Bo Giertz, "The Hammer of God"

This is a cheeky, albeit winsome, book. In it, the now deceased Lutheran Bishop, Bo Giertz, spins a series of apologetic vignettes. In each story, a young pastor faces unbelief and heterodoxy within himself or within his congregation. The sterility of theological modernism, the legalism of pietism and the holiness movement, the faux spirituality of Pentecostalism and antinomianism, the impermanence of enthusiasm, and the pseudo-biblicism of the case against infant baptism. These young pastors face these temptations within themselves and within their congregations. In each case, they find the solution to the problems raised by heterodoxy in the orthodox confessions and practices of Augsburg evangelicalism. The solutions are quiet and unassuming, but they gradually press themselves on those open to the Spirit's leading through the Scriptures.

Some parts of some of the stories are a bit more didactically heavy handed than I think necessary. Nonetheless, I could wish that every Lutheran ingest the attitude of solid, imperturbable, yet winsome and unassuming orthodoxy manifest in the characters in this book and, presumably, in the author as well.