Ham, Ken & Greg Hall. Already Compromised. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2011.

It wasn’t all that long ago I finished reading Ken Ham’s book, Already Gone. Already Gone is about Christian students who grew up in evangelical churches who are leaving the church at alarming rates. Answers in Genesis partnered with Britt Beemer and did a though statistical study to figure out why this was happening. Already Compromised is much like that original study, but it is a study of Christian colleges and the compromise taking place in those institutions whom parents are trusting their children with.

The basis for such a study is that “when parents and students willingly submit themselves to a teacher, accepting him or her as authoritative, accepting what he or she says as truth, they will become like that teacher” (p. 19). I think Ham is spot on with this idea. Much of the way I think, study, and apply theology to my life has been shaped by those I have learned from.

The book is full of facts, figures, and explanations. Many of them are helpful for understanding the place of colleges and universities, but I found many of the numbers sound similar to how students answered questions in Already Gone. Some of the numbers that stood out to me the most are:

• 49% of those surveyed believe in an old earth
• Only 24% of the 312 people interviewed actually answered all the questions correctly
• Almost 25% of those in the theology and Bible departments don’t believe Gen 1 and 2 are literal accounts of creation
• Science departments tended to be more biblical in their understanding of creation than the theology and bible departments

One of the things that was uncovered in this study and helpful to understand is that people don’t always say what they mean. So a good level of discernment needs to be exercised in actually understanding what a person means when they say something in particular. Ham uses the example of “conservative evangelical” to demonstrate that we don’t even know what this means anymore. Postmodernism and the rejection of absolute truth has fueled a culture of what Ham identifies as “newspeak.” Some of the questions were fashioned in a way that they should show similar results. For example, they asked “Do you believe in the flood of Noah’s day?” 84% of those in religion departments (theology, Bible) said yes. When asked if they believed the flood was worldwide, local, or nonliteral, 12.3% said nonliteral. One would have expected this percentage to match the 16% that didn’t believe there was a flood. So do people really even know what they think they know?

There is so much more in this book! I would highly recommend picking up this book and diving in. Ken Ham and the folks at AIG have done a tremendous service to the church in pulling this data together. Part of what they are doing with this study is launching a new website that has a list of creation colleges. You can also find the schools that were a part of this study. As of this writing the website is not yet live, but should be shortly. You can find it by clicking over to www.creationcolleges.org.

As a person who is prepping to teach a course on the theology of creation this fall, this book couldn’t be more timely. At the root of the argument is biblical authority—and biblical authority is always worth fighting for.

Lawson, Steven. Pillars of Grace. Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2010.

Steven Lawson continues to impress with this second volume, following after his first volume Foundations of Grace. This series is called “A Long Line of Godly Men.” According to Lawson this series purpose is as follows,

It is designed to demonstrate that those figures who were most used in the early and medieval church, to one degree or another, held to the truths of sovereign grace that were later taught in the Reformation. From the first century through the sixteenth, the dominant figures in the church were strong men committed to this strong teaching. That is the witness of history and the central premise of this book.

I have yet to see any work from Reformation Trust that has been disappointing. At the core of this book Lawson is taking a survey through church history showing that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation is not merely the idea of a one man, but that these doctrines have long been taught through the church.  This book covers a period of history from AD 100 to 1564, when Calvin went to be with his Lord.

Lawson’s first book in this series, Foundations of Grace, was a tour through the Bible looking at the sovereignty of God in salvation. In this newer work, Pillars of Grace, he surveys twenty-three different people starting with Clement of Rome all the way up to Calvin himself. The church fathers, and church history in general, are frequently ignored in todays contemporary discussions. I continue to find greater appreciation for church history, especially volumes like Lawson’s—who makes it so easy to step through history with a biblical theme.

The book moves in this order through church history laying out how each of these men embraced the biblical truth of the sovereignty of God in salvation. The men that you will read about are: Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian of Carthage, Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil of Caeserea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Isidore of Seville, Gottschalk of Orbais, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, John Hus, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, William Tyndale, Heinrich Bullinger, and last but certainly not least, John Calvin.

Overall the book has the feel of individual essays in a festschrift. They are easily read, highly educating, and distinctly biblical. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone wanting to dig deeper into church history or into the doctrines of grace. Steven Lawson has served the church well by taking the time to study, compile, and ultimately write such a great volume.

FTC Rhetoric: I do not receive payment for my book reviews. I do sometimes receive free review and giveaway copies from authors, publishers, and publicists. My first responsibility is to my readers, therefore, I am committed to honest reviews.