The Keeper's Crown, Nathan Maki

Although The Keeper’s Crown is fiction, I believe with all my heart that it captures the spirit of the First Century Christians, and their struggles against the fierce world they lived in. You will feel the power of the Truth they held dear and you will bristle at the intensity of the opposition they faced. For Christians, this is our history and our identity.

The setup is that Quintus is on a hero’s journey of sorts, but you can kiss clichés goodbye because the Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t work that way. (Side note: Have some sympathy Tylenol ready because Quintus and others will get hurt 4,000 times. Some content is not for kids or people with blood pressure problems.) He and Jael are both reaching for hope in their own way, but are living out a complicated brokenness as victims of a barbaric society as well as their own mistakes. Their story covers much ground on the theme of belief. We can know about Jesus, but what will we do about Him? Will we surrender? And what then…?

The Apostle Paul is one of my favorite people in all of history, and I was not one iota disappointed in his portrayal. I spent the first half of the book looking for him around every corner, when I probably should have relaxed and enjoyed the plot. Once he appears, he’s everything I imagined him to be. While we can’t unlock all the mysteries of who he was for sure, this is a beautiful and balanced look at a man who shaped words and ideas that live on in us today. Avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say Paul’s words take on a revived meaning in the context of his life story.

I hesitate to pass judgment, but in case you’re wondering – the time period, places, and people groups are shown vividly through excellent research. “Well-researched” is only a complement if the facts don’t overshadow the story, and in this case it’s all a perfect fit. The characters, their surroundings, and the events all blend together so smoothly into a singular message that as an aspiring writer myself I am challenged: This is what historical fiction is for. It speaks for both the living and the dead, memorializing their stories and challenging us to run the race with the same passion.

Among other golden qualities, I think my favorite fact about this book is that I did not guess the ending. I was off by eighty thousand miles. I read the last page with a mixture of emotions that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before, which is a sure sign of a unique story, well-told, and powerful far beyond the pages.

Read it, and get a friend reading it quickly because you will not want to experience this one alone.

Out of the Flames, Lawrence Goldstone

My latest greatest read was called Out of the Flames, subtitled "The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World." This book is partly a biography of the fascinating life of the Spaniard Michael Servetus, partly a discussion of the 16th century religious mindset, and partly the journey of a solitary book.

One of my favorite quotes was, "History is an ocean that books help us to navigate." Out of the Flames navigates the 16th Century world of publishing, bestsellers, heresies, and the intellectual prison that was the life of thousands until men like Luther, Calvin, and Servetus broke away.

Servetus had an elite education and language proficiency galore. He read Hebrew, Greek, and vulgate Latin in addition to his native Spanish. This wasn’t just unusual, it was illegal. Those languages were strategic in allowing him to study the original Bible in its entirety, as well as the modern day translations. He found discrepancies between the two, and in his drive to broadcast his ideas, he made himself a heretic to both Catholics and Protestants. Servetus wrote and published his interpretation of the Godhead and other ideas in Christianismi Restitutio and several other books. His intent was to understand the original meaning of the Bible.

Even though it is written without religious intent, Out of the Flames brings up countless discussion points for the modern Christian. Servetus was the epitome of a radical thinker. He was a pioneering medical genius, and managed to outthink centuries of stagnant medical tradition. In the same way, Servetus’ spiritual ideas also contradicted the collective consensus of established religion. He was a heretic of heretics. Thankfully, modern Christians don't kill each other over theological disagreements. However, modern Christians can still be found defending tradition and consensus rather than study the very Word they claim to follow.

Doing basic internet reading, I've seen a lot of conflicting details about Servetus' death. Modern Calvinists minimize the awfulness of Calvin’s actions because killing heretics was the way of the “church” then. In this book Calvin's role in Servetus’ death is not glossed over, nor is it presented as controversial. It seems the documentation speaks for itself. Whatever your opinion, the brutal facts are provoking. No one denies he was burned at the stake with his book Christianismi Restitutio chained to him. It's recorded that he died slowly, screaming, in terrible agony for thirty minutes.

Of course a story like this arrests your attention. I couldn't help being thankful for how ridiculously easy it is to read an honest translation of the Bible in my native language. Goldstone doesn’t make a connection with modern non-Trinitarian Christians, though many would find a special interest in this story. He does explain Servetus’ lasting influence over Unitarian groups. He may not be famous by U.S. standards, but he is well-remembered in Europe.

The last third of Out of the Flames is the story of the unlikely survival of the first printing of the book Christianismi Restitutio. Like the one that was chained to Servetus, most other copies were burned as heresy. Only three original copies exist today, and those were preserved haphazardly for hundreds of years. Finally, they all rest safely at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Bibliothèque National in Paris, and the library of the University of Edinburgh. And oh the joy. The U. of Edinburgh has images online now! Simply beautiful.  

You can buy an English translation of Christismi Restitutio for $229.00, or a used copy for $4,221.00.

And lastly, here is a first. I've made a YouTube video about Servetus for a school assignment, and I ended up using Out of the Flames as my main source.