his reborn conscience. Hart reduces the tension to a binary and, in doing so, separates the gospel from its foundation: reconciliation to God through Christ. The Church’s mission will always outlast political fashions. Christ’s kingdom doesn’t rise or fall on the sound bites of the age. Justice matters. Righteousness matters. But they flow from the cross, not the other way around. Hart gets this backward. And that makes all the difference. —J.M.G.

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.