My 5 favorite Christian books in 2025

I wrote most of the following at the end of last year, Dec 2025. Still, I thought it might be useful to post now in case anyone is looking for a good book to read. These would be my recommendations, for whatever that's worth.

The premise is someone asked for a list of the 5 favorite Christian books people read last year. Here are mine, just in alphabetical order by title. To be clear, only a few of these were published in 2025, I think. Most were published years before. I only read or reread them in 2025.

Note: Due to personal/family reasons, I haven't had as much time nor spiritual or emotional bandwidth to read over the last few years (and still don't really). As such, I tended to prioritize books which fed my soul as it were. If I felt a book didn't, then I was less likely to read it or finish it (e.g. the first volume of William Lane Craig's systematic philosophical theology is very intellectually stimulating but it was also a more dry read for me so I've set it aside for now). This list reflects all this.

If Bible translations were Star Wars characters

Just some humor:

If English Bible translations were Star Wars characters... 😊

* ESV = Yoda. Knowledgeable and wise, comes from a long and venerable heritage (Tyndale-KJV), but often talks backwards and uses archaisms.

* NASB = C3PO. Technically precise, popular with fellow robotic eggheads, but too literal-minded and woodenly awkward. NASB 2020 is C3PO with a smooth talking chip installed.

* LSB = K3PO. A different shade or color of C3PO in a land far, far away, i.e. Southern California, but throws in exotic sounding words (e.g. Yahweh) and obsessively repeats certain words as if it's glitching (e.g. slave).

* NET = R2D2. Said to be the robot's robot (the translator's translation), plugs in and interfaces with the latest tech, but most people don't really use it, per se, they only use it for its technical tools (NET notes).

* CSB/HCSB = Mace Windu. Boldly willing to take risks, even if it breaks with tradition (e.g. John 3:16, Rom 3:25), has a strong fan base within certain factions (SBC), but otherwise less popular than one might think, though it's increasing.

* NIV = Han Solo. Broadly popular, plain spoken and easy to follow, effectively gets the job done without any fancy acrobatics, but sometimes seems to be shady and may be smuggling illicit pronouns.

* NLT = Ewoks. Communicates with simple expressions, not the most technically proficient, but heart is in the right place and once in a while pleasantly surprises everyone.

* KJV = Darth Vader. Once thought to be the chosen one, speaks in an authoritative voice, but took a turn to the dark side when it began lording it over anyone who doesn't fall in line with the one true imperial text, the KJV Only.

* NKJV = Dark Helmet. On the one hand, it's a new and improved Vader. On the other hand, it looks like Vader lite.

* NRSV/NRSVue = Kylo Ren. Let the past die, forward thinking and progressive, but lack of faith is disturbing.

* Biblical Hebrew and Greek = Chewbacca. The most powerful warrior in terms of brute strength, but a bit woolly sounding to most people and as such needs a translator to understand.

A few thoughts on the NASB 2020

I have heard some people deride the NASB 2020, but I think the NASB 2020 is very good:

