Author: Tracey Rowland
ISBN: 978-0-567-03439-7
Price: £16.99
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Year: 2017
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Approaching the Study of Theology
Author: Anthony Thiselton
ISBN: 978-0-281-07759-5
Price: £14.99
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Year: 2017
Publisher: SPCK

In biblical studies it has been true for some time that ‘Introductions to study’ more or less form a particular genre within academic literature (particularly in the United States) and this is true in many ways for theological studies in general. There are some excellent guides around (such as that by the editor of this journal1) but the potential for new books is still considerable. This is bound to increase, partly because at least in this country more and more people who do choose to study theology at university (and the number seems to be dwindling) will do so without much of what we would call basic theological formation at school.

Professor Tracey Rowland from Notre Dame University Australia has become one of the world’s foremost Anglophone Ratzinger scholars2 and in this contribution to the Bloomsbury series Doing Theology outlines what she sees as the dominant approaches to ‘doing’ Catholic theology.

Author: Dr Tim Cantopher
ISBN: 978-0-281-07938-4
Price: £9.99
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Year: 2018
Publisher: SPCK

Though part of a series entitled ‘Christian Living’ and subtitled ’Helping Christians cope with mental health problems’, I would not consider this a specifically Christian book. Christ is only mentioned in it twice I think and one of those in the forward by Rev Will van der Hart, founder of the Mind and Soul Foundation. The Foundation appears to have given its backing to this 2018 special edition of a book that had been around since 2003.

The fact that it has been through so many editions over the years is because it is one of the best books around for helping people who think they are strong-minded cope with depression when it hits them

G.A. Studdert Kennedy,
ed. Thomas O’Loughlin and Stuart Bell
ISBN: 978-0-334-05656-0
Price: £25.00
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Year: 2018
Publisher: SCM Press

Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,
Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,
Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,
Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,
Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,
Waste of Youth’s most precious years,
Waste of ways the saints have trod,
Waste of Glory, waste of God, –
War!

This short poem1, very powerful and blunt, is by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, better known as ‘Woodbine Willie’, probably the best known British army chaplain of the First World War. Professor Tom O’Loughlin and Dr Stuart Bell have produced a fine new annotated edition of Studdert Kennedy’s prose work, The Hardest Part, his theological reflections drawing on his ministry as a chaplain originally published at the end of the war