IVP - Addenda & Errata - November 2007 Archives

Peerless Powell’s

We were in Portland, Oregon, for Thanksgiving, and on the day after Thanksgiving we went down to Powell’s Books. This is a regular stop for my family. If we are in Portland for Christmas, we visit Powell’s on Christmas Day. It’s open every day of the year.

ETS/IBR/AAR/SBL Debriefing

The academic conventions have come and gone. And I’ve recovered. But now it’s time to catch up in my office—before the Christmas holiday descends upon me. In my “own” time, I’m diving into some of the books I brought back from the convention.

One Flew Over

It seems that everyone wants a say about the new book There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheists Changed His Mind. It started with publication of the book last month by Harper One about Antony Flew, a British philosopher who wrote a pivotal essay in 1950 called “Theology and Falsification,” originally presented at the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis. Reprinted many times over, it has been a guide for atheists ever since.

Top Ten Things to Say on Returning Home with Conference Book Plunder

Here are some verbal tactics you might find useful as you bring your conference book plunder home under the scrutiny of your nonacademic spouse. The premise is that, arriving at the airport, you can’t manage to drop the books off at the office.

10. “Look at how much money I saved! These were all forty to fifty percent off!”

9. “You should have seen the temptations! This is the small price of my restraint.”

8. “Remember, I’m writing a book, and the royalties will more than cover the price of these books. It’s just a temporary investment that we’ll recoup.” (Oh sure. Like your monograph on Athanasius Against the Arians is going to cover the cost of even one of those Brill titles in your bag!)

7. “Look! I’ve taken care of a lot of our Christmas shopping!” (When he/she tells you that no one on the Christmas list wants those books, you act disappointed and rejected, and absorb them into your library.)

6. “Oh, so you’re going to complain about your husband/wife squandering money on books! Do I blow money on alcohol? tobacco? gambling? drugs? sex? stadium box seats? No! Just books on justice and peace, Jesus and Paul, trinitarian theology and the evils of, uh . . . consumerism!”

5. “Don’t worry. It just looks like a lot. Amortized over my lifetime, I’m not spending very much on books at all. Certainly nothing like You Know Who.”

4. “These are all tax deductible.” (This only works if he/she is under the illusion that you somehow subtract the book bill from the tax due.)

3. “These are all tools. Just the cost of doing business in my trade.”

2. Dull the impact by itemizing. “Some of these are for Christmas. Some of these are for the new class I’m teaching. Some of them are for my research. Some of them I might adopt as texts. And one of them is for you!”

1. “Folks who had lost their homes in the fires were selling these books on the streets of San Diego. I couldn’t resist helping them out. If you had looked into their eyes . . .” *

Next year, perhaps we can offer ideas on how to hustle the plunder onto the premises and avoid this conversation.

*This one shows just how low one can go.

ETS/IBR/AAR/SBL ETC.

This is the week before IVP Academic editors take off for a week of annual academic conventioneering at the Evangelical Theological Society, Institute for Biblical Research and Society of Biblical Literature/American Academy of Religion (in that order). By any consistent measure, next Wednesday through Tuesday will rank as the busiest week of our editorial year.

Theologoumenon

Driving to our annual IVP editors’ retreat at the end of September, we were divided into two cars, with the academic editors riding together. We were not a half mile down the road before the term theologoumenon was being bandied about—and with some debate as to what exactly it means. Andy Le Peau, our editorial director, thought this immediate diving into abstract theological argument was a quintessential IVP Academic moment.