1. It seems to me the NASB 2020 unfairly received a bad reputation among conservative evangelicals before the completed translation had a chance to hit the market. That's primarily due to rumors about how it would translate adelphoi (as brothers and sisters, not brothers or brethren) and anthropoi (as persons or people, not man). I suppose conservative evangelicals feared it had gone progressive on gender. However, I find the translation of these terms in the NASB 2020 is relatively restrained. More so than the NIV 2011 and much more so than the NRSV let alone the NRSVue. It seems more or less on par with the CSB, which many if not most conservative evangelicals seem to have no problem with and in fact many have embraced it as their primary Bible translation, at least in the SBC (which of course is where the CSB's roots are). The NASB 2020 is still very much the work of conservative evangelicals.
2. In addition, the NASB95 could fairly be said to read woodenly or stilted, but I don't think it would be fair to characterize the NASB 2020 as wooden or stilted anymore. I find the NASB 2020 very readable - clear and natural. Not as readable as the NLT, the NIV, or the CSB, but the NASB 2020 is significantly more readable than previous NASB incarnations as well as more readable than the LSB to my ears. It is also more readable than the ESV, I think, or at worst it's roughly equal to the ESV, inasmuch as it uses more modern and less archaic language than the ESV (e.g. "storm" instead of "tempest"; "plagues" instead of "pestilences"; "warrior" instead of "man of war") and it uses more modern English syntax and less backwards Yoda-speak than the ESV, though there is still some. In general, the NASB 2020 flows quite smoothly for a "literal" (formally equivalent) translation, and it is often a delight to read as well, whereas the NASB95 was a fine literal translation but it did read somewhat more clunky to me. Although in fairness I never thought the NASB95 readability was as bad as many critics have said it was.
3. Others have pointed out that the NASB 2020 is overall more "literal" (formally equivalent) than even the NASB95. Apparently the NASB 2020 is not as literal as the NASB77, or the LSB, but it moves much closer in that direction than the NASB95. Personally, I haven't done an assessment about which NASB/LSB is the most "literal" so I can't say with any degree of confidence (though my guess would be the LSB), but I generally trust competent reviewers and scholars when they evaluate Bible translations.
4. The main thing I don't like about the NASB 2020 is its variety in translating the Hebrew word hesed. The NASB95 and the LSB primarily translate hesed as lovingkindness, the ESV as steadfast love, the CSB as faithful love, the NIV as unfailing love or simply flattened it as love, the NLT as unfailing love, and so on. However, the NASB 2020 translates hesed with a lot more variety - lovingkindness, love, mercy, compassion, faithfulness, etc. Personally I wish the NASB 2020 had primarily stuck with lovingkindness or another term like loyal love. It's not a dealbreaker, I still really like the NASB 2020, but I do wish it had been a bit more consistent in how it translated hesed. Of course, I realize a term like hesed has a wide semantic range, and hence why it shouldn't necessarily always have the same English term. But still my impression is the NASB 2020 errs a little too much on the side of variety than consistency with regard to hesed.
5. I think it would be in Lockman's interests to change the name of the NASB to something else because I think many non-American English speakers kind of balk at the name (e.g. Brits, Aussies, Kiwis). It'd be like if we had a Bible translation called the New Australian Standard Bible or the British Commonwealth Bible. This would make it seem like it's not a Bible translation primarily meant for Americans or only secondarily at best. So even though they might say the NASB is a very good translation, just the name alone might be a bit off-putting to them. Again, I suspect it'd be better if Lockman changed the name to something else like the LSB has done. I think that might help them better appeal to a wider audience.
6. Overall I probably prefer the LSB over the NASB 2020 if push came to shove - and this is considering that I tend to lean toward thinking the translation philosophy of lexical and syntactical correspondence or concordance is a bit misguided in the LSB - but nevertheless they're both very good translations. Indeed we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Bible translations in English.

Traduttore, traditore

Someone said:

If you don't know what the original language of a text was written in, then you are 100% dependent on someone telling you what the source language says. Every translation is going to be wrong somewhere. I know this becawh use I used to be an interpreter for the Deaf/Hard of Hearing. It's is not possible to fully convey every word and concept from one language to another.

For what it's worth, if anything, here's my amateurish attempt at an answer:

Is the gospel larger than sola fide?

Many Evangelicals have cited Galatians and other parts of scripture against Roman Catholicism and other groups they think hold a false gospel. A common response has been to cite passages in the Bible that refer to the gospel without defining it the way those Evangelicals are defining it (Mark 1:1, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, etc.).

The Diversity Of Baptismal Beliefs And Practices In The Medieval Era

It's often claimed that every Christian before the Reformation believed in baptismal regeneration, that only heretics opposed it, that only an extremely small number of Christians did, or some such thing. That kind of claim simultaneously makes the concept of justification apart from baptism look weaker and baptismal regeneration look stronger.

But many people believed in justification apart from baptism prior to the Reformation, as I've documented elsewhere. And among those who assigned some type of soteriological efficacy to baptism, there was widespread disagreement about the sort of efficacy involved, and soteriological efficacy was also attributed to other rituals (or sacraments, ceremonies, or whatever you want to call them): the laying on of hands, foot washing, etc. See here for a discussion of many examples from the patristic era. So, justification apart from baptism was more widely held before the Reformation than is typically suggested, and there wasn't the sort of unified alternative to it that we're told there was. Rather, there was a wide diversity of alternatives.

The Sin Of Simplicity

Proverbs warns about being simple-minded. "How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?" (1:22) The simple should become wise rather than remaining simple (Psalm 19:7).

Despite all of the advantages people in modern cultures have in intellectual contexts - higher literacy rates, more widespread formal education, better technology that includes more access to information, more political freedoms, etc. - it's common for people to not only be too simple in their thinking, but to even treat it as something virtuous and respectable. Supposedly, it's good that they're such simple people who don't learn much about a subject or mature in other ways.

Jesus told us that having more makes you responsible for more (Luke 12:48). Given the intellectual advantages we have in contexts like the United States, we should have much more to show for those advantages than we do.

Be careful not to encourage simplicity where you shouldn't. The immaturity of your children, people in your church, or people in YouTube threads, for example, should be discouraged rather than encouraged. They should be held to a higher rather than lower standard and should be expected to mature over time. That includes maturing intellectually and becoming more active in disseminating information rather than perpetually looking for other people to provide the information.

