LOGOS BIBLE SOFTWARE – Christmas Wish List

This Christmas time, I thought I would share what might be a preach-er’s wish list for Logos Bible Software. These resources all work best together with a core library product, but sharing some of these with you may start to whet your appetite for just what is possible. Remember that electronic books are much cheaper, smaller, and easier to use than their paper versions. They also allow you to have their entire contents effectively in your working memory. Want to search thousands and thousands of books and journal articles to find explanations of that obscure verse you are working on? Put Logos to work, and you’ll have answers in seconds.

The first thing that would be on my list, and which I am actually about to get, would be the

Gold Scholar’s Library. Items such as all the major lexicons, the commentaries by the United Bible Societies that their translators use, other commentary sets, and translations of much of the major literature that gives historical background to the Bible should be enough to make any Bible geek’s mouth water. (Remember – geek is the new chic, so I for one am glad to be known as a Bible geek!) Don’t forget, I can still offer 25% off if you buy this through me.

Second only to getting at least a version of the library (and the cheaper ones are also worth having – you can always upgrade) is getting a hold of the electronic works of the master preacher and theologian of the 20th century. I reviewed Martyn Lloyd-Jones Electronic Works previously, and they continue to be worth their weight in gold. Buy them if you buy nothing else.

It should go without saying that you should get a hold of

Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology electronically and then stuff your Logos Software stocking full of every free resource you can download from Truth is Still Truth. Recent additions include Calvin’s commentaries, Warfield, and Whitefield and there is much, much more!

If you have Lloyd-Jones and Grudem, as well as the free stuff, but now want a more substantial systematic theology work, then the fourteen volumes of

Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics might be the thing for you. The way the Doctor sells this is enough for me to really want this one.

“Here we have the classic Reformed theology con-sidered in a manner which is right up to date. Professor Berkouwer has always been known as a virile and stimulating theologian. He is one, more-over, who is able to do this in a modern manner and a popular style.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I have at least some of the volumes of the Theological Journals Library. Being able to have original journal articles at your fingertips is nothing short of amazing. I cannot recommend this one highly enough, and really must get round to obtaining some of the issues I don’t yet have.

Next up is a crazy deal, which if I had the cash flow, I would snap up right now. A Christmas special with lots of commentaries is worth $4511.66, but being sold for a ridiculous $379.95. A great last minute present for any wife to give to her preacher husband. My only consolation is that I have bought separately some of these items.

Then comes something you cannot have yet. Still a standard work, Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, should be available soon for $299.95. People often ask what the secret of a man like Spurgeon was and how he came to preach so well. One big part of it was that he, too, was a Bible geek, and said of this multivolume set:

“The volumes greatly differ in excellence, yet none could be spared. We have nothing equal to them as a series.”

Why, o why, can no one bring out a commentary set where ALL the volumes are fantastic was clearly the cry of Spurgeon’s day as much as it is today. I remember reading this at the Evangelical Library, and boy do I want it on my PC!

Finally, if you want to be able to understand the man they call the greatest systematic theologian of the 20th century,

Barth’s Church Dogmatics (14 volume set) is your thing. I think I want the Berkouwer before this one simply because Lloyd-Jones recommended him as someone orthodox, and apparently Barth said that Berkower was one of the few of his critics who actually understood him. Here is how he is described on the Logos site.

Karl Barth, who lived from 1886-1968, was perhaps the most influential theologian of the 20th century. Church Dogmatics, Barth’s monumental life-work that consists of more than 6 million words, was written over the span of 35 years. In it, Barth covers in depth the great doctrines of the Word of God, God, Creation and Reconciliation. He made it his task “to take all that has been said before and to think it through once more and freshly to articulate it anew as a theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.”

. . . two characteristics that define Barth’s theology are his emphasis on the person of Christ (Barth “works from Christ outward”) and his insistence that ethics and theology cannot be separated. Barth taught that “theology is ethics,” since knowing God entails doing His will.

Barth’s theology was shaped by his experience of living and teaching in Germany during the rise of Nazism. By 1934, Barth ha
d become a leader in the Confessing Church movement, which stood in courageous opposition to Nazism at a time when the German Protestant church had largely endorsed National Socialism. This stand cost him his professorship at Bonn University and he was forced to flee the country in 1935.

Barth has been called neo-orthodox, evangelical, and Reformed. Indeed, his views developed remarkably over his lifetime as he moved from a liberal position to one of dialectical theology (theology founded on paradoxes or tensions).