Mere Orthodoxy July 23, 2026 7 min signal 2026-07-23

The Heron #2: forthcoming theology books

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On the means and ends of this column devoted to notable new and forthcoming books, see the introductory paragraphs of its first issue. This second installment will cover more ground in terms of the number of books considered but be swifter in flight in reflecting upon each.

Malcolm Guite. Galahad and the Grail. Rabbit Room Press, 2026.

Malcolm Guite is far and away the most skilled Anglican poet of our time; to read or listen to his poetry evokes the sensation that a time-traveling relative of George Herbert or one of the Inklings walks among us.

Last year I re-read J.R.R. Tolkien’s gripping translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and I was captivated afresh with the power of old tales of chivalric knights to inspire my own heart towards penitence and purity. Galahad and the Grail is the first of a planned four-volume ballad described as “Malcolm Guite’s masterwork, a lifetime in the making.” I look forward to savoring it in hopes that it will become a beloved and integral part of my moral and aesthetic imagination.

Matthew Mason. John Webster and Prayer: Living by Divine Generosity. Explorations in Reformed Theology. T&T Clark, 2026.

I was a super-fan of the apparently now defunct “Church Podmatics” podcast hosted by Matthew Mason, Andrew Errington, and Matthew Wilcoxen, “a cheerful conversation about theology in a cheerless age” that discussed the latest journal articles. Ever since I heard about Mason’s project years ago, I have eagerly looked forward to reading it.

The world never got to see the late John Webster’s planned five-volume dogmatics, but we have witnessed a flood of wonderful studies of Webster’s theology in recent years, such as those by Brent Rempel, Jordan Senner, Jeremy Jones, an edited companion to Webster’s theology, and much more.

Webster’s theology was profoundly gripped by a sense of the aliveness of the word of God, which he read as a skilled interpreter of not only the theology but also the ethics of Aquinas and Barth and a host of other luminaries. Thus I cannot wait to see how Mason reflects upon prayer in light of Webster’s theology.

Michael C. Legaspi. Job. Commentaries for Christian Formation. Eerdmans, 2026.

A revision of Legaspi’s Harvard PhD thesis written under Jon Levenson, published with Oxford University Press as The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies, was a landmark contribution to understanding the history of hermeneutics. His subsequent work on “wisdom” in the Old Testament and conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy have made Legaspi a delightful author to read for those interested in theological interpretation of Scripture. He is the kind of interpreter you hope will write more direct expositions of the Bible for the church—and now he has!

I have long struggled to read the book of Job wisely. How do the lengthy speeches in the middle of the book relate to the ending? In terms of translation, is Job “comforted with” dust and ashes or does he “repent in” or “repent of” dush and ashes? How do God and the Satan/accuser relate in Job? What exactly are Job’s friends rebuked for? How should we think about his family members in the story? What do Leviathan and Behemoth signify? How do we think about God’s apparent silence and absence in the midst of profound, horrific suffering?

I do not expect any author to exhaustively answer all of these questions, but I hope to learn from Legaspi how to be a better reader and teacher of this wonderful and difficult book of the Bible.

Derek Rishmawy. The Fire of Glory: A Biblical and Dogmatic Account of God's Holiness and Divine Judgment. Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture. IVP Academic, 2027.

I don’t tend to see too much time and attention devoted to holiness today, either divine or human. In my own journey, John Webster’s brief but breathtaking book Holiness stands alone. Older classics by the puritans published with Banner of Truth such as Ryle’s Holiness, Sproul’s The Holiness of God (which I read as a teenager), and J.I. Packer’s numerous popular books on holiness, each left their mark on my life for the better.

But I am looking forward to seeing how Rishmawy handles the doctrine of divine holiness—and I am especially keen as a preacher and teacher to see how he talks about divine judgment, a pervasive theme in Holy Scripture about which especially modern people have hesitations. Because Rishmawy has a high view of Scripture and God’s holiness, I suspect he charts a nuanced path forward through a range of recent revisionist proposals.

David J. H. Beldman and Michael J. Rhodes, Reading the Pentateuch as Christian Scripture

A Literary, Canonical, and Theological Introduction. Baker Academic, 2026.

Baker Academic’s Reading as Christian Scripture series is an enormous blessing to undergraduate students and anyone who wants to get a handle on a major section of Scripture but does not necessarily have training in the biblical languages. Crucially, the series is expressly interested not merely in historical or objectivist interpretation but invites readers to become more informed theological interpreters of Holy Scripture. Though I devoted considerable attention to Deuteronomy while writing my dissertation, it has been a few years since I read a single overview of the Pentateuch. I had the privilege of studying with Michael Rhodes at Trinity College Bristol and look forward to learning from him!

Matthew Y. Emerson. The Biblical Canon: A Theological Account. Baker Academic, 2026.

The description for this forthcoming book is a bit vague and brief, as will be my speculations about this book. But tons of lay people and students have questions about the canon, and most of the books out there are about the minutiae of historical information about various texts that variously were or were not included in the canon. Michael Kruger has written several helpful books on the canon. But I have continued to wish for a single volume that gave students an accessible yet robust handle on the theological basis of the canon, and I am hoping Emerson’s book is the one I have been waiting for.

Alexander H. Pierce. Augustine on the Mystery of Christ and the Sacramental Economy of Salvation. Cambridge University Press, 2026.

The blurbs on this book are remarkable, given the sheer volume of published material on Augustine. But it appears that Alex Pierce, a patristics scholar at the North American Lutheran Seminary, hosted on the campus of Trinity Anglican Seminary, has made a notable contribution to central pillars of Augustine’s theology that will be of significance not only to scholars of early Christianity but of theologians in general and ecumenically-minded church folk as well.

Rik Van Nieuwenhove. Providence, Evil and Salvation: A Thomist Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2026.

If evil is inherently irrational, can anything meaningful be said about it? My foray into this question was Barth’s treatment of evil as das Nichtige [Nothingness, that which is not-willed by God] in Church Dogmatics III.3, and it was a gripping read. But over time I began to wonder if Augustine and Aquinas’s shared vision of evil as a privation of the good, and being as participatory in the good, was a more reliably helpful approach—with its corollary commitment that creaturely being is undergirded by participation in God, whose being is simple. I am not sure where Van Nieuwenhove will land on these questions, but I hope to learn from his book because I want to understand evil. After all, I am surrounded by it in the world, and I am called in Christ to live as an adopted son of God who has been freed from its canceled power.

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Joshua Heavin

Rev. Dr. Joshua Heavin (PhD, Aberdeen) serves as Curate for Pastoral Care at Christ Church Cathedral in Plano, Texas; he is the book reviews editor for Pro Ecclesia, the journal of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology; and he is an adjunct professor in the School of Christian Thought at Houston Christian University and West Texas A&M University.

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