The Recent Resurrection Discussion Between Mike Licona And Dale Allison

Mike posted it on his YouTube channel here. The recording is incomplete. It stops partway through the question-and-answer segment. I don't know if there's a longer recording available anywhere. For now, I'll respond to the incomplete one linked above.

More Evidence That Irenaeus Attributed The Fourth Gospel To John The Son Of Zebedee

It's sometimes claimed that Irenaeus thought the fourth gospel was written by some other John, often referred to as John the Elder. I recently saw Tom Schmidt link a good article on the subject from Charles Hill. Here are some portions of Hill's argument, though the article includes a lot more:

Four of the five unequivocal references to the son of Zebedee [in Irenaeus] are found in a single chapter [of Against Heresies]: book three, chapter twelve. The last of these comes in 3.12.15, where Irenaeus says, “Thus did the apostles, whom the Lord made witnesses of every action and of every doctrine – for upon all occasions do we find Peter, and James, and John present with Him – scrupulously act according to the dispensation of the Mosaic law ...” The natural question arising from this statement would be, why would “all occasions” not include events recorded in the Gospel according to John? Irenaeus did not isolate John’s Gospel from the others as a maverick, renegade, or borderline-orthodox Gospel, but interpreted all four in the light of each other. So, when Peter and the rest reclined at supper with Jesus on the night he was betrayed, and Peter motioned to the disciple next to Jesus, the disciple whom Jesus loved – whom Irenaeus knows as a man named John –, why wouldn’t this John be the same John who is “upon all occasions” present with Peter and James as witness of every action and doctrine of Jesus (Jn 13:23–25)? Or, when Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved – whom Irenaeus knows as John – ran together to the tomb upon receiving Mary’s report (Jn 20:2–10). Or, when Jesus after his resurrection met seven of his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias and “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved [the disciple Irenaeus knows as John], following them” and asked Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” (Jn 21:21). How is anyone supposed to think that this John is another John, and not the one that is found with Peter and James on all occasions?...

I mentioned earlier that the only way one could argue that John the Evangelist, if he was not one of the twelve, could in some sense be called an apostle “sent” by Jesus [as Irenaeus believed to be true of the author of the fourth gospel], would be by arguing that he was present among Jesus’ disciples when Jesus gave his sending commission in Jn 20:21: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” – although here the word πέμπω and not ἀποστέλλω is used for Jesus’ sending of the disciples. But if John was present that evening, and only members of the twelve were present, then John was one of the twelve – that is, one of the ten remaining. Again, this is how both Irenaeus and the Marcosians read the Johannine Great Commission. It is also how Cyprian, in the middle of the third century read it: “And again, in the Gospel, when Christ breathed on the apostles alone, saying, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost ...’”

(n. 75 on 53, 60-61)

The Cumulative Case For A Christian Understanding Of Psalm 22

I want to put links to some of the relevant posts in our archives in one place:

Is Psalm 22 Messianic?
The Jewishness Of The Individual In Psalm 22
How Well The Psalm Aligns With Roman Crucifixion
How Verse 16 Should Be Rendered
The Individual In Psalm 22 Is Delivered From Death
The Events Of Psalm 22 Are Highly Influential Geographically And Chronologically
Is Psalm 22 too vague to have evidential value for Christianity?
How Well Psalm 22 Aligns With Other Old Testament Passages That Have Evidential Value For Christianity

Is Psalm 22 too vague?

One of the popular objections to Christian arguments for prophecy fulfillment is that the prophetic passages are too vague. Can Psalm 22 be dismissed that way?

Is Psalm 22 Messianic?

A common objection to Christian arguments for prophecy fulfillment is that the Old Testament passages don't identify themselves as Messianic. But they wouldn't have to in order to have evidential significance.

Prophecy fulfillment can have evidential value without the prophecy being Messianic, explicitly identifying itself as Messianic, or anything like that. The Messianic nature of a passage can be implicit rather than explicit. And a passage doesn't have to be Messianic to provide evidence for Christianity. Christians consider Jesus the Messiah, but there are many subcategories to the category of Messiah. A prophecy could refer to one of those subcategories without addressing the larger category. And, from a Christian perspective, Jesus is more than the Messiah. So, Messianic prophecy isn't all that's relevant.

