New Books! #3

4th year of medical school is somewhat more laid-back than the first three years so I'm planning on getting some good reading in before the start of internship in June. I'm excited to get started on the two most recent titles I picked up:

I'm already about halfway through J.I. Packer's and O.R. Johnston's magisterial introduction to Luther's The Bondage of the Will. This book would have been worth purchasing for the introduction alone. In this introduction I recognize the same passion for truth that I saw in J.I. Packer's In My Place Condemned He Stood. Especially interesting has been reading about the great intellectual humanist Erasmus and his complicated relationship to Luther. One of the most powerful lines I've read in the introduction was penned by Erasmus when Luther went missing after his appearance at the Diet of Worms before Emperor Charles V. Erasmus wrote in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, concerning Luther, "It's all up with that spark of gospel love, that tiny star of gospel light." Packer and Johnston, who I believe to be worthy interpreters, understand Erasmus to be showing genuine regret about what seemed to him to be imminent - the burning of Luther.

I also bought a copy of Pascal's Pensées, a classic I've long wanted to check out. Pensées should give me a good diversion from all the Reformed stuff I've been reading lately.