Book of the Year: Biblical Eschatology by Jonathan Menn

I read a lot of books and most I read to completion are “good” in my estimation…or I wouldn’t bother to read them.

That makes lists like this difficult.

This year my “Book of the Year” is a slam dunk, though.

Biblical Eschatology by Jonathan Menn is a classic...and should be on every pastors reference shelf.

This is the review I wrote for Amazon;

“Like most pastors, I have shelves full of books on various theological topics.

In my little library more than one of those shelves is filled with books on eschatology.

They are going to be yard sale fodder now.

Let’s just cut to the chase…this is the single best volume on eschatology ever written and I truly believe that it will become the standard teaching text on the subject in institutions of higher Christian learning.

It also should be required reading by all who believe that eschatology is a vital component of their faith…which should be all of us.

This book is comprehensive…it covers all of the doctrines and biblical texts associated with eschatology and the author has read and interacts with the differing positions on them honestly and fairly.

As a result, the book comes in at over 600 pages but every one of them is valuable in understanding the place of eschatology in the overall biblical narrative.

Great theology books are ones where the author has a clear position, but he is also well read and respectful of what others have written and what other traditions embrace.

Too often, books of this nature make a compelling case for one position, but do so at the expense of accurate representation of opposing views.

Not so with this one.

Menn is amillennial, but he seems to have read every dispensational author from Walvoord to Feinberg to Chuck Smith and he quotes, footnotes, and interacts with all of them based on the biblical text.

He does likewise with all the other major historical views.

None of the major views are given short shrift here and all are presented giving their best arguments and best scholars a voice.

I cannot commend Menn highly enough for this…it greatly strengthens the integrity of the whole volume.

My other two criteria for a “great” book are whether the author challenges my own presuppositions from the biblical text and whether he does so in a way that I can understand his arguments.

Once again, Menn gets my highest grades on both counts.

This will be a reference work esteemed for it’s excellence for many years to come.”

That’s this years winner, we’ll go over the runners up later.