With Psalm 22, what we have is a psalm that's attributed to David, but we don't know of anything in David's life that even comes close to fulfilling the passage, and the contents of the psalm are of such a nature that they're highly unlikely to have happened in David's life in some context that's not part of any of our extant records of his life. Then we have the fact that David is often assigned a lot of Messianic significance elsewhere in the Old Testament, such as being an ancestor of the Messiah. And the geographical and chronological influence of the figure in the psalm (verses 27-31) suggests a highly significant and influential individual. That doesn't require a Messianic understanding of the psalm, but a Messianic fulfillment helps make sense of those closing verses. It adds coherence to the psalm. Furthermore, we know that a later figure widely considered the Messiah, Jesus, died in a manner that aligns well with the psalm and was thought to have experienced a deliverance from that death (his resurrection). The themes of death and deliverance from it are prominent elsewhere in material Christians (and others) have argued is Messianic elsewhere in the Old Testament, and the psalm fits well with those passages (as discussed here, for example). For reasons like these, it makes sense to consider the passage Messianic, though implicitly rather than explicitly.

That's a secondary issue, though. The psalm doesn't have to be considered Messianic in order for Jesus' fulfillment of it to be evidentially valuable. Even if you identify the figure in the passage as a highly influential Jewish individual or whatever else other than calling him the Messiah, Jesus' alignment with the passage makes more sense as something supernatural than something natural. That's the primary issue, not whether the psalm should be categorized as Messianic.

The Closing Verses Of Psalm 22 Favor A Christian Interpretation Of The Psalm

One of the aspects of Psalm 22 that doesn't get enough attention is how the psalm ends. The individual in the passage is approaching death (verses 15 and 20-21), apparently at the hands of the enemies mentioned in the psalm, who are likened to animals. He asks for deliverance from those enemies, but says nothing of deliverance from some other manner of death, like an illness. And he is delivered. We're not told how he's delivered, but we're told that he is (verses 22-24). Verses 27-31 refer to the major significance of what's happened, how people across the world will hear about it and turn to God as a result of what's been accomplished. Those verses refer to widespread influence both geographically and chronologically.

That's happened on a large scale with Jesus. There have been widespread discussions of his execution in Christian and non-Christian sources from the first century onward.

By contrast, none of the many records we have of David's life describe anything even close to what Psalm 22 depicts. It seems unlikely, given what we know of David's life, that events such as those described in Psalm 22 happened to him. So, a fulfillment in David's life seems unlikely upfront, and it isn't referred to elsewhere in the oldest records we have of his life. An advocate of David's fulfillment of the passage could appeal to the psalm itself as evidence, but the widespread influence described in the closing verses of the psalm make more sense if they refer to something that would be discussed elsewhere as well.

The Christian understanding of the passage not only has the psalm itself recording the events, but also has the events being widely discussed from early on after the events, both geographically and chronologically, in contexts independent of Psalm 22. The closing verses of the psalm make more sense under the traditional Christian understanding.

Missing The Prophetic Forest For The Trees

Discussions of prophecy fulfillment often get overly focused on a certain aspect of a passage to the neglect of others. A lot of attention will be given to how to render verse 16 in Psalm 22, but other parts of the psalm that are significant will be ignored. Or whether verse 6 in Isaiah 9 is identifying the figure in the passage as God will be debated while other parts of the passage that are important don't get discussed.

One Way To Judge Skeptical Claims About Prophecy

Skeptics often object to Christian prophecy fulfillment on the basis that the prophecies supposedly are too vague, that many people could be said to have fulfilled the passages, that it's easy to fabricate alleged fulfillments by reading a later figure into the Old Testament, etc. One way, among others, of responding to such objections is to ask the skeptic to illustrate his claim with other historical figures. What sort of prophetic argument can be made for Buddha or Muhammad, for example? I've written about this subject before with regard to Muhammad, here and here. Another example of this kind of thing is the dismissive comments skeptics often make about Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy. See how much worse their explanations of the passage are. See my post here responding to Carol Newsom's commentary on Daniel, for example.

Advocates Of Baptismal Regeneration Rely On Implicit Arguments

In a post last year, I discussed several implicit lines of evidence for belief in justification apart from baptism among the early extrabiblical sources. As I mentioned there, all of us rely on implicit reasoning across many contexts in life, including when making judgments about Biblical and patristic issues. You wouldn't be able to function for a single day in your life without relying on implicit reasoning at some point. I gave some examples of how advocates of baptismal regeneration use some implicit arguments to support their own position. Yet, people often reject implicit arguments because of their implicit rather than explicit nature, or they assign implicit arguments less significance than those arguments actually have. Even many opponents of baptismal regeneration seem to get taken in by that sort of bad reasoning, to the point that they won't cite any extrabiblical sources who seem to support their view in an implicit way, since the evidence isn't explicit. Whether that's due to peer pressure, confusing a preference for explicit evidence with a need for it, or whatever else, it's a mistake.