PIC No. 37:
• Title: The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross
• Author: Scott Hahn
• Publisher: Image (Feb. 20, 2018, 192 pages)
• Management Bucket #5 of 20: The Book Bucket
Welcome to Issue No. 37 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
Columbo Investigates the Last Supper!
Here’s my challenge to you: listen to the first five minutes of this book—and then convince yourself you don’t need to read or listen to The Fourth Cup. (By the way, the first five minutes are free here on Libro.)
Scott Hahn, author of nearly 40 books, including The Fourth Cup, became a Christ-follower in high school through the ministry of YoungLife. He graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and was an ordained Presbyterian pastor. Until…he wasn’t.
After a multi-year study of the Scriptures and more, this confirmed Calvinist converted to Catholicism in 1986. (View his story here.) A Catholic theologian since 1990, he teaches at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic university in Steubenville, Ohio, and is the founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
It took his wife, the daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, four more years of discernment before she became Catholic. In 1993, Kimberly Hahn co-authored a book with her husband, Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism.
So why should you read or listen to The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross? Read the foreword by Brant Pitre who writes, “I’ll never forget the first time I heard one of Dr. Hahn’s presentations on the fourth cup. I was completely blown away. It was like reading the Passion of Christ again for the first time.” He describes the book as the “pieces of a puzzle that I didn’t even realize were there…”
Scott Hahn gave his first talk on “The Fourth Cup” in 1989 in Chicago. He notes that “Word spread, and other groups invited me to tell the tale of my ‘Hunt for the Fourth Cup,’ which I cast as a detective story, starring myself as the hapless investigator, which I am. (Peter Falk’s Columbo was my role model.)”
After giving hundreds of versions of this talk over the years (“part memoir, part detective story, and part biblical study”), a friend suggested he write this book on the “often obscure and misunderstood rituals of Passover and their importance in foreshadowing salvation in Jesus Christ.”
That’s all I’m going to share! (No spoiler alert to this detective story.) But, be assured, the narrative is rich, deep (very deep), and—for an evangelical (non-Catholic) like me looking in—quite enjoyable. It touched my soul.
And if you can believe it—you’ll find dozens of laugh-out-loud subtitles and puns from the wisdom and wit of Dr. Scott Hahn:
• Ready, Willing Abel
• Along Comes Mary
• Heard of Lambs
• Marquette Value
• Justin Case
Really…you’ll love this book. (And thanks to my neighbor, who also made the trek to Catholicism, for sharing this wonderful book with me—the perfect book to read during Lent.)
PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Book Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
[ ] The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, by Timothy Keller. (Read my review.)
[ ] 30 Days Unplugged: How a Catholic Priest Turned Off His iPhone and Took a Call From God (Full Color Edition), by Father Darrin Merlino, CMF. (Read my review.)
[ ] Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas M. Beaumont (Editor). (Read my review.)
[ ] Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? And Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery, by Stephen R. Haynes. (Read my review.)
[ ] Knowing God, by J.I. Packer. (Read my review.)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross, by Scott Hahn. Listen on Libro (4 hours, 17 minutes). For more book reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting.
© 2023 John Pearson Associates. All rights reserved.
Pails in Comparison is posted every once in a while. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. By subscribing to Your Weekly Staff Meeting, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Typepad.com’s privacy policy here.